The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn (14 page)

“G’bye, Miss Eells,” said Anthony as he got out of the car. “See you later.”

It was an exciting night in the town of Hoosac. The National Guard units were called out, and khaki-colored trucks and jeeps rumbled through the streets. The guardsmen were there to direct the people who were being evacuated and to prevent looting. They wore brown uniforms and brown helmets, and they carried rifles with bayonets on the end of them. Sound trucks rolled up and down the streets of Hoosac blaring instructions. Then the electrical storm hit. Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed, and more rain came pelting down. Police cars roared past Anthony’s house, sirens screaming and blue lights flashing.

Inside the Monday home, things were at sixes and sevens. Everybody was doing something—rushing here, rushing there, unplugging lights, turning off the furnace, checking this, checking that, getting ready for the flood. Mrs. Monday packed some suitcases and made some sandwiches in case there wasn’t anything to eat up at the academy. Mr. Monday went down to the basement and helped Keith and Anthony bring newspapers and jars of pickled fruit up to the kitchen. Mrs. Monday had warned her husband not to work too hard on account of his bad heart, but he pitched in and helped anyway.

About eight o’clock that evening, Anthony was in his room packing his own small suitcase. He felt excited, the way people often do when there is a crisis of some kind—war or hurricane or tornado or flood. Outside, sirens wailed and sound trucks blared. Thunder rolled, and from his window Anthony could see lightning flashing fitfully, lighting up jagged cloud banks for brief seconds. A long line of cars was moving past the house. The red reflections of their taillights stained the streets. On the comer was a police car with a flashing blue light, and Anthony could see a policeman in a yellow slicker waving a flashlight with a red plastic cone on the end of it.

“Anthony, are you getting packed, or are you daydreaming as usual?” his mother called.

“I’m packing, Ma!” Anthony turned away from the window and started throwing clothes into his suitcase. He often daydreamed when he was doing something like drying the dishes or stacking books at the library. It was a habit of his. Now, although he was excited and was supposed to be hurrying, he drifted off again. All sorts of odd images came to his mind. He thought about the stuck weather vane and the reindeer on top of the tower. He thought about that mocking, grinning half-moon on the front of the library, and the sign underneath that said BELIEVE ONLY HALF OF WHAT YOU READ.

All of a sudden, for no reason at all, everything came together in his mind. The things he had been trying to make sense of all day suddenly
did
make sense. His face lit up. He knew now. As if by magic,
he knew.
He knew where the real treasure of Alpheus Winterborn was!

CHAPTER 13

Anthony was so excited that he felt as if he were going to jump right out of his skin. He wanted to run up and down the room screaming at the top of his voice, but he was afraid that his folks would think he had lost his mind. So he kept his screams in and stood there, tense, clenching his fists. His face felt flushed, and his ears burned. What should he do? Well, emergency or no emergency, flood or no flood, he had to call up Miss Eells and tell her. He simply
had
to.

Down the stairs Anthony ran. He picked up the phone and asked for the operator and gave her Miss Eells’s number. Fortunately, Keith and his folks were still busy upstairs packing. They didn’t know that he was downstairs on the phone. Not that it would have made any difference to Anthony at this point—he would have called Miss Eells even if the whole town had been standing around listening.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Miss Eells! Boy, am I glad to hear your voice!” he fairly shouted. “It’s me, Anthony!”

There were a lot of crackling sounds on the telephone line, like those lightning sometimes causes. For a moment Anthony thought he heard another voice, but then Miss Eells shouted into his ear, “Good grief, Anthony! What’s the matter? What’s happened?”

In a breathless voice, Anthony told Miss Eells where he thought the treasure was, and he explained how he had figured it all out

“Good heavens! Well, you know you may be onto something! I won’t guarantee it because there has already been a false lead in this treasure hunt, as you very well know. But I must say, it’s a very ingenious guess. Congratulations!”

“What do you think, Miss Eells? Do you think we should go down and get it out now? Huh?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. It’s been there for quite a few years now, and it can stay there a little longer.
If
it’s there. I would suggest that we wait till this ridiculous flood crisis is over with.”

