Part 1: Mystery Date
Chapter 5

June twenty-second was a banner day at Collinwood. Roger hospitalized, David vanished, the sheriff and Fire Department both summoned to the house. And Maggie Evans came home from France.

David, Hallie and Amy had been sent off to school for the Winter/Spring semesters while Maggie had been abroad. An unexpected insurance payoff on the life of Sam Evans, from a policy Maggie hadn't known existed, had stimulated her desire to see the French towns where her father had fought in the war. Taking two cousins with her, she had made it an unforgettable holiday. Now she was returned to Collinwood as the tutor-governess of Hallie, David and Amy. Maggie had recently done coursework in tutoring children who had different learning styles. She had three pupils, all with different scholarly troubles, and all with past exposure to trauma.

Both girls were orphans; David's mother was dead. And Elizabeth Stoddard wasn't certain that boarding school was the right place for any of them over the long-term. So, for the time being, Maggie's place among the Collins family was assured. Besides, the entire family adored her.

Maggie entered the house with a sigh of satisfaction, the taxi driver kindly conveying her bags to the foyer. Her repeated calls to Collinwood from the bus station, to which she'd traveled from the airport, had fetched only busy signals. But as she removed her smart light-green suit coat and placed her purse on the foyer table, she met Harry coming out of the kitchen.

"Hello, Harry," she called brightly. "I've just come from the airport! I've been flying all day. How is everyone?"

"Hello," responded Harry, stopping in his tracks and staring at her in surprise. Then he dumped the afghan on the center table and stripped off his gloves, and smiled. "Welcome home. Want me to bring your bags up to your room?"

"Oh, yes, please, would you? Who's home?"

"Barnabas Collins and Dr. Hoffman are around somewhere—Hallie's upstairs—Roger Collins and Mrs. Stoddard are up there, too."

"Great," Maggie replied, dimpling. She stepped forward and fluffed up the afghan that Harry had put on the table. "What's this doing here? Do you need me to bring this up with us?"

"Oh, no," said Harry, shouldering Maggie's overnight bag and tucking suitcases into his arms, "My mother has to figure something out about it. I mean, she's not sure whether the kids took it from your room or whether it's the one from the drawing room."

Maggie held the afghan before her eyes and expertly fingered its edges. "It must belong to the drawing room, then. Mine has a cigarette burn on it from my father smoking, and this one hasn't." She replaced the afghan on the table and followed Harry up the stairs.

Needless to say, Maggie found the household in an uproar. Roger had been nonplussed to hear that his son was missing and might be suffering the same experience that he had had. He had to be physically restrained and repeatedly threatened away from the east wing room. Julia had finally given the distraught Elizabeth Stoddard a sedative. Maggie, on hearing about the situation, went immediately to Hallie and then to Elizabeth to try to provide hope and comfort.

Forty-five minutes later, she reappeared downstairs.

At his mother's request, Harry had been trying to make himself useful by cleaning the hearth in the drawing room for Mrs. Stoddard. It was a rare day that there was not a fire going there, but now that it was past the middle of June and warm enough not to have the fire constantly, it was a good time to sweep out the ashes. Harry might not have liked the task, but he had developed a sincere regard for Elizabeth Stoddard in the time that he had been staying at Collinwood, recuperating from surgery.

Harry squatted before the fireplace with a stiff brush and small shovel, carefully scooping ash and fragments of wood into a lined wastebasket, now brimming. He soon realized that he'd either need two wastebaskets or would have to pause and empty this one before continuing. He stood up and took the wastebasket into his hands, turned and saw Maggie.

She was standing in the doorway of the drawing room, observing him. Her posture was odd, her chin lowered, her eyes upturned to his face. He could tell from her expression that she was intently considering something. He knew she'd heard about the missing David and thought she was coming to ask him about it, and that she was probably distressed.

"The sheriff will find David," Harry offered. "He'll be okay. He's a smart kid, and he can look out for himself." He approached with the wastebasket but Maggie didn't get out of his way. She continued to stare at him intently, and Harry felt a stab of worry. Was she angry with him? He set the wastebasket down.

"What is it? Something wrong upstairs?" he asked, perplexed. "Is there a mouse in your room?"

