CHAPTER XIV
A Forced Entrance
Horace was right. There was no ring, no notch, nothing on the draincover except a few crisscross ridges and the name of the manufacturerin an oblong box. It was what Judy used to call a skunk box when shewas a little girl in Roulsville before the flood. If you stepped on oneof them you were a skunk. But now the skunk box was no longer funny.Someone, evidently, had stepped on the drain cover.
“Did you, Horace?” Judy asked.
“Did I what?”
“Step on that skunk box?”
He knew what she meant. “I guess I did,” he admitted. “I didn’t wantanyone else to trip over it the way you did. I guess I stepped on ittoo hard. It would take a crowbar to pry it up.”
He tried working around the edge of it with his jackknife. The draincover was slippery now that it was wet. Judy helped, prying and pushingas the water splashed down from the fountain above, getting deeper anddeeper all the time. It was up to her ankles before Horace rememberedhaving seen some lumber stacked up against the wall somewhere above thetunnel.
“If we could work a plank under the edge of that drain cover to give usleverage—” he began, but Judy had another idea.
“Why not the door? If we rammed the door to that locked room with abeam we could get in there and turn off the water before it gets anydeeper. Then we could try opening the drain.”
“Good idea!” agreed Horace.
First they called to the prisoner. “The drain is covered! The tunnelwill be flooded if you don’t turn off the fountain.”
There was no answer.
Suddenly they both realized that they didn’t know for sure that the manbeyond the locked door had turned on the fountain. It had been a guessand they could have guessed wrong. Why didn’t the man answer? Alreadythe water was seeping in under the door. Judy banged on it, calling andshouting.
“Are you Dick Hartwell? Please, whoever you are, answer! We want to getout of here and bring help. Do you know how to turn off the fountain?”
There was a little pause. Then came the answer.
“Outside ... the tower!”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Judy. “Then we are trapped unless— Is there someway to get outside from in there?” she called.
“No ... no way.” The man was evidently growing weaker. “If you really... want to ... help me,” he began and then broke off with a moan.
“We do want to help. Oh, Horace! We have to,” cried Judy. “All three ofus will be drowned if we don’t get out of here!”
Horace’s reply was reassuring. “Not if we succeed in opening thatdrain.”
Another moan from behind the door spurred them to action. Horacebrought a beam to push against one side of the drain cover while Judypried up the other edge with a plank. At last it yielded to theirtugging, and the water rushed and gurgled down the open drain.
The sound cheered Judy less than she had thought it would. “We’re nolonger in immediate danger of being drowned,” she told Horace, “but youcan still hear that running water in the pipes overhead. What are wesupposed to do? Just wait here until they turn it off?”
“I don’t like waiting any better than you do,” her brother replied,“but I don’t know what else we can do. It gives me the chills just tolisten to that water. I don’t trust those rusty pipes.”
“You mean they might leak?”
“Some of them are already leaking,” declared Horace. “But as long asthe drain is in good working order I guess we don’t have to worry toomuch. The next thing to do is get dry. My feet are wet, and I’m coldall over.”
“You are shivering. Come on back to that furnace,” Judy suggested,“before you catch your death of cold.”
She knew, from experience, that Horace caught cold more easily than shedid. But her feet were wet, too. For a little while they stood close tothe heat of the furnace, drying themselves and wondering how long itwould be before anyone turned off the fountain.
“Maybe they leave it on all day and turn it off at night,” Horacecommented.
“No, they turn it on and off whenever they feel like it,” Judy said.“When we were here yesterday it was off in the daytime and then went onjust when it began to get dark. There’s no rhyme or reason to itunless—”
“Unless what?” asked Horace.
Judy had been afraid to say what she was thinking.
“Unless someone really _is_ trying to drown us. If the fountain iscontrolled from the tower, that dark man who warned me to keep awayfrom here might be the one who turned it on. If he saw us he knows wesuspect something.”
“It’s news, too,” lamented Horace, “but now it’s too late for today’spaper. It’ll be in tomorrow, though. You’ll see!”
“By tomorrow we’ll know a lot more than we do today,” Judy encouragedhim. “We’ll know who that prisoner is, and why he’s down here. Horace,do you think he really is Dick Hartwell? Do you suppose he still wantsus to go away?”
“Ask him,” Horace suggested. “He should be willing to tell us who heis.”
Again Judy rapped on the locked door only to hear nothing but the echoof her tapping and that unearthly rushing sound overhead.
“There is a leak,” Horace told her, squinting upwards. “I knew theremust be. The water would be up to our necks by now if we hadn’tsucceeded in opening that drain.”
“Cheerful thought!” commented Judy.
She rapped on the door again—gently at first and then a little louder.
“Please answer us,” she and Horace both begged.
A long, gasping moan finally came from behind the locked door.
“Are you hurt?” asked Judy. “Are you Dick Hartwell, Roger Banning’sfriend?”
“He’s—no friend. He did it,” was the confused reply.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Horace whispered. “He is willing totalk.”
Judy was not so sure. “Did what?” she asked. “Did Roger Banning hurtyou?”
“The time ... what time is it?”
“He must be delirious,” Horace whispered. “He doesn’t understand whatyou said.”
“What time is it?” the voice from behind the door was asking again.
Horace told him the exact time, adding that his watch was accurate. “Ichecked it with my car radio this morning.”
“What day?”
“It’s Tuesday, the third of December.”
This simple statement was greeted with a moan of despair. “Eleveno’clock ... Tuesday ... the very day ... the very hour!”
“Is something timed?” asked Judy, thinking that the fountain might beturned off and on by some sort of a timing device.
This sudden hope was soon dashed. The noise overhead continued the sameas before except that now there was added to it a steady dripping soundfrom the leaky pipes. First it was in one place and then in another.Judy tried not to listen to it, but she couldn’t help the feeling ofpanic that was mounting inside her. Horace was outwardly calm.
“What difference does it make what time it is?” Horace called.
“Too late....” was the only reply.
“Too late for what?” asked Judy. “Surely we can still do something.”
“Report,” came the voice, fainter now. “Parole officer ... eleventoday. Now they’ll send me ... back....”
At last Judy understood.
“You _are_ Dick Hartwell, aren’t you?” she asked. “You wanted to reportto your parole officer, but someone shut you down here so you couldn’t.Is that it?”
The answer was barely more than a sigh.
“Who did it?” asked Horace. “Was it the work of a gang of jewelthieves? I suppose they were afraid that you would report theiractivities, too?”
“No,” the prisoner said. “They wanted....”
“Yes?” Horace prompted him.
Judy heard a gasp as if the man had tried to say something but hadn’tbreath enough left to make himself heard. He moa
ned, but that was all.
“It’s no use, Horace,” she told her brother. “He’s too weak to talk.”
“What do you say, sis?” he asked. “Shall I bring that beam? The leastwe can do is smash our way in there and make the poor guy comfortable.”
“You could try it,” agreed Judy. “But you’ll need a bigger beam thanthe one we used to open the drain.”
“This will do.”
The beam Horace found was so big he could hardly lift it. But togetherhe and Judy managed to bring it. Holding the big beam between them,they both shouted, “Keep back, Dick Hartwell! We’re coming through thedoor!”
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The Haunted Fountain Page 15
