The Castle on Deadman's Island (11 page)

“I wish you were right,” Graham said. “But if she left, why is her suitcase hidden in the attic and her favorite hat still in her closet?”

Mrs. Ruff was clearly surprised to hear about the suitcase and the hat, but that didn't stop her. “I don't know about that,” she shot back. “But I know her boat and her car are gone.”

“That may be,” Graham said, “but Neil saw what might well turn out to be her shoes in the river. I'm afraid my aunt has met with foul play and you, Sergeant, must get a police diver over here right away.”

“Look here, son,
I'll
decide what I must do,” the sergeant huffed. It was apparent from his glowering expression that this was all a bit much for him – a skeleton, escaped POWs, a missing person, and now this smart-aleck kid telling him what to do. “And I've no intention of taking officers off the search for the POWs to look for a supposed missing person just because you saw some shoes in the river. They could be anybody's. So keep your noses out of police business in future, or I'll charge you with …”

The sergeant paused, trying to recollect what exactly he could charge them with. “Obstructing justice,” he finally came up with. “Plus breaking and entering … and mischief.”

“But my aunt –” Graham began.

“You've got your aunt on the brain, young man,” Mrs. Ruff said. “Get it through your thick skull that she's not here and stop playing detective. Leave that to the police.”

“Right,” Sergeant Simpson said. “Now, Ruby, about this skeleton. I'm going to have to get in touch with the present owners of the castle and have them come here for questioning. If you'd just give me their addresses and phone numbers …” He whipped out a battered notebook.

“Well,” Ruby Ruff said, “as for Miss Stone, she didn't leave a forwarding address. But the other two live in
Kingsport. Their phone numbers are in the kitchen. I'll just get them for you.”

“I'll come with you,” the sergeant said, sensing a chance for a reviving cup of coffee and a slice of Ruby's famous apple pie. “Then I'll get Leonard to take me back to shore.”

Mrs. Ruff paused at the door to the hall and pointed to the three boys. “What about them? You going to take them with you and charge them with trespassing?”

“Not right now, Ruby, I've got too many other things to do,” the harried sergeant said. “Keep them here for now.”

“You expect
me
to keep them here?” Mrs. Ruff screeched.

“But we're hungry, Sarge,” Daniel protested. “We haven't even had breakfast. Couldn't we just row over to our campsite for something to eat?”

“You can eat here,” the sergeant said in exasperation. “Give them something to keep them quiet, Ruby”

“You want me to
feed
them too?” Mrs. Ruff howled.

The sergeant, seeing his chances for a cup of coffee and a piece of Ruby's pie disappearing fast, wrote down the phone numbers for Grimsby and Snyder and left. “I'll be back with the coroner,” he said over his shoulder. “Just don't let those boys off the island.”

“Where do you think you're going?” Mrs. Ruff said. The boys had just finished demolishing the rest of her apple pie, which she had reluctantly served them, and were heading out the back door. “You heard what Sergeant Simpson said. You're not to leave the island.”

“We're only going down to the shore,” Neil said. “Don't worry, we won't leave.”

“Why would we?” Graham added. “We like it here.”

“You bet. Great apple pie,” Daniel said. “Thanks.”

Mrs. Ruff grunted.

They made their way through the bushes to the cove, where they'd landed the night before. “Will your grandparents find us here, Daniel?” Neil said.

“They'll expect us to be on Lovesick Island at the campsite,” Daniel said. “But they usually go by here on the way, and we can flag them down. Be hours yet though. Gran and Gramps don't move that fast in the morning.”

The sun was halfway to the zenith, the powder blue sky cloudless. It promised to be another bright sunny day. The boys settled down to wait. Neil yawned. “It was a long night.” He and Daniel both lay back on the warm smooth rock and closed their eyes.

But Graham paced restlessly. “I can't stop thinking about the shoes you bumped into, Neil. What did you say they looked like?”

“Just women's shoes, low heels, loafers,” Neil said groggily He tried to picture the shoes, which had been suspended like fruit in a bowl of jello. “They looked new, but like I said, all I cared about then was finding air before I passed out. I wish now I'd grabbed one of them.”

