“Hey!” said Monty.
Unfortunately, Spooky misjudged the distance to the boat and fell into the water about two feet short of his target. He tried to grab the gunwale to pull himself aboard, but instead he was grabbing handfuls of water and kicking furiously, trying to keep himself afloat. He didn’t know how to swim.
“Give me your hand,” said Bean, leaning over the side and stretching out his arm as far as possible. Spooky grabbed at it with his left hand just as Monty, who was leaning over from the float, grabbed his right arm, so Spooky was suspended between ship and shore, like a human bridge.
“Saved your life,” said Monty with an evil grin. “Now why don’t you just come on in here and we’ll talk this all over.”
Bean started tugging for all he was worth, but Monty wouldn’t let go of Spooky’s other arm. As a result, the boat was drawing closer and closer to shore. Bean had one last chance.
He seized Spooky’s arm with both hands. Then, with an outstretched leg, he spun the steering wheel to starboard and, with a karate-like kick, slammed the throttle sharply ahead.
Monty didn’t even have time to let go. Still holding Spooky’s arm, he was pulled overboard. It was probably the shock of the cold water that caused him to free his grip on his captive. Sputtering and thrashing, Monty grabbed a trailing line from the tloat and hauled himself out of the water.
The boat, without a pilot at the helm, was headed at full speed for a shoal of razorlike rocks that stuck out of the water at the head of the cove. Meanwhile, Bean struggled to pull Spooky into the boat.
“Bean,” cried Spooky, once he had righted himself on deck. “Look.”
It was too late. There was no time to turn. No time to throttle back. Not even time to jump.
19
THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT
AS SOON AS ABBY HAD GOTTEN HOME from the church sing-along, she had gone to bed, much to the amazement of her parents and the Proverbs. Well, she hadn’t exactly gone to bed. But she had gone to her room.
After a while her parents came in to say good-night on their way to bed, and the Proverbs and the other guests came upstairs shortly thereafter. Soon everyone was asleep.
Everyone but Abby.
Kneeling beside the window overlooking Frog Hollow, she caught sight of Bean and Spooky as they came up the lane and hid in the bushes. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what they were up to.
There was a streetlight in the driveway of the Winthrop House. She was wondering how they would get across the hollow without being seen when Spooky suddenly bolted from the cover of the bushes and disappeared in the shadows on the far side of the street. Ab heard Bean’s footsteps below, heading toward the front of the house.
“Now, what are they up to?” she asked herself aloud.
She didn’t have to wait long for her answer. Within seconds, the front doorbell began ringing furiously, its shrill cries echoing through the house. Shortly thereafter, she heard Mr. Proverb stomping past her room on his way downstairs, mumbling to himself.
“Diversion,” Ab said in admiration. “Way to go, Beaner.”
A few moments later she watched as the boys met in the hollow and disappeared through the wood window.
For what seemed a long time afterward, nothing happened. Twenty minutes or so dragged slowly by. Then a truck drove out of the barn and rumbled down the lane. The truck had only one passenger, whom Ab didn’t recognize. She knew one thing, though; it wasn’t Bean or Spooky. And that worried her. But the guys might just be waiting for the right time to make their escape.
There was a gentle knocking at her door. “Come in,” she said.
“Hey,” said her father, opening the door a crack and seeing her kneeling by the window. “I thought you’d be sound asleep.”
She shook her head. “Couldn’t.”
He knelt beside her and stroked her head, the way he always had. It made her feel loved and safe. “Anything wrong?”
“No,” said Ab. “Just restless, I guess.”
Her father looked out the window. “What’s so interesting out there?”
“Oh,” she replied, starting a little, “lots of things. The moon. The stars. There are lots of interesting things if you just keep your eyes open.”
With difficulty, she was fighting the urge to tell her father what the boys were up to. She wanted him to go with her and find out what had happened. Surely he could stand up to Maud.
