After breakfast the following morning Ronnie looked for Gramps in his room, but there was no sign of him there nor anywhere about the house. It was Mrs. Butler who told Ronnie where his grandfather had gone. “Why, seems to me I saw him headed out the door a while back,” she said. “Went off toward the orchard, I’d guess.”
Ronnie took off after his grandfather. He found him sitting on a rock at the top of the bluff and looking out over the valley and the deserted village.
“Hi, Gramps,” Ronnie greeted him.
“Well, now, boy, come set a spell with me. My old legs won’t let me get down there in the village any more, but by golly, they can’t keep me from sitting here and looking.”
“Gramps?”
Grandfather shifted his position by leaning heavily on his cane. He faced Ronnie. “Boy, you’ve got something on your mind, and don’t tell me you haven’t because I’ve come to know when you’re troubled.”
Ronnie nodded. “There’s something going on down in the village that I’m all mixed up about.”
“You’re darned tootin’ there’s something going on down there!” the old man retorted. “Those Seaway people plottingand scheming to take the village away from me. I know what’s going on.”
“Not that, Gramps. Something else.” Ronnie went on to tell him about the blanket and the candle he had seen through the crack in the shutter, and about the strange light that had startled Bill and him the night before. He told Gramps about the mysterious prowler too.
“Gramps,” he concluded, “do you suppose it’s got anything to do with the secret of the boarded-up building? Maybe there’s something hidden there that this man is looking for.”
Grandfather looked at Ronnie sharply. “What man?” he demanded.
Ronnie looked away. “I don’t know who it was,” he answered.
“Come on, boy. Speak up if you know!”
“Really, Gramps. I’m not sure. I don’t want to say until I’m real sure.”
Grandfather didn’t press the point. “Ronnie,” he said, “this village has been the love and joy of my life. But lately it’s just as if—just as if the prophecy were meant to come true.”
“What prophecy, Gramps?” Ronnie asked. “Is that what the secret’s all about?”
“Yes, in a way, I suppose.” The old man looked out over the valley and then back to the boy. “I reckon the time has come when you must hear the story. It can’t die the way I’d hoped it would. The past won’t let it.”
Gramps took out his pipe and tobacco pouch from his pocket. He filled the bowl of the pipe and placed the stem between his yellowed teeth.
“Turn your mind back, boy, to what I was telling you the other evening when we were talking about the candlesticks.” He lit a match and drew heavily on the stem of the pipe until the tobacco glowed crimson. Then he exhaled the blue smoke in a cloud that rose over his head. “I told you about your great-great-grandfather Ezra and his partner Jacob Williams, if you’ll recollect. This Williams fellow was a kind of no-good scoundrel, from everything I’ve heard tell, and why Ezra got bamboozled into such an arrangement, nobody’ll ever know. Took him in as a full partner he did, lock, stock, and barrel, or in other words—Glassworks, land, and merchandise.”
“Then half this land doesn’t really belong to us, Gramps? Is that right?”
“Yep, I reckon so, if there’s anyone around to claim it. I’ll come to that later. Well, anyway, these two partners seemed to have gotten along well for a number of years. The business flourished. Rorth glassware got to be known practically around the world. Then around 1886 or thereabouts, things started worsening up, and by 1888 the company was well-nigh bankrupt. Now this Jacob Williams, who was keeping the books, finally got around to telling your great-great-grandfather how bad things were, and darned if he didn’t accuse Ezra of milking the company dry. Yep, he claimed Ezra had been stealing quantities of money and glassware from the company. And this Williams didn’t stop at that. He spread it all around the neighborhood, and pretty soon people began to believe it was true.”
“But it really wasn’t, was it, Gramps?” Ronnie asked anxiously.
“Can’t really answer that because it’s never been provenone way or the other. But maybe when you hear the rest of what happened, you’ll understand it a mite better. Now one day in June of 1889 Jacob Williams disappeared. Of course, everybody started saying Ezra had done away with him to keep him from accusing Ezra of the thefts. And I guess there was some evidence to make people believe it, too. First of all, more money and glassware were missing. Then there was this man, John Sutton, a worker at the Glassworks, who testified that he’d heard Ezra and Jacob Williams arguing and shouting at one another. Then, when he passed by the building again later, he claims he heard Jacob screaming for help. He didn’t go in, figuring it was none of his business, but later on he got to thinking about it, and went back. There was no sign of Ezra or Jacob Williams. Fact is, that was the last anybody ever heard of Jacob Williams. Old Ezra made a search for his partner—even put notice of a reward in the paper for anybody sending news of him. It was like the earth had swallowed Jacob—him and the money and the missing glassware.”
