Huddled together in the dark, the two boys and the man heard the thud of the trap door as it was dropped, the ring of a hammer against the nails being driven back into the wood. Nobody spoke. Ronnie was conscious of the heavy breathing of the man who had joined them in their prison, of Phil’s shoulder pressing against his as though for reassurance.
In the building above there were footsteps again, an occasional thump and scrape as though something were being dragged across the floor toward the opening in the wall. For several moments there would be silence; then the sounds would begin again.
“The glass!” said Ronnie at last. “He’s taking the glass away.”
“And he’s got the money,” Phil moaned.
Suddenly Ronnie was angry. He grabbed the flashlight from Phil and turned it full on their companion. “Who are you?” he demanded furiously. “And who’s that guy upstairs?”
Caldwell winced, then put his hand firmly on the flashlight and lowered it so that the beam would not blind him. “One minute,” he said softly. “Losing our heads won’thelp. You know me. The man upstairs is my twin brother; the black sheep of the family, I guess you’d call him.”
“Oh,” said Ronnie and Phil together. Ronnie saw the whole picture now. He had felt all along that the man who had attacked him on the trail and stolen the ledger couldn’t be the Caldwell he knew. He’d felt the difference at the time, but what was he to think? The two men were identical in appearance.
“Larry arrived the same time I did,” Caldwell went on. The sounds above had ceased and the cut-out piece of wall had been put back into place. “But until today I had no idea that he was here. He appeared at my cottage late this morning and demanded the keys to the station wagon. When I refused, he threatened me with a gun.”
“Your own brother pulled a gun on you?” Ronnie asked in amazement.
“Something went wrong with Larry,” Caldwell answered seriously. “He’s been in trouble all his life. In fact, he escaped from the state penitentiary last week.”
“Hedid!” Phil exclaimed. “Golly, a convict right here in the village, and we never even guessed!”
“But why did he hide out here?” asked Ronnie.
“I figure he had two things in mind,” said Caldwell. “First, since the deserted village has been opened to tourists, nobody would think of looking here for an escaped convict. If he saw anybody coming, there would be plenty of buildings to hide in. Second, Larry was obsessed all his life by that old story about the stolen Rorth glassware and the money and the murder. He said he knew the glass must be hidden somewhere, because it had never showed up on the market.”
“Well,” said Ronnie glumly. “He was right. He’s got it now, and the money, too, and the old diary that proves Great-great-grandfather didn’t murder his partner.”
Mr. Caldwell wasn’t interested in the murder or the money. “Glass!” he exclaimed. “Rorth glassware! You mean Larry found some here?”
“Crates of it,” said Phil. “Only Ronnie and Bill and I found it. That’s how come we’re down here, so we can’t tell on him.”
“Rorth glass!” moaned Caldwell. “And here we are where it won’t even do us a bit of good to think about it. I guess that’s why Larry put me down here, too. He knew I’d move heaven and earth to get it out of his hands.”
“He’s probably miles away in your station wagon by now,” said Ronnie.
The mild-mannered Caldwell suddenly turned and gripped Ronnie by the shoulders. “Look!” he said fiercely. “We’vegotto get out of here. It was nearly midnight when Larry brought me here. He had me driving him around for hours looking for a road he could use to get through the police road blocks. Then, after we found an old abandoned logging road, he had me drive back here so he could pick up the loot and put me down here where I couldn’t contact the police. It will be daylight soon. Folks will be up and about before long. Isn’t there any way we can let them know we’re here? If we all yelled at once, do you think they’d hear us?”
“The smoke signal!” Ronnie exclaimed, and at once began to break up the dry wood Phil had brought. At the same time he explained their plan to Caldwell, who thought it a good idea. “They won’t miss it,” he said. “The wholetown’s been looking for you kids since yesterday afternoon. They’ve scoured the village for you twice, to my knowledge, but, of course, nobody thought to look underground.”
Ronnie grinned, despite his anxiety. “Boy!” he said, “will we have a story to tell!” Then he sobered. “If only that guy hadn’t gotten away with the glass and the money!”
“I’ve a feeling he won’t get far,” said Caldwell. “There’s been an alarm out for him ever since he escaped. The police don’t fool around in cases like this. My main concern is how we get out of this place. What can I do to help?”
