Mystery of the Hidden House (17 page)

“I’ll wait for you at the rope’s end,” he whispered. “Follow me quickly.”

Down he went easily, as if he was performing on the ropes at school. Pip followed and then Larry. Soon they stood far down underground, in complete darkness. As they stood there they heard a noise of whirring and clattering some way off and a faint light came from that direction. Fatty saw the outline of a wide passage, and went down it, the others keeping close by him.

They followed the wide passage, which wound round and round rather like an enormous spiral stairway. “We’re going down into the bowels of the earth!” whispered Larry. “Whatever’s this curious winding passage, Fatty.”

“It’s where cars come up to go on that automatic floor,” said Fatty. “Or go down! Ah - here we are!”

From their dark corner the boys now looked out into an enormous workshop. Machines whirred and clattered. There were cars everywhere! Two were being sprayed with blue cellulose paint. Another was being scraped. A fourth was almost in pieces. Others stood about with nobody working on them.

“What sort of place is this, Fatty?” said Larry in a whisper, puzzled.

“I’m not absolutely sure,” said Fatty. “But I rather think it’s a receiving place for stolen cars. They are brought here in the dark, put on the moving floor, taken down here and completely altered so that nobody would ever know them again. Then they are sent above-ground again at night - and, I imagine, sold for a colossal sum with faked log-books!”

“Whew!” said Larry. “I heard my father saying the other day that the police were completely baffled over the amount of stolen cars disappearing lately. I bet this is where they come to. My word, Fatty - what a find!”

A Strange Night

“I say, Fatty, look - who’s that coming down those stairs at the end?” said Pip, suddenly. “He must be the Boss. See the way the men straighten up and salute him.”

“It’s Mr. Holland!” said Fatty. “Oho, Mr. Holland, so this is your little hide-out! You knew far more about Harry’s Folly than you wanted to admit. What a business he must do in stolen cars!”

“I wonder how many of the men in his garage at Marlow know about this,” said Pip

“None of them, I should imagine,” said Fatty. “He keeps those garages of his as a very nice cover for himself. But this is his real line. My word, Inspector Jenks would like to know about this little nest of cars!”

The men had evidently had some kind of order to knock off work for a meal or drink, for one by one they left their jobs and disappeared into a farther room. Mr. Holland went with them.

The workshop was deserted. “Now’s our chance,” whispered Fatty. “We must scoot to those stairs over there - the ones Mr. Holland came down - and go up them. It’s our only chance of finding Ern.”

They ran quietly to the stairs, and were up them long before the men returned to the workshop. The stairway was spiral, like the ascending passage-way to the place where the movable floor was. But this passage-way was very narrow and much steeper. The boys panted a little as they went. At the top of the stairs was a wide landing. Doors opened off it. Another flight of steps led upwards.

“Queer place!” said Fatty. “Must have been used in the war for something very hush-hush, as I said before. Something very secret must have been made down in that vast workshop - goodness knows what. Bombs perhaps!”

The boys looked round at all the closed doors, fearing that one might open suddenly and somebody come out and challenge them. Fatty looked up the next flight of steps. “I suppose those lead to the ground floor of the mansion,” he said. “Well - what shall we do? Try these doors, or go up the stairs?”

At that very moment there came a familiar sound - a rather forlorn, hollow cough.

“Ern!” said Pip, at once. “I’d know that cough anywhere. It’s so like Goon’s. Ern is in one of these rooms!”

“That one, I think,” said Fatty and went quietly to a door opposite. He cautiously turned the handle - but the door would not open. Then Fatty saw that the door was bolted - and probably locked too, for the key was on his side of the door.

He unbolted the door carefully. He unlocked it. He pushed it open and looked in. Ern was lying on a bed, a pencil in his hand, his portry notebook beside him. He was muttering something to himself.

“Ern!” said Fatty.

Ern sat up so suddenly that his notebook flew to the floor. He gazed at the three boys in astonishment that changed to the utmost delight. He threw himself off the bed and ran to them. He flung his arms round Fatty.

“Fatty! I knew you’d come! I knew you’d follow the clues I threw out of the car. Fatty, the kidnappers got me! Oooh, I’ve had the most awful time trying to tell them I don’t know anything at all. They keep saying I’m you Fatty! They’re all potty.”

