About all we could do now until Jethro was safe in bed was to sit around
and wish he'd go early. If I was going to pick out the worst job in the
world, it would be a waiting job. I don't know why it is, but when
you're waiting time goes along about a dozen times as slow as it does
any other time. If it hadn't been for Mark Tidd and his make-believes I
guess I'd have gone plumb crazy.
"Say," says I, after a while, "I know there's some sort of a mystery
about Rock, but what d'you s'pect it is? From them photographs you was
so glad to find I guessed maybe you figgered he was Mr. Wigglesworth's
son."
"Shucks!" says he. "And you mustn't speak about the young Duke as Rock.
'Tain't respectful. Earl Wigglesworth's son! Shucks! Anybody could see
that b-baby in the photographs was a girl. Besides, didn't this
p-prisoner Pekoe say he was a son of the man called the Big Duke, that's
off huntin' for the Holy Grail or s-s-somethin' in far countries?"
"Sure," says I, "so he did."
We didn't say anything for a spell, and then I asked: "If the young Duke
hain't a son of Earl Wigglesworth's, why was he fetched here? What
int'rest did the Earl Wigglesworth have in him, anyhow?"
"That," says Mark, "is exactly what we got to f-f-find out. Hain't you
s-satisfied with havin' a dandy mystery? Want to spoil it by s-s-solvin'
it without any trouble? What good's a m-m-mystery unless it's
mysterious?" says he.
That did sound reasonable.
"S'posin'," says Mark, "that the young Duke wasn't jest the Duke, but
was entitled to be somethin' more. Maybe king or some job like that. And
s'posin', while his father, the Big Duke, was off c-c-chasin' this Holy
Grail, that enemies s-stole him away, and there wasn't any way to
p-prove he was the rightful king. See? And s'posin' this Earl
Wigglesworth he had somethin' to prove it by, but didn't dare to b-burn
it up or any thin'. And when he come to die he r-r-repented his bad
deeds. And then he wrote that p-p-paper showin' where the p-papers to
prove the Duke was entitled to be king was hid. That's how I f-f-figger
it. Now, we faithful retainers of the Duke has got to r-recover them
papers and fix it so's the Duke comes into what's rightfully hisn.
Hain't that about it?"
"Shouldn't be s'prised," says I. "But seems to me like the Big Duke was
mighty careless to go off chasin' that Grail, whatever _that_ is, and
leave his son layin' around loose for anybody to steal."
"These here chivalrous knights," says Mark, "was always doin' them
foolish things. If they hadn't," says he, "there wouldn't have been any
s-s-stories. Seems l-like every knight was a l-little crazy. All I ever
read about did things that was so silly you'd lick a p-puppy for not
knowin' better than they did."
"What's this Grail you was talkin' about?"
"It's a cup," says Mark, "and I guess it's a magic cup or somethin',
near's I kin judge. It's got a way of wanderin' around all by itself and
hidin' away. Feller named Galahad up and f-found it once. His dad's name
was Launcelot, and he was the biggest knight that ever was."
"What did this Galy-had do with it?" says I.
"Oh," says Mark, "I calc'late he just _f-found_ it--and let it go at
t-t-that. Just like a knight. Spend a year l-lookin' for a thing, and
when he f-finds it, instead of takin' it home to put on the what-not and
show to folks, he jest says, 'I spy,' and gallops off again."
"Looks silly," says I.
"Was s-silly," says he.
"Say," says I, after thinking the thing over a while, "it just come into
my head that us fellers was pokin' our heads into somethin' that didn't
concern us. What we monkeyin' with this mystery for, anyhow?"
"Binney," says Mark, "you s'prise me. Hain't we newspaper men? Well!
Hain't it the b-business of newspaper men to git the news?"
"You bet," says I.
"And won't the answer to this m-mystery be the b-biggest news ever
p-printed in a Wicksville paper?"
"Guess so," says I.
"That's why we're after it," says he. "Besides," he says, "the young
Duke's in t-trouble, and a feller that won't help another feller out
when he's in t-trouble hain't much good."
Well, _that_ was so.
Pretty soon it commenced to get dark, and from then the time went slower
and slower. Neither of us had a watch, so we couldn't tell what time it
was, and we decided to go up on top of the tower to listen if we could
hear the town clock in Wicksville. We kept on listening a long time, and
then it struck. Eight o'clock, it said, and I would have been willing to
bet a minute before that it was ten at least.
"If you wait l-l-long enough," says Mark, with a grin, "any l-length of
time passes by."
I hadn't ever thought of that before, but you could see right off that
it was so. Mark was always discovering new things.
That's how it happened now. We kept on waiting, and after a couple of
years the town clock struck ten. Then we waited what we judged was a
half an hour.
