The thunderstorm did not roll away to bother other parts of the country as thunderstorms usually do. Instead, it turned into a steady downpour that showed no signs of letting up. The barnyard flooded and the water ran down the driveway in small streams that washed away the gravel and left gullies along the edges.
All night it rained, and when Ronnie awoke the next morning it was still coming down. After breakfast the boy moved from one room to the next, trying to decide what to do. He was worried about what the intruder might have discovered during the night. Perhaps by now he had found the money and glassware and had already left the village with his loot.
Ronnie made up his mind. He went to the telephone and called Bill. He told him about the figuring he had done, how he believed the money and glassware were hidden somewhere beneath the padlocked building, and how he was afraid the intruder might already have found it. “We’ve got to work fast, Bill,” he said urgently.
“I’m with you, Ronnie,” Bill agreed. “I can get away, I think. Can you?”
“I’ll wear boots and my raincoat and cape. My dad’ll say yes, for sure.”
“Then I’ll see you there! And bring the ledger book. I want to see the part you’re talking about. Meet you in our office in twenty minutes.”
Ronnie went to find his father to get permission. “Now how in the world would I know where he is?” Mrs. Butler protested. She had just arrived and was removing her plastic raincoat and hat. “Go look in the barn. He generally works there when the weather’s bad like this.”
Ronnie dashed across the yard and sailed through the open barn doors. He found his father at his workbench cutting tomato poles from old boards on his power saw.
“Sure, go ahead,” Mr. Rorth agreed. “A little rain’s not going to hurt anybody.”
Ronnie ran back to the house. He went up to his room and got the ledger. Then he got his boots, raincoat, and rubber raincape from the hall closet. Phil appeared from the kitchen. “Where are you heading for, Ronnie?” he asked.
“I’m meeting Bill down at the village. Want to come?”
Phil looked at Ronnie as if his brother had asked him to go to the moon. “Are you kidding?” he laughed. “I wouldn’t go out in this weather if the house was on fire.”
Ronnie slipped the ledger under his raincoat where it would be protected from the weather. “Say,” Phil demanded, “what’s that?”
“Just a book,” Ronnie answered. He wasn’t going to take the time now to explain. Besides, Phil knew so little about what had happened during the past few days that Ronnie would have to start at the beginning if his brother were to understand how important the book was.
“Yea, but whatkindof a book?” Phil persisted. Ronnie retreated toward the door, but Phil followed him.
“Oh, an old book I found in the padlocked building,” Ronnie admitted finally as he opened the door and stepped out onto the porch.
“Say,” he heard Phil exclaim as the door closed on his words. “Something’s going on around here—”
Ronnie splashed through the puddles in the driveway and entered the orchard. The rain drummed down on his rubber hood. Little rivers drained from his shoulders. He held the book tight as he plunged down the soggy bluff and entered the trees at the bottom.
Down in the valley he breathed deep of the pungent odor of pine, released by the long rain. Off to the right, partially hidden by the ground fog that had been trapped beneath the heavy foliage when the cooler rain touched the warm earth, Ronnie saw the old bakery building. Its broken, crumbled walls and sections of rotting roof seemed unusually deserted and lonely in the faint light.
Ronnie shivered suddenly and continued down the narrow path. Wet branches snapped back against his raincoat and sprayed water into his face. He stopped a moment to shift the ledger higher up under his arm.
And then suddenly there was a movement in the bushes at the side of the path. Before the boy could turn, someone seized him from behind and, grasping his arms, pinned them behind his back. Ronnie felt the ledger slipping from his hold. It started to fall beneath his raincoat.
He struggled to free himself, but his assailant was strong. He tried, too, to twist his head about so he could see who it was. But his raincape blocked his vision on both sides.
“All right, kid!” A man’s voice growled close to the boy’s ear. “Let’s have it!”
“H—have w—what?” Ronnie gasped.
“The book I saw you kids looking at yesterday in that shack of yours.” The man tightened his grip on the boy’s arms, and Ronnie winced. And just at that moment the ledger slipped to the ground.
“So you’ve got it with you, eh? Well, that’s so much the better!” The man loosened his grip somewhat. Then he gave Ronnie a terrific shove that sent the boy sprawling headlong into the wet leaves.
Ronnie was more angry than he was hurt. He had just one idea in his mind—to get a close look at this man now that he had the opportunity. No sooner had he struck the ground than he rolled over and pulled himself up to a sitting position.
The man was bending over to pick up the ledger. But when he straightened up he was facing directly toward the boy. Ronnie found himself face to face with his opponent.
“Mr.—Mr.Caldwell!” Ronnie exclaimed. The man’s thin summer clothes were soaked to the skin and his thick, straight hair was matted to his head on top and hanging over his forehead in ropelike strands.
But Caldwell paid no attention to the boy’s remark. Book in hand, he walked off down the path in the direction of the old bakery.
“Give me back my book!” Ronnie shouted after him. “Why, why—you—” He took off after the man, leaping onto his back and clinging there with all his strength.
But he was no match for Caldwell. With his free handthe man released the boy’s grip from about his neck. Then, still holding Ronnie’s wrist, he flung the boy from him. Ronnie sailed into the bushes, rolled over several times and came to a stop. By the time he had pulled himself to his feet Caldwell had disappeared.
Dejectedly the boy turned and made his way slowly toward their office to tell Bill the disheartening news.
Bill had the door unlocked, but closed, to keep out the rain and chill. Ronnie came inside, pulled off his raincape. He didn’t have to tell Bill that something unpleasant had happened. His friend read it in Ronnie’s face.
