The Haunted Tower
What happened immediately after her daring plunge into the roaring
water Judy never knew. She held her breath as it struck her full force
and sucked her under. Blackness and a heavy weight closed over her.
A moment later she was fighting, struggling and kicking, not knowing
which way was up. The water seemed to be knocking her about as if she
were a rag doll. She felt no pain when her body slapped against
something hard and was then washed away from it.
“The base of the fountain!” she thought.
That meant she was through the worst of it. She could see nothing, but
she could feel the hard cement base the next time the force of the
water threw her against it. Doubling herself up and then giving a
tremendous push away from it, she was again at the mercy of the foaming
spray. Fighting, fighting, she came at last to the surface of the water
and gulped a breath of fresh air.
“How did I get way out here?” she wondered, opening her eyes and
blinking in the unexpected sunshine. To her surprise, she was already
halfway across the pool that surrounded the main fountain. She had been
fighting and thrashing around in the water without realizing that she
was swimming. Now it seemed too much of an effort. She still had to
pass the stone lions.
“They’re roaring at me,” she thought unreasonably.
She tried to swim around the cold shower from the lion’s mouth, but now
the roaring noise grew louder, and she realized it must be inside her
own head.
“I’m hurt! I can’t swim another stroke!” one part of her seemed to be
saying.
But another part of her mind kept urging, “You must swim! You must get
help! Horace and Dick Hartwell are still down there in the tunnel with
the water pouring in! You must hurry, hurry and turn off the fountain!”
The sight of the tower encouraged her. It did not seem so far away.
Once she was out of the water she had only to run a short distance and
turn whatever had to be turned.
“How will I know?” she wondered.
The sickening thought came to her that she knew nothing of pipes and
valves and would have no idea what to turn. It made her feel weak.
“It’s no use,” she told herself. “I won’t know!”
“You must know! Hurry, hurry!” the second voice inside her persisted
until finally she struck out with a few long strokes that took her
quickly to the edge of the pool. Pulling herself up with a final,
determined effort, she cupped her hands and shouted hoarsely, “I made
it, Horace! I’m—all—right!”
But was she? It had hurt her to call. It even hurt to breathe. She had
held her breath for so long that now it was easier not to let it out. A
great weight seemed to be sitting on her chest. Her whole body was
stiff and numb with cold. Her torn clothing seemed to be plastered to
it. She shook herself like a wet puppy and tilted her head first one
way and then another to get rid of the roaring in her ears. Hearing no
answer to her call, she called again.
“This is Judy! I got through! Can you hear me down there? Are you all
right?”
Still she could hear nothing but the roaring of the fountain with its
stone lions glaring angrily at her and spitting out foam.
“I got through it!” she cried, her voice cracking with the effort. “Can
you hear me?”
“Hear you!” sounded faint and far away as if it came from the fountain
itself.
“The spirit!” whispered Judy. It gave her a shivery feeling of
excitement. The fountain, in spite of its terrors, was still beautiful.
It was hard to imagine Horace trapped under it. “That must be his
voice,” she told herself. “I know who the spirit is this time, but who
was it the other time so long ago?”
She couldn’t just sit beside the pool wondering. Pulling herself to her
feet, she found it hurt her to stand. And yet she must hurry to the
tower and turn off the water before it was too late.
“Is Dick all right?” she shouted, and the shout came back like an echo.
“All—right!”
Was it an echo? Judy did not know and decided not to take time to find
out. Time was precious. She couldn’t waste it, and yet, oh, how it hurt
her when she tried to walk! It felt as if she had icicles attached to
her body instead of legs. And yet she must move them. She must make
herself do it.
“Hurry! Hurry!” she whispered as if the words were enough to speed her
along the path to the tower. She ran stiffly with a limp that grew
worse as she neared the tall stone edifice.
“It mustn’t be locked!” she cried. “That would be too cruel.”
She found the lock broken and the great door sagging on rusty hinges
that creaked as she opened it. Inside there was nothing except a great,
gloomy round room that looked as if it had been built on purpose to
house witches and owls and bats. She even fancied she could hear them
fluttering. It reminded her of a giant bell tower only, instead of a
bell, she looked up to see a huge tank supported by steel girders.
Was the thing she had to turn up there? The tank could be reached by
narrow, wooden steps that wound up and up until, near the top, there
was only a ladder.
“This is the end!” thought Judy. “I can never climb it.”
But would it be necessary to climb all the way up to the tank in order
to turn off the fountain? A steady, whispering noise drew her attention
to what looked like an electric motor with a switch above it. Not at
all sure what would happen, she reached up and turned off the switch.
“Now what have I done?” she asked herself as the whole tower shuddered
and sighed. A moan came from the great storage tank overhead. Not only
the fountain, but the tower, too, seemed to be haunted.
The whispering and moaning continued for less than a minute. The
silence that followed let Judy breathe again. The electric motor was
still.
“I did it!” she thought with sudden elation. But was shutting off the
motor enough? “If this is an electric pump then it probably pumps water
into that big storage tank overhead,” she reasoned, “and if the tank is
still full it will continue to pour water into the tunnel until it
empties itself, and that may be too late!”
Judy was seized with the fear that already it was too late to save Dick
Hartwell. But Horace could swim. He might keep himself from drowning
until he reached the entrance under the cupids, but he could never dive
through the cascade as she had done. Somehow, she must turn off the
fountain.
“Is this the right valve?” she wondered.
She had discovered a number of pipes leading down from the tank. Pipes
always confused her. Several of them had valves that she could turn.
None of the valves were marked. A mistake might be costly, but
indecision was worse. Judy began turning off all the valves she could
find, one after the other.
“That ought to do it.” In the excitement of turning the valves she had
forgotten her cold and discomfort. Now she was eager to get out of the
gloomy tower and into the sunshine. But just as she was about to leave
she discovered still another pipe ending in a plunger marked: DRAIN.
“That’s it!” she cried, and her voice echoed back to confirm her
feeling that now she had made the tunnel safe for her brother and the
poor, hurt prisoner, Dick Hartwell. “This must drain the pool,” she
reasoned as she lifted the plunger. “Now they’ll be—safe!”
After it was done she sank against the stone wall exhausted, but still
with the feeling that there was something urgent that she had to do.
“I must go back to the fountain and help Horace,” she told herself, but
she was too weak to make the effort. Her eyes closed, but in another
moment they flew open. Someone was shaking her roughly by the shoulder
and shouting, “What’s the big idea, you? You’ve shut off all the water
in the house! What’re you doing here, anyway?”
“The water? The house?” Judy tried to collect her thoughts, but all she
could think of was the fountain with the water still pouring into the
tunnel out of the broken pipe. She was there again, shivering in the
icy cold water. But it didn’t matter any more. All she could say was,
“I’m cold. Go away! Let me sleep!”
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