The Brown Fox Mystery (17 page)

Moonlight, streaming in between the slats, threw narrow fingers of light across the dusty plank floor and upon a pitiful little figure lying huddled in one corner, a motionless figure.

Djuna reached it in two noiseless strides and dropped to his knees beside it.

“Oh, Miss Annie, Miss Annie!” he whispered in an agony of fear. “It’s me, Miss Annie! It’s Djuna!”

She stirred feebly, moaned, and sat up. But she did not speak. And in a shaft of moonlight which rested upon her, Djuna saw to his horror that her mouth had been gagged and that her wrists and ankles had been tied with ropes!

“Don’t move!” he whispered. “Don’t make a sound!”

Swiftly he unfastened the gag that had bitten so cruelly into her wrinkled cheeks, and slashed away, with his sheath knife, the cords that had bound her wrists and ankles. For a moment, Miss Annie could only moan feebly, while Djuna patted her on the shoulder and whispered words of encouragement to her. And then her arms suddenly went around his shoulders and she hugged him to her as if she would never let him go.

“Did—did they hurt you?” Djuna whispered in Miss Annie’s ear.

“N-n-no,” said Miss Annie with a trembling voice. “How—how did you know I was here?”

For an instant Djuna couldn’t suppress a snicker, and then he said, “I guessed. That is, I guessed you
had
to be here.”

“How did they ever get you up here?” Djuna asked after Miss Annie stopped sobbing again.

“They have a long ladder that reached up to the platform, right below here,” she whispered. “They forced me to climb it. They have guns, Djuna. They’re dangerous men.”

“I saw the ladder yesterday,” Djuna whispered back, “but I didn’t think it was nearly long enough to reach up to the platform. Did you hear Captain Ben and me when we were here yesterday?”

“I saw you,” said Miss Annie softly. “I wasn’t bound and gagged then. They didn’t do that until this morning. But I didn’t dare call to you and Captain Ben because I knew that you would both try to rescue me, and I knew that they were armed and would kill you if I did. I—I watched you leave in Captain Ben’s boat, and oh, Djuna, I thought—I thought I was
never
going to see you again!”

Djuna squeezed Miss Annie to reassure her as she began to sob again and said, “Do you know what they are digging for?”

“Why, they’re as crazy as loons!” Miss Annie whispered, with scorn in her voice. “They’re hunting for buried treasure!”

“Treasure!” exclaimed Djuna, almost forgetting to whisper, he was so surprised. “
What
treasure?”

“Well, I don’t believe for a minute that there
is
any treasure,” said Miss Annie. “But from what I’ve heard since I got here, that stupid fellow they call Lem has convinced the other two that old Mr. Winne—Miss Winne’s father, you know, the man who used to own this icehouse—buried a lot of money somewhere here, before he died, and they’re bound and determined they’re going to find it. It’s just a lot of nonsense, of course, for if Mr. Winne had really had any money he would have left it to his daughter. But they’re desperate now, and, oh, dear, I don’t know what they’ll do to us!”

“So
that’s
what they’re hunting for!” Djuna said, quietly. “But, look, Miss Annie, if you didn’t know that until after you came out here, what did you come here for, all by yourself?”

“Because I was so worried about you!” Miss Annie said. Her voice trembled and she was trying hard not to break into tears. “I was so afraid you would get in trouble with these men! I knew you suspected them of burning Captain Ben’s boat, and I was so afraid you would get them angry and they would hurt you! And, oh dear, I’ve just made things worse than ever!”

“Now, stop worrying, Miss Annie!” Djuna commanded, patting her hand.

“I thought,” sobbed Miss Annie, “that if I came out here and told them the police suspected them of burning Captain Ben’s boat, they would be so frightened that they would leave right away, before you got mixed up in it. Then I left that message with Miss Winne for you, about the lazy dog, because I was afraid she would think it was too dangerous for me to come out here alone, if I told her where I was going, and so I left that note and hoped that you could figure it out, because Captain Ben said that man he calls Lame-Brain is the laziest man he ever saw, and he intimated that the two men who were shipping the sawdust away for dolls were ‘crazy like a couple of foxes.’”

