Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt Page 5

  Johnny began to brood about the mysterious place that they had set out to explore. The old mansion was evil-looking, even in bright sunlight. What would it be like at night?

  Fergie grabbed Johnny's arm. "Hey! What was that?" he said sharply, and he sounded alarmed.

  Both boys halted and stood dead-still, listening. Off to their left they heard noises. Crunch, crunch, crackle, crunch. Somebody—or something—was thrashing through the wet underbrush. Johnny wanted to run. But he had his pride; if Fergie was going to stand his ground, then so would he.

  "Hey! What the heck d'ya think that was?" Fergie was trying to sound brave, but Johnny could hear the trembling in his voice.

  "I dunno. Maybe it was a dog."

  "Naw. Too much noise for a dog. I'd say it was a hunter, only any hunter who was out here on a lousy night like this would have to be out of his jug. Some old bum maybe."

  Johnny didn't think it was a bum. In his mind's eye he saw a Frankensteinish creature dripping green slime from its horny paws. Any minute now it would come charging out of the darkness at them, uttering strange cries and lusting for their blood.

  Suddenly the noise in the underbrush died away. Fergie took a deep breath and let it out.

  "Hot dog!" he said, grinning. "He must've gone away." Fergie chuckled. His old jaunty, swaggering self was coming back. "Let's move it! It's just a little ways down the road to the old place."

  On the boys hiked while the wet gravel went squrch, squrch under their feet. The mist turned into a steady drizzle. Johnny kept straining to see, but he could not make out much except more road and vague leafy shadows crowding in close on either side. Finally, though, as they started down a hill, the close shadows of trees and bushes fell away. The long beam of Fergie's flashlight swerved to the left and picked out the heavily ornamented stone arch, with its swags and urns and columns. They were there. They had reached Staunton Harold.

  And standing under the arch, waiting for them, was a man. He wore a yellow rubber raincoat and a black rubber rain hat with a wide floppy brim. Under his armpit the man held a flashlight, and in his hands was a rifle—pointed straight at Johnny and Fergie.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The drizzling rain kept falling. The still beam of Fergie's flashlight shone straight at the menacing figure's face. Even with the brim of the rain hat partially hiding the face, Johnny knew who it was immediately. It was the young man with the bug eyes and receding chin who had glared at him in the lobby of the Squam House.

  Shifting the gun in his hands, the man took a step forward. "Okay, you two," he said nastily. "Just you hold it, right there! Now, would you mind tellin' me what you're supposed to be doin'? Huh?"

  Johnny was terrified. He had a sudden vision of himself and Fergie lying by the roadside, shot full of holes and covered with blood.

  Fergie, however, was made of sterner stuff. He stepped forward and challenged the man angrily. "Hey, you, what do you mean pointin' that gun at us? This's a public road. We ain't done nothin' wrong!"

  The man looked at Fergie thoughtfully for a second. He looked down at the rifle in his hand. And then, amazingly, his whole attitude changed. "Darnit!" he yelled disgustedly, and he threw the rifle down on the ground. "Darnit all anyway!" He tore off his rain hat and threw it into a mud puddle. Then he sat down on a piece of carved stone that stood in the grass near the arch. "Go ahead!" he said, wringing his hands and staring gloomily at the ground. "Do what you want! Steal my gun! Break into the house! Make fun of me! See if I care! I try to be tough, but I just can't do it!"

  Johnny and Fergie were totally stunned by this dramatic turnaround. They looked at each other, and then Fergie stepped forward.

  "We don't want your dumb gun," he said. "And we're not gonna break into anybody's house. We just don't like to have people threatening us." Fergie pointed off into the darkness. "That house over there—is it yours?"

  The young man nodded glumly. "Sort of. It belongs to my family. My name is Chadwick Glomus, and my grandfather was good old H. Bagwell Glomus. Or Grampa Herbie, as he was known in the family. I have too much money, and a lot of time on my hands, so every now and then I come up to this old place and look for Grampa Herbie's will."

