Mad Scientists' Club

by Bertrand R. Brinley

  "Chief Putney is still in the kitchen," Jeff whispered. "He'll be up in a minute to see what the hollering is all about, and we've got to be ready for him."

  We could hear him fumbling about in the hall and striking matches. He found Mayor Scragg's lantern and lighted it, then started for the stairs. At the top he could dimly see the headless ghost and the glowing skeleton waltzing with each other. When the light from his lantern struck them, they broke and ran down the hall with a cackle of fiendish laughter echoing after them and Chief Putney in hot pursuit.

  Homer ducked behind a bedroom door, but Mortimer continued up the stairs to the third floor, and from there to the attic. Mortimer can run like blazes, but he kept just far enough ahead to let himself be visible in the light of the lantern. When he reached the attic, he flung off his ghost sheet and hooked it to a fishing line tied to a pulley at the top of the steep steps leading to the cupola. Then he dove behind an old trunk while the sheet continued swinging up the stairs into the cupola. Chief Putney charged right up the steps after it, and Freddy Muldoon popped out from behind the door and slammed it closed and locked it. Chief Putney had the cupola all to himself for the night.

  "I do believe that house is haunted," said Freddy Muldoon, pointing back over his shoulder as we made our way through the woods toward town. We all looked back, and we could see Chief Putney waving Mayor Scragg's lantern high in the cupola, and we could hear faint sounds of pounding and cries for help.

  "You must be some kind of a nut!" said Mortimer Dalrymple. "I don't see anything."

  "Neither do I," said Homer Snodgrass.

  Very late that night Lem Perkins and Johnny Soames jounced along Blueberry Hill Road in Lem's pickup truck, on their way back from the cattle auction.

  "Is that a light on the roof of the old Harkness house?" said Johnny.

  "I don't see any light," said Lem.

  "Right there!" said Johnny. "On the roof -- no, it's gone again. Maybe we ought to stop."

  "Some people have a wild imagination," said Lem. "Even if I saw a light I wouldn't believe it. That house hasn't been lived in for years."

  "Mebbe you're right," said Johnny. "I guess it doesn't pay to stick your nose into other people's business."

  "'Specially if they're dead!" said Lem. And he gave the old truck all the gas it could take on the bumpy road.

  Throughout the night, Mayor Scragg and Billy Dahr pounded in vain, and Chief Putney waved his lantern in the cupola to no avail. They were still doing it when Daphne Muldoon and her friends visited the old house late the next morning and finally let them out.

  Chief Putney doesn't investigate any rumors about the Harkness place any more, and Mayor Scragg turns red when anybody mentions it. Most folks in town believe that there never were any ghosts in the place, and that the Mayor and Chief Putney, for some reason, were just trying to scare people away from it.

  Night Rescue

  (c) 1961 by Bertrand R. Brinley

  Illustrations by Charles Geer

  IF YOU WANT TO FIND A NEEDLE in a haystack, you've got to be systematic about it," said Henry Mulligan. "Otherwise it's like looking for a needle in a haystack."

  This didn't make much sense to Dinky Poore, who isn't the most brilliant member of our club. But Henry proved he was right, as he always does.

  It was the day the Air Force jet fighter exploded over Mammoth Falls. A big search and rescue effort was being organized. But when Henry and I offered the help of the Mad Scientists' Club, Mayor Scragg threw up his hands and told us to keep out of his hair -- of which he has almost none.

  "We don't need your help," said the Mayor testily, as he wiped the sweat from his glasses. "Every time you Mad Scientists get mixed up in something it gives me trouble. Why don't you go home and leave me alone?"

  "But we have a plan, Mr. Mayor..." Henry ventured.

  "I don't think we ought to turn down any offers of help," said a tall man in an Air Force uniform. It was Colonel March, from Westport Field. "If that pilot is still alive he may not last through the night. It's going to get dark pretty soon, and we've got to call off the air search. Let's put these boys to work. I don't see that they can do any harm."

  "You don't know these boys!" said the Mayor.

  "Didn't they say they belong to an Explorer post?" the Colonel asked.

