Chapter IV: Part 4

“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 filing cabinet. “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!”

_Chapter 14_

Bill’s flashlight broke the inky blackness beneath the opening.

Three feet below the floor of the office building, Ronnie saw the dry, hard, crusted earth on which the footings of the building rested. Into this for a distance of some six feet beneath the trap door, old Jacob Williams had dug a slanting hole that ran down to the top of an old drainage culvert. The brick arch, which formed the roof of the culvert, had been broken through. Below the break-through, the culvert ran in both directions parallel to the side of the building.

“Wow!” Bill exclaimed, playing his light about. “A tunnel! And it’s plenty high enough to walk through, too!”

“I’ll bet it used to carry drainage water from the village down to the St. Lawrence,” Ronnie added.

“Just the kind of place Jacob Williams would want for hiding the glassware!”

Phil, hearing the excitement, came over and crouched down beside the others. He peered over the edge and looked down into the hole.

Ronnie was trying to estimate the distance to the bottom of the culvert. He figured it in sections. From the floor of the building to the ground level was a “crawl space” of about three feet. Then the hole Jacob Williams had dug was another six feet. That added up to nine feet. The culvert itself, at the highest point in the arch, was another six or seven feet.

Fifteen feet. To Ronnie looking down into the blackness, it seemed more like a hundred and fifteen!

“We aren’t thinking of going _down_ there, are we?” Phil asked. “I suffer from claustrophobia, I’d like you both to know.”

Bill looked over at Phil. “And we suffer--just hearing you talk,” he said, grinning a little. Then he looked at Ronnie. “Think we can get down without a ladder or a rope?” he asked.

Ronnie studied the problem. “Yes, I think so,” he answered finally. “We’ll take it in stages. You know--climb down there to the ground first, then slide down the hole to the top of the culvert. There’s room to stand there. Then we can swing ourselves down through the opening in the brickwork.”

Phil gulped. “That sounds like an awful lot of work,” he said. “And even harder to get _up_ again.”

“Nobody’s twisting your arm and making you go,” Bill said.

Ronnie went first, holding Bill’s flashlight. The others waited above in the darkness, peering over the edge to watch Ronnie’s progress. Ronnie had no trouble lowering himself to the ground level. Then he sent the light from the flashlight down into the hole Williams had dug.

The remains of an old ladder lay in pieces along the sides of the hole. Ronnie noticed, too, that steps had been made leading down to the top of the culvert--pieces of split log hammered into the earth but protruding far enough to provide a foothold.

The boy tried the first one. It sustained his weight. He tried another--and another. He looked up at Bill and Phil and grinned. Things were going just fine!

He smiled too soon. The fourth step broke under his weight. His feet flew out from under him and his back struck the side of the hole. He slid the rest of the way, carrying with him an avalanche of dirt and pebbles.

Luckily, he managed to keep himself from plunging through the opening in the brickwork and down into the culvert. “You all right?” he heard Bill calling down.

“I’m O.K.,” he answered. His voice echoed back hollow and distant from within the culvert.

He sat down with his legs hanging over the edge of the broken brickwork and flashed the light down into the darkness. The bottom looked sandy--silt carried there by the drainage water over many years. There was no way to climb in. He’d have to drop.

He tucked the flashlight under his belt beneath his raincoat and began to slip forward. Then, when he was on the very edge, he let his body fall forward.

He struck bottom on his feet, but the momentum threw him forward and he landed face first on a patch of slimy sand. Picking himself up, he found his flashlight and pressed the button. Light bored through the pitch-blackness. The brick walls were slimy and green, and water dripped through the bricks and dropped to the floor. In places sand and earth had seeped through the cracks in the masonry and had formed mounds and valleys along the culvert floor.

He looked up and saw Bill and Phil peering down at him under the light from his flashlight. “What’s it like down there?” Bill asked.

“Kind of--kind of spooky,” he answered. He heard his voice come back to him from both ends of the culvert.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” Bill called. “Shine the light along the way.”

Five minutes later both Phil and Bill had joined Ronnie in the culvert.

