Part 5

“Looks like it,” returned Michael, gazing down at the newly disturbed earth. “Naturally he didn’t want to leave traces of his operations for anyone to see. Especially after you two came spying on him.”

“The old villain! What right has he got to Captain Judd’s treasure, I’d like to know!”

Michael looked up with his quizzical grin. “Did you really expect to find treasure buried here?” he asked.

“W-well,” I stammered, somewhat embarrassed by the amusement in his gray eyes. “After what Captain Trout told us—I mean about the blue emerald and all——”

“Oh, that!” returned Michael scornfully. “That story sounds pretty fishy to me.”

“But there must have been something here,” put in Eve. “Or else Mr. Bangs wouldn’t have been carrying around those measurements and all.”

“If you didn’t believe there was anything, why did you bother to come up here and look?” I demanded a little hotly.

“Well,” he returned slowly, “I was curious to know what the fellow was up to for one thing. Then,” he grinned again, “I knew you girls wouldn’t sleep nights till you’d had a look.”

“Oh, is that so!” I retorted haughtily. “Of course, we’re just a couple of weak, credulous females——”

Michael paid no heed to my ill temper. He had drawn the letter out of his pocket and was studying it. “I’d give a lot,” he remarked, “to know who wrote this!”

“What I can’t understand,” mused Eve, “is this: why, if Mr. Bangs found what he was after, was he so anxious to get the letter back? Anxious enough, in fact, to break into Aunt Cal’s house last night to look for it?”

Michael shot her an approving glance. “That’s just the point that has me guessing,” he said. “It rather looks to me as if the fellow’s excavations didn’t prove successful after all.”

“But he had the measurements right—we’ve proved that, haven’t we?”

Michael nodded. He seemed to be thinking deeply.

Suddenly Eve got up and wandered over to the blackened stone figure. She stood with her back to us for several minutes, examining it. At last she turned around. “Suppose,” she said slowly, looking down to where Michael and I were sitting, our backs propped against the bowl of the fountain, “suppose this isn’t the statue of Circe after all!”

“What!” Michael was on his feet like a flash. “I say,” he cried, “that’s an idea! Maybe the old fellow got the wrong statue!”

“You see,” went on Eve, “Captain Trout told us there were several statues which Captain Judd brought home from his travels. He said there was one of Diana and one of Mercury. And this statue, even though it is so dingy and weatherbeaten, looks to me a lot more like Mercury than anyone else. Look, you can see the places where the wings were broken off on his back.”

“Gee, Eve, you’re dead right!” Michael cried appreciatively. “Pretty dumb of me not to notice that myself!” It was the first time that Michael had addressed either of us directly by our first names. I felt that it was a tribute to Eve’s intelligence.

“We simply took it for granted that it was the right statue,” Eve continued. “And, of course, our friend Bangs couldn’t be expected to know a great deal about mythology. I suppose one statue looks pretty much like another to a fellow like him.”

“Then the thing to do,” I burst in excitedly, “is to find the right one—the missing Circe! She surely must be somewhere around.”

The garden, as I have said, was so overgrown with weeds, tall grass, rambling rosebushes and every other variety of shrub that the space around the fountain where Mr. Bangs had made his measurements was practically the only clear spot in sight. But we now set to work to make a thorough search of the entire place. But though we combed it from one end to the other, startling toads from their lairs and stirring up swarms of mosquitoes, we found not the slightest trace of any other statue.

We were so absorbed in our search that none of us had noticed the swiftly darkening sky till Eve exclaimed suddenly, “Goodness, it’s going to rain.”

“Sure is,” Michael agreed, emerging from a thicket of blackberry bushes, with a scratch across one cheek. “Guess Circe’ll have to stay wherever she’s hiding for tonight. I’ll run on ahead and get the wagon and meet you.”

The drops were already beginning to fall before we reached him. “Better get in behind,” he ordered, “and put this blanket over your heads.”

It was pouring by the time we reached Fishers Haven. Michael did not let us out at the farmhouse as he had done before but drove on to Aunt Cal’s gate. There was no time for any further plans that night. We just called out our thanks and made a dash for the house. But I was sure that Michael would not be satisfied until he had fathomed the mystery of the old garden, whatever it was. For my own part, I was determined to go back and continue the search at the earliest possible moment.

