Cherry Ames 21 Island Nurse (14 page)

NURSE

hand along the inside wall near the door, Cherry found an electric switch and the place was at once fi lled with a pale light.

As soon as she crossed the threshold, she felt as if she had entered the long-ago past. The only modern note in the place was the electric light. Otherwise, the room looked as though it had been lifted out of an ancient castle. Three of the walls of the large, square room were paneled with oak. A stone fi replace almost fi lled the fourth wall and over the mantel carved in the stone were the crest of the Barclays and the legend:

“All nature hath a tongue. E’en the stones do speak if ye have ears to hear.”

There were chairs with high backs, armchairs of wood and leather fl anking the hearth, tables of dark wood, and shelves fi lled with books. A cupboard was set into one wall, and an enormous desk, scarred and stained, had a long, high top composed of little square drawers like a spice cabinet or the shelves of an old apothecary shop.

There were endless objects for her to admire as she walked about: bronze busts of Socrates and several early Greek philosophers—Thales, Heraclitus, Democritus—

with badly tarnished name plates. There was a little statue of a rugged horse whose name plate read: “Sawny Bean, our Galloway nag.”

But most amazing of all were the rocks. Scattered everywhere about on the surfaces of tables, tops of shelves, the deep sills of the tall windows were rocks of all shapes, sizes, and colors.

THE

STORM

131

Cherry turned her attention to the fi replace. In the huge cavern was a tiny little furnace and oven, such as an earlier chemist might have used for melting metals and other chemical “cooking.” The fl agstone hearth was discolored and roughened from his experiments.

Poking about among the many fascinating objects, Cherry had almost forgotten why she was up in the tower. She had to have some method of search if she expected to fi nd whether or not the secret journal was there.

“I’ll start with the desk,” she thought, “and work my way around the room.”

On the table silver candelabra, now tarnished black, held tall, dusty candles. The chandelier overhead was the only electric light apparently, and from the high ceiling its glow was too faint to work by. She got out her matches and started to walk to the table to light the candelabra when the electric lights began to fl icker and then went out. The lines were down or there had been a failure at the power plant. In any event, Norah’s warning had been timely and Cherry was grateful to have plenty of matches and candles.

For a moment she was in complete darkness. Not even a fl ash of lightning etched the blackness of the tower room. The storm outside raged boisterously, but in a momentary lull, she heard the whispering shuffl e of footsteps on the stairs.

There was something odd about the steps that made her think they belonged to neither Meg nor Lloyd.

The person on the spiral stairway, climbing up, would 132
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AMES,

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appear at any minute. She became icy cold with unreasonable fear.

Her eye caught a glimmer of light outside the door.

“Who’s there?” Cherry demanded sharply.

Suddenly a small, dark fi gure in seaman’s oilskins, with a fl ickering candle held high in one hand, stood in the doorway. Wet glistened on his black slicker and his sou’wester. In his other hand, he carried a bundle wrapped in tarpaulin.

“Who are you?” Cherry asked, with a breath of relief.

“It’s only me, Tammie,” replied the boy. “Tammie Cameron.”

c h a p t e r x i i

The Secret in the Tower

the lustrous gleam of the candles, which cherry had lighted in the candelabra, brightened the room.

Tammie placidly took off his sou’wester and slicker after shaking the water off on the hearth. Then he deposited them, together with his tarpaulin-wrapped bundle, on the deep windowsill nearest him. With a plop he sank into one of the armchairs near the hearth, brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes, and regarded Cherry gravely.

“Ye are Miss Ames, Sir Ian’s nurse,” he said after a minute.

Cherry had a good look now at the boy who had entered the tower room so calmly and made himself quite at home. He was the most self-possessed young person she had seen in a long time. She saw that he was a scrawny, towheaded boy of ten or eleven with a 133

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wind-burned face. He had a quaint, old-fashioned air about him that reminded her of a wise, little old man.

“How did you get here in the storm and at this time of night?” asked Cherry.

“I hid in the greenhouse fi rst,” he began. “Then I hid on the kitchen stoop until everything was quiet. Then I sneaked into the house and up the stairs and through the iron door at the end of the hall, the way Miss Meg used to take some of us boys and girls to the tower.

