CHAPTER 17 BASEMENT LOOT

While the cab driver waited, Penny crossed the sagging porch and rapped on the door. Evidently the taxi’s approach had been noted, for almost at once Ma Harper appeared.

She was a tall, thin woman, sallow of face, and with a hard glint to her eyes. Penny was not in the least deceived by the smile that was bestowed upon her.

“Hello, deary,” the woman greeted her, stepping aside for her to enter. “Did Ernst bring you to buy something?”

“He spoke of silk stockings,” Penny returned cautiously. “I’m not sure that I’ll care to purchase them.”

“Oh, you will when you see them, deary,” Ma Harper declared in a chirpy tone. “Just come in and I’ll show them to you.”

“Aren’t genuine silk stockings hard to get now?”

“I don’t know of any place they can be bought except here. I was lucky to lay in a good supply before the start of the war. Only one or two pairs are left now, but I’ll let you have them, deary.”

“That’s very kind of you,” returned Penny with dry humor.

“The stockings cost me plenty,” went on the woman, motioning for the girl to seat herself on a sagging davenport. “I’ll have to ask five dollars a pair.”

She eyed Penny speculatively to note how the figure struck her. Penny had no intention of making a purchase at any price, but to keep the conversation rolling, she pretended to be interested.

“Five dollars ain’t much when you consider you can’t get stockings like these anywhere else,” the woman added. “Just wait here, deary, and I’ll bring ’em out.” She went quickly from the room.

Left alone, Penny gazed with curiosity at the crude furnishings. Curtains hung at the windows, but they had not been washed in many months. The rug also was soiled and threadbare. The main piece of furniture, a table, stood in the center of the room.

Double doors opened out upon a balcony above the river. Wandering outside, Penny could see the River Queen plying its way far downstream. Closer by, a small boat with an outboard approached.

Due to the glare of a late afternoon sun on the water, she could not at first distinguish its two occupants. The boat, however, looked familiar.

“That’s the same boat Sally and I escaped in yesterday!” she thought. “And it’s coming here!”

Nearer and nearer the craft approached, until Penny could see the men’s faces plainly. One was Sweeper Joe and the other, Clark Clayton, gateman at the Gandiss factory.

“If they see me here, they’re certain to be suspicious!” Penny thought in panic. “They’ll remember having seen me with Mr. Gandiss at the factory. I’ll skip while the skipping is good!”

She turned to find Ma Harper standing in the doorway. “Anything wrong, deary?” the woman asked in a soft purr.

“Why, no,” Penny stammered. “I—I was just admiring the river view.”

“You were lookin’ at that boat so funny-like I thought maybe you knew the men. Sure there ain’t nothing wrong?”

“Of course not!” Penny was growing decidedly uncomfortable. She tried to slip through the doorway, but Ma Harper did not move aside.

“It’s getting late,” Penny said, glancing at her wrist watch. “Perhaps I should come some other time to look at the stockings. Shall we say tomorrow?”

“I have the hosiery right here, deary. Beauties, ain’t they?”

Ma Harper spread one of the filmy stockings over her rough, callous hand. The silk was fine and beautiful, unquestionably pre-war and of black market origin.

“Yes, they are lovely,” Penny said nervously. “But the truth is, I haven’t five dollars with me. I’ll have to come back later.”

Ma Harper’s dark eyes snapped angrily.

“Then what you been takin’ my time for?” she demanded. “Say—” she accused with sudden suspicion, her gaze roving to the boat which now was close to the pier, “—you seem in a mighty big hurry to get away from here all at once!”

“Why, no, it’s just that the taxi man is waiting, and it’s getting late.”

“What’s your name anyhow?”

“Penny Parker.”

“Where do you live?”

“I am a summer vacationist.”

The answers only partially satisfied Ma Harper. Evidently she was afraid that Penny might be an investigator, for she debated a moment. Then she said: “You wait here until I talk to someone.”

“But I really must be leaving.”

“You wait here, I said!” Ma Harper snapped. “Maybe you’re okay, but I ain’t takin’ no chances on you getting me into trouble about these stockings. Wait until I talk to Joe.”

Leaving Penny on the balcony, she went out by way of the front living room door. After it had closed, there was a sharp little click which made the girl fear she had been locked in.

The truth was quickly ascertained. The door was locked. For an instant, Penny was frightened, but she told herself she was not really a prisoner. There were windows she could unfasten, and another door at the rear of the house.

Intending to test it, she went quickly through the kitchen. Voices reached her ears. Evidently Ma Harper and the two men were standing close to the door, and although speaking in low tones she could hear most of the conversation.

“The girl may be all right, but I think she was sent here to spy!” Ma reported. “If we let her go, she may bring the police down on us!”

“And if you try to hold her here, you’ll soon be in trouble!” one of the men answered. Penny thought the voice 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.

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!