Ghost Stories (5 page)

“No, we haven't,” Mr. Hardy said.

“Might I trouble you to stand up?” the man pressed.

Mr. Hardy did not look pleased, but he rose. The boys followed his example. Buffon looked underneath the table and in the seat cushions, but he found nothing. His face was tense. “So sorry to bother you, Monsieur Hardy,” he said. “If you should, by any chance, find our letter, please return it. I know I can trust you, because you are an honorable man, yes?” His eyes glittered, and the boys could see that he was furious at having lost an envelope that was apparently very valuable.

Mr. Hardy just shrugged and kept staring at the man.

Buffon's voice became edgy. “I should hate to have to call the police and have them search you and your sons!” He pointed at Frank's briefcase, which stood at the side of his chair.

Mr. Hardy stood up and threw his napkin on the table. “I'm sure that whatever is in that envelope would be very interesting for the police to read. So by all means, call them! We'll wait.”

Buffon snarled and mumbled something about the Hardys getting what was coming to them someday. Then he spun on his heel and walked out.

“What do you make of that?” Joe burst out.

“Maybe we should go back and ask the fortuneteller,” Frank quipped.

“It is very strange,” Mr. Hardy said slowly. “And I have a feeling we haven't seen the last of Buffon yet. Or Simbu.”

“Tell us more about Simbu,” Frank urged.

“He was known here in the Atlanta region because there's a story dating back to the time before the Civil War that involves one of the dolls,” Mr. Hardy began.

“There was a rich old man who lived alone except for a black slave whom he had treated well and who was devoted to him. The slave was a believer in voodoo and eventually converted his master to its practice. They lived in a large house not far from what is now Route three-eighty. A narrow road leads to it from the Cresthaven Diner. Anyway, when the war came and the Union army swept south and east, the old man became worried about his fortune.”

“No wonder,” Frank said with a grin.

Mr. Hardy nodded. “He converted everything into gold and hid it somewhere in the ground. He left it with nothing to guard it but a Simbu doll made by the faithful slave. The old man and his servant tried to keep the Union army off the property, which is shielded by a stone wall, but they were killed. And as far as we know, no one has ever found the gold.”

“What a story!” Joe said. “Hasn't anyone ever looked for the treasure?”

“I suppose so,” Mr. Hardy said. “The thing is,
whoever finds it, will also find a valuable Simbu doll.”

“Then, would the discoverer fly in the face of experience and take it with the curse attached to it?” asked Frank.

All three fell silent for a while and finished their dinner. Afterward, Frank and Joe took their father to the airport, since he had to go to New York that night.

Frank had an uneasy feeling on the way and looked out the rear window of the taxi. “Someone's following us,” he said. At the next traffic light, the car behind them had to pull up close and the boys recognized the one-eyed man's white Mercedes.

“He thinks we have his envelope!” Joe burst out.

“Yes,” Mr. Hardy said. “We have to be very careful. You especially, since you're staying here. What are your plans for the next few days?”

“We'll ride up the coast and spend some time at the various beaches,” Frank replied. “Oh, by the way, I almost forgot to give you your papers.”

He handed Mr. Hardy the documents, and a few minutes later they arrived at the airport. Pierre Buffon was nowhere to be seen. After the detective had boarded his flight, Frank and Joe took another cab to their hotel. Frank spotted Buffon's car across the street.

“I wonder what he's up to,” Joe said.

“Maybe he figures we have his envelope and decided to watch our every move,” Frank said. “We'll have to keep an eye on him all night.”

The boys paid the cabbie and went into the hotel.
When they arrived at their room, Frank tossed his briefcase on the bed. Joe stared at it.

“Frank! Something's sticking to the bottom!” he cried out, pointing. “What is it?”

Frank looked and pulled off an envelope. “I don't believe it!” he exclaimed. “It stuck to my briefcase on a piece of gum! Obviously it's the envelope Buffon was looking for!”

“Open it,” Joe urged. “I can't wait to see what has such sentimental value to an arch criminal.”

