He did. They grappled all the way to the third floor; and when the elevator door opened, he raked her forearm with his claws, twisted away from her agonized clutch, and bounded into the hallway.
“Toby!” she whispered.
“Hurry!” the television set was shouting tinnily. “This offer will positively not be repeated! This is your last chance! Hurry!”
“Yow!” said Toby, sniffing the carpet. “Wow? Wowww!”
There was a muffled snort behind the door of the Shaws’ apartment, and the scrape of a chair being thrust back.
‘Good grief!’ she thought. ‘I can’t —’ She hurled the note into the hallway, and leaned her whole weight against the seventh-floor button. ‘Move!’ she prayed. ‘Move!’
The elevator door closed just in time.
11. Susan Despairs
Robert and Victoria were still waiting for her, sitting on the floor with the candle between them. They looked worried about something.
“Got it!” Susan whispered triumphantly. She pressed the seventh-floor button to send the elevator back, and got out. “I almost didn’t, though. There was a policeman in the apartment and Mr. Bodoni almost found me in the cellar. And oh, I am sorry, but Toby got away from me, and I had to leave him behind or get caught.”
“Poor old Toby in the twentieth century!” said Victoria. “Could he tell it was different? How did he like it?”
“He didn’t. Look, he ruined your dress with his claws. Don’t worry about him, though, Mrs. Clutchett likes cats, she’ll take care of him. I’ll bring him back the next time. What are you looking so down in the mouth about?”
“Well,” said Robert, “I told you I thought something was wrong, only I couldn’t put my finger on it — remember? It finally came to me while you were gone. I — I don’t think we’re going to find that money.”
“Why not? Look, here’s the map!”
“Oh, I guess the map’s all right, but — Well, look. They found it in 1960 — I mean they will find it. That means that we can’t find it. See?”
“What do you mean, we can’t find it? We’ll get there years before they do.”
“No, look,” he said patiently, drawing circles on the floor with his finger. “It’s really very simple — if we find it they can’t. Because if we find it, it won’t be there in 1960. Only it is — was — will be. So that means …”
“Ohhhh …” All the air seemed to go out of Susan with a rush. “Oh, good night!” She dropped to her knees beside them. “I never thought about that.”
“So I guess it’s all off,” said Robert. “It was a good idea, Sue, but —”
They were silent for a while. The clock discreetly said “Whirrr,” and chimed the quarter.
“So we’ll all end up in the poorhouse,” Victoria murmured, rocking herself back and forth. “Cousin Jane isn’t rich, she can’t keep us forever …”
“Don’t talk like that,” said Robert. “I told you I’m going to get work.”
“Well, so am I — I can sew or something. But my goodness, an office boy! A ’prentice seamstress! We won’t be able to make anything —”
“Don’t forget the house. It’s a good house, it’ll bring in something.”
“I can’t stand the idea of anybody else living in this house,” Victoria wept. “Nobody could love it the way I do. They’ll probably put up horrid new wallpaper, and tear out walls, and—”
“Now listen!” Susan said, thumping her fist on the floor. “This is ridiculous! We know exactly where that treasure is — well, almost exactly. We’ve got a map! There’s absolutely nothing to stop us from finding it. Now, here’s what I bet happened — will happen. We’ll find it, only there’ll be an enormous big lot of it, so we’ll just take what we need and we’ll leave the rest to be found in 1960!”
“Ahh!” said the Walkers in one hopeful breath.
“So I’m going to look for it. And I’ll go on looking for it until I find it, even if it takes me months. So do I have to do it alone, or are you going to help me?”
“Great Caesar! Are we! That must be it — we’ll leave some! Let’s start right now!”
“Not in the dark. First thing tomorrow, though!”
“First thing! Hey, I’m hungry. Let’s make a foraging raid!”
“Oh, Robert, please don’t say ‘hey.’ ”
“You hungry, Sue?”
“Ravenous!”
“Come on!”
“What will Maggie say?” Victoria sighed.
