"Good thinking!" said Dinky Poore.
"I appreciate the humor, but let's use our heads," said Henry. "There's only one entrance to this place, and it's easy enough to bug it so we know whether anybody wanders in here."
"Now you're talking!" said Jeff. "What do you think we should do, Henry?"
"All we have to do is rig an electric eye across the mouth of the cave and tie it in to our carrier current intercom system. We can run a line from here down to one of the power lines on the highway, and I'll hook a monitor into my receiver at home. If I get an alarm during the night I'll push the panic button."
What Henry suggested doing was very simple, since we already had our own private intercom net operating through the city power lines. This can be done for free and it's legal, as long as you don't exceed the maximum power limit with your transmitter. We knocked off work on the sub and spent the rest of the day scurrying around to get the necessary equipment together to rig up the alarm system.
It was that very night that the panic buzzer sounded in my room just after I had gotten to sleep. It was Henry on the line, and he told us somebody had already tripped the alarm in the cavern. We hadn't bugged the place any too soon. Henry switched the microphones we'd hidden in the cavern into the net, and we could hear voices of some of Harmon Muldoon's gang. Stony Martin, who's a loudmouth, was shouting out phony orders with a thick German accent, as though he was Count Hugo von Luckner himself. It made me sick just to hear him.
"Let's go, Henry!" said Jeff Crocker. "Everybody out to the cavern!"
I jumped into my pants, threw a shirt on, and shinnied down the drainpipe outside my window. It was then I remembered that my dad had locked my bicycle in the garage. He told me I couldn't use it for two days, because I had forgotten to mow the lawn. I stood there in the darkness by the side of the house, not knowing what to do except swear at myself. I called the old man a bunch of bad names too, and kicked the side of the house a couple of times. After I'd cooled off, I thought about shinnying back up the drainpipe and calling one of the other kids on the intercom, but I knew they'd all be gone. I even thought about sneaking into my dad's bedroom and swiping the key to the garage. But I figured I might wake somebody up, and then I would be in the soup. So I kicked the house a couple of more times and took off down the driveway heading for Dinky Poore's house.
Dinky lives closest to me and I might just be able to catch him. He also is the smallest guy in the club, and I wouldn't mind pumping his bike all the way out to the falls with him riding the handlebars. I darted into the alley behind his house and clambered up onto the fence. It was pitch dark in his backyard and I couldn't see if his bike was still there or not. I gave the tomcat call and waited a few seconds. There wasn't any answer, so I gave it again a little louder and longer. This time there was an answer. I was peering into the darkest corner of the yard, when all of a sudden something came flying out of an upstairs window of the house and crashed against the board fence just below my hands. I didn't wait around to find out what it was. I just took off down the alley, heading for Mammoth Falls on foot.
It must have taken me half an hour to get to the riverbank below the falls. All the other kids were sitting around under the big oak tree, where we usually hide our bikes in the bushes, holding a council of war.
"Where on earth have you been?" Henry asked me. "We've been waiting half the night."
"Maybe his mother wouldn't let him out!" Mortimer gibed at me.
"Shut up!" I shot back, giving Mortimer a knuckle job on his right bicep. Then I lied. "I had a flat tire on my bike. I ran all the way here."
"Let's get going!" urged Jeff. "Indian file down the bank, then one at a time under the falls. Nobody goes into the cave until we've all made it to the ledge. Then we'll rush 'em together."
We stripped down to our shorts and Jeff handed out stink bombs, three to a man. "If you get a shot at one of them, try to hit him in the middle of the back. It's hardest to wash off there."
We started down the steep path to the river bed with Mortimer leading the way. I took my usual position at the rear of the file, right behind Dinky and Freddy. There wasn't any moon out, and it was so dark we had to feel our way along the path, hugging close to the rocky bank. My heart was thumping and I could hear Dinky and Freddy breathing heavily. Suddenly there was a loud rumbling noise, followed by an ear-splitting crash like a clap of thunder. The ground shook violently and the whole riverbank seemed to heave up about a foot. We grabbed for rocks and bushes and clung to the bank to keep from falling into the water.
