The Ghost of Ernie P. (12 page)

“No you don't,” Jeff said. “We'll get out of this.”

He wanted to believe what he was saying, but just then another crazy thing happened. The front door opened beneath them, and Margo Muggin came out. She ran down the steps to where the boys had left their bicycles.

“Hey, what's she doing?” Art exclaimed. “Look at that! She's stealing my bike!”

They watched as Margo got on the bike and rode it across the lawn into the trees. Moments later she returned on foot and rode Jeff's bike out of sight.

The boys stared at each other. “Those woods are thick,” Jeff said slowly. “No one's going to find the bikes there unless they hunt for them.”

Art struggled with the window and managed to open it a few inches. “Maybe if we yell, somebody'll hear us,” he suggested.

“Don't!” Jeff pulled him back. “The only person who'd hear is Margo. We've got to think of some other way of getting attention.”

“But
what
?” Art sounded desperate. “Look! She's coming back to the house.”

Jeff felt goose bumps pop on his arms. It was up to him to think of a plan, and he didn't know what to do.

The partly opened window seemed to be their only hope. Jeff went over the possibilities. It was too far to jump, and there was no neighbor near enough to hear cries for help. They could drop a note out the window, but who would read it?

He walked around the attic looking at wooden crates, dusty chairs, stacks of old magazines. There were piles of boards along one wall, and some wide metal sheets with patterns pressed into them. Jeff clenched his fists. Somewhere in this pile of junk there had to be an answer to their problem.

Art watched him anxiously. “This place is a firetrap,” he moaned. “It's worse than our attic at home, and that's pretty bad.”

Jeff stopped his pacing.
Fire!
That would be one way to get attention. He reached into his pocket and discovered he still had the book of matches he'd used to burn the clippings.

“What is it?” Art demanded. “What are you thinking about?”

Jeff waved the book of matches at him. “This! This could get us out of here.”

“You can't start a fire!” Art exclaimed. “We'd burn up before the fire department even knew what was happening.”

“Not if we do it right.” Jeff was excited. He looked around the attic till he found a tin trunk pushed back in a corner. It was full of musty clothes.

“This ought to work,” he said. “This and those metal sheets over there. I think they used them to cover ceilings.”

He started to drag the trunk across the floor to the window, then stopped. “Listen, Art, I'll take care of the fire. You go downstairs and bang on the door and yell. Make a lot of noise.”

“So she won't hear you moving the trunk?”

Jeff nodded. There were other reasons, too. He'd suddenly realized that Margo must not get suspicious about what was going on in the attic. She was a witch. She probably had ways of knowing things and might try to interfere. If she thought the boys were too frightened to do anything but pound on the door and beg to get out, she'd ignore them.

“Hurry up,” he urged. “Go!”

“Okay,” Art said reluctantly, “but you watch out with those matches, Keppel. We're in enough trouble now.”

As soon as Art started down the stairs, Jeff set to work. First he carried a battered kitchen chair to the window. Then he lifted the trunk onto the chair so it was just below the windowsill.

“Let us out!” Art's scratchy voice shot up an octave as he shouted and thumped on the door.

Good boy!
Jeff thought. He propped the trunk lid open and rumpled the contents—some dresses, a couple of pairs of wool trousers. From a stack of magazines he snatched one and tore out pages. Crumpled into balls and tucked among the clothes, the paper would make good kindling.

“LET US OUT OR YOU'LL BE SORRY!” Art was kicking the door now, as well as banging it with his fists. Jeff hoped the noise was loud enough to drown out the next part of his plan. He needed the metal sheets to build a wall around the trunk.

The sheets were heavier than they looked. Jeff dragged a long narrow piece across the floor and lifted it up so that at one end, it rested on the hinges on the inside of the trunk's cover. The other end sloped upward and rested against the wall above the window. He propped a second, wider sheet against one side of the trunk, making a wall from the trunk to the window. Then he lit a match and dropped it on a wad of crumpled paper. A flame leaped up and died. He tried again, and this time a pair of trousers began to smolder. A spiral of dark smoke rose from the trunk, found the open window and drifted like a plume against the sky.

