THE CRAZY PUZZLE ROOM
In the excited moments that immediately followed my tumbling entrance
into the brick house, I panted out a story of what I had seen.
Scoop shook his head.
“Your imagination, Jerry. For no one ever saw a real ghost.”
I told him that it was no case of imagination.
“Then,” he concluded, “it was some one playing ghost.”
“But it had no arms or legs. And its eyes were hollow wells.”
“A make-up,” he waggled. Passing quickly to a window, he pressed his
nose against the glass. “I can’t see anything.”
“Maybe,” spoke up Tom, “it was the spy.”
“If it was,” Scoop said quickly, “Peg will know about it.”
I looked around the room, missing my big chum for the first time.
“He’s watching the mill,” Scoop told me when I inquired where the
missing one was.
By this time I was well over my scare. And I felt pretty foolish. For,
as Scoop had said, there was no such thing as a real ghost. What I had
seen was some one playing ghost.
But to what ends?
We put out the lights and peered through the windows. But the ghost had
vanished. Nor could we in the moment detect a single suspicious outside
sound.
I hadn’t been in the house very long before Peg signaled on the window
for us to let him in.
“Where were you,” I asked quickly, “when the spy chased me?”
He stared at me.
“Chased you? What do you mean?”
I told him about the ghost.
“It wasn’t the spy,” he waggled. “For the old man hasn’t been out of
the mill for hours. It was only within the past ten minutes that he
quit his wall pounding and went to bed.”
“The dickens!” cried Scoop, bewildered. “If it wasn’t the spy, who was
it?”
“Maybe,” suggested Tom, “it was a second spy, one that we haven’t
seen.”
“An unknown spy!” cried Scoop. There was a short silence. “You may be
right. But what’s his object in playing ghost?”
It was indeed a mystery. In our conversation we advanced various
scattered theories. The unknown spy, working alone, didn’t know that
the talking frog had been stolen; he was trying to frighten us away in
order to gain possession of the invention; or, if he knew that the frog
had been stolen by his companion spy, he was working to gain the
release of his chief, our upstairs prisoner. Such, in substance, were
our theories. But how widely we missed the mark was proved by later
events.
On Sunday, the following day, we took turns guarding the old mill. For
we were determined that the spy shouldn’t escape from us with the
recovered fortune if it were in our power to prevent it. Then, too, we
talked of ways of getting into the mill, without the soap man’s
knowledge, to hunt for the stolen invention. We were quite sure that
the talking frog was there.
We still had the rope that Scoop and I had used the night that we got
into the mill by way of the roof. But we didn’t dare to use it. It was
hardly to be doubted that the soap man had discovered the unlocked
window and the pile of soot in the fireplace. We may have left further
evidence of our visit. And, in watching for us, he might cut our rope.
Our prisoner gave us no trouble. He seemed to take his confinement as a
lark. We would gain nothing by holding him, he said. We would have to
turn him loose sooner or later. So why should he worry? He was being
well treated and was getting three square meals a day.
Then Monday morning came. We had given no thought to school. And when
the first bell rang, we stared at one another blankly.
“What are we going to do with Gennor?” puzzled Scoop. “We dassn’t skip
school and stand guard here; and if we leave him alone he’ll surely
escape.”
“I wouldn’t want to go to school,” I spoke up, “and leave him here by
himself. Suppose the house should burn down! If anything were to happen
to him, it would go hard with us.”
Scoop grimaced and shrugged his shoulders.
“I guess,” he concluded, “that the only thing for us to do is to turn
him loose, as he has been expecting us to do. Blame it! Our luck’s
against us.”
“It was a foolish trick,” Peg criticized, “to imprison him in the first
place. For we haven’t gained anything.”
“We’ve kept him from getting his hands on the talking frog.”
“Yes, but we haven’t got the frog. We’re right where we were last
Saturday.”
“We know where the frog is.”
“We think the mill spy has it. But we aren’t sure.”
“I’ve tried to pump Gennor,” Scoop said, “but I didn’t get anywhere.
He’s shrewd. When I asked him how many spies his father had hired, he
laughed at me.”
Our prisoner, naturally, was very much elated over our decision to turn
him loose. But in leading up to the proposed release, our leader, to
protect us, made the enemy promise to leave town.
