CHAPTER XVII
THE MIDNIGHT NOISE
Silence followed the terrific clap of thunder—a silence almost as startling as the noise which had preceded it. And then the rain came down in torrents.
It was as if that awful blast had opened the flood-gates of heaven and let down the waters accumulated there for ages past. A pelting, driving, overwhelming storm it was, punctuated by intermittent flashes of lightning and rumbling thunder.
But, as if that were not enough, the condition of the three children—woebegone, dirty and on the verge of tears—was enough to cause a disturbance.
“What has happened? What is going to happen?” murmured Ruth, for once, at least, feeling that her nerves were going to give way.
It was Agnes who saved the situation. Having gained her own equilibrium, she turned to Nalbro and asked:
“What do you think of the Corner House now? Isn’t it an ideal place? So quiet and restful!”
And as she asked this Dot burst into tears and wails, which made her inquiry seem all the more contrasting.
But Nally let out a peal of jolly laughter and exclaimed:
“I just love it! It’s so different!”
“Yes, it’s different, all right!” chuckled Neale.
“Well, now that we’re at least all here, whole and not in pieces,” said Ruth, “perhaps we can have some explanation of what it is all about—I mean what you children have been doing,” she explained. “First, though, is any one hurt?”
“I ain’t,” declared Sammy Pinkney.
“You shouldn’t say ‘ain’t,’ Sammy,” remarked Tess primly, intent on improving her playmate notwithstanding the noise and confusion all about her.
“I aren’t hurt, but I is scared,” announced Dot.
At this Hal and Luke laughed in glee, at which Dot looked a little hurt. Neale, however, was a great comfort, as usual, for he looked gravely at her and said:
“Never mind, Dotums. Almost any one would be scared.”
“Well, I know something else Sammy shouldn’t do,” said Agnes, after the laughter subsided. “And that is to have that old smelly lantern in here. It’s bad enough when the windows are open, but when they’re all closed it’s terrible. Blow it out, Sammy, do!”
The candle in the cigar box was making a smudge, and Sammy obligingly extinguished it.
“Now let’s have the story,” suggested Ruth.
While the storm raged outside the children told how they had conceived the idea of searching in the cellar for buried treasure—the treasure of Hop Wong and the two men.
“But what makes you think there is treasure in our cellar?” asked Ruth.
“Because,” was all Tess or Dot would say.
As for Sammy, he only pointed to the girls. This was a case of shifting the blame, it seemed.
By degrees, however, it was drawn out of the trio how Tess had put this and that together, and had, in a way, added what she had overheard concerning the Chinaman and the two tramps. Thus she had arrived at the decision that there must be a store of gold in the cellar of the Corner House. She had then taken Dot and Sammy into her confidence.
“And we dug and dug, but we didn’t find any,” reported Tess. “We were in the back part of the cellar, where it’s awfully dark, when we heard a noise. We ran and we knocked down something that fell on the swinging shelf, and that fell down and——”
“It’s a mercy you weren’t all cut by the broken glass jars!” exclaimed Ruth. “I suppose the cellar’s a sight!” she sighed.
“Oh, it isn’t so bad as if the jars had been filled with fruit,” chuckled Luke. “There’s a lot of broken glass, it’s true, but glass jars are cheap. It might have been worse.”
“Indeed, yes, if the children had been hurt,” agreed Ruth.
A close inspection showed no damage beyond what soap and water would remedy. Then, as the household settled down to a more normal state of existence, preparations were made for getting supper, and more details of the searching expedition of Tess, Dot and Sammy were drawn out while the storm raged.
“What sort of noise was it you heard that made you run? You said you knocked down something that broke the swinging shelf, didn’t you?” asked Ruth, when Mrs. MacCall and Linda were preparing the evening meal.
“Oh, it was just a noise,” replied Tess, vaguely. Ruth’s evident idea—evident, at least, to the older ones—was to learn if any attempt had been made by Hop Wong or the two strange men to enter the cellar under cover of the approaching storm.
“But can’t you tell me what sort of noise?” persisted Ruth.
“It was—now, it was a noisy noise!” exclaimed Sammy, with a triumphant air.
And he wondered why some of them laughed.
“Never mind, Sammy,” said Neale consolingly, “most noises are noisy. And that’s the sort of noise that annoys an oyster, if I remember the joke aright.”
“If you get off any more old ones like that,” threatened Hal, “we’ll sentence you to stand out in the rain and sing a song.”
“And it’s some rain!” murmured Luke.
Indeed, though the first fury of the storm was over, culminating, it seemed, in that one terrific crack, there was now a steady downpour which seemed likely to last all night.
“Sammy, you’d better stay here to supper,” said Ruth, when the meal was nearly ready. “I’ll telephone over to your mother to say you’re all right.”
“Oh, I guess she knows I’m all right,” Sammy announced, with cheerful irresponsibility.
“I’ll make sure,” Ruth declared.
It was still thundering and the lightning was flashing when she approached the instrument.
“Don’t go near it!” cried Agnes.
“Why not?” Ruth asked.
“It’s always dangerous in a thunder storm to go near a telephone! Keep away!”
