The Mystery of the Iron Box 5

The Mystery of the Iron Box 5

Ken answered him with a warning hand on his arm. There were footsteps

on the porch steps. Both boys listened intently, every nerve alert. Ken

could feel Sandy’s big body tense itself for action.

 

Carefully they came to their feet. With Sandy in the lead they drifted

silently across the carpet, following the path they had cleared for

themselves earlier.

 

There was a fumbling at the outer storm door, which was unlocked as

usual.

 

Ken had one finger ready on the light switch. Sandy was crouched low,

ready to pounce.

 

Metal scratched faintly against metal. Hands worked cautiously at the

lock of the inner door. An almost inaudible rattle told them that the

mechanism was clicking open. The knob began to turn.

 

Then the door itself eased slowly open. And suddenly, with an unearthly

clatter, the pots and pans rigged above it crashed to the floor,

cascading over a figure outlined in the doorway.

 

As Ken snapped on the light, Sandy leaped forward. His arms circled the

intruder, and the two heavy bodies thudded to the floor.

 

Ken barely had time to notice that Sandy was safely on top when a shout

sounded from upstairs.

 

“Hey! What’s going on?”

 

Ken lunged for the intruder’s feet and hung on. “It’s all right, Pop!”

he called. “We got him!” Out of the corner of his eye he could see Pop

Allen tearing down the stairs, with Richard Holt right behind him.

 

“You’ve got me all right.” The muffled voice spoke from somewhere

beneath Sandy’s considerable weight. “But why?” it grunted. “Just tell

me why?”

 

Ken’s hands jerked away from the feet he was holding as if they had

burned him. In the same instant Sandy rolled aside, freeing his victim.

 

And then both boys scrambled hastily out of the way as a furious

red-faced Bert, pushing aside pots and pans, got slowly to his feet.

 

“Gosh!” Ken said. “Gee, Bert—we thought you were upstairs asleep!”

 

“Sure,” Sandy echoed. “We thought—”

 

Then Sandy looked at Ken and Ken looked at him. There didn’t seem to be

anything else to say.

 

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

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER V

 

THE MISSING OUNCES

 

 

It was only when the glistening brown turkey was carried to the dinner

table the next day that the boys had any relief from the constant

barrage of kidding they had been receiving all morning.

 

“I never thought I’d have to urge the menfolks of my family to put

their minds on food,” Mom said, “but that is exactly what I’m doing.

The boys have had enough teasing. After all, they’re not always wrong.”

 

“Thanks, Mom,” Sandy said, sliding into his chair.

 

“All the same,” Ken said, “I still—”

 

“If you start all over again, Ken,” Mom warned, “I won’t be

responsible.”

 

Ken smiled at her. “O.K., Mom.”

 

Dinner conversation was limited to murmured comments about the food,

which Richard Holt insisted was better than any he had ever had in the

most famous restaurants of the world. And after dinner a heavy peace

settled on the household, broken only when occasional callers dropped

in for brief holiday visits. Outside it had grown slightly warmer, but

the gray sky promised more snow. By six o’clock heavy snowflakes were

falling steadily.

 

Richard Holt roused himself from a sleepy contemplation of the fire.

“This is no night for you boys to drive me into New York,” he

announced. “I’ll take the train instead.”

 

“Why don’t you just stay over until morning?” Pop suggested. “Doesn’t

look as though this will last long. The roads should be better then.”

 

The correspondent shook his head. “Wish I could. But I promised Granger

I’d be in early tomorrow morning to talk over that Washington

assignment.” He turned to the boys. “Unless you’re actually snowed in

here I’ll expect to see you tomorrow, as we’d planned. I’ll meet you at

the apartment in the afternoon, and we’ll have dinner before the

wrestling matches.” He got to his feet. “Anybody have a timetable?”

 

“There’s a train leaving here at six fifty,” Bert told him.

 

“Good. I can make that easily.”

 

“We’ll at least drive you to the station, Dad,” Ken said.