“Nothing, frankly,” said Ronnie. “Phil and I will tend to the smoke signals. There’s nothing else to do, unless you want to go back and keep Bill company.” He explained what had happened to Bill’s leg, and Caldwell was only too glad to do what he could to cheer the boy.
“Tell him,” said Ronnie, “we’ll be out of here before he knows it.”
Phil held the flashlight while Ronnie showed Caldwell the best way down to the culvert. Then the two boys turned back to their work. Phil held the flashlight against the ash box while Ronnie inspected it. The iron door was rusted, but not enough to prevent Ronnie from swinging it open. It squealed and protested and showers of rust flakes fell to the ground.
Ronnie poked the light inside and held his face to the opening. “There’s an opening at the top,” he said to Phil. “It must go all the way up into the fireplace, or else how did the ashes get down to the box?”
Using Bill’s knife, Ronnie shaved some of the kindling wood into tiny splinters. He placed these in the ash box first, arranging them carefully so there was sufficient airspace between each piece. Over these, in tepee style, he placed the larger pieces of dry wood. “All ready for the match,” he told Phil, reaching for one.
“Let me do it,” Phil insisted. “They’re my matches, and where would we be now if I hadn’t grabbed a pocketful this morning?”
Ronnie didn’t argue the point. He watched his brother apply the flame to the kindling and saw the fire creep upward into the larger pieces.
“So far, so good!” Ronnie exclaimed. The orange light from the fire was reflected in Phil’s face. “Let’s put all the dry wood on first and get as hot a fire as we can. Then we’ll use the wet stuff.”
Soon they had quite a blaze going in the ash box. It crackled and sputtered, and the metal banged every once in a while as it expanded from the heat. The wet wood dampened the fire considerably after it was applied, but as the pieces dried out from the heat, they too caught and burned fiercely.
“Now we’re ready for the rubber!” Ronnie announced later. He tossed the first piece into the fire. It sputtered for a moment, melting about the edges. A thick cloud of inky-black smoke filled the ash box and crowded into the opening at the top.
Ronnie threw in a few more pieces and then slammed the door shut to keep the smoke inside. “Now all we can do is wait,” Ronnie said to his brother.
“And throw on more rubber,” Phil added.
“—and maybe pray a little,” Ronnie said. If this didn’t work, what else was there left for them to try?
“Ronnie?” Phil asked softly.
“Yes?”
“How long can people live without food and water?”
Phil must have been reading his mind, Ronnie thought. He’d been asking himself the same question. “Seems to me I read that people live longer without food than they can without water.”
“That’s good, because we have plenty of water.” Phil switched off the flashlight. Some light leaked through the cracks around the door of the ash box.
“Seems to me we ought to purify the water before we drink it,” Ronnie said. He opened the door a bit to peer inside at the fire. The rubber was burning slowly and the pieces that were now in the fire should last for quite a while.
“The heck with all that trouble,” Phil answered. “In an emergency like this we can drink the water the way it is.”
“It should be sterilized—if we can find a way to do it,” Ronnie insisted.
“Well, I’m dying of thirst right now,” Phil said. He panted like a dog to illustrate to Ronnie how much he needed a drink. “Think I’ll go down and get one.”
“Try to hold off for a while, huh, Phil?” Ronnie asked him. “Maybe we can boil some water over this fire.”
“Sure!” Phil growled. “I’ll hold it in my cupped hands while it heats up! Be sensible, Ronnie. You know we’ve got nothing to heat it in.”
But despite his arguing, Phil apparently decided to follow Ronnie’s advice. He made no move to go below. Instead he switched the flashlight on again, and picking up Bill’s penknife, began to jab at the floor boards over his head. “Who knows,” he said, “maybe I can cut a hole through and we can climb out.”
But after five minutes of jabbing and poking and scraping Phil had made a hole no bigger than a fifty-cent piece, and hardly as deep. “Darnedest wood I ever cut into,” he complained.
“Oak maybe—or chestnut,” Ronnie answered. He opened the door to the ash box and threw in another piece of rubber. “Lumber was cheap in those days, Phil. They didn’t skimp on buildings the way Dad says they do today. I’ll bet those boards are an inch and a half thick. And you’d need a hole a foot across before we could slip through.”
“I’dneed one a foot and a half!” Phil grinned. He went on working with the knife, doubling his efforts by jabbing at the wood from a greater distance and with more speed.
