Part 10

Hattie May and Hamish got up. “Keep your eye on the place as much as you can,” Hamish said in a whisper. “I’ll be round as soon as it gets dark.”

“You mean you’re going to watch the house all night?” Eve asked.

“Sure. But don’t say anything to your aunt yet. Not until tomorrow anyway. Promise?”

“We-ll, all right,” Eve agreed reluctantly. “We promise.”

XXII

The Escape

I HAD looked forward to a swim that afternoon but Hamish’s request that we keep an eye on the house next door forced us reluctantly to abandon the plan. Hamish might be a bit theatrical at times but there was no denying the fact that the Captain had a strange visitor and that, for whatever reason, he had appeared most unwilling to make us acquainted with the gentleman. So there did seem some sense in the idea that we keep our eyes peeled for what went on in our neighbor’s domain.

But as the long afternoon wore away, it seemed evident that nothing at all was going on. The smoke had long since died away from the chimney and, though the back door still remained fast closed, there was no sign of activity within.

I had been, I will confess, a little surprised that Eve had given Hamish her promise to say nothing to Aunt Cal about the mysterious guest next door. For Eve, though she could never be called in the least goody goody, has nevertheless rather strict ideas about honor and all that. She knew that the police were searching for Bangs and yet she was keeping silent.

“Eve,” I said at last. She had given up the pretense of sewing and was lying in the fragrant shadow of the syringa bush, her eyes on the drifting foamy clouds. “Eve, why did you agree not to tell Aunt Cal?”

“Why,” she frowned a little, “I only agreed to keep it dark till tomorrow.”

“But why did you agree at all?” I insisted. “It wasn’t because of that buried treasure stuff—because he might lead us to that?”

“No, it wasn’t that.”

“Then what was it?” I demanded caught by something evasive in her tone. “What was the reason?”

“Oh, well, I suppose I might as well tell you! You heard what Hamish said, didn’t you, about Bangs—that his real name might be something else?”

“Of course, but what of it? Suppose his name is Jones or Brown, what’s that got to do with it?”

“Hasn’t it ever occurred to you, Sandy,” she said slowly, “that it’s rather strange that this man has the key to Craven House and—well, that he knows his way about inside it so well that he was able to hide from the police the night they searched for him? Doesn’t that strike you as rather peculiar?”

“Eve, what are you driving at?” I cried.

“Well, suppose—just suppose—that Bangs, instead of being someone who could give Aunt Cal news of Carter Craven, suppose he was—was Carter himself!”

“Carter Craven! Oh, Eve, it couldn’t be! Why, he’s supposed to be dead, isn’t he? And—oh, besides—why this man is just a little sawed-off, bald headed rascal!”

“Well, you’ve got to remember that Carter was nothing more than a good-for-nothing—Aunt Cal practically said so.”

“He might be a good-for-nothing,” I retorted, “but that doesn’t make him a common thief. Besides,” I added firmly, “I don’t believe Aunt Cal could ever have been fond of a man with bowlegs!”

“What have his legs got to do with it, I’d like to know?”

“Well you know what I mean—he just isn’t the type to be Carter Craven!” And yet as I uttered the words a horrible doubt had begun to assail me. Suppose Eve was right, suppose this skulking vendor of fake hair lotions should turn out to be the long missing son of Craven House, well where did that put us? So far as we were concerned, of course, it didn’t really matter except that it made everything seem rather sordid. But Aunt Cal, how would she feel to find her own cousin facing a charge for petty thievery? Was that why Eve had promised to keep still?

“You want him to escape then?” I demanded. “On account of Aunt Cal?”

“Well wouldn’t it be the best thing that could happen?” she returned. “It isn’t of course as if they hadn’t recovered the car.”

“But the treasure—that letter—those measurements? If he goes—we’ll never know.”

She shrugged. “What does that matter compared with Aunt Cal’s pride? As things are she can think of Carter as having died peacefully in some foreign country. Of course there’s the little matter of the will—still nothing ever has been proved. Whereas this crime of stealing—everyone would know if Carter was charged with that!”

I sighed. I felt terribly disillusioned. “I don’t believe he is Carter!” I repeated stubbornly. “Carter was an adventurer—wild, restless, perhaps—but big in his way like the old Captain, his father.”