"Holy mackerel!" shouted Mortimer. "Half the falls has collapsed!"
"Let's get out of here before something else cuts loose," Jeff hollered. "Get back up the path, Charlie!"
I turned and groped my way back up the path to the top of the bank, with Freddy and Dinky panting behind me. When the rest of them got to the top, we made our way along the bank to a point where we could get a better look at the falls. By the light of our flashlights we could see a huge, crescent-shaped space at the lip of the falls that hadn't been there before. A regular torrent of water was spilling over it and crashing onto a pile of rocks at the bottom, right where the mouth of the cavern had been.
"The cavern's blocked off!" cried Mortimer. "If Harmon's gang is still in there, how are they gonna get out?"
"Serves 'em right for nosing around," said Freddy Muldoon, jumping up and down.
"Oh, you're just full of the milk of human kindness," Mortimer sneered. "We gotta get down there and help 'em."
"Wait a minute!" Jeff cautioned. "Nobody's going down there just yet. We can't tell what might happen. Some more of the ledge might break loose any minute. We're lucky we weren't all in there when it fell."
"We would have been if Charlie hadn't been late getting here," said Dinky Poore.
"Hurray for good old Charlie!" said Freddy Muldoon.
All of a sudden I wasn't mad at my old man anymore for locking my bike in the garage.
"We can't possibly move those rocks," Henry put in. "They're too big. The first thing we better do is call the police."
"How do we know they're still in there?" said Homer. "We'd look pretty foolish bringing the police out on a wild goose chase this time of night."
"That's easy enough to find out," said Henry. "We'll tap into the intercom line and see if we can talk to them."
"If they did anything to our submarine I hope they all drown," said Freddy Muldoon.
"What are we gonna do with these stink bombs?" asked Dinky Poore.
"Eat them!" said Mortimer. "You might not get any breakfast! Now, shut up and let the brains of this outfit figure out what we're gonna do."
Henry's foresight had provided a plug-in jack in the intercom line at the top of the riverbank. The only question was whether the line had been broken by the rockfall. Henry and Mortimer probed through the bushes and rocks at the edge of the falls and found the jack. Then they plugged in Henry's handset.
"Hello! Hello!" Henry called into the speaker. "This is Henry Mulligan. This is Henry Mulligan. If you can hear me, sing out!"
We all waited, holding our breath and straining to listen for a sound from the receiver. There was none.
"If they're still in there you probably scared them right out of their skins," said Homer. "Try it again."
Henry pressed his lips close to the handset. "This is Henry Mulligan calling Harmon Muldoon. Calling Harmon Muldoon. If you can hear me, get on the intercom. There's a speaker strapped under the diving board by the pool and another one in the ceiling near the cave entrance. If you're still in there, let us know, so we can get help."
We waited for what seemed a full minute. Then we heard a crackling noise.
"Hello! Hello! Is that you, Harmon?" Henry repeated several times.
"Hello, this is Harmon Muldoon," came a voice so faint that only Henry could really hear it. "What do you want, Mulligan?"
"At least the line's still open!" Henry said excitedly. Then he cupped his hand
over the mouthpiece. "He wants to know what we want."
"How do you like that fat-lipped cousin of mine!" snorted Freddy Muldoon. "There he is, buried a hundred feet underground, and he wants to know what we want."
"Tell him we want to know if they're all right, and how many of them are in there," said Jeff.
"Harmon! Harmon! Are you all right?" Henry shouted into the mouthpiece.
"Yeah, we're all right," came the faint answer. "What kind of stunt did you guys pull on us this time?"
"Honest, Harmon, we didn't do anything," Henry answered. "Part of the ledge at the top of the falls collapsed. There's a big pile of rocks blocking the mouth of the cave."
"Are you telling me?" sneered Harmon. "Have you got any other old news, Mulligan?"
"Oh, boy! Would I like to punch him right in the nose!" said Freddy.
"By the way, Mulligan," came Harmon's voice again, "how did you know we were in here?"
