“Now we’re officially in business!” Ronnie exclaimed. He stowed the spade he had been carrying in the corner of their office and dropped into a chair. His hair was wet with perspiration and beads of it were rolling down his face and stomach. “That’s the hardest ground I’ve ever had to dig a hole in,” he added, fanning himself with a newspaper.
The boys had just finished erecting the sign alongside the highway. Layers of coarse gravel and heavy blue clay had made the job of digging difficult. But, as Bill had said, they wanted the sign planted plenty deep so the first heavy wind wouldn’t carry it away. “Who knows,” he had added, “we may want it there a long, long time!”
On their way back from the highway, Ronnie had told Bill everything that Grandfather had said about old Ezra Rorth. Bill said nothing until they reached the office. “Ronnie,” he said then, “Ronnie, this afternoon you bring the key to the padlocked building with you, you hear? We’ve got business to attend to in there!”
“You bet we have,” Ronnie agreed. “Once we find out who this man is who’s sneaking around the village—andwhytoo—maybe we’ll get to the bottom of all these shenanigans.”
Bill nodded. “We’ll search the building from top to bottom, and maybe we’ll have more luck than your grandfather did. Maybe we’ll clean up this mess around your family name.”
“Iknowmy great-great-grandfather didn’t harm Jacob Williams or steal anything, either. I just know it.”
“Sure, Ronnie, sure, but we’ve got to prove it. And that isn’t going to be easy, not after all these years have passed. But we’ll do it. Every minute we’ve got when we aren’t showing people around, we’ll use to hunt for clues. And the first thing we do is search that old office building, so don’t forget to bring the keys.”
Ronnie sprawled a little lower in his chair and watched a drop of perspiration run down over a fold of skin on his stomach. Bill, he knew, wanted to hunt for clues immediately, but it was just too hot to move. It all seemed like such a tremendous, almost impossible job. Hadn’t Grandfather tried and failed?
A moment later Phil sauntered into the building and plunked himself down in the one remaining chair. “I don’t know why I killed myself coming down here,” he sighed.
“I don’t see why you did either,” Ronnie commented with a smile. “All you did was move from the hammock to that chair. You shouldn’t exert yourself so much.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself,” said Phil.
A horsefly buzzed angrily across the ceiling and slammed into the wall. It fell dizzily for a few feet and then regained its balance. Off it went in the opposite direction and slammed into the other wall. “Crazy critter,” Phil commented.“See how he’s exerting himself—and where does it get him?”
Before Ronnie could think of an appropriate answer, there were footsteps on the path and Mr. Caldwell popped his head in the door. He entered and perched himself on the edge of the desk. “I’m going up to your house this afternoon to take a look at those candlesticks,” he told Ronnie. “From the description you gave me I’d say that the pair I have at home are identical.”
The horsefly suddenly stopped buzzing and the office seemed strangely quiet. Ronnie sat up and looked at Mr. Caldwell, his mouth hanging open just a bit. “Did—did you say you—you had a pair of candlesticks like Gramps’?”
“Yes.” Mr. Caldwell looked puzzled. “Is that so strange?”
Ronnie gulped and nodded. “Yes, sir. It is.”
“I don’t see why. There were probably quite a few pairs turned out during the years the Glassworks was in operation.”
Ronnie opened his mouth to protest, and closed it again. There was plenty of time to tell Mr. Caldwell what he knew. He decided to play it safe for the time being. “Yes,” he answered, “yes, I suppose therecouldbe quite a few around, if they haven’t been lost or destroyed.”
A car drew up in the improvised parking lot and came to a stop. Ronnie, looking out the window, saw a man, woman, and two boys leave the car and start toward the office. Ronnie and Bill went out to meet them.
“We’d like to take the tour. Are there guides?”
“Yes, sir,” Ronnie answered. “We’d be glad to take you about.”
The man looked first at Ronnie and then at Bill. He seemed a bit skeptical. “Well, all right,” he said finally. “Where do we begin?”
Ronnie and Bill led them down the path to the cobblestone road. “This is the original road that ran through the center of the village,” he told them. “Some of the cobblestones have been replaced from time to time, but mostly it’s just the way it used to be. Mules used to pull cartloads of sand along this road to be used in making the glass.”
They swung off the cobblestone road and approached the two-story building beside Goose Brook. Bill, slipping up beside Ronnie, whispered: “Hey, you’re doing all right!”
“Now this was the gristmill where all the wheat from the surrounding fields was ground into flour. That overshot water wheel you see there was in running order when my grandfather was a boy. He says our family still used it to grind the grain.”
