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Blue Ghost Mystery

<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> <h3>Plan of Attack</h3> Rick awoke to the sound of wind, a sign that the storm traveling northward from the middle south was approaching. He groaned. If the storm arrived before nightfall, the annual Sons of the Dominion affair would be postponed. After yesterday's events he had decided to drop the idea of spreading the word that he and Scotty were ghost watching, in the hope the ghost would appear for just the two of them. His new plan wasn't completely worked out, but it would be before long. Scotty grinned at him from the other bed. "No night alarms last night. Guess the ghost couldn't find anyone to play with." "Maybe tonight," Rick replied. "Come on, sack hound. Rise and shine. We have things to do." Scotty glanced through the window at the sky. "We'd better do 'em quick, then. Barring a shift in the weather system, we're due for some fine squalls." After an excellent breakfast of pancakes and genuine pepper-cured Virginia ham, Rick borrowed an empty jar from Mrs. Miller, checked all the flashlights available, and explained to the Millers the purpose of the trip. "I'm going to get a sample of the water from the pool and try to see if there's anything strange about it, then I thought we'd take a closer look at the mine to see if we can trace that water pipe. It still worries me." To his surprise, Barby and Jan hurriedly finished their breakfasts and announced they were going, too. "You're going into that mine," Barby explained. "We're going to be waiting outside, and if you're not out within ten minutes, we're going to come home for help." Rick was touched. Both girls believed in the ghost, Barby more than Jan, while he and Scotty were convinced that it was man-made in some way they didn't yet understand. It took courage for the girls to accompany them, even if they only planned to wait at the mine entrance. "Okay," he agreed. "Let's go." Dr. Miller offered, "Take the car. I don't like the looks of the weather and there's no point in your getting caught in the rain." Rick accepted and in a moment the four young people were on their way. He saw that the sky was filled with haze, with only a glimpse now and then through the haze of flying scud. Something was on the way, all right. "It's a tropical storm," Jan explained. "The morning weather report from Washington said it would strike northern Virginia this morning." "And not long from now," Scotty commented. By the time Rick had collected his first sample, a jarful of water from the pool mixed with a scraping of algae from the bottom, there was an ominous line of black clouds on the horizon. He hurried to the embankment where Scotty had found the cement bags, his pal close behind him. The girls had waited in the car. To his surprise there were no bags. Raw earth showed where they had been dug up. "What do you make of that?" he asked. Scotty shook his head. "I don't know. The Frostola man must have taken them, but I can't imagine why. Come on. Let's get out of here. This is no time to stand around wondering. That storm is close!" "No mine for us this morning," Rick said. "Wonder if the rain will last long enough to cancel out the Sons of the Old Dominion, or whether we'll just have some thundershowers?" "Time will tell. Let's go." They beat the storm to the house by minutes. It arrived with a rattle of windows and the flash of lightning, followed by thunder that reverberated among the mountains endlessly. The rain came in blinding sheets, covering the windows with a steady flow of water that blocked all vision. Rick set up his microscope on the kitchen table and plugged in the substage illumination. Then, while the others watched, he selected a well slide, took his pipette, and captured a drop from the jar of pool water. The drop went into the well slide. He put on a cover glass, then applied his eye to the ocular. After a moment of focusing and shifting the well slide, the drop of water suddenly turned to a strange aquarium populated by fantastic animals. He watched, counting the species aloud. "Lots of paramecia. A Volvox. Two Stephanoceros. One hydra. Not bad for a single drop. Want to look, anyone?" Everyone did. Rick waited while the girls exclaimed over the microscopic creatures, and Mrs. Miller remarked to her scientist husband, "And we drink that water?" Dr. Miller smiled. "No, dear. We drink the water from the pipe. This sample came from the pool." "But if the animals are in the pool, they must have come from the spring!" The scientist shook his head. "The spring water is pure. It probably has a lower bacteria count than our well. But the pool water is exposed to the air, and provides an excellent breeding place. Most of these animals propagate from spores, which are in the air." 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." "I'll ask him 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 of Yoot, an ancient Korean game that can be played almost anywhere, under nearly any circumstances. At its simplest, the Yoot board can be scratched in the dirt with a stick, and the Yoot throwing sticks that take the place of dice—or a 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 like parcheesi," 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. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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