The steel door opened into darkness. Andrew reached inside and found a switch. Ceiling lights flickered on one by one. Nobody spoke. The room was larger than the cabin. Metal shelves lined the walls. Glass cases stood in rows. It wasn’t a bunker. The food, water, batteries, and generator must have supported the hidden room during outages.
The shelves and jars held antique watches, rare coins, military medals, signed letters, old maps, photographs, books, and paintings. Every object carried a number. Boxes beneath the shelves contained receipts, auction records, photographs, and ownership papers. Walter had built a protected storage room for the collection he never kept at home.
Michael walked between the cases. “How much is this worth?” he asked. Andrew did not answer. None of them knew. Caroline found a handwritten inventory book on a desk. She began reading the numbers aloud while Andrew checked the shelves. They reached the final page. The list ended at 128. Andrew counted again. Only 127 numbered objects were visible. The final entry was different from the others. It said: “128 — E.H. Landscape.” Michael looked around the room. “So where is number 128? And why keep that separate?”