“Are you sure? You don’t think somebody else might grab it before we do?”

“Not a chance. Nobody else besides us is looking for the treasure except Hugo Philpotts, and he thinks it was in that stupid mirror. Look, Anthony, I’d love to go on chatting, but I’ve got to go pack and do some other things before I leave. I’ll see you up at the academy.”

“Okay, Miss Eells. Hey! I just had a great idea!”

“You seem to be full of them this evening. What is it?”

“Why don’t you bring your chess set and meet me somewhere so we can play a game while we’re waiting to see if there’s going to be a flood or not? How about it, huh?”

“Hmm—sounds like a good plan to me. Why not? Okay, I’ll pack my set, and—tell you what, I’ll meet you at the main entrance of the classroom building of the academy. Where the pillars are. Do you know where I mean?”

Anthony thought a minute. “Yeah, I guess I do. All right, Miss Eells, I’ll meet you there by the pillars. When do you think you’ll get there?”

“No telling exactly. I have to finish up a few things here first. I’ll see you when I see you, as my father used to say. So long now, and keep dry.”

“G’bye, Miss Eells.”

Anthony hung up the phone. He stood there a moment thinking about the treasure. He had half a mind to ignore Miss Eells’s advice and run down right away and dig the treasure out. But at this point, Anthony’s mother came charging down the stairs with a suitcase in her hand.

“Anthony Monday! What on earth are you doing standing there with that foolish look on your face? Is your bag packed?”

“Uh huh. I’m all ready to go, Mom.”

“Well, you don’t look like it. Haven’t you got any sense, Anthony? Go get your bag and take it to the car! Hurry up! Get a move on, for heaven’s sake!”

“Okay, Mom.” Anthony dashed up the stairs and got his bag. A few minutes later he was in the back seat of the car with Keith. His mom was in front, and his dad was driving. They pulled out of the driveway and joined the long line of cars that was creeping slowly through the streets in the pouring rain. As they drove, Anthony saw soldiers standing on the sidewalks. They were using walkie-talkies. At one corner he saw a jeep pulled up on a lawn. Two helmeted guardsmen sat in it, watching the long procession of cars crawl past. Rain beat on the roof of the car. The Mondays moved on at a snail’s pace, staying just a few feet behind the car in front of them. Anthony saw a long double row of taillights ahead of him. It was crawling slowly up the hill, heading for the high ground, for the academy.

Immaculate Conception Academy was a Catholic girls’ school. The girls had already been sent home for their Easter vacation. Now nuns and volunteer workers were busy making beds and hanging up sheets to divide the bigger rooms up into smaller ones so that people could sleep and have a little privacy. But everybody hoped that it wouldn’t be necessary for the people from the lower part of town to spend the night there. With luck, the walls of sandbags would hold, and the refugees would be able to go back to their homes before morning. But the river was still rising, and rain was coming down in buckets. No one really knew what was going to happen.

Around nine o’clock in the evening, the Mondays’ car pulled into a parking lot out behind the main classroom building of the academy. A policeman stood nearby, waving the traffic on. He wore a wet black slicker with a white stripe across it, and he was waving a flashlight. Rain dripped from the peak of his cap. Mr. Monday nosed the car into a parking place. With their baggage, the Mondays trotted up the walk to the back entrance of the main classroom building. Inside was a policeman with a bullhorn who told them to go up to the third floor. The marble stairs were wet and slippery because men in galoshes had been marching up and down them. The Mondays walked down a long, dark corridor and stopped outside a lighted room. Inside, mattresses had been laid out on the floor. A coffee urn steamed in one corner, and there was a steel cart loaded with sandwiches and other goodies. A nun in a long black habit was there to meet them.

“Hello. I’m Sister Louisa. This is where you’ll be staying. And your name is... ?”

“Monday,” said Anthony’s dad. “I’m Howard Monday, and this is my wife, and these are my sons, Keith and Anthony. It’s real nice of you folks to set things up this way.”