"Jethro ought to be in b-bed now," says Mark.
"If he's ever goin'," says I.
"T-take off your shoes," says Mark, which we both did, and crept down
the attic stairs as quiet as a couple of cats. We opened the door into
the second-floor hall pretty cautious, and listened. There wasn't a
sound. Then we sneaked along the hall to the top of the stairs, and
still we didn't hear a thing. I kept wishing we could hear a good,
snorting snore, and then we'd be sure Jethro was out of the way.
After a minute we went down the first-floor stairs, and was just at the
bottom and turning toward the back of the house when the front-door bell
rang. I 'most jumped out of my skin. We stood stalk still a second, and
then we heard a sound in a room at the left like somebody getting up out
of a chair.
"Quick!" says Mark, and he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into a
little sort of cubbyhole under the stairs.
And then out came Jethro, as big as life and natural enough to scare the
life out of me. He marched right past us so close we could have touched
him, and went to the door.
Well, sir, when we heard the man's voice that he let in you could have
bought _me_ for a peanut shuck. It was the Man With the Black Gloves.
Mark pinched my arm.
Right then I says to myself that being a newspaper man was all right--if
you kept on being one all in a healthy piece--but as for me, I'd rather
be something else and safe in bed.
Jethro and the Man With the Black Gloves went right past us and into the
library, where they lighted the lamp and left the doors open. The light
shone right out into the hall, and they sat down facing the door,
looking right out in our direction. We couldn't have moved out of that
cubby-hole an inch without being seen. It was a dandy place to be, I
don't think!
The worst of it was they talked low so we couldn't hear a word they
said, until at last the Man With the Black Gloves sort of raised his
voice, angry-like, and says:
"We got to get that kid out of here. Right away."
That was all we heard, but Mark laid his fingers on my hand and pressed.
I knew what he meant all right. What he meant was it was lucky we heard
_that_, and we'd have to get awful busy awful quick.
After a while we made out another thing he said, which was, "The kid's
father's dead. Central America. Months ago. No danger from him."
Well, we had later news about Big Rock than that. Then Jethro says:
"This Pekoe don't know anythin'. There's nothin' he can tell the boy."
"But he can snoop around and get suspicious," says the Man With the
Black Gloves, "and he's no man to fool with--not if he's been a partner
of Big Rock Armitage."
"He wasn't sich a tough proposition to handle," says Jethro. "I done it
alone."
"Huh!" says the Man.
"We might go and see what we kin git out of him," says Jethro.
"All right," says the Man, and up they got and went tramping up the
stairs right over our heads.
"N-n-now," whispered Mark, and out he ducked and headed for the back of
the house. I was right on his heels, you can bet, and if the hall had
been wide enough I'll bet I'd have beat him. I was anxious enough to get
somewheres else than where I was. Any change looked like a big
improvement to me.
We got into the kitchen, and because we didn't know the house very well
inside, which Mark said was our fault and we ought to suffer for it, we
had to prowl around a lot to find the cellar door. That took some time,
because it was dark and we dassent make a light, and there were a dozen
doors out of that big kitchen, and we had to open every one; we opened
slow and cautious so it wouldn't squeak or anything.
At last we found steps going down. It was as black down there as a lump
of charcoal, darker even than it was in the kitchen. But we had to go it
blind. One step, two steps, we went, and then Mark Tidd says something
startled-like, and all at once I heard the loudest, clangiest, bangiest
kind of a noise and then another. Right in front of us! I like to have
jumped clean out of my stockings.
_Bang! Bang-bang! Clangety-dang-whang-bang!_ something went, rolling and
bumping downstairs ahead of us.
"What's that?" says I.
"It l-l-looks," says Mark, "like our f-finish." That was him all over.
He could joke even when we were in a fix like that, and keep as cool as
if nothing had happened at all.
"Did you kick somethin' over?" says I.
"Oh no," says he. "It j-just went for an evenin' stroll all by itself.
Calc'late it was the sheet-iron wash-tub settin' here g-gossipin' with
the boiler," says he.
"And Jethro'll be here in a second gossipin' with us," says I.
We lighted a match then. It was time to hustle about as fast as we could
hustle, and you can't do that when it's so dark you can't pinch your own
nose and feel it, even if you could find your nose to pinch.
When the light flared up we found we were half-way down the stairs, and
that the stairs went between two brick walls and didn't go right into
the big cellar, but into a kind of little hall, and that there was a
door about six feet from the bottom step. That led into the cellar.
We scooted for the door.
"G-good heavy door," says Mark. "Slam her s-shut."
I did, not worrying much about noise now, and then we both lighted
matches to see what chances was standing around offering themselves to a
couple of boys who wished they was off in Africa or at the North Pole
instead of in Mr. Wigglesworth's cellar.
