on his way home to lunch, he did a great deal of thinking about the
question that Bill had raised. He knew why his friend had asked it. If
the candlesticks had come down through the Caldwell family--probably
on his mother’s side--then it would be pretty safe to assume that they
were the pair Jacob Williams had made for his bride. And if they were,
then Mr. Caldwell and his brother were direct descendants of Williams,
and would have a claim against the property.
But did Mr. Caldwell know about this? If he didn’t know now, would he
put two and two together and come up with an answer? That depended upon
how much he knew about the history of the candlesticks, Ronnie decided.
And from the way Caldwell had talked earlier that afternoon, the boy
doubted very much that he was aware of how the candlesticks had come
into his family.
Then probably he wouldn’t know anything about the hidden glassware or
the money either, which would cross him off the list of suspects for
the mysterious prowler--unless, of course, the prowler wasn’t hunting
for the money and glassware.
By the time Ronnie reached the house he had decided one thing only: it
was all very, very confusing!
Mrs. Butler served Ronnie, Phil, and the two men their lunch at the
kitchen table. Now that the hay was in the barn--Ronnie and Phil had
spent the previous day helping their father load the truck in the field
and hoist the hay to the loft--Mr. Rorth had turned his attention to
the orchard. The young fruit was ready for spraying. “The weather’s
going to hold for a few more days, I think,” Ronnie’s father told the
others, “so I think I’ll mix a batch of spray this afternoon. Phil, you
want to help me?”
“Oh, Dad! That stuff makes my eyes water and I cough and sneeze--”
“All right. You don’t _have_ to. I just thought maybe you were looking
for something to do. You’ll have the hammock worn through by the end of
the summer at the rate you’re using it.”
The telephone rang. Ronnie volunteered to answer it. He went into the
hall at the foot of the stairs and lifted the receiver.
It was Bill, calling to tell Ronnie that he had to work that afternoon.
“Pa’s mending some fences, and I got to help,” Bill said. “But Ronnie,
somebody should be at the office, in case we get any tourists.”
Ronnie agreed that this was so. “I’ll hang around,” he answered.
After lunch, Ronnie went to the cold cellar and selected two apples,
which he stuffed into his pockets. Then he went out to the barn to see
how his father was getting on with the job of mixing spray. “I’ll help
you, Dad,” he said, “if you really need help. Only I promised Bill I’d
stay down at the village in case we got tourists.”
“Thanks, son,” his father answered. “I’ll get along all right. This is
really a one-man job.”
Ronnie watched his father measure out the poison powder. “Dad? Gramps
said I could have the key to the locked-up building.”
Mr. Rorth stopped long enough in his work to look up at the boy. “Oh?”
“Really, Pa. I told him about how somebody’s been in the building. Bill
and I saw him again after I told you about it.”
“Well, if your grandfather said you could go in, it’s all right with
me. The key’s in the left-hand front drawer of my desk in the living
room.”
Ronnie went back into the house. Phil was seated at the desk putting
together a model airplane. “What’re you after?” he demanded, as Ronnie
pulled open the desk drawer.
“Nothing.” Ronnie was evasive. He found the key and pocketed it.
“Hey! That’s the key to the locked-up building!” Phil protested.
“I know it. Gramps said I could use it.”
“He did! Boy, you really rate with him, don’t you?”
“You can come along if you want to.”
Phil thought it over. “Naw, I’ll stay here and finish this up. It’s too
hot outside. Besides, there’s nothing in that building that isn’t in
all the rest. Just a lot of dust and dirt and a few rats’ nests.”
Ten minutes later Ronnie had the door of their office open and was
sitting on the doorsill waiting for customers. He had the key to the
locked-up building in his pocket, but somehow it didn’t seem quite fair
to Bill to go inside without him.
After a while Ronnie got tired just sitting and doing nothing, so he
went inside and finished up the sign he had been working on. Then he
found a rock and an old nail and using these, tacked the sign into
place over the top of the door.
He sat down on the doorsill again and waited. A porcupine was rattling
and thrashing on the thin, top branches of a maple tree. Ronnie watched
it for a while. The animal didn’t seem to have a care in the world.
The afternoon wore on, but no tourists appeared. Ronnie got up and
started slowly down the path. It wouldn’t hurt to take one quick trip
around the locked-up building and maybe steal a peek through the crack
in the shutter. Then he could climb up on the roof and sit there for a
time. He could see so much more from up there, and if a car came up the
dirt road, he’d know about it in time to get back to the office.
He circled around the old office building as he’d planned and then he
climbed up on the log and peered through the window. Everything looked
just about the same as the last time, except for some white objects
scattered about the floor. He couldn’t make out what they were because
of the darkness, but he decided they might be pieces of paper.
Well, he’d take one more quick look at the outside of the building
and then he’d get up on the roof and see if he could spot any river
boats on the St. Lawrence. But when he got around to the rear of
the building, something on the ground caught his eye. Nothing very
startling, but the thin layer of sawdust sprinkled on top of some of
the leaves set him wondering. Carpenter ants, maybe--or had someone
been sawing firewood? Mr. Caldwell, perhaps, the boy concluded.
But when he looked about for some sign of the white butt ends of the
discarded pieces of logs that would surely be left lying around, he
found none. His brow puckered in a frown.
He gathered a pinch of the sawdust and brought it up closer to his
face so he could examine it, rolling it around between his fingers to
get the feel of it. He couldn’t be sure, but it felt fresh. Maybe this
sawdust could help him find out how the stranger was getting into the
building.
He turned to inspect the rear wall of the building. At first glance
it looked just like all the other walls. But when he looked closer he
found a faint, irregular crack following the contour of the shingles.
Tracing it, he discovered that it formed a rough square. “I’ll bet
that whole section comes out!” he whispered. Apparently the shingles
had been removed first, then a hole cut through the boards between the
studs, and the shingles nailed cleverly back in place.
Ronnie remembered the tools that Bill’s father had found missing from
his barn. Someone, the boy thought, had gone to a great deal of trouble
to make sure that no one found his entranceway!
He’d have to try the trap door out, of course, to see how it worked. He
gripped the shingles from underneath and pushed up gently. The section
moved and then the bottom came free; and a minute later the entire
piece had come away from the wall.
Ronnie poked his head inside and looked around. The air smelled stale
and moldy. He heard the flutter of wings beating against the inside of
the chimney and knew that one of the swifts was entering the nest. In
the semidarkness he could make out some of the larger objects in the
room--the fireplace, an old-fashioned roll-top desk, a filing cabinet,
and several chairs.
He withdrew his head and slipped his feet through instead. Then,
twisting about with his back toward the inside, he pulled the upper
part of his body through.
For a minute he stood near the opening, not knowing quite what to do
next. He had a strange, uneasy feeling that somebody was watching him.
Perhaps it would be better if he put the trap door back into place.
Then if the man who made it should come by outside, he wouldn’t notice
anything different and he’d go away.
But after he had the trap door back in its place, he was a little sorry
that he’d done it. It was pitch-black in the room now. He felt in his
pocket and found a package of book matches. He tore one loose and
struck it. The flame seemed very feeble, but it gave him a few moments
to look around the room. He noticed the papers scattered about the
floor and saw that the filing cabinet near him had been emptied, and
the drawers left leaning against the wall.
It was clear to the boy that someone had been searching through the
papers of the old Rorth Glassworks.
When the match had burned out he wet his finger and cooled the hot end
and dropped the match to the floor. He lit another and moved toward
the fireplace. His foot brushed against something. Looking down, he
discovered the stub of a candle and he stooped to pick it up.
The light from the candle gave him a better view of the room. Now he
could see an old leather-upholstered chair, a brass spittoon, and a
metal coat rack. Raising the candle, he saw above the mantelpiece a
white-bearded man with a bald head, rimmed with tufts of fluffy hair.
The man looked down at him with sharp, piercing, brown eyes from a
massive oak picture frame.
Ronnie backed up a few steps and the eyes seemed to follow him as he
moved. “Great-great-grandfather?” he asked, but when he heard the sound
of his voice he grinned at his foolishness.
He lowered the candle hastily and thrust it inside the huge opening
of the fireplace. A partially decomposed mouse lay just beneath the
pair of beautifully molded andirons. Ronnie poked his head inside the
fireplace and looked up. The light from the candle reached almost
as high as the swifts’ nest. Sure, Ronnie told himself, a powerful
flashlight shining up the chimney flues could have made the weird light
they had seen several evenings before.
He heard the young swifts chirping in the nest overhead and saw a
single yellow beak protruding over the edge for a second or two. “I’m
not going to hurt you none,” he said, and then realized that the sound
of his voice would frighten the young birds even more than the light.
Ronnie backed out of the fireplace and stood for a moment or two near
the center of the room, undecided on what he would do next. He wished
that he hadn’t come through the trap door, but had come around and
opened the regular door with his key. Then he’d have more light and
could inspect the building and its furnishings more carefully. Well,
he’d have time to do that when Bill and he returned.
He started toward the rear wall, ready to leave. But he had taken no
more than a few steps when he froze in his tracks, his heart racing
wildly.
From outside, behind the building, he could hear the sound of
approaching footsteps in the dry leaves--the same quick footsteps he
had heard inside the building.
_Chapter 11_
Bill Beckney’s cat had cornered a mouse in the concrete manure pit one
afternoon the year before. The mouse ran from one side of the pit to
the other trying to avoid the cat’s claws.
Ronnie remembered the picture all too vividly now as he stood with his
feet frozen to the floor and his heart beating like a tom-tom, and the
sound of the footsteps coming closer and closer with each second. Only
now _he_ was the mouse!
He knew there wasn’t a chance that he could escape. The door was
padlocked on the other side, and even the key in his pocket couldn’t
help him. The opening in the wall through which he had come would place
him face to face with his opponent.
He had to hide, but where? Anywhere, just as long as he did it quickly!
His legs and feet came to life again. He swung about, holding up the
candle as he searched for a place large enough to hide. The flickering
light picked out the fireplace.
He started for it quickly. Behind him, small creaks and thumps told him
that the section of wall was being removed. Doubling over, he swung his
body into the fireplace. The acrid smell of stale, wet ashes struck
his nose. He straightened up and blew out the candle.
Suddenly light flooded the fireplace. The section of wall had been
completely removed. Looking down, he saw his feet and legs illuminated
as by a floodlight. He knew he couldn’t stay where he was if he wanted
to remain hidden.
Desperately reaching up his hands, he found a narrow ledge, and using
this as a support, he pulled his feet up until he was sure they were
out of sight. Then he moved them cautiously until he found a small
ledge where he could gain a toehold. Now he could ease the strain on
his hands and arms.
Whoever was in the room had evidently returned to continue his search.
A door came open with a jerk, and more papers fluttered to the floor
within the boy’s range of vision. “Please, _please_ don’t do any more
hunting in the fireplace,” Ronnie prayed.
The minutes dragged on. The muscles in the boy’s arms and legs and back
began to ache. Twice he thought of moving, but each time he decided
against it. Too risky. He couldn’t take the chance of slipping or
making a noise.
Now the intruder was tapping with some heavy object, first against the
floor boards in different parts of the room and then upon the bricks of
the fireplace. Now, Ronnie thought! Now would be a good chance to ease
his muscles. If he moved very carefully, the small sounds he might make
would be drowned out by the tapping. Shifting some of his weight to his
right leg, he began to slide his palm along the top of the ledge toward
the rear of the fireplace. He had moved no more than a few inches when
the side of his hand touched an object resting on the ledge. He knew it
wasn’t part of the brickwork because it moved along with his hand. It
might be--well, perhaps a book of some kind, he decided.
A book! Maybe, just maybe, this was the very thing that the intruder
was looking for! And just maybe it was the clue that Grandfather had
hunted for and never found! A tingle of excitement and anticipation ran
down Ronnie’s back. He just _had_ to get hold of the object and find
out for sure what it was.
And he could do it, too--with risk, of course, that he’d lose his
balance and fall from his perch. It was going to take a lot of good
balancing and some muscle testing, too! But Ronnie loved a challenge
such as this.
