Cherry Ames 22 Rural Nurse (17 page)

“Into Sauk?” Hal asked.

“Yes. Because when he came back, a long time later, he had a copy of the
Sauk Weekly Courier
with him, and a bunch of cigars in his shirt pocket. I especially noticed the cigars. Floyd never smokes anything but that smelly old pipe of his. And I wish to goodness he was here right now smoking it and smelling up the house with it!”

“There, there,” Cherry said softly. She was thinking about the cigars—the Sauk drugstore had the only tobacco counter in town that sold cigars—and the Sauk drugstore was a meeting place where you could drop in to learn the local news. Surely someone in town must have seen the sheriff lead Old Snell in handcuffs into the jail last evening. Someone must have noticed the county medical offi cer, the county nurse, Mrs. Grisbee, and another man, who was not known to the local people, enter the jail. In a town as small as Sauk, even the most insignifi cant event drew comment. The pedlar’s arrest would be news indeed. Floyd might have handed out cigars to persuade the men lounging around the drugstore to tell him the details in full. Including, Cherry suspected, anything they knew about a stranger who was the Food and Drug inspector.

“Where’s Jane?” Hal asked suddenly.

Mrs. Barker explained that Jane seemed upset about their family crisis, and had tactfully “made herself scarce.” She was doing some mending out in the yard.

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NEWS

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Hal seized upon seeing Jane as an excuse to break away from the old lady. Cherry knew he, too, was anxious to follow Floyd.

They found Jane seated in a canvas chair and sew-ing. Her crutches lay on the grass.

“Floyd left!” Jane said when she saw Hal and Cherry.

“Poor Mrs. Barker!”

“It’ll be even more painful for her,” Hal said, “if Floyd is caught and arrested. Assuming he’s guilty....” He told Jane rapidly how the pedlar had been arrested yesterday, and how today’s situation stood. “I think Cherry and I ought to go over to the old farm as fast as we can.

Floyd might have gone there.”

“From sunrise, when Floyd left here,” Cherry fi gured aloud, “to now—that’s three hours gone by.”

“Well, let’s go see if he’s still there,” Hal said. “It would take quite a while to pull up those ginseng beds.”

“You mustn’t enter the old farmhouse!” Jane exclaimed. “Suppose Floyd and those two men
are
in there—suppose they’re armed. Three men to one—

you’re outnumbered, Hal.”

“Hmm. We’d better phone the sheriff,” Hal said. “He’s armed; the Food and Drug inspector isn’t, and hasn’t power of arrest. Jane, to save time, would you …?”

“
I’m
not going to call the sheriff to arrest my hostess’s son,” Jane said. She was greatly troubled. “I can’t do that to her.”

“Fair enough,” Cherry said. “May I telephone from here to the Food and Drug inspector? Just to notify 162
CHERRY

AMES,

RURAL

NURSE

him that Floyd’s gone off? And to ask him to join us at once at the old farmhouse?”

“We-ell.” Jane looked unhappy. “Since yours and Hal’s safety is involved, I suppose you’d better.”

“Hurry up,” Hal said.

Cherry ran back to the house and, with Mrs. Barker’s permission, used the telephone to call the Sauk newspaper offi ce. Someone there said Mr. Short had just left with the editor to continue their discussion over breakfast. Cherry asked whether they had gone to Smith’s Restaurant.

“No, they’ve gone to some friend’s house,” said her informant. “No, miss, I’m sorry, I don’t know where you can reach him.”

Cherry asked when or whether Mr. Short would return to the newspaper offi ce, but her informant didn’t know this either.

Another delay. More time for Floyd to get away! And for the two St. Louis men to get away. Cherry left word for Mr. Short at the newspaper offi ce that she and Hal were going at once to the abandoned farm, and to join them there. “And tell Mr. Short,” she said, “the situation is urgent.” She called her own offi ce and left the same message for Mr. Short with the clerk.

Then she called the sheriff’s offi ce, but Mr. Steeley and his deputy were out. What bad luck! Cherry left word, anyway, but this meant that she and Hal would enter the old farmhouse alone, without protection in case of trouble. She hoped that the highway patrolman
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might be in this area, or that the sheriff would telephone highway patrol headquarters.

Hal was already in his car, with the motor running.

They’d leave Cherry’s car here. Jane would explain it somehow to Mrs. Barker. Jane looked after them with an anxious expression as they tore off down the highway.

