The Mandie Collection (16 page)

After a while John Shaw and Uncle Ned returned and told everyone they had not been able to find Zack Hughes in the darkness. By now he must be gone.

“We decided there was no use looking further for the man,” John Shaw told everyone in the parlor. “But we know he was here now, so we can be on the lookout for him if he returns.”

Elizabeth stood up and said, “I think it's about time we got some sleep anyway.”

“The door to the tunnel in your office is locked,” Mandie told him.

“It is? How do you know?” John Shaw asked.

Mandie looked at her mother and said, “Mother allowed us to go in there to check it. So he has not been able to break that lock.”

“That tunnel is quite a maze, and he might not have been able to find his way through it into the house,” John Shaw said.

Mrs. Taft also rose and said, “Good night, everyone. I'm going to my room.”

Mandie reluctantly went to bed that night. And when she did, she found the key to Uncle John's office in her pocket. She was so excited she wanted to stay up to figure all this out. But she soon got in bed and drifted off to sleep.

The next morning when she went downstairs to the kitchen she found Uncle Ned's two young braves had returned from Tennessee, and Aunt Lou was giving them breakfast at the long table. Uncle Ned and Uncle John were sitting and eating with them as they talked. And Joe came into the room holding Snowball.

“Here's that crazy cat,” he told Mandie as he set Snowball down, and the cat rushed over to his plate on the floor by the wood cookstove.

“Where did you find him?” Mandie asked.

“I left my door open just a crack last night, and this morning he was curled up on my feet asleep. So who knows where he's been?” Joe said with a laugh.

Mandie walked on over to the table, looked at the young Indians, and said, “I'm glad y'all are back.” Joe followed.

John Shaw turned to look at Mandie and said, “And they've brought good news. They found friends of Jacob Smith, and the friends will get in touch with Mr. Smith and ask him to come down here.”

“Oh, I'm so glad,” Mandie said excitedly. “Thank you, Uncle Ned.” She grasped the old man's hand.

Uncle Ned looked at her and then at the young Indian men and said, “They do work.”

“Oh yes, and I appreciate it so much,” Mandie told the two. The young men smiled at her, nodded, and kept on eating their breakfast.

“Where does Mr. Smith live now?” Joe asked as he slid onto a chair at the table, and Mandie sat down beside him.

“All the way north and west in Tennessee,” John Shaw replied. “His friends live over near Tellico, and they told these young men they were going on immediately to Mr. Smith's house.”

“Then maybe the man will get here soon,” Mandie said.

“We hope so,” John Shaw replied.

When the young Indians had finished their meal and left to go
home, John Shaw and Uncle Ned also rose from the kitchen table and John said, “Now, I didn't want to wake your mother this early, but when she does come downstairs, please tell her that Uncle Ned and I have gone searching for Zack Hughes, Amanda.”

“Uncle John, I want to go, too,” Mandie begged as she and Joe stood up.

“No, Amanda, you stay here at the house,” John Shaw replied. “Uncle Ned and I will be back soon.”

“Oh, shucks!” Mandie said as John Shaw and Uncle Ned left the kitchen.

Aunt Lou asked from over by the cookstove, “Ain't you two younguns hungry?”

“Oh yes, Aunt Lou, I'm starving,” Joe told her with a grin.

“Me too, Aunt Lou,” Mandie agreed. “Couldn't we just eat in here at this table?”

“Well, jes' sit back down and I'll give y'all sumpin' to eat den,” the old woman told her.

As Mandie sat back down, she straightened her skirt and felt the key she had put back in her pocket earlier that morning with every intention of giving it back to her mother or Uncle John, but now he was gone and her mother was still asleep.

“Joe, I still have the key,” she told him as he sat beside her. She pulled it out far enough for him to see.

“Why didn't you give that back to your mother or your uncle, Mandie?” Joe asked.

“I forgot,” Mandie replied. “I truly did. And Mother is still asleep, so why don't we hurry and eat and go back up there and look things over again?”

Joe sighed and said, “Well, all right, for all the good it's going to do.”

The two hurried through their breakfast and went back upstairs to John Shaw's office. Mandie had brought matches from the kitchen.

