“Looks like a vault,” Buckhart remarked.
“It does, doesn’t it?” Randolph said slowly. “But the only treasures I have kept there are expensive chemicals which cannot be exposed to light or air or dampness. If I should shut this door on you, I venture to say that in two hours at the latest, you would have exhausted every bit of oxygen in the place; and since it is absolutely air tight——”
“Say, don’t!” the Westerner exclaimed, with an expression of mock dismay. “Let me amble out, quick!”
Scott Randolph laughed as Buckhart came out of the room, but his eyes narrowed a little when the Texan caught sight of the peculiar construction of the door. Instead of being of wood, it was of sheet steel. On one side were cemented slabs of stone so that, when closed, it would be absolutely impossible for a person inside to locate that door. On the outer side it was covered with the same oak paneling with which the hall was lined, and there were no signs of lock or catch, not even so much as a doorknob or latch.
“That’s certain sure a neat job,” Brad commented. “When it’s shut nobody can tell where it is. Regular secret room, isn’t it?”
“That was one of my hobbies,” the man of mystery explained. “When it is shut, I can push a secret spring which slides a powerful bolt and holds the door so that it would be easier to tear down the wall than to open it.”
He switched off the light and closed the door. Both Dick and Brad examined the wall closely, but neither of them could tell between which panels the joint came.
The remainder of the second floor was divided up into five bedrooms and a bathroom, the water for which was pumped into a tank on the roof by a windmill on the cliff above. Passing by a door at the end of the hall, which, as their host mentioned casually, opened into a store closet, they mounted to the next floor, which was given over entirely to the laboratory and experimenting rooms.
They were all filled with a multitude of machines and pieces of apparatus, many being of strange shapes and unknown uses. Randolph stepped forward to explain one of these to the Texan, giving Dick a significant glance, and at the same moment pulling open a drawer in a cabinet which stood against the wall.
Merriwell had difficulty in restraining an exclamation of amazement, for the drawer was half full of the most beautiful diamonds he had ever seen. They were of varying sizes from a pea to a small hickory nut, and Dick gave a stifled gasp as he looked at the shimmering, glittering blaze of light.