Suddenly, she ran to him and pressed her body against his, crossing her wrists behind his head.

"Be with me," she whispered. "I need somebody to be with." She opened her mouth and kissed him.

Harry stood electrified, eyes wide open. He slowly put his hands on Maggie's waist as she broke the kiss. Though his brain circuits were jammed, his fingers registered the astounding heat that emanated through Maggie's clothes, and his memory recorded it.

"Maggie," he whispered, "Maggie, Miss Evans, what's wrong with you?" Maggie took a step away from him and began to unbutton her blouse. She was panting. Large drops of clear sweat stood out on her forehead.

"Oh, Jesus," Harry muttered. Four or five courses of action smote him together. He could let this happen—but they were in the middle of the drawing room with the doors open—but something must be terrifically wrong with Maggie—but what about his girlfriend—for Harry had been spending time with Tish Lemon—but anybody could walk by the room and catch them—but this was the chance of a lifetime—but—

Dimly, not realizing, he heard the front door of Collinwood open, then shut.

Maggie's cheeks glowed red. She left the unbuttoning of her blouse half-done and stumbled close to him, and began to tug the shirt up out of his pants.

Beneath all that Harry was seeing, feeling and wanting was the overpowering sense that something was terrifically wrong. This notion cleared his senses like a zap of ice water. He tried to step past Maggie, but she reacted by savagely gripping his shirt in both fists. He took her by the shoulders as she fell against him, and as he did so, he realized that the fabric of her blouse under his fingers was soaking wet.

"Harry!" she barked. "No! Harry!"

There was a fleeting movement behind Maggie's head, and Harry was thrown backwards as something detonated against his face. He collapsed helplessly against the couch, literally seeing stars. The air exploded, he thought disjointedly. I never knew that air could just explode.

"I'll kill you!" screamed Willie Loomis, standing over him, apoplectic. Willie drew his leg back wildly and delivered a frightful kick to Harry's right thigh. Harry shouted in rage and pain, and peripherally saw his wastebasket slowly tip over, fanning its ashes across the floor.

"I'll kill you! You touch her, I'll kill you!" Willie yelled, spit flying everywhere. Then, as Harry watched, Willie ducked and tried to protect himself as Maggie began to vigorously slap and pummel him, her teeth bared, eyes livid.

"Get out of here!" she yelled hoarsely at Willie, hauling and slapping him. "Nobody wants you here! I want to be with Harry! You get out, Willie!"

Harry tried to get his legs beneath him, but his thigh was pulsing in agony and his head swam. "Holy Jesus," he remarked from the floor, but the fighting couple above him didn't react.

Willie made half-gestures of reaching out for Maggie amid the rain of slaps and punches descending on him. Harry watched uncomprehendingly as Maggie then changed tactics and began throttling Willie. "Maggie," the hapless Willie gagged, "Maggie, what's the maddah?"

Then Mrs. Johnson rushed into the room, and Harry heard what was probably Roger Collins racing down the stairs.

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Julia accompanied the ambulance that took a still-raving Maggie off to the hospital. Barnabas immediately went to Harry Johnson, who was seated on a kitchen stool with a dishrag full of ice cubes pressed to his cheek.

He sat opposite Harry, whose right eye was discolored and puffed from the punch Willie Loomis had landed. Harry glared back.

"Harry," Barnabas said gently, "Can you tell me what happened?"

"Where's Loomis?" Harry grunted.

"Roger's keeping a watch on him. We had to give Willie a sedative! Now, come, tell me what went on."

"Barnabas," Harry responded, "Mr. Collins—look. I've done some bad things in my time and I'm the first one to admit it, but I have never, I would never attack a girl. Willie's got the whole thing backwards, he didn't see what happened, and nobody's going to believe me, because even I don't believe it."

"Please tell me, regardless," Barnabas encouraged. "Just go ahead and tell me and I promise you that I'll listen."

Harry fetched a deep sigh and explained what had taken place: how Maggie had been completely normal upon returning to Collinwood, and then peculiar when she came back down the stairs; she'd put her arms around him and kissed him, astounding him. He described the way she'd been sweating and how the heat had simply rolled off of her. "She definitely wasn't herself," Harry averred, touching his squinting black eye with the icy cloth. "She unbuttoned her blouse. She tried to grab my shirt off—oh, who's going to believe me? I didn't do a damn thing, but I'm going to jail, aren't I?"

