Jane Carter Investigates: Episode Ninety-Two
I opened the door of the cabin,
only to close it quickly again.
“It’s too late,” I whispered.
“The men have come back.”
“Not the girl?”
“No, they’re alone. But we’re in
a trap. What shall we do?”
“We could make a dash for it. If
we have to fight our way out, Shep will be there to help.”
“Let’s stick around here and see
what happens, Jack. We’re after information. We must expect to take chances to
get it.”
I turned the key in the lock,
bolting the door from the inside.
We stood with our ears pressed
against the panel. I could hear the low rumble of voices but was unable to
distinguish words. Then, one of the men moved close to the companionway.
“I’ll get it, John,” he called to
the other man. “It’s down in the cabin.”
We kept perfectly still as the
man turned the doorknob. Then there was a series of thuds against the door as
if the man was heaving angrily against the panel with his shoulder.
“Hey, John,” he shouted, “what’s
the idea of locking the door?”
“I didn’t lock it.”
“Then Rita did.”
Muttering under his breath, the
first man tramped back up on deck.
Ten minutes or so elapsed before
we heard a woman’s voice.
“That must be Rita,” I whispered.
“What will happen when she tells them that she didn’t lock the door?”
The voices above rose in volume
until we were able to distinguish every word. John berated the girl as stupid,
while his companion shouted at her so harshly that she broke down and wept.
“I never had the key,” Rita
wailed. “I don’t know what became of it. You always blame me for everything
that goes wrong, and I’m good and sick of it. If I don’t get better treatment
than this, I may tell a few things to the police. How would you like that?”
I did not hear the response, but
I recoiled as a crash told me that the girl had either been thrown against
something or pushed to the ground. Her cry of pain was drowned out by another
noise, the sudden clatter of the boat engine starting up.
Jack and I looked at each other.
“We’re moving,” I whispered.
Jack started to turn the key in
the lock, but I stopped him. I took the key out of his hand and placed it in my
pocket.
“Let’s stay and see it through,”
I said. “This is our chance to discover their hideout and perhaps solve the
mystery of Atwood’s disappearance.”
“All right,” Jack said, “but I
wish you weren’t in on this.”
From the tiny window of the
cabin, I observed various landmarks as the boat moved downstream. In half an
hour or so, the cruiser came to the mouth of a narrow river which emptied into
the Grassy. From that point on, progress became slow, and often the boat was so
close to shore that I could have reached out and touched overhanging bushes.
“I didn’t know this stream was
deep enough for a motorboat,” Jack whispered. “We must be heading for a hideout
deep in the swamp.”
“I hope Shep has sense enough to
call Dad and the police,” I said. “We’re going to be a long way from help.”
The boat crept on for another
mile or so, then it stopped, and I assumed we had reached our destination. When
I looked out of the window again, I saw why we had halted. A great tree with
finger-like branches had fallen across the river, blocking the way.
“Look, Jack! We’ll not be able to
go any farther.”
“Guess again,” Jack whispered
back.
One of the men had left the boat
and was walking along the shore. He did not seem in the least disturbed by the
great tree, and, for the first time, it dawned on me that the tree served a
definite purpose.
“Lift ’er up, George,” called the
man at the wheel of the boat.
George disappeared into the
bushes. Several minutes passed, and then I heard a creaking sound as if ropes
were moving on a pulley.
“The tree!” whispered Jack. “It’s
lifting!”
Very slowly, an inch at a time,
the great tree raised from the water, its huge roots serving as a hinge. When
it was high enough, the motor launch passed beneath the dripping branches, then
paused on the other side.
Slowly, the tree was lowered into
place once more.
“Clever, mighty clever,” Jack
muttered. “Anyone searching for the hideout would never think of looking beyond
this fallen tree. To all appearances, nature put it here.”
“Nature probably did,” I said.
“But our dishonorable friends adapted it to their own purposes.”
Through the window, I saw George
get back on the boat.
Once more the cruiser went on up
the narrow stream, making slow but steady progress. Long shadows settled over
the water. Soon it became dark.
A short distance ahead I saw a
light. The boat drifted up to a wharf where a man stood with a lantern. I
quickly dodged back from the cabin window to avoid being seen.
“Everything all right, Aaron?”
the man at the wheel asked, jumping ashore. He looped a coil of rope about one
of the dock posts.
“Aaron!” I whispered, gripping
Jack’s hand.
“It must be Aaron Dietz,
Furstenberg’s former business associate. So he’s the ringleader in this
sinister business!”
“Yeah, everything’s all right,”
Aaron Dietz responded gruffly.
“You don’t sound any too cheerful
about it.”
“Atwood still won’t talk. Keeps
insisting he doesn’t know where the gold is hidden. I’m beginning to think we
made a mistake. He may be telling the truth.”
“This is a fine time to be
finding that out!”
“Oh, keep your shirt on, George.
You and John will get your pay, anyhow. And even if Atwood doesn’t know the
hiding place, we’ll make Furstenberg come through.”
“You’ll have to find him first,”
George retorted. “If you ask my opinion, you’ve made a mess of the whole
affair.”
“No one asked your opinion! We’ll
make Atwood tell tonight or else—”
The man with the lantern started
away from the dock but paused before he had taken many steps.
“Get those supplies up to the
shack,” he ordered. “Then I want to talk with you both.”
“All right, but we have to get
the cabin door open first. Rita locked it and lost the key.”
“I didn’t,” Rita protested.
“Don’t you try to blame me.”
I knew that our situation had
become precarious.
“We’re trapped in this
cubby-hole,” Jack muttered.
“We can hide in the closet, Jack.
The men may not think to search there.”
Noiselessly, we opened the door
and slipped into the tiny space. I had never been this close to Jack before. I
could feel the heat radiating off his body and smell his aftershave. My heart was pounding in my chest, and not
just from fear of discovery.
Scarcely had we hidden when there
was a crash against the cabin door. The two men were trying to break through
the flimsy panel.
“Bring a light, Rita,” called one
of the men.
We flattened ourselves against
the closet wall, waiting.
A panel splintered on the outside
cabin door, and I heard the tramping of feet as the men entered the cabin.
“No one in here, George.”
“It’s just as we thought. Rita
locked the door and lied about it.”
“I didn’t! I didn’t!” Rita
protested. “Someone else must have done it while I was at the store. The door
was unlocked when I went away.”
“There’s no one here now.”
“I—I thought I heard voices while
we were coming down the river.”
“In this cabin?”
“Yes, just a low murmur.”
“You imagined it,” the man told
her. “But I’ll look in the closet to be sure.”
I heard footsteps approach our hiding place. I braced myself for the moment when the door would be flung open. Jack and I were trapped and now faced almost certain capture.
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