When he realized that Junior was no longer right behind him, Harleigh stopped and looked back, trying to quickly figure out which wrong turn Junior had made. Was it one of the turnoffs that led to a dead end? Or perhaps one that curved around and circled back to rejoin the original passageway? There were several of both. It was important that he get it right, because the only way for him to escape was to get back to the entrance while Junior was wandering off toward a dead end. Harleigh could then leave the maze the way he’d come in. The only way he knew, since the only other exit was the one he and Allegra had almost, but not quite, found.
Harleigh had decided that Junior was out there somewhere headed for a dead end, and he had begun to retrace his steps, when a huge figure burst back onto the main corridor only a few yards away. Harleigh spun around and went on running.
Once again Junior was close behind him. Close enough so Harleigh could hear not only his thudding footsteps, but also his wheezing breath. Thud, thud, pant, pant, and then an angry yelp. Glancing back over his shoulder, Harleigh caught a glimpse of a frantic scene, a wildly flailing Junior trying to free his hair from a dangling branch of yew and in the process dropping the heavy crowbar on his feet. And then, with his hair finally free, he grabbed up the crowbar only to find that he’d managed to hook its curved end around the trunk of the nearest yew. He was still trying to jerk it free when Harleigh reached the place where he and Allegra had quit working only two days before. Where their progress had stopped, leaving the original exit still unlocated. And leaving Harleigh in a dead-end trap.
But just as he began to panic, Harleigh suddenly remembered what Allegra had said about being almost there. Almost to the exit. And she had said it while she was lying on the ground, reaching into a tiny tunnel that her shears had started.
And then Harleigh was on his knees, and a moment later flat on his stomach wriggling into the tunnel, and continuing to wriggle until first his hands and then his head, and finally the rest of his body, were clear of the yew hedge, and he was able to jump to his feet.
He was free. Standing up, Harleigh looked around, recognizing a familiar spot. A path he had been on many times before, that led around the curving exterior wall of the maze. He turned to go but then went down on his knees to peer back into the rabbit-hole-size tunnel. And there, only a few feet away, Junior’s squinty eyes peered back at him. Junior had somehow managed to force his big head and shoulders into the tunnel and was now imprisoned, it seemed, in a snug cocoon of yew branches. As Harleigh watched in stunned amazement, Junior thrashed and roared without making the least bit of forward progress.
And quite possibly, unable to go back either. But you never knew with someone as strong and fierce as Junior. Tired as he was, Harleigh didn’t dawdle on his way back to Weatherby House and his very belated appointment with Uncle Edgar.
Chapter Twenty-four
Of course Uncle Edgar didn’t believe him at first. Harleigh couldn’t help feeling impatient with him, because there was no time to waste if something was going to be done about Junior before he managed to untangle himself from his yew tree trap. But at the same time, Harleigh wasn’t able to blame Uncle Edgar too much. He couldn’t help being aware that if someone else had told him such a wild story, he probably wouldn’t have believed it either.
But of course positive proof, of a sort, was easily available if Uncle Edgar would just accompany him to Aunt Adelaide’s recital hall and see for himself. Harleigh knew, however, that it wouldn’t be easy to get Uncle Edgar to visit a place he often referred to as the Throne Room of Adelaide the Great and probably hadn’t set foot in for years.
Harleigh guessed right. It was only after he’d suggested, asked, and finally demanded that he come see for himself, that Uncle Edgar levered himself out of his chair and began to lumber down the entry hall. They had turned off into the west corridor and had almost reached the recital hall’s double doors when they suddenly became aware of a hair-raising sound. Aunt Adelaide’s wheelchair.
They froze in horror, at first turning their eyes and then their heads, in time to see the wheelchair rounding the corner and hear Aunt Adelaide’s scratchy voice demanding, “What’s this? What is going on here?”
