Роберт Артур - The Mystery of the Fiery Eye

“I guess you’ll want to go first,” he said.

“There can’t be anything alarming in there,” Jupiter said. “Not in a house empty this long.”

Pete wasn’t so sure. They had encountered a couple of secret rooms before in their investigations, and one of them had held a skeleton. But Jupe turned on the bright beam and marched into the tiny room behind the bookcase, and Pete and Gus followed.

They took no more than three steps and stopped.

There was no skeleton in this room, nor anything else. It was completely empty. Shelves on the wall suggested that books had once been kept in this room, but they were gone.

“Nothing,” Pete said in disappointment.

“Nothing?” Jupe asked and Pete looked around again.

“I don’t see anything,” he said.

“Because you’re looking for the wrong thing,” Jupe said. “What you’re looking at is so commonplace, so ordinary, that your mind doesn’t realize how extraordinary it really is.”

Pete blinked again. He still didn’t see anything.

“All right, tell me,” he said. “What’s so unusual I can’t see it?”

“He means there’s a door,” Gus said. Pete saw it now — an ordinary doorknob, and the crack around a door set into the wall. It wasn’t meant to be hidden. He just hadn’t noticed the doorknob because every room has a door, and seeing one in here hadn’t registered on him.

Jupiter was already turning the knob. The narrow door opened easily and by the beam of the light they could see wooden steps slanting downwards.

“It looks as if the steps go down to the cellar,” Jupiter said. “We might as well try them and see where we come out.”

“Leave all the doors open then,” Pete urged. “I don’t want any closed doors behind me.”

Jupiter marched down the stairs, the others behind him. The walls on either side were so close they brushed their shoulders against the wood.

At the bottom Jupiter stopped. Another narrow door barred their way. It opened easily towards them. They stepped through into a small, stone-walled room where the air was cool and damp.

“We’re in a cellar,” Jupiter said, flashing the light round. They saw many curious slanting shelves which meant nothing to either Pete or Jupiter. However, Gus recognized their function.

“This is a wine cellar,” he said. “Those shelves are for laying out the bottles of wine. Look, there’s a broken bottle in one. This was Great-Uncle Horatio’s private wine cellar.”

Jupiter suddenly froze. He switched off the light and darkness enveloped them.

“What is it, Jupe?” Pete dropped his voice to a whisper.

“Sssh! Someone’s coming. Look!”

Beyond the open door which led into the rest of the basement appeared a beam of light. Low voices could be heard.

“Let’s get out of here!” Pete whispered and yanked at the knob of the door behind them.

He was too anxious. At his sudden yank, the knob came away in his hand. The voices and light came closer, and Pete’s frantically clutching fingers found nothing to grasp.

They were trapped in the wine cellar!

THE VOICES came closer. Footsteps stopped just outside the wine cellar door. A flashlight made a gleam of light in the darkness beyond the door.

“We’ve already searched the wine cellar,” said a deep voice. “No use going in there.”

“We’ve searched the whole house,” another, rougher voice said disgustedly. “We’ve spent a half hour on this cellar alone. Jackson, if you’re holding out on us — ”

“I’m not, I swear I’m not!” said a high-pitched, old man’s voice. “If it’s in this house we’d have found it. I tell you there aren’t any hiding places I didn’t know about. After all, I was Mr. Weston’s — I mean Mr. August’s butler for twenty years.”

Jackson! Pete felt Jupiter stiffen. Mr. Dwiggins had said a couple named Jackson had been Gus’s great-uncle’s only servants.

“You’d better be sure, Jackson,” said the first voice. “We aren’t playing a game for marbles. This is big money and you’ll get your share when we find the Eye.”

“I’ve told you everything I know, really I have!” Mr. Jackson said pleadingly. “He must have hidden it somewhere when Agnes and I were out of the house. I’m not sure he trusted us at the end — although we served him faithfully all those years. He began to act a little odd, as if he felt he was being spied on.”

“He was smart, he didn’t trust anybody. Not with a stone like the Eye to hide,” the second, rough voice said. “I wish I could figure what he meant by planting that phoney stone inside the head of Augustus, though.”

The boys were listening with eager interest, almost forgetting their perilous position. If the speakers knew about the fake Fiery Eye, that must mean they were accomplices of either Black Moustache or Three-Dots. The next words cleared up this question for them.

“Poor Hugo! When that guy with those three dots finished with him, Hugo didn’t feel so hot,” the rough voice said, and chuckled.

At the tone and the laugh Pete felt chills go down his spine. He remembered that gleaming sword blade and the red stain that had come off it.

“Never mind Hugo,” said the deep voice. “Why was a fake ruby inside the head of Augustus? Only to throw a false trail, I bet. I think the ruby is hidden right here in this house.”

“If it is, gentlemen, you’ll have to tear the whole house down to find it,” Mr. Jackson said. “I swear to you I have no more ideas of where to look. Please let me go back to my wife in San Francisco. I’ve done all I could, really I have.”

“We’ll think about it,” said the rough voice. “Maybe we’ll let you go. The person I wish I had my hands on is that fat smarty at the junkyard! I’ve asked around about him and they say that kid has brains like a computer, even if he does look stupid. I’ll bet a red nickel he knows a lot more than he’s telling.”

“Well, there’s no way we can get at him,” Deep Voice said. “Or maybe there is. Come on, let’s go upstairs and figure our next move.”

“What about the secret staircase and the little room?” asked Rough Voice. “We ought to search those again. They must mean something.”

“Too obvious,” Deep Voice said. “Like Jackson told us, it used to be just an ordinary stairway down to the wine cellar from the library. Right, Jackson?”

“Yes, indeed,” Mr. Jackson said. “Twenty years ago Mr. August put in the bookshelves and just for fun he made them into a secret door for the stairway. But he only used it to go to his wine cellar at night. He always said that as a boy in England he dreamed of living in a big house with a secret staircase.”

“There you are,” said Deep Voice. “Let’s get back upstairs. This dark cellar makes me feel gloomy.”

The light moved away. In a moment the three boys heard footsteps going up wooden stairs. Then a door slammed shut. They were alone again in the cellar.

“Whew!” Pete said. “I thought they had us. They sounded like tough customers.”

“My word!” Gus exclaimed. “Did you hear how that one just laughed when he talked about what Three-Dots did to his companion?”

“What do you say, Jupe — who were they?” Pete asked. “Jupe — are you in a trance or something?”

Jupe came to himself with a live jolt.

“I was thinking,” he said. “The two men must have learned about The Fiery Eye from Mr. Jackson, and are making Mr. Jackson help them try to get it before Three-Dots does.”