Part 11

“Leave Aunt Cal to me!” Eve laughed lightly and began to climb down from the wagon. Without enthusiasm I followed her and once more found myself making my way over the wall, across the yard toward the tangled garden. It was getting to be a habit, I reflected. It almost seemed as if some unknown force kept drawing us back to the old house and its secrets.

Michael pointed out the place where a new hole had been dug nearby where we had discovered the first one, and apparently hastily filled in again. Could it be that Bangs had returned?

“You’d hardly think he’d dare hang around,” Eve said thoughtfully.

“It just shows how badly he wants that treasure,” Hattie May cried. “He’s willing to take any risk.”

“Wish I could think of a way to get my flashlight,” Michael said, glancing toward the house. “I think I’ll just have a try at those cellar windows on a chance,” he added. “Be right back.”

“They’re all nailed fast,” Eve called after him. But he strode on.

We sat down on the edge of the fountain. The statue of Circe still lay where we had left it, reclining in the leaf strewn bowl. Hattie May began poking with a stick in the newly filled hole. Several minutes went by and Michael did not return. “He must have got in after all,” Eve said, glancing a little apprehensively I thought, toward the thick growth of bushes that obscured our view of the rear of the house.

As she spoke our attention was caught by the sound of a car coming up the hill. Automobiles passed that way so seldom that we all jumped up instinctively. To our surprise it appeared to be slowing down in front of the house. Then suddenly I recognized Miss Blossom’s little coupe and saw that lady’s ample bulk at the wheel. A woman beside her was leaning over and peering out.

I groaned as I looked. “Aunt Cal! If that isn’t just our luck!”

Hattie May giggled. “Look, the fat lady is waving!”

“Come on,” Eve started for the wall. “I’ll explain everything satisfactorily to Aunt Cal.”

We climbed back over the wall. Miss Blossom beamed upon us. “We’re out joy riding,” she explained. “I told Cal she needed a little relaxation from her responsibilities. We’ve been doing forty miles an hour before we struck the hill!”

“We thought,” Aunt Cal remarked pointedly, “that we might meet you coming home!”

“Oh,” I said confusedly, “we are—I mean we’re going on directly—we’re just waiting for Michael.”

But Aunt Cal did not seem to be listening to my halting excuses. Instead, I saw that her eyes—and her thoughts with them, I guessed—had strayed beyond me toward the house dreaming there in the soft sunset light.

“My, how sweet it smells!” exclaimed Miss Blossom. “I wonder if those tea roses are still blooming? Do you remember them, Cal? They were the sweetest ones I ever knew! What d’you say we take a peek around?”

Aunt Cal seemed to come back with a start. “Get out if you wish, Rose,” she said. “I hardly think I care to do so.”

“Oh, come on,” Miss Blossom urged. “Stretch your legs a little.” She began, as she spoke, lowering her massive bulk onto the running board. We gave her a hand over the wall, though she was surprisingly agile for one of her size. The tall grass fell away before her as at the advance of a steam roller. “My,” she exclaimed, “what a jungle!” She turned again, “Come on, Cal,” she urged.

Aunt Cal seemed to hesitate. And then I saw that she, too, was getting out of the car. We came, all five of us, back to the garden. Michael was still absent. Miss Blossom sank panting on the edge of the fountain. “My land! It’s just a crime to let a place run down like this!” she commented. “’Member the time we went wading in this fountain, Cal?”

But Aunt Cal, if she remembered, did not say so. She was standing erect, gazing about her. And it was not so much sorrow at the sight of the neglect and decay that I read in her face as regret for something that is past and gone forever.

Suddenly Michael came advancing toward us. “Hullo, there,” Miss Blossom called. “Is the house unlocked? Could we go inside?”

To my amazement Michael nodded. “Yes,” he said, “it’s unlocked.”

“But I thought you said,” Eve began and then stopped.

“Good!” said Miss Blossom. “Then we can take a look around.”

“Oh, no, Rose!” Aunt Cal spoke up sharply. “Not inside!”

“But why not?” returned the other matter-of-factly. “If the agent’s so careless as to leave the place unlocked, he couldn’t object to our going in. I’d just love to see how the old place looks—I hear it’s just about as Carter left it.”

“It isn’t much to see,” Michael remarked. “Just a musty old place.”

“Michael Gilpatrick,” Miss Blossom demanded accusingly, “is there some reason why you don’t want us to go in. Out with it—what mischief have you been up to?”

