UNDERGROUND
Putting the Pennykorn gang out of our minds for the time being, Poppy
and I again took up the peculiar puzzle of the one-armed cat killer.
He sure was a big hunk of mystery, all right. The crazy things that he
had done in Tutter you already know about. Less than three hours ago,
after having followed us to the church, he had given us the slip in
broad daylight. And here he was in the secret cellars of the pirate’s
house pounding away with his tack hammer as unconcerned as you please,
seemingly with as little fear of detection as he had shown at the
church. Had he followed us here, too? Or had he left town ahead of us?
We wondered.
What he was after, of course, in this secret work of his, was the
balance of the hidden treasure. Having found one of the gold cucumbers
he naturally wanted the whole caboodle. To believe Mrs. O’Mally’s
story, he had been working here, like a hidden ghost, for a month or
more. That he was still on the job, with a tap! tap! here and a tap!
tap! there, as the old scout song goes, proved that the crafty pirate
had put his treasure away in some peculiarly secure place. But where
had the man gotten his clews to the hidden treasure in the first place?
Further, where was the secret entrance to these mysterious underground
rooms that enabled him to come and go in broad daylight without
detection? And, most puzzling of all, considering his cat-killing
mania, who was he?
With nothing in the cellar now except green cucumbers and silence, we
were led to believe that the mysterious worker had gone off somewhere
to take a rest. So we got busy and did some extensive wall tapping
ourselves, with the big hope, of course, that we would be successful
in locating a hollow section in the heavy masonry. But the guy who did
the needle-sleuthing stuff in the haystack had an easier job than us.
For those cellar walls sounded about as hollow as a butcher’s chopping
block. The secret doors, it would seem, were a myth.
As I have written down, the cellar was deep and dungeon-like. It was
full of creeping shadows, too. Shadows that had twisting octopus arms
one minute and spider-like legs the next. I didn’t like it for two
cents. I kept thinking of that iron jigger that had grabbed the poor
cat. And other stories of murders believed to have been committed here
ran through my mind. Sniffing, I could almost imagine that the dank air
was heavy with the smell of blood. Like a slaughterhouse. However,
when I told Poppy what I was sniffing about he said that it was a
dead-rat smell, after which he went upstairs, in further wall tapping,
but to no better success.
We then went over the outside walls inch by inch, not only tapping, but
searching, as with a microscope, for a possible secret door, on the
order of those amazing secret doors that we bumped into while working
on the mystery of the spotted gander, as related in an earlier book,
POPPY OTT AND THE GALLOPING SNAIL. At the end of our work we were dead
sure that there were no secret doors here. So, unless the man got into
the hidden rooms from within the house, which seemed impossible, the
only other view to take was that he did the trick from underground.
“Didn’t you tell me something about a tunnel, Jerry?”
“I’ve heard there _is_ a tunnel,” I answered.
“But you haven’t seen it?”
“No,” I shook my head.
If there _was_ a tunnel leading from the river to the stone house, with
a secret entrance at the cellar end, certainly we ought to be able to
find it, the leader said. But here again we bumped our noses against a
solid brick wall, as the saying is. And after an hour’s unsuccessful
search up and down the shore of the river, where the bank for the most
part was nothing but a mud-baked slope sprinkled with willows, we came
to the conclusion that the “tunnel” also was a pipe dream.
Cutting a willow club for myself, with the thought that I might need
it before the night was over, I came back to the shore to find Poppy
staring across the wide stretch of water at the sandstone bluffs that
have been given earlier mention in my story.
“Quick, Jerry!” he beckoned.
What he had seen was a man in a rowboat, nothing unusual in itself
except that the boatman, who was little more than a speck to us,
disappeared into one of the unfrequented canyons, sort of pushing the
boat along with a pole.
Poppy, of course, as could have been expected of him under the
circumstances, was now bound and determined to cross the river. And
remembering about old Cap’n Tinkertop’s hidden rowboat, I led the way
to the sheltered mouth of Weir creek. But the boat was gone! And then
the truth of the situation slowly percolated into my bean. It was the
Cap’n’s boat that we had seen across the river. The one-armed man had
stolen it, which explained why the boat, as we had gotten a glimpse of
it at a distance, was being pushed along with a pole.
Poppy’s interest switched quickly from the cat killer to the creek.
“Where does it go to?” says he, rubbering up stream through the bushes
that cluttered the banks.
“I never followed it,” I told him, “so I can’t tell you.”
Using a willow pole as a measuring stick, he thus learned that the
water in the middle of the narrow stream was up to his neck.
