others. She looked for Wooden-Leg Sam. He was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he was in his little hut.
She hadn’t been there for more than two minutes when something surprising happened. A car came bumping slowly down the rough track to the yard! Anne sat up and watched. A man got out – and Anne’s eyes almost fell out of her head. Why, it was – surely it was Mr Andrews, Jock’s stepfather!
He went over to Sam’s hut and threw open the door. Anne could hear the sound of voices. Then she heard another noise – the sound of a heavy lorry coming. She saw it come cautiously down the steep, rough track. It ran into an old tumbledown shed and stayed there. Then three men came out and Anne stared at them. Where had she seen them before?
‘Of course! They’re the farm labourers at Jock’s farm!’ she thought. ‘But what are they doing here? How very strange!’
Mr Andrews joined the men and, to Anne’s dismay, they began to walk up the lines to the tunnel! Her heart almost stopped. Goodness, Julian, Dick and Jock were still in that tunnel, walking through it. They would bump right into Mr Andrews and his men – and then what would happen? Mr Andrews had warned them against going there, and had ordered Jock not to go.
Anne stared at the four men walking into the far-off mouth of the tunnel. What could she do? How could she warn the boys? She couldn’t! She would just have to stay there and wait for them to come out – probably chased by a furious Mr Andrews and the other men. Oh dear, dear – if they were caught they would probably all get an awful telling off! What could she do?
‘I can only wait,’ thought poor Anne. ‘There’s nothing else to do. Oh, do come, Julian, Dick and Jock. I daren’t do anything but wait for you.’
She waited and waited. It was now long past tea-time. Julian had the tea, so there was nothing for Anne to eat. Nobody came out of the tunnel. Not a sound was heard. Anne at last decided to go down and ask Wooden-Leg Sam a few questions. So, rather afraid, the girl set off down to the yard.
Sam was in his hut, drinking cocoa, and looking very sour. Something had evidently gone wrong. When he saw Anne’s shadow across the doorway he got up at once, shaking his fist.
‘What, you children again! You went into that tunnel this afternoon, and so I went up and telephoned Mr Andrews to come and catch you all, poking your noses in all the time? How did you get out of that tunnel? Are the others with you? Didn’t Mr Andrews catch you, eh?’
Anne listened to all this in horror. So old Sam had actually managed to telephone Mr Andrews, and tell tales on them – so that Jock’s stepfather and his men had come to catch them. This was worse than ever.
‘You come in here,’ said Sam suddenly, and he darted his big arm at her. ‘Come on. I don’t know where the others are, but I’ll get one of you!’
Anne gave a scream and ran away at top speed. Wooden-Leg Sam went after her for a few yards and then gave it up. He bent down and picked up a handful of cinders. A shower of them fell all round Anne, and made her run faster than ever.
She tore up the path to the heather, and was soon on the moors again, panting and sobbing. ‘Oh, Julian! Oh, Dick! What’s happened to you? Oh, where’s George? If only she would come home, she’d be brave enough to look for them, but I’m not. I must tell Mr Luffy. He’ll know what to do!’ She ran on and on, her feet catching continually in
the tufts of thick heather. She kept falling over and scrambling up again. She now had only one idea in her mind – to find Mr Luffy and tell him every single thing! Yes, she would tell him about the spook-trains and all. There was something strange and important about the whole thing now, and she wanted a grown-up’s help.
She staggered on and on. ‘Mr Luffy! Oh, Mr Luffy, where are you? MR LUFFY!’
But no Mr Luffy answered her. She came round the gorse bushes she thought were the ones sheltering the camp – but, alas, the camp was not there. Anne had lost her way!
‘I’m lost,’ said Anne, the tears running down her cheeks. ‘But I mustn’t get scared. I must try to find the right path now. Oh, dear, I’m quite lost! Mr LUFFY!’
Poor Anne. She stumbled on blindly, hoping to come to the camp, calling every now and again. ‘Mr Luffy. Can you hear me? MR LUFFFFFFFY!’
17 An amazing find
In the meantime, what had happened to the three boys walking back through the tunnel? They had gone slowly along examining the lines to see if a train could have possibly run along them recently. Few weeds grew in the dark airless tunnel, so they could not tell by those.
But, when they came about half-way, Julian noticed an interesting thing. ‘Look,’ he said, flashing his torch on to the lines before and behind them. ‘See that? The lines are black and rusty behind us now, but here this pair of lines is quite bright – as if they had been used a lot.’
He was right. Behind them stretched black and rusty lines, sometimes buckled in places – but in front of them, stretching to the mouth of the tunnel leading to Olly’s Yard, the lines were bright, as if train-wheels had run along them.
‘That’s funny,’ said Dick. ‘Looks as if the spook-train ran only from here to Olly’s Yard and back. But why? And where in the world is it now? It’s vanished into thin air!’
Julian was as puzzled as Dick. Where could a train be if it was not in the tunnel? It had obviously run to the middle of the tunnel, and then stopped – but where had it gone now?
‘Let’s go to the mouth of the tunnel and see if the lines are bright all the way,’ said Julian at last. ‘We
can’t discover much here – unless the train suddenly materialises in front of us!’
They went on down the tunnel, their torches flashing on the lines in front of them. They talked earnestly as they went. They didn’t see four men waiting for them, four men who crouched in a little niche at the side of the tunnel, waiting there in the dark.
‘Well,’ said Julian, ‘I think -‘ and then he stopped, because four dark figures suddenly pounced on the three boys and held them fast. Julian gave a shout and struggled, but the man who had hold of him was far too strong to escape from. Their torches were flung to the ground. Julian’s broke, and the other two torches lay there, their beams shining on the feet of the struggling company.
It didn’t take more than twenty seconds to make each boy a captive, his arms behind his back. Julian tried to kick, but his captor twisted his arm so fiercely that he groaned in pain and stopped his kicking.
‘Look here! What’s all this about?’ demanded Dick. ‘Who are you, and what do you think you’re doing? We’re only three boys exploring an old tunnel. What’s the harm in that?’
‘Take them all away,’ said a voice that everyone recognised at once.
‘Mr Andrews! Is it you?’ cried Julian. ‘Set us free. You know us – the boys at the camp. And Jock’s here too. What do you think you’re doing?’
Mr Andrews didn’t answer, but he gave poor Jock a box on the right ear that almost sent him to the ground.
Their captors turned them about, and led them roughly up the tunnel, towards the middle. Nobody had a torch so it was all done in the darkness and the
three boys stumbled badly, though the men seemed sure-footed enough.
They came to a halt after a time. Mr Andrews left them and Julian heard him go off somewhere to the left. Then there came a curious noise – a bang, a clank, and then a sliding, grating sound. What could be happening? Julian strained his eyes in the darkness, but he could see nothing at all.
He didn’t know that Mr Andrews was opening the bricked-up wall through which the train had gone. He didn’t know that he and the others were being pushed out of the first tunnel into the other one, through the curious hole in the wall. The three boys were shoved along in the darkness, not daring to protest.
Now they were in the curious place between the two walls which were built right across the place where the second tunnel forked from the first one. The place where the spook-train stood in silence – the place where George was, still hidden in one of the trucks with Timmy! But nobody knew that, of course; not even Mr Andrews guessed that a girl and a dog were listening in a truck nearby!