The Mystery of Sinister Scarecrow - M. V. Carey [33]
The cellar of the big house was divided into a number of rooms. The boys found a wine cellar, a furnace room, several storage rooms, and a workshop. Then Jupe led the others to the corner of the house directly beneath Mrs. Chumley’s bedroom, where the door he’d seen the night before opened onto the lawn. At this spot the ground outside was almost exactly level with the basement floor.
“See that?” Jupe spoke very softly as he pointed to tire tracks on the cement floor.
“The scarecrow pushed his wheelbarrow out this way — a wheelbarrow with a rubber tire. It was loaded with dirt. See the bits of mud on the floor?”
“But where did the dirt come from?” Bob
wondered.
The boys left the outer door and began to follow
the tire tracks back through the basement. The telltale bits of clay on the floor led them to a narrow corridor that ran between an unused storeroom and
a room with a heavy, thick door. Pete switched on the light in the latter room, and the boys saw dusty pipes on the ceiling of the chamber.
“It must have been a meat locker once,” said Pete. “It’s like the cold room at the Rocky Beach Market, only not as big.”
“This house must have been something in the days when the Radford family really lived here,” said Bob. “Imagine! Your own private cold-storage room!”
Jupe nodded, but he wasn’t paying attention to Bob. He was looking quite satisfied, as if he had just found exactly what he’d hoped to find. He gestured toward the end of the corridor. “Look! That’s where the dirt came from!”
Pete and Bob stared. There should have been cement blocks at the end of this corridor — the cement blocks that made up the outer wall of the basement. Instead there was a gaping black hole.
“A tunnel!” said Pete.
Jupe took a flashlight out of his pocket. “I found this in a drawer in the kitchen,”
he told his companions. “I thought we might need it.”
He snapped the light on and pointed its beam into the tunnel.
“Wow!” said Bob. “Someone really worked on that! Look at the timbers bracing the ceiling!”
“Like a mine tunnel,” said Pete. “So that’s what the scarecrow’s been doing. But
… but …” He stopped, bewildered.
“But it doesn’t make sense for the scarecrow to invade someone’s house to build a tunnel, does it?” said Jupiter. “He would certainly be discovered.”
“So someone in the house is the scarecrow,” Pete decided. “Or someone in the house is in cahoots with the scarecrow. Burroughs and his wife!”
“That seems like a logical conclusion,” said Jupe. “And we can guess where this tunnel leads!”
Bob studied the wall. It was on the side of the house facing the road. “The tunnel goes under the road to the Mosby place,” he said. His voice was almost a whisper.
“Someone’s going to break into the Mosby Museum!”
“Shall we check it out?” suggested Jupiter.
He went into the tunnel, crouching, shining his light to left and to right.
The other two boys followed him. No one spoke, and the dirt floor absorbed the sound of the steps. The air became rather stale as they went on. After what seemed like hours of shuffling through the dark passageway, Jupe stopped. His way was blocked by a cement wall. He touched it. It was solid — still whole.
“The basement of the Mosby house,” he whispered. “This is the only portion of the museum that isn’t guarded. There are burglar alarms everywhere else.”
Bob and Pete nodded. Jupe handed the light back to Bob, who turned and began to lead the way out of the tunnel to the Radford house.
“That’s unreal!” exclaimed Pete, when the three boys were once again in the Radford basement. “It must have taken months to dig that tunnel!”
“Now we know why the scarecrow was trying to frighten Letitia away,” said Jupe.
“He was afraid she might come to the basement and discover the tunnel — or that she might look out one night and see something.”
Bob snapped off the flashlight, and the boys started back through the corridor toward the stairs. “Now I understand why the car Burroughs drove into Rocky Beach was riding so low,” said Jupe. “He’s been loading the dirt from