A SCRAP OF FILM
A SCRAP OF FILM
A SCRAP OF FILM
The area in front of Morris’s store was one of vast confusion. A hook-and-ladder truck blocked it off from the east and a chemical truck from the west. Traffic had piled up behind both of them, in a solid mass. And the sidewalks were jammed with people. It looked as if everyone in Brentwood had converged on the spot.
The voice of Andy Kane, chief of Brentwood’s five-man police force, rose over the hubbub. “All right, keep moving there!” he shouted. “There’s nothing to see here, folks. Keep moving!”
Ken and Sandy squeezed through to him. Chief Kane glared when he saw them. “There’s nothing for you here either,” he said. “That’s the fire—the whole thing!” He pointed a scornful finger at a metal wastebasket standing in the middle of the street, still smoking faintly but now safely covered with the white foam from chemical extinguishers.
“So that’s all it is!” Sandy’s glance took in the busy policemen, urging the crowd along, the two great fire engines with their coils of hose, the firemen in heavy black waterproofs, and the jammed traffic.
“This is something the fire chief will want to remember,” he said with a grin. “See you later,” he added to Ken, and disappeared into the crowd with his camera.
A few minutes later Ken spotted him on the roof of Morris’s two-story building, aiming his lens at the crowd below and at the small foam-shrouded wastebasket at its center. When Sandy rejoined Ken again he was still grinning.
“I’ll print this up for the chief’s New Year’s card,” Sandy said. Then he straightened his face quickly as Chief Dick James emerged from the jewelry store.
“Everything under control, Chief?” Ken asked.
James nodded shortly. “Total damage one wastebasket and a black smudge on about five square feet of wall. Quick thinking on Sam Morris’s part, of course,” he added, “or it might have been a real fire. The minute he saw flames coming out of the basket he picked it up and carried it into the street.”
“How’d it start?” Ken asked. “Cigarette?”
James shrugged. “Probably. Or a still-burning match. People are so danged careless. Wonder it doesn’t happen oftener, the way they toss stuff around.”
Sandy, bending over the wastebasket, sniffed curiously. “Smell this thing, Chief,” he said. “Maybe it’s my imagination.”
“What are you imagining?” But James bent over the basket and took a deep breath. Then he looked up with the same puzzlement that Sandy showed.
“All right, masterminds,” Ken said. “What gives?”
“Film,” Sandy said. “Or at least that’s what it smells like. But why would there be film in Sam’s basket?”
“That’s a good question,” James said. “Let’s go ask Sam if he’s got the answer.” But before they went inside the shop he called one of his men over and instructed him to take the wastebasket to the firehouse and examine it carefully.
There were fewer customers inside the store than there had been earlier, but otherwise it looked very much as it had earlier that morning. Sam Morris, wearing a smoky streak down one cheek, came forward to speak to them.
“Sorry about all the excitement, Chief,” he said. “Your box is repaired,” he added to the boys.
“Gosh!” Ken said. “I’d forgotten all about it.”
“Would there have been any film in that wastebasket, Sam?” James asked.
“Film?” The jeweler looked blank. “What kind of film?”
“We don’t know,” James said. “We’re not even sure if that’s what it was, but that’s what it smells like.”
Sam shook his head. “I don’t know what was in the basket. It stands over there, beneath that desk.” He pointed to a writing shelf built against one wall, for the use of customers who wanted to fill out cards to enclose with gifts. “It’s usually almost empty, except for a couple of cards that have been blotted or spoiled, or maybe an empty cigarette package. I don’t know why anybody would have thrown film in it.”
“Film is inflammable stuff,” James pointed out. “Maybe somebody wanted to start a fire in here.”
“A pyromaniac?” Sam looked unbelieving.
James shook his head. “I was thinking of a crook—a man smart enough to start a fire, so that he could make off with a handful of rings, or watches, during the excitement. Have you checked your stock, Sam?”
Morris shook his head. “It didn’t occur to me. I had the basket out in the street in a couple of seconds, and then I came right back in. My clerks were here all the time.” He smiled wearily. “There wasn’t half as much excitement in the store as there was out in the street after the trucks arrived.”
“Where were you when the blaze started up?” James asked.
“Behind the partition—in the workroom.” Morris gestured toward the rear wall broken by a single door and a windowlike gap above a ledge. “I’d just finished putting in a watch crystal for the man who was here when you boys were in earlier,” he added to Sandy and Ken. “He’d been waiting for a few minutes and I was just handing him his watch through the window there when one of the customers yelled ‘Fire!’ I saw the smoke right away, and I ran out of the workroom through that door and carried the basket to the street.”
“You don’t know what merchandise was out on top of the counter at the time?”
“No, I don’t, Chief. But I can find out.” Morris hurried off and held brief consultations with both his clerks. When he came back he looked relieved.
“There were no small items being displayed just then,” he said. “One clerk was showing electric percolators, and the other was displaying cut glass to one customer and selling a smoking set to another one at the same time.”
James still didn’t look entirely satisfied. “Check your rings and watches and other small stuff as soon as you get a chance, Sam, and let me know if anything’s missing.”