But what if the boys were fine? What if they were staked out, watching, or doing something that was getting them close to some answers? She shuddered to think what her father would say if he was looking out the window when the boys came crawling out of the cellar. “I think I’m getting sleepy,” she said.
“Good,” said her dad, and he helped her gently to her feet. They walked over to her bed, and he tucked her in. “Sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah,” Abby replied. “I’m fine. Really.”
Her dad nodded. “Okay. I was just up and thought I’d come in to close your windows if it was too cold.”
“Oh, I’m not cold,” Ab replied quickly. “I like the fresh air.”
“As you wish, your highness,” he replied with a deep bow. She laughed.
“You may return to your room, minion,” said Ab, in her royal best. “And do not disturb me again, or your head shall be in peri1.”
“Forgive me, your misery—I mean, your majesty,” her father replied, bowing his way out of the room.
He closed the door and padded respectfully down the hall in his slippers.
Ab jumped out of bed and ran to the window, where she knelt again on the floor and watched. As the minutes passed, her heart beat faster and faster, and her mind spun with possibilities of all the things that could have happened to the boys. What if they were trapped? What if Mierette had caught them? What if Maud had caught them and tied them up in the secret room? What if the person in the truck had been Maud? What if Maud had knocked the boys on the head with a two-by-four and stuck them in potato sacks, tossed them in the back of the truck, and was driving them out in the woods or down to the shore? What if. .. ?
The longer Ab speculated, the more terrible were the thoughts that came to her mind. After ten minutes she couldn’t take it anymore. She had to make sure the boys were okay.
Quickly she dressed and tiptoed down the stairs in the dark. She closed the back door quietly behind her, hid among the bushes, and was surrounded by the cool, quiet island night. The spring popped and sang in the silence. In the remote distance, the foghorn loosed a long, lonely note from atop its crooked old pole on the ledges near Greens Island. Otherwise, everything was perfectly still.
From her place in the bushes, Ab could see that the wood window of the Winthrop House was still open. The big puddle of light from the street lamp presented a problem, but she was pretty sure that no one was awake in the Moses Webster House, and most of the windows of the Winthrop House were dark and shuttered. Besides, this was no time for caution. If the boys were gagged and bound and hanging from the cellar walls by their thumbs, she’d just have to save them.
Had anyone been watching, they’d have seen only a blur as Ab darted across the hollow and wriggled through the wood window, then disappeared into the inky darkness of the cellar.
No sooner had she landed on the musty dirt floor, amid layers of fragrant bark and wood chips, than she realized she had forgotten something important. A flashlight. For a few seconds she stood in the blackness, panting and listening, half expecting to hear muffled cries of agony.
Nothing.
Of course, the tunnel could be soundproof. Or maybe the boys were just being terribly brave.
She decided that the tunnel must be soundproof.
Feeling her way about in the darkness, she soon satisfied herself that there was no way into the tunnel rooms from the cellar. That left one alternative.
Her eyes had grown accustomed to the lack of light, and she could just make out the stairs. She walked gingerly over to
them and, stepping from side to side on the treads to avoid making noise, climbed toward the cellar door.
Again, she stopped to listen. When she was sure that the coast was clear, she turned the old porcelain knob, which was loose in her hand, until the latch clicked. The door swung open slowly.
The house was quiet and dark except for two candle bulbs that burned dimly in wall sconces in the hall. She closed the cellar door, took two quick steps to the hidden panel, and in a few breathless seconds was halfway down the stairs to the hidden rooms.
At the bottom of the steps, she again stopped to listen. It was perfectly quiet.
It was also completely dark, without even a dull stream of light through the wood window. Even after one or two minutes, she couldn’t see so much as the shadow of her hand in front of her face.
Struggling to remember the layout of the room, she felt her way along the walls trying to find the worn opening that held the secret lever.
First she had to find the right timber. There were more than she remembered, and it wasn’t long before she imagined she had been feeling her way up and down the same one over and over again. Finally her fingers detected the worn ledge and the little cubicle. She punched the lever quickly.
