The Blue Ghost Mystery: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story Page 8

  CHAPTER VIII

  Plan of Attack

  Rick awoke to the sound of wind, a sign that the storm travelingnorthward from the middle south was approaching. He groaned. If thestorm arrived before nightfall, the annual Sons of the Dominion affairwould be postponed.

  After yesterday's events he had decided to drop the idea of spreadingthe word that he and Scotty were ghost watching, in the hope the ghostwould appear for just the two of them. His new plan wasn't completelyworked out, but it would be before long.

  Scotty grinned at him from the other bed. "No night alarms last night.Guess the ghost couldn't find anyone to play with."

  "Maybe tonight," Rick replied. "Come on, sack hound. Rise and shine. Wehave things to do."

  Scotty glanced through the window at the sky. "We'd better do 'em quick,then. Barring a shift in the weather system, we're due for some finesqualls."

  After an excellent breakfast of pancakes and genuine pepper-curedVirginia ham, Rick borrowed an empty jar from Mrs. Miller, checked allthe flashlights available, and explained to the Millers the purpose ofthe trip.

  "I'm going to get a sample of the water from the pool and try to see ifthere's anything strange about it, then I thought we'd take a closerlook at the mine to see if we can trace that water pipe. It stillworries me."

  To his surprise, Barby and Jan hurriedly finished their breakfasts andannounced they were going, too.

  "You're going into that mine," Barby explained. "We're going to bewaiting outside, and if you're not out within ten minutes, we're goingto come home for help."

  Rick was touched. Both girls believed in the ghost, Barby more than Jan,while he and Scotty were convinced that it was man-made in some way theydidn't yet understand. It took courage for the girls to accompany them,even if they only planned to wait at the mine entrance.

  "Okay," he agreed. "Let's go."

  Dr. Miller offered, "Take the car. I don't like the looks of the weatherand there's no point in your getting caught in the rain."

  Rick accepted and in a moment the four young people were on their way.He saw that the sky was filled with haze, with only a glimpse now andthen through the haze of flying scud. Something was on the way, allright.

  "It's a tropical storm," Jan explained. "The morning weather report fromWashington said it would strike northern Virginia this morning."

  "And not long from now," Scotty commented.

  By the time Rick had collected his first sample, a jarful of water fromthe pool mixed with a scraping of algae from the bottom, there was anominous line of black clouds on the horizon.

  He hurried to the embankment where Scotty had found the cement bags, hispal close behind him. The girls had waited in the car.

  To his surprise there were no bags. Raw earth showed where they had beendug up.

  "What do you make of that?" he asked.

  Scotty shook his head. "I don't know. The Frostola man must have takenthem, but I can't imagine why. Come on. Let's get out of here. This isno time to stand around wondering. That storm is close!"

  "No mine for us this morning," Rick said. "Wonder if the rain will lastlong enough to cancel out the Sons of the Old Dominion, or whether we'lljust have some thundershowers?"

  "Time will tell. Let's go."

  They beat the storm to the house by minutes. It arrived with a rattle ofwindows and the flash of lightning, followed by thunder thatreverberated among the mountains endlessly. The rain came in blindingsheets, covering the windows with a steady flow of water that blockedall vision.

  Rick set up his microscope on the kitchen table and plugged in thesubstage illumination. Then, while the others watched, he selected awell slide, took his pipette, and captured a drop from the jar of poolwater. The drop went into the well slide. He put on a cover glass, thenapplied his eye to the ocular.

  After a moment of focusing and shifting the well slide, the drop ofwater suddenly turned to a strange aquarium populated by fantasticanimals. He watched, counting the species aloud. "Lots of paramecia. AVolvox. Two Stephanoceros. One hydra. Not bad for a single drop. Want tolook, anyone?"

  Everyone did. Rick waited while the girls exclaimed over the microscopiccreatures, and Mrs. Miller remarked to her scientist husband, "And wedrink that water?"