“All right,” Morris agreed. “But I still don’t think there was anything deliberate about that fire. It must have been just a careless smoker who threw a match in the basket.”
“You didn’t see that happen, did you?” Sandy asked.
“No—and my clerks didn’t either. I asked them. We were just too busy to be looking around.”
“Sure.” James nodded. “Well, maybe we’re guessing wrong about this film business. But if we run down anything we’ll let you know.”
“Don’t forget your box, boys.” Morris hurried back to the window in the rear partition, reached a hand through, and lifted it from a shelf just inside the opening.
“How much do we owe you, Sam?” Ken asked.
Sam smiled. “Since when do I charge a good friend for a few minutes’ work?” He shook his head. “Go on—beat it. Just see if you can get it home without dropping it again.”
The boys thanked him and left the store with James.
“Give us a ring if you really do turn up some film in that basket, will you, Chief?” Sandy asked.
“Sure.”
Back in theAdvanceoffice Ken handed the box to his father. “We’ve got Mom’s present all right, but we haven’t got much of a story.”
“We haven’t got much of a story yet,” Sandy corrected him.
“What does the ‘yet’ mean?” Pop demanded, while Richard Holt lifted the cardboard lid and assured himself that the catch on the little iron box was now in perfect working order.
Sandy explained the possibility of incendiarism. Bert’s automatic hoot of laughter died when he realized that Chief James shared Sandy’s suspicion.
“But if Sam says nothing was missing, it doesn’t sound like a grab-and-run deal,” Pop pointed out.
“He doesn’tthinkanything is missing,” Sandy reminded him. “He might still find—” He broke off as the phone rang.
A moment later Sandy was talking to the caller who had asked for him.
“No kidding?” he said. “About six inches? And thirty-five millimeter, huh? Did you find a cartridge or a spool?” He listened for another moment and then said “Sure. Thanks, Chief,” and hung up.
“I guess you all heard that.” There was a note of triumph in Sandy’s voice. “They found a six-inch scrap of thirty-five-millimeter film in the wastebasket. My guess is it’s the remains of a roll for a candid camera like mine.”
“That still doesn’t make it an incendiary job,” Bert said firmly. “Probably some customer of Sam’s had just picked the roll up at a drugstore, where he was having it developed. He looked at it while he was waiting in Sam’s, saw that it was no good, and threw it away.”
“Could be.” Richard Holt nodded his agreement. “Of course anybody should know better than to throw film into a public wastebasket where it might cause just this kind of trouble. But there are always careless people around.”
“Write just a brief paragraph on the fire, Ken,” Pop said decisively. “Then, if Sam does report anything missing among his stock, we’ll go to work on it.” He turned to Dick Holt. “Did Sam do a good job on your box?”
“Perfect,” Ken’s father assured him.
“Fine. I’m not surprised. Sam’s a good man.”
“And he wouldn’t let us pay for it, Dad,” Ken said.
Pop smiled. “I’m not surprised at that either. Here, I’ll help you with that, Dick,” he added, as the correspondent brought out the wrapping paper and ribbon he had put into his overcoat pocket that morning at the house.
Ken and Sandy were alone in the office that noon. Pop and Bert had carried Richard Holt off to their weekly lunch club meeting.
“Don’t cook up any more mysteries,” Bert had warned as he left.
“Mysteries!” Sandy made a face at his brother’s disappearing back. “Every time we ask a simple question we’re accused of stirring up trouble.”
Ken slipped a sheet of paper into his typewriter and twirled the roller. “We don’t do badly,” he said, smiling. “Maybe they’ve got some reason to suspect us.”
Sandy stared. “Whose side are you on, anyway? You were the one who started the whole business this morning.”
“Sure—sure. And I’m not satisfied about that business yet. But I guess maybe it was a little too much when we came tearing in with talk about an incendiary fire. Especially,” Ken added pointedly, “in view of something I remember you telling me a while ago.”
“What was that?” Sandy asked.
“You told me that modern camera film is called safety film because it doesnotgo up in flames, fast—the way film used to do.”
“That’s right,” Sandy agreed. “It doesn’t.”
“Then why would anybody deliberately try to start a fire with film?” Ken asked.
Sandy smiled. “A really smart crook wouldn’t, maybe,” he admitted. “If he was somebody like you, for example, who had had the benefit of my educational conversation. But film used to be very inflammable, and it probably still has that reputation with a lot of people.”
Ken looked unconvinced. “I still don’t think it was very smart of you to become suspicious just because you smelled film in that basket. After all, if a man plans to rob a jewelry store, and his success depends on a good rousing fire, you’d think he’d look into the subject a little first. That he’d make sure he had the right materials on hand.”
“Well, I thought maybe this wasn’t carefully planned,” Sandy said argumentatively. “Couldn’t it have been done on impulse—on the spur of the moment? In that case you might easily duck into a drugstore and buy a roll of film. It’s easy to carry around. It’s not noticeable. It’s—”
“Wait a minute!” Ken broke in suddenly. “Maybe it all fits together!”
“Maybe all what fits together?”