XI

Hamish on the Job

THE morning mail brought a letter from Hattie May. Eve was busy spreading carpet rags on the tin roof of the porch outside our bedroom window. We had forgotten and left them in the side yard and, as it had rained practically the entire night, the results can be imagined. Our only hope now was that the warm sun would dry them before Aunt Cal discovered what had happened.

“Eve,” I called, “here’s a letter from Hattie May. What do you think it says!”

Eve poked her head in at the window. “I think the colors are really going to be improved,” she said. “The fading has made them softer, sort of artistic looking.”

“Maybe,” I agreed, “though I doubt if Aunt Cal will appreciate the effect! But don’t you want to know what Hattie May says? Aren’t you at all curious?”

“Nothing sensible, I’ll be bound. What’s she up to now?”

“She’s coming here!”

“What! Not to Fishers Haven?”

“Yup. She wants to help us solve the mystery, she says.”

Eve climbed into the room. “Sandy,” she demanded sternly, “what have you been writing her?”

“Why, nothing. I thought she ought to know that our vacation wasn’t promising to be as dull as she had prophesied, so I just mentioned a thing or two—guardedly, of course.”

“Too guardedly, I guess,” Eve retorted. “She probably thinks there’s a lot more to it than there is!”

“But isn’t there?” I asked. “I mean to say, we don’t know yet what there is to it!”

“Sandy, you know perfectly well that Hattie May can’t keep even the tiniest secret five minutes.”

“Well, she’s coming anyway and it’s too late to head her off. And that isn’t all,” I giggled. “She’s bringing Hamish with her—or rather he’s bringing her. Seems he’s got a car.”

“Not—not that boy with the sticky-out ears! Not actually!” Eve dropped onto the sea chest, consternation in every line of her face.

“Yup, they’re driving up from Mason’s Cove, wherever that is. It appears their family is spending the summer there. They’re going to stay at a hotel or inn or whatever there is, Hattie May says. She says her parents consented because she told them my father was a missionary, so they’re sure we’re respectable.” I gave another giggle.

Eve groaned. “No doubt their parents are only too pleased to lose sight of Hamish for a while,” she remarked.

“Oh,” I returned lightly, “I can imagine worse boys than Hamish.”

“Well, I haven’t your imagination,” Eve returned feelingly. “When did you say they were coming?”

“Well, the letter says tomorrow. But as it isn’t dated and the postmark is blurred, it might be they’ll be here today.”

“Today! Well you’d better go down and break the news to your aunt!”

“But I don’t see why that’s necessary—they won’t bother her.”

“Don’t be too sure,” returned Eve darkly.

Aunt Cal departed soon after dinner that day to attend the weekly meeting of the Ladies’ Civic Betterment Society. The carpet rags were all dry and Eve and I determined to get a lot of sewing done on them to make up for our carelessness in leaving them out in the rain. Eve thought that, once they were sewed and wound into balls, Aunt Cal might not notice the change in color which many of the pieces had undergone.

We established ourselves in the shade of the side yard. Adam came and stretched himself in the sun nearby. He had shown no desire to leave the premises since Daisy June had taken up her residence next door and had manifested considerable irritation that morning when the kitten had pounced at his tail from underneath the hedge.

We were discussing what we now termed The Craven House Mystery as we did much of the time when we were alone. We could not decide what we ought to do with the old letter which Michael had returned to us. “Well, whatever you do, don’t show it to Hamish or Hattie May,” Eve was saying. And it was just at that moment that I looked up and saw a green roadster drawing up at the gate. I knew at once by the frantic waving of the girl beside the driver that it was Hattie May. “There they are!” I cried, jumping to my feet. “Come on, Eve!”

“Oh, Sandy, darling, it seems perfect months since I saw you!” Hattie May threw herself upon me in her usual effusive manner. Her brother, climbing out of the other side of the car, was peering around with small bright eyes behind thick glasses, as if he fairly expected some mysterious phenomenon to develop right there before his eyes!

