The Mystery of the Blazing Cliffs - M. V. Carey [39]
“There!” said Barron. “A remarkable woman, my wife!”
Leaving the ‘spacemen’ tied up on the meadow, Barron started towards the lower fields.
“Come along, boy!” he said to Pete. “We don’t want to stand here all night. I’m sure there’s no end of excitement at the house!”
Chapter 17
The Treasure Hunt
THE MAN WHO called himself Lieutenant Ferrante stood in the driveway near the ranch house. He pointed a rifle towards the sky and fired.
“Back to your homes!” he shouted. “Step on it! Move! Anybody who’s still outside two minutes from now gets his big toe shot off!”
The ranch workers who had come into the lane to stare at the blazing cliffs retreated.
The doors of the cottages closed behind them, and locks turned.
Ferrante stamped into the ranch house. The staff was gathered in the kitchen, together with Jupiter and Bob. The man Bob had seen outside the tent—the man named Bones—
was there with a rifle. He sat on a straight chair between the table and the door, his gun across his knees and his eyes alert.
Ferrante stared at Elsie Spratt and Mary Sedlack, who sat at the table, hands folded in front of them. Hank Detweiler leaned on the back of Elsie’s chair, and Aleman and Banales sat across from the women. They looked angry and tense. Jupe was at the head of the table with Bob beside him.
“Wasn’t there a third kid?” said Ferrante. He scowled at Jupe. “Where’s your pal?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” said Jupe. “He went out a while ago and he hasn’t come back.”
The lieutenant looked hesitant, as if not certain whether to believe Jupe.
“The kid’s not here,” said Bones. “Al already looked upstairs. Want me to check the sheds?”
Ferrante made an impatient sound. “No,” he said. “It’s not important. He can’t get far.
Just keep them covered.” He nodded towards the group at the table. “If the kid shows up, we’ll nail him, too.”
Ferrante went out. He paused for a moment in the drive to speak to a second armed man who stood guard there. Then he disappeared through the outside entrance to the cellar of the Barron house.
Jupiter Jones looked at his watch. It was almost half past ten. The cliffs had exploded into flames twenty minutes before, and Jupe knew it would not be reasonable to expect help before midnight. It would be a long, nerve-racking wait.
Jupe leaned back in his chair and listened. He heard smashing and thumping from the basement of the big house. Ferrante had come with three other men, in addition to Bones and the guard in the drive, and Jupe knew that the four of them were now hauling crates across the cellar floor and manhandling trunks out of the way. Jupe put up his hand to cover a smile. It would take them a long while to complete their treasure hunt. They would eventually move the woodpile, and in time they would even shovel out the contents of the coal bin and dig up the floor there.
The thumping, scraping sounds ceased, and there was a crashing which Jupe assumed was the cement of the floor being broken with a sledgehammer. It went on relentlessly for five minutes, then for ten. At last it stopped and the staff heard shovels turning the earth.
It was almost an hour since the cliffs had burned.
The man with the rifle shifted in his chair and looked up at the kitchen clock.
The men in the cellar stopped digging in the ground and began to move the woodpile.
Logs hit the remains of the concrete floor and bounced away. Again there came the sound of concrete being broken, and again the scrape of shovels in the earth.
It was an hour and a half since the cliffs had burned.
The men in the cellar attacked the pile of coal. They shovelled and then smashed more concrete and shovelled again.
And it was almost two hours since the cliffs had burned.
Lieutenant Ferrante climbed out of the cellar. His shirt was sweat-stained and dirty and split across the shoulders, and his hair hung down over his eyes. One gloved hand rested on the gun at his belt. He came up the ranch-house steps in a dash.
“They tricked us,” he said to Bones. “It isn’t there. It never was there. I