“It’s the iron box—Mom’s present! That’s what’s doing it.” Ken folded his arms over his typewriter and rested his chin on them, staring at the gaily wrapped package that now stood on Pop’s desk. “Yes, that’s it. I’m sure of it.” His voice was tense.
“Are you out of your mind?” Sandy demanded. “What are you talking about? What’s the little iron box—?”
“Listen,” Ken said. “It’s all perfectly obvious. That box is important to somebody. The somebody, whoever he is, knew Dad was bringing it home with him. He—the somebody, I mean—went to Dad’s apartment last night looking for it. It wasn’t there. He knows something about Dad—at least enough to realize that he was coming to Brentwood. So later last night he tried to break into the house here, but I scared him off. He must have hung around, saw that we were taking the box to Sam Morris’s this morning, and made another attempt there.”
“And there he is foiled again!” There was laughter behind Sandy’s mock-dramatic voice.
“Right,” Ken said. “Because, as you explained to me yourself, he made a bad choice of material for his fire. He wants to create a diversion. He has some vague idea that film is inflammable, and dashes into the nearest drugstore to get some. He slips into the crowd at Sam’s, drops it into the wastebasket, along with a lit match, and then—”
Sandy, openly grinning now, picked it up. “And then sees his whole villainous dream go up in a tiny cloud of smoke.”
“Right,” Ken said again, more firmly than ever. “Because, for one thing, the fire only lasts a second. And, for another, that man waiting for his watch crystal is standing right in front of the window, unconsciously protecting the box on the shelf inside. Sam told us he was there when it happened. Remember?”
“Oh, I remember all right,” Sandy admitted. “But the whole thing sounds like a hallucination, my friend. In the first place, why would anybody particularly want the box? Your father told us it wasn’t valuable—that he picked it up from the porter in the Rome office.”
“It’s an antique,” Ken pointed out.
“Sure. So is any old stone you can find in a field.”
“Look,” Ken said, “I don’t knowwhyanybody wants the box. But it looks to me as if somebody does. I was right about somebody breaking into the house last night. You were right about the film in Sam’s wastebasket, which is certainly an odd place for film to be.”
Sandy stood up abruptly. “O.K.,” he said. “Maybe we can check that part of your nightmare, anyway. If somebody bought that film with the deliberate purpose of starting a fire, he probably got it in Schooley’s photo shop right across the street from Sam’s. Let’s go and find out.”
They grabbed their coats and started for the door. Ken picked up the box from Pop’s desk on the way.
“I think I’ll keep my hands on this—just in case,” he said.
The photographic supply shop was as crowded as Sam’s store had been. Several minutes went by before the boys could catch the attention of one of the clerks.
But finally one of them said, “Hi, Sandy. What is it today? Film or flash bulbs?”
“Neither,” Sandy told him. “Just some information. Did you sell a roll of thirty-five millimeter this morning?”
The clerk’s eyebrows rose. “Are you crazy? I must have sold at least fifty. In case you don’t know it, chum, tomorrow is Christmas and quite a few people seem to want to take pictures that day.”
“I know,” Sandy said, “but—”
“Wait,” Ken interrupted. “Let’s put it this way. Did you sell any to a man who either didn’t seem to know anything about film, or who didn’t care what kind he bought?”
The clerk’s eyebrows rose another fraction of an inch. “Of all the idiotic—” he began, and then stopped. He looked at the boys sharply for an instant, and then called over his shoulder to a fellow clerk. “Rick! Got a second?”
Rick left his customer who was examining a small camera and joined them. “What’s up?”
“Didn’t you tell me about some queer duck who came in this morning to buy film and didn’t know what size he wanted or what speed or anything?”
Rick nodded. “Sure. He just asked for film. When I asked what size, he said it didn’t matter. And then when I kind of stared at him he said it was for a little camera. I figured he meant a miniature job, so I suggested a cartridge of thirty-five millimeter and he said that would be fine. But he didn’t know whether he wanted color film or black and white, and he didn’t know what I was talking about when I mentioned high-speed stuff. I finally gave him a spool of the cheapest film we have, just to get rid of him.”
Ken made an effort to keep his voice calm. “Do you remember what he looked like?”
“I probably wouldn’t remember my own mother if she came in here today,” Rick said with a grin. “But I do recall one more funny thing about that guy,” he added suddenly. “Right after he left I had to reach into the front window for a camera some customer wanted to see, and I noticed him crossing the street. The dumb cluck was opening the cartridge box and exposing the film to the light! He’s sure going to be in for a surprise when he tries to take pictures with it.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Ken said, beginning to pull Sandy away. “I doubt if he planned to take any pictures at all.”
BOOBY TRAP
BOOBY TRAP
BOOBY TRAP
The cuckoo stuck his head out of the old wall clock to announce that the hour of seven had arrived. But nobody in the Allen house that evening bothered to listen to him.
Tiny Mom Allen, in a rustling new housecoat, appeared unaware of even the wild litter of crumpled paper wrappings and ribbons that surrounded her. In her lap lay the iron box, and her fingers were already busy fitting together the bits of velvet with which she was lining it.
Pop was smoke-screening the room with a handsome new meerschaum that Richard Holt had brought him from Europe, and happily leafing through a huge new world atlas that had so far provided an answer for every question he could contrive.
