The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

making his way into the garden without a backward look. Then Val demanded an explanation.
    “What are you doing here?” he tried to out-screech the wind.
    In answer she clapped her wet, muddy hand across his mouth and pulled him back from the levee.
    They reached the semi-shelter of a rotting summer-house where he put down the chest. Ricky pushed her wet hair out of her eyes. It was impossible for them to hear each other without screaming madly.
    “Jeems told me—after you left—Val! How could you be so mad!”
    “I made it.” He touched the chest with his toe. “After we had practically kidnapped him, we couldn’t let his belongings just float away. But why are you out here? And where did that boat come from?”
    “I came out here after Jeems told me. I’m all right.” She laughed shakily. “I’ve got my oldest clothes on—and this,” she touched her cape. “I couldn’t stay in there—waiting—after I knew. And I didn’t want Rupert to ask questions. So I said that I was going to bed with a headache. Then I slipped out here to the levee. And I hadn’t been here two minutes before that boat came downstream. There were four men in it and they got out and went into the bushes over there. And, Val, Rupert is down at the other end of the garden where they are having trouble with the levee. Holmes and Creighton went down to see if they could help, too, just after you left. There’s nobody but Charity up at the house with Lucy and Letty-Lou. Val, what are we going to do?” she appealed to him.
    “First I’ll investigate these visitors,” he said easily, though he felt far from easy within.
    “Me too,” she said firmly if ungrammatically, and since Val could not wait to argue, she went along.
    They took the route she had watched the invaders follow, wriggling through wet bushes and around trees.
    “Val, look out!” She grabbed his arm and so saved him from tumbling headlong into a black hole in the ground. Vines and a small shrub or two had been ruthlessly torn out to bare the opening. It was here that the visitors must have gone to earth. And then Val had a glimmering of the truth; the “Boss” and his friends had at last found Jeems’ private door.
    Prudence urged that they return to the house and send Sam Two or some other messenger down to the cross-roads store to summon the police by phone. Prudence however had never successfully advised any Ralestone. They had a decided taste for fighting their own battles. So, torch in hand, Val dropped into the hole. And a moment later Ricky slid down to join him.
    They stood in a rough passage. Stout timbers banked its sides and guarded the roof. There was a damp underground smell such as Val had noted in the cellar of the house, but the air was fresh enough. After the first hasty survey, the boy held his fingers over the bulb of the flashlight so that only the faintest glimmer escaped to light their path.
    The passage was short, ending abruptly in a low bricked room. Save for themselves, a tangle of rotting rope in a far corner, and two lively black beetles, it was empty.
    “Val,” Ricky’s throaty whisper reached him, “can’t you guess what this is? The first pirate Ralestone’s storage-house!”
    It was a likely enough explanation—though nothing could have been stored there very long; the place was too damp. Beads of slimy moisture from the walls dripped slowly down, shining like silver in the light.
    At the other side of the room was a corridor branching away. But this they barely glanced into, little knowing how that neglect was to prove disastrous in the end. It was the main door to their right which interested them most, for that led, so far as Val could determine, toward the house. And that must have been the one the mysterious visitors had followed.
    Thus they came into the second of their pirate ancestor’s store-rooms. This one was long and narrow. Three wooden casks eaten with decay and spotted with fungus stood against the wall, testifying to the use to which this chamber had been put, though the all-pervading damp could not have been good for the wine.
    Again a dark archway tempted them on, and the third room into which they came had a more grim reminder of the scarlet past of the house. For Ricky stumbled over something which clinked dully. And when Val used the flash they looked down upon a telltale length of chain ending in an iron ring, its other end soldered into the wall.
    “Val,” Ricky’s voice quavered,