  "They call themselves the Mad Scientists of Mammoth Falls. You figure it out, Colonel."

  "Our specialty is science, sir," Henry explained. "Jason Barnaby saw the plane explode -- right over his apple orchard, up on Brake Hill, while he was plowing."

  "We know the pilot got out," said the Colonel. "The ejection seat is missing."

  "I have a theory about where he came down," Henry said seriously, "but I'd have to perform some experiments, first."

  "O.K." The Colonel was smiling. "You go ahead and make your experiments -- whatever they are. When you decide where you want to make your search, let me know, so I can coordinate it with the other search parties."

  "Yes, sir!" Henry said, smartly.

  We headed straight for our science lab in Jeff's barn, with Henry spitting out orders to me.

  Henry said he had to stop off at his house to pick up some stuff, so I left him at the corner of Carmel Street and ran over to Jeff Crocker's barn. At the lab I pushed the Panic Button. This sounds a buzzer in the house of every member and it means, "Get over to the clubhouse pronto, Tonto."

  Fifteen minutes later Henry showed up with two black cardboard cylinders that he shoved into his knapsack. Everybody else was already there, and Jeff Crocker had us all lined up, checking our equipment.

  "Sure took you long enough," Jeff said to Henry. "We're practically ready to go. Only we don't know where."

  "I had to call the airport for some important information," Henry explained. "We're going up on Brake Hill above Jason Barnaby's place."

  Henry grabbed Homer Snodgrass and sat him down in front of our ham outfit. "You've got to stay here near the phone, Homer, so we can contact Search and Rescue Headquarters at the Town Hall, if we have to. They won't let us use their radio frequency. We'll take the portable transmitters with us, and when we get set up on Brake Hill we'll call you."

  We have a big map of the whole county on the wall of our clubhouse, with grid squares on it, and Henry put a red circle at the place where we expected to set up operations on the hill so Homer would know where we were.

  When we finally got to the top of the hill it was already getting dark. Henry had Dinky and Freddy Muldoon pace off the distance to two large trees he had spotted on the ridge north and south of us. When they got back, Henry made some notes in his notebook. Then he had me spread out a big map, just like the one we have in our clubhouse, and orient it with a compass so that the north indicator on the map pointed exactly north.

  We set up the two black cardboard cylinders Henry had brought with him.

  "These are Army parachute flares," Henry explained. "They'll go up about a thousand feet and drift with the wind. We can track them with compasses to get a good idea where they come down. I've rigged a little radiosonde transmitter inside each of them. If the flare burns out before they reach the ground, we can still get a compass reading on where they land, with the directional radio receivers."

  "Do you think we're going to find this pilot, Henry?" Jeff asked.

  "If my calculations are correct, we should find him," Henry answered. "I checked with Westport Field, and the wind is still the same as it was when he bailed out this morning. This flare should at least tell us what direction he drifted. Then I'll have to calculate how far he went before he hit the ground."

  A few minutes later Dinky Poore was 'way up in the big oak tree to the north of us with a night compass, and Jeff Crocker sat at the foot of it with one of our directional radio receivers. In the other big tree to the south, Mortimer Dalrymple and Freddy Muldoon were stationed with the same kind of equipment.

  Henry walked over to the big rock where he had set up the first flare and pulled of
f the safety clip. We ducked behind a tree when the flare shot off with a swishing roar, straight up into the sky.

  It exploded in a shower of sparks, and a bright red, glowing thing dangled there on the cords of a tiny parachute. It lighted up the whole of the hill and the valley to the west of us, and half the lake could be seen as clear as daylight. The wind began to blow the flare, and it swayed and danced in the sky, getting brighter all the time as it drifted off to the west a little bit north of the lake.

  It kept getting smaller and smaller. When it finally went out, Henry ran over to the map and jotted down the last reading he got on his compass. Then he got on the walkie-talkie and talked with Jeff and Mortimer. Both of them said they were still getting a beep from the little transmitter in the flare.

  When we were all together again, Henry took down the compass readings each team had gotten, and with a protractor and a ruler he drew these bearings on the map.

  "I still don't see how all this bunk is gonna help us; find the pilot," grumbled Dinky. "Why don't we go out and start searching?"