“Hot dog!” he cried, jumping with excitement.
“What wonderful discovery have you made now?” says I.
“Don’t you catch on, Jerry?” he laughed. “The pirate used this creek as
a sort of hidden harbor. For he was too foxy, let me tell you, to have
his secret tunnel open directly on the river. So the thing for us to do
is to follow the creek until we come to shallow water. And then, kid,
don’t be surprised if we _do_ find an underground tunnel, after all.
Come on, Jerry!” and off he tore through the thicket like a house afire.
The creek, as we followed it, keeping as close to the banks as
possible, wound here and there, as such streams do. So far as we could
determine the depth in the middle was never less than two feet, which
was plenty deep enough for a flat-bottomed skiff. There was no current,
which showed that the stream, in spite of its name, was really nothing
more than a bayou. Still, was my conclusion, it probably had some kind
of a feeder up ahead, if nothing more than the occasional overflow
of the canal. There was a heavy growth of slough moss here, but the
channel was noticeably open, and we fancied, as we pushed and pulled
our way through the dense willows, that we could see places here and
there where the one-armed man had jabbed his pole into the moss.
Presently the leader gave a triumphant shout.
“Look, Jerry!” he parted the willows. “There’s the old stone house.”
Sure enough, we had circled until now we were not more than thirty or
forty rods from the pirate’s house, in a low strip commonly called the
“Weir jungle.” And were we ever excited! Oh, boy! As the saying is, we
were getting “warmer” every minute.
It was no trick for us to pick out the exact spot on the creek bank
where the boatman had landed. And so frequent had been his trips here
during the past month that a path, which led off to the right, showed
plainly. Following this path, with a sharp lookout ahead, we soon came
to what seemed to be the mouth of an abandoned cement tunnel, similar
to dozens of other old tunnels that I had seen in and around Tutter.
I never had known, though, that any early tunneling for cement rock,
which underlies the floor of the valley, had been done here.
“I wish we had a light,” said Poppy, rubbering into the black hole.
“Gosh!” I sort of held off. “Wouldn’t you be afraid to go in there?”
“What’s the risk,” says he, “when we know that the one-armed geezer is
on the other side of the river?”
It was our theory now that the treasure hunter, living in one of the
hidden caves across the river, was resting there for a few hours. So I
ran back to the stone house for a flashlight, as eager as the leader
was to do the exploring act.
Mrs. O’Mally nearly had a fit when she learned what we were planning to
do.
“Please don’t,” she begged, thinking, I guess, of the fix that we would
be in if the one-armed man came back to the tunnel sooner than we
expected. “Ye may be killed.”
But I didn’t let her scare me.
“Don’t you worry about us,” I laughed. Then, ready to go, I told her to
listen for us through the cellar walls. We’d give five quick taps, I
said.
If you think that a cellar is a cool place, you ought to wrap yourself
in a hunk of mosquito netting some blistering-hot July day and stroll
around in a cement tunnel. You’d soon lose your sweaty feeling. It’s
strange to me where the cold air comes from. Still, I guess it’s much
the same with coal mines or any other kind of underground places.
For my part, though, I’ll take the good old sunshine, even when the
thermometer has its neck stretched out full length.
The pirate’s tunnel, as we now called the underground passageway,
seemed cooler to me, once we got into it, than the average old tunnel
of its kind. As we went deeper into the icy hole, where everything
beyond the reach of our flashlight was as black as pitch, we not only
stopped every few seconds to listen, but we doused our light, thinking
that if we stood in the darkness we could better pick up another moving
light, either ahead of us or behind us. But we heard nothing. Neither
did we see anything.
As you may never have been in a cement tunnel, especially an old one,
I’ll describe what this tunnel was like. The floor, of course, like the
walls and the seven-foot roof, was of solid rock, perfectly flat, but
cluttered with countless fallen chunks. The walls, about twelve feet
apart, were sort of jagged, showing the way nature had put the rock
together in layers. Oak posts, or “props,” as we call them, held up the
roof. Some of these timbers, as picked up by our flashlight, looked
pretty rotten to me. And I wondered, sort of anxious-like, if they
hadn’t just about come to the end of their usefulness. At one place
a hunk that must have weighed hundreds of tons had fallen out of the
roof, leaving a gaping black hole. I was glad when we had passed this
dangerous spot. For I had the feeling that there might be more stuff up
there ready to do the tumbling-down act. And not for one second did I
want any young cement-rock mountain to tumble down on top of _me_.
