The Dark Secret of Weatherend Page 7

  At a little after two Anthony went into the house and told his mother that he was going over to the high school athletic field to play touch football with some friends. Then he put on his red leather cap and his winter coat and headed off to begin his secret mission.

  Number 611 Pine Street, the home of Miss Eells, was the first stop. When he got there, he saw a gray truck parked in the driveway next to the house; it had a blue gas flame in a yellow halo and the words HOOSAC GAS CO. painted on the side. Next to the truck stood Emerson Eells, wearing gray coveralls and a peaked cap with the gas company emblem on the front. He was smoking a cigarette and trying to look nonchalant. Anthony thought Miss Eells was right: Emerson did not look like a gas man. He seemed too... well, too intellectual. Perhaps Borkman would think that Emerson was an out-of-work professor who had to take a job with the gas company to make a living.

  The front door of the house opened, and Miss Eells stepped out, looking like she was ready to go for a hike in the woods. She wore a heavy brown tweed sweater, padded blue winter jacket, sensible brown oxfords, and white sweat socks. Anthony wondered what was in the big green bulging patent leather purse she was carrying.

  Emerson spotted the purse too and immediately grew alarmed. "What the dickens have you got there? Are you taking penny rolls to the bank?"

  "It's Grampa's old Colt forty-four dragoon pistol," she said, pulling it halfway out of her purse. "It doesn't have any bullets, but it looks impressive."

  Emerson made a great effort to control himself. "My dear sister," he said in a tight, strained voice, "we are not going to the Battle of Antietam. We are taking part in a quick, smooth undercover operation. Please dump that piece of antique artillery in the house and come along! We're behind schedule—I told Borkman that I was coming to read his meter at three."

  Miss Eells glanced disconsolately at the handbag. Then she disappeared into the house. When she came back, she was carrying a battered old field hockey stick.

  "Can I take this? It'll make me feel better if I've got something to defend myself with."

  Emerson covered his face with his hand. "Oh, all right! Jump in the back of the truck and let's get moving!"

  Out into the country they drove, past the Rolling Stone library and down into a hollow overhung by bare, wintry trees. After about ten minutes they saw a high stone wall topped with spikes. In a few places the old wall had collapsed, but it had been repaired and reinforced by a shiny, new chain-link fence topped by three strands of barbed wire. Finally the truck rounded a curve, and Anthony saw the main entrance of the estate with its grim-looking gatehouse, boarded windows, and two stone gateposts. The gate was new, made of tubular steel and chain links, and a heavy steel lock held its two sections together.

  "Looks friendly, doesn't it?" said Emerson as he stopped the truck in front of the gate.

  Anthony and Miss Eells were crouching behind the front seat so they couldn't be seen from outside.

  "What's going on, Em?" whispered Miss Eells hoarsely. "Are there guards or machine-gun nests? I can't see a blasted thing down here!"

  "There aren't any guards," said Emerson calmly. "The whole place is remote-controlled. There's a squawk box on one of the gateposts that you can yell into, and if Borkman wants you in, he just pushes a button and the gates swing open. Simple, eh? Now you just wait here while I go talk to our friend."

  Miss Eells spoke again, and she sounded worried. "Em? I have a bad feeling about all this. I think we ought to turn around and skedaddle back home while we have the chance."

  Emerson snorted. "Oh, piffle, Myra! There are no guards on the estate—I think Borkman is too cheap to hire any—and I've asked that that stupid dog be chained up while I'm there. Put all your worries out of your mind! Remember I wouldn't have led you two up here if I thought there was any real chance you'd get hurt. So stop fussing!"

  Emerson got out of the truck, walked toward the gates, and spoke into the box. Sure enough, there was a loud bzzzz-click!, and then the gates swung open. With a jaunty, cocksure smile on his face Emerson got back into the truck and slammed the door.

  "See?" he said as he started the engine. "No problems."

  Miss Eells made no reply, but in the darkness she reached out and squeezed Anthony's hand.

  "Good luck, kid," she whispered.

  They heard the gates swing behind them with a loud crash as they drove on. Then Emerson put on the brakes again.