Jeff ran back across the attic for another metal sheet. He rested this one against the other side of the chair. Now the trunk was enclosed, with a sloping metal roof over it. The sheets acted like a chimney, funneling the smoke out the window.

Footsteps pounded up the attic steps, and Art's head popped into view. “What's happening?” he whispered. “My knuckles are getting sore.”

Jeff motioned toward his “chimney.” Some smoke seeped through the spaces between the propped-up sheets of metal, but most of it was drifting out the window.

Art looked impressed. “But it's going to get smoky up here,” he worried. “What then?”

“I'll drop the lid of the trunk if it gets too bad,” Jeff said. “It'll be okay.”

“Want me to keep on pounding?”

“Right!”

The next few minutes were the longest of Jeff's life. The smoke thickened, and the burning clothes smelled terrible. Jeff lay on the floor, where the air was a little better, and wondered if he'd made a bad mistake. Maybe Art had been right; maybe starting a signal fire was the worst thing he could have done. But how else could he send a message for help without letting Margo know what he was doing?

When the siren wail finally began, Jeff was afraid he was imagining it. Far off at first, it rapidly grew louder, and at last he knew it was real. Art heard it, too. The pounding stopped abruptly, and he raced up the stairs.

“Hey, man! You did it!” He grabbed Jeff and pulled him to his feet. “Come on downstairs. It isn't nearly as smoky down there.”

Coughing and choking, Jeff followed his friend down to the little storeroom. They could hear men shouting below them now, then a clatter of footsteps on the stairs. Someone rattled the doorknob.

“It's locked!” Jeff tried to shout, but he coughed instead. A second later, an ax blade crashed through the door. Splinters of wood flew in all directions.

“Look out!” Jeff dragged Art behind a clothes rack, just as a second blade sliced through the door.

“Got it!” There was a triumphant shout from the hallway, and the door gave way with a crash. Three firemen burst into the storeroom and charged up the stairs without noticing the boys.

Jeff started after them. “I'd better tell them why I set the fire,” he said. “You wait out in the hall.”

He ran halfway up the stairs and then stopped. What, exactly, was he going to tell the firemen? That Margo Muggin was a witch? That she'd already tried once to kill Jeff, and today she'd locked them in the attic so she could—what? He didn't know why Margo had locked them up. The whole story sounded crazy, even to Jeff who knew it was true.

He scrambled back down the stairs to where Art waited in the hall. “Let's get out of here,” he said. “If there's nobody in the front hall, we can sneak out the door.”

“Sneak out!” Art was indignant. “Why should we sneak out? We oughtta have that Margo arrested. We're just trying to help her aunt and uncle, and what does she do? She locks us up, that's what.”

“We can't prove it,” Jeff argued. “She'll probably say she didn't even know we were up there. Or she might tell them we broke in and tried to burn the house down. Who knows what she'll say!”

“They won't believe her,” Art protested, but now he sounded unsure. People were always ready to believe the worst about kids.

They tiptoed downstairs to the empty front hall. Loud voices sounded from the back of the house, and people were moving around in the kitchen, but there was no one in sight.

“What's that smell?” Jeff took a deep breath, and his eyes widened with shock. “Hey, it's gasoline!”

A tall policeman appeared at the kitchen door and strode down the hall. “Who let you kids in here?” he demanded. With a sweep of his arms he shoved the boys out the door and followed them across the porch and down the steps. “You must be nuts, walking into a burning house. What are you doing here anyway?”

“We—we were looking for Mrs. Muggin,” Jeff stammered. “Her niece called my mom and said they had some cookies for us.”

The policeman looked at him suspiciously. “Cookies, huh? How long ago was that?”

The boys exchanged glances. “About an hour, I guess,” Jeff replied. Art nodded.

