Part 8

"You look like a big fat hornet," Portia said. _Her_ stripes were red, white, and blue.

"You look like a skinny little patriotic barber pole," Lucy retorted.

The boys looked just as odd as they did, and so did Mr. Payton, whose suit, also vividly striped, was a relic of the same era.

Good-natured jeers and insults filled the air. So did an alien smell of moth balls. But not for long. Soon the children were popping into the water, happy as frogs.

It was cold! Cold and delicious, and so clear that they could see the carpet of drowned leaves lying far below them on the bottom.

At first they just swam and soaked and luxuriated. The midday sun blazed down on them. Mr. Payton swam the breast stroke holding his beard well out of the water and smiling benignly.

"Ah, by Jupiter, ah, by Jove," he purred contentedly.

"Let's stay here all day long, Uncle Pin, can we? Let's stay until it's suppertime."

"Why not, why not? When we're chilled, we'll lie on the rocks and bake ourselves dry, and then we'll swim again."

After a while Julian, who wanted to show off his diving, managed to find a plank and some boulders, and contrived a springboard. For the first few dives his skill was greatly admired, but then everybody else wanted a turn, even Tom Parks, who slapped the water resoundingly with his stomach every time.

The rock walls of the quarry echoed with squabbles and laughter and splashing and shouts. It echoed often with the words: "Look at me! Watch this! Hey, you guys, watch _me_!"

Old Mathew Partridgeberry, a recluse who lived in a house halfway up the mountain, heard the racket and came to see who was making it. Peeping between hazel leaves, he saw the children in their hornet stripes, and the old man in his. Not since his own distant childhood had he seen bathing suits like these! It gave him a turn. For a moment he felt a chill of superstition: could it be ... ghosts? A switch in time?... But then he smiled to himself. No. These were real live children; live, loud twentieth century children. A prank of some sort, or a game, no doubt. Still smiling, he turned away and was lost in the shrubbery, and no one ever knew that he had been there.

12

_The Plan_

It was a beautiful summer. There was just enough rain to keep the land green and the farmers contented, but most of the days were warm and fair.

The children swam, roamed, rode their bicycles up hill and down dale, picnicked, conducted meetings in the club, and paid visits almost daily to their Gone-Away friends. In the long, light evenings they played Prisoner's Base and Any Over and Allee, Allee, In-Free.

In addition, they had their private projects. Foster and Davey, though they had their own little house on Craneycrow, decided to build themselves another in the boughs of an oak tree on "The Property." They went to work with hammers and nails, inflicting so many minor injuries upon themselves that Julian said the tree house should be named Palazzo Band-Aid. Between hammerings, the little boys could be heard arguing and conversing, shrill as the sparrows that clustered in the Boston ivy.

Portia and Lucy practiced ballet (Lucy took lessons in Albany). They had scratched out a garden for themselves containing only the vegetables they preferred: tomatoes, lettuce, onions, and carrots.

"No beets!" Portia said firmly.

"No spinach!" said Lucy.

"Oh, no, never! And absolutely no cucumbers and no broccoli and no cabbages!"

Another project was the rehabilitation of the six sad little rooms in the attic. Mr. Ormond Horton donated the paint, but the girls proposed to do the work themselves.

"Let's have each one a different color," said Portia. "One blue, one green, one red--or, no, pink--"

"And one yellow, and one orange, and--what other colors are there?"

"Purple?" suggested Portia.

"Yes, why not! I never did see a purple room."

Fortunately for them, the rooms were tiny. Even so, the work was harder than they had supposed, and nobody would help them. The little boys offered to hopefully, but were refused.

"You know what _that_ would mean," Portia said darkly.

"Paint _everywhere_ but on the walls," said Lucy, sounding like her own grandmother. She had a green streak in her hair that wouldn't wash out, and Portia's fingernails were purple. But it was all in a good cause; the rooms were beginning to look cheerful, to say the least.

Julian had started a paper route that took him half the morning, and the other boys, too, had part-time jobs.

Mr. Blake's vacation was over; he had had to return to his work in the city and only came out for weekends, but his weekend projects were so numerous that, as he said, he had "to get back to the office to relax."

