The Private Eye

possibility,” he said quietly.
    “But what would he want? There's nothing of any great value here, except for the manor's wine supply. But it's safely locked up in that wire cage over there.”
    Maggie nodded toward the wine-storage area on the other side of the room.
    “The wine might be enough of a temptation to draw a prowler,” Josh remarked thoughtfully. “Teenagers, maybe.”
    But Maggie's eyes were narrowing as a more sinister thought apparently struck her. “You know what I think?”
    “Uh, no, Maggie. What do you think?”
    “I think someone climbed in here to search for Aunt Agatha's emerald brooch.”
    Josh let that pass. The last thing he wanted to do tonight was shoot holes in Maggie's theory. He'd already shot holes in everyone else’s. “What do you say we take a look around and see if any of the cabinets look like they've been jimmied open.”
    “Right.” Maggie started determinedly toward the bank of file cabinets the Colonel used to house his research data and the reports on his experiments.
    She stopped short with a soft shriek. “Oh, my God, Josh! Look! There's water pouring out of that pipe. If it gets into the cabinets it will ruin the Colonel's papers.”
    Josh looked up from a stack of boxes he was studying and frowned. Sure enough, a steady stream of water was leaking from a joint in the pipes that ran overhead. The volume of water increased even as he watched.
    “Hand me that wrench hanging on the wall,” he ordered as he lunged across the room, cursing his awkward, broken stride. “Damn it, not that one, the other one. The big one. Yeah, that's it.”
    Josh reached the file cabinets, planted his hands on top of two of them and hoisted himself up until he was standing amid the clutter on the metal surface. His shoulder twinged painfully but he ignored it.
    Water was starting to pool and flow over the side of the filing cabinets-The cabinets, which were already groaning under the weight of the Colonel's accumulation of paperwork, trembled at this additional punishment. Josh could only pray they wouldn't collapse beneath him.
    “Here, Josh.” Maggie thrust the wrench up at him. “Hurry. The Colonel will be brokenhearted if all of his papers are destroyed.”
    “You think I don't know that?” Josh fitted the wrench to the pipe joint and applied steady pressure. The flow of water diminished quickly. Josh gave the joint a few more turns, tightening it securely until the leak stopped.
    When he had finished, he handed the wrench back to Maggie and slowly eased himself down to the floor. Maggie picked up some old cloths and began mopping up the water on top of the cabinets.
    For a moment neither of them spoke. Hands on his hips. Josh stared up at the pipe and thought about the faint sound of metal on metal that had brought him down here.
    “Someone was definitely in here. Josh.” Maggie tossed the wet rags onto the floor. “Someone climbed into this basement and deliberately loosened the pipe joint.”
    “Looks like it,” Josh agreed, still contemplating the pipe.
    “If we hadn't discovered the water corning out of that pipe tonight, the entire basement would have been flooded by morning. It would have been a disaster.”
    “Yeah. It would have been a mess, all right.” Tonight's incident put a whole new perspective on this cushy, piece-of-cake case. It was now dear to Josh that the things that had been happening at Peregrine Manor could no longer be written off as due to overactive imagination.
    “What are you thinking?” Maggie asked uneasily.
    “That the problems you've had might be the work of a vandal. Maybe some local sicko who gets his kicks causing this kind of trouble. Or a kid who's bent on doing mischief just for the hell of it.”
    Maggie chewed on her lower lip. “The sheriff did suggest that possibility when I called him after the first couple of incidents,” she admitted. “He said to be sure I locked everything up securely at night. I haven't bothered calling him again, But, Josh, it's not just wanton vandalism. I know it isn't.”
    Josh glanced at her and saw the anxiety in her eyes.
    He sighed. “You still think this has something to do with your Aunt Agatha's emerald brooch? Maggie, I don't want to quash your theory, but it doesn't make sense that a prowler would try to flood the basement while he searched for a valuable piece of Jewellery.”
    Maggie frowned. “It does look like he was trying to destroy the Colonel's papers, doesn't it? Do