When she opened the door, she told Joe, “Let's light the candles.”

On the three sides of the room with shelves, wall sconces holding candles were placed closely together between the rows of books. And Mandie knew the trick of lighting them. By touching a match to one candle, the one on either side of it automatically burst into flame, and by repeating this around the room, every candle would be lit.

Joe started at one end and Mandie at the other, and soon the candles were all glowing. The two stood back and admired them.

“I love to look at them,” Mandie said.

“Don't forget we've got to find the snuffer to put them all out,” Joe reminded her as he glanced around the room.

Mandie walked around looking for the long rod that was used to extinguish the candles. It was nowhere in sight.

“Joe, I don't believe it's here,” Mandie said in sudden alarm.

“Well, we'll just have to find it,” Joe said, searching among the shelves.

After a few minutes the two decided the snuffer was not in the room.

“I can't imagine where it is or why Uncle John must have taken it out of the room,” Mandie said.

“But your uncle uses lamps in here. Remember he told us that the first time we found this room?” Joe reminded her.

“But Mr. Jason had the snuffer that day, and he showed us how to light the candles and put them back out,” Mandie argued.

The candles were burning fast. Joe sighed and said, “We'd better go around and blow each one out. That's the only way to do it that I can see.”

“I suppose so,” Mandie said. “You start over there and I'll do these.”

Joe had no problem blowing out the candles, but Mandie was having trouble. The flames would flicker and then blaze back up. She spotted a poker by the fireplace and ran to get it. Carefully running the poker over each wick, she was able to extinguish the flames. But at the end of her row, one of the candles sputtered and the flame shot up higher.

“Oh, goodness!” Mandie exclaimed as she poked excitedly at the flame. “This one is stubborn.” The poker slipped and hit the wallpaper behind the sconce. The wallpaper puckered up from the heat.

“Mandie! What are you doing?” Joe asked, hurrying to her and taking the poker.

“I ruined the wallpaper. Look at it. It's coming off the wall,” Mandie told him as the two surveyed the damage. She reached to smooth the paper and felt something rough under her hand. Looking closely she
could see tacks in the wallpaper. “This paper must have been damaged before. Look, it's tacked up.”

Joe looked closely and said, “We'd better see what we can do to smooth out this mess. I don't know how, but we've got to do something.”

“Maybe if we just peel it back we could retack it into place,” Mandie suggested as she pulled out the key she had put in her pocket and pried one of the tacks loose.

As the paper fell back, Mandie said excitedly, “Look, there is something behind the wallpaper! Joe, look!” She began removing more wallpaper.

“Mandie, don't tear up the paper or we'll be in trouble sure enough,” Joe reminded her as he watched.

As the wallpaper fell back, it revealed a sheet of paper with writing on it. Mandie could hardly stand still until she had pulled out the sheet. Her heart started doing flipflops. Here was her father's will!

“Joe, my father's will!” she exclaimed loudly as she showed him the paper.

“Well, what do you know?” Joe was almost speechless with the discovery as he took the paper and looked at it.

“This is only one sheet. There were two pages to the will, remember?” Mandie said as she continued removing the tacks to pull back the wallpaper. “And here it is!” She hugged the paper to her and danced around the room. “We found it! We found it! I told you we would!”

Joe quickly extinguished the rest of the candles Mandie had left burning. “Of all the weird places to hide a will!” he exclaimed.

“Let's go tell Mother and everyone,” Mandie said, putting the key back in her pocket. Then taking the two sheets of paper, she left the wallpaper dangling and ran out into the hallway. Joe followed.

When they got to the bottom of the staircase onto the second floor, they met Elizabeth and Mrs. Taft in the hallway who were also headed downstairs.

Mandie waved the papers in the air and cried out, “We found it! We found the will! Mother! Grandmother! We found it!”

“Amanda,” Elizabeth called to her as the young people caught up. “Please settle down. I'm also raving happy that you've found it, but tell us where it was.”

“Yes, where was it, dear?” Mrs. Taft asked. “Are you sure you found the real will?”

