The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn (16 page)

“You lie down and try to get some rest, Miss Eells,” Anthony whispered. “I’m gonna see if the phone is working.”

“Very well.” Miss Eells sighed. She leaned her head back against the corner of the bench and fell asleep immediately in that position.

Meanwhile, Anthony was over at the circulation desk groping for the phone. Finally he located it and lifted the receiver. Dead—just like the other one.

As he put the phone down, he felt deep despair. From the bench came the sound of Miss Eells’s steady, soft snoring. “Oh, my gosh!” he said out loud. “Now what am I gonna do?”

Here was Miss Eells, asleep, helpless, maybe dying. He was a pretty strong kid for his age, but he couldn’t carry her from there to the hospital. Even if he managed to wake her up again, the flood might catch them if they tried to go on foot. Then he thought about the light he had seen in the tower room. He dismissed the idea of ghosts—that seemed ridiculous—but then who or what
was
up there? Maybe someone had taken refuge in the tower because of the flood. Miss Pratt, maybe, from the branch library! Did she know about the tower room? Whoever it was up there, Anthony felt that he ought to go find out. He needed company—and help—badly.

Anthony fumbled around among the shelves under the desk—he remembered that he had seen a flashlight there once. Ah. There it was. He tried it, and it worked. He got up and started down the stairs that led to the cellar. He had some qualms about what he was doing, but he fought them down.

With the aid of the flashlight, he found the stairs to the tower room. Up the steps he crept. Once or twice he stopped, but each time he pulled himself together and went on. He was almost at the top of the stairs when he saw that the door of the tower room was ajar. Light streamed out from inside the room. Quietly, steadily, he climbed the last two stairs. When he got to the door, he just stopped and stared.

There was a trap door in the ceiling of the tower room—Anthony had noticed it before. It hung open, and a rope ladder hung down from it. A man was standing beside it, staring up at the black opening. The man was Hugo Philpotts.

CHAPTER 15

Hugo Philpotts was really quite a sight. He was wearing a red and black cotton shirt, dungarees, tennis shoes, and a big floppy cap with a peak on it. Around his waist was a wide leather belt, the kind that window- washers use. There were wide flaps hanging off the front of the belt, and there were metal clips on the ends of the flaps. In one hand Mr. Philpotts held a hammer and a hacksaw. In the other, he carried a chrome-plated portable searchlight with a swinging handle and a basket-shaped rest on the bottom.

Anthony almost laughed. Mr. Philpotts was one of those very stuffy people who would make you imagine that they slept in a suit and tie at night. And now to see him in this get-up!

Hugo Philpotts turned suddenly. He shone the beam of the searchlight at Anthony. “Well, well. So it’s you! I might have known. I saw a couple of people come out of the shadows at the corner of the library, but I couldn’t make out who they were. Who’s the other one? Is that old hag with you?”

“If you mean Miss Eells, yeah, she’s downstairs. And she’s hurt bad. She fell down her cellar stairs and cut her head open. Mr. Philpotts, please will you help me carry her to the hospital? She might die if we don’t do something fast!”

Hugo stared stonily at Anthony. “More lies, eh? You’re full of them, boy, aren’t you? I know why you two are here. You’re after the treasure, aren’t you?”

Anthony just gaped at him.

Hugo laughed harshly. “Surprised, eh? So was I when I got home this evening and picked up my phone to find myself listening to you explaining to your dear friend Miss Eells how you had figured out where the treasure was. Crossed wires because of the storm, I suppose. Or perhaps it was the ghost of my dear Uncle Alpheus who arranged your call to be on my phone. Ha, ha. In any case, as I was saying, I was surprised. And I have to hand it to you. You are a very clever boy. So the reindeer weather vane conceals my treasure, does it?”

Suddenly Hugo Philpotts stopped talking. A wonderful idea had just occurred to him.

