Free Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls by Ann M. Martin

was out of pots, pans, and cans, though, so she had to think of something else. She looked at a shelf full of David Michael’s toys, and her eyes fell on a large bag of marbles.
    â€œAha!”
she said aloud.
    Mary Anne took the marbles into the front hall. Then she found a long piece of string. She placed the bag of marbles on a table next to the door and attached the string to a little hole near the opening of the bag. She tied the other end securely to the doorknob. This was Mary Anne’s idea: The prowler quietly opens the door; the string pulls the marbles to the floor; they spill everywhere, not only making a racket to alert Mary Anne but causing the prowler to slip and fall when he steps inside.
    Naturally, as soon as Mary Anne finished her second alarm, she decided she needed one for the back door. It was the only way she would feel safe. Then she would have all the doors covered.
    Mary Anne had to think a while before making that last alarm. By then, she was out of marbles as well as pots, pans, and cans.
    What else could make a lot of noise? Mary Anne thought.
    Blocks? Maybe.
    Tinkertoys? Nah.
    Music! Music could be good and loud. The plans for Mary Anne’s final alarm began to take shape.
    First, she tiptoed upstairs to Kristy’s room to borrow her portable stereo. Then she lookedthrough the music collection in the room Sam and Charlie share. She selected one called
Poundin’ Down the Walls
by the Slime Kings and slipped it in.
    Back downstairs, she sat on the rug in the den to think, the stereo in her lap. How could she arrange for the stereo to turn itself on?
    She thought some more. How did
she
turn it on? She pressed the PLAY button, of course. Okay. How could she get something else to press the PLAY button? Better yet, how could she get the back door to press the PLAY button?
    In a flash of brilliance, she had the answer. Mary Anne leaped up and carried the stereo into the kitchen. She sat down on the floor again and examined the skinny, rubber-tipped doorstop attached to the bottom of the back door. Perfect.
    Mary Anne set the stereo about two feet from the door. She lined the doorstop up with the PLAY button. Then she opened the door. The doorstop hit the stereo and it fell over. But that didn’t stop Mary Anne. I need to … to shore it up or something, she thought.
    She dragged a heavy, round footstool in from the den and set it just behind the stereo.
    She opened the door again.
    The doorstop hit the PLAY button, and
Poundin’ Down the Walls
blared out. Mary Anne smiled. Satisfied, she hit the STOP button, turned the volume up to ten, and went back into the den. She curled up on the couch with her tattered copy of
The Secret Garden
and began to read.
    She was in the middle of one of her favorite parts—the one where Mary discovers poor, sickly Colin hidden in Misselthwaite Manor—when she heard an ominous creak from the front hall. Actually, Mary Anne told me the next day, it was just a little creak, but her head was filled with the dark, shadowy hallways of Misselthwaite, so almost any noise would have sounded ominous.
    Mary Anne looked up sharply. She jumped to her feet. “Louie!” she whispered urgently. Where is that dog when you need protection? she asked herself. She tiptoed to the den door and peeped into the hall.
    There was Louie. He was standing at attention, staring at the front door.
    The hinges creaked slightly.
    Louie whined.
    And all of a sudden, the door flew open, pulling the marbles to the floor and scattering them loudly.
    Louie barked twice.
    But no one came in.
    Mary Anne let out a sigh of relief. “It’s just the wind, Louie,” she said shakily, “like the wind off the moors in Yorkshire,” she added, thinking of her book. “I must not have closed the door all the way.”
    But Louie didn’t look convinced. He sat at the screen door, silently begging to be let out to patrol the property. Mary Anne opened it