But Ruth was one not easily frightened. Though after she had got her connection with the Pinkney house and had relieved his mother’s feelings by saying that Sammy would remain where he was for the present, Ruth leaped back as a loud clicking from the telephone indicated some sort of electrical disturbance on the wire.
“There! What did I tell you?” cried Agnes.
“No harm done,” Ruth replied.
It was almost time for the meal to be served when Luke arose, took Neale by the arm, and started for the hall, saying:
“Well, we’ll bid you young ladies good-evening.”
“What?” cried Agnes.
“You aren’t going—not in all this storm!” objected Ruth.
“I didn’t hear you invite us to supper,” returned Luke with a simulated injured air. “And you didn’t offer to telephone to Grantham and say I was all right.”
“Or to Con Murphy,” added Neale, with a serious face.
“Silly!” murmured Ruth. “Of course you boys will stay. Stay all night, if you like. We have plenty of room.”
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” agreed Neale, looking out of the window, down the panes of which little streams of rain were running. “What say, Luke?”
“I’m with you! It looks like a good imitation of the original flood outside.”
“You really would have to go around; you couldn’t climb the back fence in this storm. Yes, you’ll have to stay,” put in Agnes.
“Then we’ll have a jolly evening of it!” cried Hal. Perhaps he thought three girls to one youth was all out of proportion.
Indeed, now that they were all safe within doors there was no need to worry about the storm. The members of the picnic party congratulated themselves that they had left the lake and grove in time to escape the outburst of the elements.
It was an intermittent sort of storm, and there would be lulls in it when it seemed about to stop. The rain would almost cease and the thunder die away, while the flashes of lightning would hardly be noticeable.
Then, with a suddenness that was appalling, would come a crash of thunder which would shake the house, and the lightning preceding it would crackle and snap on the electric-light wires.
Sometimes the rain would decrease to a mere drizzle, and again it would pelt down as if about to bore through the roof.
But the Corner House was stanch—Uncle Peter Stower had seen to that—and not a drop entered.
Supper was a jollier meal with all the company present, than otherwise would have been the case.
But to storm and conversation alike Sammy Pinkney was seemingly deaf. He paid strict attention to the affair in hand, which affair consisted in getting outside as much food as possible. Neither thunder, lightning nor rain disturbed Sammy.
As Neale observed him clean off plate after plate, which Linda filled, Agnes’ chum could not help remarking:
“Treasure hunting makes you hungry, doesn’t it, Sammy?”
“Sure!” Sammy answered, not lifting his eyes from the piece of pie.
“I only hope he isn’t made ill,” murmured Ruth.
“Doesn’t thunder or lightning or something have some effect on food or something?” asked Agnes.
“You’re thinking of lightning turning milk sour, I guess,” answered Neale.
“Perhaps,” agreed Agnes.
After the meal they went into the sitting room and sat about talking, the late treasure-hunt, among other topics, being discussed. Ruth had just gone to the telephone again to tell Mrs. Pinkney that Sammy could remain all night if the storm did not cease when a series of queer happenings began.
The first was a sudden dimming of the electric lights. They had been glowing brightly when, all at once, they went from a white brightness to a dull red in their vacuum globes.
“Oh!” exclaimed Ruth. “I hope we aren’t going to be left in darkness. We took out most of the gas. I must see if Linda has any candles.”
“I can light my cigar-box lantern,” offered Sammy.
“Thank you—no!” protested Agnes. “I’d rather sit in darkness than be smothered.”
“It’s only the lightning,” said Neale. “The lights always go down when a big flash comes.”
As he spoke the lights went dim again, but they all noted that this happened when the storm was comparatively quiet. There was no thunder and no lightning.
“How do you account for that?” asked Nalbro, nervously.
“Trouble in the power house,” said Luke promptly.
“Well, maybe,” Nally conceded.
The house was comparatively quiet for a while, though the storm kept up, and Ruth had just returned from putting the children to bed—Sammy, to his delight being given a room to himself—when Nalbro called:
“Some one’s at the telephone!”
“I didn’t hear the bell ring,” said Hal.
“No. But listen! Hear that clicking?”
They all heard a peculiar tapping in the receiver, as when one is connected with a “busy” wire.
“Maybe it’s off the hook,” suggested Luke.
He went to look, and when he came back to report that the instrument was as it should be, they all looked one at the other.
“There it is again!” exclaimed Agnes.
Once more the clicking sounded.
“I’ll ask Central what it is,” volunteered Neale.
He started toward the instrument, but at that moment there came almost as terrific a crash of thunder as the one that opened the storm.
“Neale!” screamed Agnes. “Keep away from that telephone!”
“There’s no danger,” he asserted, his voice sounding strangely loud in the quiet that succeeded the booming of the thunder.
Then, again the lights went dim—so low as almost to go out—and there came a gasp of fear even from Ruth.
“Do you suppose the house was struck?” she asked in a whisper of Luke.
“Nonsense! If it had been we’d all know it. Lightning isn’t that gentle when it strikes.”
At that moment a clock somewhere in the Corner House softly gave the hour of midnight. And almost as if it had been timed for that weird and spookish hour there came, from the cellar, seemingly, a strange sound—a sound of a heavy fall, followed by a moan.