Part 3

“Why don’t you go back the way you came then?” he inquired. “You didn’t drop down from the skies, I suppose!”

“It’s just awfully clever of you to think of that,” Eve put in. “The only trouble with your plan is that the doors of the house happen to be locked on the outside. You see, the real estate agent locked us in.”

“Real estate agent?” the boy repeated. At last there was real astonishment in his tone. “I never heard that this house was for sale.”

“Never mind that now,” Eve urged impatiently. “The point is that we’re locked in or out—whichever way you look at it—and, to be perfectly frank with you, there are other places where we’d rather spend the night!”

“So if you could borrow a ladder from somewhere,” I put in meekly.

“Or get the key from a gentleman by the name of Bangs down at Trap’s place at the Corners,” Eve added, “we’d be just eternally grateful.”

The boy did not reply immediately. He seemed to be considering the situation with an eye on the drain pipe. “Oh, well,” he said at last with a shrug, “I suppose I’ll have to go get a ladder.”

“The days of chivalry are past!” Eve sighed as we watched our unwilling rescuer-to-be climb back into his wagon, turn and drive up the road in the direction from which he had come.

“What can you expect from overalls,” I said. “Be thankful if he remembers to come back at all.”

But I did him an injustice, it appeared, for less than ten minutes later the wagon reappeared, this time loaded with a tall ladder.

The boy made no remark as he came dragging the ladder across the yard and proceeded to prop it firmly against the edge of the roof. “There,” he said finally when he was satisfied that it was steady.

We descended one at a time. The boy watched us coldly. His opinion of girls who got themselves locked in empty houses and marooned on tin roofs was apparent. “I don’t know how we can _ever_ thank you!” Eve exclaimed as she felt that her feet were on firm earth again.

“It was perfectly swell of you to take all this trouble,” I added appreciatively.

“A good deed every day, that’s my motto,” drawled the boy.

“Just a splendid young knight errant,” I added. For just the barest second I thought the corners of his rather uncompromising mouth twitched. But he quickly controlled them, and lifting the ladder down, began to drag it back across the grass.

“Oh, let me help!” Eve ran after him and seized the other end. Together they carried it as far as the wall. “I’ll just leave it here and pick it up in the morning when I go to work,” the boy remarked. Then with a nod in our direction, he again vaulted over the wall. We watched him climb into his seat and gather up the reins. “Well, so long,” he said.

Eve stood beside the wagon and gazed rapturously up at him. “Good-bye,” she said. “I suppose we shall never see you again but I shall always treasure your memory.”

“You talk a lot of nonsense, don’t you?” he remarked.

“Nonsense? Me? By the way, you aren’t going far with that wagon, I suppose?”

“I’m going home,” he stated stolidly. “And you’d better do the same if you’ve got any.”

“That’s just the point,” Eve exclaimed brightly. “I was wondering if by any chance—that is, we’re not so very heavy—you see, we’re late for supper as it is.”

“Well, get in,” he said ungraciously.

We needed no urging, which was fortunate. With more speed than grace we climbed into the rear of the wagon and in another minute were rattling down the road toward Beecham Corners.

Conversation was difficult. Only as we approached the crossroads I managed to make myself heard, “Oh, my suitcase!” I cried. “I can’t go home without my suitcase.”

The horses were pulled up sharply. “What’s the matter now?” inquired the boy.

I left Eve to make explanations. I was out of the wagon in one leap and flying up the road toward Trap’s. I found the case in the front hall just as Mr. Bangs had said. Nobody was about so I just took it and went out. Panting, I returned to the wagon.

“Mr. Doe’s going almost to Fishers Haven; isn’t that luck?” Eve said as she reached down to give me a hand. “He says we can ride as far as he goes. Or at least,” she added, twinkling, “he didn’t say we couldn’t.”

It was dusk when we saw the white houses of Fishers Haven ahead of us. At a spreading farmhouse on the outskirts, our equipage came to a stop. “This is where I live,” the boy said.

We climbed stiffly to the ground. “I suppose,” said Eve, smiling up at the boy, “that you have no idea who we are?”

It was now our turn to be surprised. “Sure. You’re the girls who are staying at Mrs. Poole’s.”

“But how in the world did you know?” she demanded. “We only came last night.”

“Fellow who lives next door is a kind of friend of mine,” he vouchsafed shortly. “Tells me all his troubles.”

