"Yes, sir. And thank you."
During their combination lunch and breakfast, the boys had to put up with comments from Jan and Barby. Dr. Miller had refrained from scolding them for foolhardiness, but the girls were not so reticent. The boys bore it stoically, but Rick resolved not to divulge their secret to Barby at any cost. Let her get a shock with the rest of the ghost fanciers.
Belsely was out when they phoned, but he called back a short time later. "Meet me at the edge of the orchard," he requested. "Got to talk with you."
The boys excused themselves and went to keep the rendezvous.
"Didn't get a chance to talk with you last night," the farmer said. "Didn't you wonder a little at how fast rescue got to you?"
"We did at first," Rick explained. "Then we realized you had seen us. We waved at you and you waved back. So we guessed the mine was the first place you'd look."
"True, true. But that's only part of the story. I saw you go in the mine, you see. Then I went back to fence makin'. Pretty soon I heard the put-put of that scooter and along came the ice-cream man. He parked the scooter and sort of sniffed around here and there, and then he walked over and went into the mine. I did some sneakin' myself, to where I could see what he was doin'. He was looking at footprints, like he was an injun trackin' the hero on a Western TV show."
"Those must have been his tracks we saw on the way in," Scotty interjected. "Big feet, which he has, and a reason for wanting to know how far into the mine we'd gone the first time add up to Mr. Frostola."
"I suppose. Well, he went in a ways and stayed a bit, then he came out and went back to his scooter and just sat on it. Pretty soon there was a rumble, and a cloud of dust came pourin' out of the mine. I knew right away you was trapped in there. Had to be, from the noise. Don't know how he did it, though. There was no explosion."
Rick explained about the rotted timbers. "He could have done a little pushing, or even cutting into the rotten wood with a knife. That would have done it. Maybe he pushed until the beams started to crack and then hurried out, only it took a few minutes for the beam to let go all the way."