Was it an echo? Judy did not know and decided not to take time to find out. Time was precious. She couldn’t waste it, and yet, oh, how it hurt her when she tried to walk! It felt as if she had icicles attached to her body instead of legs. And yet she must move them. She must make herself do it.
“Hurry! Hurry!” she whispered as if the words were enough to speed her along the path to the tower. She ran stiffly with a limp that grew worse as she neared the tall stone edifice.
“It mustn’t be locked!” she cried. “That would be too cruel.”
She found the lock broken and the great door sagging on rusty hinges that creaked as she opened it. Inside there was nothing except a great, gloomy round room that looked as if it had been built on purpose to house witches and owls and bats. She even fancied she could hear them fluttering. It reminded her of a giant bell tower only, instead of a bell, she looked up to see a huge tank supported by steel girders.
Was the thing she had to turn up there? The tank could be reached by narrow, wooden steps that wound up and up until, near the top, there was only a ladder.
“This is the end!” thought Judy. “I can never climb it.”
But would it be necessary to climb all the way up to the tank in order to turn off the fountain? A steady, whispering noise drew her attention to what looked like an electric motor with a switch above it. Not at all sure what would happen, she reached up and turned off the switch.
“Now what have I done?” she asked herself as the whole tower shuddered and sighed. A moan came from the great storage tank overhead. Not only the fountain, but the tower, too, seemed to be haunted.
The whispering and moaning continued for less than a minute. The silence that followed let Judy breathe again. The electric motor was still.
“I did it!” she thought with sudden elation. But was shutting off the motor enough? “If this is an electric pump then it probably pumps water into that big storage tank overhead,” she reasoned, “and if the tank is still full it will continue to pour water into the tunnel until it empties itself, and that may be too late!”