The Moonlit Mind (Novella): A Tale of Suspense Read Online Free PDF Page B

Recently, he has claimed to have seen three white cats slinking along hallways, across rooms, ascending or descending one staircase or another.
    Nanny Sayo says there are no cats. Both the chief butler, Minos, and the head housekeeper, the formidable Mrs. Frigg, agree that no felines live in Theron Hall.
    No cats are fed here and in this immaculate residence, no mice exist on which the cats might feed themselves. No disagreeable evidence of toileting cats has been found.
    The more the staff dismisses the very idea of cats, the more that Harley is determined to prove they exist. He has become quite like a cat, creeping stealthily through the immense mansion, trying to sniff them out.
    He claims to have nearly captured one on a couple of occasions. These elusive specimens are even faster than the average cat.
    He says their coats are as pure-white as snow. Their eyes are purple but glow silver in the shadows.
    Considering that Theron Hall offers over forty-four thousand square feet in its three floors and basement, Crispin figures that his brother might be engaged in a search for the phantom cats that will last weeks if not months before he tires of his fantasy.
    At four o’clock on the afternoon of July 26, Crispin is in the miniature room. This magical chamber is on the third floor, across the main hallway from the suite in which the matriarch, Jardena, withers in reclusion.
    The space measures fifty feet in length, thirty-five feet in width. Clearance from floor to ceiling is twenty-six feet.
    In the center of this room stands a one-quarter scale model of Theron Hall. The word
miniature
seems inadequately descriptive, because each linear foot of the great house is reduced only to three inches in this representation. Whereas Theron Hall is 140 feet from end to end, the miniature is thirty-five feet. The real house is eighty feet wide, and the reduced version is twenty. The fifteen-foot-high likeness stands on a four-foot-high presentation table with solid sides rather than legs.
    The model is such a painstakingly accurate rendering of the mansion that it’s endlessly fascinating to Crispin. The walls are made of small blocks of limestone, cut thin to minimize the weight, but seemingly thick. The carved ornamentation in the window pediments and in the door surrounds match perfectly to the real thing. The balconies, the richly designed cornice, the balustrade that serves as a parapet, the nearly flat ceramic-tile roof, the chimney stacks with bronze caps have all been re-created with obsessive attention to detail. The window frames are bronze, with genuine glass for the panes.
    Through the windows, he can study rooms precisely as they are in the true house. The miniaturized library features shelves and paneling of select walnut, exactly as does the life-size inspiration. Even the furnishings and the artwork have been reproduced by a team of modelers who must have worked thousands upon thousands of hours to complete this magnificent reproduction.
    A wheeled and motorized mahogany ladder with handrails and a safety tether rises to an oval stainless-steel track on the ceiling, allowing an observer to circle the model, peering in the windows at any level. At various points on the ladder are controls with which he can power it left or right, or stop it at any desired vantage point.
    Of Clarette’s three children, only Crispin is permitted to climb the ladder and operate it. Other nine-year-old boys might be judged too young to deserve this permission, but Crispin is responsible for his age, and prudent. He always holds fast to the handrails and snaps the tether to his belt.
    Now, as he motors the ladder to the west facade, to peer in at the ornately furnished rooms occupied by Jardena, he wonders—not for the first time—why the old woman lavished so much money on this miniature when she has the real house to enjoy.
    According to Giles, his mother has always been as eccentric as his late father was industrious. The patriarch,