“Nice place to hold a Halloween party,” Phil commented. “I’m kind of glad now that I decided to come down to the village to see what you two were cooking up!”

Bill retrieved his flashlight from Ronnie and began to explore the culvert with it. “Wow!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Take a look over where the light’s pointing.”

Ronnie saw a crude shelf supported by sapling logs which rested on the culvert floor. The shelf ran for six to seven feet along the side of the wall, and on it were a number of wooden crates. Protruding from the excelsior with which the crates were packed, Ronnie could see a number of glass cannisters, goblets, decanters, and flasks of different colors.

“Oh, boy!” Bill exploded. He ran forward and removed one of the pieces, holding out a beautiful rose-tinted goblet of frail, delicate glass. Around the belly of the piece ran a band of men and women in eighteenth-century dress, etched into the surface like autumn frost.

The others had moved to the shelf, too. “Hey, pig,” Phil said to Bill, “how about sharing some of that light so we can get a look at some of this stuff, too!”

Bill laid the light on the shelf and pointed it so Ronnie and Phil could use it, too. Ronnie lifted another of the crates to the floor. One by one he removed a set of six wine-glasses and a decanter to match and placed them on the floor in a nest of excelsior.

Phil, however, had his eye on something different. He was interested in a small metal box at the end of the shelf. He took it down, brushed off the flakes of rust and tried to open the lid. It was rusted fast.

Bill had reached the bottom of his crate, and now he was carefully packing the contents back as he had found them. He turned to Ronnie. “It’s not going to be easy getting these crates out of here,” he said. “We don’t want to break any.”

Ronnie nodded. “I know. Yet we can’t leave them here for Caldwell to claim. One of us will have to go for a rope.”

“There’s one in the Glassworks building that we were using to haul junk outside. Maybe we can persuade Phil to go and get it.”

“Fat chance of doing that!”

A sudden squeal of surprise and wonderment from Phil interrupted their discussion. Phil came over to them with the opened metal box in his hands. “Boy, oh, boy!” he exclaimed. “Have _I_ hit real pay dirt. Just focus your eyes on what’s inside this box!”

Ronnie peered inside while Phil held the box so the light from the flashlight could reach the interior. “Th-the money!” Ronnie gasped.

“You bet it’s the money!” Phil echoed. He took out a roll of bills and a handful of gold and silver coins. “And plenty of it, too!”

“Wow!” Bill exclaimed. “Now we can save the village. We can build the dam! How much is there, Phil?”

The bills had been rolled and tied with a piece of cord. Phil opened the roll easily. Bill got the flashlight from the shelf and they crouched together in a group while, one by one, Phil laid the big old-fashioned bills in a pile. There were mostly twenties and hundreds, with a few fives and tens. Altogether, Phil counted over two thousand dollars.

They examined the gold and silver coins next. With these their total came to twenty-one hundred dollars.

“Put the money back in the box,” Ronnie directed. “We’ve got to work fast. I sure feel uneasy about Mr. Caldwell coming back.”

“You two get the crates over underneath the opening,” Bill said, “and I’ll run over to the glassworks and get the rope. We’ll have this stuff out of here and locked up in our office before Caldwell even knows what’s going on. Then I’ll ask Pa to come down with the truck and we’ll take it up to your house, Ronnie.”

Bill had some trouble getting back up to the padlocked building, but he finally made it. When he had gone, Ronnie set to work lifting the crates from the shelf and carrying them over to the floor beneath the opening. Phil seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of matches, and he left Ronnie to explore up the culvert. By the time Ronnie had finished, Phil was back. He had a sheepish look on his face, but he was a little pale, too.

“What’s eating you?” Ronnie demanded.

“I--I just met up with Jacob Williams,” Phil answered. “I mean--what’s left of him.”

“You mean--you mean his bones are down there?” Ronnie asked, motioning in the direction Phil had just come from. It really shouldn’t surprise him, of course, he told himself. Great-great-grandfather Ezra had mentioned in his diary that he had found Jacob Williams’ body “down below” and that he didn’t have the strength to get him up.