Michael’s brown face reddened at the memory of last Saturday night. “I only went after my flashlight,” he said a trifle lamely. “I left it somewhere around——”

Miss Blossom jumped up spryly. “Well, anyway, I’m going in,” she declared. “Come on, Cal, don’t be sentimental!”

I got up too. I found myself suddenly sharing Miss Blossom’s curiosity. Eve and Hattie May followed us and, as we reached the door, I saw Aunt Cal and Michael reluctantly bringing up the rear. Aunt Cal wore a strange expression as if some inner force were compelling her against her will.

Miss Blossom pushed open the door and advanced into the kitchen. “My,” she snorted, “what a stuffy place! What this house needs is a good airing and”—she glanced sharply around—“a good scrubbing with strong soap and plenty of elbow grease. Look at that range, Cal!”

But Aunt Cal did not look at the range. She was staring ahead at the open door and at the wide hall beyond it. It was as if she expected to see someone advancing out of the shadows.

Then Hattie May’s high-pitched voice broke in. “Listen,” she said, “what’s that noise!”

“I don’t hear anything,” I said. “And I guess you don’t either, it’s just your imagination.”

“But I did, I tell you. There! There it is again!”

For an instant we all stood listening. And sure enough, there was something, a gentle tapping noise coming from far down the hall. “My land, the place is haunted!” Miss Blossom giggled nervously. “Oh, girls, I’m scared!”

Eve looked at Michael. “Do you know what it is?” she demanded.

He shook his head. “No, but I think it’s time I found out!” He walked toward the open hall door as he spoke.

To my amazement, Aunt Cal hurried after him. She was just behind him as he put out his hand for the handle of the parlor door. “Be careful, Cal!” Miss Blossom called in a whisper. “I wouldn’t——”

Aunt Cal paid no heed. And as Michael opened the door she advanced with him across the threshold. From where we stood in the middle of the hall we heard a startled exclamation. Then suddenly, like a breath of fresh air, came Michael’s clear ringing voice breaking from surprise into laughter. “Hamish! What on earth——?”

We all crowded forward. In the middle of the shuttered parlor stood Hamish, looking very much like a small boy caught stealing jam. His face was flushed, his shirt rumpled and I noticed a filigree of cobweb clinging to his hair. “Just a little private investigating I been doin’,” he offered the explanation sullenly as we all clustered wonderingly about him. “But of course,” he added petulantly, “I can’t get anywhere with a lot of folks bustin’ in on me!”

“Hamish Lewis, what are you doing in this house?” Hattie May demanded shrilly. “Look at your shirt and that tear in your trousers!”

Hamish regarded his sister coldly. “All a girl thinks about is clothes,” he muttered.

I was scarcely listening to this interchange. Ever since I had entered the room I had been conscious of something which had not been there before. This was a curious odor, a heavy, sweet aromatic smell. A smell which reminded me of the East and vaguely, too, of something else, that awakened a hazy memory.

“Mercy, what smells so funny!” Miss Blossom was sniffing the air.

“Guess you mean that jar that got spilled.” Hamish, still with a highly injured air, pointed to where a small bronze jar lay overturned in front of the fireplace. “I moved that cabinet a little,” he added, “and that jar fell out and spilled. It had that funny smelling stuff inside.”

Aunt Cal went over to where the jar lay and, stooping, began gathering up the scattering of dried brown particles and stuffing them back. “It’s the jar of myrrh,” she murmured, “that Uncle Judd brought back from Arabia.”

It was then that I suddenly found myself saying a thing for which I was totally unable to account. The words seemed to come out of themselves, almost as if another person had spoken them. “The cabinet,” I said, “doesn’t belong there anyway.” And I added inconsequentially, “It’s right in the way of the cupboard.”

“Cupboard?” Eve looked at me strangely. And Hattie May said, “I don’t see any cupboard. What on earth are you talking about?”

“The cupboard there by the fireplace,” I insisted.

“Sandy,” said Eve anxiously, “what’s the matter with you? There isn’t any cupboard. You can see that.”

“Yes there is,” I returned positively. “It’s where they kept the china duck.”

Of course they were all staring at me now as if they thought I had become light-headed. “It’s very close in here,” I heard Miss Blossom murmur. “Don’t any of these windows open?” And Eve asked, “Do you feel all right, Sandy?”