It rained next morning.
Susan sat by the window chewing her knuckles with frustration, while Robert and Victoria distractedly popped in and out of the room with the latest reports from below. Mrs. Walker, it seemed, was determined to proceed with her plans, and they were powerless to dissuade her.
First it would be Victoria, wringing her hands: “I can’t do anything with her, Sue. She’s writing to house agents! But what can I do? I can’t say anything definite until we actually find the treasure. Oh, this rain!”
And then Robert, who could make biting into a slice of bread-and-butter look like an act of desperation: “Mama’s still at it! She says she’s had her cup of tea and her night’s sleep, and it’s no use putting it off any longer. This rain could go on for a week!”
And then Victoria again, thrusting a tragic face around the door to announce, “She’s writing Cousin Jane.”
By ten o’clock Robert had worked himself up to such a pitch that he proposed intercepting Mrs. Walker’s letters.
“We couldn’t!” Victoria gasped. “Why, that’s a crime! It’s interfering with government business!”
“Well, we wouldn’t destroy them,” Robert argued. “Besides, it isn’t government business until the mailman has them — is it? What we do is, we take them out of the mailbox and keep them until we find the treasure, and then Mama won’t have to send them anyway. Or if we don’t find the treasure, we’ll post them again, and no harm done.”
“We’ll find it,” said Susan. “Look! Isn’t that the sun?”
It was. Their spirits immediately soared.
“Wait here a minute,” said Robert. “Have to make arrangements.”
In ten minutes he was back. “All right! I told Mama we could face our troubles better if we communed with Nature, and Maggie’s making us a picnic lunch. Don’t worry, Sue, there’ll be enough for you too.” He patted his pockets. “I’m bringing a little extra, just in case.”
Half an hour later they were in the stable at the back of the property. Susan was delighted with its cool shadowy dimness and the sharp compound of straw, manure, leather, and old wood smells it contained. Swallows were nesting in the rafters; iridescent blue and russet-breasted, they flickered in and out the doorway, calling to each other with a rolling squeak. Twice they came so close that Susan felt the wind of their wings on her face.
Robert was busily rummaging about. “Rope — won’t need that, probably. Spade. How many spades, Sue?”
“What?” she said, tearing her attention away from the swallows. “Oh. Just one. What we should have is pointed sticks — you know, to feel down through the dirt with. It’s easier than digging.”
“Hey! That’s a good idea. Never thought of that. Stick. Stick …”
“Oh, my goodness!” Victoria gasped, putting her hands to her face. “I just thought. If the treasure’s on somebody’s property it’ll belong to them!”
“Oh oh,” Robert said.
“Well, let’s look at the map,” Susan said. She took the newspaper page out of her pocket and unfolded it. “Which way is north, Bobbie?”
“That way.”
“All right.” She oriented the map, and they all crouched over it. “Yes, that must be right — see, Ward Street goes the same way as Ward Lane. I’m counting on your house being in the same place as the apartment building. The apartment is here — so, one, two, three blocks up Ward, then around the corner and down 93rd. Right here. Where would that be?”
“Knutsen’s
pasture!” Victoria said in a stricken voice. “It has to be if your blocks are as long as ours. That’s Mr. Knutsen’s land, so it’s his treas—”
“Now that’s just where you’re wrong!” Robert said triumphantly. “That’s county land — Mr. Hollister told me. Somebody had it and lost his money before he could farm it, and now the county holds it for delinquent taxes, and all Mr. Knutsen does is pay them something to run his cows on it!”
“Oh. But then the treasure belongs to the county …”
“It belongs to whoever finds it,” Susan said firmly. “The county didn’t bury it, some man did, and it says here that he probably died in the Civil War. Anyway, he never dug it up again, so we don’t have to worry about him either.”
“Well, I suppose it’s all right, then,” Victoria said.
“Sue, what’s an H-bomb?” said Robert, pointing to another part of the page.