Bert, resplendent in a British tweed sports coat, swung his new golf clubs one by one, in reckless arcs that threatened every window and every piece of bric-a-brac in the house.
Richard Holt was trying out a new portable typewriter, a lightweight model especially designed for globe-trotters like himself. “It even spells better than my old one,” he had announced.
Ken, after an hour’s experimentation, was still finding new gadgets on the chronometer his father had bought for him in Switzerland. It was a stop watch and completely waterproof, and it told the date and the phases of the moon as well as the hour of the day.
“Got it!” Sandy’s exclamation broke a long silence. He gestured with the tiny camera he held in his hand. “I knew this thing must have a delayed-action timer on it some place—it’s got everything else. And I finally found it.”
He made a few swift adjustments on the little mechanism, moved a lever, and then set the camera down on the table, lens toward the room. It made a faint buzzing sound. Sandy waded through torn papers to his mother’s side, putting his arm around her shoulders an instant before the buzzing stopped with a sharp click.
“How do you like that, Mom?” he demanded. “I just took our picture.”
“Doesn’t seem possible that anything so tiny could really work,” Mom said.
“It does, though,” Sandy assured her, returning to the table to reset the camera that was only half the size of a cigarette package.
“No more of me,” Mom said firmly, getting up and putting her box on an already well-laden table. “I have to get those dishes cleared away. Any volunteers?”
Pop peered at her through the haze of smoke. “My old army training, Mom, taught me never to volunteer for anything.”
“In that case,” Mom said, “I’ll have to draft you.”
Finally they all got up and followed Mom into the big Allen kitchen. She excused Sandy and Ken from duty, on the grounds that they had done the dishes the night before, and put Bert to work at the sink. Ken’s father and Pop dried.
“Bring me my box, Ken,” Mom said, when she had everyone organized. “I’ve got so much help here I can get back to work on my velvet lining.”
The brightly lighted room gave Sandy all the opportunity he needed to make further use of his new camera.
“I can’t wait to finish up this first roll,” he explained, taking one picture after another. “As soon as it’s done I’m going right down to the office and develop it. Hold it, Bert. Just one more. There, that does it.”
“Guess I’ll go along,” Ken said. “Want to come, Dad?”
“I do not,” Holt said. “Holding this dish towel is all the activity I can manage after so much excitement. Besides, I’m husbanding my strength for tomorrow’s turkey.”
The boys, having decided to walk the few short blocks to theAdvanceoffice, put on their heavy lumberjackets. But when they went through the front door Ken turned back toward the rear of the house.
“Hey,” Sandy said, “I thought we were going to leave the car.”
“We are. I just want to check something.” Ken followed the walk they had cleared that morning, until he was standing outside the kitchen windows. “I just want to see how much of the room is visible from out here,” he said quietly. “Hmm. Practically all of it, except the corner where the door leads into the hall.”
“So what?” Sandy demanded.
“So now we know that if somebody was standing out here last night,” Ken answered, leading the way back toward the front sidewalk, “he could have seen us put the iron box in the shoe box, and leave it there on the sideboard.”
Neither of them spoke for the distance of a block. Their feet were crunching on the snow at a cross street when Sandy said, “Well, so long as you don’t quote me, I’ll admit that business at Schooley’s this afternoon has me a little worried. I still don’t see exactly why you’re fastening on the box as somebody’s special target, but it does all sound slightly fishy. I don’t think we’d get any sympathy if we talked about it at the house, though—especially now that your father’s here, to help Pop and Bert out with their usual ribbing.”
“We won’t tell them about it until we have some more proof,” Ken assured him.
“More proof?” Sandy emphasized the first word.
“Sure.” Ken ignored the skepticism in his voice. “I think we’ve already got some. And if somebody makes another attempt to break into the house tonight—”
“Huh? Nice cheerful thoughts you have.” Sandy scooped up a handful of snow and packed it thoughtfully between his gloved hands. “But maybe you’re right. At least you may be near enough right so that we ought to put the chains on both doors tonight.” Sandy hurled his snowball at a hydrant and hit it squarely.
“Why?”
“Why?” Sandy repeated blankly. “Because you just told me somebody might be planning to try to get in.”
“Exactly. And if the attempt fails, we’d have no proof that it ever happened.”
“Perhaps,” Sandy said politely, “you could express yourself a little more clearly. It would require a great effort, of course, but won’t you just try for my sake?”
Ken grinned. “In words of approximately one syllable,” he said, “what I’m suggesting is that we make it easy for someone to get in, but that we be on hand to catch him. In other words, that we set a booby trap.”
Sandy gave one loud agonized groan and then announced that he refused to discuss the matter. Down in the basement darkroom, beneath theAdvanceoffice, he went about the business of mixing up his developing solutions in dignified silence. With a great show of concentration he figured out a method for suspending the tiny film from his new camera in a tank designed for much larger film. He turned out the lights, put the roll into the tank, fastened the lightproof cover in place and then turned the lights on again.