Then Aunt Cal said a surprising thing. “I do seem to recall a cupboard there at the right of the fireplace,” she said slowly. “I had forgotten it entirely,” she looked at me oddly. “I can’t think how you knew,” she added.

Hamish, saying nothing, now walked over to the fireplace and began feeling along the pink rosebud wallpaper which edged it. Suddenly he began to tear at it. “Sufferin’ sunfish! I b’lieve you’re right, Sandy! I believe there is a cupboard there—see, there’s the edge of the door! And me lookin’ in the chimney!”

“Looking for what?” Eve demanded. But Hamish did not answer her. He was too busy tearing away strip after strip of the rosebuds. We all gathered around to watch. Nobody seemed to care at all that the wallpaper was being ruined.

As for me, my heart was beating strangely as the outline of the cupboard came into view. Inch by inch it was revealed. But how had I known?

At last the paper was all off and we were gazing at a good sized door set in the wall about four feet above the floor. There was no handle or knob, that had evidently been removed when the paper was put on. Hamish took out his knife and thrust it into the keyhole. “Locked,” he announced.

“Well don’t that just beat all!” Miss Blossom cried. “How long do you calculate it’s been covered up, Cal?”

Aunt Cal shook her head. “It must have been done after Uncle Judd died,” she said. “I remember hearing that Carter had some of the rooms papered before he went away.”

Miss Blossom nodded. “Like as not the paper hanger did it himself without consulting anybody. If it was that Jed Button from Millport I wouldn’t put it past him! I remember the time he did ma’s room——”

But no one seemed to be listening to Miss Blossom. We were all intent on watching Michael as he tinkered with the lock. “Guess it’s no use botherin’ with it,” Hamish remarked. “I guess it’s getting pretty late.” He took out his watch.

Michael looked at him suspiciously and went on tinkering. Then suddenly Eve gave a gasp. “Why,” she cried, “the key! Where’s the key? The one we found in the tobacco tin?”

“Why of course,” almost screamed Hattie May. “Why didn’t we think of it before? Hamish, you’re the one who took it! Where is it?” Then accusingly, “You’ve been keeping it back on purpose, you wanted to wait till we were gone!”

To this accusation Hamish’s only answer was a shrug and a sigh as he plunged his hand into his trousers’ pocket and drew out the key. With a grin Michael took it and thrust it into the keyhole. There was a click and Hattie May gave another scream. “It fits!” she cried. “It fits!”

But the lock was rusty and the key refused to turn. “Needs oiling,” Michael remarked.

“There’s an oil can in my car,” Miss Blossom suggested. “We’ve just got to get this cupboard open before we go! Like as not we’ll find the family skeleton in it or something!” she added with a laughing glance toward Aunt Cal. Aunt Cal did not say a word.

XXV

Gopher

I DON’T know what I expected when I heard that key turn in the lock and knew that Hamish had at last succeeded in opening the door of the hidden cupboard. I felt as I had ever since entering the room, breathless and strangely excited. Of course Miss Rose’s remark about the family skeleton had been just a joke. I did not expect to hear the rattle of bones as the door swung outward and see a cadaverous figure tumble onto the floor. But still I did expect something.

The door squeaked protestingly on its hinges as Hamish pulled it wide. The room was utterly silent as we all gazed blankly on three wide vacant shelves. Empty!

The silence was broken by a scream. It was Hattie May again. “Look!” she cried. “It’s m-moving—the bottom—look!”

She was right. Slowly before our fascinated eyes, the board which formed the base of the cupboard was lifting like the lid of a box. Slowly from under it there was emerging—not a bony grinning skull—but a face of flesh and blood. A head, nearly bald and a lined, leathery face in which little beady eyes gleamed with mingled astonishment and fury.

Hamish seemed to be the only one of us sufficiently in possession of his senses to speak. “Well,” he said triumphantly, “got you at last, didn’t I—you double-crossin’ rat!”

Then came Aunt Cal’s voice. “Gopher!” she cried, her tone odd and uncontrolled.

The man did not answer. He was engaged in raising himself stiffly out of the hole. He was dressed in sailor trousers and a sleeveless shirt. As the bottom of the cupboard fell back into place he turned and glared at Hamish. “So you’re the guy that’s been playin’ them smart tricks!” he snarled.