Summoning all his strength, he rested his entire weight on one small
part of his inner wrist. At the same time he curled his fingers up over
the object until they reached the flat surface at the top. Then with a
quick, sudden movement, he shifted his entire hand to where his fingers
had been.
Now his fingers could explore in all directions without fear of losing
his balance and falling from his perch. It took him only a few moments
to prove to himself that his first guess had been correct: he had
discovered a small, thick book!
Outside the fireplace, the sounds suddenly increased. Apparently the
intruder was losing patience, and had thrown caution away. Over went
the desk on its side with a loud crash. Out came the drawers, one after
another. Then the desk went over again. Papers flew over the floor in
every direction. “Confound it!” the man growled, “there’s got to be
something here _somewhere_! I’ll find it if I have to tear down the
whole confounded building.”
Ronnie grinned to himself in the darkness of his hiding place and
his fingers tightened on the book. If the man only knew how close he
had come to finding what he wanted those nights he had searched the
fireplace with his light!
But then Ronnie’s grin faded. The man’s words were still ringing in
his ears and there was something familiar about the sound of the
voice--something that made Ronnie think of Caldwell. And yet, there was
something to the voice that _wasn’t_ Caldwell’s.
The light at the bottom of the fireplace brightened and Ronnie heard
the footsteps approaching the fireplace. He drew in his breath and held
it. He flattened his body as close against the wall as he dared without
risking his balance.
The footsteps stopped near the hearth. The man coughed. The soles of
his shoes scraped against the hearthstone as he shifted his position.
Then Ronnie heard the scratch of a match and smelled cigarette smoke.
Ronnie frowned, puzzled. He’d never seen Caldwell smoke. Of course
that wouldn’t disprove positively that this man was Caldwell. But it
confused Ronnie more than ever.
At last the man turned and crossed the room, and the boy breathed more
freely again. The footsteps moved toward the rear wall. There they
stopped for a moment. Then Ronnie heard the section of wall being
removed, and a flood of light from outside filled the room.
Ronnie sighed long and deep. At last the man was leaving!
As soon as the wall section was back in place, Ronnie took a firm grip
on the book and dropped to the floor. A moment later he was out of the
fireplace and standing in the blackness of the room, trying to make up
his mind what to do next.
One thing he did want to do, and that was to catch a glimpse of the
intruder before he disappeared into the woods. He hurried across the
room, tripping over one of the desk drawers, but managing to catch his
balance just in time to save himself from a headlong fall. He reached
the wall, pushed open the section of wall a few inches from the top,
and peered out.
The brilliant light blinded him for a few seconds. Then he saw the man
disappearing into the trees a short distance from the building. But all
Ronnie could see was the back of his head and shoulders. The rest of
his body was hidden in the underbrush.
It was Caldwell, and then again it wasn’t Caldwell. Ronnie just
couldn’t be positive. “I reckon I’m never going to get a real close-up
look at this fellow,” he told himself.
He pulled the section of wall closed again. Better to wait a few
minutes until he was sure the man would not see him climbing from the
building.
“Ronnie! Oh, hey, Ronnie!” he heard Bill’s voice. It seemed to be
coming from the direction of their office. The suddenness of his
friend’s voice made Ronnie jump. He had seemed so far away from his
normal, everyday life during the past twenty minutes.
He found Bill wandering slowly up the cobbled road while he called
Ronnie’s name every few minutes. “Where in tarnation have you been?” he
demanded when Ronnie reached him. “I got through working, so I thought
I’d come join you.”
“Come on down to our office and I’ll tell you all about it!” Ronnie
exclaimed. “And, boy, will your eyes pop when you hear about it.”
Bill’s eyes didn’t pop when he had heard Ronnie’s story, but he
certainly was as excited about the find as his friend. “Golly, maybe
we’ve got something real important at last. Let’s see it, Ronnie.”
They sat down together at the desk, and Ronnie placed the old book
before them. It was old--very old. Its leather-bound cover was warped
from water and age. Heavy rains down through the years had found their
way to the book’s resting place, and drop by drop had soaked through
its pages.
Carefully Ronnie opened the book. The long columns of figures, page
after page of them, were still legible despite the water damage.
“Doesn’t look very exciting,” Bill said. “There’s nothing but numbers
and entries like a bank book.”
“But then why would it be hidden in the chimney?” Ronnie asked as he
continued to turn the pages. “That old office is full of papers just
like this.” His voice showed his disappointment.
He had almost reached the last page when he exclaimed, “Look! Writing!
It looks like a diary!”
“Oh, boy!” Bill exclaimed in excitement. “Now maybe we’re getting
somewhere.” He pulled the volume closer so he could see it better.
Ronnie began to read aloud while Bill followed the words with his eyes.
“July 10, 1892. I am desperately ill with the typhoid, and sick at
heart because now, when the evidence that would clear my name is at
hand, I have not the strength to bring it from where it is hidden.
All in this place have gone away, including my dear wife and son.
There is none here to whom I can reveal my discovery. My strength
is waning too fast for me to hope to reach town with what I now
know. Therefore, I shall take these last moments to set down the
facts that will clear my name and the name of those who will come
after me.
“But what if Jacob’s son should find this account and destroy it
for the sake of his own good name? I must hide the ledger in the
chimney, hoping that someone of my family will think to look on the
secret shelf where I have hidden things before.
“Here let it be known that it was Jacob’s own greed and deceit that
caused his death, and not my hand, as so many have claimed. For
years he stole from our company, and the proof lies with him below.
To cover up his thefts of money, and to direct the guilt to me, he,
from time to time, hid parts of various glass shipments, making
it appear that they had been stolen from outside. He also entered
large debit values in the books to cover his withdrawals of money.
“As I write this, his body lies below, together with the evidence
of his guilt. How he was trapped there will probably never be
known. Rising waters may have caught him unawares. He did much
planning for his crimes, but in the end he was trapped by his own
foolishness and sent to a slow death. My strength fails. I must
hide the ledger--”
Ronnie turned the page. The next one was blank. “I guess that’s all,”
he said quietly. It seemed to the boy as if his great-great-grandfather
had been in the room talking to him during those last few moments of
his life. He thought of the eyes watching him from the picture over
the fireplace in the padlocked building earlier that afternoon. Yes,
in spirit anyway, Ezra had come back again to make one last desperate
effort to save the Rorth name. Almost as if he knew there wasn’t much
time left to get it done, Ronnie thought.
He felt the pressure of Bill’s hand about his arm, and the movement
brought his thoughts racing back to the present. He looked up at
Bill. His friend’s face was turned toward the window. “Ronnie,” Bill
whispered to him, “somebody was watching us through that window!”
_Chapter 12_
Ronnie went directly to his room when he reached the house. Bill and he
had decided that this would be the best place to keep the old ledger
after what had happened at their office. And since Bill couldn’t be
sure whom he had seen at the window, they had to protect their new
possession against an unknown adversary. Anybody, really, could be
under suspicion. “I saw him out of the corner of my eyes,” Bill had
told Ronnie afterward. “When I swung my head around he was gone. All I
know for sure is that he was wearing something red. That’s what first
caught my attention.”
“I don’t remember Caldwell wearing red,” Ronnie had said.
They had searched the area outside their office as soon as the initial
surprise had worn off, but had failed to catch even a glimpse of the
man. And then the search had been interrupted by the arrival of two
cars, and by the time they’d taken the two groups around, it was too
late to continue hunting.
Now Ronnie stretched out on his bed with the old volume propped up
against his pillow. He wanted to reread his great-great-grandfather’s
notations and do some thinking about them.
A little while later he got up to find a pencil and a piece of paper.
He sat down on the edge of the bed with a magazine beneath the paper.
At the top of the paper he wrote: “THE IMPORTANT THINGS I’VE FOUND OUT
FROM READING GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER’S DIARY.”
Then underneath he began to jot down each important fact:
1. Great-great-grandfather didn’t murder Mr. Jacob Williams the way
people think.
2. This Mr. Williams was the one who was stealing the glassware and
money, not Great-great-grandfather. Williams tried to pin it on
Great-great-grandfather.
3. Great-great-grandfather, just before he wrote in this ledger,
had found the glassware and money (and Jacob Williams’ body, too)
somewhere “down below.”
4. I guess Williams’ son knew about the stealing, and
Great-great-grandfather was afraid he’d destroy the ledger if he
found it so he could protect his father’s name.
5. Just before he died, Great-great-grandfather hid the ledger in
the fireplace because he couldn’t get to the house.
When Ronnie had finished, he stretched out on his back with his knees
up in the air and the paper resting against them. He read over what he
had written. Most of the ideas were interesting because they proved
Great-great-grandfather’s innocence. But only _Number Three_ seemed
to be any help at all in finding the hidden glassware and money. And
this one was so vague, Ronnie couldn’t see that it would be much help
either. “Down there” could be anywhere on the face of the earth! Well,
maybe not _that_ large an area, but anyway it could mean the whole
deserted village. And Ronnie couldn’t see Bill and himself digging up
the whole village to find the lost glassware and money.
Ronnie rested his head back against the bed and stared at the ceiling,
thinking. Surely Great-great-grandfather must have wanted his heirs to
find the lost articles, and if he did, he certainly would have given
adequate directions for finding them. “Why, ‘down there’ must mean
underneath the old office building,” Ronnie thought, “because that’s
where Great-great-grandfather was when he wrote this!”
It was a startling discovery, and its possibilities set the boy’s heart
racing. Wouldn’t Grandfather be surprised when Ronnie placed the diary
before him and announced, “There, Gramps, there’s the proof you wanted
about Great-great-grandfather Ezra!” Wouldn’t Gramps smile then!
But maybe it would be better to wait until he had the glassware and the
money. Then Gramps’ eyes would really open wide. Yes, that’s what he’d
do--throw the whole thing at Gramps all at one time!
Ronnie wanted to run from the house and down through the orchard to
the village and then tear every board loose from the floor of the
old, padlocked building until he knew for sure that he had figured
correctly. He got up from the bed and went to the window. The sun was
sinking fast. In another hour or two it would be dark, too late in the
day to start his search. Besides, he wanted Bill with him when he found
the glassware and money. He decided to make a trip to the kitchen to
see how Mrs. Butler was getting on with supper.
“Lands sake!” she exclaimed when he asked her how long it would be
before he could eat. “Land sakes, you’re getting as bad as your
brother--always thinking of filling your stomach.”
“Well, it’s the right time of the day to be thinking of that,” he told
her. “Say, where’s Phil, anyway?”
“I suppose he’s in the living room with your grandfather and that Mr.
Caldwell who came to see the candlesticks a while ago.”
“He _is_!” Now wasn’t that a fine kettle of fish, he thought. Here he
was missing out on a very important event while he dawdled around in
the kitchen talking with Mrs. Butler.
He hurried down the hall. The door to the living room was partially
closed. Ronnie poked his head through the opening. The two Rorth
candlesticks were standing on the desk. Mr. Caldwell was seated near
them and Grandfather directly across from him. Phil was lolling on the
couch, his bare feet resting on the wall and his head propped up with
a pillow. He seemed more interested in the comic magazine on his chest
than what was going on in the room.
Grandfather caught sight of Ronnie. “Come in, boy. Come in.”
Ronnie pushed the door open the rest of the way and came over to sit on
the floor near Grandfather’s chair.
“I have just finished explaining to Mr. Caldwell that if he really has
a pair of candlesticks like these,” Grandfather said to Ronnie, “and if
they have come down to him through the family, then I guess we can be
pretty sure he’s related in some way to the Jacob Williams who was a
partner of your great-great-grandfather.”
Ronnie gulped. Grandfather had told Mr. Caldwell all this? But, why?
_Why?_
His amazement must have shown in his face, for Grandfather gave him a
searching look and explained gently, “It’s got to be that way, Ronald.
There would be no advantage in keeping the information from him. You
see, the Seaway has learned of the unsettled title to the deserted
village land. At first I thought this would help me--I thought they
would be snarled up in such legal troubles that it would be better for
them to build the dam the way we want than to be held up for a year,
maybe more, fighting us in the courts. But it doesn’t work that way, I
learned. The Seaway just puts half the value of the property away in a
bank in trust, and if and when the person who’s got a claim on the land
shows up, why, the money’s there and waiting.”