When Bill returned with the rope, the three set to work bringing the crates up to the padlocked building. It was hard, exacting work. One end of the rope was tied to a rafter in the building and the other end fastened securely about one of the crates. Then it was a matter of pulling from the top and guiding the box along the way so that it didn’t crash against the sides at any time.

In all, there were six crates to be pulled up. The boys had removed their raingear and cumbersome boots, but by the time they had finished, they were dripping with perspiration and covered with dirt and grime.

But even Phil hadn’t complained. There they were at last--the six crates and the metal box, piled together in the center of the padlocked building. The rest seemed easy in comparison. Two trips for each of them and the crates would be safely stored in their office, ready for the truck to pick them up.

Ronnie was all smiles as he and the others stole a minute or two of their precious time to sit down and catch their breaths. “Golly,” he said, “I never once thought this would be such an exciting day when I got up this morning.”

“Neither did I,” Bill agreed. “When I saw the rain pouring down, I thought for sure I was in for a real boring day. The most I thought we’d get done was to maybe clean up another building.”

“And when I got up,” Phil added, “I told myself to turn around and go back to sleep.”

Bill looked over at Phil curiously. “How come you’re so lazy, Phil?”

Phil grinned back at him. “It just comes naturally, I guess.”

Ronnie got up. He was on pins and needles for fear something might happen before they got the money and glassware safely stowed away. He looked over at the crates. “Maybe we could each carry two of them,” he suggested, “and make it all in one trip.”

“Not me!” Phil protested. “After hauling them up from below, you’re lucky I’ll agree to carry _one_.”

“Phil’s right,” Bill agreed. “We wouldn’t want to drop and break anything. This glassware is pretty valuable, I’ll bet.”

They put on their raingear and boots. Then each selected a crate and moved it over to the trap door in the rear of the building. Ronnie set his down so he could remove the section of wall.

He didn’t have to. The trap door suddenly opened as if by itself.

And there, framed in the opening, was Caldwell’s face and shoulders. He had a gun in his hand.

_Chapter 15_

Ronnie’s heart began to tap-dance inside his chest. He knew, too, that his mouth was open as wide as it would go and that he couldn’t do a thing to close it.

Caldwell stepped inside, holding the gun loosely in his hand. He brought a flashlight from his pocket.

“Take your light out of my eyes!” Caldwell commanded Bill.

“Y--yes, sir,” Bill managed to say. The light clicked off. Caldwell’s took its place. It was focused, not on the boys, but on the pile of crates left in the middle of the room.

“Now wasn’t that nice of you boys to find this stuff for me and to lug it up, too. Of course you had a slight advantage over me, in that you had the book longer than me. But I figured it out, too--and just in time, it appears.”

Ronnie was looking at a different Caldwell now as the man stood framed in the light from the rear trap door. This wasn’t the Caldwell he had known during the past days. This was a cool, deliberate, scheming Caldwell. This was the man he had tangled with on the path earlier in the day.

Caldwell backed around toward the crates, keeping the gun and light trained on the boys. With the gun in his right hand, and the flashlight tucked under his left arm, he threw back the cover to the metal box.

“Well, now,” he said, “this is just what I need! This will cover my traveling expenses very nicely--with plenty left over besides.” He picked up the bills and pushed them into his pocket, and then came back to scoop up the coins. “You boys have been very helpful. Very helpful. And since you’ve gone to all the trouble of carting this heavy stuff upstairs for me, I might as well take it along, too. There’s always some sucker antique dealer along the road who will give me a few bucks for it.”

Bill took a step forward, but stopped when Caldwell’s gun came up. “You sure have had us fooled, Mr. Caldwell,” Bill said. “And we sure were fools to have trusted you.”

“Yea, sure, kid.” Caldwell seemed a little puzzled by what Bill had said. “Well, enough of this. It’ll take me an hour to get loaded and hit the road.” He swung the light around, searching for something. It stopped when he found the open trap door leading down to the culvert.

“O.K., you kids,” he ordered. “Supposing you climb back down into the cellar.”

Ronnie’s eyes widened as he gathered the full intent of the order. “You--you’re not going to lock us up down there?” he gasped.