“Now I went and did it!” he said disgustedly. The knife blade had snapped near the hinge. He threw the broken piece of blade on the hard, dry earth and stomped on it in anger. “Why the heck did I have to try so hard?” he asked. “I’m always messing things up.”
Ronnie wanted to scold his brother for being so careless with the knife, but he bit his lip and kept quiet. They still had the small blade, if as a last resort they needed a knife. And the way things were going, it looked as if they were going to have to think of some other way to free themselves. At least an hour had passed since Ronnie had thrown on the first piece of rubber and the black smoke had rolled up the chimney. Why hadn’t someone come? Was the smoke finding a way to the top of the flues, or was it rolling out into the room overhead?
They decided then that they’d take turns at keeping the fire fed. They drew splinters of wood to see which of them would go first. Phil drew the short one. “You’ll need morekindling from time to time,” Ronnie told Phil as he prepared to go below and stretch out a bit on the shelf and maybe talk to Bill or get some sleep. “Want me to bring some up?”
“I’ll get it when I need it,” Phil replied. “There’s still some of this wet stuff left. Say, who gets the flashlight?”
“I’ll need it to get down below,” Ronnie said.
“So I’ll light your way for you from here. Look, Ronnie, if I don’t get the light, I don’t tend the fire. Then when you take over, you’ll get the light.”
“O.K.,” Ronnie agreed. “See you later.”
The long hours dragged by. With each one that passed, Ronnie’s faith in the smoke signals he had devised grew less and less. Twice he relieved Phil. More wood had to be taken from the shelf, and now there was barely room enough for Bill to sit upright. The water pouring in from the St. Lawrence had risen another three feet. Soon the top of the shelf would be awash. And still worse, their supply of rubber was getting low. “Soon we’ll have to cut up the soles of our shoes,” Ronnie said. “Why doesn’t someone come?”
“I think it’s probably still dark out,” Phil said, “and no one can see the smoke unless they’re close by.”
Ronnie had lost all sense of time, and no one among them had a watch. He’d slept a few times when he wasn’t tending the fire, short naps during which he was more awake than asleep.
Sometime later they used the small blade of Bill’s knife to cut the heels and rubber soles from their shoes. Phil went up with Ronnie to feed some of it into the fire. They lay on their sides before the ash box. Phil picked up someof the soft, powdery earth and watched it sift through his fingers. “I wish I could eat this stuff,” he said. “I wish I could eatsomething.”
Ronnie nodded. “I’m hungry too,” he admitted. “It seems like days and days that we’ve been down here.”
Ronnie dropped off to sleep for a while, waking only long enough to place another piece or two of the rubber into the fire. Soon the last piece was gone. “That’s it,” he said to Phil. “That’s all there is.”
But Phil didn’t hear him. He was asleep. Ronnie sat up, and opening the door of the ash box, watched the last piece of rubber burn away to nothing. Soon nothing remained within the box but a few black, cold cinders.
Now what, he asked himself? What was there left to try? If only he had a tool of some kind—a pick or a shovel. With the pick he could smash a way through the stout floor boards. With the shovel he could dig to the surface. But hedidn’thave a pick or a shovel. All he had was Bill’s broken penknife. The little blade was left, of course, but it wasn’t strong enough for such a giant job as cutting through the trap door or the floor.
But perhaps it would be better than doing nothing, better than just waiting and hoping. It would take a long, long time. One little splinter of wood after another. Minute after minute. Hour after hour. Being very careful not to get angry as Phil had done and break another blade.
Eventually he might get through—if his strength lasted.
He chose a spot where there were no knots and the wood looked softest. Chip after chip he removed, each no longer or thicker than a needle. “I’ll never get through,” he thought. “Not ever.”
And then, like something in a dream, he heard voices overhead, muffled and indistinct. Then he heard a louder sound—the crash of an ax breaking through one of the walls. A section of the siding gave way and crashed to the floor. The voices were louder now, and Ronnie heard footsteps, too, crossing the room.
“That was a smoke signal we saw from the chimney.” It was his father’s voice speaking! “As sure as I’m standing here, it was a signal.”
A wide grin broadened Ronnie’s face and lit up his eyes. The sound of his father’s voice was the most wonderful thing he’d ever heard in his life. “Dad! Dad!” he called. “We’re down here.”
Then Ronnie turned and gently shook his brother. “You can wake up now, Phil. Dad’s here,” he said.