CHAPTER IXTRAPPED
Skippy was destined to remember that night. Whether it was the chill gloom of the house or the nameless dread which seemed to hang like a pall over the wilderness hideout, he did not know. Certainly, everything they said and did gave them a feeling of unreality, as if they were merely moving puppets in a play. He missed his father, as he never had before, and that was saying much.
After their peculiar meeting with Timmy Brogan (as they afterward learned was his full name), Barker gravely invited them to the kitchen for refreshment. They followed Frost through two unfurnished rooms, wading through the dirt and dark until they emerged into a sprawling room running the width of the house and which, like the sitting room, was illuminated by means of a lantern dangling from a hook in the high ceiling.
A small oil stove, battered and rusty, was trying to send up a yellow flame strong enough to boil the coffee. Another stove, a wood-burner, stood back in the opposite corner as if it were trying to hide its antiquity from the boys’ eyes. A sprawling cupboard stood in another corner and in the center of the room, surrounded by broken down chairs and boxes, was a dilapidated table holding several plates of freshly-made sandwiches.
“Sit down, boys,” Barker said simply. “The coffee will be ready in a minute.”
“Seems like I ain’t fed in a million minutes!” Timmy said with bitter complaint. “Since you left me that lousy sandwich when you beat it at dawn, I....”
“Shut up!”
Barker’s funereal voice filled the room for a tense second, then he turned on his heel and walked toward the cupboard in long, determined strides. Timmy grew pale and sat down on the nearest box, reaching hungrily for a sandwich.
Frost chuckled mirthlessly for no reason at all that Skippy could see. Barker took out several thick cups with which he strode back toward the stove and poured the coffee when it was ready. After that they ate, and a strange, silent repast it was with the lantern sending eerie shadows up on the smoke-blackened ceiling and leaving the little group in a semi-gloom about the table.
Skippy ate because he was hungry, but his mind wasn’t on it. He was too confused, too worried at the unexpected turn of events to think of anything else but what had happened and what might happen. Barker made him feel strangely hopeless about this adventure which he had set out upon so light heartedly and which Carlton Conne had seemed to plan so thoroughly. It now appeared that he who had planned on helping to trap Dean Devlin had himself been trapped in a larger web.
That was it—he wastrapped!
He looked at the two kitchen windows. They were shuttered and barred like the windows in the other rooms. The door leading out of the kitchen opened onto a shed and Skippy was certain that that too was invulnerable both inside and out. Upstairs, he learned ten minutes later, were three stuffy bedrooms fit for occupation. He was assigned to one of them along with Nickie Fallon and Timmy. Shorty and Biff occupied the room next to them and across the hall was the room in which Barker and Frost alternately slept and watched to see that their young protégés did not triumph over locks and other man-made obstructions and steal forth into the night.
“Ever since I been here, I been askin’ myself—why the locks, if them two guys brought me here outa sympathy?” Timmy whispered to his new room-mates as Frost bade them a chuckling good-night and locked the door on the outside. He retreated to his tumbled looking cot and held his head in his hands wearily while he stared at the lantern hanging above his head. “Take it from me, guys, there’s somethin’ screwy about Barker an’ Frost, an’ you might’s well get smarted up.”
Skippy looked at the decrepit bed in which he and Nickie were to sleep and his heart sank. There wasn’t a breath of air save the occasional wisps of breeze that mysteriously found their way through the chinks in the shutters. He walked to the window and by stooping could look through the bars and see a rising moon casting a flickering gleam of light on water.
“Is it a lake or somethin’?” he asked.
“Lake, me eye!” Timmy answered. “It’s a swamp, that’s what. You’ll see how much when the moon comes up good. There’s only a little back yard an’ then the swamp begins.”
“Say,” Nickie whispered inquiringly, “you got somepin’ on Barker an’ Frost? What’s the matter, anyways?”
Timmy got up and walked over to Fallon. “They got me scared, that’s what! Barker’s terrible—he’s got me scared skinny an’ I’ll tell you guys why!” He tiptoed to the door, listened a moment and then came back. “Didhehelp you guys crash outa reform?”
Nickie explained that they had not got that far before Barker had reached out a helping hand and gathered them in. While he was speaking they all moved toward the bed and sat down, there being no chairs in the room.
“So he kinda switched the deck with you guys for a change, hah?” Timmy commented after Fallon finished. “That proves what I say about him bein’ a pretty foxy guy, turnin’ a trick that maybe ain’t gonna be so healthy for us in the end.”
“How come?” Skippy asked softly.
“It’s a long story, an’ if you guys ain’t sleepy...” Timmy began.
“Say, lissen,” Nickie interposed, “the kid’n me don’t mind bein’ put hip. I didn’t like the way Barker bore down on you downstairs an’ it give me the hunch mebbe he’s too phoney even for us—see! So come across an’ mebbe we won’t get the short enda the stick.”
“Sure I’ll spiel, but that’s all the good it’ll do,” Timmy said dismally. “We’ll never get nowheres together, take it from me—Barker ain’t lettin’ us! He’ll take us away from here, one by one, and so far the two guys that have gone from here ... anyways, I’ll tell you what I think—Barker’s akiller!”
“What?” Skippy gulped.
They heard the scraping of a lock and suddenly the door swung open. A breeze from the hall blew out the feeble lantern light and they were in total darkness.