The Blue Ghost Mystery Page 6

  Rick added, “That’s right, Mrs. Miller. When I want a culture I just put some 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 a bigger 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 any chemicals.

  We can say that much. But you can get a collection like this in three days, and it’s been that long since the ghost appeared. So these animals would be in the pool by now, even if the Blue Ghost had done something to adulterate the pool temporarily.”

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

  “It’s getting worse,” Mrs. Miller exclaimed. “I do hope that it doesn’t damage the little apples on the trees. They’re so good. We’re planning to have bushels shipped to Spindrift when they ripen.”

  Jan Miller brought them back to the subject “How could chemicals be harmless to the little animals, Rick?”

  “Chemicals might kill off those in the pool, but the constant dropping of spring water would soon dilute the solution. Or, some chemicals would combine with the oxygen in the water to form harmless salts. I can’t be sure, of course. I’m just trying to think of ways the ghost might be produced.”

  Barby sniffed. “You’re a long way from an answer, I’d say. Even if your old chemicals could make the white mist, they couldn’t make the Blue Ghost appear and go through the business of getting shot!”

  “Too true, Sis.I’m not claiming a thing. So far we have only some pretty wild

  speculation, plus an interesting ice-cream man, an offer to buy 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 a ghost, I’ll type up your science project for free, and as many copies as you 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 one bit of information your tenant farmer, Mr. Belsely, can get for us that none of the rest of us can get. That is, do the real-estate agent and the ice-cream man know each other, and in particular, are they friendly? He could ask around town without causing suspicion.”

  “Illaskhim right now,” Dr. Miller replied. He went to the telephone in 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 for you. . . . No, not that. Just asking a casual question around town. . . . Tim. . . . Hello . . .” He hung up and turned to the others. “The phone went dead.”

  Rick saw that his substage illumination was out, too. “So did the electricity.”

  Dr. Miller frowned. “It’s unusual for both the phone and current to go out at once. That must mean a tree is down across the lines. Both lines cross 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 the time making an improvised game ofYoot , an ancient Korean game that can be played almost anywhere, under nearly any circumstances. At its simplest, theYoot board can be scratched in the dirt with a stick, and theYoot throwing sticks that take the place of dice-ora spinning arrow-in similar Western games can be cut from a twig. Scotty sketched the board on a piece of cardboard from a box in which groceries had been carried and made the

  throwing sticks by splitting a piece of cane from an ancient cane chair in the woodshed.

  Checkers were used as counters, where in the outdoors pebbles would have served.

  “It’s likeparcheesi ,” Scotty explained to the girls. “You try to beat your opponent around the spaces on the board. The four sticks get thrown into the air, and you can move one space for every stick that lands flat side up. If all four land flat side up, that’s a

  ‘yoot’ and you get another throw on top of the four moves. You start, Barby, and I’ll show you the other rules as we go along.”

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

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

  The storm continued through the afternoon and into the evening. Dinner was broiled steak, with a tossed salad. If the storm continued for a week, 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 know how he

  appears, either. But unless I’m way off, the Frostola man has something 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 but assumptions? 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 the ghost. If it was a man, it was a tall one with some kind of lighted thing on his head. That wouldn’t be hard to rig. Plastic comes in all shapes and sizes and colors, these days, including human heads that are used in store windows. It would be a cinch to rig up a flashlight bulb and battery inside one.Wouldn’t take me five minutes if I had a little wire and a soldering iron.”

  “That’s true,” Dr. Miller agreed. “Making the Blue Ghost the boys chased would 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 you fell in.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Scotty corrected. “We stopped because the ghost had 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, because his shoe needed tying.

  Otherwise, we’d both have been at the bottom of the quarry.”

  Dr. Miller shook his head, in bewilderment, not in negation. “You might very well have been hurt seriously or even killed.In which case people would 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. The ghost can’t stand investigation. He knew we were a menace because Scotty and 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’t you?”

  “Yes. It wasn’t touched, so far as we could see. Anyway, no harm was done. I can’t imagine why he went for the plane, though, unless he figured on sabotaging us that way.”

  “You still haven’t told us why you suspect the Frostola man,” Barby pointed out.

  Rick ticked off the points on his fingers. “He’s new. He arrived just as the ghost started making appearances. But he’s not so new that he hasn’t had time to study the area or to make plans to lead nosy people to the quarry. He was at the picnic ground when there was no chance of selling much ice cream. He took the cement bags; we don’t know why.