“I see,” Ronnie said. Only he didn’t, not really.
“This way the whole affair’s settled, once and for all.” He looked
closely at Ronnie to see how the boy was taking what he had said.
“Confound it, Ronnie,” he went on, his face flushing slightly.
“Confound it, you don’t think I _like_ what’s going on, do you?
I’m still fighting, boy, fighting for the village. And saving the
village from being destroyed, that’s the important thing. Maybe with
Mr. Caldwell as a half-owner, we’ll add strength to our side of the
fighting. Seems to me this man’s kind of keen on saving the village,
too.”
Ronnie looked over at Caldwell. “Are you, Mr. Caldwell?” he asked.
He wasn’t seeing Caldwell, not really. He was seeing the man who had
slipped into the padlocked building that afternoon, the man who had
overturned furniture and thrown the family papers about on the floor.
“Very much so, Ronald,” Mr. Caldwell answered. He spoke with genuine
feeling. Perhaps it wasn’t fair to accuse him, Ronnie told himself. He
had never made a positive identification. And yet--yet there were so
many times that Ronnie had _almost_ been sure.
“This comes as such a complete surprise,” Mr. Caldwell was speaking
again. “I shall certainly have to look into the matter. I suppose there
are agencies that will trace a family tree?”
Grandfather nodded. “I’d get myself a good lawyer, if I were you. He’ll
tell you if you’ve got claim to the property.”
“My brother was the one who was interested in our family tree--and the
family history of the candlesticks. As a boy, he was always snooping
through old trunks and boxes in the attic.” Caldwell went over and
stood before the candlesticks, touching the glass crystals lightly
and lovingly with the tips of his fingers. “Beautiful, beautiful
workmanship,” he said.
“Why don’t you ask your brother?” Phil rolled over to a sitting
position. “Maybe he’s been holding out on you. Maybe he knows all about
the property.”
Mr. Caldwell did not look around. “I--I’m afraid that’s impossible,” he
answered finally. “He’s--away.”
Ronnie brought his knees up against his stomach and then wrapped his
arms about his legs to hold them close. He looked over at Caldwell. How
much did the man _really_ know? Was this all a put-up job--pretending
he had no knowledge of his relationship to Jacob Williams? Acting as
if he didn’t know a thing, so Ronnie would not connect him with his
mysterious prowlings about the village?
Ronnie sighed. It was all very puzzling. But somehow he couldn’t
believe that Mr. Caldwell was guilty of deceiving them. Ronnie had to
admit to himself that he liked the man.
The room had grown darker. Off in the distance Ronnie heard the low
rumble of thunder. The back door slammed shut and Mr. Rorth came down
the hallway and poked his head into the room. “Hi, everyone,” he said
cheerfully. “Mr. Caldwell, how are you? By the way, I dropped some
screen doors and windows off at your place, but I didn’t have time to
put them up. I left some nails and a hammer, though, and you can tack
them up temporarily.”
“Many thanks!” Caldwell said. “I can certainly use the screens! I never
knew there were so many insects in the world until I came here. Too bad
you left the hammer, though. I have one of my own.”
Whose hammer, Ronnie wondered? Caldwell’s--or was it the one that had
disappeared from Bill’s barn?
The room grew another shade darker. A brilliant flash of lightning
dispelled the darkness for a brief moment, and then the thunder broke.
The house vibrated from the sound.
Mr. Caldwell moved toward the door. “I’d best be going before the storm
breaks.”
“Come along,” Mr. Rorth offered, “and I’ll take you most of the way in
the truck. You’ll never make it before it rains.”
The truck was hardly out of sight when the rain fell in torrents.
Ronnie, at the living room window, watched the puddles grow deeper
and deeper. The rain turned to hail and beat against the pane like a
kettledrum solo. A streak of lightning split the black clouds and
pierced the earth. Almost immediately a crack of thunder seemed to
explode overhead. The rain fell heavier.
Ronnie turned from the window and let the curtains fall back into
place. Grandfather got up from his chair. “I might as well do a little
DXing while I wait on supper to be served up,” he announced. “Ronnie,
does that sound interesting to you?”
“I don’t think so, Gramps. Really, you shouldn’t DX during a
thunderstorm.”
“Fiddlesticks! Rubbish! If the lightning’s got your name written on
it, it’ll strike you no matter what! Besides, what’s there left for me
around here now?”
He stomped from the room as fast as his cane would permit. Phil turned
over heavily on the couch, bringing his magazine around with him.
Ronnie watched his brother for a moment, then turned and left the room.
He went upstairs to his bedroom because he could think of nothing
better to do. For a while he stood by his window watching the storm.
Below, he saw his father’s truck drive into the yard and come to a
quick stop. Mr. Rorth got out and ran for the back door.
And down in the deserted village Ronnie saw another figure running in
the rain. The figure appeared out of the trees and ran toward the rear
wall of the padlocked building. It disappeared from sight behind the
building. Ronnie waited for it to reappear, but the minutes passed
without another movement in the village.
The boy remembered Great-great-grandfather’s words in his diary: “His
body lies below, together with the evidence of his guilt.” There was
no doubt in the boy’s mind now what his great-great-grandfather had
meant. Down below the padlocked building, of course.
And Ronnie remembered, too, how savagely the stranger had attacked the
interior of the building that afternoon overturning furniture, pounding
on the walls, scattering the papers.
It wouldn’t be long, Ronnie realized, before the man would begin to rip
up the floor boards.
“Bill and I have _got_ to get there first!” he told himself.
_Chapter 13_
The thunderstorm did not roll away to bother other parts of the country
as thunderstorms usually do. Instead, it turned into a steady downpour
that showed no signs of letting up. The barnyard flooded and the water
ran down the driveway in small streams that washed away the gravel and
left gullies along the edges.
All night it rained, and when Ronnie awoke the next morning it was
still coming down. After breakfast the boy moved from one room to
the next, trying to decide what to do. He was worried about what the
intruder might have discovered during the night. Perhaps by now he had
found the money and glassware and had already left the village with his
loot.
Ronnie made up his mind. He went to the telephone and called Bill. He
told him about the figuring he had done, how he believed the money and
glassware were hidden somewhere beneath the padlocked building, and how
he was afraid the intruder might already have found it. “We’ve got to
work fast, Bill,” he said urgently.
“I’m with you, Ronnie,” Bill agreed. “I can get away, I think. Can
you?”
“I’ll wear boots and my raincoat and cape. My dad’ll say yes, for sure.”
“Then I’ll see you there! And bring the ledger book. I want to see the
part you’re talking about. Meet you in our office in twenty minutes.”
Ronnie went to find his father to get permission. “Now how in the world
would I know where he is?” Mrs. Butler protested. She had just arrived
and was removing her plastic raincoat and hat. “Go look in the barn. He
generally works there when the weather’s bad like this.”
Ronnie dashed across the yard and sailed through the open barn doors.
He found his father at his workbench cutting tomato poles from old
boards on his power saw.
“Sure, go ahead,” Mr. Rorth agreed. “A little rain’s not going to hurt
anybody.”
Ronnie ran back to the house. He went up to his room and got the
ledger. Then he got his boots, raincoat, and rubber raincape from the
hall closet. Phil appeared from the kitchen. “Where are you heading
for, Ronnie?” he asked.
“I’m meeting Bill down at the village. Want to come?”
Phil looked at Ronnie as if his brother had asked him to go to the
moon. “Are you kidding?” he laughed. “I wouldn’t go out in this weather
if the house was on fire.”
Ronnie slipped the ledger under his raincoat where it would be
protected from the weather. “Say,” Phil demanded, “what’s that?”
“Just a book,” Ronnie answered. He wasn’t going to take the time now to
explain. Besides, Phil knew so little about what had happened during
the past few days that Ronnie would have to start at the beginning if
his brother were to understand how important the book was.
“Yea, but what _kind_ of a book?” Phil persisted. Ronnie retreated
toward the door, but Phil followed him.
“Oh, an old book I found in the padlocked building,” Ronnie admitted
finally as he opened the door and stepped out onto the porch.
“Say,” he heard Phil exclaim as the door closed on his words.
“Something’s going on around here--”
Ronnie splashed through the puddles in the driveway and entered the
orchard. The rain drummed down on his rubber hood. Little rivers
drained from his shoulders. He held the book tight as he plunged down
the soggy bluff and entered the trees at the bottom.
Down in the valley he breathed deep of the pungent odor of pine,
released by the long rain. Off to the right, partially hidden by the
ground fog that had been trapped beneath the heavy foliage when the
cooler rain touched the warm earth, Ronnie saw the old bakery building.
Its broken, crumbled walls and sections of rotting roof seemed
unusually deserted and lonely in the faint light.
Ronnie shivered suddenly and continued down the narrow path. Wet
branches snapped back against his raincoat and sprayed water into his
face. He stopped a moment to shift the ledger higher up under his arm.
And then suddenly there was a movement in the bushes at the side of the
path. Before the boy could turn, someone seized him from behind and,
grasping his arms, pinned them behind his back. Ronnie felt the ledger
slipping from his hold. It started to fall beneath his raincoat.
He struggled to free himself, but his assailant was strong. He tried,
too, to twist his head about so he could see who it was. But his
raincape blocked his vision on both sides.
“All right, kid!” A man’s voice growled close to the boy’s ear. “Let’s
have it!”
“H--have w--what?” Ronnie gasped.
“The book I saw you kids looking at yesterday in that shack of yours.”
The man tightened his grip on the boy’s arms, and Ronnie winced. And
just at that moment the ledger slipped to the ground.
“So you’ve got it with you, eh? Well, that’s so much the better!” The
man loosened his grip somewhat. Then he gave Ronnie a terrific shove
that sent the boy sprawling headlong into the wet leaves.
Ronnie was more angry than he was hurt. He had just one idea in his
mind--to get a close look at this man now that he had the opportunity.
No sooner had he struck the ground than he rolled over and pulled
himself up to a sitting position.
The man was bending over to pick up the ledger. But when he
straightened up he was facing directly toward the boy. Ronnie found
himself face to face with his opponent.
“Mr.--Mr. _Caldwell_!” Ronnie exclaimed. The man’s thin summer clothes
were soaked to the skin and his thick, straight hair was matted to his
head on top and hanging over his forehead in ropelike strands.
But Caldwell paid no attention to the boy’s remark. Book in hand, he
walked off down the path in the direction of the old bakery.
“Give me back my book!” Ronnie shouted after him. “Why, why--you--” He
took off after the man, leaping onto his back and clinging there with
all his strength.
But he was no match for Caldwell. With his free hand the man released
the boy’s grip from about his neck. Then, still holding Ronnie’s wrist,
he flung the boy from him. Ronnie sailed into the bushes, rolled over
several times and came to a stop. By the time he had pulled himself to
his feet Caldwell had disappeared.
Dejectedly the boy turned and made his way slowly toward their office
to tell Bill the disheartening news.
Bill had the door unlocked, but closed, to keep out the rain and chill.
Ronnie came inside, pulled off his raincape. He didn’t have to tell
Bill that something unpleasant had happened. His friend read it in
Ronnie’s face.
“You did everything you could have done,” Bill said to him after Ronnie
had told him the story. “Don’t feel bad about it.” Bill went over to
sit on the edge of the desk. “So it _has_ been Caldwell all along--and
him acting so sweet and nice. You sure, Ronnie?”
Ronnie nodded. “It was him all right. Of course, he looked a little
different because he was as wet as a drowned rat.”
“You mean he wasn’t wearing a raincoat--or anything like that?”
“Nope.” It did seem strange, now that Ronnie had time to think about
it. Certainly Caldwell would have brought enough clothing with him
for all kinds of weather. But hadn’t he _seen_ Caldwell face to face?
Raincoat or no raincoat, it _was_ Mr. Caldwell all right! “Well, _now_
what do we do?” he asked Bill.
“Why, just what we planned, of course!” Bill explained. “And maybe
we’ve got the jump on Caldwell after all! Because why would he take the
ledger from you if he had found the money and glassware, or knew where
it was?”
