Mandie Collection, The: 4 (60 page)

“Yes, I believe it is, too,” Celia agreed.

Mandie quickly scooped out the rest of the straw, but there was nothing else inside. She stood up and surveyed the stacks of boxes.

“Do y’all think we could open the rest of the boxes? They might contain more paintings,” Mandie said as she walked around the boxes.

“But you know we found rocks before,” Jonathan reminded her.

“I know but I’d guess that the rocks are only a decoy so all the boxes wouldn’t weigh the same. And the rocks are so heavy no one would suspect that there were paintings in any of the boxes,” Mandie explained. “I think we’ve found a smuggler’s loot.”

“Maybe, but where is the smuggler? He, or she, would probably be more important to the police than stolen paintings, because unless they catch him, or her, paintings might still be stolen,” Jonathan said.

“If we can find out what’s in these other boxes, though, and if there are paintings in them, we could always go tell the police, and they might catch the thief when he, or she, as you say, comes here to this room,” Mandie argued. Turning to look at her two friends, she asked, “Well, are y’all with me or not?”

“Since we don’t have anything else to do, we might as well crack open the boxes,” Jonathan said with a sigh.

“I’ll help since I can’t hold the door this time,” Celia offered.

The three began pounding on a nearby box with the large rock and with the hammer. The box burst open finally, exposing more rocks.

“Don’t give up,” Mandie told them. “I’m sure all the boxes don’t contain rocks.” She climbed up on a stack nearby to pull off a box in the next row. As she did, the whole stack fell over and bounced against the door.

As the three watched the boxes fall, to their amazement the door sprang open. They quickly turned to hide from whoever opened the door. As they peeked from behind the stacks of boxes left standing, they watched for someone to enter. There was not a sound once the boxes settled down on the floor.

“Someone opened that door. Where are they?” Mandie whispered to her friends.

“I don’t know, but I’d say now is the best chance we’ll have to get out of this room,” Jonathan said, standing up and quietly moving around the boxes toward the door.

“But what about the painting? Should we take it with us?” Mandie whispered loudly as she reached to pick it up.

“Not unless you want to be accused of stealing it,” Jonathan said.

Mandie quickly dropped the painting onto the top of a nearby box. “You’re right,” she said. “Come on! Let’s get out of here!” She
picked up the hammer and pulled the red silk scarf from her pocket to wrap it.

“I’ll take Snowball,” Celia said, quickly picking up the kitten.

The three hesitated at the doorway. Mandie cautiously looked out into the other room and then went on to the doorway to the passageway. There was no one in sight.

“That door didn’t open itself,” Mandie said, coming back to look at the door. She examined the lock and then the connecting piece of the lock in the door facing. She was puzzled as she stood there mulling things over.

“Come on!” Jonathan urged her.

“Before someone comes,” Celia added.

“Wait! I think I know what opened the door,” Mandie told her friends as she still stood there surveying the door and the room. “Those boxes hit the door and it opened just like that. There has got to be some contraption to make the door open.” She uncovered the hammer and began beating on the door facing. Finally she stopped and pointed. “Look! Here is a spring imbedded in the wooden door facing! Evidently when it’s hit, it makes the door open. Let’s try it and see if it works.”

“No, no, no,” Jonathan told her. “I’m not taking a chance of getting locked in that room again.”

“And neither am I,” Celia added as she quickly stepped outside into the passageway. She carried Snowball with her.

“All right then, I’ll go back inside and shut the door and try it,” Mandie told her friends as Jonathan joined Celia.

Mandie quickly shut the door while she stayed inside the room. Testing it to be sure it was locked, she pounded on the door facing where she had found the latch. The door immediately sprang open.

“You see?” she excitedly told her friends as they watched in surprise. “Now there must be another one on the outside.” She examined the door facing on the passageway side. “Here it is. Let’s shut it again and open it from this side.”

As Jonathan and Celia watched, Mandie closed the door, then pounded on it with the hammer, and it immediately opened.

“How about that?” she said, smiling at her friends. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“Neither have I but, Mandie, come on. Let’s go eat,” Jonathan told her.