  Johnny was astonished. He had figured that he was the only one in the world who knew that the puzzle in Mr. Glomus's office pointed toward this place. Without pausing to think, he said excitedly, "Hey! How'd you guess that—"

  The young man gave him a sour glance. "Oh, I'm clever. Very clever. And I gather you worked out that part of the riddle too. When I saw you at the hotel, I figured that you had come up here to search for the will. You see, I was working in the gift shop the day you visited my dear grandfather's cereal factory. You were babbling a blue streak about the puzzle to that old man you were with, and so I figured you might be on to something."

  Johnny gasped. So that was it. He had seen the man before!

  The young man smiled unpleasantly. "I hope you find the will, and I hope it turns out that everybody in the Glomus family has been cut out of it. I hope that Grampa Herbie left his dough to the Christian Scientists or the Red Sox or a home for retired organ-grinders! I hope nobody in my family gets a red cent!"

  Fergie looked at the young man strangely. "Why don't you like your family? What's the matter with them?"

  The young man put his hand over his face. "Oh, don't ask! Don't ask! But if you really want to know, the main reason why everybody is such a mess is Grampa Herbie. He was one of the most awful people you'd ever want to meet in your life! Always harping on the importance of a balanced diet. Chew your food thirty-two times before you swallow it! Did you know that a bowl of Oaty Crisps contains ninety-three percent of your recommended daily allowance of iron, riboflavin, and niacin? Yaargh! And then, at the end of his life, to start messing around with black magic the way he did! And to top it all off, that insane puzzle about the will!"

  The young man shook his head and winced. "Ow! I wish you hadn't gotten me started on my family. I think it's giving me a headache!"

  Agin Johnny and Fergie glanced at each other. They both felt sorry for the young man, but right now they wanted to go back to camp. They had decided that their adventure had reached a dead end, and they needed some nice, polite way of saying good-bye.

  "Uh, we ... we better be gettin' back to our camp," said Fergie, with a nervous glance over his shoulder. "If the counselors find out we're not in bed, they'll really blow their tops."

  The young man looked very unhappy. At first he had seemed threatening, but now he merely seemed strange, wistful, and more than a little bit lonely.

  "Oh, please don't go yet!" he pleaded. "I'm sorry I pointed that gun at you! Look, if you stay just a bit, I'll show you something."

  Fergie wrinkled up his nose suspiciously. "Yeah? What?"

  "It's a secret passage that runs under the fence and comes up inside the chapel next to the big house. The tunnel is a big Glomus family secret, but I'll let you in on it."

  Johnny felt very nervous about this. He had always had it drummed into his head, ever since he was little, that you never went anywhere with strangers. And this was a stranger who was stranger than most.

  The young man looked at Fergie and Johnny, and read their thoughts. With a pained expression on his face he got up and fished his rain hat out of the mud puddle. He shook it a few times and jammed it back onto his head. "Please believe me!" he said in a pleading, sad voice. "I'm not a murderer! I can't even shoot squirrels! That gun is empty. See for yourselves!"

  Fergie took a few steps forward and picked up the gun. He slid the bolt back and pointed the beam of his flashlight in the chamber. Then he slammed the bolt back into place and handed it to the young man. "Yeah, you're right," he said, nodding. "Okay, look. I'll level with you. We were just gonna peer through the fence at that old dump over there and then hightail it back to camp. But if you wanna show us somethin', we could stay for, oh, maybe about half an hour." Fergie paused and turned to look back at Johnny, who was jus
t standing there fidgeting. "That okay with you, John baby?"

  Johnny glanced fretfully over his shoulder. He had mixed emotions. He was afraid of getting caught if he stayed out too late, but the idea of a secret passage really excited him. It was the kind of thing he had always dreamed of finding.

  "I guess we could stay for a little while," he said hesitantly.

  And so it was settled. The young man turned and walked back toward the stone arch, motioning for the other two to follow him. They headed along a narrow muddy path that ran down a little slope and off into the woods. As they tramped along, Johnny found that he was getting really nervous, but he was also getting really interested. He wondered what the passage would be like.

