Chapter Six
CARTER looked at his new surroundings. It was a large, 18th-century-furnished room, with a red, patterned carpet. It seemed to be an ancient drawing room!
How'd that wall move? Carter wondered.
There was a lighted oil lamp on a small card table. In the seconds that followed, it suddenly went out.
Carter actually saw the ring turn, just as if someone had turned it. But no one was there except himself.
Well, maybe it slipped, he tried to reason with himself. There's no such thing as ghosts.
And just at that very instant, a white object soared through the air.
Carter stood still a moment and watched it coming, then ran across the room, calling for help.
There was another panel in the north corner of the room, and now it swished open. An astonished Corporal Boyle fell in.
Carter jumped a mile and looked for another place to run.
"Vince! Is that you?"
Carter stopped. He could have sworn he heard Boyle talking. He looked around. "Boyle?" he asked fearfully.
"Yeah, Vince, it's me. Where's Pyle?"
"He disappeared shortly after you did," Carter replied, just as the white object floated over them and then descended.
Carter immediately tried to dash away.
"Vince! What on earth's the matter?" Boyle exclaimed. "It's only a sheet."
"A sheet?" Carter cautiously turned around. When he realized the object in question truly was a sheet, he attempted to make it seem like he knew it all the time. "Oh. Well, I knew it couldn't be a ghost. What else could it be but a sheet?"
Boyle was amused. "So you weren't scared at all, huh, Vince?"
"Of course I wasn't scared, Boyle!" Carter insisted. "I don't believe in ghosts!" He paused. "By the way, what happened to you, anyway?"
"I don't know exactly," Boyle answered. "We were there in that empty room and then some panel opened up and I fell through. So then I was exploring the room I'd fallen into and I heard another scream. I was just going to investigate when someone knocked me out. When I came to, I was lying up in the attic."
"The attic?" Carter broke in. "Why the attic?"
"Who knows. Maybe they wanted me as far away from that room as possible. Anyway, so then I wandered through the maze and finally wound up down in the library. The door was locked and I was searching for something I could use to pick it with when a bookshelf opened up and I fell in here," Boyle concluded.
They searched for the panel again.
"Hey, Boyle? Do you think maybe whoever knocked you out was trying to get something? Like maybe that handkerchief you found outside?" Carter asked suddenly.
Boyle nodded. "Yeah, I thought of that, Vince. But I've still got it. See, here it is." He held up a white handkerchief.
A note fluttered to the floor. The Marines both looked at it.
"What's that?" Carter said, pointing.
"I don't know." Boyle picked it up and opened it. Another red-ink message, he thought grimly as he read it.
"Well? What does it say?" Carter said impatiently.
"Yeah, it's weird, alright," Boyle agreed.
At that moment, the card table collapsed.
"Holy mackerel!" Boyle exclaimed. "That table wasn't rickety! Someone must have made it fall down!"
"But who? A . . ." Carter was about to say "ghost," but stopped himself.
A panel slid open. "Hey, Vince! Here's a way out!" Boyle pointed to the gaping hole.
The Marines quickly rushed through, just as the panel snapped shut again.
"Do you hear that?" Carter asked.
"Yeah, sure I hear it, Vince. Sounds like Pyle." Boyle found the back bedroom and the closet, which was bolted shut.
"Pyle, are you in there?" he called.
Gomer stopped pounding. "Yes, I sure am! Someone locked me in here. Please let me out!"
Carter came rushing in. "We'll have you out in a minute, Pyle," he assured the trapped Marine.
Boyle un-bolted the door and opened it. Gomer came out, looking around.
"Golly, thanks a lot, Corporal. I would have been stranded in there forever if you hadn't unlocked the door."
He suddenly realized whom he was speaking to. "Corporal Boyle! Where'd you come from? We've been worried sick about you, haven't we, Sergeant?" he said to Carter.
Boyle repeated his story to Gomer, who listened in wide-eyed wonder.
