The Black Tower by Betsy Byars Page B

House to read to Mr. Hunt.” And she wasn’t going to read. She wasn’t even going into the house. She was going to clear up a mystery.
    The house came into view, and Herculeah had to admit that the house did have a face, and not a welcoming one. She paused inside the open gate. Which was not welcoming, either. It was rather like a Venus flytrap, open to lure in the unwary. See, she told herself, if Meat were here and said something like that, I would make a joke of it.
    She continued up the drive to the house.
    The day matched her mood—gloomy. The gray arch of the sky overhead was lower today. She felt she could almost reach up and touch the dark patches of clouds.
    â€œIt’s going to rain,” she told herself. Hurrying, she left the gate behind and, as if on cue, something hit the dry ground at her feet. It hit with such a sharp sound that Herculeah thought at first of a bullet.
    She glanced down. A raindrop. She smiled at herself.
    Meat, I could really use you, she said to herself. This house is getting to me.
    The single raindrop was followed by a smattering of them. Herculeah crossed the drive quickly and took shelter in a grove of trees.
    She paused. She hadn’t heard thunder or seen any lightning, so it didn’t seem reckless or unsafe to wait for a few minutes under the trees.
    As she waited, she moved slowly toward the tower, keeping under the protective branches. She felt an odd tingling as she got closer. It was as if she were moving not just closer to the tower but to the solution of its mystery.
    And there was a mystery.
    She turned her eyes from the tower to the house. There were no signs of life around Hunt House today. There were no lights in the windows, no smoke in the chimney. It reminded Herculeah of the vacation houses at the beach that had been closed for the winter.
    Herculeah continued to move closer. Now she could see the very spot where Meat had stood when he had seen something coming toward him from the tower, the exact spot where his body had lain after he had fainted.
    Her eyes narrowed in concentration. She began to calculate distances.
    But wait a minute, she cautioned herself. Meat had said something about wind. He’d told her that a sudden gust of wind had come up and sent the missile straight toward him.
    But nothing had touched him. So whatever it was had to have been carried farther by the wind. Perhaps it had gone over his head.
    Her gaze swept over the ground behind where Meat had fallen.
    And, she remembered, the missile had been light. It was not stone; Herculeah was sure of that. So if something light was thrown from the tower—a ball of fabric or a balled-up garment, and this ball became unfolded or unwrapped by the wind in the process, well it might have looked like it sprouted wings, as Meat described....
    Her thoughts were going so well, Herculeah thought it was as if she had on her granny glasses.
    And, her thoughts raced, if this something came unwrapped and was caught by the wind, then it could have gone much, much farther than she had thought.
    She began to retrace her steps, keeping close to the trees. The brief rain had stopped, but she somehow sensed that she still needed the protection of the trees.
    She glanced at the house. There was still no sign of life there. These grounds had once been tended and cared for. This had been a beautiful lawn with birdbaths and statues. She came to an overgrown clearing.
    In the center of the clearing she could see the ruins of an old fountain. Stones had fallen from the sides. The statue that had once graced the center of the fountain had fallen on its side.
    There! She saw what she had been looking for.
    It was a brown, stone-colored bundle blown against the fallen statue. It was so much the color of the statue that it was as if it had been deliberately camouflaged.
    She approached carefully, looking over her shoulder at the house. No one seemed to be watching, so she bent and picked up the