CHAPTER 9 : Sinister Spirits
THE TALL BALD MAN with the scarred throat
approached them rapidly.
“Stand absolutely still, boys!” he whispered.“Don‘t
move if you value your lives!”
To Pete, the warning seemed unnecessary. He
couldn’t move. Then the machete flashed through the
air between him and Jupiter. It struck the ground
somewhere near their feet, and the man gave an
exclamation of disappointment.
“Missed!” he said.
The bald man took off his dark glasses, blinking at
them with rather friendly blue eyes. He now looked a
good deal less sinister.
“There was a snake in the grass behind you, boys”
he said.“I don’t know whether it was a rattler or not,
but there are some about. I tried to get it with the
machete, but I hurried too much.”
He took out a red-and-white handkerchief and
mopped his brow.
“I’ve been cutting the brush along the hill,” he said.
“This dry brush is a bad fire hazard. But it’s hot work
How about joining me for a lemonade?” By now his
hoarse, whispering speech seemed more natural to
them. They judged it was a result of the same wound
that had left the great scar on his throat.
Jonathan Rex led them into the bungalow. In a
room which was screened on one side there were easy-
chairs and a table with a large jug of iced liquid in it.
Beyond the screen were the cages of birds, which kept
up their constant noise.
“I raise parakeets for a living,” Mr. Rex explained
as he poured out three glasses of lemonade and
handed two to the boys. Then he excused himself for
a moment and stepped into the next room.
Jupiter sipped his lemonade thoughtfully.“What do
you think of Mr. Rex?” he asked.
“Why, he seems pretty nice,” Pete answered.“I
mean, after you get used to his voice.”
“Yes, he’s very friendly. I wonder why he said he
was cutting brush with the machete, however? His
hands and arms were quite clean. They would have
had small twigs and bark on them if he had really
been cutting dry brush.”
“But why would he bother to make up a story for
two kids he’s never seen before?”
Jupiter shook his head.“I don’t know. But if he
had been out cutting brush for any length of time,
how could he have a pitcher of lemonade with the ice
hardly melted at all standing in here now?”
“Whiskers!” Pete exclaimed.“There’s probably
some easy answer. Maybe he likes lemonade.”
“All answers are easy when you get them. It’s only
when you don’t know them that they’re hard.”
Jupiter was silent as Jonathan Rex came back into
the room. He had changed into a sports shirt with a
collar, and he was wrapping a scarf around his throat.
“It bothers some people to see my scar,” he
whispered.“So I cover it when I have company. It’s a
relic of a little scrape I got into in the Malay
Archipelago many years ago. But tell me, how do you
happen to be calling on me?”
Jupiter produced a business card and Mr. Rex
studied it.
“The Three Investigators, eh?” he said.“And what
are you investigating?”
While Jupiter explained that they would like to ask
him some questions about Stephen Terrill, Rex picked
up his dark glasses from the table where he had
placed them.
“My eyes are sensitive to daylight,” he whispered.
“I see best at night ... What is your interest in my old
friend Stephen Terrill?”
“We wondered,” Jupiter said,“if Mr. Terrill was
the kind of man who would become a vindictive spirit,
bent on haunting his former home to keep people out
of it for ever.”
Behind the dark glasses the man’s piercing gaze
seemed to study them intently.
“A very good question,” he said.“Let me answer it
this way. My friend Stephen, though in his movie
roles he played phantoms and monsters, pirates and
weird creatures, was really very shy and gentle. That
was why he needed me for his business manager. He
couldn’t bring himself to argue with people. Look at
this picture.”
He reached behind him for a large framed
photograph that stood on a table. The two boys took
it and studied it. It showed two men standing in a
doorway, shaking hands. One of the men was The
Whisperer. The other was not as tall, and was
younger. Apparently it was the original of the picture
they had seen in Bob’s research notes.
The picture was signed: To my good friend, J.R.,
from Steve.
“You can see from that,” Mr. Rex said,“why I
handled all the business. I had a way with people―
they didn’t like to argue with me.
“That allowed Steve to devote himself to his acting.
He took it very seriously. He enjoyed being able to
thrill and scare audiences. When his poor speaking
voice made his final picture such a laughing matter, it
broke his heart. That was one thing he couldn’t face―
being laughed at. I’m sure you boys can understand
that.”
“Yes, sir,” Jupiter said.“I know how he felt. I hate
being laughed at, too.”
