“There’s another possibility,” Logan said after a long silence. “Dr. Strachey himself first discovered this room. He could have begun resurrecting the research himself. Maybe that’s why he dismissed all the workers so summarily — he wanted time alone with it.”

“Unlikely,” Kim said. She was looking up now; looking at Logan directly. “Dr. Strachey was terrible with anything mechanical. He’d have been lost in here. Besides, from what you’ve told me, it seems he’d just discovered the room — or, at least, broken through its wall — before he…” She didn’t finish.

“Yes. I know he wasn’t good at mechanical things. But, Kim, that doesn’t mean he didn’t tinker with the Machine.” And, he thought to himself, become haunted by whatever he accidentally released…until he was driven insane.

The room settled into a tense silence: Kim sitting on the stepladder, Logan leaning against the worktable, gazing off at nothing. Then, suddenly, he pushed himself to his feet. Quickly, he began moving along the walls, probing, prodding.

“What are you doing?” Kim asked.

“I think we’ve been looking for answers the wrong way,” Logan replied as he continued probing at the walls. “We’ve approached this place as if it’s a normal room. But it’s not — and, given its contents, I should have guessed as much. But it took Pam’s discovery to make me realize.”

For a moment, Kim just watched Logan as his fingers moved around the walls, searching for a hidden seam, concealed button, anything that might yield up additional secrets. And then, wordlessly, she joined in, examining first the far wall, then the floor, and then the large central instrument itself.

Moments later, Logan joined in her examination of the Machine. And within a minute, he achieved success: pressing at the polished wood, just below the two manufacturer’s placards, activated a hidden detent. With a click, a narrow, spring-loaded tray slid out into view. It seemed to be lined in lead.

“Kim,” he said. “Take a look at this.”

She came around from the far side of the Machine and knelt beside him. He slid his find back into the closed position — the rectangular lines of its front panel becoming totally obscured by the surrounding wood grain in the process — and then, with a press of his fingers, opened it again.

“Puzzles within puzzles,” Logan murmured.

Inside the compartment were four smaller trays. Two were empty, while the others held identical devices. They were small, with a profusion of wires — some yellow, others brown — and contained three vacuum tubes each. Something about them looked familiar to Logan, but exactly what he couldn’t determine. His headache had returned with a vengeance, and he was having difficulty in both concentrating and in ignoring the music that always seemed to sound in his head when he was near the forgotten room.

“Any idea what their function might be?” he asked.

“No. They appear to be receivers of some kind. But then again, maybe they’re transmitters. The technology is very old.”

Logan stared at the devices. There was something maddeningly familiar about them…and then, quite suddenly, it came to him.

He reared back, almost as if from a galvanic shock. Oh, my God…

Heedless, Kim carefully removed one of the devices — unlike the rest of the room, it was coated in a thin mantle of dust — and peered at it. “One way to find out what it does. Fire up the Machine and see what happens.”

Logan looked at her blankly for a moment before replying. “I’m sorry?”

“Clearly, its function is related to the central machine — otherwise, why would it be stored in here? If we activate the Machine, perhaps I could find a way to connect this device to the field generator or the EVP recorder.”

“No,” Logan said.

Kim stood. “We could speculate and theorize until we’re blue in the face. At some point, we’re going to have to do some actual experimentation. I say, turn it on and let’s observe the result. Otherwise, I’ve got—”

“No!” Logan said. He too was on his feet now, and — as if from far away — he realized he was shouting. “We’re not going to do that!”

An abrupt silence fell over the room. Logan raised a hand, trembling slightly, to his temple. His headache had spiked abruptly.

“I was about to say,” Kim went on, quietly and evenly, “that otherwise, I’ve got work — real work — back in my office.”

Logan took a deep breath. He needed time, time alone, to think this through. “That’s probably a good idea,” he said quietly. “Let’s call it a night.”

Kim replaced the device into its tray and Logan hastily closed the drawer. Then, turning out the lights and closing the tarp behind them, they made their way out of the West Wing in silence.

“Let me get this straight,” Olafson said. “You let Ms. Flood into the secret room.”

Logan nodded. It was the following morning, and they were standing in the parlor of Willard Strachey’s set of third-floor rooms. The curtains were drawn wide, yet the space remained dim: a large tropical depression had formed over Bermuda, and already clouds were starting to veil the coast as far north as New Hampshire.

“And this was after telling her about the room — and about Will Strachey — when you’d been explicitly told of the need for discretion.” The director’s face looked pinched, his lips pursed into an expression of extreme disapproval.

“I needed information, and she was the obvious candidate. Look. She’s the great-granddaughter of Dark Gables’s architect. She worked with Strachey on the plans for the redesign. She refused to help unless I gave her physical access to the room.”

“My God, man! Didn’t it occur to you that she was just using you, leveraging this request of yours as a way of getting into the room?”

Logan hesitated a moment. This had, in fact, not occurred to him. But he dismissed it as being alarmist.

Olafson shook his head. “I don’t know, Jeremy. You’ve changed since you were last here. Maybe it’s all the press you’ve received. I thought I could trust your circumspection in this matter. But you’ve far exceeded your brief, and I’m afraid—”

“It’s a good thing I did,” Logan interrupted. “Because I’ve made some discoveries. Troubling discoveries.”

At this, Olafson fell silent. After a moment, he motioned for Logan to continue.

“We’ve discovered the doorway to the room — if you can call it a doorway. I’d have never found it if it weren’t for Pam Flood.” Briefly, Logan sketched out how the room was accessed by a manually operated elevator concealed in the storeroom overhead. “And on the heels of that discovery, I learned something else — that a person or persons unknown have begun making use of the room…and recently.”

A shocked look came over Olafson’s face. Unconsciously, his fingers went to the knot of his tie, smoothing it down against the crisp white of his shirt. “How recently?”

“Hard to say exactly. A few months, perhaps. Half a year. But, Gregory — they knew we were coming. That’s why the room was spotless. That’s why all the books and files had been removed. I think they’ve resurrected the work that was shut down three quarters of a century before. Resurrected it — and refined it.”

“Could it have been Will Strachey himself?” Olafson asked. “I mean, he was the one who ordered the work stopped.”

“I wondered that myself. In hindsight, it hardly seems likely, since he was in charge of the reconstruction project and could have found a subtler way to keep the room secret. But the fact is I have proof it wasn’t Strachey.”

“Proof,” the director repeated.

Logan nodded. Then he reached into the pocket of his jacket, pulled out one of the devices they had discovered in the hidden tray the night before, and held it out. Olafson reached for it tentatively, as if it might bite. He turned it over in his hands once or twice, then handed it back with a look of mute inquiry.