Chapter 17 The Invisible Intruder by Carolyn Keene
Phantom Prisoners
AT Nancy’s outcry everyone jumped up. They were horrified to see a mean-looking burn on her arm.
“The rocket hit you?” Ned asked.
“Yes.”
Nancy was already moving toward the door into the lobby. Bess, George, and Ned were at her heels.
“I wonder if there’s a doctor staying here,” George said. She hurried to ask the desk clerk.
“A doctor is a guest. I’ll call him downstairs from his room,” the clerk said.
After examining Nancy’s arm, the physician said, “This is a nasty burn, but you’re lucky it isn’t any deeper. There will be no permanent scar. Please come to my room and I’ll treat it.”
Nancy and her friends were relieved to hear this. Bess and George went with her and waited while the doctor gave first aid to soothe the pain.
“How did you get burned?” the physician asked. “I heard whistling noises and a slight boom out front. My room’s in the rear.”
“The noises were fireworks,” George replied. “But besides that, several flaming rockets came whizzing our way. It’s certainly a miracle no one else was hit.”
Bess was angry. “Nobody should have been hit. The whole thing’s outrageous.”
Nancy thanked the doctor and the girls left. She turned to the cousins and asked, “Where did Ned go?”
George said he had joined the other boys to search for the person who had launched the rockets. As soon as the girls reached the first floor, Nancy insisted upon going outside again to see what the boys had found out.
“Don’t you think you should go to bed?” Bess asked her.
“Not yet,” Nancy answered. “We came here to solve a mystery.” She smiled wanly. “I wouldn’t want to be left out of it.”
By the time they reached the stone parapet, the men in the ghost hunters’ group were returning. They had nothing to report.
“We searched pretty thoroughly,” said Jim. “Not a clue to anyone hiding, either. Nancy, how are you feeling?”
“All right,” she said. “I’m wondering if perhaps there’s a clearing somewhere in the woods where a machine was set up to launch the fireworks and the rockets.”
“We’ll look further,” Bill offered. “Those rockets didn’t come from the direction of the road, so we know they weren’t launched from a truck.”
It was decided that Nancy’s group would investigate the dungeons the following morning, while the other ghost hunters searched outdoors for evidence of the mischief-maker.
Everyone was up early and the hunt started directly after breakfast. Mr. Warfield was busy, so Nancy and her friends took flashlights and went alone.
The former prison for captured soldiers was large. There was a long corridor, lined with one dungeon after another, all with stone floors.
“What an awful way to treat prisoners!” Bess exclaimed. “There’s not a window in the place and no lights. Do you suppose those poor men weren’t allowed to read or write?”
Ned said probably not. “I guess all they could do was talk to one another.”
George remarked, “I wonder if any of them ever escaped.”
“Probably,” Burt answered. “Sometimes prisoners dig tunnels in order to escape. But up here I guess you’d have to go through solid rock to make a passage. That would take forever by hand.”
“And the men wouldn’t have had any tools.”
The ghost hunters came to a dungeon which was larger than the others and they surmised that several prisoners, perhaps as many as twenty, had been kept in it.
“I think I’ll take a look inside,” Dave remarked and unlocked the door.
He and Bess walked around the cell, beaming their flashlights. Bess was particularly intrigued by the fact that two of the walls were of natural stone. The third was man-made and the barred front had been riveted into the stonework.
While Bess’s back was turned to the corridor, a mischievous twinkle came into Dave’s eyes. He tiptoed across the room, went outside, and silently closed and locked the door. Quickly he scooted down the corridor and joined the rest of the group.
A few seconds later Bess said, “We’d better go now, Dave, and catch up to the others.”
When there was no response she turned and was amazed to find that Dave was not in sight. Quickly Bess went to the door. To her chagrin it would not open!
For several seconds Bess was furious. She vowed all sorts of things to punish Dave for the prank. Then the anger went out of her face and she smiled.
“The best lesson I can give him is to play it cool,” she said to herself.
Bess decided that to while away the time until the others came back, she would do some more investigating. The only piece of furniture was a solid block of wood, probably used as a bench. She looked to see if there were a lid but found none.
“Maybe something is hidden under it,” Bess told herself.
