"And what about the bell?" he asked at last, having gotten a pretty good sounding on how reliable the elderly lady's memory was.

"Bell?" Mrs. Moon paused in her munching. A cat stretched upward as if it were going to steal the morsel from her fingers.

"You were mentioning some of the special things about the town," prompted Duane. "What about the big bell in the school belfry? Do you remember that being talked about?"

Mrs. Moon looked flustered for a moment. "Bell? When was there a bell there?"

Duane sighed. This whole mystery was nonsense. "In eighteen seventy-six," he said softly. "Mr. Ashley brought it back from Europe ..."

Mrs. Moon giggled. Her dentures were a bit loose and she used her tongue to adjust them. "You silly boy. I was born in eighteen seventy-six. How could I remember something from the year I was born?"

Duane blinked. He thought of this wrinkled and slightly senile lady as a wrinkled baby, pink and fresh and greeting the world in the year Custer's men were slaughtered. He thought of the changes she had lived through-horseless carriages appearing, the telephone, the First World War, the rise of America as a world power, Sputnik-all viewed from beneath the elms of Depot Street.

He said, "So you don't remember anything about a bell?" He was putting away his pencil and notebook.

"Why of course I remember the bell," she said, reaching for another of her daughter's cookies. "It was a beautiful bell. Mr. Ashley's father brought it from Europe on one of his voyages. When I went to school in Central, the bell used to ring every day at eight-fifteen and again at three."

Duane stared. He was aware that his hand was shaking slightly as he brought the notebook back out and began writing. This was the first confirmation-outside of books-that the Borgia Bell existed.

"Do you remember anything special about the bell?"

"Oh my, dear, everything about the school and the bell were special in those days. One of us . . . one of the younger children . . . was selected to pull the rope every Friday at the start of classes. I remember I was chosen once. Oh, yes, it was a beautiful bell. ..."

"Do you remember what happened to it?'

"Well, yes. I mean, I'm not certain ..." A strange look passed over Mrs. Moon's face and she absently set her cookie on her lap. Two cats devoured it as she raised trembling fingers to her lips. "Mr. Moon ... my Orville, I mean, not Father . . . Mr. Moon was not involved in what happened. Not in any way." She reached over and stabbed at Duane's notebook with a bony finger. "You write that down, now.

Neither Orville nor Father were there when . . . when that terrible thing happened."

"Yes, ma'am," said Duane, pencil stopped. "What did happen?"

Both of Mrs. Moon's hands were fluttering now. The cats jumped from her lap. "Why, the terrible thing. You know, that awful thing we don't want to talk about. Why would you want to write about thatl You seem like a nice young boy."

"Yes'm," said Duane, almost holding his breath. "But I was told to write about everything. I certainly would appreciate the help. What terrible thing are we talking about? Something about the bell?"

Mrs. Moon seemed to forget he was in the room with her. She stared into the shadows where her cats were a mere whisper of movement. "Why, no . . ." she began, voice little more than a cracked whisper. Duane could hear a truck pass on the street outside, but Mrs. Moon did not blink. "Not the bell," she said. "Although they hanged him from it, didn't they?"

"Hanged who?" Duane was whispering now.

Mrs. Moon turned her face back in his direction but her eyes still seemed blind. "Why, that terrible man, of course. The one who killed and ..." She made a noise and Duane realized that there were tears on Mrs. Moon's cheeks. One of them found its way down the gully of wrinkles to the corner of her mouth. "The one who killed and ate that little girl," she finished, voice stronger.

Duane stopped scribbling and stared.

"You write this down, now," commanded the old lady and stabbed a finger in his direction again. Her gaze had returned from wherever it had been and now it was burning into Duane. "It's time this was written down. Take it all down. Just be sure to include in your report that neither Orville nor Mr. Moon were there . . . why, they weren't even in the county when this terrible thing happened. Now you write this down now!"

And, as she talked in a voice which sounded to Duane like old parchment crinkling in a long-unopened book, he wrote it all down.

Dale went over in person to invite Harlen to Friday's outing at Uncle Henry's and he realized how lonely their friend had been. Harlen's mother, Miss Jensen, had doubts as to whether Jimmy was well enough to go for such a long outing, but Dale had brought a note inviting her along as well and she gave in to Harlen's pleas.

Dale's dad got home about two and they all left for the farm at three-thirty, Harlen in his bulky cast riding in the backseat of the station wagon with his mom and Kev while Mike and Dale and Lawrence crammed into the back. They were in a great mood and sang as they roared up and down the hills past the cemetery.

Uncle Henry and Aunt Lena had set up chairs in the shady part of the yard and there was much greeting and chatter, while Biff, Uncle Henry's big German shepherd, danced around in an ecstasy of welcome. The grown-ups settled into the broad-boarded Adirondack chairs while the boys grabbed shovels from the barn and headed for the back pasture. They walked more slowly than usual, opening gates for Harlen rather than clambering over fences, but the injured boy kept up well enough.

Finally, in the rearmost pasture before the woods began, down along the creek that ran from the south, they found their excavation marks from previous summers and began digging for the Bootleggers' Cave.

The Bootleggers' Cave had started out as a legend, had been refined as a story Uncle Henry told them years before, and now was gospel to the boys. It seems that in the 1920s, during Prohibition and before Uncle Henry had bought the farm, the previous owner had allowed bootleggers from the next county to use an old cave in the back forty to hide their hooch. The cave became a central warehouse. A dirt road was put in. The cave was expanded, the entrance shored up, and an actual speakeasy was created underground.

"A lot of them big-time gangsters used to stop by here when they was passing through from Chicago," Uncle Henry had told them. "I have it on a stack of Bibles that John Dillinger was here once, and that three of Al Capone's boys came down to rub out Mickey Shaughnessy . . . but Mickey heard they was a-coming and lit out for his sister's place over on Spoon River. So the three Capone boys just shot the place up with Tommy guns and stole some of the booze."

The ending of the tale was the most enticing part. Legend had it that the Bootleggers' Cave had been raided by revenuers shortly before Prohibition ended. Rather than remove the goods, the federal men had just dynamited the entrance, collapsing the cave on the warehouse of liquor, the speakeasy with its tables and mahogany bar and player piano, even on three trucks and a Model A that had been parked in the warehouse section. Then they had obliterated the road so no one would ever find the cave again.

Dale and the boys were sure that the cave hadn't collapsed, only the entrance to it. Probably only six or eight feet of digging separated that archaeological find from the outside world. If they could find the right part of the hillside to dig ...

Over the years, Uncle Henry had been a lot of help, showing the boys old tire tracks and rusting metal that he said had been left near the entrance, pointing out declivities in the hillside that were probably the entrance or at least the emergency exits, and generally remembering new details of the story when the boys' interest flagged after long days of digging and searching in the hot sun.