“It's not likely the obtuse Sergeant Simpson will do anything about it,” Graham groused. “But someone should dive down there and find them. I hate to say it, but they could be Aunt Etta's, which would mean …” He couldn't bring himself to say the fateful words.
Graham stopped pacing and looked down at Neil. “I'd go, but I'm hopeless at swimming underwater.”

Neil remembered how close he'd come to not making it out of the cave the first time. The thought of going back there was not pleasant.

“Maybe we could get the cops to fire a cannon,” Daniel interjected. “Just in case there is a body down there.”

They both turned to look at Daniel, sprawled on the rock. “What!?”

“Fire a cannon,” Daniel repeated. “Haven't you guys read
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?
When Huck ran away, they thought he'd drowned in the Mississippi, so they fired a cannon to bring his body to the surface. Course it didn't come up because Huck hadn't drowned – he was hiding on an island watching it all.”

“The British navy used cannons too, come to think of it,” Graham said. “The shock wave was supposed to burst the gallbladder and produce gas, which made the body rise, but that's been pretty well disproven.”

“Suppose there really is a body to go with the shoes,” Neil said. “How long would it be before it comes to the surface by itself?”

“There's no easy answer,” Graham, the fount of information, said. “It depends on a lot of things – the water temperature, whether the person is fat or
skinny…. Some skinny ones never do surface, especially if the water's cold. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Enough of this talk about a body. Somehow we have to find those shoes and see what they tell us.”

Neil got up reluctantly. “Then I'd better go back and have another look,” he said quickly, before he could change his mind.

Graham sat in the little dinghy, peering down into the water. He couldn't see anything, however, as a breeze was rippling the surface. The minutes were ticking by since Neil had disappeared into the depths.

He had made careful note of their position when Neil stopped rowing and said that this was about where he'd surfaced after his underwater swim. Then he'd plunged overboard, leaving Graham to take the oars.

Now, manning the oars awkwardly, Graham struggled to keep the dinghy opposite the same pine tree onshore – the stunted one growing out of the rock face. The little dinghy, however, was rebellious and refused to go where he wanted.

But where was Neil? Why hadn't he come up for air?
Graham berated himself for letting him go down there a second time. Why hadn't he kept quiet about it? He might have known that conscientious Neil would feel it his duty to go.

It seemed forever before there was a sudden eruption and a form shot out of the depths, like a dolphin after a flying fish. Neil swam over, hauled himself into the dinghy, and collapsed on the floorboards. He shook his head in answer to Graham's inquiring look. “No … luck,” he said, between pants. “Not a sign of … the shoes…. I'll have … a rest … then try again.”

“No!” Graham said firmly, rowing away as fast as he could, the dinghy veering this way and that. “It's too dangerous, Neil. You gave it a good shot. We'll have to think of something else.” He paused. “Maybe you'd better take the oars, or we'll never get back. This darned boat has a mind of its own.”

When they arrived back at the cove, Daniel was perched on the rock, watching for Charlie's launch. Before long, they heard
the putt, putt, putt
of an inboard engine, and the launch appeared around the point.

Daniel jumped to his feet. “There they are! And Crescent's with them.” The boys all waved wildly until Charlie spotted them and turned into the cove. As the launch neared the shore, he cut the motor and let her drift. “Too rocky to come any farther,” Charlie called to them.

“We'll row out,” Daniel called back. He could see his grandparents exchanging puzzled looks, wondering,
no doubt, what they were doing on Deadman's Island.

They climbed into the dinghy and Neil rowed out to the launch. He shipped the oars and came alongside.

“Daniel,” Mrs. Lonsberg said sharply, “what on earth are you doing here?”

“We came over to look for Graham's aunt, Gran,” Daniel said. “We didn't find her, but a whole lot of other things happened. And guess what, Gramps? We found the secret underground passage!”

“You did?” Gramps exclaimed. “That's exciting! So my memory was right after all.” He looked pleased.

But Mrs. Lonsberg wasn't pleased. “You went in the castle, Daniel!” she said. “That's private property. I hope you had permission.”

Daniel looked away. “Well, sort of …”

“What do you mean, ‘sort of'?”