“Yes, someone might come down the corridor and see us,” Celia reminded her friend.

Jonathan and Celia started walking up the passageway. Mandie decided she had better join them.

As the three hurried toward the hotel, Mandie thought about the secret of the lock. She suddenly remembered Jonathan accidentally banging his head against the door when they had tried to open it before and then the door opened. Also this time she had pounded on the door with the hammer when they wanted to get into the room and the door had opened. Evidently the secret spring had been hit each time. Then she remembered the strange woman from the ship had opened the door.

“Wait a minute!” she said to her friends as she slowed down. “I’ve figured something out.”

Jonathan and Celia stopped and turned to look at her. They listened as she explained about the lock. Then she added, “I wonder how that strange woman from the ship knew how to open the door. Remember she did open it?”

Jonathan and Celia were impressed with her deductions.

“Yes, she did,” Celia agreed.

“But as far as that woman is concerned, how did she know we were in that room? In fact, how did she know we were even in Antwerp?” Jonathan asked.

“Sooner or later we’re going to find out about that woman,” Mandie decided as they continued to walk toward the hotel.

“Right now let’s find out what the hotel has to eat,” Jonathan said with his mischievous grin.

They went straight to the dining room and found it almost empty. Celia quickly looked at her watch and told them it was late to be eating the noon meal.

“I suppose they’ll still have something to eat,” Mandie said as she laid the scarf-wrapped hammer on an extra chair next to her and took Snowball from her friend. She tied him to a table leg after the waiter had seated them.

“We certainly do have something to eat,” the waiter said, smiling at her. He placed menus before them and told them what was still available.

They all ordered beef roast. It was the nearest thing to American they could find. Mandie hoped it would at least do them until suppertime.

“If we’re late eating, I wonder if Grandmother and Senator Morton have gotten back yet,” Mandie asked as the waiter wrote down their order.

“I could go ask the desk clerk,” Jonathan offered.

“Never mind, I’ll go. Be right back,” Mandie said, getting up and leaving the room.

At the desk the attendant gave her a message from her grandmother. A messenger had brought a note for Mandie, saying Mrs. Taft and Senator Morton had been delayed and that it would be late afternoon before they returned. Mandie read it and rushed back to the table.

“Grandmother and the senator won’t be back until late today,” she said, waving the piece of paper at her friends. “That gives us time to go back to the boat again before they come back.”

“Do you think we ought to take a chance going down there again? We might not get back before your grandmother does,” Celia said.

“We won’t stay long,” Mandie promised. “I’d just like to see if that other man comes back to visit the one on the boat, because I think that other man is definitely the thief who stole the painting.”

The waiter had come back with glasses of water they had ordered. He looked at Mandie and asked, “Do you speak of a thief who stole the paintings out of two museums?”

Mandie looked up at him and said, “Yes, the man who stole the Rubens painting and another one from another museum. I think I’ve seen him.”

“That thief was just caught today. His picture is in the newspaper,” the waiter said.

“In the newspaper? Could we see it?” Mandie asked excitedly.

“Of course,” the waiter said and rushed off to get it.

“I sure hope they got him. I want to see if he’s the same man we’ve been seeing,” Mandie said to her friends.

“They certainly did catch the thief fast,” Jonathan remarked. “But then I’ve heard they have an excellent police force in this city.”

The waiter returned with the newspaper and spread it out on the table before Mandie. She quickly looked at the photograph on the front page and said, “That’s the man. That’s the one we’ve been seeing.”

Jonathan and Celia bent over to see.

“That does look like the man we’ve seen,” Celia remarked.

“It’s probably the same man,” Jonathan agreed.

Mandie picked up the newspaper and offered it back to the waiter. The man shook his head. “You may keep the paper, if you like. We’ve all read it. Now I’ll get your food.” He left the room as Mandie thanked him for the paper.

“Now we don’t have to go back down to the old boat,” Celia said.

“Oh yes, we must,” Mandie told her. “You see, we’ve got to find out if the police also took the man called Alex.”