“Even if Floyd and the men aren’t in the house,” Hal said, driving fast, “they may have left some evidence behind about where and how the remedy has been manufactured.”

“Optimist!” Cherry scoffed at him. “You know they’re too sharp to leave any traces.”

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c h a p t e r x i v

Through the Trap Door

six minutes later at the old farm grounds, they were stunned at what they saw. The big ginseng beds were bare! Someone had pulled up every last ginseng plant and root, leaving raw, freshly turned patches of earth.

“Not only to hide evidence,” Hal muttered. “The racketeers must be taking the ginseng with them, so they can start up their racket in a new location,” Hal guessed.

“To poison more people! Oh, Hal! Let’s fi nd them so Food and Drug can stop them.”

They looked around for Floyd’s jalopy or the “sportsmen’s” car with the St. Louis license plates. They saw no cars here, not even any car tracks.

“Well, if they’re in the house, they could have heard
our
car,” Hal said. “We’ll go in cautiously.” 165

166
CHERRY

AMES,

RURAL

NURSE

At the door they peered in and listened. The house was silent. Hal took a step or two down the hallway and motioned Cherry to stay behind. She shook her head and followed him. A fl oor board creaked. They both halted as if frozen. Nothing happened, no one came. They started to move again.

The living room was empty as they passed it. Hal took a few long strides to look into the kitchen. His lips formed the word “Nothing.” Cherry gained the doorway to the dining room, and nearly cried out in surprise. She drew Hal to look into the dining room.

The long, tall, heavy, oak buffet, which stood against the wall adjoining the living room, was awry. Out of place, with one end dragged forward—someone had moved it! Why?

“Look at that!” Cherry whispered.

Hal did not understand what the buffet’s being out of place meant. Cherry ran soundlessly across the dining room and felt along the wall behind the buffet.

Under the old wallpaper she touched what might be a joining. She applied a little pressure, then more pressure, and a narrow section of the wall slowly swung in an arc on inside hinges. The opening was barely wide enough for one person to slip through. Cherry saw a narrow, oblong, windowless room.

“Cherry!” Hal whispered. “Don’t go in there!”

“It’s empty. Come on. But what a smell!” The hidden chamber smelled overpoweringly of ginseng. A kerosene stove was in here. Was this where Floyd, or whoever, had brewed the remedy? Cherry

THROUGH THE TRAP DOOR

167

looked around at the empty, stained shelves and the one old stool, with rings where pots and jars must have rested. Everything else was gone.

“Say”—Hal nudged her and whispered—“what’s the reason for a concealed room in a farmhouse?”

“The Underground Railway—it had hiding places and escape routes,” Cherry whispered back. “Look!

Look down at the fl oor! A trap door!” Cherry knelt and grasped its rusted iron ring. The trap door opened easily. Down below she saw only blackness.

Hal’s hand came down on her shoulder. “Oh, no, you don’t go down there!” Cherry furiously shook her head.

“At least let me go fi rst.”

“Leave the trap door open,” Cherry whispered, “so Paul Short and the sheriff can fi nd us—if they come.” Hal eased his long length down through the opening in the fl oor. She heard a soft thud as he landed.

“It’s black as pitch in here,” he muttered. “Like a cave. Like the far end of the cave we found—”

“Must be a tunnel leading into the cave!” Cherry crouched, then eased herself through the open trap door. Hal helped her down. Her foot slipped and landed on something softer than the earth fl oor.

Cherry bent and picked up the thing and held it under the trap door where a dim light fi ltered through, from up in the dining room.

“Why, it’s a book!” she whispered in surprise. “I can just make out the title page.” It read:
The Compleat
Housewife
,
600 Receipts for Cooking and Remedies
, by 168
CHERRY

AMES,

RURAL

NURSE

E. Smith, London, 1753. “Hal, it’s Mrs. Barker’s old home-remedy book! Floyd took it—” She found a marker at the page with a formula for a ginseng remedy.

“Hang on to it.” Hal took her hand. “Hold fast so we won’t get separated in the dark.” He started slowly ahead. After a minute’s silence he said, “This is the other end of the tunnel, all right. But how’ll we get past that pile of dirt and the blockade, into the cave and then into the open again?”