“Let’s see,” he muttered to himself. “I’m using the finest grain developer I have. I’d better give it fourteen minutes.” Carefully he set his timer.
“While I’m here,” he said then, still talking to himself, “I might as well develop that print of the fire this afternoon. If I want to print it up in time to mail to Chief James as a New Year’s card....”
Once more his hands were busy, and he turned the lights off and on again.
“There,” he said finally. “If it’s a good negative I’ll make a nice big print of it, so he can hang it up in his office, labeled ‘Firemen at Work.’”
For the first time since they had come into the darkroom he turned around to look at Ken. His black-haired friend was conscientiously rocking the first film tank back and forth, as Sandy had so often asked him to do in the past.
“Thanks,” Sandy said. “That ought to be enough now.”
“You’re quite welcome. Any time.” Ken sat down, stretched out his legs, and stared up at the ceiling.
Sandy’s mouth finally split in a wide grin. “All right,” he said. “I give up. What kind of booby trap?”
Ken spoke as if there had been no interruption in their conversation.
“The important thing is to set it without the folks knowing anything.”
“You can say that again,” Sandy murmured.
“So we can’t do much about it until everybody’s in bed.” Ken looked down at his new watch. “I can’t tell if it’s quarter to nine or December twenty-fourth.”
“It might be both,” Sandy said helpfully.
“By gum, I believe you’re right.” They grinned at each other briefly. “O.K.,” Ken said then, “you have just proved what I always suspected—that you’re the mechanical genius in this outfit. You figure it out.”
“What’s difficult about it? We leave the chains off both doors. We sit in utter darkness—in the living room, say, where we couldn’t possibly be seen by anybody entering either door. And when somebody comes in—ifsomebody comes in—” His involved sentence broke off in a vast yawn.
Ken yawned too. “He finds us,” he said, when he could speak, “fast asleep. He takes the box. He departs.” He sat up and shook himself. “That is not my idea of a booby trap.”
The timer bell rang just then, and for the next several minutes they were busy. The activity roused them a little, but before the films were hanging from their drying clips both Ken and Sandy had yawned again.
Sandy tried to examine the tiny strip of film with a magnifying glass. “It looks great,” he muttered. “Wish it were dry already, so I could try printing them up. Wonder how big an enlargement I’ll be able to make.”
“Look,” Ken said, “don’t start getting any ideas about staying down here half the night to work on them. If the rest of the family is half as sleepy as we are, they’ll be turning in early tonight. And we’d better be there if we really want to watch for a visitor.”
“All right,” Sandy agreed. “I’m coming. I offer only one slight correction to your theory. We’d better be there—with a cup of coffee.”
When they turned the corner into the Allen’s block their suspicions about others being as sleepy as they were themselves seemed confirmed. The living-room light winked out as they watched, and a moment later the light went on in the big corner bedroom that belonged to Pop and Mom Allen. There was also a light in the room Richard Holt was occupying. Bert’s room was already dark.
“Ken—Sandy—is that you?” Mom called down as they let themselves in.
Sandy answered with a standing family joke. “No, Mom. There’s nobody here but us chickens.”
“Well, I just wanted to be sure,” Mom replied calmly. “There’s some cake left—and plenty of milk.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Sandy lowered his voice. “Let’s not rattle the coffeepot. Let her think we’re having our usual quick snack before going to bed.”
It was half past ten when they turned out the kitchen light, leaving the entire house in darkness. Quietly they tiptoed into the living room and settled themselves on the couch.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” Ken warned, “or you’ll fall asleep.”
“Don’t worry. I’m wide awake now.”
There was a few minutes of complete silence.
“You’re sure you’re awake?” Ken whispered.
“Huh? What?” Sandy stirred.
Ken poked him. “This is never going to work,” he said. “I was almost asleep myself. Coffee has certainly been overrated as a stimulant.”
“We could take turns,” Sandy murmured. “If I just took a short nap now, you could—”
“No, you don’t,” Ken said. “Get up. Walk around a little.”
“In a room littered with Christmas presents? I’d stumble over something right away and wake up the whole house.”
“Well,” Ken said, “I told you to rig up a booby trap.”
“Come on.” Sandy stood up, a shadowy figure in the faint light reflected into the room from the moonlit snow outside.
“Where are you going?”
“To rig up a booby trap. To fasten a lot of noisy pots and pans up over the door, so that even if we are asleep we’ll hear anybody trying to get in.”
“Those things never work,” Ken said.
“Mine will,” Sandy insisted. He crossed the room to the desk and cautiously prodded among its cubbyholes. “This is what I want—this light adhesive tape.”
Then he led the way to the kitchen where they opened the cupboard door as quietly as possible and lifted out a six-quart kettle and several smaller pans.
“Pie tins,” Sandy whispered. “They make a good clatter.”
“Got them,” Ken murmured.
Using small pieces of tape they fastened several pans over the back door, so lightly that the opening of the door would be sure to pull them from their place.
“If anybody opens this enough even to put a finger in, these things will come down,” Sandy whispered.
“If they don’t come down by their own weight the minute we turn our backs,” Ken added.
“Don’t criticize. A booby trap was your idea,” Sandy reminded him.
