The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn (17 page)

When he was about two-thirds of the way up, Anthony saw something that made him even more frightened than he had been before. All along, he had noticed how rusty the ladder was. It was covered with a reddish-brown crust, and he could feel pieces flaking off under his hands as he gripped the rungs. But now he had reached a point where the ladder had rusted so much that it was almost in two pieces. The parallel iron bars that ran up the sides and held the rungs in place were just pitted shells at this point. He reached out and grasped one of the bars and felt it crumble and crunch under his hand. It was about as solid and reliable as a piece of macaroni. Anthony felt another wave of fear sweep over him. For a second, he was afraid that he was going to throw up. Sweat was pouring down his face, and he had to work very, very hard to keep staring straight ahead of him. He had an idea of what would happen if he glanced down.

On Anthony climbed. Now he was past the rusted-out place. The top part of the ladder seemed more solidly anchored. The bolts that held it to the roof didn’t slide in and out as he climbed. The bars and the rungs seemed more solid, too. Well, here he was up at the top of the roof. He could reach out and put his hand on the big post that held the weather vane in place. And there was the reindeer, its upraised hoof hovering over Anthony’s head. As Anthony watched, a gust of wind hit the reindeer. It shuddered, but it didn’t move. Below the reindeer were four iron bars that stuck out from the post. On the end of each bar was an iron letter. There were four of them, for the four points of the compass: N, E, S, W. When the weather vane was in working order—if it ever had been—the reindeer would have twirled around with the gusts of wind, and the upraised paw would have pointed in the direction that the wind was blowing from. But the reindeer was stuck—stuck, Anthony guessed, because it was off balance. And it was off balance because there was something inside it. If it was the treasure, he wondered how old Winterborn managed to put it in there.

Anthony sighed and looked up. His hands were on the topmost rung of the ladder, but he really wasn’t high enough up to work on the reindeer. Then he had an idea. He could use the bars with the letters on them for handholds. Cautiously, he reached up. His fingers closed around the bar with “E” on its end. When he had a firm grip on the bar, he pulled his body higher. Now he was up under the reindeer. He could bump his head on its underbelly. The bars were chest-high on him now. With his feet on the rung below and one hand on the bar, he reached down and slid the flaps, one by one, out of the front of the belt. But he needed both hands to lead the flaps around behind the post. For an instant or two he would have to balance on his feet.

Anthony stared rigidly ahead. He tried hard not to think of where he was. For an awful second, he teetered on tiptoe, with his chest braced against the iron bar. With trembling hands he led the flaps around behind the iron post and tried to hook them together. He fumbled and bumped the clasps together for what seemed like ages. Then he felt himself losing his balance, so he dropped the flaps and clung to the post for dear life. He closed his eyes and shuddered, and then he began to get the awful feeling that the tower was swaying under him. Finally, the sick, dizzy, swaying feeling began to go away, and he opened his eyes. With a mighty effort of the will, he kept himself from looking down. Once more, he let go of the post, slowly, one hand at a time. Balancing on tiptoe again, he led the flaps once more around behind the post and tried to make them snap together. Click-click. He had done it.

Clinging to the post, Anthony cried from sheer relief. Then, when he had calmed down a bit, he looked up.

In the moonlight, he could see the reindeer quite clearly. He saw the curls of bronze hair on its body, and the cloven hoof of the upraised front paw. The reindeer’s sides were spotted and streaked with pigeon droppings, and the whole figure was covered with that greenish kind of rust that forms on bronze or copper objects when they have been out in the weather for years and years.

Anthony looked closely at the upraised leg. He wanted to see if there was some joint or crack at the place where the leg met the body. There was. Good. But when he reached up and tried to jiggle the leg, he got nowhere. It wouldn’t budge. Did it unscrew, like the lid on a mayonnaise jar? Anthony gripped the hoof firmly and tried to twist. No dice. It wouldn’t move. Sighing, he reached down and started to unbuckle the hacksaw from his belt. It dangled at his side, like a sword. It took a good deal of fiddling to undo the clasp with one hand, but he managed. Now he had the hacksaw in his hand. Getting as firm a grip as he could on the crossbar with his left hand, he reached up with his right hand and started to saw.