“I sure am, kid. You don’t think I’m going to turn you loose so you can bring the whole neighborhood after me, do you? I need plenty of time to get this stuff out of here and to hit the road. Now get moving--all of you.”

Ronnie stood his ground. “I won’t go,” he said stubbornly. “Why, we’d never get out of there. Nobody would ever find us,” he added.

“Well, now, isn’t that too bad!” Caldwell sneered. “Now move before I push you down--if that’s the way you want it.”

“We’d better go,” Bill said.

They filed dejectedly toward the opening in the floor. Bill went first and Ronnie followed. Before taking his turn, Phil turned to Caldwell. “How about paying us for bringing the stuff up anyway, huh?” he asked.

“Don’t get funny, kid.”

“My name’s Phil--or don’t you remember?”

“Look, kid, I don’t care one hoot what your name is. Now shake it up before I help you.”

When Phil’s head was below the level of the floor, Caldwell dropped the trap door into place. Ronnie and Bill stood together below the opening watching Phil descend, Bill holding the light for Phil to see by. Above, they heard Caldwell driving several nails into the trap door. Each blow echoed down the long lengths of the tunnel with a hollow boom. Then suddenly it was silent again, a deep silence that told them how far away from escape they really were.

Ronnie shivered. Behind him he heard the steady, rhythmic dripping of water against the culvert floor. He thought he heard Bill’s heart beating too. Or was it his own?

“Anybody got a deck of cards?” Phil asked suddenly and Bill and Ronnie laughed. For the first time in his life Ronnie appreciated his brother’s wisecracking.

They decided then that the first thing they should do was to explore the entire culvert in hopes that there might be some other way out beside the trap door. Before they left, however, Ronnie climbed to test the strength of the trap door, hoping that perhaps Caldwell’s nails had not been well placed. It was an idle hope. The trap door was as solid as the rest of the floor.

Their explorations revealed that one end of the culvert ended in a cave-in. The other end, sloping rapidly, ran to the river and was flooded. “And that water’s rising, too,” Bill said to Ronnie as they made their way back. “All this rain is flooding the river. And the higher the river gets, the higher the water backs up in here.”

Ronnie was almost afraid to ask the question that had come to his mind. “Do you suppose--could the whole culvert get flooded?”

Bill took Ronnie and Phil over to the wall and showed them several lines of dried slime which had impregnated the brick. “Each one of those lines,” he told them, “I’d guess was a water level mark. That means the water has risen pretty high. One thing we can be sure of, though, is that the water has never reached to the top of the archway--not _yet_ anyway.”

“How come you know that?” Phil asked.

“Because if it had, Caldwell wouldn’t be walking off with that roll of money. It would have fallen apart.”

“I wish it _was_ falling apart,” Phil grumbled.

They reached that section of the culvert below the building. Here they selected a drier area of floor and sat down with their backs against the wall. Bill turned off the flashlight to save the batteries. “O.K.,” he said to the others. “So here we are--trapped. The only way of escape is nailed shut. The water’s rising. How far we don’t know yet. Now, what do we do?”

Phil’s voice came out of the blackness. “Just go to sleep and wait until somebody finds us.”

“You’ll sleep until doomsday,” Ronnie told his brother. “Because nobody’s ever going to find us here. Except for us, the only one who knows about this--this dungeon is Mr. Caldwell and it doesn’t look as if he’s going to tell anyone.”

“That’s right, Ronnie,” Bill agreed. “And with the padlock still on the door, who’s going to think of looking inside?”

“And nobody’ll hear us shouting unless they _do_ come inside,” Phil added. “I--Yipes!”

“What’s the matter?” Bill demanded and switched on his flashlight. He picked Phil out of the darkness. Phil was rubbing at the back of his neck.

“A--a drop of cold water went down my back.”

“Is _that_ all?” Bill grumbled disgustedly. “Well for pity’s sake, put up your raincoat collar so you don’t scare me like that again. And don’t yell out again unless it’s something serious.”

“That’s serious. I could catch pneumonia--or something.”