Then I went down and unlocked the outside door so my grandda can get in. And then I came up here to wait for my grandda. I brought some victuals in case he was hungry.” Tammie pointed to the bundle on the windowsill.

“You mean your grandfather, Mr. Jock Cameron, is coming here to the tower?” cried Cherry. “What is he coming here
for
?”

“To give me a message for my grandma,” answered Tammie.

Cherry went over to the armchair on the other side of the hearth and sat down. “Look, Tammie,” she said.

“Let’s begin at the beginning. Tell me what this is all about.”

“I dinna know if I should,” replied Tammie. “Grandda made it plain I was to keep my tongue quiet and slip up to the tower without being seen.”

“But I’ve seen you,” Cherry pointed out. “Furthermore, when I was in St. John’s today, I saw your grandfather go aboard Mr. Joseph Tweed’s fi shing boat, the
Heron
.”

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135

Tammie’s eyes dropped while he considered this.

Then, giving her a sidelong glance from beneath lowered lids, he said with a sigh, “Ye must know then about the Bad Ones.”

Cherry shook her head. “No, I don’t know about the Bad Ones. Suppose you tell me.”

“Ah, weel”—Tammie heaved a sigh, his shoulders slumped dejectedly—“ye may as well know. The Bad Ones are Mr. Tweed, the one they call Little Joe, and the captain and crew of the
Heron
. They are smuggling something out of the Old Mine, and taking it out through Rogues’ Cave. Grandda has been trying to fi nd out what it is.”

“Does your grandfather have any idea what it might be?” asked Cherry.

“All Grandda said was ‘Tammie, ’tis a valuable thing whatever it is,’ ” replied the boy. “Grandda tried many ways to fi nd out. He went fi shing so he could watch the
Heron
to see if a boat brought anything from Rogues’

Cave to load on board. But the loading must have been done at night, Grandda said, because he saw a boat only once during the daytime loading heavy sacks aboard the
Heron
. Grandda even stayed sometimes in the hidey-hole in Rogues’ Cave to try to catch the Bad Ones red-handed.”

“The hidey-hole in Rogues’ Cave!” exclaimed Cherry.

“Does your grandfather know about that?”

“Ay,” Tammie nodded. “ ’Tis a secret my great-grandda shared with the Old Sir Ian. And my great-grandda told the secret to my grandda.”

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“And your grandfather still hasn’t found out what is being smuggled?” asked Cherry.

Tammie thought a moment. “I
think
he knows,” the boy said slowly. “But I dinna think he knows for
sure
.

To try to make sure, Grandda went to St. John’s to stow away on the
Heron
.”

“So that’s why your grandfather went aboard the
Heron
,” Cherry said. “He was a stowaway. Then he must have known somehow that the
Heron
was coming to Balfour Island.”

Tammie nodded. “Ay. Grandda had found out that Little Joe and the captain and crew of the
Heron
were all coming to the island tonight.”

“And your grandfather told you to come to the tower to wait for him, is that right, Tammie?” The boy nodded again. “Ay,” he said.

“But if he stowed away, how was your grandfather going to get ashore? And how in the world can he get ashore in this storm?” Cherry asked.

“We will just have to wait, I guess, for Grandda to answer that,” Tammie said. He sloughed off his black rubber boots and wriggled back into the chair.

Cherry wisely let Tammie alone. Whatever else he might recall, he would tell in his own good time.

In the meantime, it was best to go ahead with her search for the secret journal. After all, that was what she had come up here for. Besides, the search would be sure to arouse Tammie’s curiosity. And she hoped to enlist his help. A boy had hidden the journal and who would be more likely to think of hiding places than another boy?

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Although the tower room was seldom used nowadays, as Meg had once told her, the maids swept and dusted it once or twice a year. And there were candles in holders placed conveniently about. Cherry lighted the one on the desk and began to look through the little drawers, which resembled so much an oversize spice cabinet. Each drawer had rocks and minerals in it, she discovered. On these were splotches of white paint on which were lettered “salt crystals,” “lead sulfi de,” “car-bon,” “pitchblende,” and so on. Then there were drawers with what Cherry recognized as man-made, rather boy-made she supposed, nuggets, cubes, pellets, thin sheets, and disks. On each of these was a dab of white paint and a symbol, such as Fe, Cu, Ag, Sn, Pb, Au, and so on.

