The Mystery of Sinister Scarecrow - M. V. Carey [25]
The sound of the engine changed as the driver shifted down to a lower gear. Pete decided a truck was coming. He heard springs squeak in protest and he saw headlights on the road. The vehicle had turned onto Rock Rim.
The headlights seemed to pierce Pete’s hiding place as the truck jounced up into the drive next to the old house. The driver killed the engine and lights, and Pete heard a hand brake protest as it was yanked on.
The truck door opened and a man got out. He went quietly through the shadows to the back of the house. Pete heard the back door open. An instant later a light flickered through the cracks in the boarded windows.
The man from the truck went directly upstairs. Pete heard his footsteps, loud on the bare floors, as he went to the back of the house.
Pete inched along behind the bushes until he could see the upstairs windows at the back — the windows that gave a view of the Radford mansion. At first the windows gaped empty and black. But a minute later a match flared in one of them. Pete caught a glimpse of a face that was work-worn and tanned, with deep lines running from the nose down to the corners of the mouth.
The man lit a cigarette, and Pete saw a halo of white hair framing his face. Then the match went out. Except for the glowing tip of the cigarette, the house was dark.
Trembling inside, Pete crept back toward the truck. He kept low behind the bushes until he was out of the man’s line of sight.
What was the man watching? Pete wondered.
The Radford house — but what at the mansion? Would something happen there that would be a signal — that would cause the watcher to put on an old corduroy coat, tie a painted burlap sack over his head, and don the black hat of the scarecrow?
Pete thought of calling Jupe on his walkie-talkie but decided not to risk even whispering. Instead he stood up and pulled at the handles on the rear doors of the truck. The doors swung out.
At first it was totally black inside the vehicle, but after a few minutes the blackness did not seem so intense. Pete reached in and touched a net of some sort. It was attached to a metal rim. There were plastic objects — long-handled tools somewhat like rakes — and there was a strong chemical odour.
Pete got into the truck, touching and sniffing. Chlorine. He smelled chlorine. The
tools must be those that were used to clean swimming pools. The watcher in the old house was a pool maintenance man!
Pete grinned wryly to himself. The boys had gone to such lengths to investigate Burroughs and his wife, and Gerhart Malz, and even Woolley, who had hired them in the first place. And they had not given a thought to the casual help who might be familiar with the Radford household — the gardeners and the pool men. Perhaps one of them had a reason to dislike Letitia Radford. Perhaps she had been imperious or impatient. Or perhaps the owner of the truck was a man with a twisted mind — a man who enjoyed making other people suffer.
If only he could put his hands on the scarecrow outfit, thought Pete, he would have proof!
But then he froze, his hands gripping the side of the truck. The vehicle was moving! “Oh, no!” whispered Pete. Desperately, without even stopping to think, Pete scrambled over the back of the seat and grabbed at the hand brake. It was loose in his hands. He slid down, hanging on to the steering wheel, trying to guide the truck as it rolled downhill faster and faster, backward and out onto Rock Rim Drive. His foot found the brake and he pumped, but the brake pedal went to the floor, and the sharp smell of brake fluid came to Pete’s nostrils. One of the cylinders had gone out. There were no brakes! Pete wondered briefly if he could slow the truck by slipping it into gear. But the maneuver might not work, and the truck was gaining speed every second. It was time to bail out.
Pete pushed the door
open. He saw trees flash past
in the twilight. Taking a deep
breath, he rolled out of the
truck.
There was the sky above
him and