“Cut it out, Phil,” Ronnie protested. “We’ve got to _think_. Can’t you get it through your thick skull that we’re in serious trouble?”

“Sure I can. I just want to die smiling. I think Jacob’s skeleton was smiling.”

Ronnie was tired of Phil’s chatter, and he was tired of staring into the blackness and seeing nothing, too. So he closed his eyes and rested his head back against the hard, uneven brick. He wanted to think. But he couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that he was all alone, a thousand miles down in the bowels of the earth. He put his hand out and found Bill’s shoulder and left it there because he felt some comfort in knowing that his friend was so close. Bill shifted his position closer to Ronnie. “Keep your chin up, Ronnie,” he heard Bill whisper. “I’ve got an idea. It might just work.”

Bill leaned over closer to Ronnie so his mouth was only a few inches from his friend’s ear. “Here’s the pitch,” he said. “Remember the first end of the culvert we visited--not the one by the river?”

Ronnie nodded. “Yea,” he said, remembering Bill couldn’t see him.

“And remember how it was all cave-in, just a big mess of broken brick and dirt that had fallen in with it?”

“Yea,” Ronnie said again.

“Well, when I was flashing the light about, I noticed one place big enough to crawl up into. It looked as if it went quite a way toward the surface. Now, I was thinking maybe we could dig through to the surface from there.”

“Hey, Bill, that’s a cool idea! Let’s try it! But what’ll we dig with?”

“I can jab away with my penknife. The dirt’ll keep falling down into the culvert.”

“Let’s go!” Ronnie exclaimed. He was tired of sitting. He wanted to do something to help them escape--_anything_.

Bill turned on his light. Phil was stretched out on the floor with his eyes closed. “Come on,” Ronnie nudged him. “We’ve got things to do.”

Bill explained his plan to Phil as they moved down the culvert. Phil agreed that it was worth the try.

They reached the end of the culvert. Bill played the beam of his flashlight about among the giant slabs of concrete and brick that had tumbled to the floor of the culvert. Inky black crevices ran upward between the pieces of rubble, and as Bill moved the flashlight about looking for the crevice he had in mind, the jutting ends of the masonry cast weird shadows upon the walls and floor.

“There it is!” Bill said suddenly, holding his light steady. “That’s the one. See how far up it goes?”

Ronnie saw a twisting passage, which gradually grew smaller toward the top. Halfway up, a giant slab almost sealed the crevice into two parts, but Ronnie judged that there would possibly be room for Bill to squeeze past.

Bill removed his raingear and handed Ronnie the flashlight. “Keep the light where I need it,” he instructed. Then he boosted himself into the opening and began to worm his way upward. Protruding edges of brick and mortar gave him support for his feet or a hold for his hands. Soon Ronnie saw him enter the narrow aperture.

Bill continued to edge forward, forcing his shoulders and arms between the two giant slabs. Then he stopped and began to struggle. Ronnie could see that he was wedged tightly between the two slabs.

“H--help! I--I’m caught,” Ronnie heard Bill’s muffled voice.

Ronnie slipped out of his raincoat and boots and handed the light to Phil. Then he grasped the ledge of the lowest block of masonry and pulled himself up into the mouth of the crevice. From here he worked his way upward until his outstretched hands found Bill’s shoes. He took a firm grip about his friend’s ankles--and pulled. Bill’s body did not budge. Ronnie might just as well have tried to move the rubble.

“It’s no use, Ronnie,” Bill said in a whimper.

“Keep your chin up, pal,” Ronnie answered. “I’ll think of a way. Just don’t struggle or you’ll swell up and then it’ll be even harder to get you free.”

Ronnie lay back against the cold stone and tried to catch his breath--and _think_. He _had_ to find a way to free Bill. With help so far away it was up to him to save his friend.

A section of brick was jabbing into his back just under the shoulder blades. He shifted his position to ease the discomfort. His shoulders rubbed against a section of smooth, slimy moss--and an idea came to him. He’d read stories of how the bodies of trapped men had been greased, and then had slipped out quite easily. The nearest grease bucket was in the barn, but wouldn’t wet slime do just as well?