  "Okay, everybody!" he said brusquely. "Out you go! The tennis court is off to the left, and the grove with the statues is beyond it. Just do what I've asked—nothing else. I'll come back pretty soon and give a little beep on the horn. Be there when I honk."

  Anthony and Miss Eells clambered out of the back of the truck, pushed the doors shut, and the truck sped away in a cloud of exhaust smoke. Anthony stood blinking in the bright sunlight. Then he turned and looked at Miss Eells, and he almost laughed. She was holding the hockey stick upright like a shepherd's crook. It made her look like an elderly lady impersonating Bo-Peep or the world's oldest field hockey goalie.

  "Laugh now," said Miss Eells, brandishing the stick. "We may need this dumb thing before today is over with." She straightened her glasses on her nose and marched off across the matted, frosty grass with Anthony following behind her.

  They paused to look at the ruined tennis court. The concrete playing surface was cracked and pitted, and the wire fence that surrounded it was rusted and full of holes. The little building at one end had once had a red tile roof, but now half the tiles lay in broken, crumbling heaps on the ground.

  Miss Eells sighed and looked around. "This place is certainly a mess, isn't it? Did I ever tell you that I was Singles Tennis Champion of my class at Bryn Mawr in 1906? Well, I was. But time's a-wasting! We'd better go have a look at those ghastly statues."

  Anthony and Miss Eells tramped on, past the tennis court and over a patch of weedy ground. Dead thistles hovered on tall stalks all around them, and the yellow grass felt spongy under their feet. Straight ahead was the cedar grove. It looked forbidding, a mass of inky green shadows under the pale, wintry sun. When they got to the grove, Miss Eells and Anthony found that there was no path leading to the open space in the middle, so they had to shove their way through the dark, perfumy boughs, which kept slapping them in the face and scratching at their arms and legs. As they battled their way through, the boughs resisted, as if they possessed their own hostile will. Anthony felt fear rising inside him, but he fought the panic down and struggled on. By the time he had reached the inner circle he was weak and gasping for breath.

  There before them were the four dark, rugged stones, looking every bit as sinister as they had in the garage. The eerie, staring faces and clawlike, groping hands gave the odd feeling that they were... well, somehow alive. It would not have surprised Anthony if those four masses of stone suddenly turned into pillars of smoke and spewed forth monstrous, fearful shapes. Anthony was glad he was not going to be here when Emerson and Miss Eells came at night to destroy them.

  Anthony looked at Miss Eells, and she glanced quickly back at him. Her face was red, and her hair was mussed, but she was trying hard not to act nervous or frightened.

  "Well, now," said Miss Eells, forcing her mouth into a businesslike frown. "We'd better get moving, because we don't have a lot of time. Let's find those holes, then hotfoot it back to the tennis court and wait for Emerson to show up." And with that she put down the hockey stick, stepped forward, and started to examine one of the stones. Cautiously she put out her hand to touch the rough granite surface.

  "Ow!" she yelled, jerking her hand back. Her hand flew to her mouth, and she sucked at her fingertips. "Ow, ow, ow! That is hot, Anthony. Be careful!"

  Anthony was startled. How could the stones be that hot? The sun hung low in the sky, and it was a cold December afternoon. Then Anthony realized that he was sweating. The air inside this circle of trees was stuffy and humid.

  "Lucky I brought some gloves," said Miss Eells in a tight, strain
ed voice. She unzipped a side pocket of her jacket and pulled out two dirt-caked gardening gloves. She put them on and grimly stepped forward again. Anthony hadn't brought any gloves—he'd have to do his investigating without touching the stones.

  Slowly Anthony's eyes traveled up and down the surface of one of the stone pillars. A gaping skull mask glared down at him, and he flinched as his eyes met this cold, inhuman stare. He shuffled to one side and went on examining the stone. Ah! There it was! A round spot about the size of a penny. Clever old Emerson Eells was right again!

  "I found one, Miss Eells!" Anthony called, pointing triumphantly.

  Miss Eells smiled and nodded. "Great! Mark the place with chalk and keep hunting. I haven't found any yet, but they may be cleverly—Hah! There's mine! Okay, we're really doing great!" Excitedly she fumbled in another pocket and came up with a squarish lump of white chalk. She marked the plugged hole with a small X and moved on to the next stone.