The envelope contained a faded and tattered piece of paper with a strange message written on it. Frank read it aloud:

Not where you think it be
But up the hill and down
The roots sink deep
And Simbu will not sleep
If you dare steal the gold
He will punish you tenfold.

The boys were stunned. “It must be the work of the old man Dad told us about,” Joe said finally. “The man who hid the gold with the help of his slave and left a Simbu to guard it.”

“Just as the fortune-teller predicted,” Frank said, a hollow ring to his voice. “We're being lured to look for the treasure guarded by an idol who brings death to those who fool with it.”

“Now who sounds superstitious?” Joe tried to make light of the matter.

“Call it what you want. You have to admit something strange is going on here.”

“You're right,” Joe said somberly. “What do you think we should do next?”

“Well, I don't think we should just let it go and throw the message in the wastebasket. I'd like to pursue it, and if we find the gold, we can turn it over to the police or some charity to dispose of it.”

“That's my feeling too,” Joe said enthusiastically.

Frank walked to the window and peered through the curtains to see if Buffon was still watching the hotel. “It's starting to rain,” he reported. “And our friend is still out there. Ah! He's pulling away. I suppose he figures we won't go anywhere in a storm.”

The skies had opened up and the wind rushed through the treetops.

“Let's fool him!” Joe declared. “It'll be a wet ride, but we have good rain gear and I have a couple of entrenching tools in my luggage that I brought for camping.”

“Right!”

A few minutes later, the boys walked out the back door of the hotel to where their bikes were parked. Gently they eased the motorcycles out to the main street, again looking for the white Mercedes. But the coast was clear and the boys accelerated along the mostly empty road to their target, the property near the Cresthaven Diner.

Luck was with them and soon the rain stopped. The clouds cleared away and a beautiful, brilliant moon guided them. They passed the diner and took
the road next to it for a few miles. Then they pulled up alongside some heavy road construction equipment that stood near the stone wall enclosing the old man's property. They parked their bikes and walked through the gate. Clouds skittered across the moon. The wind picked up and soon rain started to fall once more.

“This isn't much fun,” Joe grumbled, when even the flashlights were of little help in guiding them through wide-spreading oak trees with strands of Spanish moss hanging down from their limbs.

Night birds screamed in their ears and went flapping off in the rain. Frogs were calling. Frank stumbled knee-deep into a swamp and felt something slither across his legs. A snake, or a muskrat? Whatever it was, it scared him out of his wits, and he shot forward as if a jet were attached to him.

“What's the matter with you?” Joe asked.

“Nothing,” Frank mumbled. “Except I got attacked by a snake or something.”

Joe laughed.

“It's not funny!” Frank grated.

As they got closer to the old house, there was a tremendous crack and a dark tree branch fell straight at Joe. Frank had no time to warn him. Instead, he knocked his brother down with a football block to get him out of the way. The branch was almost a foot in diameter and Joe shivered once he had recovered from his shock.

“That thing could've killed me!” he said hoarsely.

“You want to go back?” Frank asked.

“N-no! There's the house up ahead.”

It was not much of a house anymore. The original walls were still there, but the roof was almost gone. Much of the floor had been torn up and the cellar was filled with broken boards and scattered debris.

“Not where you think it be, but up the hill and down,” Frank recited from memory, looking around the terrain. It was mostly flat and they already had climbed a little hill to get there.

“Down which way?” Joe asked.

“I suppose we have to go to the back of the house and see what we find.”

Behind the building, indeed, the ground sloped down. But to what?

“The roots sink deep, and Simbu will not sleep,” Joe intoned. “What roots? I can't even see any big trees anywhere around here.”

“Maybe it refers to a root cellar!” Frank said suddenly. “They were common in those days. People stored their vegetables in them before they had refrigeration.”

“Good idea,” Joe admitted. “Now, where would that root cellar be?”

“We'll have to hop up and down all over that little hill and see if we hear a hollow sound,” Frank said. “Come on!”

