MIDNIGHT EXCITEMENT
Now that it was dark, with the shadows banked up around the old stone
house like prowling black monsters from the river, would the one-armed
treasure hunter come back through the tunnel to the secret rooms to
resume his work? We hoped so. And it was to catch the first possible
sound of the mysterious worker that we now gathered in Mrs. O’Mally’s
front room with sharpened ears.
At first we had talked secretly of following the treasure hunter into
the tunnel. But on discussion that plan had been dropped. For it was
too much like starting in at the alley fence to open the front gate.
What we needed, for quick work, was a direct opening into the secret
rooms. And what better way for us to get started than to check up on
the hidden pounder? Getting his general location, we could then do an
effective trick with a pair of picks. Even if we had to amputate a
whole wall Mrs. O’Mally wouldn’t object. For see how much there was
at stake! Maybe a million dollars in gold! Gee! Over three hundred
thousand dollars apiece!
With talk like this going on, you can imagine how crazy we were to
see the inside of these hidden rooms that the river pirate had so
strangely built under his stone house. What were they?--treasure
vaults? And would we find whole stacks of crammed treasure chests?
Probably not, came the more sensible thought, for if the gold cucumbers
were so openly exposed as that the one-armed worker would have skinned
out with them long ago. But no doubt there were old-time weapons
of fearful history in the hidden rooms: muskets with bell barrels,
bloodstained cutlasses, and dirks deeply knicked by human bones. Even
more weird, we might find a skeleton or two. Wow! Could you imagine
anything more exciting to a boy than to open up a place like that? And
think of the later fun of searching for the hidden treasure!
Mrs. O’Mally’s nervousness had now completely gone away. For she saw,
all right, that she was perfectly safe in our hands. And I wish you
could have seen the joy in her wrinkled face when we told her about
the happy days that lay ahead of her, with no cucumbers to worry
about, oodles of jack in the bank, and even old stiff-neck Pennykorn
bowing to her respectfully as she gasolined down the boulevard in her
ten-thousand-dollar Rolls-Royce.
Our talk then turned to old Mr. Weckler. And drawn into the
conversation, the pickle woman told us things about the Weckler family
that not only surprised us but sent our minds off on a new line of
speculation. The daughter, it seems, had eloped with a nephew of the
old river pirate. Nathan Weir, Mrs. O’Mally went into details, had
carried a bad reputation. That is why Mr. Weckler, with proper pride
in his family, had refused to accept the man as his son-in-law. But
the girl wasn’t to be stopped. And now that so many years had passed
away since she last had been heard from, it was generally concluded,
as Mother had mentioned, that the runaway was dead, after a probably
unhappy married life.
But here was the point that walloped Poppy and I between the eyes: A
relative of the Weir family by marriage, Mr. Weckler had been struck
down by the same man who was now searching for the pirate’s hidden
treasure, though as yet seemingly without success. Could it be, then
came the exciting thought, that some motive deeper than intended common
robbery had taken the one-armed treasure hunter to the house of our
“silent” partner? Or, to express the same thought in another way, could
it be that old Mr. Weckler, through his unhappy connection with the
Weir family, was somehow or other mixed up in the secret of the hidden
treasure, as it had been put away by his son-in-law’s rascally uncle?
And how strange, too, was our further thought, that we should be drawn
into this “cucumber” mystery at the very time when we had turned our
attention to cucumber pickles. First had come the “Pickle Parlor” idea,
through which we had become associated with Mr. Weckler. Then, for
reasons still unknown to us, but now under speculation, a housebreaker,
whom we had every reason to believe was the one-armed treasure hunter,
whose chief interest, outside of cat strangling, was _gold cucumbers_,
had strangely strewn cucumber pickles all over Poppy’s cellar floor.
At the time we had vaguely thought it was our “diamond” ad that had
attracted the peculiar lawbreaker to the house. But now we wondered,
with tangled minds, if, instead, the man hadn’t marked us because of
our associations with Mr. Weckler, whose house, as you know, had later
been broken into. Then, in the “cucumber” chain, had come the discovery
of the gold cucumber in the flower bed, followed quickly by the story
of the pirate’s cucumber mold. Including Mrs. O’Mally in the tangle,
whose specialty was cucumbers, it was a befuddling “cucumbery” mess, to
say the least.
The clock boomed away at intervals as it climbed the hill to the
midnight peak. Then, at a quarter of twelve, just as Mrs. O’Mally
was in the middle of a story in which an old lady in Ireland, who in
drinking out of a pan of milk in the dark had swallowed a frog, we
heard the familiar tap! ... tap! ... tap!... Getting on our tiptoes we
ran from wall to wall. Then, unable to locate the sound, we ran down
cellar, Poppy leading with the flashlight, me next, then Mrs. O’Mally,
then the big yellow cat. Tap! ... tap! ... tap!... We went from wall
to wall. But to no success. For the sound came through one wall as
distinctly as through another. The four walls, in fact, seemed to
_carry_ the sound, like a charged telephone wire.