There were, she estimated, between twenty and twenty-fi ve different symbols used, although there were many more pieces. There was, for instance, a drawer full of various size pieces labeled “Fe.” These were covered with a reddish dust or coat that rubbed off on her hands.

“Looks just like rust,” Cherry remarked aloud.

“It is,” a voice said in her ear. “Iron will rust away if ye don’t paint it.”

There was Tammie beside her, watching interestedly.

“How do you know this is iron?” she asked, holding up one of the pieces.

“Because I know iron when I see it,” he answered.

“Besides it says so on the label.” He touched the painted spot with a fi nger. “Fe. That’s short for
ferrum
, iron.” Tammie pronounced the Latin word with a strong burr of the r’s.

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“Then you must know what all these other letters on the rocks and minerals mean,” Cherry said.

“Maybe not all for sure,” he said modestly. “But almost all. My da and my grandda taught me.” Touch-ing the labels, he recited, “Cu, that’s copper. Pb, lead.

Sn, tin. This little piece with Au, that’s gold.”

“You really do know,” Cherry commented. “Do you live here on the island with your mother and father?” she asked, by way of starting a conversation.

“No, ma’am. My da is a metallurgist. He works for the Canadian government,” he said proudly. “He and my mother are up in Labrador. I am staying with Grandma and Grandda until they get settled.” Tammie walked around to the other side of the desk and began fumbling about in one of the drawers, picking up bits of metals and minerals and examining them. He held up a tiny black disk. “This is silver,” he announced. “See the label says Ag.”

“So that’s silver,” Cherry said, taking the disk and looking at it. “I don’t see any other pieces with Ag on them. But there seems to be quite a lot of iron.”

“Oh, it’s no hard to fi nd iron on Balfour,” said Tammie.

He thought a moment. “Nor yet ore with lead in it. But silver now, that’s another thing. I wonder where he got it.”

“He? Do you mean Old Sir Ian?” asked Cherry.“The father of the Sir Ian we know?”

“The very same,” replied Tammie, nodding. “When some of Grandda’s friends, like Mr. Morgan, come to visit, they sometimes talk about Old Sir Ian and how

THE SECRET IN THE TOWER

139

their fathers always said that he was a clever boy. He called this his laboratory.”

Cherry could feel her excitement mounting, as she asked, “Did you know that Old Sir Ian kept a secret journal?”

Tammie looked at her blankly.

“You know,” she explained, “when Old Sir Ian was a boy, he kept a notebook in which he put down what happened each day. He also wrote down his formulas for testing the rocks and minerals.” Tammie’s face lighted up. “Oh, you mean like a chemistry notebook.”

“Yes, yes,” Cherry said quickly. “That’s right. Do you know about it?”

Tammie considered the question, pursing his lips and frowning in thought. “Ay, ay, I have heard that Old Sir Ian kept a notebook.” He paused, then added brightly, “Are ye searching for it?” Cherry nodded vigorously. “I simply must fi nd it.

Will you help me?”

Tammie was delighted. To hunt for a secret hiding place was fascinating. “If he used a notebook to set down his experiments, it would have to be handy,” the boy suggested.

“But if you didn’t want anyone to know about it and wanted to keep your experiments secret, where would you put it?” urged Cherry.

Tammie grinned up at Cherry, like a conspirator taking her into his confi dence. “I’d keep it handy and hide 140
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it too,” he said. “Because I might have to put it away quickly if anyone came.”

Then he began walking about the fi replace and the desk, sizing everything up as though he were a cat measuring the distance to spring somewhere.

Cherry stood and watched him.

Tammie considered the desk. “Na, not there.” He moved to the cupboard and threw open the doors.

Shelves were fi lled with glass tubes, beakers, mortar and pestle, and other laboratory equipment. “Not this cupboard, either,” he decided.

The fi replace seemed to interest him. The inside he ruled out because the heat from a fi re might ruin a notebook. He eyed the stones above the mantel.