“If you mean locking you in the cellar,” Hamish returned, “I figured you’d be some annoyed. But the next time you peddle fake hair tonic——”

“It’s a good tonic,” snapped the little man. “I made it myself in Brazil from a native receipt.”

“Yeah, but you had to get yourself a supply of wigs to make folks fall for it!”

This exchange of repartee was interrupted by Michael. “Look here,” he demanded, “what are you hiding in this house for? What are you after?”

The man turned on him sourly. “What business is that of yourn?”

“It’s my business!” Aunt Cal’s voice had regained its customary authority. She had dropped onto one of the straight horsehair covered chairs and was regarding the man with a strange tense look. “Where,” she demanded, “is Carter Craven?”

Mr. Bangs—for of course it was he—seemed to notice her for the first time. And there was recognition in his glance as he answered more respectfully than he had yet spoken.

“Craven’s gone. Died in the Argentine last winter.”

There was a moment’s silence and then Aunt Cal asked tremulously, “You were with him when he died?”

The other nodded. “And that reminds me,” he said, “he sent you a message, said I was to come back and give it to you myself. Or if you wasn’t here to get your address and mail it to you.” He began feeling in the pocket of his trousers, presently bringing out a dog-eared bill folder from which he extracted a dirty envelope.

“And why have you not given me this before?” Aunt Cal inquired as she took the letter from the man’s hand.

He shrugged. “All in good time. I says to myself I’ll just take a look round first and get the lay of the land like.”

Hamish eyed him fiercely. “So you opened the letter,” he accused “and took out the part you thought interesting—the sheet that had those measurements on it!”

Mr. Bangs shook his head. “Naw, Mr. Detective, you got me wrong. I never opened the letter. I found that there paper—since you’re so interested—with Carter Craven’s things after he died.”

“And that’s where you got the key to the house too, I suppose,” Michael put in.

“Right, Buddy.”

“Anyway,” Hamish persisted, “you thought you were going to dig up a neat little fortune out there in the garden, didn’t you? Well, you jolly well got fooled!” He turned to the cupboard and drew out the key. “If you’d dug in the right place—which you didn’t ’cause you were too stupid—that was all you’d have found.”

Mechanically the man’s clawlike fingers reached out and took the key. His glance strayed from it to Michael’s honest gray eyes. “Say,” he asked wonderingly, “is this on the level?”

“That’s right,” Michael told him. “That’s all we found.”

“I suppose,” Hattie May spoke up pertly, “you expected to dig up the blue emerald didn’t you?”

“What’s that?” He turned and looked at her. “No, sister,” he said slowly, “I had all I wanted of the Blue Emerald!”

“What, you found it? You——”

The man nodded grimly. “Yeah, sister, we found the Blue Emerald—me and Carter together. It was there just where the map said.”

“What map?” demanded Hamish.

Mr. Bangs shrugged. “Say, what is this?” he demanded truculently. “A third degree or sunthin’?”

Aunt Cal, still clutching the unopened envelope close to her side, spoke again unexpectedly. “The Blue Emerald was the gold mine I suppose, the one Carter went to find after his father died?”

Mr. Bangs nodded. “Yeah, he found the map among the old man’s papers. He put all he had or could borrow into her but”—he shrugged again—“he might as well have thrown the money over the ship’s rail and it would have saved us both a good sight of sufferin’.”

“A mine!” Hattie May said wonderingly. “The Blue Emerald was the name of a gold mine! But—then—what _were_ you after? Why were you digging up the garden?”

For a minute it seemed as if he were not going to answer. But Eve spoke up quietly, “You were measuring the ground the very first day we came here.”

“Well what if I was?” he snapped. “I figured a man don’t set down measurements on paper unless they mean somethin’.”

“Carter’s mind was always running on buried treasure,” Miss Blossom, seated comfortably on the old sofa behind him, put in. “It was kind of an obsession as you might say. I calculate he buried that key hoping to fool somebody the way he’d been fooled so often.”

“But that doesn’t explain about the cupboard,” I cried. “If it was just a—a joke, why did he have the cupboard covered up?”

Mr. Bangs honored me with a glance. Then turning to the spot from which he had so recently emerged, he lifted up the false bottom again and began fumbling about below. At last he drew out a long dusty brown envelope, tied with red cord. “Reckon that’s the answer,” he said tossing it across to Aunt Cal. “Guess Carter didn’t want that will to be found till he was good and ready. He figured on comin’ back a rich man!” He laughed hoarsely.