“In short a kind of romantic, story book hero!” retorted Eve cruelly, “wavy raven locks and fiery piercing eye and all that!”

“And straight legs!” I added. “Well, we’ll wait and see!”

After supper Miss Rose Blossom appeared to discuss Civic Betterment plans with Aunt Cal and the two were closeted in the front parlor for the rest of the evening. Things could not have turned out better for us. Just as dusk was beginning to fall we heard a low whistle from the bushes by the front fence and going out, found Hamish crouched behind them. “Where is she?” he whispered.

“In the parlor with the windows shut so you don’t need to whisper,” I said. “And by the way, if it’s not too much to ask, I’d like to know what you expect to do in case this—this creature next door does try to escape?”

“I’ll follow him of course,” he said still speaking in a guarded undertone as if he imagined there was some hidden listener behind the next bush. “If he’s who I think he won’t be leaving these parts till he’s got hold of what he’s after!”

“You mean you’d follow him if he went out to Craven House tonight?” I demanded. “Does Hattie May know?”

“Never mind Hattie May,” he retorted shortly. “I’ve got to see this thing through and I’m not going to have any interference from girls, d’you hear?”

Eve giggled. “Well do try to keep away from wells and things, won’t you? And I do hope you won’t catch your death of cold out here in the damp yard.”

“I’ve got my raincoat,” he said. “Now all you’ve got to do is to scram—see—and keep your mouths shut!”

“Absolutely,” Eve said. “Good luck—see you in the morning!”

It did seem funny going to bed with Hamish hiding out there in the bushes. Would he really stick it out, I wondered? Sometimes there seemed more to Hamish than appeared on the surface. Eve poked back the curtains after she had blown out the light. “See anything of him?” I asked.

“Not even a shadow! Wonder what Aunt Cal would think if she knew that the house was guarded!”

Darkness and quiet descended then. Soon Eve’s even breathing told me that she was asleep. For awhile I lay wondering some more about Captain Trout’s visitor, coming finally to the common-sense view that he was just what the Captain himself had stated—a ship’s cook, perhaps temporarily out of a job. Having reached this conclusion, I fell comfortably asleep.

The next thing I was conscious of was a footstep in the hall outside the bedroom door. My first startled thought was of the cook. Then I heard the steps descending the stairs, soft but firm. Aunt Cal, of course. But the dark square of the window told me that it couldn’t be morning yet—why was she going downstairs in the middle of the night? What prompted her?

I was wide awake at once. What had happened? Had I missed something? I slipped out of bed and to the open bedroom door. The reflection of a light was on the wall, coming from the hall below. I stole to the top of the stairs. I could hear the key turning in the front door—something very special must be up, I thought. I couldn’t just stand there and listen, I’d got to know.

I flew back to the bedroom, got into my dressing gown and slippers. Eve had not stirred. A minute later I was following Aunt Cal out onto the narrow front stoop. She had set the lamp down on the little stand in the hall and the light from it streamed out. She turned and saw me as I started down the steps. “What is the matter?” I whispered.

Instead of the rebuke I had looked for, she said indignantly, “There’s a tramp asleep behind the hedge! I don’t know what this town is coming to!”

“B-but how do you know?” I stammered. “I mean maybe you just imagined it—the shadows, you know—and—and all——”

“Sandra, you’d better go back to bed,” she returned severely. “I do not require any advice or assistance.”

“No, of course not,” I returned hastily. “I just meant that things are deceptive at night. And even if it is a tramp,” I went on desperately, “wouldn’t it be better to wait till morning? At least it would be safer.”

She was not listening to me. She had now advanced firmly halfway across the little front yard toward the hedge. “Why on earth couldn’t Hamish have stayed out of sight?” I thought, “and what had moved my aunt to look out of the window in the middle of the night anyway!”

Aunt Cal reached the hedge and peered over it. “Come out of there,” she ordered loudly, “or I shall have you arrested for trespassing.”

There was no answer. She advanced along the hedge, she was approaching the clump of bushes where we had last seen Hamish. I held my breath. If only I could do something to prevent the revelation that was impending! I wished Eve were there, she might have had an inspiration.

Aunt Cal had reached the bushes. She had picked up a stick and now began poking at them fiercely. “Come out of there!” she repeated. “Or I shall call the police!”