“Sh!” said Fatty. “Are you quite all right, Ern? They haven’t hurt you, have they?”

“No,” said Ern. “But they don’t give me much food. And they said they’d starve me tomorrow if I don’t answer their questions properly. But I don’t know the answers. Fatty, let’s go!”

“Larry - go to the door and keep watch,” ordered Fatty. “Tell me at once if there’s any sound of somebody coming up the spiral stairway. At once, mind!”

He turned back to Ern, who was now almost in tears with excitement. “Listen, Ern - can you do something really brave?”

“Coo! I don’t know,” said Ern, doubtfully.

“Well, listen,” said Fatty. “We’re right in the very middle of a great big mystery here - and I want to get to the police and tell them about it before the men are warned that somebody knows their secret. Now, Ern - if we take you away with us tonight, the men will know their game is up, for they’ll find you gone and know that someone has rescued you. So will you stay here, locked up, all night long, in order to let the men think everything is all right - and wait till the police come in the morning?”

“I can’t do that,” said Ern, almost crying. “You don’t know what it’s like, to be a prisoner like this and not know what’s going to happen to you. I can’t even think of any portry.”

“Aren’t you brave enough to do this one thing?” said Fatty, sadly. “I did want to think well of you, Ern.”

Ern stared at Fatty, who looked back at him solemnly.

“All right,” said Ern. “I’ll do it, see? I’ll do it for you, Fatty, because you’re a wonder, you are! But I don’t feel brave about it. I feel all of a tremble.”

“When you feel afraid to do a thing and yet do it, that’s real bravery,” said Fatty. “You’re a hero, Ern!”

Ern was so bucked at these words that he now felt he would have stayed locked up for a week if necessary! He beamed at Fatty.

“Did Bets tell you about the wonderful pome I wrote in my sleep?” he asked anxiously. “You should see it, Fatty. Lovaduck, I feel so proud when I remember it. It’s the best pome I ever wrote. I don’t know when I’ve felt so pleased about anything. I feel reel proud of myself.”

Now was the time for Fatty to confess to Ern that he had played a trick on him and written out the poem in Ern’s own handwriting - but Fatty, looking at Ern’s proud face, simply hadn’t the heart to tell him. Ern would be so bitterly disappointed! Let him think it was his own poem, if he was so proud of it. Fatty felt so embarrassed about the whole thing that he almost blushed. Whatever had possessed him to play such an idiotic trick on Ern?

“Sssssst!” suddenly came warningly from Larry and Pip. Fatty gave Ern a pat on the back, murmured “Good fellow, see you tomorrow!” melted out of the room, closed, locked and bolted the door in an amazingly deft and silent way, and then pulled Larry and Pip up the farther flight of stairs.

They had no sooner got up them than Mr. Holland appeared at the top of the spiral stairway. He went into one of the rooms. The three boys did not dare to go down again.

“Better go on up to the top of these stairs and see where we are,” whispered Fatty. So up they went. They soon found themselves on the ground floor of the great mansion. Fatty flicked on his torch. The boys shivered.

Cobwebs hung everywhere. Dust rose from the floor as they trod over it. A musty, sour smell hung over everything.

Fatty looked at his watch. “Do you know it’s almost one o’clock!” he said, his whisper echoing round the room mysteriously. “Let’s get out of here somehow, and go and give the warning to Inspector Jenks.”

But they could not get out! Shutters closed the windows on the outside, so even if the boys could have unfastened a window they could not have undone the shutters. Every outside door they tried was locked, but without a key! It was just like a nightmare, wandering through the dark, dusty house, unable to get out anywhere.

“This is frightful,” said Fatty at last. “I’ve never felt so completely done in my life. There’s nowhere we can get out at all!”

“Well - we shall have to see if we can go back the way we came,” said Larry. “We can’t go through that enormous workshop whilst the men are at work there. We’ll have to wait till they go for a meal again. Come on, let’s go down the stairs to Ern’s landing and see if anyone is there.”

They went silently down. The landing was empty. No sound came from Ern’s room, He was not asleep though. He was awake, feeling very solemn and exultant. He was being a hero, being really brave for Fatty’s sake. Ern felt thrilled - and hoped intensely that Mr. Holland wouldn’t come and badger him again with questions he couldn’t answer. Suppose he asked him if any of the others had been there that night? Ern lost himself in dreadful thoughts of what might happen to him if Mr. Holland tried to worm a lot of things out of him, thinking Ern was hiding something from him. He felt anything but a hero then.