  "We'll search," said Henry, "but if the experiments work, we'll know where to search."

  Then Henry really started to work. He sat on a flat rock with a pencil and slide rule and reams of paper. Pretty soon the ground all around him was littered with paper, but he came out with a point where the pilot was likely to have come down. It was a point in the hills about six miles west of town, where we all knew there was an old abandoned quarry.

  Dinky Poore was sent shinnying up a tall spruce to place a flashing road lantern at the very top of it. Henry said we would use this as a reference point to shoot a back azimuth to, so we could check our bearings on the way. Freddy Muldoon was given the job of staying on Brake Hill with the ham outfit so we could keep in touch with Homer back at the clubhouse. We packed our bedrolls, walkie-talkies, emergency rations, and first-aid supplies on our backs and took off.

  The sharp edge of a cliff silhouetted against the stars served as a good landmark to guide us until we got down off of the hill and into the woods. Then we could no longer see it. Moving through woods at night without losing direction isn't easy, but Jeff and Henry had it all figured out.

  "The important thing," Jeff said, "is to keep checking your direction all the time. When you shoot a compass bearing, pick out a landmark as far away from you as possible. This reduces the chance of making an error. It's just like drawing a straight line on a piece of paper. If you use a long ruler, it's easy. If you use one only two inches long, it's pretty hard to make the line straight."

  "What if it's so dark you can't see any landmark at all?" Dinky asked him.

  "I'll show you in a few minutes," Jeff said. "We're getting into pretty deep woods right now."

  Sure enough, we got into a place so pitch black we couldn't even see each other. Then Jeff gave us a demonstration. He called it "leapfrogging." He sent Mortimer ahead with a flashlight. After he was two or three hundred yards ahead of us, Jeff would holler to him to move either right or left. When his light was right in line with the compass bearing we were supposed to follow, we would all take off to the place where he stood. Then Jeff would send him out ahead of us again.

  Sometimes we'd sight back to the light we'd left on Brake Hill, if we could see it. If we couldn't, we'd call Freddy on the radio and have him turn on the radiosonde transmitter so we could tune in on the beep our directional receiver. This way we could check on how close we were keeping on course.

  We had a little problem when we got to the creek that tumbles out of Strawberry Lake. We couldn't afford to get our equipment all wet by swimming across, so Jeff found a place where the bank on our side was pretty steep. He slung a length of rope over the bough of a big tree that stuck out over the water, and had us shine our flashlights on the other shore. Then he tore down the bank like Tarzan and swung out over the creek. He landed with a squishy splash just at the water's edge on the other side, knee-deep in mud. But he was all right, and we now had a good stout rope stretched across the stream, as well as a piece of clothesline that Jeff had tied securely to his belt.

  Jeff tied the big rope good and taut to another tree on his side and we ferried all our stuff across by hanging it on a loop from the big rope and pulling the clothesline back and forth.

  The rest of us went across hand over hand, with the clothesline hooked to our belts as a safety line and the loop slung under our armpits so we couldn't fall if our hands slipped off the rope. We all made it in good style except Dinky. He's so skinny that he slipped right out of the noose when he lost his grip, and we had to pull him out of the water with the clothesline. He was sopping wet and mud from head to foot, and he wanted to go home. But Jeff made him take all his clothes off and we pinned a big blanket around him.

  "The best thing to do is to keep moving around when you're all wet, so you can build up plenty of body heat," said Jeff. "Let's move out now. We've got to keep going."

  "This stinky old blanket scratches!" said Dinky, sobbing a little bit.

  "Scratch it right back!" said Mortimer.

  It was just about midnight when we crawled to the top of a low ridge that we figured must be in the area the pilot had drifted to.

  We found a small clearing, where we set our gear down and held a council meeting to decide what to do next. First of all, Jeff insisted that we build a fire in the middle of the clearing and bank it up well with a rock and dirt firewall so it couldn't spread. This would give us a reference point to guide us while we did our scouting, and also would make it easy to get back to the clearing. Besides, Dinky could dry his clothes out and get dressed.

