The Mystery of the Death Trap Mine - M. V. Carey [15]
“Allie!” he shouted, when she came through the door. “Just the girl I wanted to see!
Been talkin’ to Ben Tait, and he tells me you’re the one found that body up at the mine.”
Allie grinned. “Mr. Kingsley, so far you’re the only one who’s happy about it. Mr.
Thurgood wants to knock my block off, Sheriff Tait says he’ll put me in jail if I ever go near the mine again, and Uncle Harry’s so mad at me …”
“I know. He’ll get over it, don’t you worry. Only you’d better stay out of mines from now on. Hate to have to write your obituary.” The man squinted at the Three Investigators.
“These your friends from Los Angeles?”
“Mr. Kingsley, this is Jupiter Jones,” said Allie. “That’s Pete Crenshaw over by the door, and Bob Andrews is the one with the glasses — his dad works for the Los Angeles Times.”
“Well, now,” said Kingsley. “That’s some newspaper!”
“Yes, sir,” Bob agreed. He was edging toward a partition that separated the office from a huge dim room in the back of the building. He could see a small rotary press and a linotype machine. The place smelled of printer’s ink and dust and age.
“Want to look around?” asked Kingsley.
“I’d like to very much,” said Bob. “I’m interested in newspapering. Do you run the linotype yourself?”
“I do everything,” Kingsley told him: “Most weeks that doesn’t amount to much. This week’ll be different. This week we’ve got news. Now Allie, you just sit right there and tell me about looking down that shaft and seeing that body. Boys, make yourselves at home.
Turn on the lights back there. Look at the press if you want.”
The Three Investigators went back past the partition. Jupe touched a light switch and fluorescent fixtures in the ceiling filled the place with glare. Bob pointed to shelves along one wall. There were rows of file boxes, each one marked with dates.
“Those must be the old issues,” Bob said.
“We want the ones for five years ago,” murmured Jupe.
Bob nodded, and the three boys began to remove file boxes from the shelves. The papers for the year when the mine was sealed took up six file boxes.
“Go through every issue,” said Jupe. “Scan the headlines. We don’t want to miss anything that might possibly be a clue.”
The three seated themselves on the floor, and each one opened a box, took out stacks of newspapers and began to page through them. They could hear Allie in the front office, her voice clear and excited, as she described to Kingsley what he doubtless already knew — that it was both thrilling and disturbing to find a dead body.
At first the old newspapers were disappointing. There were accounts of two small fires in the town. There was the report of the purchase of a new car by the sheriff’s department.
There were stories about visitors who had come to stay for a few days with relatives in Twin Lakes. There was nothing that could relate to Gilbert Morgan. But then, as he went through the issue for the week of April 29, Jupe said, “This may be something.”
“What is it?” asked Bob.
Jupe was silent for a minute, reading a news item to himself. Then he looked up. “A five-year-old girl wandered away from her home near town and was missing for three hours.
She was found by a search party in Death Trap Mine. It seems that the entrance had once been boarded up, but over the years vandals and curiosity seekers had managed to remove some of the old boards. The little girl got into the mine and fell asleep. Her parents wanted to start a fund to raise money and have the mine sealed permanently. They said she could have been killed if she had gone further into the mine — and we know that indeed she could have.”
Jupe looked around. “Where’s the issue for May sixth?”
“Here.” Bob held up a paper he had been reading. “There’s a front-page story about the mine. The owner of the Twin Lakes Market put an empty five-gallon water jug next to his cash register and asked the citizens to donate to a fund for closing the mine. In two days they had raised enough for an iron grill to seal the mine entrance. The grill was ordered from Lordsburg, and they