He twisted his body about so he could call down to Phil. “Get me a good, big handful of that slime down at the other end of the culvert. And hurry.”

Phil nodded that he understood. He turned quickly and started for the river end of the culvert, leaving Ronnie in the pitch-black. Ronnie lay back against the rock and rested. Above him he heard Bill’s forced breathing and an occasional groan. He heard the gentle dripping of water, too, and felt something crawling down the back of his shirt.

It seemed an eternity before Phil returned with both hands loaded with slime, the flashlight tucked under his arm.

Ronnie had to come down a way before the slime could be transferred to his own hands. And now he’d have to work his way up again to where Bill was caught, and he’d have to do it without the use of his hands. It wasn’t going to be easy. With both hands cupping the precious stuff, he had no way of holding on.

He managed it, however, using only his feet and elbows. Now his head was alongside Bill’s knees and he could reach up and force the slime between the rubble and his friend’s shoulders. Bill understood what Ronnie was attempting to do, for he worked his body about to spread the application. Inch by inch Bill squirmed his way backward--and suddenly he was free.

Then something happened that _Ronnie_ hadn’t foreseen. Bill’s shoulders came free so unexpectedly that before either Bill or Ronnie could check the momentum, Bill had lost his balance. His body slipped backward, struck the side of a concrete slab and landed on the culvert floor with one leg doubled under him.

Phil was already kneeling beside Bill’s body by the time Ronnie had climbed down. The light from the flashlight was on Bill’s face. “My leg. Oh, Ronnie, my leg!” Bill groaned and grimaced from the pain. Sweat broke out on his forehead in large drops. His lips were purple-blue and his face was as white as the sweat shirt he was wearing.

“Ronnie,” Bill whispered, “Ronnie, _please_. Do something for me. Please, _do_ something.”

_Chapter 16_

Ronnie stooped down beside his friend and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. “Sure, Bill, we’ll have you fixed up in no time,” he said.

He took Bill’s raincoat and covered him with it, wrapping it around underneath as far as he dared without moving the injured leg. Then he set to work massaging Bill’s wrists and limbs to restore the circulation. And all the while he worked, he was glad for those hours of practice and study that he’d given to learning first aid at Scout meetings and at home. His first-aid merit badge was proving its worth!

He looked up at Phil. “Down the culvert I saw some boards that must have washed in one time or another. I’ll need a couple of splints. Go get them.”

Phil nodded. Ronnie handed him the flashlight, and his brother moved off down the culvert. Ronnie continued chafing Bill’s wrists in the dark. He could feel the rapid pulse and knew that his friend was in slight shock. He’d have to treat that first. The leg could wait. He continued to massage Bill’s limbs and arms.

Phil returned with an armful of boards. Ronnie signaled for him to drop them and to take over the job that he had been doing. The flashlight showed that the color was beginning to return to Bill’s face. His pulse was slowing down to normal now, too.

Ronnie got up and came around to kneel by Bill’s feet. He swallowed hard. This was going to be a real tricky job--straightening out Bill’s leg without compounding the fracture. Ronnie had done it plenty of times in practice, but then there had been no broken bones that could jab through the flesh if he made a wrong move.

He reached in under the raincoat and felt his way forward until he could get a hold on Bill’s shoe. When he was ready, he instructed Phil to grasp Bill around the armpits and to lift him gradually. As the weight of Bill’s body was removed from the leg, Ronnie took a firm grip about Bill’s ankle and began the slow, tedious task of straightening the leg. All the time he moved the leg out from under his friend’s body, he applied a steady forward tension to keep the broken bone from working into the flesh. Several times Bill cried out in pain.

Now the leg was ready for splinting. Ronnie selected several of the longer boards. He ripped sections from his own shirt and placed these against Bill’s leg and laid the boards gently on top. Then he tore strips of cloth and bound them about the boards and the leg until the splints were firmly in place.

Only then did he realize that he was soaking wet from perspiration and that he was shivering from nervous tension. “There,” he said to Bill, “I guess that’ll hold you until we get rescued.”

Bill smiled weakly. “Thanks, pal,” he said.