As for Mrs. Blake, she was seldom seen without something in her hands: hammer and nails, or paint and paintbrush, or lengths of fabric. "You really never get finished with a house," she said contentedly. But sometimes she just wandered quietly from room to room, gloating.

The Villa Caprice continued to offer surprises: certain tall spikey plants near the house turned out to be lilies: great freckled fragrant ones. A drawer in the library desk was discovered to be full of jigsaw puzzles, dominoes, playing cards, and a chess set. Some surprises were not so pleasant: the leak that appeared in the dining room; the peculiar temperament of the bathroom plumbing; the fact that the drawing-room fireplace smoked in rainy weather.

Gradually they became familiar with the sounds peculiar to the house: the stairtread in the hall stairs that chirped like a cricket when anyone stepped on it; the swing door into the dining room that whooshed and sighed; the way the chimneys rumbled when the wind was high. All these were nice because they were the sounds of home.

"This place _is_ home, now," Portia said. "And the apartment in New York is just the place we stay in in wintertime."

"Winter. Ugh," said Foster. "I wish it wouldn't get here for eleven years."

But the summer, as summers are apt to do, was spinning itself out fast, too fast. Already it was August.

"It's funny," Portia observed. "I never really believe in school in summertime. I know it exists, and all, but it just doesn't seem really _real_."

"Mine does," Lucy said. "I can smell it if I think about it. I can smell the blackboard and the varnish on my desk and the wet floor in the hall when they've scrubbed it."

"I move we change the subject," suggested Tom Parks. "Is there another stuffed egg on the premises?"

They had met, all of them, for a picnic at Gone-Away--both the official groups, of course: the members of the Fang Club, all two of them; the members of the Philosophers' Club, all five.

It was exactly the sort of day for watermelon, so that was what they had for dessert. Foster luxuriated, sinking two thirds of his face into the icy pink slice.

"Hey, you know what, Dave?"

"No, what?"

"My new front teeth are getting to be more than just edges. I can sort of bite with them now."

"I've been biting with mine for months," Davey said wearily.

Except for a watery crunching and slurping, there was silence; then Foster said: "But you know what, Dave?"

"No, what?"

"When we've got our real full-grown front teeth, we won't be able to call it the Fang Club any more, because we won't have any fangs."

"What will we call it then?"

"I don't know. We'll think of something."

"What about the Dental Maturity Club?" suggested Julian; but of course they didn't pay any attention to _him_.

After the watermelon had been eaten right down to the rind, the little boys repaired to Craneycrow and the girls went off to visit Mrs. Cheever.

Tom Parks sighed and let his belt out a notch. Then he and Julian and Joe, for no particular reason and not really thinking about it, climbed up in the Vogelhart willow tree. Sun and food had made them lazy, and each of them found a perching place and sat there like a sleepy baboon high among the wind-sifting, sun-sifting leaves.

Swallows looped and dipped around Judge Chater's tipsy cupola.

"You know something, Jule?" Joe Felder said. "I bet you'd never dare spend a night in one of these old dumps. Judge Chater's house, for instance."

"I bet I would."

"I bet you wouldn't."

"I bet I would," but then Julian, who was a fairly honest boy, felt compelled to add: "Not alone, though. _With_ somebody. You, maybe. How about it? I dare you!"

It was a bright, lively afternoon. Foster and Davey could be heard sparrow-chirping on their island, and Mr. Payton, distantly, could be heard whistling in his garden. To the left, there was the scatterbrained conversation of hens and a sound of feminine voices as Mrs. Cheever and the girls came out of her house to go berrying.

The world was a safe place. Anyone could see that it was safe.

"O.K.," Joe said. "You say when."

"You too, Tom?"

"Well, I guess so." Tom agreed, but not with alacrity.

"We'll do it on the night of the full moon," Julian said. "That's only three nights off, Thursday. We'll be able to find our way around better by moonlight, and another thing is--another rule is--that we can't bring any flashlights."

"Heck, why not?"

"That would make it too easy," Julian said happily. His very eyeglasses sparkled with excitement. "We don't just want this to be an _easy_ sort of thing, do we? Because it has to be in the nature of a--of a test."

"Why?" Tom wanted to know.

"For discipline," Julian replied. He had a noble feeling in his forehead as he said it. "Self-discipline," he added.

