The Mystery of the Death Trap Mine - M. V. Carey [3]
All three boys started. Aunt Mathilda was planning to remove the heaps of junk that protected Headquarters! Jupe thought quickly. Without the boys, she would never get to this task.
“Aunt Mathilda, I would like very much to go with Allie and her uncle. It would be a new experience.
“And new experiences are good for you!” said Allie, laughing. “Besides, you just might run into some mystery in Twin Lakes, and that would be fun!”
Jupe suddenly realized that in some devious way Allie had put her uncle up to issuing the invitation. She had trapped them into helping her with her case.
“It might be fun at that,” said Pete. “I think my folks will let me go.”
Bob looked eager. “I know I can get a leave from my part-time job at the library. It’s slow there now.”
“Well, all right,” said Aunt Mathilda.
Harrison Osborne shook her hand. “I promise not to work the boys too hard.”
“I’m not worried about that,” said Aunt Mathilda. “It can’t be done. They can think of more excuses not to work than a centipede has legs!”
Chapter 2
A Roaring Welcome
“SUCH AS IT IS, this is Twin Lakes,” announced Harrison Osborne.
He slowed the big air-conditioned station wagon that had carried them across Arizona deserts and up into the hills of southwestern New Mexico. The boys, who rode in the back, looked ahead along the oiled logging road and saw a green valley between two ranges of tree-covered mountains. There were rows of little frame houses on dusty streets that ran back from the main road. Several buildings faced the road — a market, a drugstore, a newspaper office, and a tiny crumbling hardware store. In the centre of town a faded brick courthouse reared up to an imposing two stories. There was a gas station and, beyond this, the Twin Lakes Fire Department.
“Fire!” said Pete suddenly, pointing to a place beyond town. Smoke curled up into the clear afternoon air.
“Don’t panic,” said Allie. She sat next to her uncle in the front seat. “That’s just smoke from the furnace of the sawmill.”
“Mining used to be the big thing here,” Uncle Harry told them. “Now the mines are all played out and the sawmill keeps the town going. Logging is the only thing left. Forty-five years ago Twin Lakes was a rip-roaring place, but no more.”
“Last place in the world I’d come to if I wanted to pull a fast one,” said Pete.
Harrison Osborne looked away from the road for a second. “A fast one?” he said. “Allie, have you been telling the boys any of your wild tales?”
Allie stared straight ahead.
“Allie? ” Her uncle stopped the car to let a woman dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt cross the road in front of him.
“I only said that Wesley Thurgood is a phony — and he is, Uncle Harry!”
Uncle Harry made a sound that was halfway between a snort and a laugh. He kept his foot on the brake and turned to face the boys. “I know you three are amateur detectives,”
he said, “but don’t go bothering Wesley Thurgood. He is our neighbour and I don’t want any trouble with neighbours. Thurgood’s got a fine reputation. He’s made a lot of money in real estate, and he came back to Twin Lakes because that’s where he started out. He was born here — just before the mine closed down. His family moved away soon after, but he told me he grew up hearing exciting stories of Twin Lakes’ boom-town days. He bought Death Trap Mine because his father once worked there. Now that doesn’t seem to me like such a far-out thing to do.”
“So why’d he open up the mine again?” demanded Allie with all the authority she could muster.
“That’s none of our business,” said her uncle. “I do know that it wasn’t so kids could prowl around and maybe get hurt. Thurgood’s one hundred percent aboveboard. I’ve checked him out and so has my bank. He’s a millionaire — his credit rating would make a Vanderbilt look like a piker.”
He turned to the boys and smiled. “Allie has a way of going off half-cocked,” he said.
“She’s got it in for Thurgood because she tried to explore the mine one day and he marched her back home by the scruff