 

“And afterward we’ll print up those negatives, so we can bring them in

tomorrow to show you,” Sandy added.

 

About an hour later Sandy was proudly studying the first print from his

new camera. “Look at this,” he told Ken. “A four-by-five print from a

negative less than half an inch square! That little peanut certainly

has a wonderful lens.”

 

“Mmm,” Ken murmured. “Great.”

 

Sandy dropped the print back into the tray and prepared to enlarge the

next image on his tiny strip of film. “Wish we’d gotten a picture of

Bert snowed under by pans last night,” he said, grinning over his

shoulder.

 

“I think that event will live in our memories all right without a

picture to remind us,” Ken assured him.

 

The phone rang as he finished the sentence and he reached out to pick

up the darkroom extension.

 

“Hello. Brentwood _Advance_,” he said automatically.... “Oh, Mr.

Morris.... Yes, this is Ken.” He listened for a moment. “No, we don’t,”

he said then. “Never saw him before.... Really? Well, he’ll probably

get in touch with you. I don’t see why you should have to worry about

it.”

 

“What’s up?” Sandy asked, when Ken hung up the receiver a moment later.

 

“Sam Morris wanted to know if that man with the broken watch crystal

was a friend of ours,” Ken reported. “He remembered seeing us talk to

him.”

 

“Why?” Sandy asked, his voice preoccupied. He was using a magnifier to

focus the image being projected on his enlarger easel.

 

“The man had just given Sam a twenty-dollar bill to pay for his crystal

when the fire started,” Ken explained. “Sam stuffed the bill in his

pocket as he ran out to pick up the wastebasket, and when he came back

later to give him his change the man had disappeared. Sam thought he

could send him his change if we knew who he was.”

 

“Nobody else but Sam would worry that much about it,” Sandy said.

“Anybody else would figure that if the man wanted his change he’d come

back for it—or remember it in the first place.”

 

“I know.” Ken dropped into a chair. “But the man said he was just

passing through Brentwood, remember? Maybe by the time he realized he’d

forgotten his change he was too far away to come back, and not knowing

Sam’s last name couldn’t call him up. Anyway, that’s how Sam thinks it

was.

 

“Wish we could have helped him out,” he went on after a minute. “For

the man’s sake as well as Sam’s. I still think Mom would be out one

jewel box if he hadn’t been standing at that window when the fire

happened.”

 

“You can’t prove that by what happened last night.” Sandy grinned as he

rocked a tray gently.

 

“How right you are. Especially,” Ken admitted, “since I stayed awake

until daylight and can practically swear nobody tried to get in the

house all night.”

 

“Were you awake too?” Sandy grinned again. “So was I—and without even

trying. Every time I got sleepy Bert’s face seemed to rise up before me

and—”

 

“Same thing happened to me.”

 

Neither of them spoke then for some time. Sandy worked steadily.

Finally he said, “Here, make yourself useful. Take these prints out of

the hypo and set them washing in the sink. I’m just going to print up

that picture of the fire and then I’ll call it a day.”

 

“Sure,” Ken agreed.

 

“Look at this,” Sandy said a few minutes later. He was holding up a wet

eight-by-ten print and pointing to one corner of it with a dripping

forefinger. “Take a look at that car,” he said, as Ken joined him. “The

one parked right across the street from Sam’s store.”

 

“I’m looking,” Ken told him. “What am I supposed to see?”

 

“The man in it leaning out of the window to see what’s going on,” Sandy

told him impatiently. “Isn’t he the one who was getting his watch

crystal fixed?”

 

Ken bent closer. “Sure enough! Must have been caught in the traffic

jam.” He took hold of Sandy’s wrist and held it so that light fell more

clearly on the print. “Could you make the enlargement any bigger?”

 

“Sure. But why?”

 

“If we could read the license plate on that car maybe we could help Sam

out after all.”

 

“That’s an idea. But we won’t need a print for that. I’ll just make a

larger projection.” Sandy dropped the wet picture back into the tray,

adjusted his enlarger to a bigger image, and turned on the light. “Now

you can see the number,” he said, pointing to the tremendous image on

the easel.