All of a sudden my eyes, which had been vainly trying to pierce the shadows, were attracted upward. In the house beyond the hedge a light had winked on. It was in the little upper window facing our way. Aunt Cal saw it too for she paused momentarily in her poking.

And while our attention was thus distracted, a figure hurtled from between the bushes and the hedge and plunged headlong through the latter and on across Captain Trout’s back yard, a rubber coat flapping about its ankles as it ran. “There! What’d I tell you!” Aunt Cal exclaimed. “The miserable loafer!”

We watched the figure disappear into the darkness. “Tomorrow,” said my aunt, “I shall make a complaint. Come, you must go back to bed at once, you’ll catch your death on this wet grass.”

“Yes, Aunt Cal,” I said meekly, and followed her back into the house. And without further ado I presently found myself back in my own room again with the door, by special admonition of Aunt Cal, locked on the inside.

But the light in Captain Trout’s upstairs window still winked across the grass and now and then, I could see it blink as if a figure stepped between it and the window. Perhaps the cook had had another chill, I thought with an inward chuckle, and had demanded still more blankets! Well anyway Hamish had got safely away. Then, suddenly as it had come, the light winked out.

“What’re you looking at?” Eve stirred sleepily.

“Nothing,” I began and stopped. Someone was coming out of the house next door—a short figure in white duck trousers, dark coat and visored cap. The Captain? Where on earth could he be going at this ungodly hour?

Eve was beside me, I could hear her catch her breath. “It’s him!” she said.

“You mean the Captain?” I asked, puzzled at her intensity.

“Of course not. Can’t you see the way he walks and—and his legs!”

“You mean it’s the cook all togged up like that?”

“Disguised of course. We might have expected something like this. I suppose Hamish is asleep by now.”

“No,” I said, “I don’t think so. The last I saw him he was hoofing it across Captain Trout’s back yard in the general direction of the sea.” And I told her what had happened.

“Why on earth didn’t you wake me?” she said when I had finished. “To think I should have missed it all! Do you think Aunt Cal suspects anything?”

“I don’t think so. Where d’you suppose he’s going, Eve—the cook, I mean?”

“Back to sea, very likely.”

“Then that’ll be the end—of everything. And we’ll never know who he was or what he wanted!”

Eve yawned. “Well that’s apt to be the way things peter out in real life, you know,” she said. “The villains just walk out of the picture.”

“And the noble man hunter takes to his heels!” I sighed.

XXIII

A Belated Visit

HATTIE MAY came over early next morning. She was in a frightful temper and declared she was going to take the next train back to Mason’s Cove and leave Hamish to his fate.

“What’s he done now?” I inquired. “No more run-ins with the police, I hope?”

“So far as I’m concerned,” she stated, “he could languish in a foul dungeon before I would lift a finger to extrapate him!”

“Extricate, I expect you mean,” I said. “But what has he done?”

She flung herself into Aunt Cal’s rocker on the back porch and began to rock violently. “He locked me in my room, that’s what he did!”

“Locked you in your room? But whatever for?”

“You’ll have to ask him that! It was last night. As soon as I was convinced he actually meant to carry out his crazy plan of watching that house, I told him he shouldn’t go one step without me.”

“Yes, well? I suppose he didn’t take to the notion?”

“My dear, he just shut up like a clam. And all during supper I couldn’t get a single solitary civil word out of him. It made me awfully embarrassed, sitting at the table with the other people all chatting away and him acting like that! Never once opening his mouth except to shovel in food.”

“Disgusting!” I agreed.

“Well right after supper I went upstairs to get me a heavy sweater because I knew if I’d got to sit up all night out in your yard I’d need it. Well I was rummaging in the closet when I heard the door close very softly and locked from the outside! Can you imagine! The ingrate had followed me upstairs, waited till my back was turned and then turned the key.”

“But how did you get out?” I asked, stifling a desire to giggle. “Did the ingrate return?”

“I suppose he must have,” she answered indifferently. “The door was unlocked this morning. He didn’t appear at breakfast so I suppose he’s asleep.”

“I know how you must feel, Hattie May,” said Eve sympathetically. “But I suppose Hamish felt that what he had to do was a man’s job——”

“Man’s job!” she interrupted, with a scornful snort.

“Well he felt that girls around would sort of gum things up. He sent us packing in pretty short order.”

“Then he came?” she asked with curiosity. “Did anything happen?”