"I don't know if I need it," Tom said. "I _get_ discipline. I get it everywhere. I get it at home, I get it at school, I get it in the mornings working at Bilmeyer's store."

"Oh, everybody needs it," Julian assured him. "And listen, you guys, this whole operation has to be kept secret. Absolutely secret. From everyone."

"Our families, even?"

"Especially our families. They might say no."

"From the girls, too?" asked Joe.

Julian just ignored him. That went without saying.

"We'll slip out after dark, see, when everything's quiet. We'll meet here under the tree. I'll be spending the night at the Blakes so I can get here fast, and you guys will have your bikes...."

Busily and happily he laid his plans, and soon his companions were infected with his enthusiasm; even Tom.

"We'll bring some blankets in case we get sleepy," Julian said.

"And some food in case we get hungry," Tom added.

"And an alarm clock to wake us up in time to go home before they miss us. I'll bring it," Joe volunteered.

Thursday came: fine and clear and very warm. Julian smuggled three blankets into Judge Chater's house. He had also brought a bottle of Mrs. Cheever's A.P. Decoction because at night the mosquitoes were apt to be bad. He crawled cautiously up the rickety stairs that swayed and swagged beneath his feet. Reconnoitering, the day before, he had found that there was a fairly sound room on the second floor not quite so littered and ruined as the rest. Besides, though he scarcely admitted it to himself, to be upstairs seemed somehow--safer.

Now in the broad light of day even the hint of such a thought appeared ridiculous. Sunshine blazed beyond the broken windows; flies buzzed in and out. Everything looked perfectly ordinary and cheerful, however shabby.

"Nothing to it," Julian remarked aloud, sweeping fallen plaster aside with his foot and clearing a space to spread the blankets on.

"Hey, Jule," called Tom's voice below stairs. "Where are you anyway?"

"Up here; come on up! Take it easy on the stairs, though."

Tom came, carrying a tin box under his arm. He lifted the lid of it and peered in lovingly.

"Three chocolate-almond bars," he recited. "Three bags of potato chips. Three bags of salted peanuts. And Joe's bringing cold root-beer tonight along with the alarm clock."

"Great," Julian said. "And I know where I can get some salami and a bottle of dill pickles."

"M-m," murmured Tom wordlessly. The thought of dill pickles made his mouth water; then he said: "You know, Jule, this doesn't seem like a test, or discipline, or anything. It just seems like a neat thing to do. It just seems like fun."

"I know," said Julian. "Let's hope we feel the same tomorrow morning."

13

_The Night of the Full Moon_

Julian thought that the Blakes' house would never quiet down that night. He waited in his room, and waited. He felt himself getting sleepy and fought himself awake again. But finally, after all the last good nights were said, after all the tooth-brushings and murmurings and yawns and the closing of doors, he was able to creep out of his room and inch his way along the hall. Pressed against his chest, he held the bag of salami and dill pickles as if to keep them quiet, too.

Going down the front stairs, he forgot about the chirping stair tread, and of course it chirped loudly. Julian froze against the banister, staring down at Miss McCurdy's dim figure on the newel post. He had chosen to come this way because the back stairs were uncarpeted and noisy, and now--But no one came; nothing happened. Soon he continued down and tiptoed through the dark, watchful house to the back door. Behind him, the kitchen clock ticked in a little scolding voice.

Outdoors the sound of crickets shimmered in the air; everywhere, all over the summer land. The bright moon was small in the sky; it lighted up the edges of the clouds that were swimming toward it. A small soft wind moved forward, and the trees, dry with August, rustled their leaves and whispered.

Julian hurried along the drive. Moon patches dappled the ground, moving now as wind stirred the branches above. The honeysuckle trees were frightening at night; they looked like stooping figures: old soldiers, giants, in great dragging cloaks. Julian would not have admitted to a soul that his heart was hurrying in his chest, but it was. He was glad of the strong reassuring smell of the salami pressed against his ribs.

He slowed down when he came to the clearing, and his heart slowed down, too. The clearing was blue with moonlight and humming with crickets. The wind was warm. Far to the right there was a lighted window in Mr. Payton's house. Far to the left there was another in Mrs. Cheever's. Julian whistled a tune softly. He felt fine; everything was going right, and there, sure enough, waiting under the willow, was good old Tom Parks.

"Hey, where've you been! You're late!"