“You did everything you could have done,” Bill said to him after Ronnie had told him the story. “Don’t feel bad about it.” Bill went over to sit on the edge of the desk. “So ithasbeen Caldwell all along—and him acting so sweet and nice. You sure, Ronnie?”
Ronnie nodded. “It was him all right. Of course, he looked a little different because he was as wet as a drowned rat.”
“You mean he wasn’t wearing a raincoat—or anything like that?”
“Nope.” It did seem strange, now that Ronnie had time to think about it. Certainly Caldwell would have brought enough clothing with him for all kinds of weather. But hadn’t heseenCaldwell face to face? Raincoat or no raincoat, itwasMr. Caldwell all right! “Well,nowwhat do we do?” he asked Bill.
“Why, just what we planned, of course!” Bill explained. “And maybe we’ve got the jump on Caldwell after all! Because why would he take the ledger from you if he had found the money and glassware, or knew where it was?”
“I see what you mean!” Ronnie exclaimed. “He wouldn’tneedthe ledger if he was close to finding the money and glassware.”
“Right! He’s probably getting desperate. He saw us with the old book and decided it might contain an answer to what he wanted to know. Maybe he even heard us reading parts of it.”
Ronnie walked over to the window. Streams of water ran down from the roof. The wind was lifting now and the trees were bending under its force. Ronnie turned to face his friend. “Bill, if I hadn’t seen Caldwell face to face, I don’t think I could believe he’s the man who’s been doing all this snooping. And you know, even while he was grabbing me back there on the path, I didn’t think it was him. He just didn’t talk like Caldwell—or act like him either.”
“Well, you never do really know a man until you’ve been around him a good long while—that’s what my pa says.” Bill pulled his raincape over his head. “We’re just wasting time sitting here and talking. Let’s get over to the padlocked building. I brought a flashlight. Did you bring the key?”
Ronnie patted his trouser leg. “Right here in my pocket!” he exclaimed.
They closed the door to their office and started down the puddle-filled path. The rain beat against their raincapes and coats, and overhead the trees lashed wildly in the rising wind. A dead branch fell to the path behind them.
When they reached the cobblestone road they saw Phil coming toward them, huddled inside his raincoat and pushing against the wind. “I figured something was up,” he said to Bill and Ronnie when he had reached them. “Come on,out with it. What have you two got up your sleeves—and where’s that old book you had, Ronnie?”
Ronnie glanced at his friend. Bill nodded that as far as he was concerned he didn’t care if Phil was brought in on their venture. So while they walked to the padlocked building, Bill and Ronnie supplied Phil with whatever information he needed to bring him up to date.
When they arrived at the old Rorth Glassworks office building, Ronnie brought the key from his pocket and inserted it in the rusty lock. He tried to turn the key but it wouldn’t budge. It wouldn’t turn for Bill or Phil, either.
“We’ll have to use Caldwell’s secret trap door,” Ronnie said, and they hurried around to the rear of the building.
Ronnie removed the wall section and the three climbed through. Bill lit his flashlight. Then Ronnie closed the trap door again because, as he explained to the others, “We don’t want Caldwell to know we’re in here.”
Bill was exploring the interior with the flashlight. He whistled. “Wow! Caldwell sure turned this place upside down!”
Ronnie nodded. Hardly a square foot of the floor was bare of paper or overturned filing cabinet and desk drawers. Even a few floor boards here and there were torn loose.
“Looks just like my bedroom when Mrs. Butler yells at me,” Phil commented.
“We’ll never find a way down below with all this clutter,” Ronnie remarked. “Maybe we should clean up first.”
Bill agreed and the three set to work picking up the papers and stuffing them back in the drawers. Next they moved all the furniture to one side of the room and returned the drawers to their places in the desk and filingcabinet. “Now we’ll give this cleared side of the room a real going-over!” Bill said. “Then we’ll move everything to the other side and search that part. Come on, Phil, let’s get with it.”
Phil was lighting matches and peering under the floor boards Caldwell had loosened. “O.K.,” he mumbled.
They started in the corner and worked systematically back and forth across the room, taking a few boards at a time. It was Bill’s idea that Jacob Williams had made some sort of a secret trap door for himself, and that if the boys searched carefully enough they could find it. “Then we won’t have to tear up any more of the floor the way Mr. Caldwell’s done,” he said.
Bill was working with his penknife at the rear of the building toward the fireplace. He was jabbing into the wider cracks with the blade, and then prying upward, hoping to dislodge any loose section. Suddenly he let out a little cry of triumph.
Phil didn’t hear Bill because he was inside the fireplace lighting more matches while he explored. But Ronnie heard him and came over to find out what he had discovered. “Look, Ronnie,” he said. “I’ve got these boards up a little way. But I need something stronger. My knife’ll snap if I push any harder.”
“Hold everything!” Ronnie directed. During clean-up, Ronnie had seen a pair of old fire tongs leaning against the fireplace. He found them easily in the dark and brought them to Bill. Bill examined them by the light of his flashlight. The ends were flattened like the ends of a screwdriver. Just the implement they needed!
Bill inserted the flattened end of the tongs into the crack,removed the penknife, and pushed down with all his weight. Then he pried the tongs backward. A section of the flooring began to move upward. Ronnie grabbed the loose end and pulled. An entire section of the floor came free.
“Zowie!” Bill exclaimed. “We’ve found it!”