I told her about Aunt Cal’s interruption of the vigil and then about the departure of the mysterious stranger from the house next door.

“My goodness,” she exclaimed when I had finished. “Then there is something to it. The man’s a crook or he wouldn’t sneak off like that in the dead of night. I certainly am glad Hamish wasn’t there to see him, though. Why he might have been trailing the man yet, he might even have followed him onto a ship and gone to sea!”

“Well, you know persistence is a fine quality,” I remarked.

“Oh, yes, it’s all very well for you to stand up for him but you didn’t spend the night under lock and key. I kept waking up and thinking what I would do if there was a fire, and I thought how Hamish would feel when he gazed at my charred body!”

“Oh, well, there wasn’t any fire and you spent a comfortable night in bed instead of on the damp ground,” Eve said soothingly.

Hattie May seemed to be thinking. “I do think it’s a crime that a man like that should be allowed to escape,” she said at last. “I wonder if Hamish knows about it?”

“Well, since you’re not on speaking terms with him,” I giggled, “I don’t see how you’re going to find out. Besides if you’re leaving on the afternoon train——”

“Oh, I suppose I’d better stick around,” Hattie May said. “We can’t be sure that the fellow has gone back to sea and—there’s the key!”

But for all Hattie May’s sticking around, no more was seen of Captain Trout’s mysterious visitor. Aunt Cal reported to the local constable that a tramp attempted to pass the night in her yard and the following evening we saw a uniformed figure peering over our hedge just after dusk. But apparently discouraged by his failure to round up anything more criminal than Daisy June chasing fireflies, he soon abandoned the pursuit and retired—we guessed—along with other respectable citizens to the shelter of his own roof.

So much for the tramp! As for Captain Trout—whom Hattie May now dubbed our perfidious neighbor—nothing much was to be got out of him. A guarded reference on Eve’s part to his late guest elicited merely the statement that he, the Captain, couldn’t stomach so much fried food and had sent the fellow packing.

It was one day after dinner, the following week, that Aunt Cal, who had spent the morning baking, said she had made a little spice cake for Mrs. Viner. “I was expecting to take it out to her this afternoon,” she remarked, “but Rose has called a meeting of the Civic Betterment to see about those folks burning rubbish in the lot beyond the millpond. Of course the cake will keep——”

“Oh, do let us take it out, Aunt Cal?” I begged. “We’d just love to.”

“I don’t know about that,” she shook her head doubtfully. “After what happened to my dandelion wine——”

“Oh, please don’t hold that up against us,” Eve pleaded. “You must admit the circumstances that time were unusual. Hamish isn’t likely to fall into another well—at least I hope not!”

No one can resist Eve for long. And so in the end, Aunt Cal packed the cake in a basket and entrusted it to our keeping. “Tell Mrs. Viner I’ll be out to see her in a few days,” she said. “That is, if you see her!” she added dryly.

I took the basket. “Aunt Cal,” I said, “this day will vindicate our reputation, you can depend upon it!” I blew a kiss toward her as I opened the door.

“Well, if you take my advice,” she sent a parting shot after us, “you won’t make any stops on the way.”

We decided to walk down the shore road and call for Hattie May. She had been so disappointed at our failure to take her to Millport on Michael’s affair that we were anxious not to seem to slight her again. “But I’m not at all sure she’ll be good for the invalid,” Eve remarked. “She’s quite as likely as not to tell her she’s looking poorly or start talking about some lovely funeral she went to!”

We found her alone. “I’ve just finished a letter to Mother,” she said, “and I guess Hamish’ll be hearing from Dad before long!”

“You don’t mean he’s still acting strangely?”

“My dear, I scarcely see him at all except at meals and he won’t tell me a solitary thing!”

We caught the two o’clock bus from the square and at a little before three were opening the gate of the big stone house which Aunt Cal had described to us. Somewhat to my relief, we found the invalid much improved and sitting out in the sun. She welcomed us cordially and I guessed that she was pleased enough to have some one new to talk to. We chattered on, telling her about school, about Hamish’s fall into the well and about our discovery of the statue of Circe at the bottom of it.

“Dear me,” she exclaimed, “what a terrible experience for the poor boy. I wonder that he retained his reason, I’m sure I shouldn’t have!”

“I’m not a bit sure that he has,” Hattie May said feelingly, “at least not all of it. The way he acts!”