“I see what you mean!” Ronnie exclaimed. “He wouldn’t _need_ the ledger
if he was close to finding the money and glassware.”
“Right! He’s probably getting desperate. He saw us with the old book
and decided it might contain an answer to what he wanted to know. Maybe
he even heard us reading parts of it.”
Ronnie walked over to the window. Streams of water ran down from the
roof. The wind was lifting now and the trees were bending under its
force. Ronnie turned to face his friend. “Bill, if I hadn’t seen
Caldwell face to face, I don’t think I could believe he’s the man who’s
been doing all this snooping. And you know, even while he was grabbing
me back there on the path, I didn’t think it was him. He just didn’t
talk like Caldwell--or act like him either.”
“Well, you never do really know a man until you’ve been around him a
good long while--that’s what my pa says.” Bill pulled his raincape over
his head. “We’re just wasting time sitting here and talking. Let’s get
over to the padlocked building. I brought a flashlight. Did you bring
the key?”
Ronnie patted his trouser leg. “Right here in my pocket!” he exclaimed.
They closed the door to their office and started down the puddle-filled
path. The rain beat against their raincapes and coats, and overhead the
trees lashed wildly in the rising wind. A dead branch fell to the path
behind them.
When they reached the cobblestone road they saw Phil coming toward
them, huddled inside his raincoat and pushing against the wind. “I
figured something was up,” he said to Bill and Ronnie when he had
reached them. “Come on, out with it. What have you two got up your
sleeves--and where’s that old book you had, Ronnie?”
Ronnie glanced at his friend. Bill nodded that as far as he was
concerned he didn’t care if Phil was brought in on their venture. So
while they walked to the padlocked building, Bill and Ronnie supplied
Phil with whatever information he needed to bring him up to date.
When they arrived at the old Rorth Glassworks office building, Ronnie
brought the key from his pocket and inserted it in the rusty lock. He
tried to turn the key but it wouldn’t budge. It wouldn’t turn for Bill
or Phil, either.
“We’ll have to use Caldwell’s secret trap door,” Ronnie said, and they
hurried around to the rear of the building.
Ronnie removed the wall section and the three climbed through. Bill lit
his flashlight. Then Ronnie closed the trap door again because, as he
explained to the others, “We don’t want Caldwell to know we’re in here.”
Bill was exploring the interior with the flashlight. He whistled. “Wow!
Caldwell sure turned this place upside down!”
Ronnie nodded. Hardly a square foot of the floor was bare of paper or
overturned filing cabinet and desk drawers. Even a few floor boards
here and there were torn loose.
“Looks just like my bedroom when Mrs. Butler yells at me,” Phil
commented.
“We’ll never find a way down below with all this clutter,” Ronnie
remarked. “Maybe we should clean up first.”
Bill agreed and the three set to work picking up the papers and
stuffing them back in the drawers. Next they moved all the furniture to
one side of the room and returned the drawers to their places in the
desk and filing cabinet. “Now we’ll give this cleared side of the room
a real going-over!” Bill said. “Then we’ll move everything to the other
side and search that part. Come on, Phil, let’s get with it.”
Phil was lighting matches and peering under the floor boards Caldwell
had loosened. “O.K.,” he mumbled.
They started in the corner and worked systematically back and forth
across the room, taking a few boards at a time. It was Bill’s idea that
Jacob Williams had made some sort of a secret trap door for himself,
and that if the boys searched carefully enough they could find it.
“Then we won’t have to tear up any more of the floor the way Mr.
Caldwell’s done,” he said.
Bill was working with his penknife at the rear of the building toward
the fireplace. He was jabbing into the wider cracks with the blade, and
then prying upward, hoping to dislodge any loose section. Suddenly he
let out a little cry of triumph.
Phil didn’t hear Bill because he was inside the fireplace lighting more
matches while he explored. But Ronnie heard him and came over to find
out what he had discovered. “Look, Ronnie,” he said. “I’ve got these
boards up a little way. But I need something stronger. My knife’ll snap
if I push any harder.”
“Hold everything!” Ronnie directed. During clean-up, Ronnie had seen
a pair of old fire tongs leaning against the fireplace. He found them
easily in the dark and brought them to Bill. Bill examined them by the
light of his flashlight. The ends were flattened like the ends of a
screwdriver. Just the implement they needed!
Bill inserted the flattened end of the tongs into the crack, removed
the penknife, and pushed down with all his weight. Then he pried the
tongs backward. A section of the flooring began to move upward. Ronnie
grabbed the loose end and pulled. An entire section of the floor came
free.
“Zowie!” Bill exclaimed. “We’ve found it!”
_Chapter 14_
Bill’s flashlight broke the inky blackness beneath the opening.
Three feet below the floor of the office building, Ronnie saw the dry,
hard, crusted earth on which the footings of the building rested. Into
this for a distance of some six feet beneath the trap door, old Jacob
Williams had dug a slanting hole that ran down to the top of an old
drainage culvert. The brick arch, which formed the roof of the culvert,
had been broken through. Below the break-through, the culvert ran in
both directions parallel to the side of the building.
“Wow!” Bill exclaimed, playing his light about. “A tunnel! And it’s
plenty high enough to walk through, too!”
“I’ll bet it used to carry drainage water from the village down to the
St. Lawrence,” Ronnie added.
“Just the kind of place Jacob Williams would want for hiding the
glassware!”
Phil, hearing the excitement, came over and crouched down beside the
others. He peered over the edge and looked down into the hole.
Ronnie was trying to estimate the distance to the bottom of the
culvert. He figured it in sections. From the floor of the building
to the ground level was a “crawl space” of about three feet. Then the
hole Jacob Williams had dug was another six feet. That added up to nine
feet. The culvert itself, at the highest point in the arch, was another
six or seven feet.
Fifteen feet. To Ronnie looking down into the blackness, it seemed more
like a hundred and fifteen!
“We aren’t thinking of going _down_ there, are we?” Phil asked. “I
suffer from claustrophobia, I’d like you both to know.”
Bill looked over at Phil. “And we suffer--just hearing you talk,” he
said, grinning a little. Then he looked at Ronnie. “Think we can get
down without a ladder or a rope?” he asked.
Ronnie studied the problem. “Yes, I think so,” he answered finally.
“We’ll take it in stages. You know--climb down there to the ground
first, then slide down the hole to the top of the culvert. There’s room
to stand there. Then we can swing ourselves down through the opening in
the brickwork.”
Phil gulped. “That sounds like an awful lot of work,” he said. “And
even harder to get _up_ again.”
“Nobody’s twisting your arm and making you go,” Bill said.
Ronnie went first, holding Bill’s flashlight. The others waited above
in the darkness, peering over the edge to watch Ronnie’s progress.
Ronnie had no trouble lowering himself to the ground level. Then he
sent the light from the flashlight down into the hole Williams had dug.
The remains of an old ladder lay in pieces along the sides of the hole.
Ronnie noticed, too, that steps had been made leading down to the
top of the culvert--pieces of split log hammered into the earth but
protruding far enough to provide a foothold.
The boy tried the first one. It sustained his weight. He tried
another--and another. He looked up at Bill and Phil and grinned. Things
were going just fine!
He smiled too soon. The fourth step broke under his weight. His feet
flew out from under him and his back struck the side of the hole. He
slid the rest of the way, carrying with him an avalanche of dirt and
pebbles.
Luckily, he managed to keep himself from plunging through the opening
in the brickwork and down into the culvert. “You all right?” he heard
Bill calling down.
“I’m O.K.,” he answered. His voice echoed back hollow and distant from
within the culvert.
He sat down with his legs hanging over the edge of the broken brickwork
and flashed the light down into the darkness. The bottom looked
sandy--silt carried there by the drainage water over many years. There
was no way to climb in. He’d have to drop.
He tucked the flashlight under his belt beneath his raincoat and began
to slip forward. Then, when he was on the very edge, he let his body
fall forward.
He struck bottom on his feet, but the momentum threw him forward and
he landed face first on a patch of slimy sand. Picking himself up,
he found his flashlight and pressed the button. Light bored through
the pitch-blackness. The brick walls were slimy and green, and water
dripped through the bricks and dropped to the floor. In places sand
and earth had seeped through the cracks in the masonry and had formed
mounds and valleys along the culvert floor.
He looked up and saw Bill and Phil peering down at him under the light
from his flashlight. “What’s it like down there?” Bill asked.
“Kind of--kind of spooky,” he answered. He heard his voice come back to
him from both ends of the culvert.
“I’ll be with you in a minute,” Bill called. “Shine the light along the
way.”
Five minutes later both Phil and Bill had joined Ronnie in the culvert.
“Nice place to hold a Halloween party,” Phil commented. “I’m kind of
glad now that I decided to come down to the village to see what you two
were cooking up!”
Bill retrieved his flashlight from Ronnie and began to explore the
culvert with it. “Wow!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Take a look over where
the light’s pointing.”
Ronnie saw a crude shelf supported by sapling logs which rested on the
culvert floor. The shelf ran for six to seven feet along the side of
the wall, and on it were a number of wooden crates. Protruding from the
excelsior with which the crates were packed, Ronnie could see a number
of glass cannisters, goblets, decanters, and flasks of different colors.
“Oh, boy!” Bill exploded. He ran forward and removed one of the
pieces, holding out a beautiful rose-tinted goblet of frail, delicate
glass. Around the belly of the piece ran a band of men and women in
eighteenth-century dress, etched into the surface like autumn frost.
The others had moved to the shelf, too. “Hey, pig,” Phil said to Bill,
“how about sharing some of that light so we can get a look at some of
this stuff, too!”
Bill laid the light on the shelf and pointed it so Ronnie and Phil
could use it, too. Ronnie lifted another of the crates to the floor.
One by one he removed a set of six wine-glasses and a decanter to match
and placed them on the floor in a nest of excelsior.
Phil, however, had his eye on something different. He was interested in
a small metal box at the end of the shelf. He took it down, brushed off
the flakes of rust and tried to open the lid. It was rusted fast.
Bill had reached the bottom of his crate, and now he was carefully
packing the contents back as he had found them. He turned to Ronnie.
“It’s not going to be easy getting these crates out of here,” he said.
“We don’t want to break any.”
Ronnie nodded. “I know. Yet we can’t leave them here for Caldwell to
claim. One of us will have to go for a rope.”
“There’s one in the Glassworks building that we were using to haul junk
outside. Maybe we can persuade Phil to go and get it.”
“Fat chance of doing that!”
A sudden squeal of surprise and wonderment from Phil interrupted their
discussion. Phil came over to them with the opened metal box in his
hands. “Boy, oh, boy!” he exclaimed. “Have _I_ hit real pay dirt. Just
focus your eyes on what’s inside this box!”
Ronnie peered inside while Phil held the box so the light from the
flashlight could reach the interior. “Th-the money!” Ronnie gasped.
“You bet it’s the money!” Phil echoed. He took out a roll of bills and
a handful of gold and silver coins. “And plenty of it, too!”
“Wow!” Bill exclaimed. “Now we can save the village. We can build the
dam! How much is there, Phil?”
The bills had been rolled and tied with a piece of cord. Phil opened
the roll easily. Bill got the flashlight from the shelf and they
crouched together in a group while, one by one, Phil laid the big
old-fashioned bills in a pile. There were mostly twenties and hundreds,
with a few fives and tens. Altogether, Phil counted over two thousand
dollars.
They examined the gold and silver coins next. With these their total
came to twenty-one hundred dollars.
“Put the money back in the box,” Ronnie directed. “We’ve got to work
fast. I sure feel uneasy about Mr. Caldwell coming back.”
“You two get the crates over underneath the opening,” Bill said, “and
I’ll run over to the glassworks and get the rope. We’ll have this stuff
out of here and locked up in our office before Caldwell even knows
what’s going on. Then I’ll ask Pa to come down with the truck and we’ll
take it up to your house, Ronnie.”