Harleigh stared at Uncle Edgar, hoping he would begin the explanation, but Uncle Edgar only stared back. At last Harleigh turned to face Aunt Adelaide’s steely glare and began to stammer, “We—we were just going to—I was just going to show Uncle Edgar what Junior did to your room. To the floor of the stage, that is. See, what happened is . . . Well, Junior was just starting to chop a hole in the floor when . . .” His voice trailed off in despair. Waving one arm in the general direction of the recital hall, he finished weakly, “Come and see. I’ll show you.”
While Uncle Edgar held one of the doors open, they filed through: Harleigh first, right behind him the wheelchair pushed by Cousin Josephine, and last of all Uncle Edgar.
And there it was. All of it, in plain view. The stage curtains were still pulled open and the recital hall’s bright lights were spilling in to reveal the stage floor, where Junior’s huge ax was lying beside a gaping, roughly cut hole.
They moved closer, rounded the rosewood desk and the enormous canopied bed, and continued on to the very edge of the stage. And then Aunt Adelaide was pointing at Harleigh and screeching, “You. You ungrateful, destructive, incorrigible . . .” Her voice had trailed off into an unintelligible screech when it happened. Suddenly lurching to one side, Aunt Adelaide collapsed limply over one arm of the chair.
Harleigh and Uncle Edgar stared at Aunt Adelaide and then at Cousin Josephine, who was calmly turning the chair while she steadied Aunt Adelaide with one hand. “Here,” she said to Uncle Edgar, “help me get her onto the bed. She’ll be all right soon.”
“You mean she’s not—not dying, or anything?” Harleigh gasped.
Josephine shook her head. “No,” she said. “Not likely. She’s been like this before. It happens when she gets too excited. She’ll probably sleep for a while, and when she wakes up she’ll be as good as . . .” Josephine paused and then, smiling grimly, went on, “That is, she’ll be the same as always.”
So it wasn’t until Aunt Adelaide had been lifted onto her bed, her shoes removed and her pillow fluffed, that the rest of them turned back to the damaged stage.
“There,” Harleigh said. “See, I heard this loud chopping noise and I came in to see what was happening. And there Junior was . . . There he was chopping this hole, and when he saw me, he started chasing me with a crowbar and I—well, I . . .” He trailed off and turned to Uncle Edgar. “And like I told you, he’s stuck in the maze now, or at least he was. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
There followed quite a pause while the three of them looked at each other and then, uncertainly, back at the hole in the stage floor, until Harleigh began to realize it was going to be up to him to do something.
“All right,” he said. “Come on. Let’s find out what’s in there.”
The first step was to get Uncle Edgar up onto the stage, which was only accomplished with a lot of pushing and pulling. And then came the problem of getting him back on his feet, which he finally managed himself by scooting to the upright piano and using it to balance on as he straightened up. At last Uncle Edgar was on his feet and dusted off a little, and Harleigh was free to peer down the hole. But the light was bad and the hole was small. Nothing was visible.
While Cousin Josephine went to get a flashlight, it occurred to Harleigh that there must be another way. Somehow it just didn’t seem likely that a first-generation Weatherby, or even a second-generation direct descendant, would store something valuable in a place you could only get to by chopping up valuable hardwood flooring. Somehow it seemed more likely . . .
Moving around the stage, he checked out the three steps that led down to the stage door, but they seemed to be firmly and immovably built in. And on the stage itself there were only the two ancient pianos, the three-legged grand and the bulky, old-fas
hioned upright that sat back against the far wall. Looking around, Harleigh studied the scene and began to wonder—why two pianos? And then he asked Uncle Edgar to help him try to move the big old upright.
And so they did, but it wasn’t easy. Even with Uncle Edgar’s weight leaning against it, the piano moved to one side only very slowly. But move it did, leaving exposed a large, dusty rectangle, which it had covered for many, many years. And in the middle of that rectangle, a well-constructed trapdoor.
The trapdoor lifted easily and they all peered down, saying things like, “My God, would you look at that!” That was Uncle Edgar.