“Oh, never mind.” She hastily folded up the paper and put it back in her pocket. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Have to find a stick first,” Robert said. “For probing. Should be metal so it won’t break.”
Their searching finally uncovered a three-foot piece of brass curtain rod. Robert insisted on sharpening it; and the girls, hopping with impatience now, had to hold it across the manger while he scraped away with a file.
“Oh, come on!” Victoria said. “That’s enough — the ground will be all soft with the rain anyway.”
At last they were ready to start. Robert took the picnic hamper, Victoria held the probing rod, and Susan carried the spade.
“Now,” Susan said when they reached the road. “Let’s see …” She consulted the map, looked about her, and shrugged her shoulders. “I guess the only thing to do is just walk down the lane and pretend I’m on Ward Street. If I can remember all the buildings and pace them off right, we’ll end up pretty close. Your house is where the apartment building is” — ‘I hope,’ she added privately. “So, here’s the dry goods place next door … we’ll just take a few steps for it, it’s only a hole in the wall. Now the stationery place. Um. What’s next? Oh, Wilson’s Market, a lot of steps for that … Now the cigar store … and here’s 95th! Isn’t it wonderful, no traffic lights! Watch your step at the curb,” she giggled.
“Where did you meet the old woman with the potatoes?” Victoria asked.
“Oh, down the road the other way — past Hollister’s place.”
“You’ll have to show me some day, Sue. I want to put a marker there to remember all this by.”
“A big stone,” Robert said. “ ‘Sacred to the memory of Fortune-hunter Sweeney,’ ” he declaimed, “ ‘whose fate was decided — no, sealed, on this historic spot.’ And hey, we could put dates on! 1960-1881: that’d make everybody sit up and wonder!”
“Don’t say ‘hey,’ Bobbie.”
“Stop talking a minute, will you?” Susan said. “I’m trying to think. Oh yes, Rumpelmayer’s, that’s a department store. It’s huge, takes up almost half the block. Then there’s a florist, I think — no, a bakery, and then the florist, and then a bank. Come on.”
But when they reached what should have been — or was to be — 94th Street, they were brought up short. Ward Lane angled off to the right here.
“Is this on the map?” Robert asked.
“No, Ward Street’s supposed to be perfectly straight. Hmm. I think we’d better keep on in the same direction we’ve been going. That means we’ll have to cut into the field.”
But first the fence had to be negotiated: a split-rail zigzag fence, overgrown with honeysuckle and blackberry and sumac.
“Watch out for poison ivy. Remember when I had it last summer, Vic? I thought I was going to die!”
Victoria had become entangled with a blackberry runner, and was feeling uncharitable. “Serves you right,” she sniffed. “Papa always said you didn’t have to worry if you kept a sharp lookout.”
“Well, I was looking for a bird’s nest. You can’t keep a sharp lookout everywhere at once. Ow! Look out, nettles.”
The field seemed to be miles in extent. Some distance ahead of them stood a vast tree, with black and white cows lying in its shade.
“Won’t they object to us being in their field?” Susan asked nervously.
“Oh no, we’re friends,” said Victoria. “Bobbie and I feed them apples in the fall.”
It was rougher going now. The grass was hip-high and heavy with rain; walking through it was like wading in water. Their legs were soaked in an instant, and the damp heat made them sweat. Worst of all, Susan, now that she was off the road, forgot what buildings were supposed to be on this last and crucial block. Try as she might, she could conjure up no more than a vague memory of a red-brick insurance building and a jumble of show windows. In the end they had to guess the distance by compromising their three various notions of how much walking constituted a city block.
“Sharp left now,” Susan said. They trudged a little further in silence.
“Well, whereabouts, Sue?” Robert asked.
She took out the map and looked at it helplessly. “I don’t know, it could be anywhere around here … Maybe there’ll be a little hump over it. Or a hollow.”
“You couldn’t see a hump or hollow in this grass,” Robert said. He thrust the rod into the ground. “Well, this isn’t the place, anyway.”
