The Case of the Dirty Bird Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.”
    “All right, all right. Let’s go—there’s that color television set to pick up yet.”
    “You think it’s safe to go back to the same house?”
    “Oh, sure. They’re on vacation. We can clean the whole place out. Then we load the truck and take it downstate and sell it at flea markets, just like last time.”
    “Last time you traded the whole load for old telephone line insulators.”
    “An investment, my friend. You’ll see. Now come on—wait a minute, what’s that?”
    “What’s what?”
    “There. Those are tracks heading off down the tunnel. See them in that soft dirt and dust?”
    “Tracks?”
    “I
told
you I left the peg in the hasp.Somebody took it out, and they’re still in here.”
    Dunc poked Amos, leaned close to his ear. “Get ready. We have to go through this door. It’s our only chance.” He pulled Amos up.
    The voices came down the tunnel again.
    “How do you know they’re still here?”
    “There’s two sets of tracks and they only go one way—they don’t come back. And there’s no way out of the tunnel. Come on, we’ve got to find them.”
    “Oh, come on—they’re probably gone. You don’t know that there’s no other way out. You just walked back a little ways.”
    “That doesn’t matter. I’m not letting anybody steal my stolen appliances.”
    Dunc leaned close to Amos again and whispered barely loud enough to make a whushing sound. “Ready?”
    Amos hesitated. “Well, as a matter of fact—”
    “Now!”
    Dunc pulled at the door. This time the hinges had not been oiled. The door opened, but with a sound like fingers being draggeddown a blackboard. It made a slot wide enough for the two boys, and they wiggled through just as they heard from the tunnel:
    “There they are! Come on—let’s get ’em!”

Dunc stopped just past the door, and Amos ran into him.
    “What the—”
    “It’s a storage room.” Dunc flashed the light around. There were barrels and boxes stacked up both sides of the tunnel.
    “Let’s
go
!” Amos shouted. “They’re coming.”
    “It’s powder,” Dunc said. “Gunpowder from years ago.”
    “We have to get going!”