The Case of the Dirty Bird Read online

  “What’s their problem?” Amos asked when Dunc stopped next to him.

  “Oh—they wanted to borrow my bike. Forever.” He caught his breath. “I saw it—it’s definitely a hammer. I could see the outline. I don’t see how I missed it the first few times. I think I could see some lettering, too, but it might have been my imagination. We’ll have to come back later—”

  “Don’t say it,” Amos said.

  “—after dark.”

  “That’s what I meant. Don’t say that. I mean, if we come back here after dark, nobody will ever hear from us again. This is the waterfront, Dunc—not your yard. There are people down here who will sell us for medical experiments.”

  “Well,” Dunc said, “you can’t expect us to come here in the daylight again, can you? I mean, those guys were throwing bottles at me.”

  Amos started pushing his bike home, and Dunc pushed his alongside.

  “That’s hard logic to beat,” Amos said. “How about if we don’t come down here at all?”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I don’t?”

  “No. If you didn’t want to come down here, you wouldn’t have told me about the hammer, would you?”

  Amos started to say something. Then he realized Dunc was right.

  “All right. You win.”

  “No,” Dunc said. “We win. We both win. You’ll see, there’ll be treasure. I just know it.”

  It was just past midnight.

  Dunc waited outside Amos’s house patiently. There was a special procedure. Amos couldn’t come out until his parents went to bed and he heard his father snoring.

  Finally Dunc heard scraping and looked down to see Amos crawling out the basement window. His room was in the basement, and he had to use a small ladder and the window didn’t open very far so Amos had to squeeze through.

  “Now I know how an earthworm feels,” he whispered. He scrambled to his feet. “Let’s go.”

  The light from the streetlamp hit his face, and Dunc stopped him. “What happened to your face?”

  Both his eyes were swollen, and his nose was all red and puffy. His lower lip was thick looking as well, and he had a cut with square corners on his forehead.

  “Oh—Melissa called. I’m sure it was her ring this time. It was about eight o’clock, and we were watching television. I like to get to the phone before the end of that first ring—any sooner, and you look too eager, know what I mean?”

  They had their bikes—Amos had fixed his tire—and they pushed them half a block until they were well clear of Amos’s house before riding.

  “You still didn’t tell me what happened,” Dunc said.

  “So I hear the ring and I make my move,” Amos said. “I was sitting on the end of the couch with one leg draped up over the back, you know, all natural.”

  Dunc nodded.

  “Well, I was in good form. I made my roll backward, missed my mother who was sitting on the end of the couch with both feet, and landed running. I even planned on the cat sleeping near the end of the couch.”

  They had reached the end of the block, and Dunc swung his leg over the seat on his bike and started riding, fitting his feet into the pedals. “So what happened?”

  “Tonka truck.” Amos pulled up alongside, the two of them riding slowly. “My little brother left it near the end of the coffee table. I stepped into it on the second step, it rolled, and I didn’t make it. The roll carried me to the kitchen doorway, and I almost snagged the phone on the way by, but I grabbed wide and tore it off the wall. I took out my mother’s food processor with my face—that’s the square cut on my forehead. Luckily it was unplugged. She had it set for puree, and I hit the switch as I dove in. If it had been plugged in, I’d look like baby food about now.”

  They rode in silence for a time. The way to the waterfront did not go through the downtown section, and Dunc kept them back along the darker sections of the residential areas until they hit the river. Then they followed the river road to the waterfront.

  They stopped at the end of the street.

  All the streetlights were broken out. It was almost pitch dark except for light leaking out of the tavern about halfway down.

  There were only four cars on the whole street, and no signs of any people except noise from the bar.

  “Well,” Amos said, “I’ve changed my mind—how about you?”

  Dunc ignored him. “I just caught a glimpse of the building with the hammer on it as I left this afternoon.”

  “You were moving pretty fast.”

  “So there’s this doorway to the right of the building, and it seems to lead into the space between the two buildings. The lock was busted off the hasp.”

  “You got all this from a glimpse?”

  “Well, I was looking for it. I figure if we get in there between the buildings, we should be all right. Then we can find a way into the building and see if there are any clues.”

  “It’s dark,” Amos said.

  “Yeah, I know. That’s why I brought a small flashlight.”

  Dunc led the way down the right side of the street. They passed an alley, and Amos came up next to him.

  “The same guy is there,” he said. “With his head under the trash bin. He’s not moving.”

  “He’s resting.”

  “Right.”

  They made the doorway without incident. Two of the four cars on the street were nearby, but there were no people and no sounds.

  Dunc pulled at the door, and it came out slightly, stopped, and he pulled harder.

  There was a sound like a cat fight, and the door moved farther on the rusty hinges.

  “Stop,” Amos said. “Somebody will hear us.…”

  But Dunc had pulled his bike with him and was already inside. Amos took a quick look up and down the street and followed.

  Into a pitch black hole.

  “Dunc?” Amos could see nothing.

  No answer.

  “Dunc?”

  Still nothing.

  “Dunc!” He whispered it as loudly as he dared.

  “Down here—there’s a ramp down to a lower level.” Dunc whispered from the front and down.