Ronnie turned to his brother. “Think we can carry him back to the spot where we came in?”

“We probably can,” Phil answered, “but I don’t think we ought to. You see, the river’s risen since you were there, and that part of the tunnel’s under a foot of water now.”

Ronnie tried desperately not to let Bill know how frightened he was. “Then--then we’ll put Bill up on that shelf where the crates of glassware used to be.”

“O.K.,” Phil answered. “That sounds like a good idea, because it isn’t going to be long before the whole culvert’s covered with water. It’s coming in fast!”

Ronnie wished his brother could see his face so Phil would know what he was thinking. Of all the stupid things to let Bill hear! It would be simple for Ronnie and Phil to climb to a safe level in the crawl space beneath the building, but never in a million years could they get Bill up there. And Bill wouldn’t know, of course, that Ronnie would never leave him behind--no matter how high the water rose.

They brought Bill down the culvert without too much difficulty and lifted him up onto the shelf where he could lie down. There was room for Phil and Ronnie to sit, too, and although they had their boots on, they preferred this to standing in the water.

Now that Bill had been taken care of, Ronnie had time to think about plans for their escape. He sat on the edge of the shelf with his feet dangling over the edge and watched the water swirl in from the river. He could go back and continue the plan that Bill had been attempting before his accident. But somehow Ronnie doubted the wisdom of this. There must be a better way.

He looked over at Phil. “Got any ideas?” he asked.

“Ideas about what?”

“Ideas about getting out of here, of course!”

“Not right offhand,” Phil answered. “But I’ll think on it.”

Ronnie didn’t want to count too heavily on that! Phil had never been one for finding a way out of a scrape. Phil had always relied upon his brother for an answer--or he had just simply evaded the issue completely if that were possible.

Bill raised his head a few inches and placed his arm underneath to support himself. “Don’t try my idea,” he said, “it just won’t work. Nobody but the thin man from the circus could get through that opening.”

“I don’t intend to,” Ronnie answered. “Except maybe as a last resort.”

“Yea,” Phil said. “And by that time you’ll be thin enough to squeeze through.”

Ronnie smiled a little at Phil’s remark. He turned off the flashlight to save the batteries. “We’ve certainly made a mess of everything, haven’t we?” Bill’s voice reached Ronnie from out of the darkness. “Let the glassware and money slip right out of our hands. Got ourselves trapped down here. Me with a busted leg. And I guess we’re about as far from saving the village as we ever were. Well, my pa says it’s always darkest before the dawn. Maybe things will get better from here on.”

The silence closed in again, except for the steady dripping of water against the flooded floor. It sounded to Ronnie as if a hundred distant bells of different pitch were all ringing at the same time. It was hard sitting here in the darkness, waiting ... wondering if they’d ever get out again.

“Ronnie?” Bill asked. “You suppose our folks are out looking for us now?”

“Maybe. Depending on how late it is. I’ve lost all idea of the time.”

“Nobody’ll ever find us down here,” Bill continued. “They won’t even look inside the padlocked building because they’ll see that the lock’s still on the door. I wish we could attract their attention somehow.”

“I’ve got plenty of matches left,” Phil announced. “Want me to burn down the building? Nobody could miss seeing _that_!”

Ronnie wasn’t sure if Phil was being serious, or if this was another of his attempts at humor. Whichever it was, Ronnie couldn’t go along with his brother’s suggestion. With the building on fire, the culvert was sure to fill with smoke and fumes, perhaps to the point where it might suffocate them. “No, Phil,” he told his brother, “that’s too risky.”

“Then how about just burning through the trap door?” Phil added. “How about that?”

Ronnie found himself shaking his head. “No, Phil. It would never stop with the trap door. Besides, I don’t think we’ve got enough kindling to get it started. No, we’ve got to think of a better way.”

“Then how about _you_ putting out with a few?” Phil demanded of his brother.

“Maybe I can if you’ll keep quiet for a few minutes.”

Ronnie rested his chin on his palm and braced his elbow on top of his leg. He stared into the blackness. There was some merit to Phil’s idea. Not fire, of course. That was too dangerous. But some kind of a signal that could be seen at a distance.

