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was that of Clark Clayton. "You and this petty stocking business of yours! We warned you to lay off it."
"Sure, blame me!" Ma's voice rose angrily. "The truth is, you're getting scared of your own racket. I was
sellin' stockings and makin' a good, safe income until you come along and talked my husband into lettin' you
store your loot in our basement. Well, I've made up my mind! You're gettin' the stuff out of here tonight, and
you're not bringing any more in!"
"Okay, okay," growled Sweeper Joe. "Just take it easy, and quit your yippin'. We'll move the stuff as soon as
it gets dark. Fact is, we've made a deal with a guy that runs a junk shop near the factory. He's offered us a
good price. We had to play along slow and easy to be sure he wasn't tied up with the cops."
"What about the girl?" Ma demanded. "If I let her go, she's apt to get me into hot water about those
stockings."
"That's your funeral," Joe the Sweeper retorted. "If you'd handled her right, she wouldn't have become
suspicious."
The discussion went on, in lower tones. Then Penny heard Ma say:
"Okay, that's the way we'll do it. I'll think up some story to convince the girl. But that brass must be out of
here tonight! Another thing, you can't sell the lantern that simpleton, Adam Glowershick, stole from the River
Queen."
"Why not?" Sweeper Joe demanded. "There's good brass in it."
"You stupid lout!" Ma exclaimed, losing patience. "That lantern is known to practically every person along
the waterfront. Let it show up in a pawnshop or second hand store, and the police would trace it straight to us.
You'll have to heave it into the river."
"Okay, maybe you're right," the factory worker admitted.
Penny had learned enough to feel certain that brass, stolen piecemeal from the Gandiss factory, had been
stored in the Harper basement. Even more astonishing was the information that the trophy taken from the
River Queen also was somewhere in the house.
"If the lantern is thrown into the river, no one ever be able to recover it," she thought. "If only I could get it
now and sneak away through a window!"
Penny's pulse stepped up a pace, for she knew that to venture into the basement was foolhardy. She listened
again at the door. Ma and the men still were talking, but how long they would continue to do so, she could not
guess.
"I'll risk it," she decided.
CHAPTER 17 78
The basement door opened from an inside wall of the kitchen. Penny groped her way down the steep, dark
stairs but could find no light switch.
The cellar room was damp and dirty. As her eyes became accustomed to the dim light which filtered in
through two small windows, she saw a furnace surrounded by buckets of ashes and boxes of papers and trash.
A clothes line was hung with stockings and silk underwear.
Penny poked into several of the boxes and barrels. All were empty. Then her gaze focused upon another door,
which apparently led into a fruit or storage room. It was padlocked.
"The brass is locked in there!" she thought, her heart sinking. "The lantern too! How stupid of me not to
expect it."
Without tools, Penny could not hope to break into the locked room. There was only one thing to do. She must
get away from the house, and bring the police!
Starting up the stairs, she stopped short. An outside door had slammed. In the room above she heard footsteps,
but no voices.
Frightened, Penny remained motionless on the basement stairs. She could hear Ma Harper tramping about,
evidently in search of her, for the woman muttered angrily to herself.
"I don't dare stay here," the girl thought. "I'll have to make a dash for it."
Penny reasoned that in reentering the house, Ma Harper probably had left the front door unlocked. What had
become of the two men she did not know, but she would have to take a chance on their whereabouts.
Noiselessly, she crept up the stairs to the kitchen door, opening it a tiny crack. Though she could not see Ma,
footsteps told her that the woman had stepped out onto the balcony overlooking the river.
"This will be as good a chance as I may get," she reasoned.
The door squeaked as she opened it wide enough to slip through. Unnerved by the sound, Penny moved
swiftly across the kitchen to the living room.
"So there you are!" cried Ma Harper from the balcony.
Penny threw caution to the winds. Darting across the room, she jerked at the outside door. It opened, but on
the porch, facing her, stood Sweeper Joe and Clark Clayton!
CHAPTER 18 79
CHAPTER 18
OVER THE BALCONY
Panic-stricken, Penny's first thought was to try to dart past the men. But she realized that to do so would be
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| Cytat |
Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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