"When was Maggie upstairs in the dumbwaiter room?"

"Where?"

"She must have gone up there and touched the dumbwaiter or looked inside it. Did you see her go into the east wing? … Maybe Hallie saw her go there, if you didn't. Maybe Elizabeth saw her."

Harry groaned. "Does Mrs. Stoddard have to know about this? I like Mrs. Stoddard and I think she likes me. Oh, my God."

"Harry, something is going on around here. Just this morning Roger Collins came down with the same symptoms you just saw in Maggie: sweating, hot to the touch, unusual behavior, yelling and so forth. He had to be treated at the hospital. Now it's happened to Maggie. We're trying to locate the one thing they both touched or breathed in that caused this. As far as we can figure out, it's something in the dumbwaiter room. When did you and Maggie go upstairs with her luggage?"

"As soon as she got here," Harry answered. "She came through the front door and I happened to be in the hall, and I told her I'd take her bags up. I pulled off my gloves and threw them on the table, and brought her luggage to her room. We didn't go to the east wing."

"Why were you wearing gloves?"

"The kitchen dumbwaiter," Harry answered. "My mother is supposed to scrub it out and she asked me to help, and we thought it was going to be dirty. But Maggie never went into the kitchen."

"Those dumbwaiters again," Barnabas growled. "Did Maggie touch your gloves? Did the gloves perhaps fall to the floor after you removed them, and Maggie picked them up?"

"No, no. I hadn't even touched the dumbwaiter yet with those gloves. The thing Maggie touched," Harry realized, "was that black afghan with the different colored squares. My mother found it crammed into the kitchen dumbwaiter, so she pulled it out and told me to put it on the hall table, since she didn't know whether it belonged in the drawing room, or whether the kids had taken it from Maggie's room, or something. Because Maggie has a black afghan, too. So Maggie picked it up, looked at it, decided it wasn't hers because of a cigarette burn."

"She touched the afghan and you never did, because you were wearing rubber gloves in preparation for helping your mother scrub out the dumbwaiter?"

"Yes. Maggie looked over the afghan and felt along the edges for the hole. Do you think there's something on the afghan that made her sick?"

Barnabas crinkled his brow. "I'm confused. Who put the afghan into the kitchen dumbwaiter? For what reason? And I don't know whether Roger's case involved an afghan. If that one isn't Maggie's, then it has to belong to the drawing room, yes? Stay here, let me go see if the drawing room afghan is still there."

"I'm not going anyplace," observed Harry unhappily. "Don't think I can get up, anyway."

Barnabas hurried from the kitchen, through the foyer and into the drawing room. He stopped in the doorway. The black-and-multicolored afghan was there as always, casually draped over the back of the sofa. It had accompanied Roger home from the hospital. Barnabas withdrew, retracing his steps to the kitchen.

Mrs. Johnson was standing over her son, weeping into a hankie and sobbing breathy words. Harry protested, "I didn't, ma!" at which Mrs. Johnson swung her wet, red eyes on Barnabas. "Don't let them take him back to prison, please, Mr. Collins. Oh, my God—"

"MA!" Harry exclaimed, then clenched his eyes shut. Fantastic! Now Barnabas knew he'd been to prison!

"—I'll never see him again! I can't believe the things that happen in this house! That nice Miss Evans! I thought you were interested in that other one, the one that's going to get me thrown out of my own kitchen, that Tish Lemon—"

"Look, Ma, could you for once—"

"—and now you go and do this, Harold Glen Johnson, heaven help you when my heart explodes and I'm dead!"

"Try to be calm, Mrs. Johnson," Barnabas encouraged. "I don't think Harry did anything wrong. We think Maggie must have got close to the same source of contamination, whatever it is, that took down Roger Collins this morning. Maggie couldn't help what she was doing, and Harry just happened to be in the way."

"Is she going to be all right?" Mrs. Johnson asked tearfully.

"I'm sure she will be. Julia Hoffman's on the case, as is Dr. Liska. They're going to isolate the problem. I'm going to do some research around here myself. We'll get to the bottom of it."

