“What an adventure!” Benny announced when he came back to the castle.
The children chattered on about their morning while they helped Carrie get lunch. As usual, Benny was starving, which was too bad. Lunch that day was just dibs and dabs of leftovers from the day before.
“Sorry about serving reruns again, Benny,” Carrie said. “I thought Sandy would be back with the groceries by now.”
“I found one can of tuna fish left,” Jessie said when she looked in the almost empty cabinets. “Maybe I can stretch it out.”
Carrie looked disgusted. “That Sandy! Where can she be? She promised to be back by lunchtime.”
Henry was surprised to hear this. “Wait a minute. At least an hour ago Benny and I saw a red Jeep driving back toward the castle. Wasn’t that Sandy?”
“That must have been someone else on the lake road,” Carrie said. “It’s too bad it wasn’t Sandy. I guess we’ll have to make do with what food we have.”
By the time everyone had sat down to eat, the lunch tasted just fine to the Aldens. Their morning’s adventure had made them hungry for anything, even leftovers.
“We’re going to start work on the stained glass windows in the towers this afternoon,” Carrie announced when lunch was over. “I’ve got this book of old photos and watercolors that show how the windows looked originally.”
Violet studied the pictures of Drummond Castle as it once was. “Do you think someday the castle will really look like this again?”
Carrie gave Violet a smile. “With patience and care, we can do anything. Now let’s find Mr. Tooner. Your grandfather mentioned you like drawing and painting, Violet. I think you might be of special help.”
Mr. Tooner was halfway up the staircase in the other tower when the Aldens caught up with him. He didn’t even turn around when Carrie came up with the Aldens. He just went right on taking down the plywood coverings from the damaged windows.
“Already at work, I see,” Carrie said to Mr. Tooner. “Violet is going to sketch the windows from the picture and number the window pieces that are missing. Then we can give her sketches and your measurements to the glassmaker.”
“If you like, you can hand things to us, Mr. Tooner,” Henry said. “We can help you put back the plywood coverings.”
Jessie gathered up old nails scattered around the floor. “These can be used again if we hammer them straight. Can Benny borrow this extra hammer?”
“Humph,” was Mr. Tooner’s answer.
The children decided this meant yes. Soon Benny was banging away on the nails to make them straight. Henry helped take down the plywood so Mr. Tooner wouldn’t have to go up and down his step stool every time. As Mr. Tooner uncovered each window, Violet made sketches to show the missing pieces. Then Jessie labeled them with the measurements.
After each window was done, Benny handed Mr. Tooner nice straight nails to hammer on the coverings again.
“Did I do these right, Mr. Tooner?” Violet asked when she put down her colored pencils.
Mr. Tooner looked at Violet’s drawings. His face seemed to brighten. “Why, yes, Miss, yes. That is just the way they should be.”
After that, Mr. Tooner didn’t seem to mind that the Aldens were there.
“I can see you don’t need me,” Carrie said. “I’ll be downstairs. Maybe Sandy is back by now.”
Mr. Tooner and the Aldens labeled every window along the tower staircase until they got to the top floor.
“Are we going in here?” Henry asked when they came to a locked door. “Carrie says no one goes in that room.”
“This room is closed up, but look what I have,” Mr. Tooner said. He jiggled some keys in his pocket. The children all wondered the same thing. Did Mr. Tooner have the big key to the blue door?
He didn’t. When he held up his key ring, they saw it had only small, ordinary-sized keys on it.
Mr. Tooner opened the door to the mysterious tower room, and they all went inside. The room was cluttered with boxes and old furniture and toys. Most of the windows were plain leaded ones. There was another one hidden under a square of plywood. When Mr. Tooner and Henry pulled down the wood covering, a rainbow of colors filled the room.
“It’s hardly damaged at all!” Jessie cried. “Just one or two pieces are missing.”
Mr. Tooner showed the children just how to measure the pieces that needed to be replaced. Violet sketched them and wrote down the measurements. The children, and even Mr. Tooner, hummed and hammered, measured and whistled. When they had finished, the children looked around the room.
