CHAPTER NINE

 

 

Johnny shook hands with the professor and Grampa. He introduced Fergie, who plunged into the milling crowd of relatives and Scouts and came back dragging his dad. Mr. Ferguson turned out to be a mild little man with glasses and thinning hair. He said hello and then headed off with Fergie in the direction of their car. There was an awkward silence until the professor coughed and said brusquely that it was time to be heading back.

Johnny stowed his luggage in the trunk of the car. He climbed into the front with the professor, Grampa climbed into the back, and off they went. Except for the hum of the motor there was absolute silence. To Johnny this was maddening. He wanted to yell, What is it? What's the matter?, but his fear and his usual timidity forced him to keep his mouth shut. Finally they arrived at 28 Fillmore Street.

The professor pulled up with a jolt and a sudden screech of the brakes. There, standing on the steps with a big smile on her face, was Gramma! Johnny was amazed, and he felt very relieved. The way Grampa and the professor had been acting, he had expected to find a wreath with a black ribbon on the door and Gramma laid out in a coffin in the living room. But, no, there she was, leaning on a cane with a funny white stocking cap on her head. Her eyes were bright, and she seemed very cheerful. Johnny let out a wild shriek of delight, ran up the walk, and threw his arms around her.

"Gramma!" he yelled. "You're okay! Hooray!"

"Well, I'm sorta okay," said Gramma, frowning. "Your grandfather is gonna scold me for comin' out here. But I didn't wanta be lollin' around in the parlor like some kinda invalid"

Soon Grampa and the professor were at Gramma's side. They were clucking like a couple of elderly hens, telling her that she was supposed to be inside lying down. Somehow, with a lot of door-slamming and shuffling around, everybody got back inside the house. Grampa helped Gramma into the parlor and got her seated in the big bristly brown easy chair. Then the professor went out to the kitchen and started fixing Sunday dinner. The professor could cook, which was a good thing—Johnny didn't know if he could take another of Grampa's ghastly meals. Every now and then Johnny would glance at Grampa and see the same secretive look he had noticed before. What were they hiding from him?

 

Eventually dinner was served in the dining room. With Grampa's help Gramma hobbled out to join them. It was a good meal—shepherd's pie, a dish the professor had learned to make when he was in England, and ice cream sundaes for dessert. But halfway through dinner Gramma got drowsy and started to complain of a headache. So Grampa helped her into the back bedroom, made her comfortable, and came back to finish his meal.

After dinner the professor asked Johnny to join him and Grampa in the parlor. Uh oh, thought Johnny, here comes the bad news.

The professor sat down on the sofa. He rubbed his hands nervously and looked solemn. "John," he began, in a tight, strained voice, "there is a passage in Shakespeare that goes, When troubles come, they come not single spies, but in battalions. And that has certainly been the case lately around here. Your grandmother's trouble is over with—at least, we hope it is. But on Thursday your grandfather got a telegram from the Department of Defense. And it was bad news. Your father's plane was shot down over North Korea, in enemy territory."

There was a heavy silence in the room. Johnny felt a tightening in his chest. With an effort he forced himself to speak. "Is . . . is he . . ."

The professor sighed wearily. "We don't know. There's no word one way or the other. He was a good pilot, with good reflexes. I think there's reason to believe that he could have parachuted to safety, in which case he is probably a prisoner now, or will be soon. But as bad as that is, it's better, far better than . . . the alternative."

"It sure is," said Grampa, nodding. He patted Johnny on the back and smiled sadly at him. "Don't you worry, John. Your dad'll be okay. I read in the paper the other day about how a pilot who got shot down stole a row-boat an' rowed all the way to Japan an' got rescued. Don't you worry—he'll be back soon."

Yeah, thought Johnny gloomily. He will if he's still alive. He thought about Chad Glomus, who either was or was not alive. And then he thought about all the stories he had ever read about missing persons. There was the famous Judge Crater, who had gone out to dinner one evening and had never come back. There was Amelia Earhart, the aviator who had disappeared in her plane. Would his dad become a missing person like that? Would Johnny be waiting twenty or thirty years from now for some news of the great Korean War pilot who had vanished without a trace? Black despair filled his heart. He had been so happy about coming home. He had planned to tell Grampa and the professor about his mysterious midnight meeting with Chad Glomus and about the secret passage and everything. But now he didn't want to talk about anything.

The late-afternoon sunlight fell slanting through the parlor windows. It was a nice day outside—for some people.

Finally the professor spoke. He was not much good at comforting other people because he was such a prickly, snappish person, but he tried. "Well, John," he said, "all we can do is hope and pray. There's no reason to despair until there are definite reasons for despair."

The professor was being logical, but logic wasn't going to help Johnny much right now. It took a real effort to shove himself to his feet and go upstairs to work on the Latin homework assignment that Sister Mary Anthony had given the class to do during the week's vacation. He opened his Latin book, heaved a great sigh, and soon he was busy with fruor and ulciscor and fungor and lots of other lovely deponent verbs. But over and over as he turned the pages of his book he saw in his mind's eye his father's jet plane bursting into a bright bloom of fire.