He thought over all the different ways of signaling he’d ever heard of. There were whistles and bells and horns. There were lights and radio beams, flags, hands, smoke.... The Indians had used smoke signals!

Ronnie stiffened, straightening up. He let out a little high-pitched sound of approval. “Ronnie?” Bill asked. “You all right, Ronnie?”

“Sure I’m all right! I just had an idea that might work. I guess I surprised myself with it!”

“You sounded like something bit you,” Phil grumbled.

“Let’s hear your idea, Ronnie,” Bill said.

“Well, remember right after Caldwell nailed the trap door shut I went up to test how strong it was? While I was there I saw a little metal door in the base of the fireplace. You know, a door to an ash box.”

“Sure, Ronnie, sure,” Bill said excitedly. “We’ve got one in our fireplace--down in the cellar.”

“Well, my idea is to build a real smoky fire in the box. It’ll travel up to the fireplace and then on up the chimney--I hope!”

“That’s a great idea!” Bill exclaimed. “I sure wish I could help you with it.”

“We’ll need kindling,” Ronnie went on. “There’s more of that where Phil got your splints. But the real problem is finding something that’ll give a lot of thick smoke and won’t burn up too quickly.”

“Like rubber,” Phil said.

“Say, Phil, you’re really using your brains at last!” Ronnie exclaimed. “And rubber’s something we’ve got plenty of! Three raincoats, three pairs of boots, and the soles off our shoes, too, if we need them.”

“I’ve got a penknife,” Bill said, his enthusiasm mounting as the pain in his leg subsided. “You can cut the rubber into chunks and then feed them into the fire. Why, with the supply we’ve got we can keep a signal fire going for hours and hours!”

They set to work immediately. Bill found he could help, too, after he had pulled himself up to a sitting position. He used the knife to cut up the heavier pieces of boots. Phil and Ronnie worked at the raincoats, ripping the fabric, first into strips and then into smaller pieces. Soon they had a large pile between them in the middle of the shelf.

Phil waded down the culvert to gather kindling. In the meantime Ronnie took off his torn shirt and, tying a knot about the neck end, used the piece of clothing as a sack to carry the chunks of rubber while he climbed to the crawl-space above.

Phil joined him in front of the ash box a few minutes later. “All I could find was wet wood,” he told Ronnie. “The floodwater has picked it all up. We’ll need something dry to get the fire started.”

Ronnie inspected the wood Phil had brought. “Yes, I guess you’re right. We’ll have to take part of the shelf. Suppose you go down and rip off a few boards. You take the flashlight. I think I can manage in the dark.”

It wasn’t easy breaking up the wood in the darkness. He was continually hitting his head on the low floor beams. But by the time Phil returned with the flashlight and several pieces of dry wood, Ronnie had most of the work done.

Then suddenly there were sounds overhead--footsteps creaking across the floor, a muffled murmur of voices. Ronnie drew a deep breath and let it all out in a shout. “Dad! Dad! We’re down here!”

“Bust a hole in the floor if you can’t find the trap door!” yelled Phil.

Ronnie’s heart beat wildly as he heard the screech of nails being pulled from the wood. The trap door was lifted. Phil uttered a soft groan of relief. And then an all-too-familiar voice said harshly, “O.K.! Down you go!”

For a moment the two boys stood frozen. Then, with a swiftness amazing for him, Phil pointed the flashlight at the trap door. Caldwell was standing near the opening, motioning with his gun to someone in the shadows behind him.

As the light struck him, Caldwell made a low, snarling sound and whirled around to level his gun at the boys below. “Put out that light!” he commanded.

Phil obeyed hastily, but in the split second it had taken him to find the switch, a second man had stepped into the light. Ronnie gasped. He knew, from Phil’s simultaneous gasp, that he had not been dreaming. There were _two_ Mr. Caldwells!

_Chapter 17_

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’t help. 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.”

“He _did_!” 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’ve _got_ to 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 whole town’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 air space 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’d_ need 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 more kindling 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?”