We laughed and Mrs. Viner said, “I remember so well when the old Captain—as we used to call him—first set up those statues in his garden. My, what a lot of talk it made!”

“You knew Aunt Cal when she was a girl, I suppose?” I said.

“Oh, dear, yes, we went to school together. At the old district school that was torn down when they put the state road through.”

“Did you know my uncle, Tom Poole, too?” I asked.

“Yes. Cal and Tom were married the year before the old Captain died. When she came back from the West, I hoped I would have her for a neighbor but—well, things turned out differently,” she added discreetly.

We talked on till suddenly Eve jumped up. “We were cautioned the other time we started to call on you not to stay more than ten minutes,” she said, “and not to talk any nonsense. I’m afraid we’ve broken both rules.”

“The idea!” Mrs. Viner laughed. “You mustn’t take your Aunt too seriously.”

“But we really must go now,” I agreed. “You see our reputation is at stake today. Aunt Cal doesn’t really trust us out of her sight any more.”

“Cal’s bark is a lot worse than her bite,” Mrs. Viner returned. “And you’re to tell her from me that I’m feeling much better for your visit.”

A short distance beyond Mrs. Viner’s gate, Eve stopped suddenly. “If there was any other way to go home,” she said, “I’d be in favor of taking it.”

“Well there isn’t,” I retorted. “And if you find that old house so enticing that you can’t even walk by it, it’s just too bad! For my part I wouldn’t care if I never saw it again.”

“Just the same let’s—well, let’s rest a minute,” she said. “Here on the wall.”

“Rest? Gracious we’ve just started!”

Eve sat down. “I just happened to think,” she said carelessly, “that it’s about time for Michael to come along.”

“Huh!” I retorted. “I’ll bet you’ve been planning to wait for him all the afternoon. I think you’re a shameless hussy!”

Hattie May giggled. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t wait for him,” she said. “If he has his wagon he’ll give us a lift.”

“Yes, and if he’s on his bicycle, he’ll wave his hand and go sailing by. And we’ll miss the bus!”

We were still arguing when the faint rattle of a wagon fell on our ears and a moment later, Michael’s blue shirt and brown head appeared above the brow of the hill. “Hello,” he called as he drew alongside of us, “waiting for some one?”

“Just resting,” Eve told him with a twinkle.

“Don’t want a lift then?” he grinned.

“Well perhaps we might—what d’you think, girls?”

But Hattie May was already in the front seat and Eve and I climbed into the rear as we had done that first day when we had fairly to beg for a ride.

“Anything new in the mystery line?” Michael inquired with a slap of the reins.

“Well,” said Eve between jolts, “your friend Captain Trout has been harboring a visitor—a kind of cooking recluse, if you know what I mean. But he left in the dead of night arrayed in white trousers and a visored cap.”

Michael did not seem greatly impressed by these revelations. “The Captain knows a lot of seafaring birds,” he said. “Very likely the fellow blew in between sailings.”

“Then you don’t think it was Bangs?” I asked.

“How should I know. But there’s something else you might be interested in—somebody’s been digging up that old garden again.”

XXIV

It Fits!

AT these words my heart sank. “There goes all our good resolutions and promises!” I thought. For of course I knew that we’d never go straight home now!

“Digging up the garden!” cried Eve. “How d’you know?”

“I saw it this morning when I stopped to have a look for my flashlight which I mislaid the night I was—ah—pinched! The door was locked, and I couldn’t get into the house. On my way out I noticed that somebody’d been at work in the garden in a new place.”

“Then that creature hasn’t left the country at all,” Hattie May cried. “It’s just as I suspected, he’s still after the treasure!”

We were approaching the house. “Want to stop and have a look?” Michael inquired teasingly. “Might pick up a clue—collar button or whatnot! Don’t you think?”

“Oh, no, I don’t think we’d better,” I began hurriedly, though I knew as I said it that it was useless.

“Of course we must stop,” Hattie May declared. “Hamish would never forgive me if I neglected a single clue!”

“We-ll,” said Eve doubtfully, “I don’t suppose it would really do any harm just to run in for a minute. So long as we don’t have to catch the bus,” she glanced doubtfully at me.

I shrugged. “Do just as you like,” I said, “but don’t expect me to explain things to Aunt Cal!”