The boys crept down the spiral stairway. Work was in full swing again in the workshop. Mr. Holland stood with his hands in his pockets talking to another man. Nobody could see the boys because they were in such a dark corner.

For two hours the tired boys watched. Then Pip fell suddenly asleep on the stairway, his head rolling on Fatty’s shoulder.

“We’ll take turns at watching,” said Fatty. “You sleep too, Larry. I’ll wake you if any one comes this way.”

So two of them slept and Fatty kept watch. At half-past three he awoke Larry, who kept watch whilst he slept. Still the work in the great place below them went on at full speed. Half-past five came and Pip was awakened and told to keep watch. He was fresh after his four hours’ sleep and looked with interest at everything going on. Nobody came near their corner.

lt seemed as if there would be no chance at all of getting out. When Fatty awoke suddenly at seven o’clock, he felt worried. Time was getting on. They couldn’t stay here much longer.

A big lorry was suddenly backed almost into their corner. The boys all retired a little way up the stairway in a hurry. Then an idea came to Fatty.

“That lorry’s going out! It seems quite finished. If we get into the back, we might slip out with the lorry unseen. We’ve got to get out somehow!”

The others were quite willing. When the man who had backed the lorry into their corner had got down to speak to Mr. Holland a little way off, the three boys climbed quietly into the back of the lorry. To their relief there was a partition between the driver’s cabin and the back of the van, so that nobody could see them from the driver’s seat. There were some old papers and sacks in the lorry. The boys covered themselves with these.

The man came back to the lorry. He started up the engine. So did two drivers of other cars. They were ready to go out. They had come in a week or two before - stolen, all of them - now they had been repainted, touched up, altered beyond even the owner’s recognition - and were ready to go out and be sold again, with false log-books.

The lorry went slowly up the winding stone passage, up and up and up, following the other cars. They came to the movable floor and ran on to it. A minute’s wait and the floor went upwards like a lift!

One by one, at five minute intervals, the cars ran silently out of the garage. In the last one, the lorry, lay the three hidden boys. The lorry-driver flashed his headlights on and off once, and waited for the gates to open at the end of the drive. In that minute the three boys slipped out of the lorry!

They waited in the shadow of the trees till the gates were closed and everything was quiet. Then they went to the wall.

“Have to feel our way round till we come to the ladder,” whispered Fatty. “Fat lot of good my marking the trees as I did. Come on! We’ll soon find the ladder - and then up we’ll go and away home.”

Inspector Jenks Takes Over

Meantime Mr. Goon had been sitting up all night long, expecting and hoping the telephone bell would ring to say that Fatty had found Ern.

But it didn’t ring until eight o’clock the next morning, when an anxious Mrs. Hilton telephoned to say that Pip was missing! He hadn’t been at home all night. Bets was in a dreadful state of worry and had told her mother such extraordinary things that nobody could make anything of them.

Then Larry and Daisy’s father rang. Larry was missing! They couldn’t get anything out of Daisy at all except that Fatty was in charge and everything was all right.

“Daisy says that Fatty has gone out to solve a mystery, but that Larry and Pip have gone to rescue your nephew. Mr. Goon, do you know anything about this at all?”

Well, Mr. Goon did. But what he knew was going to be very difficult to explain to angry and alarmed parents. He hummed and hawed, and then, at a banging on bis door, hurriedly put down the receiver to answer the door, hoping against hope that it was Fatty with good news.

But it wasn’t. It was Mr. Trotteville! Fatty was missing - hadn’t been in his bed all night! Mr. Trotteville had tried to ring up Mr. Goon repeatedly but his telephone appeared to be engaged every time. Did Mr. Goon know anything about where Fatty had gone?

What with Ern being gone for two days and now three more boys missing, Mr. Goon began to feel he really couldn’t stand any more. He telephoned to the Inspector.

“Sir, I’m sorry to worry you so early in the morning - but there’s all kinds of things happening here, sir, and I was wondering if you could come over,” said the agitated voice of Mr. Goon.