“Well,
uh,
I mean, we didn't have permission when we first went in, but we do now. In fact, Sergeant Simpson told us not to leave the island.”

“What! Are you in trouble with the police?”

“Not exactly,” Daniel said, at which point Graham spoke up.

“It was all my idea, Mrs. Lonsberg. It's a long story – we found more than we bargained for – but as Daniel said, we're not supposed to leave, so why don't you come ashore and we can explain what happened.”

“Let's go, dear,” Mr. Lonsberg said.

“If I can tag along, I'd sure like a chance to see the castle!” Charlie said.

So Neil rowed Graham and Daniel back to shore, then made two more trips – the first to ferry the Lonsbergs in and then Crescent and Charlie, who had set out a sturdy anchor in the meantime. “I gotta see this secret passage you boys discovered,” Charlie said, on the trip in. “I've always wondered if there really is one.”

“There really is,” Neil said. “In fact, Graham and I were in it a lot longer than we wanted. We were trapped.”

Crescent looked at him in alarm. “Trapped! What happened?”

“Don't worry, it turned out all right,” Neil said, as they reached the shore. “I'll tell you about it later.”

Mrs. Ruff stared, aghast, when she saw the crowd approaching the back door of the kitchen. “If those people think they can tramp all over my castle,” she said to Leonard, “they've got another think coming.” As she strode to the door, Leonard slipped quickly away to avoid the confrontation.

“Hi, Mrs. Ruff,” Daniel said, before she had a chance to speak. “This is my grandmother and my grandfather.”

“So nice to meet you, Mrs. Ruff,” Mrs. Lonsberg said. “I do hope the boys haven't been a nuisance.”

Mr. Lonsberg extended his hand. “Delighted to be here, Mrs. Ruff. I've heard so much about your castle.”

Mrs. Ruff put out her hand, somewhat hesitantly and Mr. Lonsberg seized it enthusiastically. “We live in New York, you see, Mrs. Ruff, and I knew the original owner of the castle, when he was building it way back when, before the poor man fell on hard times. My, but he couldn't talk about anything else but his castle.” He stepped back to gaze up at the towering structure. “Now I can understand why. It's so impressive. May we come in a minute?”

Mrs. Ruff's demeanor had undergone a distinct change. “Why,
uh,
yes,” she said. “Come in. Come in.” She held the door open.

“This is our friend, Crescent Savage,” Mr. Lonsberg said, as they filed in, “and our invaluable fishing guide, Charlie Milton.”

“I met Crescent before,” Mrs. Ruff said. “And Charlie and I have known each other for a dog's age, haven't we, Charlie?”

“'Deed we have, Ruby,” Charlie said. “But what's this I hear about finding the secret passage to the river? You're a sly one, Ruby, you've been holding out on us. I hope you're going to let us see it.”

“Why, of course, Charlie,” Mrs. Ruff said. “But you'll get a shock when you do. Have the boys told you?”

“We haven't had a chance yet; they just arrived,” Daniel said.

“You'd better sit down then,” Mrs. Ruff said, pulling up some extra chairs to the big kitchen table. “I'll get some tea while they tell you what they found.”

Graham did most of the talking. He told about Daniel pulling the horse's tail, the trapdoor opening to reveal the skeleton, who they thought it was, the POWs tying up Daniel, and Neil swimming out of the tunnel. He didn't, however, mention the shoes Neil had seen in the water – that was something he was going to demand that Sergeant Simpson investigate. Until he found out more, though, he didn't want to speculate about whose shoes they might be.

Then, while they waited for the sergeant to return, Mr. Lonsberg persuaded Mrs. Ruff to describe what it was like in the castle in the old days.

When Sergeant Simpson arrived back at the castle with the coroner, he was surprised to hear chatter coming from the kitchen, as if there was a social gathering in progress. He found a crowd of people sitting around the kitchen table drinking tea, while Mr. Lonsberg and Mrs. Ruff swapped stories about the Roaring Twenties.

“The things I could tell you about some of them high-society folks that came to the castle back then,” Mrs. Ruff was saying, when she looked up and saw the policeman standing in the doorway.
“Ah,
there you
are, Sergeant. I kept the boys here, like you said. But these folks came looking for them, so I thought they should stay too.”