"There's an electronic eye at the mouth of the cave," Henry answered. "You guys tripped it when you went in, and it set off an alarm on our intercom."
"Very clever!" said Harmon. "I guess we never will outsmart you guys. Now, how do we get out?"
"How many of you are in there?" asked Henry.
"There are six of us," said Harmon. "Is that enough to qualify?"
"We'll get hold of the police right away," said Henry.
"I don't know how they're going to get through to you, but we'll figure out some way. Sure you're all right?"
"Yeah! We're all right. It's fine in here. Just get us out in time for breakfast."
"He doesn't sound very scared for a guy trapped in a cave," said Homer.
"He's a cool character, all right," said Mortimer Dalrymple. "Something sounds a little fishy to me."
"It's Harmon's deep voice," said Freddy. "He's a big-mouthed bass."
Mortimer grabbed him by the collar and rubbed his knuckles in his hair good and hard.
Since we hadn't bothered leaving anybody at the clubhouse in Jeff Crocker's barn, we had no way of reaching the police except to ride into town and call them from the nearest phone we could get to. Jeff and Mortimer volunteered to make the trip, and the rest of us busied ourselves making as complete a reconnaissance as we could of the situation around the mouth of the cave. It would take Jeff and Mortimer at least fifteen minutes to get into town, and we knew it would be at least half an hour after that before Chief Putney could rouse any of his men and get them out to the falls. From the looks of things, they wouldn't be able to do anything without heavy equipment, so it would probably be hours before they mustered enough help to begin a rescue operation.
Literally tons and tons of rock had crashed down in front of the cave mouth, as far as we could tell from shining our flashlights onto the pile. The lip of the falls had receded to the point that one of the main plumes at the right of the torrent was spilling huge volumes of water directly down at the mouth of the cavern. It was possible that water was flowing into the cave.
Henry got on the intercom and roused Harmon again. "Harmon!" he shouted. "Is water coming into the cave? Are you all right?"
"We're fine," Harmon answered. "It's dry as a bone in here. Now will you stop bothering us? We're trying to get some sleep. Just concentrate on getting us out of here."
"OK!" said Henry. "But keep somebody near the intercom so we can keep in touch with you."
"Roger!" said Harmon.
"Those guys can sleep?" said Homer in disbelief.
"What else can they do?" Henry shrugged. "They have to wait for help, and they might as well save their strength. They might need it. You gotta hand it to them that they didn't panic."
Soon we heard the wailing of a siren and a screech of brakes as a police car pulled up nearby on the highway. Two officers came panting along the path, with Jeff and Mortimer leading them.
"How do you know there's anyone in there?" asked one of the officers, shining his flashlight into the abyss at the foot of the falls.
"We've talked to them," said Henry, and he explained about the intercom system. "You can talk to them if you want to," he offered.
"Never mind!" said the officer. "Looks like we've really got a job on our hands here." He whistled in surprise as he played his flashlight over the rockfall. "Holy mackerel! There must be tons of the stuff. It'll take real heavy construction equipment to move that stuff, and I don't know how anybody could get it down there to do the job. Are those kids safe in there?"
"They're all right, so far," said Henry.
The officer played his flashlight along the crest of the falls.
"Some more of that ledge could break loose any minute," he said. "If it does, the roof of that cave might collapse."
"That's possible," Henry agreed.
"We don't have any time to waste," said the officer, turning to the other policeman. "Al, get back to the car and tell Chief Putney he'd better notify the Mayor. We've got a real emergency on our hands. Tell him we recommend putting out a general alarm and a request for rescue equipment. Better get the Civil Defense people out too."
The other policeman turned to run up the path.
"Wait a minute, Al. After you call in, see if you can bust down a section of that fence and pull the car in here somehow. We ought to have the radio right here."
"We'll bust down the fence!" cried Jeff. And he and Mortimer dashed up the path after the policeman.
