The Mystery of Sinister Scarecrow - M. V. Carey [35]
“Hey!” he yelled. “Hey, we’re in here!” He pounded on the door with his fist.
Jupe took off a shoe, stood up, and began to bang it on the door. All three boys yelled at once.
And at last the big door to the cold room swung open. The boys saw a tall man with bushy white hair standing in the doorway. His skin was leathery from long exposure to the sun, and deep furrows ran from his nose down to the corners of his mouth. Letitia Radford clung to his arm.
“Thank heavens!” he said. “I knew you had to be here someplace. I saw you arrive, but you never left!”
Jupiter grinned and walked out into the corridor.
“Obviously there are advantages to having a mystery man who keeps watch over this house.”
“Mystery man?” said Letitia Radford. “He’s not a mystery man. He’s Ben Agnier.
He used to be our pool man. I wish somebody would tell me what’s going on here.
Where are Burroughs and Mrs. Burroughs? I woke up from my nap and everyone was gone!”
“If Burroughs and his wife are gone, then their business here is finished,” said Jupiter. He nodded toward the tunnel at the end of the corridor.
Agnier followed his glance. “So that’s what they were up to!” he said. “A tunnel!”
“To the Mosby house,” Jupe told him.
Jupe snapped on his flashlight and started through the tunnel. The others followed.
“Wait!” cried Letitia Radford. “Don’t leave me!”
“Then hurry along!” said Agnier.
Letitia scurried after Bob, who had been the last to enter the tunnel.
There seemed to be no reason for stealth, yet no one spoke until they reached the end of the tunnel. There they saw a large opening in the concrete wall that separated the underground passage from the Mosby basement. An acrid odour lingered in the air.
“Dynamite, I imagine,” said Agnier. His long, brown face was grim.
“Of course!” exclaimed Jupiter. “We felt the explosion earlier. It must have taken place after five, when the guards go home.”
Agnier went through the opening into the Mosby basement and, in the light from Jupe’s flashlight, found a light switch. In the cellar were packing crates and a furnace room and a room with the elaborate machinery that kept the temperature in the house at a constant level. Agnier and the boys glanced around quickly and then went upstairs, with a silent, pale Letitia Radford staying close to them.
“Mr. Malz!” shouted Jupiter when they reached the entrance hall.
No one answered.
“Maybe he wasn’t here when they broke in,” said Pete.
They moved on through the rooms on the lower floor. Nothing was disturbed there. Again and again they called for Malz. The house was perfectly silent.
Was Gerhart Malz still in the museum? Was he hidden away, as the boys had been, and left to suffocate or starve? Jupe shuddered. The tunnel-makers were without pity.
“Mr. Malz!” Jupe shouted, and started up the stairs.
The rooms on the second floor were stripped almost bare. The Vermeer was gone.
So were the Rembrandts from the next room, and the Van Dyke and the Reubens. So were the ancient Flemish paintings that had glowed with rich, intricate color. Room after room was empty and echoing.
“A fortune!” said Jupe. “They took a fortune in art!”
Letitia Radford gazed at the blank white walls.
“The entire Mosby collection of paintings,” she said. “Burroughs and Mrs.
Burroughs? The houseman and the cook? They dug that tunnel and … and Burroughs was the scarecrow after all?”
There was a thumping from overhead.
“Aha!” said Jupe.
He darted up the stairs to the third floor, where Gerhart Malz had his workshop and his private rooms. The thumping grew louder as he went. Jupe followed the sound, with Bob and Pete close behind him, and opened the door to a closet in the small bedroom to the left of the stairs.
Gerhart Malz was there, bound with clothesline and gagged with a towel.
“It’s okay, Mr. Malz,” said Jupe. He knelt beside the curator. “We’ll have you loose in a second!”
Chapter 19
The Watcher’s Story
“I WOULD APPRECIATE IT greatly if someone would tell me exactly what is going on here!”
Mrs. Chumley sat upright