“I say,” he demanded without the formality of greeting, “have you seen the fellow who wears a wig again?”

“Oh, yes, do tell us all the latest developments!” Hattie May cried. “I can hardly wait to hear.”

“Mr. Bangs has left town,” replied Eve coldly. “And nothing more has happened. I’m really afraid you’re going to be disappointed, Hattie May, if you think anything is going to. I’m afraid Sandy has given you a wrong impression—this isn’t like a mystery thriller, you know!”

“But my dear,” my roommate exclaimed, “surely there is some treasure buried in that old garden. What else _could_ that cryptic message mean? Tell me, haven’t you found a thing?”

Well, I guess we both saw that there was nothing for it but to tell them everything. If we didn’t, Hattie May would begin to imagine all sorts of startling things that weren’t so, and might even end in blurting out something and getting us in bad with Aunt Cal.

So we all repaired to the side yard and sat down on the grass. And while Eve went inside for cold tea and cookies, I told Hattie May and her brother briefly just how far we had got—or hadn’t got, rather—in unravelling the mystery and how we had gone about it.

Hattie May, as was to be expected, kept interrupting and asking all sorts of foolish questions. Hamish said nothing at all but his eyes were very bright and eager as he listened. When I had finished, he got up. “Well,” he said, “I guess I’d better go right out there and have a look round.”

I suppressed a giggle. The pride of Scotland Yard, called in as a last resort, to solve a baffling crime, couldn’t have spoken with more importance! “But gracious, Hamish,” I exclaimed, “there’s nothing to see!”

“Just let me have a look at that letter,” he continued, “so’s I’ll get the measurements straight.”

Eve came out with the refreshments. “Hamish,” I said, with I fear, a trace of sarcasm, “is going right out to dig up the treasure!”

“He’ll have to wait for me,” declared his sister. “I’m going to have some tea first.”

Hamish’s eyes lighted on the cookies. “Oh, well,” he said and sat down.

It ended finally in our producing the letter and then all piling into the car and driving out to Craven House. Neither Eve nor I was willing to let Hattie May and, her brother go without us. But I did wish that Michael were along, somehow it seemed his affair as much as ours.

Hattie May went into ecstasies over the house and, most of all, over the garden. “My _dear_,” she cried, “I think it is absolutely the most romantic place. Can’t you just see that old miser bringing his gold and jewels out here on a dark night——”

“But he wasn’t a miser,” I protested. “And he didn’t have any gold.”

“Nonsense, you needn’t tell me,” she retorted. “He buried something, didn’t he?”

“Well, we don’t actually know——” I began, but Hattie May had disappeared after Hamish into a thick growth of underbrush.

For my own part, the old garden had never appeared so thoroughly unattractive as it did today. It was very hot in the mid-afternoon sun and heavy with the scent of overgrown vegetation. I sat down on the edge of the fountain and tried to imagine what it had been like in the old days, the days when Captain Judd had taken such pride in it and folks had driven from all around in their buggies to see the funny statues he had brought from over the sea. I tried to see it with the paths and flower beds that were now almost entirely lost to view. I wondered what the Captain’s wife had been like, the woman called Emily, who hated the sea. Had she loved the flowers and tended them as Aunt Cal would have done?

Then I fell to thinking of Aunt Cal and wondering what she would have done to the place had it fallen to her. I could fancy how she would have enjoyed scrubbing and painting the house and putting it in order again. And the garden—I smiled to myself when I thought of my indomitable relative coming to grips with that garden.

Meanwhile the others were wandering about, poking into every niche and corner for some trace of the missing statue. I believe Hattie May had expected to discover it almost at once and I could see that she was considerably crestfallen when she at last returned to join me at the fountain. “It’s very baffling!” she sighed, wiping her burning face. “If we could only find the pedestal where the thing stood, that would be enough.”

Hamish did not give up easily. But at last we persuaded him to abandon his efforts for the time being, for as Eve pointed out there was really no fear that Mr. Bangs would get ahead of us so long as the Circe was missing.

“Unless,” said Hamish astutely, “he has taken it away on purpose!”

“You don’t mean you think he has stolen the statue?” cried his sister. “Why should he do that?”