She stepped back as the wall groaned slowly aside. It wasn’t hard to imagine the immense hydraulic apparatus in the cellars of the Moses Webster House grinding into action. Would anyone there feel the wind in the walls or hear the counterweights rise and fall? She doubted it.
Carefully testing each step with her feet, she descended the shallow flight of stairs and made her way to the tunnel.
“Bean?” she said softly. There was no response. “Bean?” she said, a little louder.
“Spook?” she cried in a desperate whisper. Still, no reply.
Maybe it was worse than she thought.
She remembered a light switch near the door and frantically traced the plaster with her fingertips. Once again the darkness played tricks on her sense of distance, but just as she was about to give up, she found the switch and flipped it on.
A red bulb in the middle of the ceiling bathed the room in soft, eerie light—and revealed instantly that Bean and Spooky were not hanging from the walls or the ceiling and weren’t spread out on a rack. In fact, they weren’t there at all.
Everything was just as it had been except that most of the paintings and the blank canvasses were gone. The few exceptions lay strewn about the floor. The easels, paints, splotches, and splatters were still there, looking either red or black under the deep red light.
Ab was relieved. All her imaginings were just that—imaginings. lithe boys weren’t here, they must have gotten out on the other side of the house. Wherever they were, she convinced herself, they were probably all right.
As she pondered what to do next, her gaze fell upon the blank wall at the end of the tunnel studio. What was beneath the white plaster? Granite? Brick? Wood? It wouldn’t be hard to find out, if only she could find something to ... Her eyes swept a small workbench against the north wall. A Swiss army knife.
Kneeling at the base of the wall, she pulled up the screwdriver of the knife and began scraping away at the plaster. At first she didn’t make much headway. Layers of enamel paint had made the surface hard and slippery. She pressed harder as she scraped. Eventually she was through the paint, and the plaster began to sift softly down.
“It’ll take forever at this rate,” she said aloud. In frustration she repeatedly jabbed the screwdriver into the plaster. Suddenly a big chunk fell away. She began chipping with renewed effort, until she had cleared all the plaster from its backing for a space of about two inches. She brushed away the residue with her hand, then bent close to examine the hole.
“Lath,” she said excitedly, trying to peer into the darkness between two old, dry strips of wood. Bean was right. If the wall on the Moses Webster side was brick, and this was lath and plaster, there must be a room in between.
All of a sudden, like a wild animal on the trail of its prey, she began jabbing at the hole, first using the blade, then, as the hole grew big enough, reaching in and pulling out large chunks with her hands.
Soon she had stripped away an area big enough to squeeze through. The only obstacle was the lath. She tried pulling at the wood strips, but they didn’t give. Then she lay on her back and began kicking at them with all her might.
At first nothing happened, and it seemed that the hidden room was determined to hold onto its secrets. Then, as her muscles were aching after repeated blows, one of the laths snapped loudly. That was just the encouragement she needed. She kicked harder and harder. More snaps followed, then cracks. Then, with a crash, her foot went through the wall.
After a few more kicks, she sprang to her knees and began pushing the broken laths inward and out of the way. The edges that remained were sharp and decreased the size of the hole appreciably, but by this time, in her determination to find out what was in the hidden room, she was indifferent to the threat of physical pain. She made herself as small as possible and began to inch her way through the hole.
“Who’s down there?” said a sharp voice behind her. No sooner had the words engraved themselves on the silence than a feeling of nausea swept through her body. As if poked by a pin, she pulled herself through the hole, fear making her oblivious to the cuts and scrapes caused by the jagged strips of wood.
Once in the pitch darkness of the secret room, she spun around and looked out the gaping hole.
“Who’s in there?” It was Maud; there was no mistaking that husky, angry voice. She was about halfway down the stairs, Ab figured, preceded by the white beam of a flashlight. She seemed to be approaching slowly, as if unsure whom she might encounter.