"Couldn't help it; they just wouldn't settle down and I had to wait. Where's Joe?"

"Search me. I waited for him, too, but his house was all dark, and when I threw pebbles at his window, they made such a racket, I was scared his folks would wake up, so I scrammed out of there pretty fast."

"Well, there's no sense waiting any longer. Let's go in. I don't think he chickened out, do you?"

"No, not Joe. He's no coward."

They entered the gaunt old house on tiptoe. It was still in there, and stale. It smelled of age, of decay, of damp; and it was very dark. The swimming clouds had caught the moon and covered it. Wind was beginning to tease the house.

"Ow!" exclaimed Tom in an outraged whisper; he had barked his shin on something. "I think it was a crazy idea not to bring a flashlight. I think it was dumb. Ow!"

The stairway quivered and swung as the boys felt their way up, and then felt their way to the room they had chosen. The moon tore itself free from clouds just long enough to light them in; then it was seized and darkened again. Far, far away there was a sort of shuddering. One could hardly have called it a sound.

"Was that thunder?" Tom asked apprehensively.

"I don't think so," Julian said. He certainly hoped not. He walked over to one of the windows and leaned his arms on the sill. Mrs. Cheever's house was dark now; all the world was dimmed, but you could tell there was a moon somewhere; the clouds could not quite smother its light. Below, the Vogelhart willow tossed softly in the wind.

"What do you say we have a snack?" Tom suggested.

That seemed a good idea to both of them, and they spread the blankets out on the floor and sat down. Tom rattled open the metal box. Julian crackled open the paper bag. Soon the air was warmed with an odor of peanuts and salami and dill pickle, and there was a sound of crunching. In the darkness everything tasted perfectly delicious.

"But salty," Julian objected. "Do you realize, Tom, that every single thing we brought is salty? Except the chocolate, and that always make you thirsty anyway."

"Well, we counted on Joe and the root-beer. How could we know? I'm not thirsty yet, though, are you? If we don't think about it, maybe we won't be."

"Maybe not." Julian agreed doubtfully. But the more he tried not to think about it, the more he thought about it. He could feel himself inventing his own thirstiness.

"Doggone it, what do you suppose _happened_ to Joe?"

"I don't know. Fell asleep maybe, but there's no use worrying," Tom said philosophically. He was clanging things back into the tin box. "There's plenty left over for a snack later on if we need it."

He yawned a loud, satisfied yawn.

"Maybe we should sleep for a while."

"All right," Julian said, thinking about thirstiness; and they each stretched out on a blanket--it was much too warm for covers--and were quiet for nearly two minutes.

"Ow," Tom complained. "I never knew my bones had so many corners."

"You think _you_ have troubles. You've got good natural padding, and I haven't. This is the hardest floor I ever felt."

"Well, we'll just have to get used to it. Soldiers do. Marines do."

"Rugs do," added Julian. "I don't mind the hardness of the floor so much, but I'm getting so thirsty I may have to drink the A.P. Decoction!"

Tom laughed. "Good thing you brought it anyway; here come the mosquitoes."

It was true. Somewhere just above their heads there was a sound like the wailing of the tiniest violin imaginable. Then another.

Hurriedly, Julian slapped his face and arms with Mrs. Cheever's famous Anti-Pest Decoction and handed the bottle to Tom. The room was suddenly permeated with an extraordinary smell, and because of it the sound of little violins diminished and was gone.

There was another distant shuddering in the air.

"It _is_ thunder, Jule," Tom said accusingly. "I told you it was."

"It may never get here, though. It's a long way away."

"It will get here," Tom pronounced gloomily. "Just wait and see."

Outside, the wind was picking up; the trees churned under it, and all the reeds of Gone-Away hissed and rustled as they bowed.

"Sh-h! What's _that_!" whispered Tom, clutching Julian's arm.

"Hey, quit _grabbing_ me like that; it startles me. What's _what_?"

"Listen--"

_Clap_ came the sound; then a sort of jiggle and squeak; then _clap_ again.

"Oh, that. It's only a broken shutter banging against the house. I think."

"You hope."

Both boys were whispering now, and Julian was wishing that they had chosen a room with a door that would close and preferably lock. This door had been wedged and warped ajar by time and weather. Nothing would ever close it now.

