The Mystery of the Iron Box 2

The Mystery of the Iron Box 2

cardboard container and scrawled on the cover “Mom—Don’t peek!”

 

“And we’ll leave it right here,” Bert said, placing it in full sight on

the sideboard.

 

“What’s the idea?” Richard Holt wanted to know.

 

Pop grinned. “Just teasing her.”

 

“She’ll try to wheedle a hint out of us—without ever asking a direct

question,” Bert said.

 

“But she won’t look inside,” Sandy added.

 

“Sounds like some form of torture to me,” Ken’s father said.

 

“It is,” Sandy admitted, grinning. “But it’s an old Allen custom—only

usually we’re on the receiving end.”

 

But Mom, when she returned a little later, refused to give them the

satisfaction of a single question. She did walk past the sideboard

several times, but they could never catch her looking directly at the

box. And once, when she had to move it aside to make room for her

morning’s setting of rolls, she seemed not even to notice that the shoe

box was a stranger in her kitchen.

 

Richard Holt grinned at the Allens, and they grinned sheepishly back at

him. “If there’s any teasing going on around here,” he said quietly, “I

don’t think we’re doing it.”

 

“Did I hear you say you wanted a cheese sandwich?” Mom said. Her eyes

were twinkling.

 

“Eh—why, yes, I believe I could manage one—even after all that dinner,”

Richard Holt admitted.

 

Some time later, as Sandy crawled into bed and snapped of the light at

his elbow, he murmured his usual last request to Ken. “Don’t forget to

open the window.”

 

Ken slid the frame up several inches and shivered as the cold air

struck him. “It’s snowing,” he said.

 

There was no answer. Sandy was already asleep.

 

But Ken was still wide awake ten minutes later. He turned over and

tried counting sheep, but the ruse didn’t work.

 

“Serves me right,” he muttered, “for eating that cheese sandwich.” He

turned over once more.

 

When another ten minutes had gone by he slid out from under the covers.

 

“A good dull book—that’s what I need,” Ken decided. “And Pop’s got

plenty of them in his library downstairs.”

 

In his robe and slippers he cautiously opened the bedroom door and

stepped out into the silent hallway. As he moved toward the stairway he

slid one hand along the wall to feel for the hall-light switch.

 

Suddenly he stopped. A cold draft was swirling around his feet. He was

just deciding that he hadn’t pulled the bedroom door tight shut when

something else caught his attention. Below him, in the darkness, a

faint click sounded.

 

And almost immediately the draft around his feet died away.

 

Ken’s hand moved swiftly then. His fingers found the switch and the

hall light snapped on. Ken took the two descending steps to the turn in

a single quiet leap. But before he could start down the rest of the

flight he heard another click from downstairs, and felt another surge

of cold air around his feet. A third mysterious click sounded just as

he reached the bottom of the stairs.

 

Ken snapped on all three switches on the wall of the lower hallway. The

hallway itself, the living room, and the sun porch all became brightly

illuminated.

 

But the light revealed nothing to his searching eyes. The rooms looked

just as they had looked some time before, when the Allens and Holts had

gone upstairs to bed. He went through the dining room, into the

kitchen, and into the pantry, turning on all the lights as he went. But

nowhere was there any sign of disturbance, or of an intruder who might

have been responsible for those clicking sounds.

 

Ken shook his head. “Was I dreaming? I certainly thought I heard

something down here. And it sounded like the front door opening and

closing.”

 

Finally he turned off all the lights, picked up his book, and started

back toward the stairs. But at the foot of them he stopped. That cold

draft around his feet couldn’t have been a dream.

 

Ken moved swiftly to the front door. It was securely locked. He started

for the kitchen door and then turned back.

 

He snapped on the front entrance light and pulled the curtain away from

the glass panel in the door in order to peer out.

 

His breath caught sharply. Footprints stood out clearly on the

snow-covered porch. And through the veil of falling snow, for as far as

the light penetrated, he could see further footprints—on the porch

steps and on the flagstone walk that crossed the lawn to the sidewalk.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER II

 

A FIRE

 

 

There was a double line of the footprints—one set coming toward the

door, one set going away from it. Ken stared at them for a long moment.

 

Suddenly he realized that he was clearly visible, through the glass, to

anyone who might be outside the house. Quickly he dropped the curtain

into place and with a swift gesture he fastened the safety chain above

the lock on the door.

 

Then he ran to the back door and fastened the safety chain there.

 

The events of the past few moments were perfectly clear in his mind. He

sat on the edge of the kitchen table and ran over them again, trying to

explain them to himself as he went along.

 

He had stepped out of his bedroom and had almost immediately felt the

draft of cold air. Probably the front door was just then being opened.

The faint click he had heard an instant later had probably been the

door being cased shut again—because after the click he had no longer

felt the draft.