“This looks like an old attic,” Benny said. “I guess that’s why no one comes up here.”
“It’s too bad,” Jessie said. “We like our two little tower rooms on the other side.”
This made Henry realize something. “Isn’t it strange that this room is only as big as one of our rooms? Since the towers are the same size from the outside, they should be the same size on the inside!”
“Or there should be another room,” Jessie said, puzzled.
“I’d like to find a secret room,” Benny said. He crawled behind the old toys and suits of armor piled up all around. He tried to look behind the bookcase, but realized it was built into the wall.
“This has been used as a storage room ever since Mr. Drummond died,” Mr. Tooner said. “Once it was used as a playroom for some of the servants’ children. There’s probably a crawlspace around it, nothing more. Well, we’re finished with these windows. Let’s go downstairs and work on the others.” As Benny left the room, he took one last look at the suit of armor standing in the corner of the room. He knew it was impossible, but he was almost certain he’d seen it move. He hurried to catch up with the others.
“Listen,” Violet whispered to Jessie as they followed Mr. Tooner down the tower stairs. “Mr. Tooner is humming that same fiddle tune we heard.”
Mr. Tooner’s humming carried clearly up the stone staircase.
“You’re right,” Jessie said. “But I don’t think it has anything to do with the missing violin. He’s too nice to be mixed up with that.”
Henry overheard the girls. “I bet Mr. Tooner sometimes hears that same music, and it just got into his head. He probably doesn’t even realize where that tune came from!”
“Well, anyway I’m glad he’s humming instead of being grouchy like before,” Violet agreed.
The children stopped whispering when they caught up with Mr. Tooner. He waved them down a hall on the second floor toward the front of the castle.
“Where to now, Mr. Tooner?” Henry shifted the step stool from one shoulder to another.
“Another secret room?” Benny joked.
For the first time, the children saw Mr. Tooner smile a real smile. His blue eyes twinkled.
“You guessed right, my boy,” Mr. Tooner said to Benny. “Now follow me. Henry, you can put down that ladder. You girls can leave the toolbox and papers in the hall. Nothing needs fixing in here.”
With that, Mr. Tooner pulled out his key ring again. He opened a door to another small room filled with soft colored light.
“It’s the room with the round stained glass window over the front door!” Violet cried.
“Yes, indeed,” Mr. Tooner said. “Mr. Drummond used to spend a lot of time here. He had this room and that window specially designed.”
Mr. Tooner went over to the window and clicked two latches. Out fell the central piece of stained glass. The children gasped.
“Don’t worry. It’s not broken,” Mr. Tooner said with a very nice smile. “Here Benny, hold this piece over your face.”
Benny carefully took the painted piece of the knight’s face. It fit right over his own! Benny knew just what to do next. He went over to the empty space and put his own face in the window. It fit almost perfectly.
“I can see everything from up here!” he cried.
“And so could Mr. Drummond,” Mr. Tooner explained. “He designed the removable glass so he could see who came to the door ahead of time. Then he would decide if he wanted to meet with a visitor or not.”
Mr. Tooner slapped his knee. “I sometimes do the same. Half the time people who come to the door are just a plain bother. If I don’t like ’em, I don’t answer the door.”
“You must have liked us, Mr. Tooner,” Violet said. “I saw a face the day we arrived at Drummond Castle. Remember? You were the one who answered the door.”
Mr. Tooner shook his head. “I answered the door, but I haven’t been in this room for weeks. Too much work to do.”
“But … but, someone was here,” Violet said. “Now that I know this is a lookout, I’m sure someone was watching us the day we drove up.”
“What about this morning?” Henry asked Mr. Tooner. “Benny and I are sure someone was up here. But when we got close, the person moved away.”
“Can’t be, my boy, can’t be,” Mr. Tooner told Henry. “Even Mrs. Bell doesn’t have a key. She thinks it’s my private storage room and doesn’t bother me about it.”
The children were completely confused. They couldn’t say for sure that they had seen a face in the funny window. But they certainly thought they had. |