  He’s tall and 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 carries something that would make a marvelous mist for a ghost to appear in.Something that might harm the microscopic animals in the pool temporarily-although I’m not sure of this- but would be gone with the mist.”

  The others stared at him with complete interest.

  Dr. Miller said softly, “Of course! Rick, that’s brilliant. It fits perfectly!”

  Jan Miller wailed, “What does?”

  “Dry ice,” Rick said.

  CHAPTER IX

  The Splitting Atoms

  The storm had given way to a fine drizzle of rain by morning. Rick stared out the window at the drenched land and considered the angles he had been turning over in his mind.

  The dry-ice theory wasn’t conclusive, he knew, but it was a strong indication. It didn’t explain the Blue Ghost himself, but it could explain the mist.

  Dry ice is simply solid carbon dioxide, which is a gas at normal temperatures. It becomes a solid at low temperatures, and because it is harmless, inexpensive, and clean, it is widely used to keep things cold, as in the case of ice-cream route men who have no means of refrigeration.

  When the temperature is raised, dry ice passes directly from the solid to the gaseous state. When dropped into water it seems to boil, as the comparative warmth of the water turns it to gas, and it creates a fine white mist.

  Rick was reasonably sure the Blue Ghost appeared in a carbon-dioxide cloud, and he was beginning to have an inkling of how this was accomplished-in principle, if not in specific terms. There were, after all, he reasoned, only a few ways of creating a visible image. He was going through the list of possibilities, eliminating them one by one.

  If the Frostola man was connected with the ghostly appearances, it was only necessary to keep track of that tall individual. This was Rick’s plan, necessarily postponed because of the storm.

  “Wish we had a radio,” he said. ‘Tdlike to get a weather report.”

  Scotty grinned sympathetically. He knew that Rick was impatient when there was detecting to be done.

  “We really should have a battery radio,” Dr. Miller said. “Power here is not very dependable in stormy weather. I think I’ll get one, although that won’t help now.”

  “What we need is a radio that doesn’t depend on power,” Jan Miller said. “Then it would always be ready.”

  Rick stared at the girl, not really seeing her.A radio without power. He remembered a long talk with Dr. John Gordon of the Spindrift staff about the principles of radio. Dr.

  Gordon had sketched a circuit that needed no power, and then had told Rick of how American ingenuity had produced what soldiers called a “foxhole radio.”

  “I saw an old transformer in the woodshed,” he said suddenly. “May I have it, Dr.

  Miller?” At the scientist’s nod, he addressed Jan. “I’ll bet you can find me a cardboard tube. Then, if I can have an old razor blade and permission to take the receiver off the telephone for a while, I can make a radio!”

  The scientist, the girls, and Scotty looked at him with disbelief. “He’s gone off his rocker at last,” Scotty muttered. “How can anyone make a radio out of junk?”

  “Illneeda pencil stub, a few screws, and a piece of board,” Rick added. “A safety pin would help, too.”

  “Rick Brant, you’re being silly,” Barby said firmly. “This is no time for practical jokes!”

  Dr. Miller held up his hand. “Peace, Barbara. Rick isn’t joking. I believe I see what he has in mind. Rick, I’ve never heard of this, but I assume the oxide on the razor blade is to act as a rectifier?”

  “That’s right, sir. John Gordon told me about it.”

  The scientist rose. “Then it will work. Come on, gang. Let’s build a radio out of junk.”

  With many hands to help, the work went quickly. Under Dr. Miller’s direction, Scotty took the transformer out of its case and the girls went to work unwinding the quantities of wire from its coils.

  Rick found a razor blade and anchored it to a rectangular piece of plywood he found in the woodshed. It was a double-edged blade, and one small screw from Dr. Miller’s junk

  box served to hold it. He wrapped a short piece of insulated wire, one of the transformer’s connecting leads, under the screw before he tightened it. He sharpened the lead pencil with his jackknife, uncoiled the safety pin, and pushed the sharp end into the exposed lead at the upper end of the pencil, which was a stub only two inches long.

  The safety pin also was screwed to the board, the screw going through the space in the pin’s head. It was placed in such a position that the sharp end of the lead pencil rested on the razor blade. Another short piece of insulated wire was wrapped around the screw before it was tightened. Kick bared the copper end of the wire in order to make a good contact.