“Exactly,” the man whispered.“For weeks after
the picture was released, Steve wouldn’t leave his
home. He sent the servants away. I did all the
shopping. The reports kept coming in that audiences
shrieked with laughter everywhere the picture was
shown. I urged him to forget it, but he brooded about
it.
“Finally he ordered me to obtain all the prints of
his old pictures that were in existence. He was
determined no one would ever see them again. I
managed to get them, at considerable expense. I
brought them to him. I had to tell him that the bank,
which financed the building of his home, threatened to
take the castle away from him. You see, he was a
young man and expected to make many more
pictures, so he had saved very little money.
“We were alone in the main room of the castle. He
looked at me with burning eyes.‘They will never get
me to go,’ he said.‘No matter what happens to my
body, my spirit will never leave this building’.”
The whispering voice ceased. The blank, dark
glasses seemed like the eyes of some strange creature.
Pete shook himself.
“Golly!” he said.“That certainly sounds as if he
was planning to go into the haunt profession!”
“Yes,” Jupiter agreed.“Yet, Mr. Rex, you say Mr.
Terrill was a gentle individual. Such a person would
hardly turn into a malevolent spirit capable of
inspiring unreasoning terror in everyone who entered
the castle.”
“That’s true, my boy,” the man said.“But you see,
the unseen force that causes the sense of terror in
everyone may not be the spirit of my old friend. It
may be one of the other, much more sinister spirits
that I strongly suspect now manifest themselves
there.”
“Other――” Pete swallowed hard “――more
sinister spirits?”
“Yes, you see there are really two possibilities,”
Rex said.“You no doubt know that Stephen Terrill’s
car was found at the foot of a rocky cliff?”
The two boys nodded.
“And you have probably heard about the note he
left in the castle, saying that it would for ever be
accursed?”
Both boys nodded again, their eyes fixed on
Jonathan Rex’s face.
“The police,” Rex said,“were sure that my friend
drove off that cliff on purpose, and I believe they were
right. However, I never saw Steve again after that last
conversation I just told you about. He sent me away
after making me promise never to enter the door of
the building again.
“What must his thoughts have been at the very end,
when he wrote that note? Remember, in life his
mission was to scare people. Now people were
laughing at him. Might he not be determined that
after death he would resume terrorising them, if only
to show he could not be safely laughed at.”
“You said there were two possibilities,” Jupiter
prompted him, when the strange, bald-headed man
seemed to be about to fall into a deep meditation.
“Also you spoke of other, more sinister spirits.”
“Oh, yes,” the man said.“When Steve built the
castle, he sent all over the world for materials from
various buildings supposed to be haunted. From
Japan he obtained timbers of an ancient, ghost-ridden
temple where a noble family had been wiped out in an
earthquake.
“Then he bought material from a ruined mansion in
England, where a beautiful girl had hanged herself
rather than marry a man her father had picked out for
her. And he imported stones from a castle on the
Rhine, supposedly haunted by the ghost of a mad
musician who was imprisoned in the cellars for many
years. The musician was said to have displeased the
ruling noble by playing music he did not like. After
his death the tune which brought about his
imprisonment was often heard coming from the
locked music room of the castle.”
“Gosh!” Pete exclaimed.“If all those dead
characters are wandering round Terror Castle now, no
wonder it’s so hard to live in.”
“They may be. They may not be,” Jonathan Rex
whispered.“I only know that even tramps, hoboes
and thieves give Terror Castle a wide berth. Once a
month I drive all the way over the hills to walk up the
road, stand out in front, and examine the condition of
my old friend’s only monument. And in all these years
I have never seen any sign of such persons round the
building.”
Jupiter nodded. That agreed with the observations
he and Pete had made. He did not see any reason to
mention the individual, whoever it might have been,
who had rolled the rocks down on them.
“What about the newspaper stories that mention
strange music from Mr. Terrill’s pipe organ, and a
Blue Phantom?” he asked.
“I can’t say. I never saw the Blue Phantom. I do
know that, even before his death, Steve mentioned
that several times he had heard mysterious music
coming from the organ in the projection room. As a
test he locked the door and disconnected the electric
apparatus which worked the organ. Still the music
continued. But as soon as he entered the room, it
ceased.”
Pete swallowed hard. Mr. Rex removed his glasses
and blinked at them.
“I cannot swear that Terror Castle is haunted by
my old friend or anyone else,” he whispered,“but
personally I would not enter that front door and spend
a night there now for ten thousand dollars.”
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