himes of Death

aron Von Lodge was the head of a small country known as Lilliland near Switzerland. The time was the early 1900s.

Life in Lilliland was calm and peaceful as usual. The Alpine Mountains were beautiful and Castle Lake glistened as the graceful swans moved across the clear water. Everything was perfect and that is the way the Baron liked it to be, as did his father and his father's father, down a long list of ancestors.

There was some concern about the usually quiet and loyal castle staff talking about a strange sound that came from the center of the castle. The sound was like the chiming of bells. The last two times the mystery chimes were heard an older member of the castle staff passed away within that week. Some of the staff started calling the sound the "chimes of death."

The Baron was concerned about the effect these stories were having on the attitude of the castle staff. The staff had over forty members and most of them were over fifty years old. They had been loyal members for many years.

Professor Hamblin was summoned to a special meeting with the Baron to address this problem. They both agreed that the stories of the chimes of death were hurting the staff's working morale. The Professor wanted to have a first hand experience of hearing the chimes so he interviewed the people who actually heard the chimes and determined that the chimes sounded very late at night between midnight and two a.m. It was usually a windy night with some rain or snow. The Professor decided to stay in the room closest to where the chimes were heard. It was a small hallway between two guest bedrooms right above the kitchen. The Professor also realized that the kitchen had a dumbwaiter that was in the wall nearby.

The Professor found the solution. It turned out that the sounds came from the pots hanging in the kitchen. Outside wind would come down the kitchen fireplace across the hanging pots and up the dumbwaiter shaft. To prove his point the next time it was windy after midnight, when all kitchen activities had stopped, he was able to duplicate the events that caused the sounds.

The Baron saw that it was simply an act of nature in a drafty old enchanted castle and the deaths of the two staff members were just an eerie coincidence. Doors were constructed to cover the dumbwaiter in the kitchen which solved the mystery once and for all. Everyone on the staff was pleased with the findings and solution.