  Dr. Miller smiled. "No, dear. We drink the water from the pipe. Thissample came from the pool."

  "But if the animals are in the pool, they must have come from thespring!"

  The scientist shook his head. "The spring water is pure. It probably hasa lower bacteria count than our well. But the pool water is exposed tothe air, and provides an excellent breeding place. Most of these animalspropagate from spores, which are in the air."

  Rick added, "That's right, Mrs. Miller. When I want a culture I just putsome water with a little broth in it out in the open for a day or so,then put it out of direct sunlight. Within seventy-two hours I have abigger mob of animals than this in every drop."

  "Then the Blue Ghost didn't hurt the water of the pool?" Scotty asked.

  "Can't tell," Rick explained. "There was no permanent harm done by anychemicals. We can say that much. But you can get a collection like thisin three days, and it's been that long since the ghost appeared. Sothese animals would be in the pool by now, even if the Blue Ghost haddone something to adulterate the pool temporarily."

  The storm punctuated his remarks with a gust of wind that rattled thewindows.

  "It's getting worse," Mrs. Miller exclaimed. "I do hope that it doesn'tdamage the little apples on the trees. They're so good. We're planningto have bushels shipped to Spindrift when they ripen."

  Jan Miller brought them back to the subject. "How could chemicals beharmless to the little animals, Rick?"

  "Chemicals might kill off those in the pool, but the constant droppingof spring water would soon dilute the solution. Or, some chemicals wouldcombine with the oxygen in the water to form harmless salts. I can't besure, of course. I'm just trying to think of ways the ghost might beproduced."

  Barby sniffed. "You're a long way from an answer, I'd say. Even if yourold chemicals could make the white mist, they couldn't make the BlueGhost appear and go through the business of getting shot!"

  "Too true, Sis. I'm not claiming a thing. So far we have only somepretty wild speculation, plus an interesting ice-cream man, an offer tobuy part of this property, and some missing cement bags. Old ones, too."

  Barby had to smile. "If you can tie all those things together into aghost, I'll type up your science project for free, and as many copies asyou need!"

  Rick grinned. "And if I don't?"

  "I won't be surprised, but you can get me a new record album."

  "Done. You've got a bargain." Rick turned to Dr. Miller. "There's onebit of information your tenant farmer, Mr. Belsely, can get for us thatnone of the rest of us can get. That is, do the real-estate agent andthe ice-cream man know each other, and in particular, are they friendly?He could ask around town without causing suspicion."

  "I'll ask him right now," Dr. Miller replied. He went to the telephonein the big farm kitchen and dialed. After a moment he said, "Clara?...Is Tim there?" He waited, then said, "Tim, I have a little job foryou.... No, not that. Just asking a casual question around town....Tim.... Hello ..." He hung up and turned to the others. "The phone wentdead."

  Rick saw that his substage illumination was out, too. "So did theelectricity."

  Dr. Miller frowned. "It's unusual for both the phone and current to goout at once. That must mean a tree is down across the lines. Both linescross the creek within a few feet about half a mile upstream."

  There was nothing for it but to wait the storm out.

  Rick and Dr. Miller resumed their chess tournament. Scotty spent thetime making an improvised game of Yoot, an ancient Korean game that canbe played almost anywhere, under nearly any circumstances. At itssimplest, the Yoot board can be scratched in the dirt with a stick, andthe Yoot throwing sticks that take the place of dice--or a spinningarrow--in similar Western games can be cut
from a twig. Scotty sketchedthe board on a piece of cardboard from a box in which groceries had beencarried and made the throwing sticks by splitting a piece of cane froman ancient cane chair in the woodshed. Checkers were used as counters,where in the outdoors pebbles would have served.

  "It's like parcheesi," Scotty explained to the girls. "You try to beatyour opponent around the spaces on the board. The four sticks get throwninto the air, and you can move one space for every stick that lands flatside up. If all four land flat side up, that's a 'yoot' and you getanother throw on top of the four moves. You start, Barby, and I'll showyou the other rules as we go along."