The boys slipped and slid around in the mud for the better part of an hour when Joe suddenly stopped. “I think I heard a hollow echo around here,” he said. “Let's start digging.”

For the next half-hour the young detectives kept excavating the dirt until they hit wood. Straining
hard, they managed to rip off the half-rotted boards and shone their lights into a dark pit. It was about twelve feet deep and completely empty!

Joe groaned. “All this work for nothing!” he complained.

“Wait a minute,” Frank said. “If the old man went to this much trouble, there must be more to it. Maybe the gold was buried under the floor of the root cellar.”

The boys hooked up the rope from Joe's tool kit, slid down the twelve feet and began prodding the floor. It didn't take long to find that same hollow sound again. But as they were tearing up the planking over the chamber, the rain began pouring into the root cellar. To make matters worse, the boys found that a groove in the ground that collected water ran down the hill right over the root cellar.

Soon they stood ankle-deep in water and it was climbing.

“We'll probably drown,” Joe said darkly. “Maybe we should heed the fortune-teller's warning!”

“You really want to quit now?” Frank asked.

“I suppose not,” the younger Hardy replied and tore away another board. Now they could see a small tunnel underneath, less than five feet high. It led up into the side of the hill, away from the flood.

“The old man designed this well,” Frank said. “Look, it's nice and dry.”

The boys lowered themselves into the tunnel and followed it to a turn about ten feet to the left. Slowly they crawled around the corner, when they suddenly heard a loud
crash!

A bolt of thunder hit exactly at the moment when they came face-to-face with Simbu. They stared at the little figure that sat atop an iron box. Was the gold inside the box?

“Shall we defy Simbu's curse and look?” Frank whispered.

“I—don't know,” Joe breathed.

The more they stared at Simbu's evil little face, the more they hesitated to touch him. At last Frank addressed the ancient guardian. “Simbu, we're not going to hurt you. And we're not going to steal your gold. We just want to see if it's there.”

Then he moved the figure and tried to open the box. However, the locks, despite the years underground, were still strong, and they had no tools that could have broken them.

“Now what'll we do?” Joe asked. “We could take Simbu—”

Another terrible crash of thunder interrupted him.

“The water'll build up in the root cellar,” Frank warned. “We'd better get out of here. We can always come back tomorrow.”

“You're right,” Joe said. He was relieved that Simbu and the gold would stay for the time being.

The boys scrambled back down the passageway and hoisted themselves up into the root cellar. With some difficulty they made their way through the rushing water to their rope and climbed out into the raging storm.

“We'd better divert the water from going into the pit or else it'll be a pool in the morning,” Frank suggested.

Quickly the Hardys dug a shallow ditch around the opening to the root cellar, then replaced the planks, tamped down the earth and sod, and left.

They returned to their bikes and drove to the hotel, where they managed to get into the parking lot without being observed. At least, they did not see Button's white Mercedes anywhere.

An hour later, they had an unexpected telephone call from Bayport. Their mother had been taken to the hospital for emergency surgery. Mr. Hardy, who had stopped off in New York, could not be reached for another twenty-four hours, since he was out on Long Island on a stakeout involving boats. So Frank and Joe had to go home fast.

“I suppose we have to postpone our date with Simbu and make arrangements with the hotel to store our bikes,” Frank said. “And I'll call the airport right away to book us a flight home.”

The following morning, the white Mercedes followed the boys to the airport. “I bet Buffon is real surprised to see us leave,” Joe declared.

“I bet he is,” Frank agreed. “I hope he doesn't decide to follow us to Bayport, though.”

As it turned out, Buffon stayed behind. A month later, Frank and Joe were sitting in front of the fireplace with their friends Tony Prito and Chet Morton, whom they had just told the story.

“So what happened after your mom got out of the hospital?” Chet demanded. “Did you go back to retrieve the gold?”

“We did,” Joe said, “but we were too late.”

“What do you mean?” Tony asked. “Did someone else get to your friend Simbu first?”