  “How about some light?”

  “Can’t. I dropped the flashlight, and I can’t find it. Feel around up there—see if you can locate it.”

  Amos squatted and swung his fingers back and forth in an arc. He stopped. His hands had hit something, and he jerked back. “Did it have fur on it?”

  “Never mind. I found it.”

  There was a quick flash of light—part of a second—and Amos saw Dunc and his bike down the dirt ramp to the front. They were between two rock walls so old, the cement holding the rocks together was crumbling away.

  “Leave your bike. Come on. I found a doorway into the building.”

  Amos left his bicycle and bounced off the rock wall four times before he found the opening and stepped inside.

  If anything, it was darker inside the building than it had been outside.

  Amos held his hand out and could not see it, moved it closer to his face until his finger was in his eye and still never saw it.

  “Dunc?”

  “Over here.” There was a flash of light—like a flashbulb going off in Amos’s eyes—and it was dark again. “Watch out for all the junk.”

  In the flash, before going stone blind again, Amos had seen Dunc standing in the middle of piles of old tools and cardboard boxes. Then the light had gone off, and there was nothing.

  “Come on,” Dunc said. “There’s a stairway in the back that comes down from upstairs. We’re in the basement.”

  “Dunc, I can’t see.”

  “Go by feel. Move your feet ahead slowly, then take a step.”

  There was a sudden crashing-clanging.

  “What happened?” Dunc whispered.

  “I took a step,” Amos said. “What do you think happened? You know grace isn’t my thing. I stepped on a rake, and I think I’ve got a broken nose.”

 
Dunc sighed. “I’ll flash the light, you take a step, then another.”

  In a series of flashes Amos made his way across the basement through the junk.

  “It’s like a light show at a concert,” he said, finally standing alongside Dunc at the back of the basement. They were under the stairs. “Like a strobe.”

  “Be quiet—I thought I heard something.” Dunc held his hand over Amos’s mouth, and the two of them stood but there was no sound.

  “All right,” Dunc whispered. “Let’s go upstairs and see what we can find.”

  He led the way up the stairs, flicking the light in tiny bursts back down the stairwell so Amos could follow.

  At the top there was a door, but it wasn’t locked and opened easily.

  “Hmmm,” Dunc said.

  “What?”

  “The door—why didn’t it squeak?” He leaned down and flashed the light on the hinges. “Look—they’ve been oiled.”

  “So?”

  “So if this building is abandoned, who’s oiling the hinges?”

  “So we go home, right?”

  “Not yet—let’s find out what’s upstairs.”

  Dunc moved away from the stairwell door and into the middle of a large room. Along one side there was a counter, and above that were stacks of empty shelves that showed in the flashes of light.

  “Looks like an old store,” Amos said. He felt his nose and winced. “Man, a rake handle on top of the food processor—noses weren’t made for it.”

  “It might have been a ship chandler’s,” Dunc said.

  “What’s that?”

  “A store for nautical things. See, there’s grease on the shelves—maybe from engine parts. It sure wasn’t a tavern.”

  “Not now—but a long time ago. There might be something somewhere to show what it used to be before it was a chandler’s.” Amos pointed at the back wall in the darkness. “Shine back there.”

  Dunc flashed the light on the walls, but they had gone around the room twice before Amos spotted it. And then it was in an image two times before the one they were flashing on.

  “Back up one, then another one.”

  “What?”

  “Run the movie backward. I saw some writing.”

  On the back wall, near the right corner, there were some letters carved in the wood. They showed in the light, and Dunc closed his hand around the flashlight beam so that just a trickle of light came out and they moved into the corner.

  “ ‘D.H. 1857,’ ” Dunc read. The letters were carved into the old wood of the wall, a cross-board that might have been in back of a bar. “I’ll bet it stands for Devil’s Hammer. They carved it in the wall back of a bar.”

  “Yeah,” Amos said. “Or it might have been somebody named Donald Hamilton.”

  “Amos—”

  “I know. Be positive, right?”

  A sudden clunking sound froze both of them. Dunc turned the light off, and they stood listening, holding their breaths.

  There was no repeat of the sound.

  “It was a cat,” Dunc said.

  “Or a rat,” Amos said. “As big as a rhino, except that it eats meat. Human flesh. And it’s hungry.” Amos stopped as he realized he was alone again. “Dunc?”

  “Over here.” Dunc was moving along the wall, and he held his hand over the light again, letting a tiny stream out. “I’m looking for a tunnel or door. The back of the building is against the stone of the river-bank.”

  They felt along the wall, tapping, but there was no opening except for the doorway leading to the basement.

  “Maybe it’s downstairs,” Dunc whispered. “And we missed it.”

  He moved back down the steps and was halfway down when Amos landed on him in a heap that sent both of them tumbling down to the bottom.

  “Missed a step,” Amos whispered as they untangled themselves. “I was doing all right until that third one. My foot slid over it at a slight angle, and my body weight was past center. I still almost controlled it, but then the main mass of weight caught up and—”

  “Amos.”

  “Right, it doesn’t matter. Be quiet. Got it.”

