The Ghost Wore Gray

by Bruce Coville

  “Good morning, girls,” Meg said. “I hope you slept well.”

  “Now why do you suppose she said that?” asked Chris, once the Colemans were out of hearing distance.

  “She was being polite?”

  “Maybe. And maybe she was telling us she knew we had been wandering around in the middle of the night—giving us a warning to keep our noses out of things.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Those two are as innocent as we are.”

  “Maybe,” said Chris. “But think for a minute. Where are they from?”

  “Canada,” I answered. “But what does that …”

  My voice trailed off as I realized what Chris was saying. If the Colemans were from Canada, it was just possible one of them was a descendent of the mysterious Canadian Connection who never showed up to meet Captain Gray. Or at least showed up too late to do him any good. I realized it was the kind of a story that could easily be passed down through a family. “Did I ever tell you about the time your great-great-granddaddy was supposed to go down to New York State to pick up a fortune in jewels? When he got there, the man he was supposed to meet was dead, and the treasure had disappeared. No one ever found out what happened, but rumor has it he buried the things somewhere on the grounds of the Quackadoodle Inn.”

  Looking for a treasure like that might make a nice hobby for a retired couple—a hobby they could disguise by pretending they were digging up wildflowers! Suddenly Meg and Arnie didn’t seem so sweet and innocent after all.

  I was still chewing on that when Chris hissed, “Look, there he is again.”

  “The ghost?” I asked, surprised that he would be out in the daylight.

  “No, dummy. Peter.”

  I looked where she was pointing. Peter Gorham was painting furniture again.

  Before I could answer her, Peter spotted us. He waved his paintbrush in the air, sending an arc of green paint out in front of him. “Morning, girls!” he called.

  “Think you can keep from embarrassing yourself?” asked Chris as she started in Peter’s direction.

  “I’m willing to try,” I answered. I figured this was a no-lose situation. Even if we couldn’t get any new information from Peter, we’d at least be able to stand there and look at him for a while. I wondered how long it would take for Gloria to spot him talking to us and screech him back to work.

  “I hear your father made a big discovery yesterday,” said Peter when we strolled up to him.

  I nodded. “Seems this place was a stop on the Underground Railroad,” I said.

  Peter dipped his brush into the bucket of paint. “That’s hardly news,” he said. “This whole area was a hotbed of antislave activity. They cram it down your throat over and over again if you go to school here. That guy Samson Carter used to live just over the hill there.” He gestured to his right with the paintbrush, spattering more green across the grass. “The county made his house into a museum. I must have been dragged there five or six times when I was in elementary school. I guess our teachers didn’t think we had the brains to go on our own.”

  “Is it worth the trip?” I asked, feeling vaguely guilty about all the museums in Syracuse that I had never bothered to visit.

  He shrugged. “If you like that kind of stuff. It’s mostly old furniture, plus some pictures and newspaper clippings. I can take it or leave it.”

  “Is it open today?” asked Chris.

  “Probably. It’s Friday, so they can count on some tourist business.”

  I was about to ask Peter if he knew anything about a treasure that was supposed to be buried near the inn when an upstairs window slid open and a familiar voice shrieked, “Peter Gorham! You get back to work!”

  Peter smiled, which almost made my heart stop. “You girls better scram, or Gloria will have my head.”

  We smiled and scrammed. We didn’t even have to discuss what he had told us. Our next move was obvious.

  Baltimore was glad to give us specific directions to the museum. He even asked Dieter to pack us a box lunch. At about ten o’clock we started walking down a country lane carrying food that would have been a hit in any fancy restaurant.

  As it turned out Peter’s “just over the hill” was more like two miles down the road. But it was a beautiful walk. We even saw a deer along the way.

  The Samson Carter house turned out to be a little wooden building surrounded by a picket fence. To the side was a slightly overgrown garden, crowded with flowers and vegetables. A white sign announced the hours the building was open.

  We stepped through the gate and walked up to the house, wondering what we might find.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Samson Carter

  A white-haired woman sat on a wooden chair just inside the door. She was fanning herself with a folded-up newspaper. It didn’t seem to be doing much good, though; her pale, wrinkled skin still glistened with sweat.

  “Morning, girls,” she said as we stepped in. “You visiting around here?”

  “We’re staying at the Quackadoodle,” I said.

  The woman snorted. “What, over with that crazy Baltimore Cleveland?”

  I didn’t like her attitude. My first reaction was to defend Baltimore. But I caught myself, realizing we’d probably get more information out of the woman if we just acted casual. So I said, “What’s wrong with Baltimore?” as if I didn’t really care.

  “The man’s got no common sense,” the woman said, tapping herself on the forehead with her newspaper. “He doesn’t know third base from page nine. And he’s in debt to just about everyone in the county.” She leaned forward. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he lost that place before the summer’s over.”

  I swallowed hard at that bit of news. If Baltimore was out of money, how was he going to pay my father?

  “Anyway, what brings you girls here?”

  “We just heard about the museum,” said Chris with a shrug. “We thought it would be fun to take a look at it.”