 

“Right. That does it.” Ken copied the number off on a scrap of paper.

“It’s a New York license. And I’ll bet Dad can get the car owner’s name

from the New York Motor Vehicle Bureau. We’ll phone him when he’s had a

chance to reach home.”

 

Sandy’s prints were all washed and on their drying boards by the time

Ken got his father on the telephone. Richard Holt laughed when he first

heard Ken’s request.

 

“Don’t tell me you’re on the track of another mystery,” he said. “After

last night—”

 

“This is something else, Dad,” Ken broke in hurriedly. He explained

about Sam Morris’s phone call and their subsequent discovery of the

watch-owner’s car in Sandy’s print. “Sam was so nice to us we just

thought we ought to try to help him out.”

 

“You’re right,” Richard Holt said quickly. “We should. I’ll call Global

and have the agency’s Albany man put in an inquiry. Ought to have the

owner’s name for you tomorrow.”

 

“O.K. Swell, Dad. Sandy says to tell you the little camera’s a honey,”

he added before he hung up.

 

“You ready to go home now?” he asked Sandy.

 

“I will be in a minute. Just want to take these prints off the boards.

Most of them are dry now.” One by one he began to lift them from the

chromium plates, examining each one as he turned it face up. “Look at

them,” he said admiringly, reaching for his magnifying glass. “I could

enlarge them to eight-by-tens and still have pretty sharp prints!”

 

“Do your gloating at home,” Ken suggested. “I wouldn’t have thought it

possible, but I believe I’m actually hungry.”

 

Sandy grinned. “Turkey sandwiches sound pretty good to me too.” He put

the prints into an envelope and slipped them into his pocket, along

with his magnifying glass. “All right. Let’s go.”

 

As they walked away from the _Advance_ office Sandy said, “If there’s

any of the dressing left I could do with some of that too. And maybe

even a piece of mince pie.”

 

Ken seemed too preoccupied to comment on the suggestion, and when he

finally spoke, Sandy had driven the convertible halfway home. “There

could be just one reason for anybody wanting that box badly enough to

burglarize two houses and set a fire,” he declared. “It must be

valuable.”

 

“Now, look,” Sandy protested, maneuvering the car carefully along the

ruts of a snowy street. “We’ve been through this. Your father said the

box wasn’t valuable. He ought to know. Besides, after last night—”

 

“Dad isn’t an expert on antiques,” Ken interrupted. “The only reason he

thinks it isn’t valuable is because he apparently didn’t pay very much

for it.”

 

“Well, apparently the man who sold it to your father didn’t think it

was very valuable either, or he’d have asked more for it,” Sandy

pointed out reasonably.

 

“Maybe he had his own reasons for selling it cheaply,” Ken said darkly.

“Dad assumed it was part of the porter’s own household stuff—heirlooms,

I suppose—that he was selling off because he was broke. But suppose Dad

was fooled? Suppose the box was stolen and offered to Dad

inexpensively, just so he’d buy it and bring it through American

customs. Then the idea would be to steal it from him, once it was here,

and sell it for its real value.”

 

“But it hasn’t been stolen,” Sandy reminded him. “Nobody tried to get

it last night. Besides, there’s a hole in your argument big enough to

drive a truck through. If a valuable box had been stolen, the customs

authorities would have been alerted to watch for it. And no matter how

well they know your father by now, they’d have shown at least a little

curiosity when he turned up with something they’d been warned to watch

out for. In fact, they’d probably have landed on him like a ton of

bricks.”

 

“Well, maybe it isn’t _that_ valuable,” Ken admitted. “Maybe it’s not

the sort of thing that would arouse an international hunt.”

 

Sandy laughed. “I see. It’s only valuable enough to cause two

burglaries and an attempted arson. You’re just not making sense, Ken.”

 

Sandy had driven the car into the Allen garage, but he made no effort

toward getting out. “I’m not going into the house with you while you’re

still on this subject,” he announced. “I’ve stood all the ribbing I

want to take for one day. Well? Are you convinced?”

