Tunnel of Secrets by Franklin W. Dixon Read Free Book Online Page A

been all excited about lately aren’t the half of it. Who knows what you’d see down there if you searched hard enough? Although I suspect all you’d find are cobwebs and sewer rats.”
    Whatever lay ahead, we had an obligation to Layla to investigate. So far all the crazy components of this case seemed to point back to one person, and I figured that person was a good place to start.
    “Um,Zeke, if we did want to find Sal, where would we look?” I asked.
    Zeke thought for a moment. “Well, I guess you could leave him a note.”
    “A note?” Frank asked.
    “Sure. Sal’s kind of like the maintenance guy around here, only he doesn’t like talking to people, so he keeps a lockbox for folks to put requests when something needs to be fixed. Like running wires for a new resident or when HBO is on the fritz. Just take that tunnel to the junction and you’ll see it on the wall.”
    Zeke pointed to a dark tunnel branching off from the open, well-lit space we were standing in. I unzipped my bag, took a quick inventory, and strapped on a headlamp. Luckily, the thief hadn’t taken anything except the Admiral’s key.
    “Let’s roll,” I said to Frank.
    “Thanks for your help, Zeke,” Frank said.
    “No worries. You boys keep an eye on your sandwiches,” he said with a wink.
    “Well, that was interesting,” I said to Frank as we walked toward the mouth of the tunnel. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite like Zeke and Curly before.”
    “I guess you have to be at least a little strange to choose to live underground,” Frank replied.
    I had an unsettled feeling as we entered the tunnel. I didn’t love the idea of going even deeper underground in pursuit of someone everyone claimed was off his rocker, andwalking into an enclosed train tunnel with barely any space between the track and the walls made me feel extra edgy. As we followed the track around a curve in the tunnel, my headlamp threw all kinds of ghostly shadows off the railroad ties in front of us.
    “Is it normal to feel claustrophobic while urban exploring?” Frank asked meekly.
    “Totally normal, bro,” I said. “The important thing is to stay calm and it’ll pass.”
    Frank sighed in relief. “Okay, that’s good, thanks.”
    “No prob— Hey, what’s that?” I asked my brother.
    “What’s what?” he started to ask, but then he felt it too. The tracks had started vibrating under our feet.
    “That’s weird,” he said, listening to the low clk-clk-clk-clk-clk that followed. “It sounds kind of like a train, but that’s not even possible. The cars down here have been out of commission for, like, a hundred years. It must be coming from the station aboveground.”
    “That’s good. I’d like to avoid getting stuck in this tunnel with a train heading toward us,” I said.
    “Yeah,” Frank agreed, laughing nervously.
    “Um, Frank, what’s that?” I asked again, this time pointing over our shoulders at a circle of light that had appeared on the track behind us—a light that was growing larger by the second.
    Frank’s eyes went wide.
    “Train!” he yelled, and took off running like a rocket.
    My stomach dropped.
    “I thought you said it wasn’t possible,” I screamed, sprinting after him.
    “Someone must have intentionally sent it down the track to run us over!” he cried.
    “Unless it’s haunted,” I yelled back.
    “Impossible!”
    “You mean impossible like the train that’s not supposed to be chasing us or a different kind of impossible?”
    Frank ignored that one. “Whoever it is, they must not want us digging any deeper. That means we’re on the right track.”
    “If this is the right track, I sure don’t want to see the wrong one!” I said, trying to will my feet to go faster.
    “Sorry, bad word choice!” Frank replied. The light behind us grew brighter, filling the tunnel and making our shadows dance along the tracks in front of us.
    “We can’t outrun it!” I yelled.
    Frank screamed something else,