By the time the clock struck eleven the front door had been similarly rigged, and the boys were back in their place on the couch.
Stillness settled over the house. A board, creaking by itself in the dry night air, sounded like the noise of a pistol shot. The ticking of the clock at the far end of the room was as clear and distinct as if it were right beside them. When a car passed several blocks away both boys roused out of a near sleep and came to their feet. But after a few seconds of tense waiting they settled down again sheepishly.
“We going to stay here all night?” Sandy asked, when the cuckoo had struck twelve and then twelve thirty.
Ken answered him with a warning hand on his arm. There were footsteps on the porch steps. Both boys listened intently, every nerve alert. Ken could feel Sandy’s big body tense itself for action.
Carefully they came to their feet. With Sandy in the lead they drifted silently across the carpet, following the path they had cleared for themselves earlier.
There was a fumbling at the outer storm door, which was unlocked as usual.
Ken had one finger ready on the light switch. Sandy was crouched low, ready to pounce.
Metal scratched faintly against metal. Hands worked cautiously at the lock of the inner door. An almost inaudible rattle told them that the mechanism was clicking open. The knob began to turn.
Then the door itself eased slowly open. And suddenly, with an unearthly clatter, the pots and pans rigged above it crashed to the floor, cascading over a figure outlined in the doorway.
As Ken snapped on the light, Sandy leaped forward. His arms circled the intruder, and the two heavy bodies thudded to the floor.
Ken barely had time to notice that Sandy was safely on top when a shout sounded from upstairs.
“Hey! What’s going on?”
Ken lunged for the intruder’s feet and hung on. “It’s all right, Pop!” he called. “We got him!” Out of the corner of his eye he could see Pop Allen tearing down the stairs, with Richard Holt right behind him.
“You’ve got me all right.” The muffled voice spoke from somewhere beneath Sandy’s considerable weight. “But why?” it grunted. “Just tell me why?”
Ken’s hands jerked away from the feet he was holding as if they had burned him. In the same instant Sandy rolled aside, freeing his victim.
And then both boys scrambled hastily out of the way as a furious red-faced Bert, pushing aside pots and pans, got slowly to his feet.
“Gosh!” Ken said. “Gee, Bert—we thought you were upstairs asleep!”
“Sure,” Sandy echoed. “We thought—”
Then Sandy looked at Ken and Ken looked at him. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say.
THE MISSING OUNCES
THE MISSING OUNCES
THE MISSING OUNCES
It was only when the glistening brown turkey was carried to the dinner table the next day that the boys had any relief from the constant barrage of kidding they had been receiving all morning.
“I never thought I’d have to urge the menfolks of my family to put their minds on food,” Mom said, “but that is exactly what I’m doing. The boys have had enough teasing. After all, they’re not always wrong.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Sandy said, sliding into his chair.
“All the same,” Ken said, “I still—”
“If you start all over again, Ken,” Mom warned, “I won’t be responsible.”
Ken smiled at her. “O.K., Mom.”
Dinner conversation was limited to murmured comments about the food, which Richard Holt insisted was better than any he had ever had in the most famous restaurants of the world. And after dinner a heavy peace settled on the household, broken only when occasional callers dropped in for brief holiday visits. Outside it had grown slightly warmer, but the gray sky promised more snow. By six o’clock heavy snowflakes were falling steadily.
Richard Holt roused himself from a sleepy contemplation of the fire. “This is no night for you boys to drive me into New York,” he announced. “I’ll take the train instead.”
“Why don’t you just stay over until morning?” Pop suggested. “Doesn’t look as though this will last long. The roads should be better then.”
The correspondent shook his head. “Wish I could. But I promised Granger I’d be in early tomorrow morning to talk over that Washington assignment.” He turned to the boys. “Unless you’re actually snowed in here I’ll expect to see you tomorrow, as we’d planned. I’ll meet you at the apartment in the afternoon, and we’ll have dinner before the wrestling matches.” He got to his feet. “Anybody have a timetable?”
“There’s a train leaving here at six fifty,” Bert told him.
“Good. I can make that easily.”
“We’ll at least drive you to the station, Dad,” Ken said.
“And afterward we’ll print up those negatives, so we can bring them in tomorrow to show you,” Sandy added.
About an hour later Sandy was proudly studying the first print from his new camera. “Look at this,” he told Ken. “A four-by-five print from a negative less than half an inch square! That little peanut certainly has a wonderful lens.”
“Mmm,” Ken murmured. “Great.”
Sandy dropped the print back into the tray and prepared to enlarge the next image on his tiny strip of film. “Wish we’d gotten a picture of Bert snowed under by pans last night,” he said, grinning over his shoulder.
“I think that event will live in our memories all right without a picture to remind us,” Ken assured him.
The phone rang as he finished the sentence and he reached out to pick up the darkroom extension.
“Hello. BrentwoodAdvance,” he said automatically.... “Oh, Mr. Morris.... Yes, this is Ken.” He listened for a moment. “No, we don’t,” he said then. “Never saw him before.... Really? Well, he’ll probably get in touch with you. I don’t see why you should have to worry about it.”