Bill had some trouble getting back up to the padlocked building, but
he finally made it. When he had gone, Ronnie set to work lifting the
crates from the shelf and carrying them over to the floor beneath the
opening. Phil seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of matches, and he
left Ronnie to explore up the culvert. By the time Ronnie had finished,
Phil was back. He had a sheepish look on his face, but he was a little
pale, too.
“What’s eating you?” Ronnie demanded.
“I--I just met up with Jacob Williams,” Phil answered. “I mean--what’s
left of him.”
“You mean--you mean his bones are down there?” Ronnie asked, motioning
in the direction Phil had just come from. It really shouldn’t surprise
him, of course, he told himself. Great-great-grandfather Ezra had
mentioned in his diary that he had found Jacob Williams’ body “down
below” and that he didn’t have the strength to get him up.
When Bill returned with the rope, the three set to work bringing the
crates up to the padlocked building. It was hard, exacting work. One
end of the rope was tied to a rafter in the building and the other
end fastened securely about one of the crates. Then it was a matter
of pulling from the top and guiding the box along the way so that it
didn’t crash against the sides at any time.
In all, there were six crates to be pulled up. The boys had removed
their raingear and cumbersome boots, but by the time they had finished,
they were dripping with perspiration and covered with dirt and grime.
But even Phil hadn’t complained. There they were at last--the six
crates and the metal box, piled together in the center of the padlocked
building. The rest seemed easy in comparison. Two trips for each of
them and the crates would be safely stored in their office, ready for
the truck to pick them up.
Ronnie was all smiles as he and the others stole a minute or two of
their precious time to sit down and catch their breaths. “Golly,” he
said, “I never once thought this would be such an exciting day when I
got up this morning.”
“Neither did I,” Bill agreed. “When I saw the rain pouring down, I
thought for sure I was in for a real boring day. The most I thought
we’d get done was to maybe clean up another building.”
“And when I got up,” Phil added, “I told myself to turn around and go
back to sleep.”
Bill looked over at Phil curiously. “How come you’re so lazy, Phil?”
Phil grinned back at him. “It just comes naturally, I guess.”
Ronnie got up. He was on pins and needles for fear something might
happen before they got the money and glassware safely stowed away. He
looked over at the crates. “Maybe we could each carry two of them,” he
suggested, “and make it all in one trip.”
“Not me!” Phil protested. “After hauling them up from below, you’re
lucky I’ll agree to carry _one_.”
“Phil’s right,” Bill agreed. “We wouldn’t want to drop and break
anything. This glassware is pretty valuable, I’ll bet.”
They put on their raingear and boots. Then each selected a crate and
moved it over to the trap door in the rear of the building. Ronnie set
his down so he could remove the section of wall.
He didn’t have to. The trap door suddenly opened as if by itself.
And there, framed in the opening, was Caldwell’s face and shoulders. He
had a gun in his hand.
_Chapter 15_
Ronnie’s heart began to tap-dance inside his chest. He knew, too, that
his mouth was open as wide as it would go and that he couldn’t do a
thing to close it.
Caldwell stepped inside, holding the gun loosely in his hand. He
brought a flashlight from his pocket.
“Take your light out of my eyes!” Caldwell commanded Bill.
“Y--yes, sir,” Bill managed to say. The light clicked off. Caldwell’s
took its place. It was focused, not on the boys, but on the pile of
crates left in the middle of the room.
“Now wasn’t that nice of you boys to find this stuff for me and to lug
it up, too. Of course you had a slight advantage over me, in that you
had the book longer than me. But I figured it out, too--and just in
time, it appears.”
Ronnie was looking at a different Caldwell now as the man stood framed
in the light from the rear trap door. This wasn’t the Caldwell he had
known during the past days. This was a cool, deliberate, scheming
Caldwell. This was the man he had tangled with on the path earlier in
the day.
Caldwell backed around toward the crates, keeping the gun and light
trained on the boys. With the gun in his right hand, and the flashlight
tucked under his left arm, he threw back the cover to the metal box.
“Well, now,” he said, “this is just what I need! This will cover my
traveling expenses very nicely--with plenty left over besides.” He
picked up the bills and pushed them into his pocket, and then came back
to scoop up the coins. “You boys have been very helpful. Very helpful.
And since you’ve gone to all the trouble of carting this heavy stuff
upstairs for me, I might as well take it along, too. There’s always
some sucker antique dealer along the road who will give me a few bucks
for it.”
Bill took a step forward, but stopped when Caldwell’s gun came up. “You
sure have had us fooled, Mr. Caldwell,” Bill said. “And we sure were
fools to have trusted you.”
“Yea, sure, kid.” Caldwell seemed a little puzzled by what Bill had
said. “Well, enough of this. It’ll take me an hour to get loaded and
hit the road.” He swung the light around, searching for something. It
stopped when he found the open trap door leading down to the culvert.
“O.K., you kids,” he ordered. “Supposing you climb back down into the
cellar.”
Ronnie’s eyes widened as he gathered the full intent of the order.
“You--you’re not going to lock us up down there?” he gasped.
“I sure am, kid. You don’t think I’m going to turn you loose so you can
bring the whole neighborhood after me, do you? I need plenty of time to
get this stuff out of here and to hit the road. Now get moving--all of
you.”
Ronnie stood his ground. “I won’t go,” he said stubbornly. “Why, we’d
never get out of there. Nobody would ever find us,” he added.
“Well, now, isn’t that too bad!” Caldwell sneered. “Now move before I
push you down--if that’s the way you want it.”
“We’d better go,” Bill said.
They filed dejectedly toward the opening in the floor. Bill went first
and Ronnie followed. Before taking his turn, Phil turned to Caldwell.
“How about paying us for bringing the stuff up anyway, huh?” he asked.
“Don’t get funny, kid.”
“My name’s Phil--or don’t you remember?”
“Look, kid, I don’t care one hoot what your name is. Now shake it up
before I help you.”
When Phil’s head was below the level of the floor, Caldwell dropped the
trap door into place. Ronnie and Bill stood together below the opening
watching Phil descend, Bill holding the light for Phil to see by.
Above, they heard Caldwell driving several nails into the trap door.
Each blow echoed down the long lengths of the tunnel with a hollow
boom. Then suddenly it was silent again, a deep silence that told them
how far away from escape they really were.
Ronnie shivered. Behind him he heard the steady, rhythmic dripping
of water against the culvert floor. He thought he heard Bill’s heart
beating too. Or was it his own?
“Anybody got a deck of cards?” Phil asked suddenly and Bill and
Ronnie laughed. For the first time in his life Ronnie appreciated his
brother’s wisecracking.
They decided then that the first thing they should do was to explore
the entire culvert in hopes that there might be some other way out
beside the trap door. Before they left, however, Ronnie climbed to
test the strength of the trap door, hoping that perhaps Caldwell’s
nails had not been well placed. It was an idle hope. The trap door was
as solid as the rest of the floor.
Their explorations revealed that one end of the culvert ended in a
cave-in. The other end, sloping rapidly, ran to the river and was
flooded. “And that water’s rising, too,” Bill said to Ronnie as they
made their way back. “All this rain is flooding the river. And the
higher the river gets, the higher the water backs up in here.”
Ronnie was almost afraid to ask the question that had come to his mind.
“Do you suppose--could the whole culvert get flooded?”
Bill took Ronnie and Phil over to the wall and showed them several
lines of dried slime which had impregnated the brick. “Each one of
those lines,” he told them, “I’d guess was a water level mark. That
means the water has risen pretty high. One thing we can be sure
of, though, is that the water has never reached to the top of the
archway--not _yet_ anyway.”
“How come you know that?” Phil asked.
“Because if it had, Caldwell wouldn’t be walking off with that roll of
money. It would have fallen apart.”
“I wish it _was_ falling apart,” Phil grumbled.
They reached that section of the culvert below the building. Here they
selected a drier area of floor and sat down with their backs against
the wall. Bill turned off the flashlight to save the batteries. “O.K.,”
he said to the others. “So here we are--trapped. The only way of escape
is nailed shut. The water’s rising. How far we don’t know yet. Now,
what do we do?”
Phil’s voice came out of the blackness. “Just go to sleep and wait
until somebody finds us.”
“You’ll sleep until doomsday,” Ronnie told his brother. “Because
nobody’s ever going to find us here. Except for us, the only one who
knows about this--this dungeon is Mr. Caldwell and it doesn’t look as
if he’s going to tell anyone.”
“That’s right, Ronnie,” Bill agreed. “And with the padlock still on the
door, who’s going to think of looking inside?”
“And nobody’ll hear us shouting unless they _do_ come inside,” Phil
added. “I--Yipes!”
“What’s the matter?” Bill demanded and switched on his flashlight. He
picked Phil out of the darkness. Phil was rubbing at the back of his
neck.
“A--a drop of cold water went down my back.”
“Is _that_ all?” Bill grumbled disgustedly. “Well for pity’s sake, put
up your raincoat collar so you don’t scare me like that again. And
don’t yell out again unless it’s something serious.”
“That’s serious. I could catch pneumonia--or something.”
“Cut it out, Phil,” Ronnie protested. “We’ve got to _think_. Can’t you
get it through your thick skull that we’re in serious trouble?”
“Sure I can. I just want to die smiling. I think Jacob’s skeleton was
smiling.”
Ronnie was tired of Phil’s chatter, and he was tired of staring into
the blackness and seeing nothing, too. So he closed his eyes and rested
his head back against the hard, uneven brick. He wanted to think.
But he couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that he was all alone, a
thousand miles down in the bowels of the earth. He put his hand out
and found Bill’s shoulder and left it there because he felt some
comfort in knowing that his friend was so close. Bill shifted his
position closer to Ronnie. “Keep your chin up, Ronnie,” he heard Bill
whisper. “I’ve got an idea. It might just work.”
Bill leaned over closer to Ronnie so his mouth was only a few inches
from his friend’s ear. “Here’s the pitch,” he said. “Remember the first
end of the culvert we visited--not the one by the river?”
Ronnie nodded. “Yea,” he said, remembering Bill couldn’t see him.
“And remember how it was all cave-in, just a big mess of broken brick
and dirt that had fallen in with it?”
“Yea,” Ronnie said again.
“Well, when I was flashing the light about, I noticed one place big
enough to crawl up into. It looked as if it went quite a way toward the
surface. Now, I was thinking maybe we could dig through to the surface
from there.”
“Hey, Bill, that’s a cool idea! Let’s try it! But what’ll we dig with?”
“I can jab away with my penknife. The dirt’ll keep falling down into
the culvert.”
“Let’s go!” Ronnie exclaimed. He was tired of sitting. He wanted to do
something to help them escape--_anything_.
Bill turned on his light. Phil was stretched out on the floor with his
eyes closed. “Come on,” Ronnie nudged him. “We’ve got things to do.”
Bill explained his plan to Phil as they moved down the culvert. Phil
agreed that it was worth the try.
They reached the end of the culvert. Bill played the beam of his
flashlight about among the giant slabs of concrete and brick that had
tumbled to the floor of the culvert. Inky black crevices ran upward
between the pieces of rubble, and as Bill moved the flashlight about
looking for the crevice he had in mind, the jutting ends of the masonry
cast weird shadows upon the walls and floor.
“There it is!” Bill said suddenly, holding his light steady. “That’s
the one. See how far up it goes?”
Ronnie saw a twisting passage, which gradually grew smaller toward the
top. Halfway up, a giant slab almost sealed the crevice into two parts,
but Ronnie judged that there would possibly be room for Bill to squeeze
past.
Bill removed his raingear and handed Ronnie the flashlight. “Keep the
light where I need it,” he instructed. Then he boosted himself into the
opening and began to worm his way upward. Protruding edges of brick
and mortar gave him support for his feet or a hold for his hands. Soon
Ronnie saw him enter the narrow aperture.
Bill continued to edge forward, forcing his shoulders and arms between
the two giant slabs. Then he stopped and began to struggle. Ronnie
could see that he was wedged tightly between the two slabs.
“H--help! I--I’m caught,” Ronnie heard Bill’s muffled voice.