Out of luck, as I say, we went back upstairs. The clock struck twelve.
The ghost hour! I was peculiarly uneasy for a moment or two. I always
feel that way at midnight. Then a sound came out of the cellar that
literally turned me into an icicle--a sound so _hideous_ and so _awful_
that you, too, I think, had you been in my shoes, would have been
completely scared out of your wits.
Poppy flashed by me.
“The cat!” he cried, and throwing open the cellar door he tumbled
pell-mell down the stairs. Again that awful blood-curdling, choking,
gasping cry cut my ears. And then, as though the deadly machine had
completed its fearful work, the cellar was plunged into silence.
Knowing that the cat killer had secretly entered the cellar, to the
death of her cat, Mrs. O’Mally fell helplessly into a chair. Her
lips moved. But so great was her fright--I might say her _horrified_
fright--that she could make no sound.
My own voice, as I called my chum’s name, sounded faint and squeaky.
“Poppy!” I called again. Then, as my legs began to lose their icy
anchors, I managed to get to the head of the cellar stairs. “_Poppy!_”
I called a third time.
But much less than getting an answer, there wasn’t a sound.
I haven’t a very clear recollection of what happened in the next few
minutes. I completely lost my head, I guess. I thought I had the hand
lamp, but discovered, when I started down the cellar stairs, that I had
the goldfish globe. I got the lamp then. And pretty soon I found myself
at the foot of the cellar stairs.
Poppy was gone! There wasn’t a sign of him! That’s why the cellar
was so deadly quiet. Wherever the secret door was in these grim
stone walls--and no longer could it be doubted that there _was_ such
a door--it was through this hidden opening that the cat killer had
dragged my captured chum.
I was crazy now. All I could think of was that Poppy was in terrible
danger. I ran around and around the cellar, the lamp chimney rocking
in its metal socket. “Poppy!” I called again and again. “_Poppy!_” But
there was no answer.
It was during one of these merry-go-round trips of mine that I
discovered the cat’s tail. A piece about two inches long, it lay beside
the huge chimney base in the center of the cellar. I gingerly picked
it up--meaning the tail end and not the chimney base. There was fresh
blood on it, proving that it had just been cut off. Ough! I wanted to
drop it. But I felt I ought to keep it. I felt I ought to tell poor
Mrs. O’Mally about the terrible crime. So, with the lamp in one hand,
and the sticky tail in the other, I zigzagged up the stairs on high
gear.
“It’s all that’s left of your cat!” I screeched, waving the tail at its
horrified owner.
“No, no!” came the shriek, when I put the tail on the center table.
“But what’ll I do with it?” I cried.
“Throw the nasty thing outside.”
Well, I finally got some of my wits back. And I saw that the only way
to help my chum was to lay for his captor at the mouth of the tunnel.
So I grabbed my willow club. Then I lit out. A thing that helped me was
the moonlight. Finally I came to the creek. There was the boat pulled
up on the shore! I knew now that the man was still in the tunnel. So I
ran along the path. And pretty soon I came to that awful black hole in
the ground.
I listened. But I couldn’t listen very good for my panting apparatus
made too much noise. My heart was pounding, too. Two, three, four
minutes passed. I wasn’t panting so hard now. But however much I
stretched my ears I could hear no sound of footsteps or distant
underground voices. Suddenly, though, I did catch the sound of
something behind me. Boy, did I ever jump! Coming out of the willows
was a black shape that crawled along, animal-like, on its stomach. Or
was it a man on his hands and knees? Anyway, whatever it was, animal or
man, I knew that its burning eyes were fastened on _me_. This was more
than I could stand. And screeching bloody murder I lit out on the tear
for the stone house. Scooting along, I expected every minute to feel
the awful thing grab my heels. But I got away from it.
Tumbling into the house, who should I see, first of all, to my great
joy and amazement, but Poppy! Yes, sir, not an apparition, or whatever
you call it, but old Poppy, himself, with his hair all mussed up and
his shirt-tail hanging out. He and Mrs. O’Mally were bending over the
couch. And when I got closer I saw that they were working on a boy.
“Is he dead?” I gasped, everything else going out of my mind.
“Unconscious,” says Poppy, bathing the boy’s forehead with a wet towel.
Then he looked up. “Ever see him before, Jerry?”
It was a boy about our age. With his closed eyes and white face it
was hard, of course, to tell exactly what he looked like. But there
was nothing about him that seemed familiar to me. Certainly, was my
conclusion, he wasn’t a kid from my own neighborhood.
“Uncle Abner!” the boy whispered, with a sort of convulsive movement of
his arms. “Uncle Abner!”
“Do you know him?” Poppy asked me again.
“No,” I shook my head.