“What’s up?” Sandy asked, when Ken hung up the receiver a moment later.
“Sam Morris wanted to know if that man with the broken watch crystal was a friend of ours,” Ken reported. “He remembered seeing us talk to him.”
“Why?” Sandy asked, his voice preoccupied. He was using a magnifier to focus the image being projected on his enlarger easel.
“The man had just given Sam a twenty-dollar bill to pay for his crystal when the fire started,” Ken explained. “Sam stuffed the bill in his pocket as he ran out to pick up the wastebasket, and when he came back later to give him his change the man had disappeared. Sam thought he could send him his change if we knew who he was.”
“Nobody else but Sam would worry that much about it,” Sandy said. “Anybody else would figure that if the man wanted his change he’d come back for it—or remember it in the first place.”
“I know.” Ken dropped into a chair. “But the man said he was just passing through Brentwood, remember? Maybe by the time he realized he’d forgotten his change he was too far away to come back, and not knowing Sam’s last name couldn’t call him up. Anyway, that’s how Sam thinks it was.
“Wish we could have helped him out,” he went on after a minute. “For the man’s sake as well as Sam’s. I still think Mom would be out one jewel box if he hadn’t been standing at that window when the fire happened.”
“You can’t prove that by what happened last night.” Sandy grinned as he rocked a tray gently.
“How right you are. Especially,” Ken admitted, “since I stayed awake until daylight and can practically swear nobody tried to get in the house all night.”
“Were you awake too?” Sandy grinned again. “So was I—and without even trying. Every time I got sleepy Bert’s face seemed to rise up before me and—”
“Same thing happened to me.”
Neither of them spoke then for some time. Sandy worked steadily. Finally he said, “Here, make yourself useful. Take these prints out of the hypo and set them washing in the sink. I’m just going to print up that picture of the fire and then I’ll call it a day.”
“Sure,” Ken agreed.
“Look at this,” Sandy said a few minutes later. He was holding up a wet eight-by-ten print and pointing to one corner of it with a dripping forefinger. “Take a look at that car,” he said, as Ken joined him. “The one parked right across the street from Sam’s store.”
“I’m looking,” Ken told him. “What am I supposed to see?”
“The man in it leaning out of the window to see what’s going on,” Sandy told him impatiently. “Isn’t he the one who was getting his watch crystal fixed?”
Ken bent closer. “Sure enough! Must have been caught in the traffic jam.” He took hold of Sandy’s wrist and held it so that light fell more clearly on the print. “Could you make the enlargement any bigger?”
“Sure. But why?”
“If we could read the license plate on that car maybe we could help Sam out after all.”
“That’s an idea. But we won’t need a print for that. I’ll just make a larger projection.” Sandy dropped the wet picture back into the tray, adjusted his enlarger to a bigger image, and turned on the light. “Now you can see the number,” he said, pointing to the tremendous image on the easel.
“Right. That does it.” Ken copied the number off on a scrap of paper. “It’s a New York license. And I’ll bet Dad can get the car owner’s name from the New York Motor Vehicle Bureau. We’ll phone him when he’s had a chance to reach home.”
Sandy’s prints were all washed and on their drying boards by the time Ken got his father on the telephone. Richard Holt laughed when he first heard Ken’s request.
“Don’t tell me you’re on the track of another mystery,” he said. “After last night—”
“This is something else, Dad,” Ken broke in hurriedly. He explained about Sam Morris’s phone call and their subsequent discovery of the watch-owner’s car in Sandy’s print. “Sam was so nice to us we just thought we ought to try to help him out.”
“You’re right,” Richard Holt said quickly. “We should. I’ll call Global and have the agency’s Albany man put in an inquiry. Ought to have the owner’s name for you tomorrow.”
“O.K. Swell, Dad. Sandy says to tell you the little camera’s a honey,” he added before he hung up.
“You ready to go home now?” he asked Sandy.
“I will be in a minute. Just want to take these prints off the boards. Most of them are dry now.” One by one he began to lift them from the chromium plates, examining each one as he turned it face up. “Look at them,” he said admiringly, reaching for his magnifying glass. “I could enlarge them to eight-by-tens and still have pretty sharp prints!”
“Do your gloating at home,” Ken suggested. “I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but I believe I’m actually hungry.”
Sandy grinned. “Turkey sandwiches sound pretty good to me too.” He put the prints into an envelope and slipped them into his pocket, along with his magnifying glass. “All right. Let’s go.”
As they walked away from theAdvanceoffice Sandy said, “If there’s any of the dressing left I could do with some of that too. And maybe even a piece of mince pie.”
Ken seemed too preoccupied to comment on the suggestion, and when he finally spoke, Sandy had driven the convertible halfway home. “There could be just one reason for anybody wanting that box badly enough to burglarize two houses and set a fire,” he declared. “It must be valuable.”
“Now, look,” Sandy protested, maneuvering the car carefully along the ruts of a snowy street. “We’ve been through this. Your father said the box wasn’t valuable. He ought to know. Besides, after last night—”
“Dad isn’t an expert on antiques,” Ken interrupted. “The only reason he thinks it isn’t valuable is because he apparently didn’t pay very much for it.”