A big painting lay on the studio floor near the hole. That gave Abby an idea, and she might have just enough time to pull it off.
Quickly she began scraping up the plaster chunks that had fallen from the wall to the studio floor and tossed them into the darkness beside her. She did the same with the few splinters of wood that had fallen into the studio. Then she swept up as much dust as she could into her hand, and shook it free in the darkness.
“I’ve called the police,” Maud threatened, her voice edged with an indefinable fear. Nevertheless, she was closer, probably inside the second door at the top of the little flight of stairs. Already a trembling light was splashing against the far wall of the studio. Maud was only seconds away.
Ab reached out for the large painting and pulled it toward her, covering the hole at the last instant. She held her breath and waited.
Through the canvas that concealed her, Ab could see the beam of Maud’s flashlight racing about the room. Then she heard a low, rattling moan, as if from the throat of someone who was being choked. As Ab listened, the moan grew to a frightening, otherworldly wail, which sent shivers up her spine. The wail turned into a scream, and the scream to a cry. “My paintings! Where are my masterpieces?” The flashlight clattered to the floor, pointing its beam directly at the painting that Ab held over the hole.
“Madam?”
It was Mierette. She sounded sleepy. “Wot eez dee mattair?”
Maud instantly stifled her cry and turned on her maid with fury in her eyes. “How did you get down here?”
“Madam,” said Mierette innocently, “I haird you cry. De wall, she was open. I come tru an’ see de stairs, an’ haird you cry.”
“My paintings! My masterpieces,! Maud wailed, in a revival of her agony. “They’re gone.”
“How eez dees posseebul?” said Mierette, suddenly seeming wide awake. “C’est tragique.”
“What am I going to do?” Maud shrieked. “I’m ruined.”
“Surely not,” Mierette consoled. “You mos’ go to dee polees. Dey weel fin’ dee pantings, no?”
“No,” said Maud with a sudden sharpness that stopped her tears. “I can’t do that. They’d find ... No, no. I’m ruined. Ruined.”
Once more she shrieked, and the shriek turned to pathetic so
bs as she fell to her knees.
Mierette pretended to console her. “Dere, dere, madam. Surely eet eez not so bad as dees. Come opstair. Come. I will make you some tea, no? Eet wee I be hokay. You can mak new pantings. Come.”
Mierette succeeded in getting Maud to her feet and took her upstairs. Ab could hear her still weeping. The flashlight remained on the floor, pointing blindly at Ab’s hiding place.
She waited until the sound of their footsteps disappeared and she heard the door click shut. Slowly and carefully, with the blood pounding in her ears, she moved the painting aside and emerged from the secret room. she crawled quickly to the flashlight, then back through the hole in the wall.
Breathlessly, she turned the strong white beam on a scene that had not been witnessed in nearly a hundred years. Her heart nearly froze in mid-beat as the pool of illumination oozed across the granite floor. Toward the center of the little room, it revealed a tiny pair of shoes, tiny legs, tiny petticoats, and an old-fashioned dress.
Ab clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a scream as she traced the beam over the little figure. Its full, fat cheeks reflected the light. Its eyes, open wide, stared straight at her and sparkled. “A doll,” she said aloud, but the words came out muffled through her tightly clamped fingers. Behind the first doll was another. Beside that, another, and another, and another—a small mountain of them stacked high in the middle of the little room. No two were alike, and each had a unique costume. Some were beautifully simple; others were studded with gems of every description that scooped up the light and tossed it back at her in scintillating shards of color.
Some of the dolls were white, some black, some Oriental, some Indian. Every continent on earth seemed to be represented. Ab gently drew the soft-edged halo of light higher up the slopes of arms, legs, and staring eyes. her amazement growing until she felt she would burst. Then she nearly did.
The summit of the mountain of dolls was crowned with the hollow-eyed head of a human skeleton.
20
BY THE SKIN OF THEIR TEETH
The Secret of the Missing Grave Page 17