Ronnie slipped out of his raincoat and boots and handed the light to
Phil. Then he grasped the ledge of the lowest block of masonry and
pulled himself up into the mouth of the crevice. From here he worked
his way upward until his outstretched hands found Bill’s shoes. He took
a firm grip about his friend’s ankles--and pulled. Bill’s body did not
budge. Ronnie might just as well have tried to move the rubble.
“It’s no use, Ronnie,” Bill said in a whimper.
“Keep your chin up, pal,” Ronnie answered. “I’ll think of a way. Just
don’t struggle or you’ll swell up and then it’ll be even harder to get
you free.”
Ronnie lay back against the cold stone and tried to catch his
breath--and _think_. He _had_ to find a way to free Bill. With help so
far away it was up to him to save his friend.
A section of brick was jabbing into his back just under the shoulder
blades. He shifted his position to ease the discomfort. His shoulders
rubbed against a section of smooth, slimy moss--and an idea came to
him. He’d read stories of how the bodies of trapped men had been
greased, and then had slipped out quite easily. The nearest grease
bucket was in the barn, but wouldn’t wet slime do just as well?
He twisted his body about so he could call down to Phil. “Get me a
good, big handful of that slime down at the other end of the culvert.
And hurry.”
Phil nodded that he understood. He turned quickly and started for the
river end of the culvert, leaving Ronnie in the pitch-black. Ronnie
lay back against the rock and rested. Above him he heard Bill’s forced
breathing and an occasional groan. He heard the gentle dripping of
water, too, and felt something crawling down the back of his shirt.
It seemed an eternity before Phil returned with both hands loaded with
slime, the flashlight tucked under his arm.
Ronnie had to come down a way before the slime could be transferred to
his own hands. And now he’d have to work his way up again to where Bill
was caught, and he’d have to do it without the use of his hands. It
wasn’t going to be easy. With both hands cupping the precious stuff, he
had no way of holding on.
He managed it, however, using only his feet and elbows. Now his head
was alongside Bill’s knees and he could reach up and force the slime
between the rubble and his friend’s shoulders. Bill understood what
Ronnie was attempting to do, for he worked his body about to spread the
application. Inch by inch Bill squirmed his way backward--and suddenly
he was free.
Then something happened that _Ronnie_ hadn’t foreseen. Bill’s shoulders
came free so unexpectedly that before either Bill or Ronnie could check
the momentum, Bill had lost his balance. His body slipped backward,
struck the side of a concrete slab and landed on the culvert floor with
one leg doubled under him.
Phil was already kneeling beside Bill’s body by the time Ronnie had
climbed down. The light from the flashlight was on Bill’s face.
“My leg. Oh, Ronnie, my leg!” Bill groaned and grimaced from the
pain. Sweat broke out on his forehead in large drops. His lips were
purple-blue and his face was as white as the sweat shirt he was wearing.
“Ronnie,” Bill whispered, “Ronnie, _please_. Do something for me.
Please, _do_ something.”
_Chapter 16_
Ronnie stooped down beside his friend and wiped the perspiration from
his forehead. “Sure, Bill, we’ll have you fixed up in no time,” he said.
He took Bill’s raincoat and covered him with it, wrapping it around
underneath as far as he dared without moving the injured leg. Then
he set to work massaging Bill’s wrists and limbs to restore the
circulation. And all the while he worked, he was glad for those hours
of practice and study that he’d given to learning first aid at Scout
meetings and at home. His first-aid merit badge was proving its worth!
He looked up at Phil. “Down the culvert I saw some boards that must
have washed in one time or another. I’ll need a couple of splints. Go
get them.”
Phil nodded. Ronnie handed him the flashlight, and his brother moved
off down the culvert. Ronnie continued chafing Bill’s wrists in the
dark. He could feel the rapid pulse and knew that his friend was in
slight shock. He’d have to treat that first. The leg could wait. He
continued to massage Bill’s limbs and arms.
Phil returned with an armful of boards. Ronnie signaled for him to drop
them and to take over the job that he had been doing. The flashlight
showed that the color was beginning to return to Bill’s face. His
pulse was slowing down to normal now, too.
Ronnie got up and came around to kneel by Bill’s feet. He swallowed
hard. This was going to be a real tricky job--straightening out Bill’s
leg without compounding the fracture. Ronnie had done it plenty of
times in practice, but then there had been no broken bones that could
jab through the flesh if he made a wrong move.
He reached in under the raincoat and felt his way forward until he
could get a hold on Bill’s shoe. When he was ready, he instructed Phil
to grasp Bill around the armpits and to lift him gradually. As the
weight of Bill’s body was removed from the leg, Ronnie took a firm grip
about Bill’s ankle and began the slow, tedious task of straightening
the leg. All the time he moved the leg out from under his friend’s
body, he applied a steady forward tension to keep the broken bone from
working into the flesh. Several times Bill cried out in pain.
Now the leg was ready for splinting. Ronnie selected several of the
longer boards. He ripped sections from his own shirt and placed these
against Bill’s leg and laid the boards gently on top. Then he tore
strips of cloth and bound them about the boards and the leg until the
splints were firmly in place.
Only then did he realize that he was soaking wet from perspiration and
that he was shivering from nervous tension. “There,” he said to Bill,
“I guess that’ll hold you until we get rescued.”
Bill smiled weakly. “Thanks, pal,” he said.
Ronnie turned to his brother. “Think we can carry him back to the spot
where we came in?”
“We probably can,” Phil answered, “but I don’t think we ought to. You
see, the river’s risen since you were there, and that part of the
tunnel’s under a foot of water now.”
Ronnie tried desperately not to let Bill know how frightened he was.
“Then--then we’ll put Bill up on that shelf where the crates of
glassware used to be.”
“O.K.,” Phil answered. “That sounds like a good idea, because it isn’t
going to be long before the whole culvert’s covered with water. It’s
coming in fast!”
Ronnie wished his brother could see his face so Phil would know what he
was thinking. Of all the stupid things to let Bill hear! It would be
simple for Ronnie and Phil to climb to a safe level in the crawl space
beneath the building, but never in a million years could they get Bill
up there. And Bill wouldn’t know, of course, that Ronnie would never
leave him behind--no matter how high the water rose.
They brought Bill down the culvert without too much difficulty and
lifted him up onto the shelf where he could lie down. There was room
for Phil and Ronnie to sit, too, and although they had their boots on,
they preferred this to standing in the water.
Now that Bill had been taken care of, Ronnie had time to think about
plans for their escape. He sat on the edge of the shelf with his feet
dangling over the edge and watched the water swirl in from the river.
He could go back and continue the plan that Bill had been attempting
before his accident. But somehow Ronnie doubted the wisdom of this.
There must be a better way.
He looked over at Phil. “Got any ideas?” he asked.
“Ideas about what?”
“Ideas about getting out of here, of course!”
“Not right offhand,” Phil answered. “But I’ll think on it.”
Ronnie didn’t want to count too heavily on that! Phil had never been
one for finding a way out of a scrape. Phil had always relied upon
his brother for an answer--or he had just simply evaded the issue
completely if that were possible.
Bill raised his head a few inches and placed his arm underneath to
support himself. “Don’t try my idea,” he said, “it just won’t work.
Nobody but the thin man from the circus could get through that opening.”
“I don’t intend to,” Ronnie answered. “Except maybe as a last resort.”
“Yea,” Phil said. “And by that time you’ll be thin enough to squeeze
through.”
Ronnie smiled a little at Phil’s remark. He turned off the flashlight
to save the batteries. “We’ve certainly made a mess of everything,
haven’t we?” Bill’s voice reached Ronnie from out of the darkness. “Let
the glassware and money slip right out of our hands. Got ourselves
trapped down here. Me with a busted leg. And I guess we’re about as far
from saving the village as we ever were. Well, my pa says it’s always
darkest before the dawn. Maybe things will get better from here on.”
The silence closed in again, except for the steady dripping of water
against the flooded floor. It sounded to Ronnie as if a hundred distant
bells of different pitch were all ringing at the same time. It was hard
sitting here in the darkness, waiting ... wondering if they’d ever get
out again.
“Ronnie?” Bill asked. “You suppose our folks are out looking for us
now?”
“Maybe. Depending on how late it is. I’ve lost all idea of the time.”
“Nobody’ll ever find us down here,” Bill continued. “They won’t even
look inside the padlocked building because they’ll see that the lock’s
still on the door. I wish we could attract their attention somehow.”
“I’ve got plenty of matches left,” Phil announced. “Want me to burn
down the building? Nobody could miss seeing _that_!”
Ronnie wasn’t sure if Phil was being serious, or if this was another of
his attempts at humor. Whichever it was, Ronnie couldn’t go along with
his brother’s suggestion. With the building on fire, the culvert was
sure to fill with smoke and fumes, perhaps to the point where it might
suffocate them. “No, Phil,” he told his brother, “that’s too risky.”
“Then how about just burning through the trap door?” Phil added. “How
about that?”
Ronnie found himself shaking his head. “No, Phil. It would never stop
with the trap door. Besides, I don’t think we’ve got enough kindling to
get it started. No, we’ve got to think of a better way.”
“Then how about _you_ putting out with a few?” Phil demanded of his
brother.
“Maybe I can if you’ll keep quiet for a few minutes.”
Ronnie rested his chin on his palm and braced his elbow on top of his
leg. He stared into the blackness. There was some merit to Phil’s idea.
Not fire, of course. That was too dangerous. But some kind of a signal
that could be seen at a distance.
He thought over all the different ways of signaling he’d ever heard
of. There were whistles and bells and horns. There were lights and
radio beams, flags, hands, smoke.... The Indians had used smoke signals!
Ronnie stiffened, straightening up. He let out a little high-pitched
sound of approval. “Ronnie?” Bill asked. “You all right, Ronnie?”
“Sure I’m all right! I just had an idea that might work. I guess I
surprised myself with it!”
“You sounded like something bit you,” Phil grumbled.
“Let’s hear your idea, Ronnie,” Bill said.
“Well, remember right after Caldwell nailed the trap door shut I went
up to test how strong it was? While I was there I saw a little metal
door in the base of the fireplace. You know, a door to an ash box.”
“Sure, Ronnie, sure,” Bill said excitedly. “We’ve got one in our
fireplace--down in the cellar.”
“Well, my idea is to build a real smoky fire in the box. It’ll travel
up to the fireplace and then on up the chimney--I hope!”
“That’s a great idea!” Bill exclaimed. “I sure wish I could help you
with it.”
“We’ll need kindling,” Ronnie went on. “There’s more of that where Phil
got your splints. But the real problem is finding something that’ll
give a lot of thick smoke and won’t burn up too quickly.”
“Like rubber,” Phil said.
“Say, Phil, you’re really using your brains at last!” Ronnie exclaimed.
“And rubber’s something we’ve got plenty of! Three raincoats, three
pairs of boots, and the soles off our shoes, too, if we need them.”
“I’ve got a penknife,” Bill said, his enthusiasm mounting as the pain
in his leg subsided. “You can cut the rubber into chunks and then feed
them into the fire. Why, with the supply we’ve got we can keep a signal
fire going for hours and hours!”
They set to work immediately. Bill found he could help, too, after
he had pulled himself up to a sitting position. He used the knife to
cut up the heavier pieces of boots. Phil and Ronnie worked at the
raincoats, ripping the fabric, first into strips and then into smaller
pieces. Soon they had a large pile between them in the middle of the
shelf.
Phil waded down the culvert to gather kindling. In the meantime Ronnie
took off his torn shirt and, tying a knot about the neck end, used the
piece of clothing as a sack to carry the chunks of rubber while he
climbed to the crawl-space above.
Phil joined him in front of the ash box a few minutes later. “All I
could find was wet wood,” he told Ronnie. “The floodwater has picked it
all up. We’ll need something dry to get the fire started.”
Ronnie inspected the wood Phil had brought. “Yes, I guess you’re right.
We’ll have to take part of the shelf. Suppose you go down and rip off a
few boards. You take the flashlight. I think I can manage in the dark.”
It wasn’t easy breaking up the wood in the darkness. He was continually
hitting his head on the low floor beams. But by the time Phil returned
with the flashlight and several pieces of dry wood, Ronnie had most of
the work done.
