The Blue Ghost Mystery: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story

  CHAPTER XVIII

  The First Fact

  Rick said, "Hold it a minute. Which way do we go? If we assume thetunnel we came out of was fairly constant in direction, we should turnright to come out on the side of the hill where we saw the Frostola mana while ago. If we turn left, we go deeper into the hill."

  Both boys saw the implication the moment the words left Rick's lips."Right it is," Rick added quickly. "First thing we have to do is see ifthere really is a way out."

  They turned right into the cross tunnel, and met the breeze head on. Solong as they followed the direction of the breeze, they were approachingthe outside air.

  Within a hundred feet they saw a glimmer of daylight and broke into arun. The glimmer became an opening, irregular in shape, but obviouslybig enough for an entrance.

  "We made it!" Rick exulted. "Let's get a good look at that sunshine!"

  "Careful," Scotty cautioned. "We'll have to let our eyes adjust fully orthe glare will hurt. Besides, it may not be a good idea to go bargingout into the open. Might be some ghosts hanging around."

  "You're right. Anyway, let's take a brief look. What's blocking theopening?"

  As they approached he saw that it was the trunk of a fallen tree,festooned with blackberry bushes. When they looked through the entrance,blinking in the light, they saw that the tree wasn't really a block,because there was plenty of room to crawl out of the tunnel.

  "That trunk makes a mighty good shield," Scotty said thoughtfully. "Betthis entrance is invisible ten feet away, except from the air!"

  "And I'll add my own bet, that the entrance is very close to where wemet the Frostola man this morning, and that he wonders if we spotted itfrom the plane."

  Scotty shook his head. "No betting on sure things. This explains theinterest in the plane, all right. Stand by, old son. I'm going to make aquick recon and be sure the coast is clear."

  "Okay. Eyes adjusted?"

  "Enough." Scotty went through the entrance on hands and knees. Rick sawhis legs as he stood up and surveyed the scene.

  "Come on out," Scotty called. "We're alone."

  Rick joined him. The fallen tree trunk came above their knees. As Scottyhad said, it made an effective shield for the mine entrance.

  Rick studied the entrance itself. Probably it had once been a regulartimbered entrance, like the one on the other side of the hill, but ithad fallen in, the rocks wedging to form a low passage into the tunnelinside. The whole hillside was overgrown with brambles, down to thetwo-rut road below them, almost at the place where they had met thepeddler.

  "We were within fifty feet of this entrance," Rick said, "and neversuspected it."

  "The Frostola man knew it. Do you think he thought we knew it?"

  "Possible, I suppose. I'm not so interested in what he thinks as I am inwhat he was doing here. Where would we have ended if we had taken theleft-hand turn, do you suppose?"

  "Why suppose? Unless you've had enough of mines for one day, we can goback in and find out."

  "I've had enough, but not enough to miss a chance like this. Myflashlight is still strong and it shouldn't take more than a fewminutes."

  "Then let's go. No telling when a spook may visit the mine from thisend. Of course there's no telling about Uncle Frostola, either. He maybe inside."

  That hadn't occurred to Rick. He thought it over, then shrugged. "Wemight as well take the chance. If he is inside, that proves something,and we're two to his one. Besides, it's late, and any sensible man iseating his supper. Come on."

  He led the way back into the cave, but because of the peddler's possiblepresence, he wasn't as headlong in his traversing of the tunnel as hemight otherwise have been.

  They passed the side tunnel from which they had emerged a short timebefore and entered entirely new territory. It wasn't unlike the rest ofthe mine, consisting of a main bore with some alcoves indicating eitherdeviations of the ore vein or niches cut to allow ore carts to pass.

  Walking rapidly, but alert for either sound or light, they traveledthrough the tunnel at a good speed.

  "We've been walking quite a while," Rick said finally. "How long do yousuppose this shaft is?"

  Scotty thought it over. "It can't be any longer than the hill is wide,because we're traveling through the hill. It must be about the samelength as the lower tunnel."

  "Why two tunnels?" Rick asked. "I doubt that there were two veins ofore."

  Scotty reminded him of the good ore they had seen in the ceiling of thelower tunnel. "There might have been just one vein, about two tunnelshigh. They were limited to pick and shovel for tools in those days,remember, maybe with a little powder for blasting. It would have beenmore convenient to work within range of tools like shovel and pick. Sothe ceiling is as high as a man with a pick can reach, and as wide asthe ore vein was wide. That's a little confused, but I'm sure you followme."