Here and there we saw traces of the old two-rail track over which the
early mule-drawn dump-cars had carried the raw rock into the daylight,
to be later hauled away to the mill. Some of the ties were so rotten
that they went together under our feet like a sponge. At one place
we waded ankle deep through a pool of icy water. Br-r-r-r! Deep in
the tunnel now, the walls on both sides of us were wet and dripping.
Cold drops came down from the ceiling on my head. It made me think of
spiders. And I sure hate spiders.
Tunnel exploring such as this was new stuff to Poppy, so, naturally,
as it is his nature to want to know all the “why’s” and “wherefore’s”
of everything, he had a hundred questions to ask me. I told him what I
knew about cement work, explaining that the new mill in Tutter was fed
by rock that was “stripped” instead of “tunneled,” as the tunneling
process was considered out-of-date. In the places where the stripping
was done, called quarries, the workmen frequently tapped artesian
veins, and that, I said, was how we came to have those dandy swimming
holes south of town, of which the “fourth quarry,” as you may recall,
entered so prominently into my book, JERRY TODD AND THE WALTZING HEN.
But aside from the unusual features of the tunnel, itself, we saw
nothing of special interest. Certainly, to our great disappointment,
we saw no “treasure” chests, or, for that matter, anything that had a
“pirate” look to it.
The tunnel ended in a chamber of good size, the walls of which were
unbroken except for the entrance. Plainly this was as far as the early
miners had gone. Were we now under the old stone house? We wondered.
Certainly, was our conclusion, we had been traveling in that general
direction. But we saw no break in the chamber roof, which, like the
narrower passageway, was supported by oak props.
“Let’s yell,” says I. “Maybe if we’re as close to the house as we
think, Mrs. O’Mally will hear us.”
So we whooped it up at the top of our voices. The sound was deafening
to us. But we got no answer.
Going back to the mouth of the passageway, after having spent an
unsuccessful hour underground, we found ourselves wondering if the
river pirate had helped to build this tunnel, or whether, after it had
been abandoned, he had just copped it for his own use, upon learning,
possibly, that it ran under his house.
“Glory be!” cried Mrs. O’Mally, when we showed up safe and sound. So
full of joy was she that she even tried to hug us! But that was all
right with me. I don’t mind letting an old lady hug me. “Sure, ’tis a
burden that has been lifted off me mind at sight of ye. An’ what luck
had ye?”
“No luck at all,” says Poppy. Then he told her about us yelling.
“Didn’t you hear us?”
“Sure, I was expectin’ to hear ye. An’ the continued silence was what
set me to worryin’.”
Somewhat to my surprise Mother and Dad drove into the yard about five
o’clock. The doctors had operated on Mr. Weckler, they said, and the
old man was getting along all right, though he was still out of his
head.
“He seems to think that his daughter Clara is in the next room,” says
Mother. “And they say it’s very pitiful to hear him begging her to come
to him.”
“Is his daughter dead?” says I, remembering how sad the old man had
acted that day in the orchard.
“The general opinion is that she is dead. For she hasn’t been seen or
heard of since the time when she ran off to get married, more than
twenty years ago.”
The two women then got their heads together in “pickle” talk. And
learning that our car had come here purposely to take home a bushel of
cucumbers, I lugged them out of the cellar.
Mother was running around with a cucumber pickle in each hand.
“Oh!...” she took on, like she does when she sees a new baby or an
unusual crochet pattern. “Aren’t they _per_-fectly delicious? Have you
tried them, Jerry?”
“No, thanks,” I shrugged.
I told her then that Poppy and I were going to stay all night on the
cucumber farm. Mrs. O’Mally wanted us to, I said. For she had been
hearing strange sounds. I caught Dad looking at me curiously. He
realized, of course, that my chum and I were up to something. But he
didn’t ask me any questions, realizing, I guess, that I was looking
forward to the fun of surprising him.
Mrs. O’Mally lugged out a swell supper for us. And then we sat around
until it got dark. The air, after the day’s heat, was sort of stagnant.
And as though begging for a cooling shower a bullfrog army lined up in
chorus on the river bank. Then the katydids got busy. _See-e-e_-saw!
_See-e-e_-saw! They seemed to be very busy “sawing” something. I
wondered what it was. Down near the mouth of the creek an owl shook
itself awake and went, “Whoo-o-o-o! Whoo-o-o-o!”
“Lively stuff, huh?” laughed Poppy.
I didn’t say anything. But somehow I had the shaky feeling, as I
watched the moon come up, that it was going to be plenty lively enough
for us before morning. A fellow very frequently gets a premonition like
that, or whatever you call it. You know what I mean.