Barry’s Great Discovery
Barry jumped from the sled and took out the keys while the others were
dismounting from the sleighs. Tim and Mac lifted a large oil can from
the vehicle they had come in. The others stood in the snow and stamped
their feet, glad to move about once more after sitting so long. Coach
Jordan helped some of the boys tie the horses to the back-porch rail.
The sun had gone down in an angry red haze, and the darkness was
spreading rapidly, accompanied by a cold that nipped and penetrated
them. Although they knew that the lodge would be cold, the visitors were
glad to follow Barry and the twins inside. Kent made a quick trip around
the big log building to see if everything was all right, and he returned
satisfied.
The twins lighted the lamps that were already in the big living room,
and in the meantime Barry collected some wood, soaked it with oil, and
touched the flame of a match to it. After the flames were leaping up the
chimney he got some coal and put it on the burning wood. The room began
to get warm slowly.
The girls and boys roamed around admiring the place, and at last they
began to take off coats and hats as the room warmed up. From the living
room Kent and Barry moved into the two bedrooms and lighted fires in
them, so that they would be able to stay there all night without
discomfort. Soon the grates in those rooms were glowing and the lodge
had become comfortable. They decided to do their cooking in the kitchen,
and accordingly a fire was kindled in the big range there. This was
something more of a task because the stove was rusty and clogged with
ashes and tin cans, left by some careless and untidy campers. The boys
cleaned the stove out, and after this was done, the fire burned well.
Some of them favored using the dining room, but the majority vote was
that they eat in the living room, by the light and warmth of the large
grate there. All of them were hungry, and so the girls took charge of
the supper preparation under the expert leadership of Mrs. Jordan. The
boys sat in the living room with the coach and chatted about winter
sports. In a very short time the delightful smell of things cooking
reached them. The coach smiled as he heard the murmurs of appreciation.
“That’s a tempting smell, boys,” he said. “This Lake Arrowtip air is a
great hunger-producing tonic!”
“We found it that way,” Tim grinned.
Charlie was seldom able to sit still long at a time, and he bounded off
to the kitchen, followed by the faithful Castor Oil. Before long he was
back, rigged out in an apron and a paper hat, obviously in the capacity
of a waiter. Disregarding the jokes of the boys, he began to set things
in order for supper.
It seemed to the hungry boys that the meal was a long time coming, but
the girls declared with spirit that it hadn’t taken much time except to
those who sat around waiting for it. The time finally came when they
were all sitting close to the fire eating steak and potatoes, talking
and enjoying themselves. All lamps had been put out, and only the red
glow of the fire illuminated the room. But by this time the fire was a
solid mass of glowing coals, and a sufficient light was rendered for
all. Their shadows clustered on the wall back of them.
“And you four boys camped here for a few days, just like this?” a senior
girl asked the four chums. “Wasn’t it delightful?”
“We enjoyed it,” Kent nodded. “We weren’t here all the time, though. At
first we camped over in that smaller cabin that you could see as we
drove up.”
“What made you leave it?” Mrs. Jordan asked.
This was getting close to things that the boys did not want to reveal,
but before Kent could answer, Barry broke in. “That little cabin was
cold, and the floor was hard to sleep on,” he said. “Then one night a
limb dropped on the roof and scared us quite a bit, so we decided to
move in here. Tim and Mac did the moving, and Kent and I got lost in a
storm that day.”
“But what about all the ghost stories we hear?” another girl asked. “Is
there a ghost around?”
“Pretty cold for a ghost,” Barry smiled. “We’ve been here two hours or
more and haven’t heard anything yet.”
“I hope we don’t!” said another girl, looking around the room uneasily.
“It will be all right,” Charlie Black assured her. “We’ll let Castor Oil
loose all night and he’ll sic the ghost. He’s a fine sic-er!”
“The spook will run if he ever finds out the dog’s name!” said Mac, amid
a general laugh.
“Coach, how about telling us a good ghost story tonight?” Bill Jefferson
asked. “The atmosphere is just right.”
“The atmosphere is all right,” the athletic instructor smiled. “But I’m
afraid of some nerves around here. I know a ghost story wouldn’t bother
the boys, but I don’t want to upset the girls.”
But the girls themselves begged him to tell at least one after the meal
was over, and at length he agreed to do so. Coach Jordan was a good
story teller, and many times he had spun some lively yarns while on
overnight hikes with the boys of Cloverfield. He excelled in creepy
mystery stories, and the young people looked forward with eager
anticipation to a good one after supper.
“How about some boy volunteers to dry dishes?” Pearl asked, as they got
up to carry plates back to the kitchen. “We did all the work of
preparing supper. I know that most of you boys camp out, so you must
know how to wash and dry dishes!”
“How about letting Castor Oil lick all the plates and then drying them
over the stove?” Charlie shouted, but an indignant chorus of voices
answered him, and he went off chuckling.
“All right, the men will take charge of the kitchen from now on,” cried
Coach Jordan. “No ladies allowed out there except to bring your plates.”
“That’s the spirit!” commended Ruth Carrier, the leader among the
high-school girls. “We’ll start to toast some marshmallows for you.”
“Agreeable all around,” Kent nodded, and the boys took over the kitchen
work, while the girls went back to the living room to toast the
marshmallows.