“But,” giggled Eve, “we’re not one of his troubles, are we? At least not yet!”

The boy made no reply to this but gathered up his reins preparatory to turning into the drive.

I remembered suddenly the dark figure I had seen creeping along the hedge last night. “What kind of troubles has your friend?” I called hastily.

“Oh, cat troubles mostly.” The words drifted back as the wagon rattled away.

“Did he say ‘cat’?” I asked.

“Sounded like it,” said Eve.

VI

A Piece of Paper

AUNT CAL listened to our story without interruption at supper that night. Only at my first mention of the old Craven House, I fancied I saw an odd expression flit across her face. But her only comment, when we had finished, was the dry remark that the next time we felt moved to go poking about empty houses, we’d better make sure that the key was on the inside.

Following Eve upstairs that night, I found her standing in the middle of the room, scowling over a scrap of paper. “Is this anything of yours, Sandy?” she asked.

I peered at it over her shoulder. It was a soiled and dog-eared piece of notepaper which had been folded twice. Scrawled across the middle, I read: “Circe south 13-6, 90 degrees W. 7 dig here.”

“I never saw it before. Where did you find it, Eve?” I said, looking at it curiously.

“Saw it lurking under the bed as I came into the room,” she explained. “It doesn’t seem like Aunt Cal to leave pieces of old letters about.”

“What do you think it is?” I asked, still staring at the strange inscription. “A ship’s log maybe? Circe sounds like the name of a ship.”

“Perhaps. But ‘dig here’—what about that? That’s not exactly nautical, is it?” Eve returned musingly. Suddenly she lifted the paper to her face and sniffed at it. “Harry’s Hair Restorer!” she exclaimed.

“What!” I sniffed too. She was right. The scent of Mr. Bangs’ lotions when we had opened his suitcase had permeated everything. It was unmistakable. “Then—then,” I stammered, “this letter, or whatever it is, must be his. Must have fallen out when we opened the suitcase!”

“Looks like it. And the wind probably blew it under the bed when you opened the window. That’s why we didn’t notice it before.”

“I wonder if it’s anything important,” I mused. “What do you make of it, Eve?”

Eve sat on the sea chest, her eyes round and big. “Sandy,” she said slowly, “if I read it in a story book, I would think of just one thing!”

“You mean—treasure?” I asked in a half whisper.

She nodded. “But of course in real life,” she went on hurriedly, “well, you know yourself, Sandy, real life is different, however much you try to make yourself believe otherwise.”

“Yes,” I admitted, “I know it is. But—look here!” I shot bolt upright on the bed with the suddenness of the thought that had come to me. “What do you suppose that man was doing in that garden today?”

“Why,” said Eve, “he was measuring, surveying or something, I suppose.”

“Surveyors don’t crawl on their knees,” I said. “And besides, he hadn’t any instruments, only a tape measure.”

Eve looked at me solemnly. “What are you driving at?” she asked.

“Well, this paper is his, isn’t it? And it’s got measurements on it. And he was measuring. It sounds crazy, of course, still——”

“But he didn’t have the paper; it was here under the bed!”

“Yes, I know. But he might have had it in his head, mightn’t he—the numbers, I mean?”

“You don’t mean you actually think, Sandy, that that man was looking for buried treasure?” Eve’s voice had fallen to a whisper, too, now.

“I don’t know what to think,” I returned.

“He certainly was annoyed when he saw us watching him!” Eve said thoughtfully.

“Annoyed is putting it mildly,” I said. “I thought he was going to strangle!”

Eve nodded. “Do you know,” she said, “I felt there was something very odd about him from the first. Take his hair, for one thing——”

“Somebody has taken it, or most of it!” I giggled. “He certainly isn’t much of an advertisement for his old lotions!”

“Not today. But he was yesterday when we saw him on the bus, don’t you remember?”

“Why, that’s so! I do remember he had thick brown hair that stuck out all around under his hat. I noticed it particularly, it didn’t seem to go with his face somehow. You don’t think it could have been——”

“A wig, of course!” Eve cried. “That settles it! That man is up to some funny business, you can depend upon it. Of course he wasn’t expecting to see anybody out there in the garden today. I dare say he’d found the wig hot and had taken it off and laid it in the grass or hung it on a branch or something!”

