Spiderweb for Two - A Melendy Maze (20 page)

CHAPTER XIII

Seek in the Dust

A heart is cold that once was hot.

    
A voice is still that once was bold.

Seek in the dust of flames forgot

    
For that which you would seize and hold!

But on the next day there was a rude shock in store for them: Willy, since it was springtime and warm, had cleaned out all the fireplaces. Where, until yesterday, there had been soft beds of ash, there was now nothing but clean brick and fans made out of newspaper between the andirons.

“But they must have known this might happen,” said Randy. “They would have warned us, I'm sure they would have. They warned us about the ice cube, and told us the time was limited.”

“Maybe they thought we'd find it earlier, though; the way they thought we'd find the Kwan Yin clue later than we did.”

“Perhaps it's not even
in
a fireplace,” Randy said. “Those ashes would be an awfully chancy hiding place, anyway. Do you think they might have put it in the chimney?”

A great light of anticipation broke on Oliver's face. “Ever since Cuffy read me
Water Babies,
when I was seven, I've wanted to be a chimney sweep like Tom. Or at least to try it out! And now I can!”

Randy looked doubtful. “Gosh, I don't know. Suppose you got stuck?”

“Oh, I wouldn't,” said Oliver, and would have started up the chimney immediately if Randy hadn't urged him to go and put on his oldest clothes.

“Sneakers, too,” she called, as he ran upstairs. “It might be sort of slippery.”

Boys enjoy the queerest things, she thought. I wouldn't want this job.

Since the living-room fireplace was the largest one they decided that was the place to start from. Randy crept in with Oliver, gave him a boost, and somewhere up above the damper he got a fingerhold and then a toehold and began his cautious climb. Soot fell in showers upon Randy who leaped aside, anxiously clasping her smudged hands together.

“Are you all right?” she called.

There were grunts of effort and sounds of scraping and scratching within the chimney. More soot fell.

“I don't think the clue's up here,” said Oliver in a muffled, miserable voice. “I don't think anybody's ever been up here before. The soot is thick and it looks like fur, but it's not
attached;
it comes off if you breathe on it, even, and I've got it in my eyes and up my nose, and I don't like it!”

“Come on down then,” urged Randy, alarmed at the black avalanches descending from the chimney.

There were more sounds of struggle in the flue and some chips of mortar hurtled down. “I can't,” said Oliver at last. “I'm stuck. My belt is caught on something and I can't reach my arm around to unhitch it.”

“Try to wiggle up off of it,” advised Randy.

More frantic scratchings, more soot, more (and larger) lumps of mortar. “It doesn't work,” reported Oliver in a worried voice. “I'm just as stuck as ever.”

“Wait, I'll get Willy, he's tall, he can reach you,” said Randy. “Don't worry, Oliver, just stay where you are.”

“Where did you think I'd be going?” inquired Oliver crossly. He really was very unhappy. It was so dark and lonesome where he was, and it smelled dismally of old dead ancient smoke. Suppose Willy failed to unhitch him? Suppose nobody could get him out? They'd have to leave him there forever and lower his food down on a pulley line, or else they might have to take the chimney apart, perhaps tear down the house, which would be inconvenient, untidy, and expensive, and Father and Cuffy would be upset. Oliver sniffled, and a tear tracked down his sooty cheek. He could hear John Doe barking spiritedly out of doors somewhere, and Cuffy singing in the kitchen; but it was as though they were in a far-off, unattainable world. A sound of sobbing issued from the flue.

“Here now, here now,” said Willy's reassuring voice. “Don't you be crying none, we'll get you out in just a jiffy; and you don't want Cuffy comin' in and gettin' all excited, do you now?”

Oliver gulped lugubriously and waited as Willy, prudently wearing a raincoat, got into the fireplace, stood up on a footstool, and reached his long arm upward between Oliver and the old black bricks, located the snared belt and freed it. Then he got out of the way and Oliver came down onto the hearth with a thud, looking nothing in the world like Santa Claus.

“Man, are you a mess!” said Randy, in a tone of wonder. “You remind me of the Tar Baby. Willy, what can we ever do with him?”

Willy considered. “Best thing, I guess, is to arrange for him to fall into the brook clothes and all. Good thing it's a warm day. And better fall in with a cake of soap while you're at it; you go get one, Randy, and I'll carry him to the front door or he'll leave a set of footprints no one could overlook!”

When Randy returned with the soap she found Willy waiting at the front door; across the lawn, black as a golliwogg, Oliver was running toward the brook.

“You better make use of that soap yourself, too, Randy,” Willy said. “Your face don't look too good; it's kind of striped. And while you're gettin' rid of the evidence outdoors I'll be gettin' rid of it in here.”

“Willy darling, you're a hero! You're a saint!”

“Just one thing,” said Willy plaintively. “Why, Randy,
why
do you kids do things like climbin' up chimney flues?”

“We'll tell you soon, Willy, really we will. We're not crazy. Oh, and Willy, when you took the ashes out of the fireplaces did you happen to notice if there was a piece of blue paper? With writing on it?”

“Oh, no! Not again!” groaned poor Willy. “Always these pieces of paper with writin' on 'em! You kids have got a—a—an
ob
-session about pieces of blue paper! No, I didn't see none.”

Later, when they were clean and dry once more, Randy had another idea.

“Do you suppose they mean the chimney of Mark's deserted house?” she suggested.

“Why, I was thinking of the same thing!” said Oliver.

“We'll go there Saturday and see,” said Randy. “We'll take our lunch and spend the day.”

