do to me if I got caught, and I never tried it.” His face twisted into an abashed grin. “Do you know, even when I came down here with the engineer, I almost couldn’t bring myself to go inside? I kept thinking Father was watching me from Hilltop, and when I got home, he’d skin me. Forty-three years old, and still afraid of my father. Some tycoon, hunh?”
Alan chuckled, and thumped his friend’s back. “Afraid you just don’t pull off the tycoon act very well at all, Phillip, and that’s the truth. You sure you’re a real Sturgess?”
“I’m going to accept that little bit of snideness as a compliment, thank you very much,” Phillip replied. Then he pulled the door open, and stood back. “After you.”
Alan stepped through the door, and looked around curiously. It was almost pitch black in the interior, for only a little light filtered through the boarded windows. High overhead, a latticework of iron strutting supported the ceiling.
“In its day, that roof was considered quite an accomplishment. There weren’t many buildings this size with no pillars for the roof. It’s almost the size of a football field.”
“And almost as empty, too,” Alan observed. He kicked at the floor, and was surprised when there was no give.
“It’s oak. Solid oak, and three inches thick. Downstairs, there are beams and pillars everywhere. The engineer said he’d never seen anything quite like it.”
They prowled through the building, but Alan quickly realized there was little to see. It was simply an immense shell, with a few remnants of partitions still in place at the back, where the mill offices had been. Though it had suffered badly from neglect, the structure did, indeed, seem basically sound. After exploring the main floor, they headed toward a stairway leading to the basement.
Phillip switched on a flashlight, and they started down. At the bottom of the stairs, Phillip suddenly stopped.
“This is where they found Conrad Junior,” he said softly. “Apparently he tripped, and fell on some kind of tool.”
Alan frowned, then took the flashlight from the other man and cast its beam around the expanse of the basement. Shadows from the closely spaced columns were everywhere, and the beam of light finally seemed to lose itself in the distance. But except for the forest of supporting pillars, the basement, like the floor above, seemed empty.
“What was a tool doing here? It looks like the place was cleared out a hundred years ago.”
“Search me,” Phillip replied. “When it happened, I hadn’t even been born yet. In fact,” he added, his voice taking on a note of melancholy that Alan had never heard before, “I guess I was the replacement child. I don’t think Mother intended having more than one, but when Conrad Junior died, they decided to have me.”
“They didn’t do so badly,” Alan said, deliberately making his voice light. “I don’t know what your brother was like, but—”
“—But he was the son my father loved,” Phillip said, his voice suddenly bitter. “Father never failed to let me know that I was no substitute for my brother,” he added. Then, embarrassed by what he had confided, he cleared his throat, and grasped Alan’s arm. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
Though he would have liked to examine the massive wooden beams that supported the main floor, and take a closer look at the building’s foundations, Alan followed Phillip up the stairs and across the barren building.
Their footsteps echoed loudly in the silence, and neither man spoke again until they had once more emerged into the bright sunlight of the summer morning.
“Well,” Phillip asked, “what do you think?”
Alan once more regarded the building thoughtfully before he spoke. Then, at last, he nodded.
“It can be done. And it won’t take long either. If we get started right away, we should be able to have it open by Labor Day.”
The two men stared at each other, both of them recognizing the irony at the same time.
“Labor Day,” Phillip repeated softly. “Given the history of the building, that seems somehow fitting, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” Alan agreed. “And a tad macabre, too, when you think about it.”
Phillip relocked the metal door, and they started back up the path toward Prospect Street. Then, when they were once more in front of the old factory, Phillip spoke once more.
“Alan, when we were down in the basement, did you smell something?”
Alan frowned thoughtfully, then shook his head.
“It was probably nothing,” Phillip went on. “But for a minute there, while we were talking,