“Still, whatever he’s up to,” I said thoughtfully, “I suppose we’ll have to return his property to him. We can mail it to him in care of Trap’s Inn, I suppose.”

“All right. You’ll find an envelope in that top drawer.”

When I turned with the envelope, Eve was jotting down something in her diary. “No harm keeping a copy of those figures,” she remarked. “Just as a matter of curiosity, you know.”

We mailed the letter to Mr. Bangs next morning. We hoped that we would receive some acknowledgment of its receipt, something which might shed some further light on the mystery. But the days went by and nothing came.

Of course, a man who wears a wig may or may not be a villain. As Eve pointed out, he may have worn it for professional purposes solely. If he was a vendor of hair lotions, then the wig was a kind of advertisement. But even so, I argued, it was deceitful and misleading and I felt that our first impression of the man was abundantly justified.

We spoke frequently of making another trip to the old house to try to find out for ourselves what he was up to. But fear of incurring Aunt Cal’s disapproval held us back. It would be extremely difficult to explain to my severe-minded relative what had taken us there. To discuss anything so fantastic as buried treasure with Aunt Cal seemed out of the question.

Meanwhile our life at Fishers Haven flowed along serenely. We found that Aunt Cal was not hard to get along with, once you adapted yourself to her ways. She had lived so long alone that she couldn’t help being rather set in her habits, Eve said. Indeed it was due mostly to Eve’s tact and diplomacy that things went so smoothly. Eve had had some experience in visiting relatives and, though she admitted that none of them was in the least like my aunt, still, as she said, when you go to stay in somebody else’s house, you just have to make up your mind to doing things differently than when you are in your own home.

We began to feel quite at home too in the village, at the stores where Aunt Cal “traded” and at the post office where we went for the mail each morning and at any other odd moment when time hung too heavily on our hands. We explored the shore for miles and, covering our bathing suits modestly with coats in deference to Aunt Cal’s proprieties, walked to the beach for a swim nearly every day.

It was one afternoon when we returned rather late from one of these expeditions that we found the kitchen door locked. The key was under the mat where Aunt Cal—with what Eve called a painful lack of imagination—always placed it if she went out while we were away. We let ourselves in and found a note on the kitchen table addressed to me.

“Have gone to Old Beecham to see a sick friend who has just sent for me. Rose Blossom is driving me out. May have to spend the night. If I am not back by nine, put Adam in the kitchen, lock up and go to bed.

Hastily, Aunt Cal.”

“Hurrah!” I cried, seizing the startled Adam from his cushion and beginning to waltz with him about the kitchen.

“You don’t,” remarked Eve, “seem so awfully depressed at the news of Aunt Cal’s suffering friend!”

“I wasn’t thinking of her at all,” I confessed. “I was wondering if we couldn’t make a Welsh rarebit for supper. I’m fed up with beans and fried potatoes.” For some reason Aunt Cal’s note had filled me with a strange exhilaration. The thought of being on our own, if only for a few hours, was exciting. “Why, we won’t even have to wash the dishes if we don’t want to! And we can sit up as late as we please.”

The odor of toasting cheese is delectable at all times. Never have I known it so delicious as it was that night. Adam, too, seemed to find the atmosphere of the kitchen particularly attractive for, even after he had finished his supper of fried fish, he lingered, purring and twining himself about my feet.

“He wants some of the rarebit, I guess,” Eve said, dropping a morsel onto his plate.

Somewhat to my disappointment, Eve elected to wash the dishes as usual. “Better cover up all guilty tracks,” she laughed.

But we soon had them out of the way and after everything was in order again, we went out into the soft, sweet smelling dusk, the cat at our heels. There is a little bench under the locust tree where we had formed the habit of sitting in the evening and watching Adam at his capers. For, while in the daytime, he is staid and dignified in the extreme, in the evening he loosens up considerably and, given a toad or a grasshopper, will cavort with mild abandon up and down the garden path and beds. But we were always cautioned by Aunt Cal to keep our eyes on him and be sure that he did not stray beyond the hedge into her neighbor’s domain.

Tonight the rarebit or something seemed to have made him unusually lively. He darted about quite wildly and even in one moment of abandon so far forgot his years as to chase his tail. “It’s because Aunt Cal’s away,” I said. “I know just how he feels.”

Eve was lying on her back, trying to find Jupiter. “I wish we could think of something exciting to do,” I said.