  On they marched, over masses of soggy leaves, while water dripped all around them. Finally they came to a small clearing where Johnny could see the dark shadow of a small building. It seemed to be a funny little cottage of some kind. Fergie swept his flashlight beam upward, and Johnny saw part of a slate roof, a brick wall, and a little window with diamond-shaped panes. A door was set in a fancy stone arch. Over the arch was a stone banner with the inscription Health Is Wealth.

  "This is one of those cute little outbuildings or lodges that you find around big estates sometimes," said the young man as he fumbled in his pocket for a key. He turned it in the lock and gave the door a good hard shove. Then he disappeared inside. Johnny and Fergie hesitated for a second and then followed him into a musty-smelling room with no furniture in it. Built into one wall was a very fancy marble fireplace. It was covered with stone knobs carved to look like the tiny heads of children. They were smiling and apple-cheeked, and were slurping cereal from bowls. Over the mantel was a mildewed oil painting of good old Mr. Glomus himself, with a box of Oaty Crisps in his hands.

  The young man laid his rifle on the mantel. Then he grabbed one of the carved heads and twisted it. Johnny heard the clanking and clattering of hidden weights and chains. And then, as the young man pointed the beam of his flashlight into the dark mouth of the fireplace, Johnny saw the back wall of the hearth slide up. A low opening was revealed, with steps leading down.

  The young man folded his arms and stared calmly down into the dark opening, laughing harshly. "Good old Grampa Herbie really thought of everything! If you're out shooting quail and a thunderstorm hits, you duck in here. And then you can scoot right over, zippity-zoo, to the chapel without getting your head wet. And now, if you've got a few minutes more, I'll show you part of the passage."

  But before starting out, the young man did a strange thing. He stepped back, reached up onto the mantel, and took down a candle and a book of matches. Then he poked around in the darkness for a few minutes and came up with a long knobby bronze candlestick. Humming tunelessly, he screwed the candle into the holder and lit it.

  "Whaddaya need that for?" asked Fergie. "You've got a flashlight, doncha? Or did your batteries run out?"

  "The batteries are Everready batteries and will last for centuries," said the young man dryly. "This is for something else." His face suddenly grew grim and hard. In the candlelight it looked like the face of a gaunt and cadaverous ghost. "Have you two heard about the Guardian?"

  Johnny stared. This was something new to him, and to Fergie too.

  "Don't know, eh?" said the young man tauntingly. "Well, kiddies, the Guardian is something my irresponsible grandfather whipped up when he was fooling around with the black arts. He called it up out of the depths, out of the void, and it's still here, wandering around this old estate. The Guardian can be anything: It might be a pool of moonlight on the floor, or a chair, or smoke drifting in the air. And if it catches you . . . well, one of my great-uncles was caught by it. Afterward they buried him in a hurry." The young man paused and grinned unpleasantly. "Do you know what a mummy looks like after it's been unwrapped? Just a dried brown husk that used to be a human being, with holes for eyes? Well, that's what Great-Uncle Piatt looked like after the Guardian got him. And I'll tell you something else you may not know. Three people have disappeared in this area in the last five years. No bodies were ever found, but I'll bet you—dollars to doughnuts—that the Guardian got them too."

  Fergie's eyebrows went up. He was pretty suspicious about all this. "So, if there's this monster down there," he said, "why are we goin' on down to meet it? Is it monster-feeding time or what?"

  The young man stared stonily at Fergie. "You can make fun all you want, my friend," he said grumpily. "But what I'm telling you happens to be true! And in answer to your question, the Guardian isn't there all the time. But I suspect that it will come for you if you get too close to the will. I have this candle. If an evil presence is near, candle flames burn blue. That's what Shakespeare says, and it happens to be the truth. So come along. . . ."

  Fergie and Johnny looked at each other. Neither of them believed a word the young man was saying.

  "Yeah, sure, let's go," said Fergie, with a jaunty leer and a devil-may-care shrug of his shoulders. "If you don't mind about monsters, neither do we."

  The young man smiled a crooked, mocking smile. With the candlestick in one hand and a flashlight in the other, he bent over and stepped down into the narrow opening. Fergie went next, and Johnny came last. Down a dark, damp-smelling staircase passage they went. Johnny counted twenty-three steps to the bottom. Then the floor leveled off, and the passage grew wider. They were in a stone tunnel where three people could walk abreast. Fergie flashed his light around, and Johnny saw, at the top of an arch they were passing under, a smiling stone cherub and the carved motto Mens Sana in sano corpore, which means "a sound mind in a sound body." Over by one wall of the tunnel some junk was piled up.