 

October passed. The loud winds of autumn stripped the leaves from the trees on Fillmore Street. Johnny helped his grandfather rake the leaves into a pile in the driveway, and then they had a bonfire, and Johnny threw chestnuts into the fire to make them pop. Gramma got steadily better every day, and soon she was up and about—against the doctor's advice. On school days Johnny went back and forth between his home and St. Michael's School. Some days after school he would go down to Peter's Sweet Shop, a soda fountain on Merrimack Street, and talk with Fergie, and gobble various gooey concoctions. And often in the evening Fergie would come over to Johnny's house to play chess or have weird-fact contests or just sit around and blab. At six P.M. every day Johnny would turn on the television set and listen to the CBS Evening News. He kept hoping that he would hear some news about a jet pilot named Harrison Dixon or see a picture of his dad being turned loose by the North Koreans. But the Korean War raged on, and the newscasters said nothing about any prisoners being released. "No news is good news," said the professor, meaning that at least they hadn't heard that Johnny's dad was dead. But this bit of "comfort" did not help Johnny, and day by day, bit by bit, his gloom and pessimism deepened.

Ever since his mother had died of cancer, Johnny had been gnawed by the fear that he would be abandoned, that he would be left alone. To Johnny this now seemed like more than a possibility—it seemed terribly likely. His mother was dead, and his dad was missing in action; his grandmother had been terribly ill, and her illness might return. And then, if Gramma died, Grampa might get so gloomy that he wouldn't want to go on living. Then he would die, and Johnny would be left alone. There was the professor, of course, but Johnny was sure he wouldn't want to adopt him. Hadn't he heard the professor say, many times, that he enjoyed living alone? No. There would be no help there. If everybody close to him died, Johnny would be alone.

Johnny let this fear of abandonment grow. He worried about his father a lot, and he was always glancing anxiously at his gramma to see if she was all right. And now, strangely enough, Johnny's brooding about his grandmother's health brought him back to the lost Glomus will. His reasoning was that if Gramma got sick again, it would take a great brain surgeon to save her. They'd need money to pay one, but now that they had cashed in their savings bonds to pay for her first operation, they were next door to broke. All they had left was a small nest egg, something in a savings account, and something more in that tin can in their kitchen. Johnny didn't know how much great brain surgeons charged for their services, but he figured that it must be a lot. If only he could get the ten thousand dollar reward for finding the Glomus will, he would hire the best surgeon there was to operate on Gramma if her sickness came back.

This "reasoning" of Johnny's was a daydream, but it helped him handle his deep, dark fears. The Glomus will would save him when all else failed, and soon Johnny became obsessed with it. He thought about it all the time, and he became strangely secretive. He never did tell Grampa or the professor about his strange midnight meeting with Chad Glomus. Nor did he tell Grampa about his "Staunton Harold" theory, his guess about where the will was hidden. He wanted very much to discuss his theory with Fergie, but something made him hold back. He was afraid that Fergie might accidentally tell the professor or Grampa and that the two of them would get worried and try to stop him from going after the will. If he was going to save Gramma, he would have to be allowed to work out the puzzle and then do whatever was necessary after that. Until he was ready to make his move, Johnny figured that he'd better stay clammed up.

Often in the evening Johnny went to the public library to find out what he could about the Glomus family and their estate up in the White Mountains. He didn't find much, except for a little about Chad's disappearance in the back issues of The Boston Globe. He also managed to locate an article about the Staunton Harold estate in an old picture book called Stately Homes of New England. There were a few murky engravings, and there was the surprising information that Mr. Glomus was buried in a mausoleum on the grounds of the estate. All this was very interesting, but it did not throw any light on what the YE OLDE TEA SHOPPE sign meant. Sadly Johnny had to admit that he was up against a blank wall. He had tracked the will as far as the estate, but unless he were Superman, with X-ray vision, he didn't see how he was ever going to discover where it was hidden.

One cold, dark day early in November Johnny came home from school to find that nobody was there. Under the sugar bowl on the dining room table was a note, and it said,

 

Dear Johnny,

Have gone to take your grandmother to the hospital. Nothing to worry about. Just a checkup. We'll be back by dinnertime.

Grampa

 

As he read this Johnny felt his blood run cold. If he had been in a more reasonable frame of mind, he would have known that there was nothing strange about Gramma's going back to the hospital for a checkup. But now he was convinced that Gramma was dying. What on earth could he do?

Johnny sat very still on one of the dining room chairs. Some people yell and scream when they are upset, but Johnny always got very quiet, cold, and withdrawn. He stared at the picture of the Last Supper that hung over the sideboard. But the picture was just a blur to him. Instead, he saw Mount Chocorua and the crumbling stone arch that said Staunton Harold. He saw a train chugging northward up into the White Mountains. And now, slowly, as the Sessions clock ticked on the sideboard, a plan began to form in Johnny's fevered brain. He would go up to New Hampshire, to the estate called Staunton Harold. He would get a room at the hotel that the fussy old lady ran. What was its name? Oh, well, it didn't matter. He had some stationery with the hotel's name and phone number on it—it had been passed out to the Scouts so they could write letters home. Then he'd go out to the estate, and somehow, by hook or by crook, he would find the lost Glomus will, claim the reward, and use the money to get a brain surgeon for Gramma.

This was a crazy plan, and in one corner of his brain Johnny knew it. It was also dangerous, but, strangely enough, the danger attracted him. Even though Johnny was timid, the kind of kid who always looks six ways before crossing the street, every now and then he got the urge to do wild, untimid things. He was always longing to break free from his nervous, scaredy-cat side. All right, then. He would go. He wouldn't tell the professor and he wouldn't tell Fergie, either. Johnny wanted this to be his triumph, his alone. Okay. Let's get organized. What did he need?

The quiet, reasonable Sessions clock ticked on. The shadows in the dining room grew longer. Johnny sat like somebody who is under a spell. His eyes shone, and his mind was racing like a runaway steam engine, churning out a plan, a wonderful, improbable plan.