  “You work one way, I’ll work the other.” Dunc felt along the wall to the left, and Amos worked to the right. In moments they were back to the stairway.

  “Nothing,” Dunc said.

  “Just rocks and crumbling cement,” Amos said. “No tunnels.”

  “Maybe,” Dunc said, “there’s a secret passage and a hidden latch that makes a door swing open.”

  Amos snorted. “Only in movies.”

  “Then that means there isn’t a tunnel.” Dunc’s voice had a final flatness.

  “Yes, well, I told you not to believe a dirty bird.”

  “So we can go.”

  “Good. Light my way across the basement so I don’t hit that rake again. I’m afraid of that rake.”

  “How about under the stairs?” Dunc asked suddenly. “What did you find there?”

  “That was in your half.”

  “I thought it was in yours. Come on, let’s check it.”

  Dunc crawled beneath the stairway and halfway back the sliver of light caught it.

  There, so low that a person would have to stoop well over to get through it, was a small doorway set into the rock and concrete wall.

  Amos kneeled next to Dunc. “Is it locked?”

  “Just a wooden peg through a hasp.” Dunc lifted the peg out and opened the door.

  To his surprise, the door swung open easily.

  And silently.

  He moved the shaft of light to the hinges. “Look—they’ve been oiled. Just like the hinges upstairs.”

  “So what?”

  “So somebody had to come and do that—they must have had a reason.”

  “So we go home?”

  Dunc snorted. “Not likely. Not now that we’ve found something.”

  He pulled the wooden peg and opened the door, crouched down, and crawled in. Amos held for a moment, but the basement was pitch black without the sliver of light from the flashlight, and he kneeled and followed Dunc.

  “Close the door,” Dunc said, “and I’ll turn the flashlight on full.”

  Amos closed the door, and Dunc took his hand off the light.

  The sudden brightness was blinding, and both boys closed their eyes for a second.

  “Oh, man, look at this.” Dunc opened his eyes and swept the light in front of them. It disappeared down a long tube of darkness.

  “It’s a tunnel.” Amos tried to see the end of it and couldn’t. “It must go on forever.”

  “Just like the parrot said.” Dunc flashed the light down and back up, trying to see the end, but the light didn’t penetrate far enough.

  “I wonder what it was for?”

  “Maybe they dug it out for a storeroom or something.”

  “It’s pretty long for a storeroom.”

  “Who knows? All I know is that it’s a tunnel like the bird said, and we’ve got a shot at buried treasure.”

  “Maybe it’s an old mine,” Amos said. “Maybe it goes to the center of the earth.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We go in eight paces and start digging for treasure.”

  “Tools,” Amos said. “We don’t have any tools.”

  “Oh—that’s right. How about in the basement? Weren’t there some tools there?”

  “A rake—that I know about for sure. But I didn’t see a shovel.”

  “Let’s go look.”

  He made a step, and there was a clunking noise from outside and above the tunnel entrance.

  “What was that?” Amos said.

  “Like before—it was just a rat or cat or something.”

  There was another thump, then the sound of something being dragged across the floor upstairs, then a thumping as if a heavy weight were being brought down the steps one step at a time.

  And then, distinctly, the boys heard a man’s voice say:

  “I don’t care how much we make, I think we should f
ind something lighter than appliances to steal—they barely fit through the door into the tunnel.”

  “Smuggle,” a second man said. “We don’t steal—we’re smuggling.”

  Dunc and Amos stood frozen, but Amos broke first.

  “Run!” he yelped at Dunc and ran directly over him, headed down the length of the tunnel.

  Dunc had caught up in three jumps and was passing Amos when Amos squeaked:

  “The light, kill the light!”

  Dunc flipped the switch, and the results were disaster. The two of them were running wide open and went suddenly from bright light to total pitch darkness. Amos went down like an oak, stepping on his own feet, and Dunc fell over him.

  “Flick it,” Amos whispered. “Flick the light so we can see what we’re doing.”

  Dunc flashed the light, and they were up and running again. He kept flashing it until it showed a side tunnel, smaller than the main run, going off to the right.

  “In here!” Dunc swung to the right and Amos bounced off the corner and followed. Just around the corner Dunc stopped. There was another wall with a door, this one slightly larger than the first, but closed. Or it seemed closed at first. There was a crack on the left side, and Dunc tried it.

  “Stuck.”

  “Be quiet,” Amos whispered. “They’re coming in the tunnel.”

  Dunc turned off the light again, and the two boys stood silently in the darkness. There was more bumping and cursing, and then a light came down the tunnel, past them, from the doorway.

  “Isn’t there some better place to store these things while we’re waiting to take a load out?” the first man asked.

  “I told you—nobody will bother anything here. We need a safe place because it takes so long to get a full load. Now quit griping, and help me.”

  There was more grunting and cursing. The sound carried well down the tunnel.

  “There. Let’s get out of here. This place makes my hair stand on end.”

  “Why? It’s just an old powder storage tunnel from the Civil War. They needed a cool, dry place for cannon powder while they were waiting to ship it. Hey, just like us—waiting to ship.”

  “I still don’t like it. It’s dark, and there may be spiders.”