 

The intruder—and there must have been one, Ken concluded—had actually

been inside the house. Because there had been two other clicks, and

another draft of cold air, which must have occurred as the intruder

opened the closed door again in order to escape into the darkness.

 

Ken was out of the kitchen in a flash, and on his knees before the

front door. His fingers explored the surface of the polished floor. A

few feet inside the threshold there were two patches of dampness.

 

Ken moved backward carefully, surveying every inch of the smooth

surface. He found no further wet spots. It seemed clear that the

intruder had taken one step into the hall and then retreated again,

apparently frightened off by Ken’s own footsteps in the upper hall.

 

Ken made one more round of the house, and again assured himself that

nothing had been taken or disturbed. His impulse to wake Sandy, and

tell him about the whole business, died slowly away. There seemed no

point in arousing Sandy, or anybody else, in the middle of the night.

 

Ken warmed a glass of milk for himself in the kitchen and drank it

thoughtfully. Then he went back upstairs, with a book under his arm.

But he didn’t turn on his small reading light. He lay on his back,

staring up into the darkness and puzzling over the mysterious intruder,

until he finally fell into a troubled sleep.

 

When he woke up, the clock said only seven-thirty, but he got out of

bed immediately. The snow had stopped. The world outside was blanketed

with white. It was dazzling to Ken’s eyes, even at that early hour of a

winter morning.

 

Sandy opened one sleepy eye as Ken stripped off his pajamas and began

to dress. “Where do you think you’re going at this time of night?”

 

“Downstairs,” Ken said. “And it’s morning. You’d better get up too.

I’ve got something to tell you.”

 

Sandy closed his eye again. “Can’t you tell me here?”

 

“We’d wake everybody else up.” Ken tied his last shoelace. “Come on.

It’s important.”

 

The seriousness in his voice brought Sandy to a sitting position. “O.K.

Get some coffee going. I’ll be down before it’s ready.”

 

Ten minutes later, while the coffee percolator bubbled away unnoticed,

Ken completed his story.

 

“Well,” he said after a moment, “what do you think? Were we almost

burglarized—or weren’t we?”

 

Sandy set his empty orange-juice glass on the table. He was grinning

widely. “I think,” he said, “you were asleep last night half a minute

after I was. The whole thing was a dream. You should give up cheese

sandwiches.”

 

Ken pointed to the rear door. “I didn’t dream the chain into place

there. Or on the front door, either.”

 

Sandy shrugged. “Maybe you walked in your sleep.” But he got to his

feet. “All right. Let’s go see these alleged footsteps on the front

porch.”

 

They walked through the hall together. Sandy unfastened the chain,

unlocked the door, and threw it wide open. The white sweep of snow over

the porch was unmarked.

 

“I could have told you they wouldn’t show any more,” Ken pointed out.

“It was still snowing then. Naturally they got covered up.”

 

Sandy was still smiling as he bent down to examine the outer face of

the lock. When he straightened again he looked sober.

 

“Take a look,” he said quietly. “Those little scratches on the face

plate were never made by keys. I’d say somebody’s been using a picklock

in the dark.”

 

“I’d say it’s a good thing I _did_ eat cheese sandwiches,” Ken said a

moment later, as they closed the door. “If I hadn’t come downstairs the

house might have been cleaned out. Do you think we ought to notify the

police?” he asked, when they were back in the kitchen and Sandy was

pouring out two cups of coffee.

 

“Let’s let Pop decide,” Sandy suggested. “And let’s not worry Mom about

it as long as nothing was taken and no harm seems to have been done.”

 

“Right,” Ken agreed. “We can talk to Pop at the office.”

 

They ate some toast, drank their coffee, and then went outside to clear

the walks and the driveway. By the time they had finished shoveling the

snow it was almost nine o’clock and they were ready for some of the

bacon and eggs Mom was preparing for Pop and Bert and Richard Holt and

herself.

 

The phone rang while they were all at the table.

 

Bert went to answer it. “Global News wants Richard Holt,” he called

from the hall.

 

Holt shoved his chair back with an impatient gesture. “I called the

office from the apartment yesterday, just to let them know I was back,”

he said. “I see now that was a mistake. If they’ve thought up an

assignment that will cut me out of a turkey dinner—” He disappeared

into the hall.

 

When he came back he was smiling. “Nothing serious,” he reported

quickly, answering the question in Ken’s eyes. “I’m still on vacation.

Global just wanted to let me know I didn’t close the apartment door

carefully when I dashed in and out yesterday.”

 

“Global told you that?” Pop looked blank.

 

The correspondent grinned over a fresh cup of coffee. “I know it sounds

confusing. Seems the apartment-house janitor found my door ajar when he

was cleaning the hall this morning. He didn’t know I was back in the

country, so he called Global News to ask what to do about it. Granger

sent a man down to look the place over—very kind of him, of course, as

he was careful to remind me. But nothing was disturbed—clothes,

portable radio, typewriter, all safe and sound. No signs of illegal

entry, so apparently the fault was mine.”