For some time now, he had been standing in the tower room, brooding. He was brooding because he couldn’t get up the courage to go out on the roof, climb up the ladder, and get the treasure out of the weather vane. Finding the entrance to the tower room had been easy enough. Hugo had worked in the library when he was a young man, home on vacation from Harvard, so he knew the secret of the hidden door. And he had come prepared to do a little surgery on the bronze reindeer. The safety belt he wore was a window-washer’s belt that he had taken from a storeroom at the bank. He had a hammer and a hacksaw and a screwdriver for prying. And the time was perfect. With everybody—well, practically everybody—gone from the lower end of town, there was not much likelihood that anyone would see him. But when he stuck his head out of the trap-door opening and looked up at the spindly iron ladder that led to the weather vane, he nearly had heart failure. The ladder was old and rickety and rusty. One or two of the rungs were missing, and when he seized the ladder in both hands and shook it, the ladder went up and down with a loud clattering and squeaking noise. Several of the bolts that held the ladder to the shingled roof were loose. It didn’t look like a very safe ladder at all. In fact, as Hugo Philpotts said to himself with a shudder, anyone who tried to climb that ladder might very well end up dead.

Hugo stood looking at Anthony. He rubbed his chin and smiled unpleasantly. “Young man,” he said slowly, “how would you like to earn a little, uh, leniency for your father?”

Anthony gave Hugo a blank stare. “I—I dunno what you mean, Mr. Philpotts.”

Hugo came closer to Anthony. He put his hand on Anthony’s shoulder and smiled in his usual cold, creepy way. “I mean just this. If you’ll climb up the ladder and get the treasure out for me, I promise you that I will not deal harshly with your father. Once I have the treasure, I will deal with your father—generously.”

At first Anthony was dumbfounded. Why did Hugo Philpotts want Anthony to go up the ladder instead of him? But then it came to him—Hugo was afraid. Anthony hadn’t seen the ladder, so he didn’t know that Hugo had good reason to be afraid. Anthony grinned smugly. He wasn’t scared of heights, and he was a good climber. It was strange to think that this big, pompous man was scared to do something that any kid could do.

Still, Anthony didn’t like the idea very much. He was worried about Miss Eells, and he didn’t see why he should do Hugo Philpotts’s dirty work for him. “Mr. Philpotts,” he said, “before I go do any climbing, I want you to write out a promise for me.”

Hugo’s eyebrows rose. “A promise? What kind of promise?”

“I want you to write down that you’ll let my dad keep his store. And that you’ll help me get Miss Eells to the hospital as soon as we get the treasure.”

Hugo’s eyebrows shot up again. “Oh. That’s what you want, is it? Well, I’m sorry. I’m afraid you’re out of luck. I still have what they call the whip hand in this little chariot race, and I’m not going to give it over to you. For all I know, there may not be anything inside that ridiculous weather vane. And then wouldn’t I look foolish for making a lot of promises to
you!
No, young man. No promises. You’ve got to help me, whether you want to or not.”

If looks could kill, the look Anthony gave Hugo Philpotts would have finished him off then and there. Anthony was boiling over with rage and bitterness. He wanted to pick up a chair and smash it over Hugo’s head, the way cowboys did in the movies. But he was beaten, and he knew it. He had to do what this rotten, creepy, no-good man wanted him to do. His father’s life and Miss Eells’s might depend on it. He would get it over with in a hurry.

“Okay, Mr. Philpotts,” said Anthony in a low voice. “I’ll do what you say.”

As Anthony got ready to make the climb, Hugo unbuckled the window-washer’s belt and offered it to him. He explained that the spring clips on the ends of the two hanging flaps were supposed to hook into metal rings in the window frames of the windows at the bank. But he showed Anthony how he could hook the clips together around the post of the weather vane to give himself a good solid mooring while he hacked, sawed, or pounded at the reindeer. This seemed like a good idea to Anthony, but, when he tried the belt on, it was too large and wouldn’t buckle. The belt had been made for a full-grown man.

“Ah, but a hole can be made,” said Hugo in his smug, superior way. He got a hammer and a nail out of the tool box he had brought with him, and with the belt laid out flat on the floor, he put the point of the nail on the belt’s tongue and tapped with his hammer. When he was through, there was a new hole in the belt. Now Anthony could wear it.

Anthony felt strange as he buckled the big, heavy leather belt around himself. The flaps hanging off the front seemed awkward and silly, and it occurred to him that they would get in his way when he was climbing. But when he had tucked the flaps into the front of the belt, he felt better. He figured he could manage that way. There were some loops in the belt, meant to hold pieces of window-washing equipment; Anthony stuck the hammer into one of them. From a dangling metal clip he hung the small hacksaw that Hugo had brought with him. There was a screwdriver, too, for prying, but Anthony decided to leave it behind. He felt overloaded even as he was.