“If that wasn’t just like him!” Miss Blossom exclaimed. “I always said he never destroyed that will!”

Aunt Cal was untying the envelope with unsteady fingers. Inside was a sealed one. “Yes,” she said, “it is Uncle Judd’s will!”

“And Craven House is yours at last,” Miss Blossom gave a vast sigh of satisfaction. “I always knew you’d get it some day but I was afraid it might come too late for you to enjoy it. Dear me, if these children hadn’t found that key and all——”

Hattie May, too excited to remember her manners, burst in here. “But I don’t understand yet! I mean how Mr. Bangs—or whatever his name is—how he happened to come popping out just at the moment Hamish opened the door? Why, it was exactly like a jack-in-the-box!”

This characterization of his appearance in our midst seemed to tickle Mr. Bangs for he grinned for the first time. “Yeah,” he agreed, “reckon it did give you kind of a surprise. I’d been a-poundin’ on that trap door for quite a spell after this smart detective guy locked the cellar door on me.”

“Hamish dotes on locking doors on people,” his sister remarked. “It’s one of his pet tricks!”

“The cupboard must open into that underground passage that Uncle Judd had walled up years ago,” Aunt Cal remarked thoughtfully.

The man nodded. “Yeah, I remembered hearin’ talk of it. I poked around and found the entrance to it under the cellar stairs, and this here ladder between the floors. But it was dark as a ship’s hold down there and I couldn’t get the trap door open. Then you opened the cupboard and let in some light through the crack and I see where she was hooked down. I reckoned I could manage this smart guy here without much trouble—I didn’t figure on runnin’ into a whole tea party!” he finished with a cackle.

“I suppose that was the passage you were hiding in the night the cops searched the house for you?” Michael remarked.

The man shot him a sardonic glance but did not answer.

Aunt Cal got up. “I really think, Rose,” she said, “we should be starting for home. It’s growing dark and we’ve had quite enough excitement for one day.” She turned to the sailor and fixed him with a stern glance. “I sincerely trust, Gopher,” she said, “that you will not leave the neighborhood until I’ve had a further talk with you. I—I naturally wish to hear more details of my cousin’s last days.”

The man did not answer for a moment. But there was an insistence in Aunt Cal’s tone that was not to be disregarded. Perhaps he thought that, since the game was up in any case, his best chance lay in compliance. “Okay,” he said with another lift of his bony shoulders. “I’ll hang round for a spell.”

As Miss Blossom’s little car rolled away down the hill, no one spoke for a time. Eve and I were in the rear seat. Hattie May had gone with Hamish in his car. It was with some difficulty that we had succeeded in prying the latter loose from the man whom he considered his lawful prisoner. What was the use, he insisted, of pulling off a capture if you had to turn the fellow loose again?

But Aunt Cal’s wishes of course had prevailed and Hamish, still grumbling, had been obliged to depart and leave the villain, as he dubbed him, to his own devices.

As we turned into the main highway at The Corners, Miss Rose settled back. “Well, it does beat all,” she said, “the mysterious ways Providence does work. To think of that rascal Carter sealing up that old cupboard with the will in it and going off to the ends of the earth!”

“No, Rose, not a rascal,” Aunt Cal returned, “you mustn’t think of him like that. It was just a—a kind of prank. He never meant to keep the house from me for long, he says so in this note. You see I—I was away out West at the time he left. I think it was just as Gopher said, he wanted to come back a rich man——”

“And make you sorry you’d married Tom Poole instead of him,” put in Miss Rose calmly. “That was just like him, always believing that money was all that counted even in a love affair.”

“He says,” said Aunt Cal softly, “that he hopes I will forgive him everything. I believe he realized—at the end—the mistakes he’d made.”

Miss Rose nodded. “Yes, Carter wasn’t a bad fellow at heart,” she said.

“And Mr. Bangs?” Eve asked hesitantly, “you knew him before, Aunt Cal?”

“Oh, yes. His real name is Gopher—Harry Gopher. He shipped as cook with Uncle Judd for years and used often to be around town between voyages. Uncle always said he was a rascal but he had a fondness for him too. I shall have to see what can be done for him.”

XXVI

The Unveiling

A MONTH had gone by. August was already drifting into September. School loomed ahead but we hardly gave it a thought. Each day as it came along was too absorbing, for Eve and I agreed that the business of making an old house come to life again was about the most thrilling experience in the world.