But Anthony’s hands were slippery with sweat, and he was attacking the reindeer at a bad angle, from underneath. And he was using the arm he had broken to wield the hacksaw; it hadn’t set quite right, and it didn’t always behave properly. Anthony hadn’t made more than two or three swipes with the saw when it slipped from his grasp. It sailed up over the leg and fell onto the slates of the roof. Anthony heard it slide down, clatter, clatter, clatter, all the way to the bottom.

Anthony felt helpless. Totally and utterly helpless. He had failed. Hugo Philpotts would get mad now, and who knew what he would do?

But then Anthony remembered that he still had the hammer with him. He might be able to bang on the leg till it dropped off and get the treasure out that way. With one hand still clenched firmly on the bar, he reached down and eased the hammer up out of the loop on his belt. He shifted the heavy implement around in his hand until he had a good tight grip on it. And then he started to pound at the leg.

Blong! Blong!

Anthony’s mouth dropped open, and he stopped pounding. He was startled by the sound he had made. Since the deer was made of bronze, it rang like an alarm bell when it was hit.

An alarm bell! People would hear it for miles around!

Anthony grinned. A wonderful idea had occurred to him. He was sick of playing errand boy for Hugo Philpotts. What if he did get mad? It wouldn’t matter—Anthony knew what he had to do.

He hauled off and struck the leg of the deer again. And again and again and again.
Blong! Blong! Blong! Blong!

“Stop it! Stop it! What are you doing, you little fool? Stop!” It was Hugo Philpotts calling. He was standing at the bottom of the ladder and staring up in astonishment and horror.

Anthony paid no attention. He went on pounding. The reindeer rattled and rang, sending its loud, high- pitched bell-sound out across the night.

CHAPTER 16

Although his arm was getting tired, Anthony kept on pounding. He was flailing away with a maniacal fury now, and the blows of the hammer were hitting all over the reindeer, not just on the leg. He banged on the deer’s bronze underbelly, on its sides, and even on its neck. When he hit the reindeer’s belly, the sound was very loud and bell-like. Over and over the hammer rose and fell.

“You fool! You fool! Stop, for God’s sake!” Hugo Philpotts had climbed halfway up the ladder. He was bellowing at Anthony with one hand cupped to his mouth. But it was no use. With the noise he was making, Anthony could hardly have heard him even if he had wanted to. But now, over the clanging and banging rose a louder noise. A siren. Fire trucks were coming.

Anthony stopped pounding and started to cheer. “It worked!” he yelled. “My alarm bell worked!” People were coming. They would save Miss Eells. They would discover Hugo Philpotts. Everything would be all right.

A small crowd was beginning to gather on the lawn below. Anthony didn’t know it, but the flood crisis was over. People were beginning to pour back into town. The men who had been manning the sandbag wall had heard the bell and had figured the library was on fire. So had the firemen in the firehouse on Eddy Street. They hadn’t stopped to consider whether or not there was a bell in the library tower. They had simply piled into their trucks, and now they were on their way. In fact, they were almost there.

Anthony went on bashing the reindeer with his hammer. Hugo Philpotts was hanging below on the ladder, trying to decide what to do. But then—quite suddenly—the decision was made for him. With a terrific groaning and shrieking of metal, the part of the ladder he was hanging on began to pull loose from the roof. Bolts popped and snapped. The ladder broke in two at the very rusty point that Anthony had noticed, and the section that Hugo was clinging to leaned lazily over sideways. It groaned and creaked and bent, and for a horrible instant, Hugo thought that it would break off entirely and throw him to the ground four stories below. But it didn’t. It just stopped in its bent-over position. And there he was, hanging between earth and sky—Hugo Philpotts, first vice-president of the First National Bank of Hoosac, in sneakers and jeans, in the middle of the night, with people staring at him from below! Down on the ground, with a roaring of motors and a piercing wail of sirens, fire trucks were pulling up on the gravel drive in front of the library.

Meanwhile, at the top of the tower, Anthony swayed on his dizzy perch. His section of the ladder—the top part—had held firm. The rung he had been standing on was still under his feet, and the safety belt was still hooked around the stout post that the weather vane was mounted on.