The room we were in was a big one, the whole width of the house. Toward
the front of the house was a brick wall, with doors in it that led to
other parts of the cellar. The door we came through was the only one
into the room from the back.
"B-b-barricade the door," says Mark, and we set to work piling things
against it. There were quite a few heavy things there, which was our
first piece of luck that night, and the way we pulled and hauled and
jerked them in front of that door would have done your heart good. In
three minutes it would have taken an elephant to push it open.
"There," says Mark, "n-now we got to see if there's another stairway
down here."
We scurried into the other parts of the cellar, but there wasn't another
stairs. Anybody that got us now would have to come the way we did, or
through a window, and the cellar windows were little, narrow ones that
neither Jethro nor the Man With the Black Gloves could have got through
to save their lives.
We were safe for a while, anyhow.
"Here's a lamp," says I; "let's light her up. Somehow I feel easier in
my mind when it hain't pitch dark."
"Go ahead," says Mark, so I lighted up, and just then somebody came
pounding down the stairs and stumbled over the tin things that had given
us away, and banged against the door.
Of course the door wouldn't open.
"Somebody in here," yelled Jethro. "They got the door fastened."
"Bust it," says the Man With the Black Gloves.
Jethro tried that, but we didn't worry much, knowing what was against
it.
"Can't budge it," says he.
There wasn't a sound for a minute. Then the Man called out:
"Hey, inside there! Who are you and what d'you want?"
Mark pinched my arm and motioned to keep still.
"Come out of there," says Jethro, and I felt like giggling. Not that I
wasn't afraid. Whee! I should say I was afraid. The chills that was
running up and down my back was enough to freeze my spine into an
icicle.
"They can't g-get at us," says Mark. "Let's use what t-time we got to
see if we can trace out the rest of Mr. Wigglesworth's writin'. The last
part of it says, 'In. Down.' We're _that_ all right. Then it says, 'What
color is a brick? Investigate.' That comes next. What color _is_ a
brick, Binney?"
"Brick color," says I.
"No?" says he. "G'wan! I thought it was the color of a orange blossom."
"Red, then," says I. "Most of 'em is."
"This cellar's b-built of red brick," says he.
"Sure," says I.
"Then," says he, "it's safe to s-s-say this s-secret's got somethin' to
do with these bricks here."
"Yes," says I.
"Git the lamp," says he, which I did. We felt all over for loose bricks
and things like that. Sort of figgered we'd find a hiding-place
somewheres, but we didn't, and all the time Jethro and the Man were
doing their best to get the door open.
"Hustle," says I.
"What's the use?" says he. "We can't git out any more 'n they kin git
in."
Pretty soon Mark says, "Color's got some-thin' to do with it, too.
Bricks and color," says he.
He grabbed the lamp and went all around the room. All at once he stopped
and called soft to me. "Binney!"
"Yes," says I.
"Look," says he.
I looked where he was pointing, and up toward the top of the wall was a
brick that wasn't brick color! It was a pale-complected brick--almost
white.
"What color is a brick?" says Mark, and heaved a big sigh of relief.
"Kin you reach it?" says I.
"No," says he. "Here, step on my back."
He stooped over, and I stepped where he told me. It was like standing on
a platform to speak a piece, his back was so broad. I thought a little
of the feller in the _Arabian Nights_ that got off on an island and
built a fire, and then the island dived, because it was a whale. Only
Mark didn't dive.
I reached up and fumbled with the brick. It was wedged pretty tight, but
it wasn't plastered. I got a holt of the edge with my nails and wiggled
and monkeyed with it, till it came out, and then I shoved my arm back
into the hole that was left--and my fingers touched something that felt
like a big envelope full of something. I hauled it out and jumped down.
"There," says I, "we got somethin', but much good it's likely to do us."
Mark was almost jumping up and down he was so tickled. He held the
envelope up to the light, and read on it, "Take this envelope to Lawyer
Jones or some other trustworthy lawyer."
"Jest what I'd 'a' done, anyhow," says he.
Then he stuffed the paper inside of his shirt, and stuck his fingers in
his mouth and whistled three times. When Jethro and the Man heard that
they stopped working at the door, but when nothing else happened they
went at it again.
We waited, too. Quite a while went past, and the only thing we heard was
Jethro and the Man.
"Can't be Plunk and Tallow has deserted us," says I.
"N-n-never," says Mark--and just then we heard an awful kicking and
pounding on the front door, and jangling of the bell in the kitchen, and
the fellers' voices hollering, "Fire! Fire! Fire!" as tight as they
could.
"Good kids," says Mark. "Git ready, Binney." Ready was somethin' I'd
been for several hours.