“Well, apparently the man who sold it to your father didn’t think it was very valuable either, or he’d have asked more for it,” Sandy pointed out reasonably.
“Maybe he had his own reasons for selling it cheaply,” Ken said darkly. “Dad assumed it was part of the porter’s own household stuff—heirlooms, I suppose—that he was selling off because he was broke. But suppose Dad was fooled? Suppose the box was stolen and offered to Dad inexpensively, just so he’d buy it and bring it through American customs. Then the idea would be to steal it from him, once it was here, and sell it for its real value.”
“But it hasn’t been stolen,” Sandy reminded him. “Nobody tried to get it last night. Besides, there’s a hole in your argument big enough to drive a truck through. If a valuable box had been stolen, the customs authorities would have been alerted to watch for it. And no matter how well they know your father by now, they’d have shown at least a little curiosity when he turned up with something they’d been warned to watch out for. In fact, they’d probably have landed on him like a ton of bricks.”
“Well, maybe it isn’tthatvaluable,” Ken admitted. “Maybe it’s not the sort of thing that would arouse an international hunt.”
Sandy laughed. “I see. It’s only valuable enough to cause two burglaries and an attempted arson. You’re just not making sense, Ken.”
Sandy had driven the car into the Allen garage, but he made no effort toward getting out. “I’m not going into the house with you while you’re still on this subject,” he announced. “I’ve stood all the ribbing I want to take for one day. Well? Are you convinced?”
Ken smiled faintly. “I’m convinced that your arguments are unanswerable—for the moment,” he admitted. “But do you honestly believe there’s no connection at all between that unlocked door at Dad’s apartment, the attempted entry into the house here, and the fire at Sam’s?”
Sandy ran his gloved hand through his hair. “I’ll go this far: I’ll agree they make a curious string of coincidences. And you know how I mistrust coincidences. But don’t ask me what the connection is. And don’t expect me to believe that the box is a priceless antique.” He turned the door handle. “And don’t go on about this when we get inside,” he added menacingly.
“All right,” Ken agreed. “I’m with you there.”
The rest of the Allens were already in the kitchen. Pop, towering on one side of his tiny wife, was slicing generous slabs of white meat from the turkey carcass. Bert, towering on Mom’s other side, was cutting bread. Mom, between them, was making sandwiches.
“Ha!” Bert said. “The demon sleuths—and probably on the trail of food this time.”
“Lock up the pots and pans, Mom,” Pop contributed.
“Now that will do,” Mom said firmly. “Boys, get the milk from the icebox and get some glasses.”
Sandy brought his pictures out as soon as they had sat down, to ensure a safe subject of conversation. “Look what that little camera can do,” he announced proudly.
The strategy was effective. Even Bert became engrossed. And half an hour later, when the boys were left alone in the kitchen to clean up, Bert forgot to warn them against setting further booby traps as he went up to bed.
“I’ll wash,” Ken said. “We’d better put these things away before they get splashed,” he added, beginning to gather together the prints still spread out among the dishes.
Suddenly he halted and bent low over the table. “Where’s your magnifying glass?”
“Here,” Sandy said, handing it to him. “Why?”
Ken was holding one print close to the light and peering at it through the glass.
Sandy grinned proudly. “Is that the one where you can even tell what time it is by the kitchen clock?”
“It’s the one of Mom sitting alongside the cupboard. But look where the box is—the iron box, I mean.”
Sandy shrugged. “I remember where it was then—on the kitchen scale. Mom put it there while she was working on the lining.”
“And you put it there the night Dad got home. Remember?” There was mounting excitement in Ken’s voice. “Just before Dad dropped it.”
“That’s right. I did. So?”
“Then you said something about how much it weighed. Do you remember what you said?”
Sandy looked at him questioningly, but a moment later he obediently wrinkled his brow in an effort to recall the moment. “Let’s see. I said something about how heavy it was for its size. And—wait—I think I said it weighed exactly four and a half pounds.”
“That’s what I thought you said!” Ken sounded triumphant. “But take a look at this. The box didn’t weigh that much last night when you took this picture. Look what the scale shows here. It’s considerably under four and a half. Isn’t it?”
He handed the picture and the magnifying glass to Sandy, and Sandy studied the print carefully. “You’re right,” he said slowly. “But this is a tiny image. Maybe—”
“Let’s check up. Mom hasn’t got the lining fastened in yet. The box must weigh just what it did last night.”
Ken disappeared for a moment and came back carrying it in his hands. He put it on the kitchen scales, and both boys watched silently as the pointer swung back and forth in diminishing arcs. Finally it came to rest.
“Four pounds and five ounces,” Sandy said wonderingly. “But how can that be? I must have been wrong the other night. But I was sure—” He broke off abruptly. “Could Sam have done anything to the box to reduce its weight? Do you suppose he had to take something off in order to fix it?”
Ken was still watching the scale as if fascinated. “He just straightened the bent lever. Even if he had removed it entirely that wouldn’t have reduced the weight by three ounces.”
He looked up, finally, into Sandy’s puzzled face. “I don’t think this is the same box Dad brought home,” Ken said.