“Then we’d better hurry,” Celia said.

The waiter brought the food and the three young people ate so fast they didn’t really pay much attention to what they were eating. But they also cleaned every crumb from their plates. Mandie fed Snowball under the table. Finally they were ready to go. Mandie picked up Snowball and the hammer and carried them both. Celia took the newspaper.

As they hurried outside, Mandie turned to her friends and said, “Let’s go by way of the tunnel, just to see if the door to that room is still standing open like we left it.”

“Oh, Mandie,” Jonathan protested. “I know you. When we get to the room, you’re going to want to break open more boxes and we’ll never get back to the hotel.”

“No, I promise,” Mandie protested. “I only want to look and then we’ll go on to the old boat.”

“I’ll make sure you keep your promise,” Jonathan said with his mischievous grin as they walked along the avenue.

They had the route memorized by now, so they were soon at the room in the tunnel. As they approached, Mandie ran ahead and exclaimed, “The door is still open!” She had crossed the room off the passageway and was looking into the smaller room where the boxes still lay scattered about.

Jonathan caught up with her and said, “Now you’ve seen that the door is still open so let’s go on.”

“Let me just look and see if that little painting is still there where we took it out of the box,” Mandie insisted as she hurried inside the room and around the stacks of boxes.

The painting still lay on top of a box where they had left it. Evidently no one had entered the room since they had been gone.

“All right, it’s not been disturbed. Let’s go on,” Mandie told her
friends as she came out into the passageway and led the way toward the old boat.

When they arrived at the wharf, they hurried down the pier and used the rope ladders to board the old boat. They slipped over the side and crept behind the trash pile on the deck where they could watch and listen. There was no sound from the cabin.

“I’m going to see if Alex is still here,” Mandie whispered to her friends. She handed Snowball to Celia and the hammer to Jonathan. Then she slowly moved toward the window of the cabin. Just as she reached it she heard someone coming up the rope ladder. Rushing back to her friends, she made a sign to them to be quiet.

As she heard the footsteps on the deck, Mandie quietly moved enough to see who it was. To her amazement it was the man they had seen before. He was carrying a package, as he always seemed to do. She snatched the newspaper from Celia and quickly compared the photograph with the man. It had to be the same person. If the police had arrested the man, he must have managed to break out of jail.

Jonathan and Celia also looked at the newspaper and at the man and nodded to Mandie.

The man went inside the cabin and the young people immediately heard Alex yelling at him, “I told you not to come back anymore! I don’t want you on my boat. Now begone!”

“Alex, Alex, you need help and I can give it to you,” the man insisted.

“Begone!” Alex yelled. “I prefer living alone with my guilt!”

“But, Alex, you are not guilty,” the other man insisted. “Why won’t you listen to me? I want to help you.”

“I do not want your help. I want to be alone,” Alex insisted loudly. “Now, begone with you!”

Mandie heard them come out on the deck, and she strained to watch. Alex was shaking his fist. The other man was slowly backing away from him.

“I will come again later. Maybe you will eventually listen to me,” the other man said as he started down the rope ladder.

“Do not come back!” Alex shouted as he returned to the cabin.

Mandie crept toward the edge of the boat. “It’s safe. Let’s follow him!” she whispered to her friends.

Jonathan and Celia followed her off the boat and down the pier. There she stopped to look around. The man had evaded them again.

“He’s just evaporated again!” Mandie exclaimed as she stood there looking around.

“He’s too fast for us. He knows his way around,” Jonathan told her.

“Well, I suppose we’d better go back to the hotel,” Mandie decided. “Let’s cut through the tunnel on our way back.”

“What for?” Jonathan asked.

“It’s shorter and I like the tunnel. It’s interesting,” she said. “When we get time I’d like to explore the rest of it.”

“I’d say we don’t have time to explore right now,” Celia spoke up.

They hurried back into the tunnel, and when they came to the room they had passed through before, all three of them stopped in surprise. The man they had just seen on the old boat was inside the room with the boxes.

“Sh-h-h-h!” Mandie cautioned her friends as she motioned them back from the doorway.