  "Sounds reasonable," Rick agreed. "Only this tunnel can't go on muchfarther, or we'll be in the middle of the picnic--Hey! Scotty, take alook!"

  Ahead in the tunnel was a box, and on the box was metal that reflectedthe flashlight's beam. In a second the boys stood over it.

  Rick's heart pounded rapidly. Here was the proof. Here was Missing FactNumber One. Here was verification of at least part of their speculation.

  An eight-millimeter motion-picture projector!

  Rick motioned to the front of the machine with a trembling hand. "Look,there's a film in place, and it's a continuous loop. Once it's threadedit will repeat over and over unless cut off."

  Scotty was probing into the box. "Batteries. Two of them, twelve voltseach. And I'll bet the motor in the projector is designed to operate ontwelve volts. There's even a hydrometer for testing the batteries."

  Rick took a look. As Scotty had said, there were two automobilebatteries, their cables running up into the projector.

  "Simple enough," he commented. "Let's see what's on the film."

  He opened the film gate gingerly and removed the film from thesprockets. Then, without disengaging the spindles, he put the flashlightbehind it and bent close. The eight-millimeter frames were pretty small,but not so small that he and Scotty couldn't make out the image.

  The scene had been shot against a black background, that was clear. Onlythe central figure was illuminated, the figure of a Union cavalryofficer.

  "Meet the Blue Ghost," Rick said happily.

  "Delighted," Scotty said emphatically. "I suppose I shouldn't admit it,but deep down, way back in the primitive part of my thick head, I wassometimes guilty of wondering about this creature."

  Rick held out his hand. "Shake hands with another superstitiouschucklehead. So was I. But let it be said to our credit that neither ofus was so scared we were afraid to move."

  He chuckled. "Of course there were times when I just had to keep my pooricy spine from freezing solid." He replaced the film on the sprocketsand closed the gate with great care.

  "The projector is aimed at the wall," Scotty pointed out, "right at theend of the tunnel. How does it get to where people can see it?"

  "There has to be a way," Rick said. He swept the beam of his lightaround and it steadied on an iron pipe. "Hey, look!"

  The pipe entered through the end of the tunnel, threaded into aright-angle pipe fitting, and disappeared into the tunnel floor!

  "So that's how the water comes out of the hillside!" Rick exclaimed."The well was originally driven straight down, as a well should be, andthe horizontal pipe was added later. It misses the lower tunnel by aboutsix feet."

  "That's not the only interesting thing about this end of the tunnel,"Scotty added. "This whole end is artificial, including part of the roofover the well. Take a look. It's mortarless stonework. No wonder theface was so seamed on the outside. Whoever did this was a terrificmason, because he selected rocks--probably from the mine itself--thatduplicated the contour of the hill. But why go to all the trouble?That's what puzzles me."

  "Maybe this is the reason," Rick said. He pointed to rusty ironproj
ecting from the wall. The iron supported a block of stone, by meansof an iron pin that ran from the bottom of the stone through a hole inthe iron piece projecting from the wall. At the top of the stone was asimilar arrangement. It was an elementary but effective hinge, long agorusted to disuse.

  Rick studied the wall, and directly in front of the projector lens hefound another of the same arrangements, but with a difference. This onewas modern, and it had been painted to prevent rusting. There weretraces of graphite or graphite grease where the pins went through theiron supports.

  Clearly, the block of stone supported by the iron pins formed aporthole, the pins allowing the stone to be swung inward. The old,rusted one had been unused for decades, but the port in front of theprojector had been repaired and lubricated. The comparison between thetwo gave Rick his clue.

  "This is a sniper nest built by the Confederates," he guessed. "Probablyto protect the mine. The upper mine tunnel opened out here, too, andthen war came and the people sealed the upper one to give protection tothe troops working the lower level. That means the upper level was dugout first."

  "It's speculation, but it sounds good," Scotty agreed. "These are gunports, very likely. I don't know what other purpose they could haveserved."

  Later they learned from Dr. Miller that the ports had also served asventilation for slaves using the mine to hide on their way North tofreedom, but that was after the North had the area partly in its grip.They also found that from these same ports the Lansdale brothers hadfired the shots that killed Captain Seth Costin, for the legend wasalmost entirely true.