"Shazam!" Gomer exclaimed at the conclusion. "Are you sure you're alright, Corporal?"
Boyle grinned. "Yeah, Pyle, I'm fine."
"They left a little note," Carter added. "Show him, Boyle."
Boyle handed Gomer the note. The Private's eyes grew wide when he read it. "Well, I never! Terrible, terrible, terrible!"
Gomer and Boyle also wondered what had happened to Sergeant Carter, who then told of his misadventures.
"And what happened to you, Pyle?" Carter and Boyle wanted to know. So Gomer told his story.
After stories had been shared, Carter hastily pulled the others over to the door. "We'd better get out of here before anything more happens! C'mon, Pyle. Boyle. Let's try to find the front door—and fast!"
The others were only too willing to comply.
"Why not? There's a Jeep out front," Duke Slater replied. "And it's got Gomer's suspense novel in it. They must be in there!"
They stared at the gloomy old mansion.
"But here?" Lester protested. "The old Crawford residence? This mansion has been vacant for over forty years! In fact, some say it is haunted by the spirits of the Crawfords!"
"Well, maybe Gomer and the others wouldn't know about that," Duke shot back. "Looks like the Jeep stalled on them. Maybe they were hoping that someone inside the house would have a telephone they could use to call a tow truck."
"That's very possible," Lester agreed, as they walked up the driveway. "But this is the most famous abandoned residency in the Los Angeles vicinity."
When they reached the porch, they found the front door blowing in the breeze.
"Good heavens!" Lester exclaimed.
"Look at that!" Duke pointed at a hole in the porch. "It's the entrance to the coal cellar!"
"Well, we'd be wise to proceed with caution," Lester warned. "Apparently the door fell off, and we might very well fall in!"
They edged their way around the gaping hole and entered through the front door, where they found themselves in the parlor.
"I don't see anyone in here," Duke declared after a thorough search of the room was conducted. He and Lester began calling for the missing Marines.
In the back bedroom, they heard the others calling. "Shazam! It sounds like Duke and Lester!" Gomer exclaimed.
"Hey, you're right, Pyle," Carter realized. "It does!"
They hurried out of the room and down the hall, and finally into the living room.
"Duke! Lester! What in the world are you doin' here?" Gomer asked them in delighted surprised.
"Well, Pyle," Lester began, "back at Camp Henderson you and Sergeant Carter and Corporal Boyle are classified as missing. Colonel Gray sent us out looking for you."
"But how'd you know we were here?" Carter queried.
"We were just driving around and we saw your Jeep out front." Duke gestured outside.
"Well, boy, we're sure glad you found us," Gomer said happily. "Otherwise, we'd have had to walk to the nearest town. If you can believe it, the Jeep's engine blew up."
"Yeah. We were hoping that someone here might have a telephone we could use to call a tow truck," Carter added.
Just before they left, Boyle idly noticed that a leg on a small wooden card table in the parlor was missing.
"It sure is a creepy place," Gomer declared.
Just at that minute, three pigeons flew into the Jeep. One came over to Gomer.
"Well, hey there, Adelina!" he greeted her.
Everyone stared. "Huh?"
Gomer explained about the pigeons in the secret tunnel. "I guess they wanted to come with us," he concluded. "We'll have to see if they belong to anyone."
They continued their tales.
"And then Corporal Boyle disappeared," Gomer rambled on.
Between the three of them, they explained about the secret tunnel, the coal cellar, and the other strange things that had happened.
"There's something weird going on in that place," Boyle remarked. "It couldn't be entirely vacant, not after the things that happened. Someone would have had to have been there. And why would they knock me out? There must be some underhanded operation going on in there or something of that sort that they wanted to make sure I didn't find out about."
"Sure is puzzling," Gomer agreed. "We'll have to tell the police all about it!"
Suddenly, from seemingly nowhere, a voice said, "You tell the police about your misadventures and you'll all wish you hadn't!"