“Yes,” Djuna whispered dryly. “I did figure it out, but not until I learned a couple of other things. Then I
knew
you must be here.”

Suddenly Djuna jabbed his hand into his blouse and said, “Jeepers! I brought you a couple of sandwiches. Did they give you anything to eat?”

“Yes,” said Miss Annie; and her voice was getting stronger now. “They gave me some sandwiches and a bottle of milk, and some water. And I had a bag of cookies with me when I came.”

“A bag of cookies!”
Djuna said. “What did you have those for?”

“Well,” said Miss Annie, hesitating in an embarrassed sort of way, “I—I was going to give them to those men down there, and then they got so mean I just kept them for myself!”

When Djuna snickered at her reply Miss Annie managed a faint-hearted snicker herself; and then her smile was gone, as she grasped Djuna’s arm and her next whisper was filled with terror.

“How are we going to get away from here, Djuna?” she moaned. “If those men find that money tonight they’ll kill both of us, so that we can’t ever tell anyone they found it!”

“If they don’t find it tonight,” Djuna whispered back, “I think I’ve arranged things so that we’ll be rescued in the morning. But—but if they find out I’m here they’ll probably do something awful to us before morning!”

After Djuna had made Miss Annie as comfortable as he could, he inserted the point of his knife under an edge of the trap door that led down to the platform directly underneath the cupola. Raising the door only a fraction of an inch at a time he lifted it until he could peer down into the dimly lit space below him.

He could not see the front portion of the icehouse because of the platform; but the space where Jones and Baldwin were digging was in the center section and the two men were clearly visible as they worked along, side by side, swinging their picks with methodical precision, and then stopping, every few minutes, to shovel out the dirt they had loosened.

Djuna felt relatively safe from being seen because the light afforded by the two small lanterns by which the men were working penetrated the darkness for only a small area around them. He watched their determined efforts and listened to their muffled curses for a few minutes, and then it came to him, as Jones and Baldwin stopped to rest, that Miss Annie and he must not risk whispering again, because the old building became as silent as a tomb when they were not working. He could only hear the rasping of their breath as they drew air into their lungs, and the eerie silence of the place sent a tingle of something closely akin to terror creeping up his spine.

When the men began to use their picks again he gently lowered the trap door back in place and then cupped his hand around Miss Annie’s ear as he whispered, “We mustn’t talk any more. It’s too dangerous. They might hear us. Try to go to sleep. We’ll just have to wait until daylight.”

Miss Annie nodded her head and reached up and grasped Djuna’s hand to press it, without saying a word. And Djuna thought again, as anger surged through him, that there was no punishment too great for men who would bind and gag a helpless old lady.

The illuminated dial of Djuna’s wrist watch told him that it was a quarter after two as he lay down beside Miss Annie and pillowed his head on his arm.

Each second seemed like an hour and each minute seemed like a day as the hard boards of the floor cut into his body and he tried desperately to stay awake. He went over and over the Morse code so that he wouldn’t make any mistakes when it came time to signal to Tommy, and when he came to N the sixth time he was going over it, he suddenly fell asleep.

The next thing Djuna knew, daylight was streaming in between the ventilator slats on the east and south sides of the cupola. He blinked his eyes twice and gasped as he became aware of where he was. He looked quickly at Miss Annie and saw that she was still asleep. Then he looked at his watch and saw that it was twenty minutes of six!

Moving with the same cautious stealth that he had used the night before, he crept over to the south front of the cupola, to the opening he had made by removing the slats, and peered down across the lake.

The sun, a great golden ball of fire, was just climbing out of the hills to the east, and on the dock almost directly below it Djuna could see Tommy Williams standing motionless, gazing toward the icehouse. And beside him was a little black form that was also standing motionless and gazing toward the icehouse. Djuna knew it was Champ!

Relief, relief that they were there, loyally waiting to make rescue possible, caused something to climb into Djuna’s throat and almost brought tears to his eyes! He waved a hand outside the cupola, although he doubted that Tommy could see it. Then alarm seized him as Tommy began to wave both arms back and forth above his head. He knew that if Lame-Brain was awake and gazing down the lake he could see Tommy waving his arms, while he faced the icehouse, as easily as he, Djuna, could see him!