It's amazing how fast things can happen sometimes. Within an hour the riverbank was swarming with people and vehicles. And more kept coming all the time, as calls went out for special equipment that somebody thought might help solve the problem of how to burrow through tons of rock with tons of water spilling on it, on the other side of a dangerous whirlpool more than a hundred feet offshore. There was a lot of confusion and shouting and not much being accomplished, but it was exciting to watch.
The county sheriff's mobile rescue unit pulled in and flooded the area with high-powered searchlights. Seth Emory, the Civil Defense director, was supposed to be in charge of the operation, but Mayor Scragg did more talking than he did. He kept shouting orders to Chief Putney and the fire chief, Hiram Pixley, telling them to do things that they were already doing, and he agreed with everybody's ideas about how to get into the cave, no matter how crazy they were. Somebody suggested bringing a long-boomed crane in with a clamshell bucket to lift some of the rocks away from the cave mouth. But a construction foreman who had been called out said the biggest crane they could get wouldn't reach out to the rockfall from the riverbank, and it would take at least two days to build a pier out into the water for the crane to operate from. Somebody else suggested running a pontoon bridge out to the rockpile and trying to force a hole through the rocks so a long section of corrugated iron storm drain could be run into the cave as an escape tunnel. But this was considered too dangerous, since more of the overhanging ledge might come plunging down at any minute. There were other people in favor of stringing a breeches buoy across the front of the falls so a couple of men could try to pull some of the rocks away with grappling hooks, but this was considered impractical. Some suggested taking a chance by trying to dynamite the rockpile, but almost everybody was against this.
A reporter and a photographer from the Mammoth Falls Gazette were circulating among the crowd, interviewing officials and getting opinions from onlookers. The reporter wanted to talk to the boys in the cave and Mayor Scragg said, "Sure! All you have to do is figure out how to get in there."
"But I thought there was some kind of a communication line into the cave," said the reporter. "One of the policemen told me -"
"I don't know about that," said the Mayor. "You'll have to ask those young magicians over there. They're the ones that got us into this mess."
"I don't think they want to be bothered. They're all asleep," said Henry, when the reporter asked him. "Besides, I heard there's a camera crew coming from the TV station in White Fork. Why don't we wait until they get here?"
The reporter howle
d in anguish. "I was here first!" he complained. "I have to get my copy in for a special edition. If you make me miss it, and the TV stations get the story first, my boss will fire me!"
"Oh!" said Henry.
"Gosh, mister, we wouldn't want you to get fired over a little thing like six kids trapped in a cave," said Freddy Muldoon.
"I didn't mean it that way," said the reporter. "But this is a big story, and it's happening right in our backyard. Did you see what the TV networks did with the little girl that was trapped in a well out in Omaha last month? They kept the whole nation glued to their TV sets for three days. Can you imagine what they'll do when they have six kids trapped in a cave?"
"Yeah! I can imagine!" said Mortimer.
"Well? Do I get to talk to the kids?"
Henry shrugged.
"Say, what is this?" said the reporter truculently. "Are you in charge here?"
"No, I'm not in charge," said Henry, "but it's my intercom set."
"Oh! I get it!" The reporter reached for his wallet. "How would five bucks do?"
"You just said the magic word," said Freddy Muldoon.
"I don't want your money, mister," said Henry, pushing his hand in Freddy's face. "Wait until the TV crew gets here and we'll let everybody talk to them at the same time."
The reporter threw his hands in the air and turned away. Then a thought struck him, and he pulled the photographer to one side. In a voice loud enough for everyone to hear he said, "What do you bet there aren't any kids down in that cave at all? You know, it's just possible these kids framed the whole thing."
"Hey, that's right!" said the photographer.
"We don't know there's anybody down there. Say! That'd make a pretty good story too."
Jeff stepped over to Henry. "I think maybe we'd better let 'em talk to Harmon."
"OK!" said Henry. "I guess we'd better."
He managed to get Harmon to answer on the intercom after some trouble, and the reporter talked with him. Harmon said he was fine and gave him the names of the other five members of his gang that were with him. He woke up Stony Martin and had him talk to the reporter too. The photographer held the microphone of a tape recorder to the speaker while they were talking and taped the whole conversation.
New Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club Page 5