  "Charming place, isn't it?" said the young man as they walked along. "I understand Grampa Herbie originally wanted to make this a little subway line, with a pneumatic-powered car and all. But he lost interest when he found out how much it would cost."

  They walked on. In places there was a strong smell of earth, and Johnny noticed that pieces of the ceiling had caved in. Sometimes the walls were slick with damp, and here and there Johnny saw streaks of yellowish-green niter oozing down over carved corbels and columns. Every now and then he glanced at the flame of the candle that the young man was carrying. It burned sluggishly, because the air in this underground place was rather stale. But it did not burn blue.

  Finally they stopped. Before them was a nail-studded wooden door set in a stone arch with a zigzag molding around it.

  "End of the line," said the young man with a little sigh. He turned to face the two boys. "This door leads to the crypt under the chapel next to the big ghastly old house. You two must have seen it from the road. But I don't think we ought to go upstairs. No, I wouldn't want to take the responsibility if anything happened to you two. Let's head back."

  Johnny was disappointed. He had not believed any of the young man's warnings about the Guardian and he wanted to see the inside of the spooky old chapel. Also he had a funny idea that was lodged firmly in his head: If he could only get onto the grounds of the estate, he would be able to figure out the rest of the Glomus puzzle.

  Fergie protested and Johnny wheedled, but the young man was quite firm. So, back they went and up the narrow stairs into the dusty little room where the journey had started. The young man blew out his candle and set it on the mantelpiece. He twisted the carved knob, and the stone slab at the back of the hearth came bumping and grumbling back down. Then, taking the rifle again and tucking it under his arm, he led the boys out of the lodge, locked the door, and slid the key into a hole in one of the carved ball-flowers over the door. And now the three of them were tramping back along the muddy path through the trees.

  When they reached the gravel road, the young man stopped again. "Gentlemen, I am going to take my leave," he said, bowing stiffly. "My car is parked not far from here, and I gather you two can make it back to camp all right. I'm so glad I had a chance to entertain you. And if you ever think of me, remember that there are things in this world tha
t are better than having lots of money. Like having all your marbles, which I don't seem to. Good day. It's really been, as they say."

  And with that the young man wheeled abruptly and marched off down the road.

  "Weird," said Fergie, shaking his head. "Weird is the word for that character."

  "Yeah, but he was kind of nice, anyway," said Johnny thoughtfully.

  "Uh-huh," grunted Fergie, and he screwed his mouth up into a distrustful frown. Then the two explorers turned and began walking quickly back toward camp. For a few minutes the only sound was the pattering of rain and the crunching of gravel under the soles of their shoes. Then suddenly the air was split by long, loud, hideous yells and shrieks.

  Johnny and Fergie stopped dead in their tracks. The yelling had come from the stretch of road that the young man had just been heading for. The two boys did not discuss what they ought to do. Instead, they turned around and set off running, pell-mell, in the direction they had come from. Johnny was not a great runner, but he ran hard, determined not to be left behind in the dark. Suddenly the two of them stopped, breathless, in the middle of the road. The jumping, bouncing beam of Fergie's flashlight had picked out something. On the rain-soaked gravel lay two objects: One was a rifle, and the other was a flashlight. The flashlight was still on, and it cast its long, narrow beam out across the gravel of the road. On the handle was a raised oval medallion that bore the gold initials CG.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Horrified, Johnny looked at Fergie. Fergie was staring down at the rifle and the flashlight, still breathing hard from the long run. Abruptly he stopped to pick up the flashlight. He flipped it over to Johnny, who was so surprised that he almost dropped it.

  "Here," said Fergie. "Now we've each got one. Come on. Let's get headed back to camp."

  Johnny was flabbergasted. He stood there opening and shutting his mouth. Finally he managed to speak. "You mean . . . you mean you're gonna just . . . just . . ."