“You might try chasing your tail,” she murmured. “I think stars are exciting.”

“Of course, if you start thinking about them,” I agreed. “Still, you can look at them most any time.”

“You hardly ever see so many as there are tonight. See, there’s the Little Dipper!”

It was while I was trying to see the Little Dipper that Adam saw his chance. I think very likely the sly thing had been waiting for just that moment when both our heads should be lifted to the sky.

“Where’s Adam?” Eve asked presently, coming back to earth.

“He was here just a moment ago.” I got up. “Adam, Adam!” I called.

Then suddenly, almost like an echo—but not quite—from the other side of the hedge I heard a voice. “Caliph, Caliph!” it said.

I stopped short. In the darkness of the adjoining yard, I saw the figure of Aunt Cal’s neighbor, a short plump gentleman of seafaring aspect who went in the village by the title of Captain Trout but whom Aunt Cal herself referred to with some asperity as “that man next door.” “Caliph, Caliph!” he called again.

“I didn’t know he had a cat,” whispered Eve at my side. Then just in front of us we saw Adam scurrying toward the hedge. In a second he was through it and bounding across the yard toward the summoning voice. “He thinks he’s calling him,” I said. “I guess I’d better go after him.”

I negotiated the hedge with only a scratch or two on my legs and flew after the runaway. “Adam,” I called. “Come back here, you bad cat!”

But even as I spoke the words, I saw the round figure beyond me stoop and gather the cat in his arms. “Caliph, you rascal,” he scolded, “where have you been keeping yourself?” He did not appear to see Eve or me at all but just went on stroking and scolding the cat by turns.

Finally Eve cleared her throat. “I think,” she said politely, “you’ve got the wrong cat, haven’t you? That’s our Adam, you know.”

At the words, the man’s head jerked up. “What,” he snapped, “are you talking about?”

“About Adam, our cat,” said Eve coolly. “It’s long past his bedtime.”

There was quite a pause after this during which the Captain went on stroking the cat. “You see,” I put in at last out of sheer embarrassment, “he had Welsh rarebit for supper and it sort of went to his head——”

But I never finished the sentence. With a sudden soldierly swing, the figure in front of us turned round and, still bearing the cat in his arms, marched toward the back door of his house.

VII

Caliph

TOO surprised to move, we stood and watched him. Then I caught Eve by the hand. “Why, we can’t let him carry off Adam like that!” I cried. “What will Aunt Cal say? Why, it’s highway robbery—stealing our cat before our eyes!”

“I don’t think he’ll invite us in,” Eve observed with something suspiciously like a giggle. “Seems sort of a crusty old bird.”

“But we can’t stand here and do nothing!” I was starting forward when I saw that the back door of the house had opened from within. For a moment another figure stood there, etched against the light. Then the Captain entered and the door closed.

“Well,” I cried, “I’m not going to stand for that! Eve, maybe—maybe they’re vivisectionists or something—going to cut his poor little insides out!”

At this gruesome suggestion, however, Eve only laughed again. “How you do let your imagination run on, Sandy!”

“Just the same, are you going to let that man steal my aunt’s cat?” I demanded. “You know what ‘store she sets by Adam.’”

“Well, I’m thinking,” said Eve. “I think perhaps there’s some misunderstanding.”

“Misunderstanding!” I scoffed. “I tell you that man’s nothing but a common thief. Probably knows Aunt Cal’s away and thinks he can get away with it. But I guess he’ll find he’s mistaken!” With that I advanced boldly toward the house.

There was a light in the kitchen window and I could hear movements inside as I crossed the little porch and knocked loudly on the door. Eve was in the shadow just behind. After a minute the door opened and the figure I had seen there before stood in the light of an oil lamp which was burning in a wall bracket behind him.

“What do you want?” It was not a gruff voice like Captain Trout’s, but clear and a little chilly. Moreover there was something distinctly familiar about it. But I did not stop to place it. Instead, I stepped boldly across the threshold and faced the owner squarely. He turned and the light fell on his face. It was John Doe.

But I did not let my momentary astonishment distract me from my purpose. “We’ve come for our cat,” I stated.

Looking beyond the boy, I saw the Captain in the act of pouring out a saucer of milk. “He’s had his supper,” I said. “And besides he likes his milk warmed.”