  It took Anthony and Miss Eells only about twenty minutes to locate all four holes. But by the time they were finished they felt as if they had been in this evil, airless place for hours. Anthony found that he was beginning to imagine things... at least he hoped that he was imagining them. He kept thinking that the carvings on the stones were moving. When he looked one way, he would see—out of the corner of his eye—something shifting, just a bit, on one of the other pillars. And more than ever now he found that he was having trouble breathing. It was getting harder and harder to fight down the panic. He wanted to leave; he wanted to leave now.

  "Come on, Miss Eells!" said Anthony, grabbing his friend by the arm. "We've marked all the holes, so let's just..." Anthony's voice trailed away. He saw, to his horror, that Miss Eells was just standing there with a glazed look on her face and her arms hanging limp at her sides.

  Anthony hesitated a moment. Then he seized her by the shoulder and shook her violently. "Hey, Miss Eells! What's the matter? Are you okay? Please say something!"

  "Wha... wha..." muttered Miss Eells thickly. "Who are... uh, I mean..." And with that she came to with a jolt. She looked about wildly—at the four grim dark stones, at the circle of shadowy trees, and at Anthony.

  "What... what was I doing?" she asked in a wondering, scared voice. "No, don't tell me—I don't want to know. You're right. We've got to get out. Are you ready?"

  Anthony nodded. He picked up the hockey stick and handed it to Miss Eells. Then the two of them plunged back into the cedar boughs. It was even harder going out than coming in, but somehow they made it. They reeled into the open, and after several nervous backward glances they headed toward the tennis court. When they got there, they did not stop but continued on till they got to the road. Emerson had told them that they were supposed to hide in the ruined building, but they'd had enough of enclosed spaces for now. They felt safer, somehow, just along the shoulder of the road.

  They waited. Fifteen minutes passed, then thirty, forty-five, and then a full hour. The shadows of the roadside trees grew longer and longer. Then the sun set behind the distant hills, and the sky grew darker. With a sick, tight feeling in his stomach Anthony knew that something had gone wrong.

  He peered anxiously up the winding drive. The white gravel of the road glimmered vaguely in the gathering darkness. When he spoke, his voice was a trembling whisper.

  "Miss Eells? Where... where's Emerson? What's wrong? How come he hasn't come back?"

  Miss Eells's face was pale and drawn. She bit her lip and shook her head despondently. "I don't know, Tony... I just don't know." She paced up and down a bit, and then lost her temper. She picked up a stone and threw it at the tennis-court fence. "Blast my brother!" she exclaimed in an angry, tearful voice. "He always knows what to do! You can't tell him anything, you can't warn him or make him cautious when there's every reason to be cautious. Em's got it all figured out! Oh, this is awful, Anthony! What on earth are we going to do?"

  Anthony looked around. He felt completely helpless. It was so dark that the tennis-court building was just a shadow, and he couldn't see the evil grove of trees at all. Once again panic was creeping over him. He wanted to get out of this awful, unnerving place, even though he knew that he ought to stay and try to help Emerson. He wanted to be brave, but he was terribly, terribly afraid.

  Once again he seized Miss Eells's arm and squeezed it. "We've got to go!" he hissed. "They'll get us if we don't!"

  Miss Eells pulled herself together. She set her jaw grimly and got a firm grip on her hockey stick. "I want to go running up the road to Borkman's house, burst in on him, and pound knobs on his rotten skull, but I suspect that would not be a very bright idea," she said in a low voice. "No, you're right—we've got to escape. But how? You saw the walls and the cyclone fence—this place is like a prison. And we didn't bring a flashlight with us. We're going to go stumbling about like a couple of blind bats in a brewery."

  Miss Eells paused. She pounded the butt of her hockey stick on the ground, took a deep breath, and let it out. She had made up her mind.

  "Okay, Tony," she said in a determined voice. "We may be doomed, but at least we'll go down fighting. We have to go back down the road toward the gate and then pick our way along the fence till we find a weak spot. I saw a couple of places where the wall was broken and had been patched with chain-link fence. Maybe we can climb the wrecked wall and get over the fence somehow."