“Which is a thing you’ll want to do anyway,” Scoop said. “For the
Tutter business men will make it pretty hot for you when they learn how
you fooled them.”
“Who said I fooled them?” bluffed Gennor.
“You made them think that you were going to build a toy factory here.”
“Maybe we will.”
“That’s hot air and you know it.”
Gennor broke his promise about leaving town. And when we met him in the
street that noon he gave us the horselaugh.
I’ll hand it to him for having nerve. For what do you know if he hadn’t
taken out a ten-day option on a factory site! As a result, everybody in
town was talking excitedly about the proposed new toy factory. And no
one talked any louder or longer than Gennor himself.
“He must have the talking frog,” I said, gloomy-like. “Otherwise he
wouldn’t be so sure of himself.”
“Yes,” said Tom, his face white, “we’re licked.”
“Not yet,” waggled Scoop. “We’ve got a chance of winning out if your pa
and Aunt Polly get to Washington first.”
This thought brought some small satisfaction. But our spirits went
baggy at the knees when a telegram came while we were eating dinner.
The inventor, Aunt Polly wired, had not been located. And the little
old lady was now searching for him in Charleston, South Carolina.
Peg had been over to the old mill.
“The spy’s still on the job,” he told us, coming into the house when we
were washing the dinner dishes.
His mention of the spy filled me with sudden anger.
“Why don’t we get him out of there?” I cried. “We’ll monkey around
until he finds the money and beats it.”
The front door bell rang.
“It’s Mrs. Kelly,” Scoop told us, squinting under the door curtain.
The woman had a worried look as she came into the house.
“Sure, I thought I’d stop in an’ find out what you boys have been
doin’. For several days have passed an’ I haven’t heard a word from
you. It’s sick I am with worry in the fear that the rascally twin
brother will git away from here with the money.”
“He’s still searching for it,” Scoop told the visitor, “but, lucky for
us, he isn’t doing his searching in the right place.”
“No?”
“We know where the money is, Mrs. Kelly.”
“You do?”
“Have you ever been in the old mill?”
“Many times.”
“Then you should know about the office.”
“Office?”
“The small building on the roof.”
“You mean the crazy puzzle room.”
“What’s that?” cried Scoop, straightening.
“Sure, the buildin’ that you just mentioned was put up when Mrs. Matson
was alive. She wouldn’t let the ould gintleman mess around the house
with his puzzles, so he built himself a room on the roof of his mill
where he could work undisturbed. And because his wife said that he was
fiddlin’ away his time like a crazy man, the new workshop was called
the crazy puzzle room.”
“I was told,” said Scoop, “that it was an office.”
“Sure, the ould gintleman would have been crazy, indeed, to have built
an office on the roof of his mill! No, the buildin’ never was intended
for an office, though a lot of people got that idea. It was, as I have
just told you, a workroom.”
“We think the money is hid in the room’s plastered walls,” said Scoop.
“An’ what gives you that idea?”
“Because the room is ten feet square.”
Mrs. Kelly knitted her forehead.
“‘Under ten an’ ten,’” she muttered, thinking. Her eyes lighted up.
“Sure, the money is under the floor, boys, not in the wall.”
“Under the floor?” cried Scoop.
“Deacon Pillpopper came out to call on me the other day to see if he
could solve the Bible’s secret; and as soon as he set eyes on the
marked verses he said their meanin’ was ‘under ten an’ ten,’ and not
just ‘ten an’ ten.’”
“‘Under ten and ten,’” repeated Scoop, his eyes dancing. “You’re right,
Mrs. Kelly. The penciled marks were under the chapter headings and
verses. ‘Under ten and ten.’ Hot dog! We can find the money in a
jiffy.”
“But how are we going to get the spy out of the mill?” I spoke up.
Laughing, Scoop told us his plan.
“I shall be on needles an’ pins,” worried Mrs. Kelly, “until I learn
how you come out. Be careful, boys. Don’t let the ould scoundrel come
in an’ surprise you.”
When the visitor had gone, we got together a collection of axes,
crowbars and hammers. We would need these tools when the time came to
tear up the office floor.
“Now,” grinned Scoop, “we’ll go to school by way of the old mill and
have a chat with soapy. He’ll be tickled, I imagine, to learn that
we’re going to do some more soap peddling for him.”