An abandoned house takes the wind the way a ship takes heavy seas. It creaks throughout, seems to stretch and groan, then settle for a bit, then stretch and groan again. It does other things, too, or at least this one did: it had a constantly varying repertory of creaks, tap-taps, and sounds like the most hesitant of footsteps.

When Julian had thought about this adventure, he had imagined that the scary thing would be the deadly silence of Judge Chater's midnight house. But now it was the sounds--all these different sounds--that were scaring him, and in his heart of hearts he was beginning to wish that he had never insisted on this idiotic undertaking: this "test!" The only good thing about it, at the moment, was that he felt too worried to be thirsty.

Evidently Tom shared his attitude about the venture. "I don't know," he said. "I don't see what good it's going to do our characters just to sit here in a thunderstorm in a beat-up old house, feeling scared. I think it's going to be _bad_ for our characters. It is for mine."

"Well, why don't you go on home, then? Go ahead."

"And leave you here alone? You know I wouldn't. And anyhow, I'd probably get struck by lightning on my bike."

As if its name had been a cue, a tongue of lightning flickered, bright and close. It lighted the room so that for a split second each boy saw the worried solemn look on the face of the other. Then it was dark again, and approaching thunder slammed in the sky.

The broken shutter banged frantically; the old house strained and shook as if it were trying to tear itself loose from its foundations; and after a while the rain began all at once so that it fell on the roof like a solid thing.

The storm went on and on; they could not guess how long, but they knew when it had reached its pitch. The lightning, blue and blinding, winked and winked and hardly stopped winking; it seemed to lick the house. And the thunder hardly stopped thundering; sometimes it rolled and grumbled, and sometimes it burst the air with a bang; but it, like the lightning, seemed to have singled out this house for its prey.

"Hey, Jule! Listen!" shouted Tom. He had to shout above the uproar. "Anyone could be coming into this house, any_thing_ could be, and we'd never even hear it!"

But he was wrong. In one of those instants of lull, when the rain left to itself sounds peaceful and industrious, they heard something else--another sound--and it was in the house with them, yes, in this very house: hard, brisk footsteps, then an old voice calling....

"Uncle Pin?" breathed Tom, moving closer to Julian.

"Oh no, it's not him," whispered Julian, icy with the thought of Chinese ghosts.

"Listen--listen! Something is coming up the stairs!"

Something was. Something was coming, clicking and clattering--what? Oh, what? And then the sound was lost as the thunder burst itself apart, and burst the lightning with it. The world seemed to blow up.

Almost immediately there was a hideous tearing noise; a mighty crash _inside_ the house!

And something white flashed by the door....

All this took only an instant, but when there is terror, an instant seems pinned motionless on time. The boys were clinging to each other, unashamed.

"The house has been struck," croaked Tom. "There'll be a fire."

"But the white thing! The white thing...."

There was another lull; in that last burst the storm seemed to have spent itself. Only the rain poured down and down; and now, quite close to them, the thin old voice called out again.

"Ma-a-a-a," it called.

Julian let go of Tom.

"It's only Uncle Sam! That crazy goat! He must have broken out of his pen."

"And come in here for shelter, I guess."

"Why here, I wonder? Why not somewhere else?"

But they would never know the reason. When they called him, Uncle Sam came clicking into the room, smelling strongly of wet goat, and the boys were so relieved, so glad to see him, that they gave him a chocolate bar to eat, paper and all.

"That crash though, brother, what was that?" Tom wondered, and sneezed. The air seemed suddenly thick and itchy. "Do you think we were struck?"

"No," said Julian, ashamed that his teeth were chattering still. "I think--I think that Uncle Sam finished off the s-stairs."

And that is what had happened, as they saw when they went to investigate. They could see, by the diminishing, fitful lightning, that where the stairs had been there was a chasm, edged with a hanging fringe of balustrade. The stifling cloud of dust and wood particles was beginning to settle now, but the boys kept sneezing.

"How'll we ever get down from here, I wonder?" said Tom.

"There are back stairs. Bound to be," Julian assured him.

"We'll have to wait till daylight to find them. We'd never do it in the dark; the floor back there is full of holes. I'm sorry, Jule, but I certainly think it was a _crazy_ idea not to bring a flashlight. I certainly think it was _dumb_."