Barnabas stalked out of the kitchen and went immediately to the den, where Roger sat with Willie Loomis. Willie was slumped on the small sofa, his face buried in his hands. Roger wearily put aside a book when he saw Barnabas at the door.

"Roger," Barnabas asked, "did you—well—did you happen to find an afghan in the dumbwaiter room, east wing, by chance?"

Roger blinked. "Why yes, I did. Last night. It was lying inside the dumbwaiter of the east wing, which was papered over, you remember. I thought it odd, someone playing a joke on me with the afghan from the drawing room. But I checked, and the other afghan—our regular afghan was over the couch where it always is. I left the other upstairs on the floor of the east wing room where I found it."

"Where do you think that afghan came from? Do you believe that it had been inside the dumbwaiter, papered over, for years?"

Roger frowned. "Yes. I assumed it had, because Elizabeth and I were the only ones who knew about the dumbwaiter at that point. Though I told David and Hallie about it at dinner." His features contracted, melting into grief and confusion, and his eyes swam with sudden tears. "Barnabas, where is my son? I was outside scanning the roofs of Collinwood earlier, with Elliot, after he told me of his idea of David being trapped up there somehow. We looked, shouted, saw nothing."

"Roger," Barnabas told him firmly, "as soon as I can make contact with Julia, either by phone or when she gets home, and tell her of this suspicious afghan—then I promise you that I am going to re-create David's ride in the dumbwaiter. Before I say another word, however, I want your solemn promise that you will stay out of that room! You've already been exposed once to whatever it is, and your symptoms were life-threatening. Now. It is my theory that there is a ledge or small room, an outlet of some kind off the dumbwaiter shaft, and that David crawled onto it to investigate and either got caught there, or hurt. I am going to ride the dumbwaiter myself, and find him."

Shaking his head in disbelief, Roger nevertheless gave Barnabas his grateful thanks.

On his way out, Barnabas grasped Willie's shoulder and told him not to worry about Maggie, and that they'd talk a bit later. Willie didn't respond. Barnabas left the den.

But when he reached the foyer, the afghan that had been on the table was gone.

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He phoned the hospital and asked for Dr. Hoffman.

"Maggie's fine," Julia reported. "I'm keeping her overnight for observation, but her vitals were already stabilizing before we'd even got her out of triage. She's coherent and not sweating, and wants to know why she's in the hospital, if you please! Barnabas, she doesn't remember anything that happened to her, but it was the same damned thing that got Roger. Blood pressure so low as to be undetectable, terrible heat, rapid heartbeat, prodigious sweating, altered disposition –"

Barnabas quickly told her of Harry's testimony, that Maggie had had in her hands the same afghan, presumably infected, that Roger had encountered.

"Don't touch it, of course," she urged, "but pick it up using a stick or pole, or coat-hanger, and bag it or box it up, and tape the box shut and set it outside somewhere! Write the contents on the box. We want to test—"

"Julia," Barnabas broke in, "it's gone, my sweet. Vanished."

"Find it!" Julia cried on the other end of the line. "Please! Before it poisons somebody else."

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The household, except for Willie Loomis, who was now dozing in the den, had been gathered into the foyer and questioned. No one admitted having collected the afghan from the foyer table. Barnabas then updated everyone on Maggie's fledgling recovery and informed them all to be on the lookout for black-and-multicolored afghans that might appear in odd places—and not to touch them with bare hands. He shared with them Julia's directions about boxing them up. Then he himself, wearing a fresh pair of Mrs. Johnson's rubber kitchen gloves just in case, went to Maggie's room and found her afghan with the cigarette burn in it and brought it downstairs. He removed the drawing room afghan from its place over the back of the couch, folded it, and was placing both afghans into a bag when Elizabeth Stoddard stopped him.

"I can tell whether that one is ours," she murmured, stretching forth one hand.

"Don't touch," Barnabas cautioned.

She drew back. "Maggie's has a cigarette burn. Ours has a signature sewn over one of the corners." She watched while Barnabas flopped the afghan about in his gloved hands, looking for the sewn name. "There, see? Lena Collins put that there in pink thread, much faded but still readable." She gazed up at him. "Now, if we actually locate a third afghan, we can tell them all apart."