The nun smiled. “Thank you. We hope you will be able to return to your home before long, but if not, this place is yours to stay in as long as you like. Make yourself comfortable.”

The Mondays put down their suitcases and sat on some chairs that were arranged nearby. The mattresses had clean sheets and blankets on them, but nobody thought about sleeping. It was only a little after nine, and they were all terribly excited. Mr. Monday wandered out into the hall and started talking to a friend of his he had seen passing by. Mrs. Monday got out her knitting, and Keith started reading a book. Anthony was all at loose ends. He began pacing up and down, glancing at his watch from time to time. He was eager for Miss Eells to get there. She had told him that she would meet him at the main entrance of the academy as soon as she got settled. Had she arrived yet? There was no way of knowing. There were two big dormitories with hundreds of rooms in them, and there was this building. She could be anywhere.

“Mom,” Anthony said after a while, “could I go downstairs and look around? I won’t go away. I’ll just stay near the building.”

Mrs. Monday looked up. “Oh, I guess so. But don’t get in the way of the policemen. They have a job to do, you know. And be back in half an hour. Do you understand?”

“Sure, Mom. I will. G’bye.”

Anthony put on his raincoat and rain hat and walked down the long, dark corridor and two flights of stairs. On the first floor, there were lots of people milling around and talking. Anthony slipped through the crowd, and before long he found himself out in front of the building under the tall, pillared porch. Below him lay the town. There were lights on here and there, but most of the houses were dark. He wondered if there were any people who had refused to leave their homes. Where was Miss Eells? Anthony felt she ought to be there by now. It looked as though most of the people from his part of town had already arrived. The parking lot was jammed. Darn it, why didn’t she get here? Anthony wanted to talk to her about the great discovery he had made.

And then a horrible thought struck him.

What if Miss Eells had had an accident? What if she were lying unconscious somewhere? There was no one around to help if something had happened. She might lie there for hours and then drown when the flood waters came rushing into the town.

Anthony didn’t know why this worrisome thought had come into his head, but once it was there, he couldn’t seem to get it out. The trouble was, it all seemed so very likely that Miss Eells
would
have an accident of some kind.

Anthony began to get panicky. The more he thought, the more thoroughly convinced he became that something had happened to her. He looked around. He felt helpless. What could he do? At the end of the driveway was a police car. Its blue light revolved slowly, and its motor was idling. Maybe he’d better try to get help.

He ran down the drive to the police car and rapped on the window. The policeman rolled down the window.

“Yeah? Whaddaya want?”

“Please, officer, there’s a friend of mine down in the town and—and I think maybe something happened to her. Could—could I maybe go down to her house with you and make sure she’s okay?”

The policeman was tired. It had been a long, hard night, and he didn’t feel like being polite. “Look, kid, if I ran around to every place that everybody asked me to go, I wouldn’t know which end was up. Your friend is okay. What’d you say his name was?”

“It’s not a man, it’s a lady. It’s Miss Eells, the lady that runs the library.”

“Oh, her. Well, don’t you worry about her, son. She’s a pretty smart old chicken. She’s probably already up here in one of these rooms, takin’ a snooze.”

“Yeah, but she promised to meet me...”

At this point the policeman’s car radio started to squawk. A red light on the panel lit up. “Sorry, kid, I got work to do,” said the cop. He rolled up the window and started fiddling with the dial on his car radio. Then he picked up the microphone, said something into it, and drove off.

Anthony stood there in the middle of the driveway, watching him go. Should he go find another cop? No, it wouldn’t do any good. Everybody would think he was just a crazy kid with a lot of silly ideas. He stood there thinking a moment longer. Then he set out on a dead run down the driveway. He was running fast, pumping his arms. He passed the stone gateposts at the entrance to the academy’s grounds, then slogged downhill through the wet, elbows and knees pumping up and down like pistons. It would be a long run, but he could do it. He was a wiry kid, and a good runner. He would save Miss Eells if he could.