Free Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 03 - THE SPRING -- a Legal Thriller by Clifford Irving

vegetation.
    “That’s the spring?” Dennis asked. “That skinny waterfall and rivulet? And the hill? That’s what the town is named for?”
    “The spring is hidden. The water you see is about eighty degrees Fahrenheit. In summer it goes up to eighty-five. That pool you see used to be quite a bit bigger, and people sometimes bathed there. Come. I’ll show you something else.”
    There was no path, but she knew exactly where she was heading. Dennis and the children followed. A tumbledown cabin showed itself suddenly against a small mound of dirt.
    Lucy said, “The wicked witch lives here!”
    “No,” Brian cried. “She lives in a castle! This is a poor woodcutter’s cabin.”
    “No one lives here now,” Sophie explained, smiling. “But many years ago, a miner did. William Lovell, an ancestor of Hank Lovell, our friend who manages the quarry. That man, Hank’s ancestor, was one of the first settlers in this part of the range.”
    Brian’s eyes grew wide. “Is there still some gold here?”
    “Mr. Lovell mined copper, not gold, and his little mine, which used to be on the side of that hill, was called El Rico—Spanish for ‘the rich one.’ The copper gave out about twenty years ago. No one works the mine anymore. Now I’ll show you some of the reasons it’s special. Sometimes, odd things happen around here.”
    “Scary things?” Brian asked quickly.
    “No.” Sophie put one gloved hand on each of the children’s shoulders. “Take off your snowshoes. Come into the cabin with me.”
    The children followed her. Dennis, lingering a few feet behind them, watched. The old cabin was dark. Its sod roof had been replenished several times during its more than century-old lifetime. The floorboards creaked.
    “Which one of you is taller?” Sophie asked.
    “You know I am,” Brian said. “By two inches.”
    “One,” Lucy said.
    Sophie nodded. “Stand back-to-back.”
    The children stood inside the cabin in winter morning shadow on the old plank floor, which seemed perfectly level. Sophie pressed the backs of their heads together.
    “Dennis, you be the judge. Which of them is taller?”
    “Whatever they’re standing on,” he said, “makes them seem the same height.”
    “I’m two inches taller,” Brian insisted. “Well, maybe one and a half.”
    “The floor must slope,” Dennis said, puzzled.
    “Why didn’t I think of that?” Sophie asked. From the deepest pocket of her parka she took out an old tennis ball. Bending, she placed it on the floor just a few inches past Brian’s feet. The ball rolled slowly toward Lucy and bounced against her heel.
    “If the ground slopes the way that ball rolls,” Sophie said, “then Brian should look a lot taller than Lucy. Even more than two inches.”
    “The whole cabin must be on a slant,” Dennis said. But even as he said it, he knew that the words and the concept made no sense. He was baffled.
    Sophie picked up the tennis ball. “Look at me.”
    Clasping her hands high in the air, she leaned far to the left. Her body canted at an angle that seemed impossible; it seemed that she should fall to the floor.
    “Cool,” Brian said.
    “Wait a minute,” Dennis said. “That’s weird. How are you able to do that?”
    Sophie straightened up again, offering no explanation of the impossible angle she had assumed. “Come outside.”
    There in the woods she said, “Strange things happen here. And strange things don’t happen here. In summer, for example, there are no birds. They don’t fly over these trees and they don’t land in the branches. They make a detour around the whole area. And look at the trees. What do you see?”
    Some of the aspens were twisted like gray corkscrews.
    “In the summer,” Sophie continued, “squirrels jump from one of those trees to another, and often they miss the branch they’re jumping for.”
    “You’ve seen this?” Dennis asked.
    “Yes, I have.”
    “Give me a rational explanation. What’s the nature of this