Moving swiftly but silently, he took the heliograph out of its leather case and rested it carefully on the window ledge, just as the sun shot upward to clear the tops of the trees.

Holding the base of the heliograph as steadily as he could with one trembling hand, because there was nothing to clamp it to, he lined up Tommy’s figure through the small unsilvered spot in the center of its mirror, and adjusted the angle until he could see Tommy through the V of the sighting rod.

When Tommy put both arms straight up above his head and then brought them down until they were at right angles to his body Djuna knew that the reflected ray from the sun was passing directly through the V to Tommy. He made a series of dots while Tommy lowered his arms and got ready to take the message.

Concentrating with all of his will power Djuna began to send:

Djuna was just about to add the final D for his signature, as he had done the afternoon before, when there was a sharp report beneath him and slivers of glass cut his face as the mirror of the heliograph broke into a hundred pieces!

Stunned by the impact of the metal part of the heliograph against his head, Djuna fell backward against Miss Annie, waking her. For an instant, while Miss Annie tried to gather her senses, she lay perfectly still. Then, as she saw Djuna’s bleeding face, she screamed and gasped, “Djuna! What happened? Your face is bleeding!”

“Lie still! Stay right where you are!” Djuna commanded as he sat up and started crawling on his knees toward the open space in the cupola. As he peered cautiously out of one corner of the open space there was another report and a bullet slapped into the wood above his head!

He ducked back, but not before he had seen Lame-Brain aiming a rifle at him from the rickety old dock of the icehouse. And he had also seen that Tommy Williams, followed by Champ, was climbing into his rowboat to start for the Lakeville Landing to bring help!

But now, Djuna knew, help could never arrive in time! He figured quickly that it would take Tommy at least ten minutes to get to the landing, another fifteen to get Captain Ben and the police, and six more minutes for Captain Ben to come the length of the lake at top speed.

Djuna just put one finger over Miss Annie’s lips as she began to pour frightened questions at him. He was straining to hear what Jones and Baldwin were saying, as they began to shout questions at Lame-Brain and Lame-Brain’s voice sounded in the icehouse below.

“I was shootin’ at one o’ them kids!” Lame-Brain yelled. “He’s up in the cupola, an’ the other kid—”

“
What
kid?” shouted a voice that Djuna recognized as Baldwin’s.

“The kid what was here with Capt’n Ben,” Lame-Brain answered in a shrill voice. “I seen the other kid, th’ one that c’m here with him, dancin’ around on their dock, and wavin’ his arms. He was lookin’ up this way. I didn’ know what was happenin’ until I went out to look up at the cupola, thinkin’ maybe that ol’ lady had got loose and was wavin’ out the window ag’in. That kid was up there, an’ he had some kind of a mirror he was makin’ signals with to the other kid on the dock. I ran ’n got my rifle and broke the mirror with my first shot. I—”

“What did the kid on the dock do?” Baldwin interrupted.

“He got in his rowboat an’ started f’r Lakeville,” Lame-Brain said.

“To bring the police!” Baldwin said quickly. “We’ve got to get out of here, fast!”

“Not before I take care of that nosey old lady, an’ that little rat up in the cupola!” said another voice that Djuna knew must belong to Jones. “C’mon, Lem, get hold of the other end of that ladder. I’m going up and teach them to keep their noses out of other people’s business.”

“Do anything to ’em you want to,” said Baldwin fiercely. “They’ve gummed things for us so that we’re out a fortune. When you get up there, throw ’em off the platform so I can get a whack at ’em, too!”

Djuna heard Miss Annie softly weeping beside him and he turned and hugged her for a brief instant before he stuck his knife under the edge of the trap door to the platform and carefully raised it.

He could see no one in the dim light of the two lanterns below, but a moment later he heard grunts beneath the platform and then the top of a ladder was laid against it. As the end of the ladder began to wobble back and forth Djuna knew that someone was mounting it, and hardly knowing what he was doing, he lifted the trap door off the opening and swung himself onto the short ladder that went down to the platform.

When he reached it he peered over the side and saw that Jones was three quarters of the way up the ladder. Placing one foot against the top of the ladder and bracing his back against one of the heavy timbers that held the platform, Djuna put all the strength of his sturdy young body into one great heave.