Cousin Josephine said, “Stand aside. I’ll do it,” followed by, “Oh my goodness. I can’t go down there. There are sure to be spiders.”
So it was Harleigh who was sent down to explore. Carrying the flashlight Josephine had provided, he went down two steep steps to where a collection of metal boxes sat in neat rows, covered by many years of ancient dust. And it was also Harleigh who, one by one, dragged the boxes to the steps and lifted them up to Josephine and Uncle Edgar.
Most of the boxes were not very heavy, but a few others were, and they rattled in a muffled but vaguely metallic way—an exciting, possibly golden, sound. But all of them were firmly locked with small rusty padlocks. It wasn’t until all eleven of them had been brought up onto the stage that Harleigh caught his breath—and remembered about Junior.
Chapter Twenty-five
By the time Uncle Edgar called the police, almost two hours had passed since Harleigh had left Junior Weatherby stuck in the maze’s overgrown exit. But at last three Riverbend officers drove up the circular drive, pulled up to the front entrance of Weatherby House, and were ushered into the entrance hall by Uncle Edgar, where they stood around looking confused and amazed while Harleigh and Uncle Edgar and Cousin Josephine kept interrupting each other as they tried to explain what had happened and who had done it.
Harleigh was frustrated by how long it took for the officers to begin to show as much interest in Junior’s crimes as they did in their surroundings. Obviously they had never been in Weatherby House before, or anything quite like it.
“It seems he located the long-lost Weatherby treasure,” Uncle Edgar was saying. “With a metal detector.”
“In Adelaide Weatherby’s bedroom,” Cousin Josephine broke in. “Under the stage.”
The policeman who was taking notes paused with his pen in the air. “Under the what?” he asked.
“Under the stage,” Cousin Josephine repeated, sounding impatient, almost rude, as if it was perfectly normal to have a stage in your bedroom.
Uncle Edgar was still trying to explain why they didn’t exactly know what it was that had almost been stolen, when Harleigh interrupted him by saying, “And when I saw what he was doing, he tried to kill me with a crowbar.” It wasn’t until then that the officers began to pay more attention.
“And this person who attacked you with a crowbar, you’re saying you recognized this person.” The policeman named Sergeant Marino seemed quite interested now.
“Of course I did,” Harleigh said. “He lives here. His name is Junior Weatherby.”
“Oh, I see. Junior?” The note-taking officer was smiling condescendingly at Harleigh. “And is Junior as big as you are?”
That made Harleigh mad. “He’s big,” he said through clenched teeth. “A lot bigger than you are.”
“Is this true?” Sergeant Marino asked Uncle Edgar. “A grown man tried to attack this boy with a crowbar?” After Uncle Edgar said it was true, the police got down to business and agreed to inspect the scene of the crime.
Then came a rather slow procession down the west corridor: Harleigh, Uncle Edgar, Cousin Josephine, and the three bug-eyed police officers. And on into the recital hall, where Aunt Adelaide was still sleeping soundly and snoring loudly in her canopied bed. And then, finally, they were all up on the stage, where the large ax still lay next to the gaping hole in the hardwood floor. And where eleven dusty and rusty boxes were now neatly stacked next to the upright piano.
Then there was another long delay while Uncle Edgar explained to the police officers how it was that no one yet knew what was in the boxes, and how whatever it was belonged to Harleigh and his father as the direct descendants of the Weatherby estate.
All of it, all the explanations, inspections, and careful questioning, had taken an endless amount of time and, just as Harleigh feared, by the time he and the three officers finally reached the spot where he had last seen Junior trapped in the tiny prickly tunnel, he was no longer there. All the officers took turns getting down on their knees and staring into the hole, and by the time they had finished they were once again asking the kind of questions that made it clear that they didn’t believe a word of what Harleigh had been telling them. Questions like, “And when you last saw this very large man, he was crawling through that little hole?”
It was, Harleigh had to admit, a little hard to believe. He offered to take the police to the maze entrance, and through to where the tunnel started, but they didn’t seem interested.