 

He grinned again. “Granger wouldn’t even have called me about it,

except that it gave him a chance to explain that Global always has the

best interests of their employees at heart.”

 

The others grinned back at him, all but Ken and Sandy who looked

soberly at each other over the table. The same thought was in both

their minds. An attempted burglary in Brentwood and a mysteriously

unlocked door in Holt’s New York apartment, both on the same night,

seemed a remarkable coincidence. Sandy opened his mouth to speak.

 

But Ken, shaking his head slightly, got to his feet. “Are we all

vacationing today?” he asked. “Or are we going down to the office?”

 

“I hope you’re not all planning to vacation under my feet,” Mom said

frankly. “I’ve got a lot to do today.”

 

“We can take a hint,” Pop replied with dignity. “Come on, Holt. There’s

not much work on tap for today, but we can yarn at the office as

comfortably as we can here. You two,” he added to Sandy and Ken, “have

to take you-know-what to you-know-where.”

 

“I hope you’re referring to that disreputable-looking shoe box on the

sideboard,” Mom said. “I’d like to have somebody take it somewhere out

of my way.”

 

“Know what’s in it, Mom?” Bert asked.

 

“No. And I haven’t the slightest curiosity,” Mom told her older son.

 

“Not much, you haven’t!” Bert said. “I’ll bet you spent half an hour

this morning trying to see through the cardboard.”

 

“I have other things to do with my time, especially on a busy day like

this,” Mom assured him. “For example, there are the dishes to be done.

But of course if you’re all going to be here, you might—”

 

Pop was on his feet. “We’re on our way, ma’am. On our way. Come on,

Holt, you drive down with Bert and me.”

 

Ken and Sandy took the shoe box with them when they left a few minutes

later, but they didn’t go directly to Sam Morris’s shop. They went to

the office first.

 

“We think you ought to know about something that happened last night,

Pop,” Sandy said abruptly, when he and Ken joined the others in the

Brentwood _Advance_ office. “Ken came downstairs in the middle of the

night and—”

 

“No!” Bert leaped to his feet with an __EXPRESSION__ of mock horror. “You

mean he found Mom peeping in the box?”

 

Sandy didn’t even laugh. “Tell them, Ken.”

 

Ken made his report as brief as possible. “You can see the scratches on

the lock yourselves,” he concluded, “when we go back to the house.” He

turned to his father. “And if somebody also broke into your apartment

last night, Dad, it certainly looks—”

 

Bert’s laugh interrupted him. “It’s not enough for you two to imagine

one burglar. Oh, no—you can do better than that.”

 

“Nobody tried to burglarize my apartment, Ken,” Holt said. “I just

didn’t lock it properly myself.”

 

“How do you know?” Ken asked. “Can you be sure, Dad?”

 

“Doesn’t it seem strange,” Sandy put in, “that the minute you land in

the country somebody breaks into the house where you’re staying, and at

the same time your own apartment is mysteriously—”

 

Bert was still laughing. “You’re just not used to the way these two

carry on,” he told Ken’s father. “Every time they see a doughnut they

begin to worry about who stole the middle out of it. Anything for a

mystery—that’s their philosophy.”

 

“Now wait a minute,” Pop said mildly. “It does sound as if there might

be a sneak thief around Brentwood. We don’t have them often, but I

suppose Christmas is a likely time, with everybody’s house full of

presents. I’ll call Andy Kane and tell him to alert the force. That

satisfy you?” He looked at Ken and Sandy. “But I will not,” he added,

“call the New York police chief with a similar suggestion. So you two

just take your dark suspicions out of here, and get over to Sam

Morris’s while he’s still got time to fix that catch.”

 

Ken and Sandy looked at each other. Ken smiled first.

 

“All right,” he said. “I guess that does make sense. Come on, Sandy.

But save your best stories until we get back, Dad.”

 

As soon as they arrived at the jeweler’s shop they were glad they had

waited no longer. The place was crowded with customers, all wearing the

harried __EXPRESSION__ of those who have delayed their Christmas shopping

until the last possible moment. Sam Morris and his two clerks looked

equally harried as they tried to wait on several people at a time.

 

Ken and Sandy chose the least crowded area along the glass-topped

display counter that bisected the store lengthwise, running back toward

Morris’s partitioned-off workroom at the rear. After they had waited

for a few minutes, Sam, hurrying past with a heavy mahogany mantel

clock, noticed their presence.

 

“I’ll be with you as soon as I can, boys,” he murmured. He put the

clock down in front of a woman several feet away, told her to take her

time examining it, and came back to where Ken and Sandy stood.