Then suddenly there were sounds overhead--footsteps creaking across the
floor, a muffled murmur of voices. Ronnie drew a deep breath and let it
all out in a shout. “Dad! Dad! We’re down here!”
“Bust a hole in the floor if you can’t find the trap door!” yelled Phil.
Ronnie’s heart beat wildly as he heard the screech of nails being
pulled from the wood. The trap door was lifted. Phil uttered a soft
groan of relief. And then an all-too-familiar voice said harshly,
“O.K.! Down you go!”
For a moment the two boys stood frozen. Then, with a swiftness amazing
for him, Phil pointed the flashlight at the trap door. Caldwell was
standing near the opening, motioning with his gun to someone in the
shadows behind him.
As the light struck him, Caldwell made a low, snarling sound and
whirled around to level his gun at the boys below. “Put out that
light!” he commanded.
Phil obeyed hastily, but in the split second it had taken him to find
the switch, a second man had stepped into the light. Ronnie gasped.
He knew, from Phil’s simultaneous gasp, that he had not been dreaming.
There were _two_ Mr. Caldwells!
_Chapter 17_
Huddled together in the dark, the two boys and the man heard the thud
of the trap door as it was dropped, the ring of a hammer against
the nails being driven back into the wood. Nobody spoke. Ronnie was
conscious of the heavy breathing of the man who had joined them in
their prison, of Phil’s shoulder pressing against his as though for
reassurance.
In the building above there were footsteps again, an occasional thump
and scrape as though something were being dragged across the floor
toward the opening in the wall. For several moments there would be
silence; then the sounds would begin again.
“The glass!” said Ronnie at last. “He’s taking the glass away.”
“And he’s got the money,” Phil moaned.
Suddenly Ronnie was angry. He grabbed the flashlight from Phil
and turned it full on their companion. “Who are you?” he demanded
furiously. “And who’s that guy upstairs?”
Caldwell winced, then put his hand firmly on the flashlight and lowered
it so that the beam would not blind him. “One minute,” he said softly.
“Losing our heads won’t help. You know me. The man upstairs is my twin
brother; the black sheep of the family, I guess you’d call him.”
“Oh,” said Ronnie and Phil together. Ronnie saw the whole picture now.
He had felt all along that the man who had attacked him on the trail
and stolen the ledger couldn’t be the Caldwell he knew. He’d felt the
difference at the time, but what was he to think? The two men were
identical in appearance.
“Larry arrived the same time I did,” Caldwell went on. The sounds above
had ceased and the cut-out piece of wall had been put back into place.
“But until today I had no idea that he was here. He appeared at my
cottage late this morning and demanded the keys to the station wagon.
When I refused, he threatened me with a gun.”
“Your own brother pulled a gun on you?” Ronnie asked in amazement.
“Something went wrong with Larry,” Caldwell answered seriously. “He’s
been in trouble all his life. In fact, he escaped from the state
penitentiary last week.”
“He _did_!” Phil exclaimed. “Golly, a convict right here in the
village, and we never even guessed!”
“But why did he hide out here?” asked Ronnie.
“I figure he had two things in mind,” said Caldwell. “First, since the
deserted village has been opened to tourists, nobody would think of
looking here for an escaped convict. If he saw anybody coming, there
would be plenty of buildings to hide in. Second, Larry was obsessed
all his life by that old story about the stolen Rorth glassware and
the money and the murder. He said he knew the glass must be hidden
somewhere, because it had never showed up on the market.”
“Well,” said Ronnie glumly. “He was right. He’s got it now, and the
money, too, and the old diary that proves Great-great-grandfather
didn’t murder his partner.”
Mr. Caldwell wasn’t interested in the murder or the money. “Glass!” he
exclaimed. “Rorth glassware! You mean Larry found some here?”
“Crates of it,” said Phil. “Only Ronnie and Bill and I found it. That’s
how come we’re down here, so we can’t tell on him.”
“Rorth glass!” moaned Caldwell. “And here we are where it won’t even
do us a bit of good to think about it. I guess that’s why Larry put me
down here, too. He knew I’d move heaven and earth to get it out of his
hands.”
“He’s probably miles away in your station wagon by now,” said Ronnie.
The mild-mannered Caldwell suddenly turned and gripped Ronnie by the
shoulders. “Look!” he said fiercely. “We’ve _got_ to get out of here.
It was nearly midnight when Larry brought me here. He had me driving
him around for hours looking for a road he could use to get through the
police road blocks. Then, after we found an old abandoned logging road,
he had me drive back here so he could pick up the loot and put me down
here where I couldn’t contact the police. It will be daylight soon.
Folks will be up and about before long. Isn’t there any way we can let
them know we’re here? If we all yelled at once, do you think they’d
hear us?”
“The smoke signal!” Ronnie exclaimed, and at once began to break up the
dry wood Phil had brought. At the same time he explained their plan to
Caldwell, who thought it a good idea. “They won’t miss it,” he said.
“The whole town’s been looking for you kids since yesterday afternoon.
They’ve scoured the village for you twice, to my knowledge, but, of
course, nobody thought to look underground.”
Ronnie grinned, despite his anxiety. “Boy!” he said, “will we have a
story to tell!” Then he sobered. “If only that guy hadn’t gotten away
with the glass and the money!”
“I’ve a feeling he won’t get far,” said Caldwell. “There’s been an
alarm out for him ever since he escaped. The police don’t fool around
in cases like this. My main concern is how we get out of this place.
What can I do to help?”
“Nothing, frankly,” said Ronnie. “Phil and I will tend to the smoke
signals. There’s nothing else to do, unless you want to go back and
keep Bill company.” He explained what had happened to Bill’s leg, and
Caldwell was only too glad to do what he could to cheer the boy.
“Tell him,” said Ronnie, “we’ll be out of here before he knows it.”
Phil held the flashlight while Ronnie showed Caldwell the best way down
to the culvert. Then the two boys turned back to their work. Phil held
the flashlight against the ash box while Ronnie inspected it. The iron
door was rusted, but not enough to prevent Ronnie from swinging it
open. It squealed and protested and showers of rust flakes fell to the
ground.
Ronnie poked the light inside and held his face to the opening.
“There’s an opening at the top,” he said to Phil. “It must go all the
way up into the fireplace, or else how did the ashes get down to the
box?”
Using Bill’s knife, Ronnie shaved some of the kindling wood into
tiny splinters. He placed these in the ash box first, arranging them
carefully so there was sufficient air space between each piece. Over
these, in tepee style, he placed the larger pieces of dry wood. “All
ready for the match,” he told Phil, reaching for one.
“Let me do it,” Phil insisted. “They’re my matches, and where would we
be now if I hadn’t grabbed a pocketful this morning?”
Ronnie didn’t argue the point. He watched his brother apply the flame
to the kindling and saw the fire creep upward into the larger pieces.
“So far, so good!” Ronnie exclaimed. The orange light from the fire was
reflected in Phil’s face. “Let’s put all the dry wood on first and get
as hot a fire as we can. Then we’ll use the wet stuff.”
Soon they had quite a blaze going in the ash box. It crackled and
sputtered, and the metal banged every once in a while as it expanded
from the heat. The wet wood dampened the fire considerably after it was
applied, but as the pieces dried out from the heat, they too caught and
burned fiercely.
“Now we’re ready for the rubber!” Ronnie announced later. He tossed the
first piece into the fire. It sputtered for a moment, melting about the
edges. A thick cloud of inky-black smoke filled the ash box and crowded
into the opening at the top.
Ronnie threw in a few more pieces and then slammed the door shut to
keep the smoke inside. “Now all we can do is wait,” Ronnie said to his
brother.
“And throw on more rubber,” Phil added.
“--and maybe pray a little,” Ronnie said. If this didn’t work, what
else was there left for them to try?
“Ronnie?” Phil asked softly.
“Yes?”
“How long can people live without food and water?”
Phil must have been reading his mind, Ronnie thought. He’d been asking
himself the same question. “Seems to me I read that people live longer
without food than they can without water.”
“That’s good, because we have plenty of water.” Phil switched off the
flashlight. Some light leaked through the cracks around the door of the
ash box.
“Seems to me we ought to purify the water before we drink it,” Ronnie
said. He opened the door a bit to peer inside at the fire. The rubber
was burning slowly and the pieces that were now in the fire should last
for quite a while.
“The heck with all that trouble,” Phil answered. “In an emergency like
this we can drink the water the way it is.”
“It should be sterilized--if we can find a way to do it,” Ronnie
insisted.
“Well, I’m dying of thirst right now,” Phil said. He panted like a dog
to illustrate to Ronnie how much he needed a drink. “Think I’ll go down
and get one.”
“Try to hold off for a while, huh, Phil?” Ronnie asked him. “Maybe we
can boil some water over this fire.”
“Sure!” Phil growled. “I’ll hold it in my cupped hands while it heats
up! Be sensible, Ronnie. You know we’ve got nothing to heat it in.”
But despite his arguing, Phil apparently decided to follow Ronnie’s
advice. He made no move to go below. Instead he switched the flashlight
on again, and picking up Bill’s penknife, began to jab at the floor
boards over his head. “Who knows,” he said, “maybe I can cut a hole
through and we can climb out.”
But after five minutes of jabbing and poking and scraping Phil had
made a hole no bigger than a fifty-cent piece, and hardly as deep.
“Darnedest wood I ever cut into,” he complained.
“Oak maybe--or chestnut,” Ronnie answered. He opened the door to the
ash box and threw in another piece of rubber. “Lumber was cheap in
those days, Phil. They didn’t skimp on buildings the way Dad says they
do today. I’ll bet those boards are an inch and a half thick. And you’d
need a hole a foot across before we could slip through.”
“_I’d_ need one a foot and a half!” Phil grinned. He went on working
with the knife, doubling his efforts by jabbing at the wood from a
greater distance and with more speed.
“Now I went and did it!” he said disgustedly. The knife blade had
snapped near the hinge. He threw the broken piece of blade on the hard,
dry earth and stomped on it in anger. “Why the heck did I have to try
so hard?” he asked. “I’m always messing things up.”
Ronnie wanted to scold his brother for being so careless with the
knife, but he bit his lip and kept quiet. They still had the small
blade, if as a last resort they needed a knife. And the way things were
going, it looked as if they were going to have to think of some other
way to free themselves. At least an hour had passed since Ronnie had
thrown on the first piece of rubber and the black smoke had rolled up
the chimney. Why hadn’t someone come? Was the smoke finding a way to
the top of the flues, or was it rolling out into the room overhead?
They decided then that they’d take turns at keeping the fire fed. They
drew splinters of wood to see which of them would go first. Phil drew
the short one. “You’ll need more kindling from time to time,” Ronnie
told Phil as he prepared to go below and stretch out a bit on the shelf
and maybe talk to Bill or get some sleep. “Want me to bring some up?”
“I’ll get it when I need it,” Phil replied. “There’s still some of this
wet stuff left. Say, who gets the flashlight?”
“I’ll need it to get down below,” Ronnie said.
“So I’ll light your way for you from here. Look, Ronnie, if I don’t get
the light, I don’t tend the fire. Then when you take over, you’ll get
the light.”
“O.K.,” Ronnie agreed. “See you later.”
The long hours dragged by. With each one that passed, Ronnie’s faith
in the smoke signals he had devised grew less and less. Twice he
relieved Phil. More wood had to be taken from the shelf, and now there
was barely room enough for Bill to sit upright. The water pouring in
from the St. Lawrence had risen another three feet. Soon the top of
the shelf would be awash. And still worse, their supply of rubber was
getting low. “Soon we’ll have to cut up the soles of our shoes,” Ronnie
said. “Why doesn’t someone come?”
“I think it’s probably still dark out,” Phil said, “and no one can see
the smoke unless they’re close by.”
Ronnie had lost all sense of time, and no one among them had a watch.
He’d slept a few times when he wasn’t tending the fire, short naps
during which he was more awake than asleep.
Sometime later they used the small blade of Bill’s knife to cut the
heels and rubber soles from their shoes. Phil went up with Ronnie to
feed some of it into the fire. They lay on their sides before the ash
box. Phil picked up some of the soft, powdery earth and watched it
sift through his fingers. “I wish I could eat this stuff,” he said. “I
wish I could eat _something_.”