“How long would that take?” Sergeant Marino asked.
“Only about half an hour if you know the way,” Harleigh said. “I could show you.”
Sergeant Marino looked at his watch and shook his head. “Maybe some other day,” he said. “Right now we need to get back on duty.”
As the three police officers, and a frustrated and embarrassed Harleigh, were on their way back through the overgrown jungle that had once been the famous Weatherby gardens, they began to hear a crackling, crashing sound that seemed to be coming from the bamboo thicket. As they stopped and turned to look back, a huge man burst into view only a few yards away. No longer carrying his crowbar, his face and arms covered in bloody scrapes and scratches, and his clothing in tatters, an almost unrecognizable Junior was waving his arms in the air and babbling wildly. His eyes were wide and staring, but when he saw Harleigh he froze, and then staggered forward, yelling, “There you are, you little rat. Now I’ll get you.”
Scared, but at the same time relieved to have this sudden proof of his story, Harleigh ducked behind the police officers, who soon had Junior handcuffed and under control.
As the police escorted him off to their car, Harleigh, trailing behind at a safe distance, heard Junior saying he’d been trapped in what he called “those ghost bushes” for hours. “For days,” he raved. “For years, maybe. See, those things keep changing. They don’t stay still. Just when you get it figured out, they change.” Lowering his voice, he almost whispered, “And there are voices in those bushes. Voices that tell you which way to go to get out, but they lie. They always lie.”
At one point he stopped to look back at Harleigh and then went on babbling. “He’ll lie too. He’ll say I was going to kill him. But that’s a lie. Those bushes wouldn’t let me catch him.”
Harleigh followed as far as the gate and watched from a distance as the police carefully loaded the still ranting and raving Junior into their patrol car, before he returned to Weatherby House.
Not only Uncle Edgar, but also Cousins Josephine and Alden were waiting for Harleigh in the library. They listened in fascinated silence as Harleigh told about the capture and how Junior thought the yew trees had been talking to him and telling him lies. He finished his story by saying, “It sounded to me like he really cracked up.”
Cousin Alden said that he wasn’t surprised. “Not surprised at all,” he said. “Since the day I first met him I’ve always felt that particular would-be Weatherby had a few bats in his belfry.”
After they’d finished discussing what might happen to Junior and whether it would be jail or an institution, Harleigh asked Cousin Josephine about Aunt Adelaide.
“It’s so strange,” Cousin Josephine said. “She woke up and let me help her into her wheelchair, but she hasn’t said anything. Not a word. When I asked her if she wanted to go to lunch, she shook her head, so I brought her a sandwich and she ate most of it with none
of her usual complaints. And when I asked if I should call her doctor, she only shook her head again. But she still hasn’t said anything. Not a word.”
“Amazing,” Uncle Edgar said. “Really amazing.”
Harleigh knew what he meant. A speechless Aunt Adelaide was not an easy thing to picture.
Harleigh was still trying to imagine it when Cousin Alden asked when they were going to open the boxes. Cousin Josephine looked over to where the eleven metal boxes were now stacked on one of the library tables. “Soon, I guess,” she said. “But it looks like a big job. Maybe we should wait until after lunch.”
Uncle Edgar pulled out his pocket watch and exclaimed in surprise.
“Well, would you look at that,” he said. “Don’t know when I’ve let a mealtime sneak up on me like that. But I do think you’re right. Those boxes have been waiting a long time. I don’t think one more hour will make any difference. Come on, all of you. Let’s not keep Matilda waiting any longer.”
When Harleigh and Uncle Edgar reached the kitchen, there was another difference. Cousin Alden, who as a non-Weatherby had never before been permitted to eat in the kitchen, came right in and sat down by his wife.
Harleigh was hungrier than usual, and when he took a second helping Matilda smiled encouragingly. He smiled back and said, “Good stuff.”
The Treasures of Weatherby Page 12