"Thank you, Elizabeth," Barnabas said, smiling at her.

As she watched, he placed the two folded afghans one atop the other, stuffed them into a large nylon lingerie bag, and then wrapped them in a blanket, making a parcel of them. Then he walked out of the drawing room and found a first-floor linen closet, and stowed the blanketed package away on its empty top shelf.

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While a rubber-gloved Mrs. Johnson scrubbed the foyer table with disinfectant, and Elizabeth and Roger worried together in the drawing room over Roger's missing son, Hallie met her Mystery Date.

She had been sitting tearfully in her room, pondering David's disappearance. Finally, she could stand it no more, and walked to the east wing.

She opened the door of the room where the dumbwaiter was and stepped inside, slowly picking her way over to a forlorn corner. There she seated herself and brought her knees to her chin. Tucked into a comfortable ball, she wept.

A slow ticking sound eventually penetrated her consciousness. Then it grew faster. Then another sound frightened her—it was like the groan of machinery. Hallie lifted her tear-streaked face in surprise, feeling the faintest vibration in the floor beneath her. The dumbwaiter! Was it the dumbwaiter, with David in it?

Panting, astonished, Hallie scrambled to her feet and stood agog in her nightgown, staring at the dumbwaiter door. She heard the hiss of the working cables, the grumble of the carriage as it swept along behind the door. The noise increased. It was approaching! David had found his way back!

Not realizing what she did, she began to hop lightly from foot to foot in her excitement. Happiness soared within her. What would everyone say when she ran downstairs to them with David?

Behind the wall, the dumbwaiter whumphed to a stop. Its door was thrust open by the occupant.

"David!" Hallie shrieked. There was no response to her joyous cry, but she heard someone breathing and scrabbling inside the dumbwaiter carriage.

Her skin went abruptly ice-cold.

Boots came into view, black ones studded with silver divots, and close-fitting dark slacks. The legs moved as the person tried to push forward to exit the dumbwaiter. Two pale hands, long and unfamiliar, grasped the sides of the dumbwaiter frame and pulled the body forward.

It was a man she had never seen before, of slim build, wearing dark glasses. He ducked his head as he left the dumbwaiter carriage, and then straightened to his full height in front of it, shaking out his limbs. He had a wild, ugly bush of upstanding dark hair and a week's worth of stubble on his face. He wore a leather jacket, with a red kerchief fitted about his neck. A gleaming silver chain was slung over one shoulder and down the front of his leather jacket diagonally, like a sash. He saw her, grinned, and then spoke in a loud, raucous voice.

"You been in this dumbwaiter, kid? What a trip—acid all the way!" whooped Buzz Hackett.

Barnabas waited only until Julia got back to Collinwood, then both of them immediately mounted the stairs to the east wing.

"I don't want you to do this!" Julia argued. "The firemen would have seen such a ledge or alcove and seen David on it, if it existed! You're taking a terrible risk, Barnabas. What am I going to do if you disappear, too?"

"Julia, we're getting nowhere like this. Someone has to reprise this sojourn in the dumbwaiter. Perhaps there is some supernatural Bermuda Triangle force in there. Well, if David is trapped in it and I can reach him, maybe he and I can work our way back together. He's been gone nearly 24 hours and none of us can take much more."

Julia's eyes were wet. "Yes, of course. All right. Oh, Barnabas."

"If I vanish, get Elliot. Oh, shit!" Barnabas blurted.

"What?"

"Angelique! Possibly she knows something about the dumbwaiters? She certainly spent enough time in this house in the past. Why didn't I think of her until now? Oh, well. If I don't get back, get Elliot and Angelique, and know that I'm trying to return to you." He grabbed her quickly and gave her a fierce hug. She clung to him, and they kissed, long and deep.

"I'll be back, my love. With David. Or we'll get some kind of signal back to you." Barnabas gave her his beautiful smile. He was holding back tears. Julia, one hand lingering on Barnabas' face, her eyes worried, nodded in acceptance.

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As it happened, there was no need for worry, for Barnabas soon returned, and someone was with him.

But it was the wrong someone.

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This is the End of Part 1.