“Well, now,” the policeman said, “I'll want to check that story with your mother, won't I? Because in the first place, Mr. and Mrs. Muggin are out of town. Been visiting their married daughter in Boston for a week. And in the second place, when we got here that niece of theirs was getting ready to burn the house down. She must have already started a fire in the attic—the neighbors saw the smoke and called us—but that wasn't quick enough for her. She poured gasoline on the rugs and draperies all over the first floor. We got here just as she was getting ready for a real bonfire.” He paused, watching the boys' horrified expressions. “You
sure
she invited you over?”

Jeff nodded, unable to speak.

“Then you're lucky you took your time getting here,” the policeman said, more kindly. “The woman's raving! Keeps talking about getting even with her enemies. She's going to be locked up—in jail or in a hospital for the criminally insane—for a long time.”

“Getting even with her enemies?” Art squeaked.

“That's her story. She was going to torch the house and then go for a walk or something. Thought she could convince everybody that someone broke in while she was gone and set the fire!”

The policeman took out a notepad and wrote down the boys' names and addresses. “We'll check with you later,” he said. “Now you guys go home. I don't want to see your faces around here anymore.”

Five minutes later, Jeff and Art were watching from the woods as Margo Muggin was led out of the house to a waiting squad car.

“She's wearing handcuffs,” Jeff breathed. “She's really and truly going to jail.”

He felt as if a great load had slipped from his shoulders. Margo had done her worst, and she had lost.

First a ghost and then a witch!
he thought wonderingly. It deserved a headline in the paper:

KEPPEL THE BRAVE FACES UP TO HIS PROBLEMS

“Hey.” Art shrank back farther under the trees. “She's staring over here, just as if she knows where we are. Boy, if looks could kill …” He turned to Jeff. “You have to tell me what's been going on here, man,” he said. “But if you're going to say Margo hated you so much she was ready to burn the house down with us in it—well, I'm not sure I'm ready to hear all that. Not now. Not here.”

Jeff knew how he felt. He wasn't ready to talk about it either. Keppel the Brave needed a little time to think about what had just happened.

“The bikes have to be in there somewhere.” He pointed deeper into the woods. “It looks like a trail.”

“Let's go,” Art said. “I'm ready.”

They began walking, concentrating on the trail, careful not to look back as the squad car started up and drove away.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

“That terrible, terrible woman!” Mrs. Keppel exclaimed. “Imagine, wanting to burn down her aunt and uncle's house! I hope they lock her up and throw away the key! Whatever could she be thinking of? Poor Celia Muggin is brokenhearted.”

Jeff wished his mother would stop talking about what had happened. It had been two whole days since Margo Muggin had disappeared from his life—two whole days without a sign of a ghost or a witch. He could finally forget about the Top Secret Project—if his mother would let him.

“You boys would have been in real danger if you hadn't gone for a bike ride before you went to the Muggins' house,” she said. “I just don't understand why she'd want you to come over there, do you?”

“No, ma'am,” Art said. He was busy spreading peanut butter on Mrs. Keppel's homemade bread. The boys were going to sleep in the tent, and the sandwiches were to be part of their supplies for the night, along with chocolate cake, popcorn, apples, and soda.

“Well, I'm glad you're going to do something that's fun tonight,” Mrs. Keppel went on. “Jeff needs a change—this has been a hard time for him.” She shook her head. “Do you miss poor Ernie Barber as much as Jeff does, Art?”

“No, ma'am,” Art said politely, “I don't believe I do.”

“Well, good!” Mrs. Keppel exclaimed. “Then you can help cheer him up. Though I must say”—she thrust the picnic hamper at Jeff and handed a six-pack of soda to Art—“he's been a lot better the last couple of days. More like his usual happy self.”

“I'll do what I can for him,” Art promised solemnly.

The boys carried their supplies out to the tent. Dark was settling in, and Jeff lit the lantern while Art unrolled the bedrolls.

“Do you really miss Ernie Barber that much?” Art asked curiously. “I never thought you liked him much, even though you let him hang around.” He threw himself down on his bedroll and reached for a sandwich.

“I don't miss him, but I guess I feel sorry for him,” Jeff said, surprising himself with his answer. “Nobody liked him, and now nobody misses him—except his folks, of course.”