Read Online Spiderweb for Two - A Melendy Maze by Elizabeth Enright - Free Book Online Page A

eyes were the palest blue, almost white; it was astonishing how fierce they looked.
    â€œWhat do you kids think you’re doin’?”
    His loud voice, wavering with rage, released the spell. Randy dropped Oliver with a thud and automatically flexed her tired arms. “We—why, we were just looking for something,” she said lamely.
    â€œLookin’ for something! In my store? Lookin’ for what? You tell me the truth, see, or I’ll get the cops after you. Gointa get ’em anyhow!”
    â€œWe weren’t doing anything wrong, really we weren’t!” Randy tried to explain. “People, friends of ours, have been hiding things for us to find; sort of like a treasure hunt, you know. We thought—they led us to believe—they’d hidden one of them here. On your clock we thought, maybe.”
    â€œYou have got the same name as an emperor, you know,” said Oliver helpfully.
    â€œWhat do you think I am? Dumb? Green? Born yesterday?” inquired Mr. Frederick. “N-a-a, you don’t. Stay right there where you are a minute.” His left hand, still holding the five-dollar bill, lightly touched the handle of a butcher knife lying on the counter, his other reached out and opened up the cash register; after a hasty appraisal of its contents, he clanged it shut again, reached around the doorjamb behind him, still glaring at the young Melendys, and pulled out a chair.
    â€œStay where you are, see,” he ordered (unnecessarily, as it happened, for the children stood frozen where they were). They watched, like terrified rabbits, as Mr. Frederick bounded up on the chair and lifted the calendar from its hook above the clock. They saw, now, why it was hung so high, for it was used to conceal the little wall safe which Mr. Frederick was now engaged in opening. They watched him as he peered and counted, satisfying himself that nothing was missing.
    â€œAll right,” he said, slamming the heavy little door and replacing the calendar. He stepped down remarkably lightly from his stool, and faced them like a pirate still grasping the long sharp knife and the five-dollar bill. For some reason the things he wore—the long tight apron, like a skirt, the hard black-banded hat, the jaunty pencil tilted beside a face so far from jaunty—made him doubly terrifying.
    â€œAll right,” he said, advancing on them slowly. “But now get out, see? Get out and don’t come meddling again. And if you ever mention to anyone—to a single person, see?—about how you saw my safe or where it is, I’ll find it out, see? And I’ll skin you both alive!” With this he brandished the knife, and Randy made for the door. It was Oliver who remembered to snatch up the parcels from the counter; then he, too, was in the street beside her.
    â€œWhat a horrible—what a terrible man!” gasped Randy.
    â€œHe never gave us our change, either,” said Oliver.
    â€œWild horses couldn’t drag me back to get it,” cried Randy. “But what will Cuffy say? How could they have sent us to that awful place? And all for nothing, too.”
    â€œHey, wait,” said Oliver, stopping in the street. “It may not be for nothing; I think I’ve got the clue.” He reached into his pocket and drew out the little object he had snatched from the top of the clock frame.
    He and Randy stared at it, lying on his palm.
    â€œThe clock key,” said Randy quietly. In a minute they began to laugh. They laughed so hard that they had to go over and lean against the wall of the Carthage Municipal and Farmer’s Loan and Trust Building until they recovered. People went by them on their way home—it was five o’clock—and smiled in sympathy, wishing they knew the joke.
    â€œFair exchange is no robbery,” Randy said. “We have the key, but he’s got a dollar and a half of ours.
    â€œI think,” she said a little later,