  At lunchtime Mrs. Miller broiled hamburgers on the charcoal grill out inthe woodshed, which connected to the kitchen. Then she used the glowingcoals to make coffee in the old-fashioned way, putting the groundsdirectly into the pan of boiling water. Since the family coffeepot wasan electric percolator, this was the only means she had.

  Rick would have enjoyed it thoroughly were it not for his impatience toput his plan for catching the ghost into operation. It was certain bynow that the affair at the picnic grounds was called off, but with radioand TV silent, there was no way of checking.

  The storm continued through the afternoon and into the evening. Dinnerwas broiled steak, with a tossed salad. If the storm continued for aweek, Rick told the group, they'd all get as fat as Collins from Mrs.Miller's charcoal cooking.

  Over coffee he outlined the plan that had been stirring in his mind.

  "We don't know the motive for the ghost's appearance yet. We don't knowhow he appears, either. But unless I'm way off, the Frostola man hassomething to do with it."

  "I don't see how you can say that," Barby objected.

  "It's an assumption," Rick admitted. "But what else have we butassumptions? We assume the ghost is man-made. All right. Who's the man?I give you Frostola, the product that produces ghosts.

  "Seriously, we have to make some assumptions about our chase of theghost. If it was a man, it was a tall one with some kind of lightedthing on his head. That wouldn't be hard to rig. Plastic comes in allshapes and sizes and colors, these days, including human heads that areused in store windows. It would be a cinch to rig up a flashlight bulband battery inside one. Wouldn't take me five minutes if I had a littlewire and a soldering iron."

  "That's true," Dr. Miller agreed. "Making the Blue Ghost the boys chasedwould be absurdly easy."

  "But leading us on took someone who was a good runner," Rick continued."He also had to know his way around."

  Jan Miller pointed out, "But he floated right over the quarry and youfell in."

  "It wasn't like that," Scotty corrected. "We stopped because the ghosthad vanished. It's not hard to see why. He switched off the light,walked around the edge of the quarry, then switched on again."

  "That has to be it," Rick agreed. "Now, why try to lead us on like that?It was only an accident that Scotty and I didn't go in together, becausehis shoe needed tying. Otherwise, we'd both have been at the bottom ofthe quarry."

  Dr. Miller shook his head, in bewilderment, not in negation. "You mightvery well have been hurt seriously or even killed. In which case peoplewould have blamed the ghost. But why did the ghost do such a thing?"

  Rick had wondered about this, too. "I can think of only one reason. Theghost can't stand investigation. He knew we were a menace because Scottyand I ran right up and tried to catch him that first night."

  "But why did he tamper with your plane, or try to?" the scientist asked."He couldn't have known about the alarm. You checked the plane, didn'tyou?"

  "Yes. It wasn't touched, so far as we could see. Anyway, no harm wasdone. I can't imagine why he went for the plane, though, unless hefigured on sabotaging us that way."

  "You still haven't told us why you suspect the Frostola man," Barbypointed out.

  Rick ticked off the points on his fingers. "He's new. He arrived just asthe ghost started making appearances. But he's not so new that he hasn'thad time to study the area or to make plans to lead nosy people to thequarry. He was at the picnic ground when there was no chance of sellingmuch ice cream. He took the cement bags; we don't know why. He's talland lean, so he could run fast enough to keep ahead of Scotty and me.He's also tall enough to qualify for the ghost we chased."

  He stopped and took a deep breath. "And one more thing. He carriessomething that would make a marvelous mist for a ghost to appear in.Something that might harm the microscopic animals in the pooltemporarily--although I'm not sure of this--but would be gone with themist."

  The others stared at him with complete interest.

  Dr. Miller said softly, "Of course! Rick, that's brilliant. It fitsperfectly!"

  Jan Miller wailed, "What does?"

  "Dry ice," Rick said.