 

Ken smiled faintly. “I’m convinced that your arguments are

unanswerable—for the moment,” he admitted. “But do you honestly believe

there’s no connection at all between that unlocked door at Dad’s

apartment, the attempted entry into the house here, and the fire at

Sam’s?”

 

Sandy ran his gloved hand through his hair. “I’ll go this far: I’ll

agree they make a curious string of coincidences. And you know how I

mistrust coincidences. But don’t ask me what the connection is. And

don’t expect me to believe that the box is a priceless antique.” He

turned the door handle. “And don’t go on about this when we get

inside,” he added menacingly.

 

“All right,” Ken agreed. “I’m with you there.”

 

The rest of the Allens were already in the kitchen. Pop, towering on

one side of his tiny wife, was slicing generous slabs of white meat

from the turkey carcass. Bert, towering on Mom’s other side, was

cutting bread. Mom, between them, was making sandwiches.

 

“Ha!” Bert said. “The demon sleuths—and probably on the trail of food

this time.”

 

“Lock up the pots and pans, Mom,” Pop contributed.

 

“Now that will do,” Mom said firmly. “Boys, get the milk from the

icebox and get some glasses.”

 

Sandy brought his pictures out as soon as they had sat down, to ensure

a safe subject of conversation. “Look what that little camera can do,”

he announced proudly.

 

The strategy was effective. Even Bert became engrossed. And half an

hour later, when the boys were left alone in the kitchen to clean up,

Bert forgot to warn them against setting further booby traps as he went

up to bed.

 

“I’ll wash,” Ken said. “We’d better put these things away before they

get splashed,” he added, beginning to gather together the prints still

spread out among the dishes.

 

Suddenly he halted and bent low over the table. “Where’s your

magnifying glass?”

 

“Here,” Sandy said, handing it to him. “Why?”

 

Ken was holding one print close to the light and peering at it through

the glass.

 

Sandy grinned proudly. “Is that the one where you can even tell what

time it is by the kitchen clock?”

 

“It’s the one of Mom sitting alongside the cupboard. But look where the

box is—the iron box, I mean.”

 

Sandy shrugged. “I remember where it was then—on the kitchen scale. Mom

put it there while she was working on the lining.”

 

“And you put it there the night Dad got home. Remember?” There was

mounting excitement in Ken’s voice. “Just before Dad dropped it.”

 

“That’s right. I did. So?”

 

“Then you said something about how much it weighed. Do you remember

what you said?”

 

Sandy looked at him questioningly, but a moment later he obediently

wrinkled his brow in an effort to recall the moment. “Let’s see. I said

something about how heavy it was for its size. And—wait—I think I said

it weighed exactly four and a half pounds.”

 

“That’s what I thought you said!” Ken sounded triumphant. “But take a

look at this. The box didn’t weigh that much last night when you took

this picture. Look what the scale shows here. It’s considerably under

four and a half. Isn’t it?”

 

He handed the picture and the magnifying glass to Sandy, and Sandy

studied the print carefully. “You’re right,” he said slowly. “But this

is a tiny image. Maybe—”

 

“Let’s check up. Mom hasn’t got the lining fastened in yet. The box

must weigh just what it did last night.”

 

Ken disappeared for a moment and came back carrying it in his hands. He

put it on the kitchen scales, and both boys watched silently as the

pointer swung back and forth in diminishing arcs. Finally it came to

rest.

 

“Four pounds and five ounces,” Sandy said wonderingly. “But how can

that be? I must have been wrong the other night. But I was sure—” He

broke off abruptly. “Could Sam have done anything to the box to reduce

its weight? Do you suppose he had to take something off in order to fix

it?”

 

Ken was still watching the scale as if fascinated. “He just

straightened the bent lever. Even if he had removed it entirely that

wouldn’t have reduced the weight by three ounces.”

 

He looked up, finally, into Sandy’s puzzled face. “I don’t think this is the same box Dad brought home,” Ken said.