“To keep anyone else from finding the treasure of course, stupid. It looks to me as if we were up against a very clever crook!”

I giggled. “Oh, don’t be absurd,” I said. “Mr. Bangs doesn’t know we’re interested in his search—why should he? And if he knew where Circe was, he’d go ahead and dig and find out what there was to find.”

Hamish however clung to his theory. It was the only explanation, he said, for the absence of the statue. As we were packing ourselves into the car for the return trip the rattle of a wagon sounded up the road and Michael drove into view. Eve called to him and at the mention of his name, Hattie May was out of the car with a bounce.

“Oh,” she cried, “I’ve been wanting so much to meet you! Ever since I heard how you chased that desperate villain the other night! I think you were absolutely the bravest thing!”

Michael’s face assumed its stoniest aspect. I feared that he and Hattie May were not going to get along. “We’ve been looking about the garden again,” Eve said hurriedly to fill up the awkward pause. “But we didn’t find anything.”

Michael nodded. “Guess there’s nothing to find,” he remarked noncommittally. With that he gathered up the reins and drove on.

“Well, I must say he’s a queer acting boy!” Hattie May exploded.

“You shouldn’t have gushed over him,” Eve said. “He doesn’t like that sort of thing.”

The car was bumping down the road now. We passed Michael on the way, but he didn’t look around. Hattie May and her brother engaged rooms at Wildwood Lodge, a quiet little inn on the shore road. That and the big Seaside Hotel farther down the beach were the only accommodations Fishers Haven offered to summer guests.

Eve and I were late for supper. Aunt Cal was pouring her second cup of tea when we came in. We told her about the arrivals and added casually that we’d been for a drive in Hamish’s car.

“A boy of that age has no business with a car,” Aunt Cal stated severely. “First thing you know you’ll be in one of those accidents the papers are full of. In my day young folks didn’t go careering around the country!”

As if he realized that his reputation was at stake, Hamish himself reappeared directly after supper. We heard the already familiar honk of his horn as we were finishing the dishes and a moment later, his bespectacled face appeared at the screen door. “Is your aunt in?” he demanded. “I’ve brought her a little present.”

“She’s in the garden,” I answered. “Just a minute and I’ll take you out.”

But he did not wait for me to take off my apron. “I’ll find her,” he called and was striding down the path. Eve giggled. “I warned you,” she said, “how things would be if that boy came to town.”

I wasn’t present at the meeting of my relative and Hamish. By the time we reached the spot where Aunt Cal and Adam were sitting, the moment for introductions had passed. Hamish had just pulled a queer looking package out of his side pocket and was proffering it to my aunt. “Here’s a little gadget I picked up on my way down today,” he remarked. “I said to myself as soon as I saw it that it was a thing any good house-keeper’d like to own.”

Aunt Cal, apparently stunned by the quick movement of events, took the parcel without a word and began unwrapping it. “It’s a combination mousetrap and insect sprayer,” Hamish explained. “A new invention, just on the market.”

“Dear me,” said Aunt Cal, turning it over. “You don’t say. Much obliged, I’m sure.”

“Glad you like it,” returned Hamish complacently. “Thought you would. What a handsome cat!” He stooped to give Adam’s back a rub.

But Adam—perhaps resenting the mousetrap—got up and with a backward swish of his tail, started up the path.

“Here, kitty, kitty!” Hamish pulled a length of twine from his pocket and began dangling it before the cat’s nose. As he did so a piece of paper fluttered to the ground, unseen by him as he walked away.

I recognized it instantly and stooped to grab it. But Aunt Cal was nearest and reached it first. Papers scattered about her garden were not to be endured even for a second. She was about to crumple it in her hand when her eyes fell on the handwriting. In an instant I saw her face change. She was staring hard at the paper and the hand which held it was shaking. “Wh-what is this?” she demanded in a hard strained voice.

XII

Over the Banister

WHEN Aunt Cal saw that letter and I watched that funny, almost frightened look pass over her face, I knew of course that there was nothing for it but to tell her everything. But I never am good in a crisis and this time was no exception. Aunt Cal had picked up the paper, as I have said, and now sat staring at it just exactly as if she were seeing a ghost. “What is this?” she demanded again, and this time I knew that somebody had to answer.