Suddenly they both grasped what must have happened down here. Someone had put up or retained the old barn door as a blockade, to prevent anyone in Riverside Park from entering the old farmhouse through the cave and tunnel. Floyd—or whoever had set up the blockade—evidently had dug earth out of the cave walls in order to accommodate the barn door. That would account for the pile of earth Hal had seen.

“Watch for daylight up ahead,” Hal said softly to Cherry. “If we see daylight, we have a direct route for getting out of here. But if the passageway is still closed, we’ll have to retreat back to the house.

It won’t be easy to scramble up through the trap door.”

He meant that
if the three men were in the tunnel,
they’d need to get away from them fast
. Cherry’s heart pounded in alarm, but she said nothing and followed Hal. Presently she whispered:

“Listen! Do you hear something? A muffl ed sound—”

THROUGH THE TRAP DOOR

169

Hal paused. Cherry could not see him except as a blacker blue in the darkness. Then he said:

“Yes, I hear something. And I think I see a big patch of daylight. Scared? Want to turn back?”

“I’ll go farther ahead if you will,” Cherry whispered.

“At least we could edge up closer and see what’s going on. Though I’d rather not come face to face with—”

“Quiet!”

Hal and Cherry shrank back against the tunnel wall as someone—a man, judging by his heavy tread and breathing—ran past them on his subterranean way back to the farmhouse.

Farther down in the tunnel, at the open cave end, judging by the echo, a man’s voice called roughly:

“Where you going?”

The man near them shouted back, “I dropped the formula book somewheres in here! I got to fi nd it!” It was Floyd’s voice. He struck a match, hunting on the earth fl oor, his back to them. Hal pulled Cherry away from the light of the matches. They stumbled into a shallow natural niche in the tunnel’s earth wall and fl attened themselves against it.

“Barker!” The same surly voice called. “You got the formula in your
head
by now! Come back here!” His voice echoed and re-echoed in the cave, and carried clearly up the tunnel.

“I
got
to fi nd that book!” Floyd yelled back. He was far up the tunnel by now. “I’m just going back into the house for a minute—”

170
CHERRY

AMES,

RURAL

NURSE

Cherry began to tremble. If Floyd went back into the house and noticed that the trap door was open, he’d be alerted to their presence.

“Barker!” This time Cherry and Hal saw the fi gure of one of the men silhouetted in front of the cave’s opening. “We got to get away before those nosy kids bring the Food and Drug dick here! Do you want me to come and drag you back?”

“Okay, Benny, coming,” Floyd called back. “I guess I can remember the formula all right.” In another minute he passed them again in the dark.

Only then did Cherry let out a long breath in relief.

“Hurry up!” a second man’s voice shouted. “I got the boats waiting, but we ain’t fi nished loading. Give us a hand!”

Hal beside Cherry muttered, “So they’re going to make their getaway down the river. With all the evidence! I want to see what direction they’ll be going.” He moved nearer the cave, silent as a cat, half pulling Cherry after him. At one place Hal whispered:

“Look out—the old barn door and the pile of dirt should be about there. Don’t stumble on them.” They picked their way, feeling for every step. But there was no pile of dirt. The passageway was clear.

They moved through the cave toward the glimmer of daylight. All was quiet at the far end of the cave—the three men must be busy loading the boats. Or already gone—?

Hal and Cherry took advantage of these few quiet minutes to feel their way rapidly along the craggy cave walls.

They came close to the cave’s low, rocky opening.

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171

Here, illuminated by daylight, they saw cardboard cartons full of jars of the fake remedy, burlap bags stuffed with ginseng plants and dried ginseng roots, and some ledgers. Here was the evidence!

“We can still turn back or get away,” Hal said. “Or at least you can.”

“No. I’m staying with you. If we can detain these men until Mr. Short gets here—”

Hal drew her back into shadow as the three men straggled into the cave. Floyd said, “Ezra will notice when we don’t bring back two of his rented rowboats.”

“He won’t notice before fi ve o’clock,” the heavier of the two St. Louis men said scornfully. Cherry recognized the voice; he was Benny. “By then we’ll be in the car and a long ways from here. Let him go fi nd his boats adrift. Now hurry up with the loading.” The other man grunted. “Hurry! Hurry! I told you we should’ve beat it right after Barker saw the nurse pry-ing around the house. But no, we had to stick around while Barker makes more of the stuff. We wait around to fi nd out how well Snell can sell it in the towns. So now, it’s hurry, hurry!”