“You’re not supposed to try and walk the way you do in shoes,” Sandy instructed him. “You just shuffle along.”
At last they stood beneath the big ramshackle structure. It was spooky, Sandy had to admit to himself, just as Jerry said. Once this building had been the nerve center of a booming industry, buzzing with activity and life. Now it stood on the hillside, gaunt, decaying and silent. Before many more years it would become a rickety skeleton.
He shuddered as Parker led them up on the moldy loading platform and into the tomblike dampness of the shed. “We can go on up to the main building through here. There are stairs right inside.” They passed through a doorway into a room illuminated only by the slivers of daylight that penetrated the cracked boards.
Suddenly, Russ Parker did an about-face and began talking. “Well, here we are.” Only he seemed to be talking to someone in back of them.
Sandy whirled quickly and saw that the doorway was blocked by a huge man wearing a stocking cap and a plaid mackinaw. His face was hidden in shadow. But the big Lüger pistol in his right hand was very plain to see.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Plot Revealed
In his other hand the stranger carried a square electric lantern. He turned the powerful beam on Sandy and Jerry. “Did you have any trouble with them, Parker?”
“Not a bit,” Parker said. “The Steele boy suggested himself that we land here. And of course there was no trouble at all persuading him to fly out here with me.”
The boys looked from Parker to the other man in bewilderment. “Russ,” Sandy pleaded, “tell us what’s going on. Who is this guy?” He turned on the stranger belligerently. “Do you know where my father is?”
“My name is Kruger,” the man snapped. “And, yes, I do know where your father is. Now, turn around and march up those stairs.” He waved the pistol at them threateningly.