Mr. Jordan and Kent did the washing, and the other boys dried the
dishes. After a time they looked around for a pail to put scraps in, but
there was none in the kitchen. Barry seized a lantern.
“I think I remember seeing one in the tool house,” he said, as he opened
the back door. “I’ll be right back.”
The horses tied to the rail of the porch moved restlessly as he passed
by them on his way across the board platform. Fodder had been brought
for them, and as soon as the dishes were dried the boys planned to move
the horses to a big shed back of the lodge which served as a combination
barn and garage. Barry arrived at the tool house and went inside,
peering around in the feeble light from the lamp. At the far end of the
place he saw a tin can.
“There it is. I thought I remembered seeing it in here. This is just——
Ouch!”
He had tripped on something, and he flashed the light down to see what
it was. He was close beside the bale of hay that stood there, and as he
examined the floor he saw that it was slightly raised. This interested
him, and he put his hand down and pulled the raised boards toward him.
To his surprise several of them came up a few inches.
“What the dickens is this? Why——”
With a single motion of his arm he pushed the bale of hay aside and
stared at the floor. A long trapdoor was revealed, and with trembling
fingers he raised it, looking down into a deep well of darkness. A pair
of wooden stairs ran down to the floor of a passage.
“An underground passage!” Barry breathed. “Now I’m beginning to see a
few things!”
For several seconds he stood staring down into the tunnel, remembering
how the black shadow had disappeared from the interior of the shed. Many
conflicting thoughts crowded his mind, and his impulse was to go down
and explore the passageway. But the severe cold made him think better of
it, and, closing the trap and replacing the hay, he picked up the tin
container he had come to get and went back to the lodge.
“I’ll get my hat and coat on and get some of the boys to go with me,” he
thought, as he opened the kitchen door and went in.
Coach Jordan and his helpers were nearly finished. Barry left the can
and went into the living room, picking up his coat and hat. Kent and the
twins were not around at the time, and so Barry slipped out of the front
door alone. His chums were in the bedroom attending to the fire there.
“I’ll just take a peek along that corridor myself,” he decided, feeling
in his pocket for his flashlight and noting with satisfaction that it
was there. “Then maybe I’ll take the whole crowd for a tour of it,
providing it is safe to do so!”
Arriving once more in the tool house, he moved the bale of hay aside and
raised the trapdoor, listening keenly before making a descent into the
newly found passage. No sound came to him as he stood in perfect
silence, and at last, thinking that it was safe to proceed, he turned on
the beam of his light and carefully walked down the steps. There were
seven steps, and when he reached the bottom he turned the light down the
tunnel. He had closed the door of the opening and now stood alone under
the earth.
The passage was long and sloped away farther than the shaft of light
would reveal. With a rapidly beating heart he began to advance, walking
slowly and quietly, his eyes alert and his nerves drawn tight. The
thought came to him that he was drawing farther and farther away from
his companions and that he ought to go back and get some of them, but
the impulse to go on was too strong, and he kept advancing.
The tunnel was well made. He was able to walk upright and had to bend
low only at one place where a tree root broke through and crossed the
underground way. It was a dry place and not very cold. The sides of the
tunnel had been carefully cut, and it seemed to him that it had been
built for some definite purpose.
“But what can it be for?” he wondered. “Does Mrs. Morganson know that it
is here? Maybe I’ll know more about it all when I get to the end.”
The end was near. He could see some boards before him, and a few moments
later he stopped, playing the beam of the light against the boards that
closed the tunnel. They seemed to be fairly new ones, and they simply
fitted into the soil. He put out his hand to push against them and then
thought better of it, pausing to listen once more, his flashlight out.
The blackness seemed to crush in on him.
“No telling what is on the other side of that boarding. If I can’t push
it open, I’ll go back and get the others.”
No sound came to him, and so he again turned on the light and then
pushed against the partition. To his astonishment it turned outward like
a door, and his light showed him the interior of a small shed. Stepping
through and closing the boards after him, he was surprised to see that
it was on hinges and formed part of the wall of the small building in
which he found himself. There were two windows and a door to the place,
but otherwise the interior was perfectly bare. A conviction came to him.
“By George, this is the quarry shed where Kent and I saw the man with
the black gloves go in! No wonder no one answered our knocks and kicks.
The man had gone up the tunnel to the lodge, and when we got over that
way, we saw him run into the tool house! I’m learning so much that it
makes me dizzy!”
He opened the door of the quarry shed and stepped out. The wind, coming
in from a break in the rock wall, had swept the snow away from the door,
and the ground was hard and the snow at that particular place
hard-packed. He closed the door and looked around. It was much the same
as it had been the night he and Kent had stood there demanding shelter,
except that the snow was not driving. He wondered where the black shadow
came from, and he began to wander toward the far end of the quarry. For
a while he did not use his light, and it was not until he was at the
very base of the quarry wall that he flashed the light around. There was
nothing to be seen.
“No house or anything down at this end,” he reflected, turning. “I’d
better go the other way.”
Then his eyes fell on a figure crossing the bowl of the quarry, and
instinctively he crouched down. It was the same black-clothed figure
that they had seen once before, and the man went boldly into the quarry
shed. Barry watched him with wildly beating heart.
“There he goes now!” he breathed. “On his way to the lodge to start
something, I’ll bet! And as sure as I’m a foot high, he’ll discover that
someone has been in his tunnel! Then what will happen?”