Ronnie nodded. “I’m hungry too,” he admitted. “It seems like days and
days that we’ve been down here.”
Ronnie dropped off to sleep for a while, waking only long enough to
place another piece or two of the rubber into the fire. Soon the last
piece was gone. “That’s it,” he said to Phil. “That’s all there is.”
But Phil didn’t hear him. He was asleep. Ronnie sat up, and opening
the door of the ash box, watched the last piece of rubber burn away to
nothing. Soon nothing remained within the box but a few black, cold
cinders.
Now what, he asked himself? What was there left to try? If only he had
a tool of some kind--a pick or a shovel. With the pick he could smash a
way through the stout floor boards. With the shovel he could dig to the
surface. But he _didn’t_ have a pick or a shovel. All he had was Bill’s
broken penknife. The little blade was left, of course, but it wasn’t
strong enough for such a giant job as cutting through the trap door or
the floor.
But perhaps it would be better than doing nothing, better than just
waiting and hoping. It would take a long, long time. One little
splinter of wood after another. Minute after minute. Hour after hour.
Being very careful not to get angry as Phil had done and break another
blade.
Eventually he might get through--if his strength lasted.
He chose a spot where there were no knots and the wood looked softest.
Chip after chip he removed, each no longer or thicker than a needle.
“I’ll never get through,” he thought. “Not ever.”
And then, like something in a dream, he heard voices overhead, muffled
and indistinct. Then he heard a louder sound--the crash of an ax
breaking through one of the walls. A section of the siding gave way
and crashed to the floor. The voices were louder now, and Ronnie heard
footsteps, too, crossing the room.
“That was a smoke signal we saw from the chimney.” It was his father’s
voice speaking! “As sure as I’m standing here, it was a signal.”
A wide grin broadened Ronnie’s face and lit up his eyes. The sound of
his father’s voice was the most wonderful thing he’d ever heard in his
life. “Dad! Dad!” he called. “We’re down here.”
Then Ronnie turned and gently shook his brother. “You can wake up now,
Phil. Dad’s here,” he said.
_Chapter 18_
A burning, August sun scorched the long stretches of the St. Lawrence
River Valley. For two weeks it had blazed down from a cloudless sky,
evaporating the last remaining moisture from the soil. Ronnie came out
of the house and crossed the barnyard, his bare feet stirring dust
clouds that hung behind him and marked his path. The powder-dry dust
felt as soft as talcum against the soles of his feet.
Ronnie made his way toward the orchard. Here it was cooler, for the
earth was wet from days of irrigation.
Ronnie spied his father’s blue overalls and white T shirt among the
peach trees to the right. “Pa?” he called.
“Yes, Ronnie?” Mr. Rorth was reeling out a section of rubber hose, a
feeder line to connect to the main metal pipe that ran to the brook.
“I got a call from Mr. Mercer just a while ago. You know him--he’s the
president of the historical society in town. He wants Bill and me to
come to a meeting tonight. He says the Seaway people will have a big
official there to discuss the village.”
“That’s wonderful!”
“Dad, will you drive us in?” Ronnie asked.
“Tonight?” Mr. Rorth thought it over. “I think so. In fact, I’d kind of
like to sit in on that meeting myself. Maybe Gramps would like to go,
too.”
“The heat’s got him bad,” Ronnie reminded his father.
“Yes, I know. But when it comes to the village, Gramps would go from
here to Timbuktu in the hottest weather.”
Ronnie grinned. “Yes, I know.”
He left his father then and swung off toward the village. He’d been
there only a few minutes when he saw two men approaching. One of them
was carrying a transit. They set up the transit on a level spot at the
top of the east side of the gap. One man stayed with the instrument,
while the other climbed to the other side of the stream and held up
a long measured stick. Ronnie went over to him. “What’re you doing,
mister?”
“Surveying.”
“I mean, how come you’re surveying?”
“Because the boss sent me here, that’s why.” He looked over at the boy
and saw that Ronnie was more than just idly curious. “Well, it seems
there’s going to be a meeting tonight and the boss wants some figures
about whether it’s possible to build a cofferdam across this gap,” he
added.
“Do you think it _can_ be built?” Ronnie asked--and held his breath
while he waited for the answer.
The man looked about him, examining the narrow valley with its steep,
tree-filled slopes. “Sure,” he answered. “Of course, that’s only _my_
opinion. Now beat it, kid. You’re taking my mind off the job.”
Despite the heat, Ronnie began to run. He felt light all over. His feet
hardly seemed to touch the ground. The dam _could_ be built. Now, if
_only_ the Seaway would agree to have it done. If the meeting tonight
was a success, he vowed, then there would be nothing more he could ask
for.
He broke out of a thick clump of hemlock saplings and came out on the
riverbank just as his brother swung himself off the fallen tree trunk
on the end of their “ducking” rope. Phil arched out over the water with
his legs curled up against his body and then, letting go, dropped like
a bullet. He came up sputtering and spitting water and brushing his
hair from his eyes.
“Come on in, Ron!” he yelled.
Ronnie undressed quickly and soon he was in the water beside his
brother. Bill appeared minutes later. His leg was still in a cast.
“Darn old doctor!” he grumbled good-naturedly. “I sure wish he’d let me
go in.”
However, Ronnie had devised a way by which Bill could at least get
cooled off. After Bill had undressed, Ronnie and Phil bound his cast
with a strip of canvas they had on hand for this purpose. Then the two
bombarded Bill with bucketful after bucketful of water. “O.K.! O.K.!”
Bill called for mercy. “Enough!”
The three lay down on a moss bank to dry, while Ronnie described his
meeting with the surveyors. “And, Bill,” he went on, “we’ve been asked
to a meeting tonight with the historical society, and Dad says he’ll
drive us into town.”
Bill grinned. “It’s really beginning to look as though we might save
the village after all!” he exclaimed. “We made over a hundred dollars
exhibiting the glassware. Altogether, counting the money we found down
in the culvert, and what we earned during the past two months taking
tourists around the village, and what we got from selling the gold and
silver coins to a collector, plus the exhibition money--why, we’ve got
over three thousand dollars!”
Exhibiting the glassware had been Ronnie’s idea, but it was Mr.
Caldwell who had done a great deal to make it a success. He had sent
announcements to antique dealers throughout the vicinity, and many of
them had come. Curious townspeople had come, too, and each visitor had
been charged an admission fee of fifty cents.
“I wonder when Mr. Caldwell will be back,” Bill said as he struggled to
get his pants over the cast and metal support. “He’s been gone almost
two weeks now.”
“I guess it takes time to work out all those legal matters,” Ronnie
answered.
Ronnie thought about Mr. Caldwell as he and Phil started for home. The
day after Mr. Caldwell and the boys had been rescued from the culvert,
Caldwell had paid a call on Grandfather. “I want to get a lawyer to
make out papers that will relinquish all Jacob Williams’ claims to
the deserted village,” he had announced. “Then I’ll go up to the
penitentiary and have my brother sign them, too.”
“Supposing he refuses?” Grandfather had asked.
Caldwell had smiled. “I don’t think he will. He’s got ten years of his
old sentence to finish--plus whatever he gets for escaping. I think if
I offer him a small amount of money, he’ll see my way!”
“Well, now,” Grandfather had said, “that’s very decent of you, Mr.
Caldwell. But why should you go to all this trouble and expense?”
“I was hoping, sir,” Caldwell had answered, “that you and Ronnie might
consider letting me select a few pieces of the Rorth glassware. That
would more than repay me.”
Caldwell left a week later with the papers the lawyer had drawn up.
He promised to return as soon as he’d visited his brother. “I’ve got
plenty of work left on my book,” he had told Ronnie, “so keep my place
cleaned and ready for me!”
When Ronnie and Phil reached the house, supper was already on the
table. Grandfather was dressed in his best summer suit with a white
shirt and necktie. “How come, Grandpa?” Phil asked.
“How come? Why, you don’t think for one minute I’m going to miss that
meeting tonight. Thunderation, they won’t get anywhere unless I’m there
to lend a hand.”
Grandfather did lend his hand that night--and his voice, too! But it
was Ronnie’s plea, perhaps, which did the most toward convincing the
Seaway official that the village had to be saved. “Mister,” Ronnie told
him, sitting on one side of the long conference table, “every building
down in the village has got a story to tell about its past. Gramps told
me all of them when I was a boy, and I’ve never forgotten a one. Lots
of these stories I’ve told to the tourists who have come to see the
village. And do you know what so many of them have said to me when they
left? They said they’d never been anywhere that helped them so much
to understand how people lived and worked back in the last century.
And if the village can be saved, you know what we can do? Well, we’ve
got enough of the old furnishings left from the general store, for
instance, to fit it out just like it was a hundred years ago. And
Gramps says that with some fixing up we can do the same thing for the
gristmill, the smith shop, and even the main glassworks. Can’t we,
Gramps?” Ronnie asked, smiling across at his grandfather.
“Why, you bet we can, boy! That village is just chuck-full of history.”
After the meeting Mr. Mercer, Ronnie’s grandfather and father, a lawyer
whom the historical society had hired, and the official from the Seaway
went into a smaller room in the back of the building and closed the
door. Ronnie, Phil, and Bill waited in the car. It was almost an hour
later before Gramps and Dad joined them.
Grandfather was smiling. “Well, we did it, lad!” he said to Ronnie
and the others. “We’ve got ourselves a proposition that’ll save the
village.”
During the ride home Gramps did most of the talking. “You’ve got to
put in the money you boys have earned and the money you found,” he
explained the terms of the agreement. “The historical society will lend
another three thousand--you’ve got to pay that back, Ronnie, from money
you get showing people around the village. The Seaway will pay the rest
of the bill, build the dam, and maintain it.”
“Yipee!” Ronnie exclaimed.
“I’m right proud of you, Ronnie--proud of all you boys,” Grandfather
added. “That Seaway fellow told me that it was what you boys have done
this summer that convinced him. He said any youngsters who would put
their hearts and souls and time into something worthwhile like this,
why, they deserved to get what they were working for.”
Late that night a thunderstorm broke. Thunder boomed incessantly, and
the lightning was so vivid that Ronnie’s room was as bright as noonday.
But twenty minutes later the storm had stopped and when Ronnie opened
his window again a cool breeze blew through.
When Grandfather came into the kitchen for breakfast the next morning
he was as full of life and pep as a puppy. “Prayed for this cool
weather, I did!” he exclaimed. “Prayed for cool weather and I prayed
for the village, too. Seems like I got both my wishes.”
After breakfast Ronnie and Grandfather took a walk. “I want to see the
village again,” Grandfather said. “I want to see it again knowing that
it’ll be here after I’m gone, and even after you’re gone, Ronnie.” He
stepped along briskly as if suddenly he’d found a new pair of legs.
They stood at the top of the bluff near a large bull hickory tree.
Below, the village lay peaceful and quiet in the early morning light.
The red brick of the glassworks caught the sunlight and reflected it,
glowing like molten lava.
“I’m proud of you, lad.” Grandfather was talking again. “I’m proud of
you for helping to save the village and bringing back honor and respect
to the Rorth name. And you know, boy, you took to yourself a little
bit of what we Rorths stand for, just from the working and fighting
you’ve been doing. Folks become what they believe in and fight for. You
understand what I’m trying to say to you, boy?”
Ronnie blushed. “No, sir, I don’t,” he answered.
“Well, you will some day. Yes, sir, boy,” he said, “we’ve had
everything pretty much the way we wanted it, haven’t we? Everything _I_
wanted anyway. All but one thing, that is.”
“What’s that, Gramps?”
“Well, darned if I didn’t lose the chess game to that old fox Donavon!
But then, guess I can’t hog the whole barrel of apples, can I?”
Transcriber’s Note:
The table of contents was added by the transcriber.
Variations in hyphenated words have been retained as published in the
original publication. The following has been changed:
Page 41
jabbed the tongs of his fork _changed to_
jabbed the tines of his fork
Page 42
that had been handled _changed to_
that had been handed