It was with great difficulty that she was able to move the bench. In the stone floor where it had stood was a large square piece of wood.
“I wonder what this is for. Maybe there’s a well under here,” Bess thought.
She tried to pry up the piece of wood with her fingers, but it was either stuck or too heavy. She could not budge it.
Bess smiled. “My jailer’s going to get a big surprise that I found something he missed.”
At that moment her friends returned. Dave stayed in the background, wondering what punishment Bess had in store for him.
To his astonishment she said, “Dave Evans, you did the ghost hunters a great favor. Unlock the door and I’ll show you something exciting.”
They all entered the cell and stared at the wood square in the floor.
“I’ll bet it leads to a secret subterranean passage,” George said.
“In any case, let’s lift it out if we can,” Nancy suggested.
They all crowded around as the three boys tried to raise the wooden piece. Presently it gave a little. They pried harder. Suddenly the wood came loose. Then boom! There was an explosion from underneath.
It knocked the ghost hunters off their feet. They lay sprawled on the floor, all of them in a state of shock.
Nancy was the first to regain her senses and realized she had sustained a few bruises and her burned arm hurt.
Concerned about the others, she asked if they had suffered any injuries. Fortunately no one had been harmed by the explosion, although all expected that some black-and-blue marks would show up later.
“I don’t want any more frights like that,” George declared.
As they all stood up and gazed below, the ghost hunters wondered when the explosive device had been rigged and why. There was no question but that it had been a homemade bomb, but luckily it had not caused much damage.
Ned shone his light below. There were steps cut out of the solid rock. He descended them and announced that he was in a short tunnel.
“There’s a wooden door at the end of it. I wonder if this was used as a secret entrance and exit,” he said.
Nancy wanted to investigate but the others objected. “You’ve been banged up enough,” George declared. “We’ll come back later.”
Reluctantly Nancy agreed. “But make it soon so we can find out where that door leads. I believe this was an escape route.”
“You mean prisoners dug this?” Bess asked.
“Perhaps. Or it might have been put here when the fortress was built. In time of attack, the officers and guards could get away.”
“Yes,” Ned said. “Probably a few clever prisoners found out about this tunnel and managed to get away. In order not to be shot if they were seen, they draped themselves in some kind of white garment or piece of cloth so that they looked like phantoms.”
“Pretty neat trick.” Dave chuckled. “And now somebody who knows the story has been reenacting it for the benefit of guests at the inn.”
“And planted the bomb to keep people out,” Burt put in.
For the time being, the block of wood was put into place and the heavy bench placed over it. When Nancy reached the lobby, she told Mr. Hesse, the owner of the inn, what had happened. He was amazed and at a loss to explain the bomb.
“In fact, I knew nothing about the wooden block and the tunnel. I’ll notify the police. While they’re on the way, let’s go down there.”
When they reached the special dungeon, Mr. Hesse was astounded when he saw the opening to the secret tunnel.
The explosion knocked the ghost hunters off their feet
“I’ll go down first,” he said. “You’ve already had two accidents. I try not to be superstitious, but it does seem as if things come in threes. Please be careful.”
Along the walls of the short passageway the searchers found a row of seashells. They were very beautiful. The ghost hunters wondered if by any chance they belonged to Madame Tarantella. Nancy picked up several of them but could not find any initials or other evidence to show who the owner was.
Nancy noticed that the shells were all highly polished and had very little dust on them. She concluded that they had been hidden there fairly recently. “It’s probably a stolen collection,” the young sleuth thought.
After a struggle the boys managed to open the wooden door at the end of the tunnel. It led into the hillside but at such an angle that it could hardly be detected from above or below.
“But at least one person knows it’s here,” Nancy thought. “And we may find out he’s Wilbur Prizer!”
The door was closed and the investigators went back upstairs. The other ghost hunters had just returned. Unfortunately they had learned little.
“In a small clearing in the woods, we found a burnt-out fireworks display and some rocket shells, but that’s all,” Don Hackett reported.
When Rita heard Ned’s theory about the escaping soldiers playing ghost, she looked disappointed. “You and Nancy always manage to take the supernatural out of everything,” she complained.
“What do you mean?” Bill asked. “Everything in this world is supernatural.”