Grandfather tamped his pipe with a leathery thumb and continued. “Well, boy, people here put two and two together, and there began to be talk. When people begin to talk, they make things bigger and meaner. Old Ezra had killed Jacob to cover up his own thefts and he’d hidden the body somewhere. Search parties went over every square foot of the village, but they didn’t turn up a clue. Well, no matter, people said, Jacob Williams’ curse was on the Rorth family until Jacob’s death was avenged.”
Grandfather puffed hurriedly at his pipe to start up the dying coals. “But what happened to Great-great-grandfather Ezra?” Ronnie asked.
“The case came before the grand jury, but the jury failed to indict Ezra. There wasn’t proof of anything, really. So Ezra was freed, but people didn’t stop accusing him for a long time. Some even tried to find Jacob Williams’ son, then a man in his late twenties, to persuade him to come back and avenge his father’s death. But he wasn’t anywhere to be found.
“Then came reports of people who claimed they’d seen Jacob Williams’ ghost near the old office building, and there were those who said the ghost had cried out that he’d never stop haunting the Rorth family until his death was avenged. Funny thing was, though—no Rorth ever saw this ghost!”
“Which just proves the whole thing’s a phony!” Ronnie exclaimed. “Who believes in ghosts, anyway?”
“No one—excepting maybe those who haven’t gotten a proper education. But there’s more to this story. A few years after Williams disappeared, an epidemic of typhoid struck the village. Probably came from drinking the water out of Goose Brook. Anyway, lots of people died and the rest left like rats from a sinking ship. Soon there were only Ezra and his family left. He sent them away, too, while he stayed behind to close up. The Glassworks never opened again. When Ezra’s wife and my father returned, they had the office boarded up tight and padlocked, and I guess it was never opened until I went in there five or six years ago.”
“You were hunting for something, weren’t you, Gramps?”
“Yep.”
“Something that would prove Ezra didn’t harm his partner?”
“Yep, that’s right. It was a terrible blot on the family name. I couldn’t stand the thought of it. But all my searchingproved nothing. I’m afraid the evidence—if there is any—will be covered by the floodwaters when they come.”
“Nowwho’s the one giving up without a fight?”
Grandfather smiled down at Ronnie. “You’re right, boy. That wasn’t a Rorth talking then, but a discouraged, old man.”
Ronnie looked down into the valley. The thin mists that had settled in the lowlands during the night were dissipating now under the hot sun. “Gramps, do you think this man I saw is hunting for evidence too—the way you were?”
Grandfather thought over the question for a moment or two. “Nope, I don’t think so, Ronald. More’n likely—if he’s hunting for anything at all—he’s after the money and glassware that was stolen. There’ve been others before him.”
“Gramps?” Ronnie asked again. “What finally happened to Great-great-grandfather Ezra?”
“Well, when my father and mother returned after the epidemic was over, they found him in the office building. He was dead from the typhoid. But everyone said it was Jacob’s ghost that did it.”
The old man grasped the head of his cane with both hands and pulled himself to his feet. He stood for a minute with the hot breeze ruffling his snow-white beard and hair while he looked down into the valley. His sharp eyes darted from one building to another and finally rested upon the old, padlocked building.
“The answer’s in there somewhere,” Ronnie heard him say, although the wind tried to take his words away. “I hope the good Lord will let me live long enough to see it found.” He turned to face the boy. “Ronnie,” he said, “Ronnie, your father’s in town now, but when he comesback tonight, you tell him I said he’s to let you have the keys to the Rorth office building. You and this friend of yours take a good look around inside and maybe you can find what this man is doing in there. And maybe your keen, young eyes will find what I’ve failed to find all the times I looked.”
“Sure, Gramps!” Ronnie’s eyes lit up with excitement. “You bet we’ll find something to prove Great-great-grandfather Ezra didn’t harm Mr. Williams. And maybe we’ll find the glassware—and the money too!”
Grandfather was looking down into the valley again. “Went through every paper in the place,” he was saying, not waiting for Ronnie to finish talking. “Hundreds of them. But not a clue. Not a single clue. Just old bills and statements and records. Put them all back in the files, I did, just the way I found them. But somewhere in that building there’s an answer. I’m convinced of that.”
He drew himself up tall and breathed in deeply and squared his shoulders. “We aren’t licked yet. No, sir, not by a long shot! Now, boy, how about helping an old man back to the house?”