“Help! Help! For God’s sake, somebody help me!”

Anthony heard the yelling and looked down. He saw the bent-over section of the ladder hanging out in space, with Hugo Philpotts clinging to it for dear life. The shock of this incredible sight made Anthony hold on tighter to the weather vane. Then he looked back up at the reindeer. Its leg and underbelly were scarred where the hammer had hit. There were bright golden scratches on the corroded green surface. And now Anthony noticed something that he hadn’t noticed before: On the upraised leg of the reindeer, up near the place where the leg joined the body, was a button. It had been cleverly made to look like a little curl of hair, but it was a button, like the button on a doorbell. With his wild, aimless bashing, Anthony had knocked some of the green crud off the area around it, and now it lay exposed quite clearly.

Anthony hefted the hammer in his hand. He got a firm grip, raised the hammer, and struck the button a single sharp blow.
Sproing!
A powerful spring inside the reindeer uncoiled, and the leg, moving on a concealed hinge, swung open like a door. When this happened, something else happened, too—a package slid out of the hole in the reindeer’s body. It slid right out into Anthony’s arms.

With a startled gasp, Anthony dropped the hammer and grabbed the package. With his free hand, he clutched it tightly to his side. The package was about the size of a small loaf of bread, and it was wrapped in gray cloth and tied up in cord. A gust of wind hit Anthony, and he teetered on his perch. It was hard to hang on with one hand, but he managed it, and the safety belt helped. A wave of dizziness passed over him again. He was scared to death, but he also felt very happy. He was sure that this was the treasure, here, clasped to his side. All he had to do now was hang on till somebody rescued him.

From below came the shouts of firemen. Men were giving orders, pulling out hoses, cranking up ladders. One truck had a huge spotlight on it, and the spotlight was rotated till it shone over Hugo Philpotts and Anthony. Now the long ladder on the hook-and-ladder truck swung around on its swivel. It rose up, and with a loud clattering and clicking of gears, it started to make itself longer. Up the long ladder rose, up, up, up the side of the tall stone tower. Now the tip of the ladder had reached the base of the tower roof, and it was up even with Hugo. Its tip tapped the shingles near him. A fireman in a shiny black helmet started to climb. It didn’t take him long to reach Hugo. Carefully, gently, the fireman helped the frightened man climb down off the swaying, rusty ladder and onto the fire truck’s ladder. Then down they went, the fireman and Hugo, slowly, one rung at a time.

A couple of newsmen with flash cameras had arrived on the scene in a car. Flash bulbs popped. A loud, raucous cheer went up from the crowd. Many of them recognized Hugo.

“Who is it, anyway?” somebody yelled.

“Hey, it’s Philpotts, the guy down at the bank!”

“What the heck was he doing up there?”

“I dunno. Checkin’ up on the weather, maybe. Yay, Hugo! Let’s give him three cheers.”

Everybody yelled and laughed and hooted. Three more loud, raucous cheers went up. Hugo Philpotts, stony-faced and shivering, was helped down off the truck. He stood on the ground with a blanket over his shoulders.

Up above, Anthony still hung on. His left hand, the hand on the bar, was getting numb, but he stubbornly clung to his prize with his other hand. He would rather have died than let it go. Grimly, he stared straight ahead at the post of the weather vane. He didn’t dare look down again.

Now the ladder was rising higher. Click, grind, rattle-rattle! Now it was just under his feet. The fireman was climbing again. When he got to the top, the fireman started talking gently to Anthony. He told him to throw down whatever he was holding and take his hand. But Anthony wouldn’t drop the parcel. Finally, the fireman persuaded him to let him put it in the pocket of his coat—the fireman’s big shiny rubber coat had a deep pocket in the side of it, and the package slid in easily. Next, the fireman told Anthony to undo the clasps on the safety belt. With both hands free, this wasn’t such a difficult job. After a little fumbling, Anthony got the snaps unsnapped. All the while he was working at the snaps, the fireman’s big strong hands were around his waist. He wasn’t going to let Anthony fall.