The Mystery of the Cranky Collector - Carey M. V. - Страница 9

“No way!” Bob declared. “Not for a second. I had to get up a couple of times and walk around to keep awake, but I kept awake!”

Jupe scowled at the ceiling. “Well, however he got in, he certainly knows he’s not alone. He knows we’re here, and he knows that we know he’s here, and so —”

Jupe yanked open the attic door and called out. “Hey! Who’s there?”

No one answered, but the unseen one stopped walking.

Jupe called again.

Still there was no answer.

Jupe flicked on the attic light.

“You’re not going up there!” cried Bob. “Suppose the guy’s got a gun?”

“He’d have shot me by now if he was going to shoot me,” said Jupe. He sounded confident — more confident than he really felt.

He went up the stairs in a rush. He wanted to get to the top before the person who lurked in the attic could get back to the stairwell.

He reached the top unharmed, but no one was there! The attic was empty.

Jupe saw bookcases and trunks and boxes, and that was all.

He stood still and listened.

Not a sound.

He went back to the stairs and looked down. Bob was looking up at him.

“Nothing,” said Jupe. “We — we must be sharing some kind of… hallucination!”

“I don’t believe that!” said Bob.

“There’s nobody here,” insisted Jupe. “Unless… unless there’s some way to get in and out of here without coming down the stairs! That’s it! This is an old house. There could be a hidden passageway — something nobody knows about!”

Marilyn appeared behind Bob in the hall. She was wearing a quilted robe and a grumpy expression. “What’s the matter with you two?” she demanded. “Jupe, what are you doing up there?”

“Marilyn, could there be a secret passageway in this house? Have you ever heard of one? Even a rumor of one?”

“No.” She shook her head. Jupe searched. He looked behind boxes and trunks. He moved things that stood near the chimney, thinking a door might be concealed next to the bricks. He got a flashlight from the kitchen, then crawled around on his hands and knees to examine the open area between the end of the floorboards and the place where the roof slanted down to meet the joists. Here for a foot or two, he could see the lath and plaster of the bedroom ceilings. He sent a beam of light into the space under the floorboards. But he saw nothing except the grime that had collected over the years, plus some odds and ends that people had dropped and then forgotten. He recovered an old golf ball, an empty cola bottle, and a few bits of crumpled paper.

When he was satisfied that he had examined every inch of the attic, Jupe went down to the hall where Marilyn and Bob waited.

“Weird!” said Bob.

“You guys are hearing things!” Marilyn accused.

She went back to her room and closed the door.

Bob went for his blanket, wrapped it around himself, and settled down on the floor next to the armchair.

“You aren’t going back to bed?” said Jupe. “It’s my watch, you know.”

“I don’t think I want to be by myself,” Bob confessed. “I’ll stay here and keep you company.”

So the two Investigators spent the remaining hours before daylight watching the staircases, watching the ceiling, and listening — always listening.

Once Bob thought he heard the stealthy footsteps again, but the sound was so soft he couldn’t be sure.

At last a thin gray light began to show at the windows. Soon the sun would be up. The long, dreary watch was over.

But Jupe stiffened. He heard a key rattle in a lock! Downstairs! The kitchen door! Someone was at the kitchen door. Someone who had a key.

Jupe was up and out of his chair. A weapon! He mustn’t go down there without a weapon!

Bob flung his blanket aside.

Jupe touched his lips, signaling silence, and seized a tarnished brass plate that hung on the wall near the attic stairs. It was the only thing he could grab. It would be a clumsy weapon, but it would have to do.

He started down the back stairs with Bob behind him.

At the bottom of the stairs the two stared-across the kitchen. The upper half of the kitchen door was glass, but a shade had been drawn to cover it. There was no way to tell who was there.

Jupe went forward, his brass plate held ready.

The rattling stopped. The door swung in. Jupe lifted the plate, ready to strike!

7

The Secret Files

“Saints preserve us!”

A gray-haired woman shrank away from Jupe. She threw her arm up to protect her face.

Jupe was paralyzed with surprise. For a second he froze, his brass plate still held ready. Then he realized that the gray-haired little woman with the string shopping bag couldn’t possibly be a menace. “I’m very sorry,” he said. He lowered the brass plate.

“Police!” shouted the woman. “Help!” She turned and fled toward the alley.

“No, wait!” yelled Jupe. “Please! Just a minute!”

Marilyn Pilcher tumbled downstairs in her bathrobe and her bare feet. “Mrs. McCarthy, wait!” she cried.

She raced past Jupe and caught the woman when she was halfway down the alley. “Wait! It’s only Jupe and Bob. They’re okay, honest.”

The woman let herself be coaxed back to the kitchen. “Bob, Jupe, this is Mrs. McCarthy, my father’s housekeeper,” said Marilyn. “Mrs. Mac, Jupe and Bob are my bodyguards.”

Mrs. McCarthy glared at the boys. She was breathing hard. Jupe guessed that her sprint across the backyard was her most athletic feat in years.

“Bodyguards, is it?” she said at last. “Since when are you such a treasure that you need a bodyguard? And where’s your father? He’s bodyguard enough for anyone, I’m thinkin’. The old heathen would scare off the devil himself if Old Nick took it into his head to come round.”

“Dad’s not here,” said Marilyn. “He disappeared. Yesterday. He was kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped? You don’t mean it!” Marilyn insisted that she did mean it. She told about the mysterious disappearance, and she showed Mrs. McCarthy the ransom note. “The boys are helping me,” she explained. “We’re looking for the bishop’s book, whatever that is. Have you ever heard Dad talk about a bishop’s book?”

“I have not,” said the housekeeper. “Your father and the clergy were not well acquainted, as you know. And are you sure it’s someone got in and got him and then sent that note? You know he doesn’t like that poor pale briggle you’ve taken it into your head to marry, no more than I do. Not much to that one, if you ask me. And it was foolish of your father to give in to you about that party. But you would have it, wouldn’t you? And on a Sunday, when I don’t work. And now your father might be trying to scare you so you’d forget the idea of a weddin’.”

“That isn’t it,” said Marilyn. “At least I don’t think that’s it. I can’t take a chance, can I? The kidnapper might do something awful to him.”

Mrs. McCarthy shook her head. “A bad business,” she said. She dived into her string bag and took out an apron. She put it on and started to fix breakfast, all the time keeping up a steady stream of talk.

“It’s this house,” she said. “It’s an unlucky house. Always has been. Built by a man named Harrison Reeves, long ago. I heard the story from my neighbor Dolly Jessup. Reeves was a rich man, but the day the house was finished he lost everything. The stock market crashed — you know, in 1929. Reeves never lived here, and the house stood empty for years. Then, just after I moved here from New York, a family named Whitney bought the place. I remember them. He was a big strappin’ fellow. He fell on the stairs before the year was out and broke his hip, and he never walked right again.

“After the Whitneys there was Miss Jensen. An old maid with more money than was good for her, and fond of it, she was. She had a niece come to live with her. I remember the niece — a nice little thing, but sad. Miss Jensen was so stern with her. She had to come right home after school and help with getting the dinner. Miss Jensen claimed that would build character. Saved the old biddy from hiring servants is what I’m thinkin’. A shame it was, when all the other young ones in the neighborhood were out playing up and down the street.