The Mystery of Sinister Scarecrow - M. V. Carey [34]
trunk of the car and taking it away.”
The boys came abreast of the abandoned cold-storage room. Pete stopped and sniffed.
“Something’s burning!” he said.
He reached around the edge of the doorway and flipped the light switch.
The old refrigerator room was misty with smoke. There were heaps of rags in a corner, and a couple of old paint cans with the lids off.
“Good night!” said Pete. “Somebody left a bunch of paint rags here. Internal combustion’s started!” He crossed the refrigerator room and kicked at the rags. They flew this way and that, and flames leaped up from several of them.
“Watch it!” said Bob. He jumped to stamp out the little fires, and Jupe hurried to help.
Suddenly, from the corridor there came a low, eerie laugh.
The three boys spun around.
The scarecrow stood staring at them. Its painted grin was ghastly in the light from the naked bulb in the ceiling. For a moment it did not move. Then it pulled at the heavy door and slammed it shut.
“No! Wait!” Pete jumped
to the door, seized the handle
and pulled.
The door didn’t budge.
“Stop!” cried Pete again.
“Come back!”
“Save your breath,” said
Jupe. “He isn’t going to let us
out of here. Not now. Maybe
not ever!”
Chapter 18
The Break-In
BOB EXAMINED THE LATCH on the inside of the door. “Just our luck!” he said.
“It’s broken!”
“I don’t believe it’s a matter of luck at all,” said Jupiter. “I think that the scarecrow saw us go into the tunnel. He decided that we knew too much, and he broke the latch.
He then decoyed us in here by setting those rags on fire.”
“It was dumb to fall for that,” said Pete, “but I didn’t want to see the house burn down.”
“The scarecrow was counting on that,” said Jupe. “And he’s counting on this room to keep us quiet. I mean, it won’t do us any good to yell or pound and try to attract someone’s attention. This room is too well insulated. No one would hear.”
“Not even if we bang on the pipes on the ceiling?” asked Pete. “Wouldn’t they carry sound out of the room?”
Jupe nodded. “But those pipes aren’t connected to the rest of the house. They just run to a refrigeration unit, which is sure to be somewhere right outside. No one would hear us banging unless he was already close by in the basement.”
Pete sat down on the floor. “Is the scarecrow just going to leave us here?”
“Someone will come looking for us,” said Jupiter confidently. “We left our bicycles out in front, right near Letitia’s car. She’s bound to see them.”
“Would she come down here?” wondered Bob. “To the basement? With the spiders?”
Jupe thought about it. “No, she wouldn’t,” he said glumly. “Anyway, if she sees the bikes she’ll just think we’re with Dr. Woolley. And if Burroughs or his wife notices the bikes — well, we certainly can’t count on them for help.”
The boys sat still after that. The silence in the room was so intense that it seemed to close in on them, muffling their thoughts.
“Aunt Mathilda will guess where we are,” Jupe said at last. “She’ll send Hans or Konrad. Or she’ll call Chief Reynolds, and he’ll guess we’re in the Radford house. But that could take hours. …”
Jupe didn’t bother to go on. The Investigators were all wondering the same thing
— whether the air in the room would last until they were found.
Time crept by, one slow hour after another. Jupe’s stomach began rumbling. He wondered if dinnertime was close. Or was he hungry because he’d missed lunch?
Suddenly the boys felt a tremor in the room.
“What was that?” asked Pete in alarm, sitting up straight.
“Probably a little earthquake,” answered Bob.
“Oh, great!” muttered Pete as he slumped back against the wall. “It’s not enough to be trapped in an airless room! Now we can get buried alive in an earthquake, too!”
The minutes dragged by. Hours seemed to pass. “Am I imagining it,” asked Bob finally, “or is the air in here beginning to get stale?”
“It can’t be!” said Jupiter. “We haven’t been here—” He stopped and held his breath for an instant. “What was that?” he whispered. The other two boys listened.
“Someone’s banging on something,” Pete