  Miss Eells and Anthony started walking. The road was a pale ribbon in the starlight, and all around them the shadows of trees and bushes seemed to close in and hover over them. The silence was unnerving. Anthony would have been glad to hear the sound of a car passing on the road beyond the wall, or wind in the trees, or even the hooting of an owl. But there was nothing, nothing but the sound of their footfalls on the gravel.

  Finally Anthony saw the dim outline of the main gate.

  "Hey, Miss Eells!" he yelled, waving his arm. "Look!"

  "Great!" she muttered. "Now all we have to do is find a weak spot in the wall. Maybe over there—"

  Miss Eells never finished her sentence. She heard a noise, an odd rustling. Fearfully she peered off to her left and saw, by the side of the road, a heap of dead leaves. And though no wind was blowing, the leaves were stirring uneasily. As Anthony and Miss Eells watched, the leaves began to whirl and spin.

  "Run, Anthony!" yelled Miss Eells suddenly. And with that they were off, racing across the grass. The rustling behind them rose to an angry whirring. Miss Eells and Anthony ran faster, blindly, into the dark. Now they saw looming before them the great black shadow of the wall that surrounded the estate, and turning sharply to the right, they began to run alongside it. More dead leaves began to stir. As he went pounding along, full speed, Anthony saw a leaf rise up and fly at his face. It brushed his cheek, and he gave a wild yell. The leaf had cut his cheek. He felt the sticky wetness of blood. Miss Eells cried out, and he knew she must have been cut too.

  "Up there, up there!" she yelled, waving her hockey stick as she swerved off suddenly into the shadow of the wall. "Wall's... broken..." She gasped. "Climb it quick. These leaves'll... kill us!"

  Without knowing what he was doing or why, Anthony ran off after Miss Eells. In seconds he was totally swallowed up by the darkness. Stumbling against a heap of stones, he fell forward onto his hands and knees. But Miss Eells had already dropped the hockey stick and was scrambling madly up a broken rocky slope. Anthony pulled himself to his feet and hurled himself up the wall after her. There was the chain-link fence that had been used to patch this part of the wall. And above him, outlined against the starry sky, was Miss Eells. She was peeling off her padded jacket and yelling commands at Anthony. Despite his confusion and fear, he managed to make out what she was saying. He was supposed to throw his coat over the barbed wire at the top of the fence to protect himself when he jumped over it.

  But as Anthony began unbuttoning his coat, a sound like a thousand angry bees rose from the darkness below them. A cloud of leaves had turned into a spiraling tornado that surrounded
the two of them. Anthony covered his face with his hands and fell to his knees, screaming. There was no escape—he was going to die.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Every muscle in Anthony's body grew tense. He pressed his hands very hard against his face, digging the nails into his skin. Holding his breath, he waited for the horrible pain to begin. In his fevered brain a thought formed: Please, let me just black out. Any minute now, any second now, it would start, and then...

  An icy mist blew over Anthony's body. That, and nothing more. For several seconds longer he held his rigid pose. Then he took his hands away from his face and looked around. Miss Eells was lying flat on the top of the wall, her hands over her head. She too straightened up and peered blearily around. The leaves were quiet; the whirring sound had stopped. Except for a couple of minor cuts and scrapes they were all right.

  "Well, now!" said Miss Eells as she brushed dirt off her knees. "Life is full of surprises, isn't it? I thought we were going to be turned into hamburger. I guess Old Nasty up there in the mansion is toying with us, having his own ghoulish kind of fun. Let's clear out before our kindly host changes his mind. We'll have to leave our coats behind, but that's better than having our pelts nailed to Mr. Borkman's barn door, don't you think?"

  Anthony nodded glumly. He took off his coat and draped it over the barbed wire. Then, gripping the top of the fence, he vaulted over and dropped to the ground. When he looked up he saw Miss Eells hanging by her hands from the top of the wall. She was afraid to let go.

  "It's okay, Miss Eells!" Anthony called. "There's a big pile of leaves down here, and they'll—" Anthony clapped his hand to his mouth. He realized what he had just said.

  "Break my fall?" said Miss Eells sarcastically. "Okay, one-two-three... bombs away!"