“Oh, this is the real will, Grandmother. I know because Joe and I both have seen it before, remember?” Mandie explained as she tried to calm her racing heart. She held out the two sheets of paper to Elizabeth, who scanned them and gave them to her mother.

“And you'd never believe where we found it,” Joe told them.

“It was under the wallpaper in Uncle John's office!” Mandie exclaimed.

“Under the wallpaper. That is hard to believe,” Elizabeth said.

“Why, Elizabeth, I think that would be the perfect place to hide a piece of paper,” Mrs. Taft told her.

Mandie and Joe quickly explained how they had found it.

“Oh, dear, you could have burned the house up with those candles,” Mandie's mother said. “I've asked John time and again to take all those candles down.”

Mandie heard that and protested. “No, Mother, I just love all those candles. Besides, my grandfather had them all put up there after his father built this house.”

“We'll see,” Elizabeth answered. “Now, let's go on downstairs and get some breakfast while we talk about this will. Is your uncle John down there?”

“No, Mother, he and Uncle Ned left a long time ago to look for Zack Hughes, and they ate with the young Indian men that Uncle Ned sent to look for Mr. Smith,” Mandie began garbling everything up. “And Mr. Smith—”

“Amanda, please slow down and tell me one thing at a time,” Elizabeth said as they continued down the stairs to the first floor and on toward the dining room.

Mandie and Joe took turns explaining about the braves' return and about Mr. Smith's coming visit. By the time they reached the dining room, Aunt Lou had heard the loud talking and she was waiting for them.

While Elizabeth and Mrs. Taft ate their breakfasts, Mandie and Joe continued talking until Liza came into the room with an envelope in her hand.

“Dis heah man be waitin' outside. He give me dis heah envelope
he say is message for Mistuh John,” she told Elizabeth as she walked up to the table.

Elizabeth took the envelope and said, “I wonder what this is all about. It's from Ed Wilson, John's lawyer.” She looked it over.

“Well, go ahead and open it, Elizabeth. John's not here, and the man may be waiting for a message to take back,” Mrs. Taft told her.

Elizabeth tore open the envelope, pulled out one sheet, and read the few lines scribbled on it. She looked at Mandie and then said, “Ed says he has word that the signature on the letter John gave the judge and the signature on the will Etta Hughes turned in are the same, that evidently Jim did sign both of these.”

“No!” Mandie cried out as she jumped up, went around the table to her mother's side, and read the message.

“John is not here as I said before, so you need to send a message back to Ed Wilson that Amanda and Joe have just now found the original will and ask him to let the judge know,” Mrs. Taft told her daughter.

Elizabeth rose and said, “Yes, I should do that.” Looking at Liza, who was still standing nearby, she said, “Liza, will you please go tell the man that I will have a message shortly for him to take back to Ed Wilson?”

“Yessum,” Liza said and stepped back into the hallway.

Elizabeth left the room to write the return message, and Mandie and Joe sat back down at the table, too stunned to discuss the message the lawyer had sent.

“Do you think your father could have really made a new will, the one that Etta Hughes turned in?” Mrs. Taft asked Mandie.

“No, no, no! I just know he didn't. Don't ask me to explain, but I just know he didn't!” Mandie protested.

Joe looked at her and said, “I don't believe he did, either, Mandie. I believe those Hugheses are dishonest.”

“I wish your uncle John would hurry up and come on back home so we can discuss this,” Mrs. Taft said.

Mandie looked at her with sudden hope. “And I wish Mr. Jacob Smith would hurry up and come to see us. He'll be able to straighten everything out. He was my father's friend. I'll trust him.”

Everything was in such a turmoil Mandie's mind seemed to be whirling through space. There had to be a solution to this somehow.

CHAPTER TWELVE

AND THAT'S THAT!

John Shaw and Uncle Ned came home not long after Ed Wilson's messenger left. Mandie heard them ride into the backyard and ran to the back door to meet them. She had the will in her hand. Joe followed her.

“Guess what this is?” she excitedly asked as she waved the two sheets of paper in front of them. “Guess!”

She had barely given them time to step inside the house. Both men looked at her in surprise and then grinned. John put his rifle back in the rack over the door.