False Alarm!

Ken was sitting on the steps of the porch. He jumped up as he heard the door open. “Hello, fellows,” he cried.

“Hello, Ken. You’re lucky; you always get away with things.”

“What’s the trouble this time, Paul?”

“My dad just had us up at the bar and almost made us tell.”

“You can’t do that. Not yet, at any rate.”

“For the present we got away with it,” remarked Jack.

They went across the street to Ken’s garage where they would have the privacy they wanted. Seating themselves on boxes in a circle, Jack heaved a sigh, then said, “Well, Paul, now you can tell us everything that happened.”

Paul grinned mischievously. He leaned forward and whispered, “I found out their secret entrance to the cellar.”

“You mean it!” exclaimed Jack.

“That’s perfect!” cried Ken.

“It’s in the house to the rear of the empty house.”

“I had a suspicion it would be something like that,” commented Jack. “What sort of a house is it?”

“It was dark and there was not much chance to see anything. By the way,” he asked, “whose idea was it to suspect the grocery man?”

“Mine,” answered Ken. “Was I wrong?”

“On the contrary, you were right and you deserve a medal as a fine detective. That man is one of the gang.”

“You don’t say! Well, come on, tell us about it.”

Paul commenced at the very beginning and related all that had happened to him the previous night. Completing his narrative, Jack muttered, “So! That’s the way things stand.”

“Yes. Now you tell me what happened to you two last night.”

“In one word,” replied Jack, “nothing.”

“Tell him about the printing press,” suggested Ken.

“Well, yes, but that wasn’t much. By putting our ears to the ground, we could hear very slightly the printing press going.”

“On the contrary. You should have been able to hear it very well,” commented Paul.

“Come to think of it,” remarked Jack, “you’re right. They must have muffled the noise of the machine somehow.”

“They are certainly going in for it in a big way,” said Ken.

“It seems that they are,” Paul replied. “Now, if we can get a couple of things straightened out, we can tell the story to the police and have the gang arrested.”

“I think we ought to wait a while,” suggested Jack. “It is a little too soon yet.”

“Yes. From every indication,” commented Paul, “it seems that they are on the alert. We have to catch them at a moment when they are off their guard and make sure that every one of them happens to be there.”

“There are also a couple of more things that we have to check up on. For example, we still don’t know how Mr. Grey fits into the picture and—”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” interrupted Paul. “Following the grocery man, he and Mr. Grey passed each other and nodded. Whatever that meant I don’t know, but it establishes beyond a doubt that they know each other and that Mr. Grey is in with the crowd.”

“That’s very interesting to know,” said Jack enthusiastically. “But in that case, how are we going to explain his past behavior?”

“I don’t know,” answered Paul. “But there is no doubt that there is some connection between his past behavior and what we are up against now.”

“Yes,” muttered Jack, “I’d give a penny to know exactly how those fires and the robbery fit into the puzzle.”

“Eventually, we will solve that,” remarked Paul. “I have a notion how they fit in but—”

“Tell us!” exclaimed Ken.

“I would rather not; it sounds foolish and I may be mistaken. Besides, I couldn’t very well substantiate my argument. But what we have to decide now, is what we are going to do next, what our plan of action is going to be.”

“Do you have any suggestion?” asked Jack.

“My opinion is that we ought to keep away for a couple of days. That would make them think that they have scared us away. It will also make them a little careless and things will be easier for us to accomplish.”

“All right. Now suppose we do play dead, so to speak, for two days; then what?” asked Ken.

“Well, we still have to go down to the cellar for a second time and establish definitely what’s going on there.”

“And we still have to locate the exact position of their secret tunnel—for it must be that,” added Jack.

Paul nodded. “Yes,” he said. “It would be a simple thing to bore a tunnel connecting the two cellars.”

“But how are we going to determine how the fires and the robbery at Professor Link’s fit into the picture?” asked Ken.

“For that we will have to wait and see how things turn out,” explained Paul. “It may be very possible that those incidents have nothing to do with it all.”

“But those were the very things that we began to investigate,” insisted Ken.

“Yes, and now look what it got us into,” remarked Jack.

Suddenly the air was rent by the screech of the fire siren. The boys leaped to their feet and began to race down the street. “But it isn’t time yet for another fire,” protested Paul.

“What do you mean, it isn’t time yet?” questioned Ken.

“I told you about it. From the reports in the papers, it seemed there was a fire approximately every ten to fourteen days.”

“Well, maybe this is a real fire,” suggested Jack.

“Perhaps.”

At Main Street, the boys saw the fire engine, a brand new one the town of Stanhope had recently acquired, come racing madly down the street. People were lined up along the sidewalk watching the engine pass. “Where’s the fire?” Paul asked someone.

The man shrugged his shoulders and answered, “I don’t know.”

Paul asked someone else. But nobody seemed to know where the fire was. Jack suggested that they run down the street, in the direction the fire engine went, and perhaps they would come upon it. The boys agreed and they fell into a trot. On the way, they stopped every once in a while to inquire as to the location of the fire. But nobody seemed to know. “That’s strange,” muttered Jack.

“What’s strange?” asked Ken.

“That no one should know where the fire is.”

About a quarter of a mile down, they saw the fire engine returning. The firemen waved to people as they passed. One of the firemen shouted to a friend at the curb, “False alarm!”

“Did you hear that?” asked Jack, turning to his friends.

“Yes,” answered Paul, “I heard it. I’m just wondering.”

“Wondering about what?”

“Just thinking of something.”

The boys began to walk back. For a while they were silent. “By golly!” exclaimed Paul, slapping his right fist into his palm. “I wouldn’t be surprised if—”

He stopped to think for a second. “If what?” asked Ken.

“If that gang,” continued Paul, “were not responsible for the false alarm.”

“How do you mean?” asked Jack.

“Pretty soon,” commented Ken, “you will have that gang responsible for everything that happens in this town.”

“But listen to this,” explained Paul. “Suppose they want to move something, do you think they want any witnesses?”

“No, but—”

“But when you hear the fire siren, people start running to the fire, there is a commotion, no one would pay any attention to something being moved in or out of a house. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” agreed Ken hesitantly, “but—”

“How about going over there and looking around?” suggested Jack.

“No,” insisted Paul. “We said we would play dead for two days and we are going to do it.”

“All right, you win.”