"Mr. Ashley-Montague is busy," the voice said finally. "He does not wish to be disturbed. Good day."

Dale rubbed his nose. No one had ever said "Good day" to him before. It was a day of firsts. "Hey!" he cried, banging on the speaker box to get its attention. "Tell him it's important! Tell him we've got to see him! Tell him we've come a long way and ..."

The box remained silent. The gate remained sealed. No one and nothing moved between the gate and the mansion.

Dale stepped back and looked up and down the high brick wall that separated the estate grounds from Grand View Drive. It might be possible to get up and over it if Harlen gave him a lift, but Dale had images of fierce German shepherds and Doberman pinschers ranging the grounds, of men hi the trees with shotguns, of the cops showing up and finding Harlen with the pistol . . .

Jesus, Mom thinks I'm playing ball or at Mike's, and she'll get a call from the Peoria police department saying that I'm under arrest for breaking and entering, carrying a concealed weapon, and attempted kidnapping. No, he realized, Harlen would get the carrying-a-concealed-weapon charge.

Dale grabbed the speaker and put his face almost against the microphone grid, shouting, not even knowing if the thing had been switched off or if the listener at the other end had gone about his duties in the Emerald City. "Listen to me, goddammit!" he shouted. "Tell Mr. Ashley-Montague that I know all about the Borgia Bell, and about the colored guy they hung from it, and about the kids that got killed . . . kids back then and kids right now. Tell him . . . tell him that my friend's dead because of his grandfather's fucking bell and . . .oh, shit.'' Dale ran out of steam and sat down on the hot pavement.

The box did not speak again, but there was an electrical humming, a mechanical click, and the wide gate began to open.

It wasn't George Sanders who let Dale in; the silent and thin-faced little man looked more like Mr. Taylor, Digger's dad, Elm Haven's undertaker.

Harlen stayed in the car. It was obvious that if both of the boys went in, Congden'd be out of there like a rifle shot, probably taking the gate with him if he had to. The promise of the other $12.50 wasn't enough to keep him from leaving them ... or from killing them if he got a chance. Only the literal presence of the .38 aimed at the figurative head of his '57 Chevy kept him in line, and that was getting shakier by the moment.

"Go on in," said Harlen through thin lips. "But don't take high tea or settle in for supper. Find out what you need to know and get the fuck out."

Dale had nodded and scrambled out of the car. Congden was threatening to go in-and call the police, but Harlen said, "Go right ahead. I've got eighteen more cartridges in my pocket. We'll see how much we can make this heap look like a Swiss cheese before the cops get here. Then I'll tell 'em that you abducted us. Dale and me haven't been in County Juvenile Detention like somebody I can mention ..."

Congden had lit another cigarette, settled against the doorframe, and glared at Harlen as if he were imagining precisely what revenge he was going to take. "Move it," Harlen had added unnecessarily.

Dale followed the guy he assumed was a butler through a bunch of rooms, each of which as large as the entire first floor of the Stewart house. Then the dark-suited guy opened a tall door and waved Dale into a room that had to be the mansion's library or study: mahogany-paneled walls and endless built-in shelves rose twelve feet to a mezzanine catwalk, brass railings, then more mahogany and more shelves with books rising to a ceiling lost in rough wood rafters. There were slidable ladders along the base of the lower bookcases and on the mezzanine itself. On the east side of the room, about thirty paces from where Dale had entered, there was a giant wall of windows spilling sunlight over the big desk where Mr. Ashley-Montague sat. The millionaire looked very little behind that desk, and the man's narrow shoulders, gray suit, glasses, and bow tie did nothing to make him seem bigger. He did not rise as Dale approached. "What do you want?" Dale took a breath. Now that he was here, inside, he felt no fear and very little nervousness. "I told you what 1 want. Something killed my friend and I think it has to do with the bell your grandfather bought for the school."

"That's nonsense," snapped Mr. Ashley-Montague. "That bell was a mere curiosity-a piece of Italian junk that my grandfather was persuaded to believe had some historical significance. And as I told one of your little friends, the bell was destroyed more than forty years ago."

Dale shook his head. "We know better," he said, although he knew nothing of the kind. "It's still there. It's still affecting people the way it did the Borgias. And that 'little friend' you're talking about was Duane McBride, and he's dead. Just like the kids who got killed sixty years ago. Just like the Negro your grandfather helped hang there."

Dale heard his own voice, strong, clipped, sure-sounding, and it was as distant as a movie soundtrack. Part of his mind was enjoying the view out the wide windows: the Illinois River gleaming wide and gray between tree-covered bluffs, a railroad line far below, a glimpse of Highway 29 winding south toward Peoria.

"I know nothing about these things," said Denrtis Ashley-Montague, rearranging folders on his desk. "I'm sorry about your friend's accident. I read about it in the newspapers, of course."

"It wasn't an accident," said Dale. "Some guys that've been around that bell too long killed him. And there are other things . . . things that come out at night ..."

The thin man stood up behind his desk. His glasses were round, horn-rimmed, and they reminded Dale of some silent movie comedian's. Some guy who was always hanging from buildings.

"What things?" Mr. Ashley-Montague's voice was almost a whisper. It seemed lost in the huge room.

Dale shrugged. He knew that he shouldn't be revealing so much, but he didn't know any other way to show this guy that they really did know that something was going on. At that second Dale imagined a secret panel in the book-lined wall opening, Van Syke and Dr. Roon sliding softly through the opening behind him, and behind them, other things lurching forward in the shadows.

Dale resisted the impulse to look over his shoulder. If he didn't come out, he wondered if Harlen would leave without him. I would.

"Things like a dead soldier showing up," said Dale. "A guy named William Campbell Phillips, to be precise. A thing like a dead teacher coming back. And other things . . . things in the ground."

It sounded nuts even to Dale. He was glad he'd stopped before he started babbling about the shadow that had run from the closet to hide under his brother's bed. He had a sudden thought. I haven't seen these things. I'm taking Mike's and Harlen's word for this stuff. All I've seen is some holes in the ground. Jesus Christ, this guy's going to call the local asylum and they're going to put me in a rubber room before Mom even knows I'm late for supper. That made sense, but Dale didn't believe it for a second. He believed Mike. He believed Duane's notebooks. He believed his friends.

Mr. Ashley-Montague seemed almost to collapse into his high-backed chair. "My God, my God," he whispered and leaned forward as if he were going to bury his face in his hands. Instead, he removed his glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief from his suit pocket. "What do you want?" he asked.

Dale resisted the impulse to let out a deep breath. "I want to know what's going on," he said. "I want the books that the county historian . . . Dr. Priestmann . . . wrote. Anything that you can tell me about the bell or what it's doing. And most of all . . ." Dale did let the breath out. "Most of all I want to know how we can stop this thing."