Philip and the Haunted House (9781619500020) Read Online Free PDF

But this time—him
and Emery! In the haunted house! The dream made him certain what
he’d planned earlier would work! The haunted house had to be the place where the bandits
who robbed the neighborhood stores hid the stolen money, especially
if, as his father said, they knew the neighborhood. The opened
window in the photograph proved someone—and not a whatever—used the
house. It had to be the robbers. Who else could it be? Wait until
he told Emery what he’d figured out! They had a chance to be rich!
They could get the money when the crooks weren’t looking. It would
be easy. He only had to convince Emery to go inside the haunted
house with him, and he’d do that in school today.
     
     
    ****
     
    “ Let’s walk past the haunted house,”
said Philip as he and Emery walked home from school.
    Emery stopped. “Why?”
    “ I want to tell you something about the
haunted house.”
    “ Same side of the street or
across?”
    “ Across,” Philip answered more quickly
than he meant to. He’d never convince Emery to go inside with him
if he acted afraid of the house.
    As they walked, Philip talked. He told his
friend everything he figured out the night before. By the time they
stood opposite the house, Philip had said all he needed to. With
its newly mown lawn and with the bright November sun shining, the
house looked peaceful.
    “ The window’s closed,” Emery
said.
    “ I see.” It was the first thing Philip
had looked for.
    Emery went on. “You really think the crooks
hid the money inside the house?”
    “ Somebody opened the window, right?”
    “ But if we go in to get the money,
won’t they be in there and get us?”
    “ No, I told you. You don’t think they
stay there all the time, do you? Somebody would see them. Somebody
would see them go in and out if they were there all the time. They
can’t cook there or anything like that. And if a grownup saw the
window down and up and then down again, the grownup would
investigate or call the police.”
    “ I’ll bet they can’t even flush the
toilet.”
    Philip looked at Emery.
    “ Somebody might hear it.”
    “ So there you go. They were there on
Saturday when we cut the grass because they committed a robbery on
Friday night. They hid the money and went away. They did it again
on Sunday afternoon when they threw away the Happy Pie paper.
There’s got to be a lot of money in there, Emery.”
    “ When we get it, do we put it in the
bank or what do we do with it? Can we go out and spend
it?”
    “ I don’t think we could spend so much
money. Thousands and thousands of dollars.”
    Pronouncing such a vast amount silenced the
boys as they contemplated the wonder of it.
    “ Do we have to give it back?” Emery
asked. “If we know it’s stolen money and we keep it, can’t we go to
jail?”
    “ You always make problems,” Philip
grumped. But he didn’t have an answer. “I’ll ask my dad. Even if we
have to give it back, we’ll probably get a reward. A big
reward.”
    “ Can’t we tell the police where the money is and let them
get it?”
    “ They won’t believe us, and
suppose they get the reward
then. And besides we won’t know where it is unless we go in and
find it. It could be upstairs, downstairs, in the basement. Let’s
find it first, and we can decide what to do second.”
    Emery started across the street.
    “ Where are you going?” Philip
asked.
    “ Aren’t we going to look for the
money?”
    “ Are you crazy? Not now. We can’t let
anyone see us go in there. We’ll get chased or somebody’ll follow
us in, and they’ll find the
money instead of us. We have to pick a right time.”
    “ I like now,” said Emery. “It’s light
out and there’s lots of people around.”
    “ But we don’t know if they robbed any
place last night. If they did, they might be in there hiding more money.”
    “ Oh. Maybe.” Emery examined the house.
“I don’t see anyone.”
    “ Of course you don’t see anyone,”
Philip cried in