“I guess I know what he likes,” snapped the Captain, setting the saucer of milk down on the floor beside the stove.

I took an indignant step forward. But Eve’s restraining hand was on my arm. “Wait a minute, Sandy,” she urged. “If Captain Trout wants to give Adam a little refreshment, surely there’s no harm in that. I’m going outside to have a little chat with Mr. Doe. You’d better come along.”

I hesitated, looking from the ruddy face of the Captain, bent solicitously over the cat, to the impassive one of John Doe where he stood like a sentinel guarding the door. Suddenly the whole situation became funny. “Eve,” I said, “doesn’t he remind you of Horatius at the Bridge or something!”

But Eve was saying something to him in a low appealing voice and the next moment, somewhat to my surprise, we were all three standing together on the little back porch with the door closed behind us. “Now,” said Eve, “please, Mr. Doe, do tell us what all this cat business is about?”

“Oh, don’t call me that,” said the boy impatiently. “You know it isn’t my name.”

“Naturally,” returned Eve, “but since it’s the name you gave us——”

“Oh, I was just kidding. My name’s Michael Gilpatrick.”

“What an awfully nice name,” Eve smiled. She seated herself on one of the built-in benches at the end of the porch. “Now,” she said, “we can talk. Tell us about the cat.”

Michael Gilpatrick leaned against the post. “Well,” he said, “I suppose I might as well. But I don’t want you to think I’m taking sides in the matter. Of course I’m a friend of the Captain, still I can see that there’s something to be said on both sides.”

“Okay,” said Eve. “Having stated your position, please proceed. You must remember that we’re all in the dark. We never had the slightest inkling that there was any mystery surrounding Adam until tonight. Of course we knew that Aunt Cal and the Captain weren’t exactly on cordial terms.”

“And that the Captain had a habit of creeping along hedges after dark,” I put in.

Michael’s straight mouth twitched a little, but he quickly regained his solemnity. “Well,” he began, “it’s quite a long story. Goes back to the winter before last.”

“Adam must have been something of a kitten then,” Eve suggested.

Michael nodded. “It was about Christmas time, I think, that Captain Trout bought this little house and settled down here with his invalid wife.”

“Why, I didn’t know——” I began, but Eve whispered, “Hush!”

“They got this kitten—a kitten, that is,” he went on. “It came to them on Christmas Day and Mrs. Trout made a big fuss over it. They called it Caliph.”

“What a flight of fancy!” I murmured.

“That’s what they named it,” said Michael stolidly.

“Well, go on.”

“Some time in February, one cold night when the thermometer was below zero, the cat disappeared.”

“You didn’t tell us this was a sob story,” I put in, feeling for my handkerchief.

“Hush, Sandy,” said Eve. “How did he happen to disappear?” she asked.

“I don’t know—he just vanished, the way cats do.”

“Night life and all that?” I queried.

The boy ignored my frivolity. “The next day Mrs. Trout was ill and the Captain was so occupied with nursing her that he didn’t think very much about the cat’s absence. But later, when he began to look about and make inquiries, he couldn’t find any trace of him.”

“And so a year went by,” I prompted, “and still no trace of the missing che-ild!”

“Well, it wasn’t quite a year. It was the next fall, October, I believe. Mrs. Trout had died that summer and the Captain was living here alone. One day he saw Caliph across the hedge. He was following your aunt, Mrs. Poole, about the garden.”

“How,” I demanded, “did he know it was Caliph? A cat grows a lot in—let me see—eight months, wasn’t it?”

“He thought it was Caliph,” continued Michael, “and he went over and told Mrs. Poole so. But she said it was her cat Adam. She said she’d found him starving on the street the week before and had brought him home. Then Captain Trout explained about his cat, Caliph, running away last February and all. But it was no use. Mrs. Poole remained—er—unconvinced.”

“Naturally,” I exclaimed. “Why, the world’s practically full of Maltese cats and to tell one from another after it’s had eight months to grow in—why, I don’t blame Aunt Cal in the least.”

Michael regarded me gravely. “Well,” he said, “I’m just giving you the facts as I learned them. Of course, the whole thing is rather silly,” he added, “but you see the Captain was attached to Caliph on account of his wife and all, and should know his own cat.”

“Of course,” said Eve. “He didn’t have seven toes or anything like that?” she suggested hopefully.

“Not that I know of.”