“It’s a paper we found in that suitcase,” I began. “I mean it dropped out when we opened it to look for an address and found all those bottles and afterward it got under the bed somehow but as we had returned it by this time—though of course we could tell by the smell where it had come from——”

“My dear Sandra,” Aunt Cal had regained some of her composure in the face of my stumbling recital, “I am sure that I find myself quite unable to follow you.”

“Perhaps I’d better tell it,” Eve put in quietly. Whereupon she gave Aunt Cal the facts as they had happened in a few words, including the evening visit of the mysterious Mr. Bangs on the night when Aunt Cal had been absent in Old Beecham. Eve made no mention, however, of what Captain Trout had told us of Aunt Cal’s own connection with the Cravens, nor of the blue emerald. But she did tell about our search for the missing statue.

When she had finished I waited breathlessly for what Aunt Cal would say. Would she be very angry with us for keeping all this from her? But I was to realize anew that evening that it was part of my aunt’s code of life to conceal her emotions. And her only comment when Eve had ended her recital was, “So that explains the condition of my bureau drawers.”

“But we put everything back just——” I was protesting when a look from Eve silenced me.

“We expected to tell you all about everything,” she said, “just as soon as we found out something definite. You see we—we were afraid you wouldn’t like to have us go out there at all if you knew—about Mr. Bangs being a housebreaker and all.”

“You are quite correct in that,” returned my aunt severely. “After all I am responsible for your safety.”

“But of course now,” I put in anxiously, “now that he has left, it is different—I mean it can’t do any harm just to go out and—and look around, I mean——”

“I doubt if your investigations will lead you anywhere,” she returned frostily. “And now if you have quite finished with your extraordinary revelations, I think I will go in. Here in the country as you know”—she looked pointedly at Hamish—“we are accustomed to retire early.”

Well so much for Aunt Cal’s connection with the mystery, I thought, as we sat in silence and watched her spare, uncompromising figure with Adam closely at heel disappear inside the kitchen door. Hamish, who had kept silence for a longer period than I would have deemed possible, now let out an explosive “Whew!” And added gloomily, “And she went and left my present behind!” It was true; the combination mousetrap and insect sprayer still lay in its wrappings on the bench. But the letter was gone!

“Never mind, Hamish,” I said consolingly. “I think Aunt Cal really was upset you know, though she didn’t show it. I’m sure nothing but great stress of mind would have made her forget your lovely present!”

“Well, maybe,” he returned. “I suppose I’d better be going. Glad I made a copy of that letter though!”

So Hamish had copied the “cryptic message” too. Well, there were plenty of copies going around. Eve had one, and now Hamish, and I would not have been surprised if Michael—for all his seeming indifference—had one too. Besides that, Mr. Bangs apparently had the measurements in his head, as he had proved. At this rate, all Fishers Haven might soon be in the secret of the whereabouts of Captain Judd’s treasure.

“Eve,” I said, after we had locked the back door and gone up to bed, “do you think Aunt Cal will do anything?”

Eve shook her head slowly. “I can’t make her out,” she said. “I’m as sure as anything that she recognized the handwriting on that paper but that’s absolutely all I am sure of. If Hamish thought he had pulled a coup, he jolly well must have been disappointed.”

“What?” I demanded. “You mean Hamish dropped that letter on purpose?”

“Why of course he did,” returned Eve. “He wanted Aunt Cal to see it; he thought he’d find out something.”

“But,” I protested indignantly, “didn’t we practically swear both him and Hattie May to secrecy before we showed it to them!”

“They agreed not to say anything. They didn’t agree not to drop things around apparently by accident.”

“That Hamish!” I cried; “somebody ought to—to sit on him so hard—well hard enough to make him yell.”

“I warned you there’d be trouble,” said Eve, “just as soon as Hattie May put her nose into this business.”

I was just ready for bed when I found that I had left my wristwatch downstairs on the kitchen shelf. Slipping into my bathrobe, I was about to steal down after it when I was surprised to see a light coming from the front room below stairs. Had Aunt Cal gone down again, I wondered—or was this another evening visitor?