  “Well, go ahead and look,” the woman said, gesturing with her newspaper. “My name is Effie Calkins. You can call me Effie. If you have any questions, I’ll be right here.”

  She closed her eyes and started fanning herself again.

  Trying to keep from giggling, Chris and I began to look around. The room we were in was small and clean. A plaque on the wall said that it had been restored to look the same as it had when Samson Carter lived there a hundred and twenty-five years ago. I assumed that did not include the rack of crummy postcards or the glass counter they sat on.

  It was a fascinating little place. We started by going out back, where another little garden was planted with the same flowers and vegetables Samson Carter had once grown on that very spot.

  Back inside, we climbed a narrow stairway to a pair of small bedrooms. White curtains, lifted by a passing breeze, floated away from the windows. The bare wooden floor was made of wide boards. The bed in one room was made of tree branches tied together with thin rope. When I put my hand on the mattress it rustled.

  “Corn husks,” said Effie, when I asked her about it back downstairs. “Folks used to stuff mattresses with them all the time. ‘Course, they had to dry them first. But it must have worked all right. At least, I never heard of anyone dying from it. Not that I’d want to try it myself. I’m perfectly happy with my waterbed, thank you very much.”

  “You have a waterbed?” Chris laughed.

  “Anything wrong with that?” Effie sounded offended.

  “Are there any secret rooms here?” I asked, partly to change the subject and partly because I had been trying to see if I could spot one since we had first entered the place.

  It was Effie’s turn to laugh. “This wouldn’t have been the best place for Samson to hide folks,” she said. “He was too well known.”

  I felt a little silly. I also felt a little angry with Effie for making me feel so silly. I didn’t think it was such a bad question to ask. I wish people wouldn’t do that when you ask a question. It makes it hard to ask the next one. S
ometimes you’d rather stay stupid than have someone laugh at you.

  I think Effie realized what she had done because she went behind the counter and got out a book. “Here,” she said, “you girls might like to look at this. It’s a biography of Samson Carter. Tells all kinds of interesting things about him; that man did more good works on an off day than two parsons and a politician generally manage in a lifetime.”

  “Can we sit on the porch and look at this?” asked Chris.

  “I suppose so,” Effie said. “As long as you promise not to run off with it.”

  When we opened the book, it looked weird. I couldn’t figure out why, until I realized that the words on the right edge of each page formed a zigzag pattern, instead of a straight line, like most books. The pages looked more like a typewritten letter than a regular book.

  We flipped to the front. According to the copyright page, the book had been written by someone who lived near Samson Carter, and published by a local company. I was used to regular books; it was strange to see something like this.

  We began to read. It was fascinating—all about the terrible things that had happened to Samson Carter when he was a young slave, and the enormous risks he had taken to escape from slavery. I found myself wondering if I would have had the courage to endure all that to seek my own freedom.

  Then it talked about his work with the Underground Railroad. I wish I had room to write about some of his adventures. There were so many disguises, chases, daring escapes, close calls—But he never lost one of his people, even though getting them out almost cost him his own life more than once—like the time he ran into a swamp to lead a pack of hunting hounds away from the rest of his group and almost got caught in quicksand.

  And then we found the map. It was in the center of the book, tucked in with about twenty pages of photographs and drawings of Samson Carter and the other people and places mentioned in the book. We might have flipped right by it, if I hadn’t noticed the words “Cap’n Gray” written at the top.

  “Whoa!” I yelled as Chris started to turn the page. She stopped, and we stared at it for a minute, trying to make sense of it. It looked vaguely familiar.

  “Is there a caption?” I asked finally. Chris turned the page. The next page had two photographs of people Samson Carter had rescued. There were three captions, one for each of the photos, and one that said, “Overleaf: map found among Samson Carter’s paper’s after his death, indicating the burial place of Captain Jonathan Gray. See story, on page 155.”

  We flipped back to the map. Sure enough, it showed the location of the little cemetery we had found near the waterfall.

  We turned to page 155. The first part of the story was the author’s version of stuff we already knew from Captain Gray’s diary. Then it got more interesting. According to the story Samson Carter told the author, Captain Gray had just started to make his will when the searchers came looking for him again. So Carter and the innkeeper had taken the captain back to the hidden room.

  It was an hour before the men left. Captain Gray’s last hour on earth, as it turned out; he was dead when the innkeeper went back to get him.

  That was sad enough. But the rest of the book was even sadder, because it told the story of Samson Carter’s death. I had just assumed that since he had survived running the Underground Railroad, he must have lived on to die a peaceful death.

  The world doesn’t work that way, I guess. It turns out that he had made many trips to the South during the war, serving the Union sometimes as a spy, sometimes as a scout. That was incredibly dangerous, of course, but he used all his contacts and tricks from the days on the Underground and managed to survive it all.

  He was an old man by that time. The drawings and photos of him were wonderful—you could see both his sweetness and his strength. I guess you would have needed both those qualities to do everything that Samson Carter did.