“We can’t just go wandering around with that rod,” Victoria said. “We’ll miss some places and go over others twice.”
“No, it’s all right, Vic. Thing is to keep together. See the trail we make in the grass? We’ll know where we’ve been. We’ll go in a straight line and then double back right beside it.”
“One thing, anyhow,” Susan said. “The playground wasn’t very big. It won’t take long to cover it.” She kept to herself the nagging suspicion that they weren’t even on the playground — or what someday would be the playground.
They set out hopefully, keeping close together and trying to walk in a straight line. Robert jammed the rod into the ground at every step, grunting as he did so. It did not seem to Susan that the rod was penetrating very deeply.
“Thirty,” said Victoria after a while.
“Thirty what?” Robert said, wiping his sleeve over his face.
“Thirty probes with the rod. I’ve been counting.”
They looked back over the short way they had come, and then at the immensity of meadow all about them.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Susan said faintly.
Twenty minutes later the rod grated against something.
“Here it is!” Robert shouted. “Give me the spade!”
He attacked the turf furiously. The earth was soft enough, but the grass roots were tough and thoroughly intertangled. There slowly came to light two pink worms and a small stone.
“Oh, pooh!” he groaned, flinging the spade down. “Here, one of you work the rod for a while. I’m done in.”
An hour later they had dug up three more stones and a rusty plow point—to say nothing of worms, grubs, crickets, and other assorted specimens of soil life.
“I’m hungry,” Robert said. “Let’s eat.”
“Oh, honestly!” Susan snapped, turning away.
“Isn’t he impossible?” Victoria said.
“Well, who’s doing most of the work? Look, I’ve got blisters on both hands! Even a horse would get fed by this time. All right, all right,” he added feebly under their glares, “one more try.”
They trudged off again, probing with the rod.
“OW!” Robert shrieked, soaring into the air like a kangaroo.
“What?” said Susan.
“Look out! Yellow jackets!”
“Run!” Victoria screamed.
Suddenly something that felt like a white-hot needle stabbed into Susan’s leg. She screamed and fled. Another needle! She screamed again, and beat her arms about wildly. She never knew she could run so fast. For a tired and unfed treasure seeker, Robert was also doing superbly; while Victoria turned in
to a very deer, and outdistanced them both.
Puffing and blowing and rubbing their wounds, they gathered together at a safe distance from the humming nest. Only Victoria had gotten off unscathed. Susan had two stings, and Robert three.
“This is too much!” he said. “I don’t care, I’m going to have something to eat. You two can suit yourselves. Let’s get out of the sun a while, anyway.”
They picked up their scattered tools and the picnic hamper, and headed wearily for the tree. The cows under it looked huge to Susan, and she began to drag her feet nervously; but Robert and Victoria made soothing noises of “Soo, boss boss, soo bossy,” and the beasts merely looked on with mild interest as the three of them entered the shade and sat down.
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Robert said gloomily, as he opened the hamper and fell to on the provender within, “if those yellow jackets weren’t nesting right on the spot. Right in with the gold. Be just our luck.”
Victoria groaned and rested her chin on her hands. “We might smoke them out,” she suggested without conviction.
Susan was too discouraged to say anything. She sat down on a large flat rock and scuffed in the earth with her feet. Acorns were scattered all about in the litter. She picked up a few and rolled them between her fingers to feel their smoothness. Then, although she knew it would do no good, she took out the front page again.
FORTUNE FOUND AT CONSTRUCTION SITE
‘Oh yes,’ she thought savagely, ‘it’s all very well for Frank M. Zalewski. He had a bulldozer … Wish we did … Couldn’t get it up the elevator, though. Some sort of electronic gadget? A what-do-you-call-it counter? No, they’re only good for radioactive stuff. Is gold radioactive? Where would I get one anyway? Oh, golly, we’ll never find it! How nice to be a cow … No worries; just lie in the sweet grass, looking into space, chewing, switching your tail …’
Time at the Top Page 9