  "We open this port in front of the machine and we'll be only inchesabove the pool," Rick said. "Look at the location of the pipe. So, toproduce the ghost, the Frostola man slid open the port, dropped a pieceof dry ice...."

  "All properly sized to give the right amount of mist for the righttime," Scotty added.

  "... and turned on the machine. With only the small port for the soundto go through, it wouldn't be audible to anyone in the picnic grounds."

  Scotty agreed. "And since the projector is so close to the mist wewouldn't see a beam. That lens must have a mighty wide angle, by theway. What's more, the projector must be slid closer to the opening whenin use."

  "True. You know, in a way we were unlucky. If we had chanced to climb atree when the ghost was actually appearing, we would have seen theprojection lens through the mist as a bright spot of light, and thatwould have given the show away before this. But because of the angle,only someone in a tree could see it."

  Rick shook his head in admiration. "Rear-screen projection with awide-angle lens. That's really using movie technique for all it'sworth."

  "Rear-screen projection?" Scotty queried.

  "Sure. Movies and TV use it all the time. When the hero is supposed tobe watching dinosaurs fighting it out, he's actually standing in frontof a big screen of special plastic or ground glass, with the pictureprojected on it from behind. The mist acted as the screen, so we saw theimage but not the projector beam. That's rear-screen projection."

  "I know how it works," Scotty said. "You can tell in a movie when theyuse it, because the definition of the background isn't as sharp as realphotography, but I didn't know the name of the process."

  Scotty turned and studied the location of the port. "He must place theprojector right on the tunnel floor, tilted upward to shine through theport. That's why the ghost was so tall. It hit the mist at an angle."

  Rick bent over the port. "Not hard to smack us in the eyes with methylchloride from here, either. There we were, on our knees, faces in goodrange. And I'll bet he chuckled while he was doing it. Simple weapon,too. A water pistol. Or any plastic squirt bottle."

  He tugged on the port and it failed to move. Something wrong here. Hestudied it carefully and saw the reason. It had to be slid sideways fora quarter of an inch, a safety-lock feature. No wonder their examinationof the rock face outside had shown nothing.

  "Open it," Scotty said. "Let's look."

  Rick did so, and instantly closed it partly shut again. "Get down hereand look," he commanded. He had seen at once what had happened duringtheir absence and his quick mind had caused him to react.

  There were men outside, several of them, and they were watching a smallpower scoop move into position in front of the lower mine entrance.Among them were Dr. Miller and Belsely. Away from the group, sitting onhis tricycle scooter, was the Frostola man!

  "We forgot about Belsely," Rick said softly. "He saw us, and may evenhave seen us go into the mine. Anyway, that's the first place he'd lookwhen we turned up missing."

  Scotty drew back and closed the port gently. "That power scoop can goright into the tunnel, scoop up a yard of rock and back out and dump it.It will have the tunnel cleared in no time. We'd better get out thereand let them know we're safe."

  "If they were breaking their backs with hard manual labor to get us outI'd yell through the port," Rick said gleefully. "But they aren't. Sowe'll let the scoop operate. It will remove that stuff in an hour. Andwhen they open up, they'll find us."

  Scotty looked at him suspiciously. "The tone of voice tells me you'rewhomping up something that will make someone unhappy. What is it?"

  "Well, if we rush out and tell the world about this, everyone will knowthe ghost is a fake. But that won't help us much, because we'll stillneed to know the answer to the biggest question of all. Why do this? Sowe go back, use the time covering up the break between the tunnels so noone will suspect we know, and let ourselves be rescued. The ghostcontinues to operate, and so do we! Then, when we have the answer, Ihave a great idea for unmasking the ghost."

  Scotty saw the reasoning at once. "Besides," he added, "if the Frostolaman doesn't see us come out, he'll know the jig is up right now. Solet's go."

  They checked carefully to be sure no trace of their presence remained,then hurried back to the lower tunnel. Working carefully, they fittedrocks into the opening until a casual survey by flashlight would notreveal that the block between the tunnels had been removed. Then theyspent the remaining time clearing more rocks from the original rockfallthat had sealed them in.

  When the power scoop finally broke through, the glare of headlights,turned on when darkness fell, revealed two dirty, disheveled, exhaustedyoung men who were too fatigued for anything but a quick bath, a meal,and bed.