  Anyway, six months after the war ended, Samson Carter went to the South as a free man, traveling there legally for the first time in over thirty years. He went to visit some friends, and to begin planning his great dream: the Samson Carter Institute, a college for the children of former slaves. The trip was a success. But while he was on his way home he passed through a town where a mob of angry men beat him to death.

  They didn’t kill him because he was Samsom Carter and had worked so hard to free so many slaves.

  They didn’t even know who he was.

  They just killed him because he was black.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Crisis Level

  We walked back to the Quackadoodle in silence, each of us wrapped in our own thoughts. So much had happened, and so long ago. How did it all fit together?

  We did have one more piece of good luck at the museum. When we took the book back to Effie, we were so enthusiastic about it that she showed us a thin little paperback the museum sold as a souvenir. “Don’t sell many of these,” she said. “They’re about as popular as termites in a lumberyard. So I don’t bother to show it to folks. But since you seem so interested—”

  So for two dollars we had a small version of the Samson Carter story, complete with illustrations.

  It was late afternoon when we finally made it back to the inn. I wanted to check on some things in Captain Gray’s diary so Chris and I went into the lobby. It was empty. We rang the bell, but no one came. We stood there for a moment, feeling hot and impatient.

  “Come on,” said Chris. “Let’s check the office. For all we know Baltimore’s in there listening to Bruce Springsteen on a Walkman. Probably he just couldn’t hear us ring.”

  The idea seemed unlikely to me, but I followed her, anyway. As it turned out, Chris was about half-right. Baltimore was in the office. But he wasn’t listening to Springsteen. He was lying face down on the floor with his eyes closed. We could see a purple swelling the size of a baby’s fist on the back of his head.

  The safe, which was normally hidden behind a painting, was wide open. It was also completely empty.

  Chris, who is not as squeamish about these things as I am, bent down and put her ear against Baltimore’s back.

  “He’s alive,” she said. “Just unconscious. I’ll stay with him. You go get help.”

  I could feel my hands begin to shake as I left the office. Ghosts were one thing. Whoever had bopped Baltimore was flesh and blood, and playing for real. Suddenly this mystery didn’t seem like such a game anymore.

  The first person I found was Gloria. She was kneeling in front of a wooden table, polishing it with an oily cloth. I wasn’t sure what I should say. After all, it was her husband lying on the floor in there. I tried to stay calm. “Gloria, I need some help.”

  “I’m sure it can wait,” she said. “You can see I’m busy now.”

  That made me angry. “It’s Baltimore,” I said sharply. “He’s been hurt!”

  What a transformation! The only other time I’ve seen anyone get to his feet so fast was one evening when I was watching TV with Chris and her brothers and Mrs. Gurley yelled “Dinner!” All six of those boys were on their feet and into the dining room before I had managed to uncross my legs.

  Gloria moved the same way now. “Where is he?” she asked.

  I told her, then hurried to keep up as she charged down the hallway.

  Baltimore was starting to regain consciousness when we entered the office. He had rolled over onto his back. Chris was sitting beside him, holding his shoulders. He opened and closed his eyes a few times, moaning gently as he did so.

  Gloria knelt beside him. “What happened, sweetie?” she asked, kissing him on his bald spot.

  He groaned, but didn’t answer her.

  Gloria sent me to call a doctor—and the police. Before we knew it there were six deputies swarming all over the place and getting in one another’s way.

  “Too much time, too little crime,” said Mona, who had come to see what the commotion was all about. “The only thing worse than having the police department bored is having them overworked.”


  The police wanted to talk to us, of course. They asked about how we had found Baltimore. We told them. They asked what we did next. We told them. But they didn’t ask if we had anything in the safe ourselves. So we didn’t tell them—mostly because we had talked it over before the police got to us, and neither one of us believed that Captain Gray wanted the police involved in this thing.

  My father came in while we were giving our statements. He took one look at the scene—Chris and I sitting and talking to a cop with a notebook—rolled his eyes, and walked over to Mona. I could imagine what he was saying: “All I asked them to do was keep things below crisis level. Was that so much to ask? Was it?”

  But I didn’t feel too guilty. I figured we didn’t have anything to do with this.

  I was almost right, too.

  Dinner that night was a quiet affair. Everyone in the inn wanted to believe that whoever attacked Baltimore had been an outsider. But everyone also knew that it might have been one of the guests. My father gave us several warnings about not getting too nosy and so on. He wanted to know how much we knew about what was going on. But since I didn’t figure things out until later in the evening, I could honestly tell him, “not much.”

  By nine o’clock more than half the couples that had come for the weekend had checked out. Things looked pretty bad for the big dance the next night.

  In fact, they looked pretty bad for the Quackadoodle in general. Between what Porter had told us earlier and what Effie had said that afternoon, I was pretty worried about the fact that my father had quit his job on the basis of what he expected to make from Baltimore. I was trying to figure out what I should say to him about it as Chris and I climbed the stairs to go to our room.

  I stopped across from the picture of Captain Gray. “What do you think I should do about all this?”

  The picture didn’t answer me, of course. But as I stood there looking at it something else occurred to me.

  “You know, there’s something odd about this picture,” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” said Chris. “He looks just as good in real life, or real death, or whatever.”