They visited the main building where the glass had been made and blown. From here they moved to the general store, the blacksmith shop, the smith shop, the carriage buildings, and the workers’ cottages. This brought them in a circle back to their office.
There, they found another car pulled into the parking area. Two men were waiting inside the office. Before entering, Bill and Ronnie collected their fees and said good-by to the first group. “We enjoyed the tour very much,” the man told Ronnie and Bill. “It was well worth the stop.”
“Thank you, sir!” Ronnie beamed. “Tell your friends about it.”
Mr. Caldwell was still in the office, chatting with the twomen. He introduced them to Ronnie and Bill. “This is Mr. Perkins, and this is Mr. Brown.” Ronnie and Bill shook hands with the men.
“They’re interested in learning more about the business you’ve started,” Caldwell went on to explain. “You see, they’re from the Massena Sunday paper, and they’re thinking about writing a story for next Sunday’s edition.”
“That’s right,” Brown broke in. “We feel that more people will take an interest in the fate of this place if they’ve heard about what you two boys are doing. Besides, it’ll help bring you business!”
“Gee, that’s swell of you!” Ronnie exclaimed. “Bill and I are awfully anxious to do everything we can to save the village.”
Mr. Perkins pulled out a notebook and seated himself at the desk. “Let’s make that our first question,” he said. “Just how do you expect to save the old village by taking tourists through it?”
Ronnie explained how they hoped to raise some of the money to build a dam across the narrow gap in the valley through which Goose Brook ran down to the river. “My dad says it could be done,” Ronnie continued. “’Course, we won’t get enough money ourselves to do it. But we’re hoping maybe other people will get worked up enough to want to help out.”
“People are beginning to wake up already,” Mr. Brown said. “I happen to know that your father saw Steve Mercer the other day and put a bug in his ear about the village. Steve wrote to the Seaway Authority, trying to convince them to use your plan and save the village. He got some kind of a letter back—but they didn’t commit themselvesone way or the other. It’ll take time, but I’m sure it can be done.”
Mr. Brown’s remark gave Ronnie some of the encouragement he needed. Sure, he’d had his doubts, right from the beginning when he’d first thought of opening the village to the public. They would need public support, and perhaps more money too—unless the Seaway agreed to foot the bill.
By the time the two men were ready to leave, Mr. Perkins had several pages of notes, some of them on the history of the village itself. “I think I’ll get a statement from the Seaway Authority, too,” Brown said as he slid into the driver’s seat. He had an impish smile on his face. “That will really put them on the spot! They know how the people around here feel about the village, and if there’s a way to save it, they’ll have a hard time explaining why not!”
After the car had driven off, Mr. Caldwell left to work on the notes he had gathered in the Glassworks during the morning. Ronnie, Phil, and Bill walked back toward their office. Ronnie had cooled off considerably, and now he felt more like working again. There wasn’t time before lunch for hunting for clues or cleaning out a building, but he had an idea in mind for a sign to hang outside the office door. It would read: “Tours from 9–12 and 1–5. OFFICE.”
He had found a suitable piece of wood the day before and now he set to work sandpapering it down smooth. Bill sat opposite him, tipping back in his chair again. Phil seemed restless, and a few minutes later announced that he was going back to the house.
“You know,” Bill said thoughtfully as he watched Ronnie rubbing vigorously with the sandpaper, “you know, Ronnie,there are two things that bother me. Two questions I can’t answer.”
“Yes?” Ronnie asked looking up for a moment. “What are they?”
“Well, the first one is this: How is this fellow we’ve seen around here getting in and out of the padlocked building?”
“That’s a question maybe we can answer this afternoon when I get the key and we get a chance to look inside,” Ronnie said.
“Maybe. But I don’t see what we can see from the inside that we can’t see from the outside.”
Ronnie ran his hand over the wood to see how smooth it was. “Oh, I don’t know about that. Supposing he’s dug a tunnel? We couldn’t see that from the outside. Anyway, what’s the other question?”
“This question’s a real stickler,” Bill said. “Remember what Mr. Caldwell said before—that he has a pair of candlesticks like your grandfather’s?”
“You mean, hethinkshe has. He hasn’t seen ours yet.”
“Well, let’s just say that he finds out this afternoon that hehas. And let’s say these candlesticks have come down through his family the way he claims.”
“Get to the point, will you?” Ronnie was impatient.
“All right. My question’s this: Doesn’t that mean that Mr. Caldwell owns half this land?”