  "There's a quarry back there, and we don't know much about it," Jeff said. "Let's get organized before we start."

  We decided to tie ourselves together, two and two, with lengths of rope, the way mountain climbers do, and be extra careful. We left Dinky to watch the fire and listen for radio calls from Freddy. Then we set off through the woods.

  "When you come to the quarry, don't go too near the edge," Jeff warned. "A piece might crumble off and dump you right to the bottom. Henry and I will go along the left rim. You two go to the right. If you see anything, or find a way down to the bottom, call us on the walkie-talkie."

  Roped together, Mortimer and I crept along through the underbrush. At the edge of the quarry we could see Jeff and Henry on the other side, shining their flashlights down into the pit. It was so dark we couldn't see much, but it looked as though it was about eighty feet deep and covered with scrub growth on the bottom.

  Henry called over the walkie-talkie that he would throw a road flare into the pit. The flare exploded into a big hissing ball of red light that cast eerie, dancing shadows on the quarry walls. We could see that the west end of the quarry was completely blocked off by a huge stagnant pond of rain water that had collected there.

  "Look! Look!" shouted Mortimer.

  I followed his pointing finger to the quarry wall on the opposite side. Right below the point where Jeff and Henry stood on the rim we could see the torn shreds and dangling cords of a parachute hanging from a scrub pine that grew out of the face of the wall. Huddled among the limestone boulders at the bottom we could dimly make out a dark shape.

  "The pilot!" we shouted at the tops of our lungs. "The pilot's down there!"

  The next fifteen minutes went so fast I can't remember all that happened, but Jeff told us to go get Dinky and all the rope we could find and come back to the quarry.

  We made a safety line out of the rope and sent Dinky over the edge. We could hear him scrambling around over the boulders at the bottom. Suddenly he shouted up to us. "It's him, all right! It's the pilot!"

  "How is he? Is he alive?"

  "I don't know," Dinky answered. "It's scary down here!"

  We pulled the rope back up, and Jeff went down to the quarry floor. Then we took off to get the rest of our gear. We doused the campfire at the clearing and carried everything to the rim of the quarry.

  "The pilot's still a
live," Jeff shouted up to us. "But he's pretty bad off. He's unconscious, and I don't want to move him 'cause he might have a broken back. It's foolish to try and get him out of here."

  We decided to move everything to the bottom of the quarry and leave Mortimer up on the rim, where he could keep radio contact with Freddy. While Henry and I worked with the rope sling, Mortimer tried to reach Freddy on the walkie-talkie. A woman answered.

  "What's your destination?" she asked.

  "Where's Freddy?" Mortimer asked.

  "What do you mean, where's Freddy? Who is this? Number Seven?"

  "Who are you?"

  "This is the Ajax Taxi Company. What do you want?

  "Please get off the air, lady. This is an emergency!"

  "You get off the air. We've got a license for this radio."

  "Forget the walkie-talkie!" Henry said excitedly. "Hook up the portable ham transmitter. Tune it to one four five point two megacycles. That's the emergency frequency that they're working on. Get the Town Hall direct and tell them exactly where we are."

  The next hour and a half we worked like beavers. Henry and Jeff went to work on the pilot while Dinky and I set up camp on the quarry floor. Messages kept coming through on the radio from Search and Rescue Headquarters at the Town Hall.

  The pilot had a fracture of the leg. Jeff and Henry made a splint from branches of scrub trees and my shirt. They moved the rocks away from him so he could lie flat on his back, and covered him with blankets. He was in deep shock. Jeff told us to build fires at three widely separated points in the quarry to serve as location markers in case Colonel March wanted to fly a plane over the area to fix our location.

  "We can do better than that, Jeff," Henry said. "I've got a surplus weather balloon in my knapsack and a thousand feet of nylon thread. We can fly the balloon with a flashlight tied beneath it, and they'll be able see it all the way from town."

  Henry's knapsack was a regular McGee's closet. He could always pull something out of it you never knew he had.

  We had just sent the balloon up when a message came through that they might try to send a small helicopter in before daylight if it was possible to land anywhere nearby. Jeff sent back word that we would clear an area on the quarry floor and let them know when we were ready.