“Okay,” said Anthony in a thick voice. “I guess I’m ready.”

“After you, young man,” Hugo said, stepping aside.

Anthony started up. The rope ladder swung and swayed, but it held firm. When he got to the top, he clambered out into the small, dusty floor of the crawl space. Above him, in the darkness, he saw a square patch of deep midnight blue and some stars. The trap door that led out onto the roof lay open.

“Go on out! The door’s open!” called Hugo from below. “The ladder starts just above the opening. I’ll be right behind you.”

Thanks a bunch
, thought Anthony, but he said nothing. He bit his lip grimly, took a deep breath, and stuck his head out of the hole.

Suddenly a wave of dizziness and fear swept over him. The trees and the river and the walks below him blurred and shimmered, got closer and then farther away, and then closer again, as if he were looking at them through a telescope that was going in and out of focus all the time. Anthony had never had an attack like this before. Maybe it was because he was tired. Cold sweat ran down his face, and he could feel a knot forming in his stomach. He closed his eyes and heard the blood roaring in his ears.

“What’s the matter? Why didn’t you go on up?” Hugo called up to him from below. “Get a move on. We can’t stay here all night, you know.”

“O-okay,” Anthony stammered. He felt another wave of chilly sickness pass over him. Then his head cleared. “I’m okay now,” he said.

“Then go on out. Stop stalling.”

“I’m not stalling, I just felt—kinda sick, that’s all.”

“You’ll feel better when you get outside. Go on.”

Anthony stuck his head out of the little square opening again. He turned around quickly to avoid looking down. Above him rose the sloping tower roof. It seemed as steep and as tall as the side of a mountain. The shingles glimmered gray in the moonlight. Up at the top, perched on the point of the conical roof, was the weather vane with the reindeer on it. The right front paw was raised.
That must be the way in,
thought Anthony.
Right through that raised-up leg. “Mind the prancing and pawing of each little hoof.”
That was the only hoof that was prancing and pawing. Maybe the leg unscrewed or something like that. Or maybe he would have to use the hacksaw. Oh, well, he would find out, one way or another. He felt very depressed as he looked up at the reindeer. He had worked so hard to get at Alpheus Winterborn’s treasure. He had sweated and slaved and worried and fretted. He had even broken his arm. Now he was climbing the ladder to get it—for somebody else. And not for just anybody, either. He was going to get it for the person he hated most in all the world.

Anthony sighed and shook his head. He gritted his teeth and put his hands on the rung above him. But as soon as he swung his foot up and started to put his weight on the ladder, something happened. The ladder groaned and shrieked. It jolted forward as if it were going to come loose. Terrified, Anthony jumped back down into the trap-door opening.

Hugo Philpotts was hanging on the rope ladder just below the opening in the ceiling of the tower room. He shone the searchlight up at Anthony. “Well, what are you waiting for? For heaven’s sake, stop dilly-dallying! It’ll be dawn before you know it if you keep up this way!”

“The ladder’s broken,” said Anthony. “It’ll come off if I try to go up it.”

“Nonsense,” snapped Hugo. “It’s—well, it’s just a little loose, that’s all. But it’s perfectly safe. I climbed up it myself to the top just to see.” This was a lie, of course. Hugo Philpotts hadn’t gone any farther up the ladder than Anthony had. To ease his conscience (what conscience he had), Hugo told himself that the boy’s lighter body would make all the difference. He would be able to climb to the top once he got moving.

Anthony looked down at Hugo. Then he looked up at the ladder. He swallowed hard. He thought about Miss Eells, and his father. He would just have to try to do it. Once more, he put his hands on the rung above him and swung himself up. The ladder shrieked and shuddered as before, but it held firm. His whole weight was on it now. Slowly he started up. At each step he could feel the ladder tremble, but it stayed in place. Up one hand, then up one foot, that was how it was done. Slow but sure, one step at a time. He climbed on, and the reindeer got closer and closer.
Easy does it now
, he said to himself,
easy does it...