  Jan found a cardboard roll that had once held paper towels. Rick cut off about six inches of it and proceeded to wind it with wire from the transformer. He wound evenly and tightly, until the roll was full of wire. Then he stabbed a small hole in each end of the roll and pulled the wires through to hold the coil in position. The roll-now a coil-was tacked to the board with thumbtacks.

  Dr. Miller, meanwhile, had taken the receiver from the telephone. Scotty strung yards of wire around the room and handed the loose end to Rick. That was the antenna. Then Scotty scraped a bright place on a water pipe with his knife and twisted a length of wire tightly around it. That was the ground.

  Rick and Dr. Miller made connections. Rick gestured to the haywire apparatus with some pride. “Behold. Where there was junk is now a radio.”

  Jan Miller said, “I don’t believe it!”

  Rick had to laugh. I’m not sure I do, either. But let’s try.” He sat down at the table and held the receiver to his ear. With the other hand he began the laborious job of locating a sensitive spot on the razor blade.

  Dr. Gordon had told him that only an occasional spot on a blade will work. Some blades have no such spots. Others have many.

  Rick was beginning to think that he had one of the no-spotkind , or that the whole idea was wrong, when he heard what he thought was a voice. He hastily concentrated on the spot, and in a few seconds music flooded into the earphone. He had caught a disk jockey in the process of introducing a record. For a long moment he listened, then held out the earphone with a broad grin. “Anyone care to listen?”

  Everyone did. They took turns, with each application of the phone to an ear

  accompanied by expressions of astonishment.

  Barby looked at her brother with new respect. “It’s just fantastic! How on earth does it work?”

  Dr. Miller chuckled. “I’m sure you don’t want a full course in electronics, Barby.

  Actually, it’s simple enough. The signal from the radio station is an alternating current that sets up a corresponding current in the antenna wire. This current goes through the coil and is rectified-that is, it’s turned into pulsating direct current-by the razor blade.

  The receiver then converts it into audible sound.”

  Barby sighed. “I’ll just have to take your word for it. But it’s a miracle!”

  “It may seem like one, but it’s really the same kind of circuit you find in a crystal set,”

  Rick explained.

  “The razor blade acts like the crystal. That’s all.”

  The young people took turns listening to the station, located in a town nearby. Within the hour there was a weather report promising clearing skies before the end of the day.

  Later, in a roundup of local announcements, they heard that the annual Sons of the Old Dominion feast, postponed because of the storm, would be held the next night.

  “That means we start keeping an eye on theicecream man tomorrow afternoon,” Rick said.

  Scotty nodded. “First, we’d better make a survey of the terrain. He has to approach by the road, but there are a mil
lion places he could go once he got into the mine area.”

  Rick looked out the window. “The rain has stopped. Maybe we can reconnoiter this afternoon.”

  Fortunately, the Miller farm was well equipped with boots and overshoes. The boys borrowed footgear suitable for any mud left by the rain and started out after lunch.

  The picnic area was washed clean of footprints and it was clear no one had visited the area since the rain. They made their way to the top of the hill above the mine and surveyed the cornfield that had been planted on the hilltop field. The corn was not high.

  The plants came only to their knees. Either it was a second planting or a poor crop. Rick guessed that the second reason was probably the correct one, because the field hadn’t been cultivated recently.

  “This isn’t Miller land,” he mused. “Wonder who is farming it?”

  “It must beHilleboe’s property,” Scotty returned. “Maybe he rents it to some local farmer,”

  They walked to the downstream edge of the cornfield to where the woods resumed.

  Rick had a feeling that they were wasting time. The ghost couldn’t be produced from such a distance by any means he had ever heard of. The apparition had to be created right in the vicinity of the mine.

  He spoke his thoughts aloud, and added, “Let’s go back.”

  “Just a minute.”Scotty pointed to a pile of brush. “Aren’t those more bags?”

  They were, and of the same brand as those the boys had located on the stream bank.

  Scotty picked one up and tested it between his fingers.“Mighty curious. Water cures Portland cement.Turns it hard. These bags aren’t hard, even though some powder is still in them.”

  Rick examined the bags, his brows creased with bewilderment. “They must have held something besides cement.But what?Fertilizer for the cornfield, maybe? And why two caches?”

  “If it were fertilizer, the bags near the mine could have been for the field across the creek where the plane is,” Scotty suggested. “These could have been for this field. But I don’t think it was fertilizer. Isn’t fertilizer soluble in water?”