It was a wonderful May morning when they set out. All over the countryside the orchards were in bloom, and petals speckled the breeze like pink and white confetti. Everywhere there was the new, new green of spring, and the fields were dappled with the yellow of wild mustard and buttercups and dandelions.

“It's funny how happy weather can make you,” said Randy, as they sailed along the road on their bikes.

“Good weather like this can,” said Oliver judiciously. “Brother, am I glad of spring! Billy Anton and me are building a wigwam, and we're going to sleep out in it when it gets warmer.”

“Billy Anton and
I,
” corrected Randy absently. “I wonder if I'll be able to get into my last-summer's dresses.”

At the customary spot they parked their bicycles among the bushes at the roadside and walked into the woods. Birds were singing everywhere, and the ground was patterned with Dutchman's breeches and trillium and blood-root.

“Spring flowers are white in the woods and yellow in the meadows,” said Randy. “I wonder why? And then they're purple in the ditches where the violets grow.”

Mark's deserted house wasn't really a house anymore. It was only a lot of old stones in the underbrush and one tall chimney with a fireplace in it. Near the chimney grew a tall neglected lilac bush, now in bloom, and beyond stood the remnants of an apple orchard, also blooming. “Look, there's a new oriole's nest in one of the trees,” said Oliver.

“A pocketful of gold,” quoted Randy reminiscently. “Gee whiz, we've come a long way in the search since then, haven't we?”

“Thirteen clues!” said Oliver. “Come on, let's find the next one.”

But poking in the old fireplace among the ashes of past picnic fires they found no scrap of blue, and the chimney overhead was noisy with the indignant chimney swifts who had their nests there.

“Well, heck, it isn't here,” said Oliver. “So let's eat lunch.”

“Are you kidding? I bet it isn't half past ten! Let's go and see what's happened to the well.”

The well was as old as the house, deep, with an eye of water at the bottom that looked back at them. Its sides were covered with moss and tiny ferns. “And look,” said Randy. “There are violets growing where the gentians bloom in the fall.”

Oliver leaned over gingerly. He had once fallen into that well, and had treated it respectfully ever since. He dropped a pebble down into the pool, though, and so did Randy, for it was a custom they always observed, and besides it made a lovely sound.

Then they went wandering for a while. Lilies of the valley, gone wild, grew thickly all around the ruin and back into the woods. Randy picked a huge bunch of them, sniffing in their fragrance so heartily and often that it made her dizzy. The sun grew warmer on her stooping back, and Oliver from high up in an apple tree called, “Gee, it must be
nearly
lunchtime.”

On the way home that afternoon Randy said, “We've looked in all the fireplaces that have anything to do with
us,
and I don't think it's in anybody else's, do you? The poem would have given a hint.”

Oliver only yawned. The air and food and sunshine had been too much for him.

“But I know one place we haven't tried,” continued Randy. “And I intend to look there as soon as we get home.”

Oliver, too drugged by spring even to express curiosity, pedaled on in silence at her side.

Once home, though, he revived a little. “Okay, where is it, then?” he said, languidly letting his bicycle crash to the ground.

“Come,” said Randy, mysterious and commanding.

“Oh boy, I think I get it!” said Oliver a moment later as she led him down the cellar steps.

*   *   *

It was cool in the cellar and smelled of cement; the light down there was dim and green, for the low windows were overgrown, now, with vines and leaves.

“Switch on the light,” commanded Randy. Then she opened the door of the cold and silent furnace and stuck her hand inside. “Eureka!” she shouted, with a loud, metallic echo, for there at the bottom of the furnace, with a sparse scattering of ashes and one forgotten clinker, lay the clue!

“Honest? No kidding?” yelped Oliver, no longer sleepy. “Here, come out and let me see!”

Randy backed out of the furnace and held up the blue paper.

“Read it! Read it!”

“Listen,” said Randy. “Oliver! It's the last one! Next we're to look for the reward itself!”

“Well, read it! I can't wait!”

“Okay.

‘On the eleventh day of June,

At three o'clock that afternoon,

    
(Not half past three or ten to four)

    
Set out to seek a friendly door.

(A door unknown, a door that's new!)

First, follow Highway 22,

    
Proceed, and take the next turn right,

    
Beyond the cows of Herman Heidt.

Travel a mile and you will see

A Northern name, and a tall tree.

    
Onward a little, round a bend,

    
Behold the goal! Here's journey's end!'”

“Now this one really gives good directions,” said Oliver approvingly. “Telling about cows and Highway 22, and turning right and all. Now if the other clues had just been like that—”

“Oh, I'm glad they weren't,” said Randy. “I liked all the adventures and mistakes and the crazy ways we found them in the end. But how, oh, Oliver, how are we going to
live
until the eleventh of June?”

CHAPTER XIV

A Door Unknown

On the eleventh day of June,

At three o'clock that afternoon,

    
(Not half past three or ten to four)

    
Set out to seek a friendly door.

(A door unknown, a door that's new!)

First, follow Highway 22,

    
Proceed, and take the next turn right,

    
Beyond the cows of Herman Heidt.

Travel a mile and you will see

A Northern name, and a tall tree.

    
Onward a little, round a bend,

    
Behold the goal! Here's journey's end!

Fortunately they did manage to live, and the day, when it arrived, was magnificent: June at its very best, and nothing can be better than that. Everything is on its way but not quite there: every flower, every vegetable, every blade. Every nest is finished, and one is just beginning to find those turquoise halves of robin's eggs all over the place. The birds are still so noisy and joyful that nobody can sleep late in the morning. Luckily not many people want to at this time of year. The peonies are big as lettuces, the poppies, though rumpled, are wide open, and in every garden in the world someone is stooped over, gladly working.