Part 6

For a second I hesitated there on the top step. If it was Aunt Cal I’d better not go down, but if it was somebody else—Mr. Bangs perhaps, returned to make another search for his missing property——. The thought sent me creeping forward. My slippered feet didn’t make a sound on the carpeted stairs. Over the banister I now had a clear view into the lighted room below, and there, seated at the old-fashioned secretary in the corner, was Aunt Cal. The desk was open and spread with papers—letters by the look. And I had no doubt that Mr. Bangs’ mysterious document was among them.

As quietly as I had descended, I stole back to our room and told Eve what I had seen. “I think she’s comparing the handwriting with some she’s got, don’t you?”

“Perhaps,” Eve agreed. “I do hope she isn’t awfully upset by it all,” she added. “If I thought we’d been the means of worrying her or anything, I’d be sorry we ever found that letter, Sandy. I really would.”

“Yes—of course,” I agreed. “Still we weren’t really responsible for finding it—it isn’t as if we had meant to take it. And anyhow maybe some good will come of it; you can’t tell.”

“If you mean finding treasure,” Eve shook her head. “No, I’m inclined to agree with Michael about that. Don’t forget,” she added wisely, “that we’re living in the twentieth century!”

“No-o, I won’t,” I said with a sigh. “Very likely you’re right, Eve—very likely we’d better just drop the whole thing, forget about it entirely. Still—there’s the letter! People don’t write down measurements, do they, unless there’s something to measure?”

“Or unless they want to fool somebody!”

“Fool somebody?” Oh, that was a disconcerting thought! But fool who? Mr. Bangs, or Aunt Cal—or us? No, the last two possibilities were absurd. For our own possession of the letter had been purely accidental, as, for the matter of that, was Aunt Cal’s. The more I though of it in the light of Eve’s rather startling suggestion, the more confused I became. And it was perhaps no wonder that, falling asleep at last, I should dream that Daisy June’s eyes had turned into blue emeralds but that, when I put out my hand to take them, it was Adam’s green ones which I found coldly regarding me.

XIII

Harry’s Hair Restorer

AUNT CAL was as brisk and decisive as ever next morning. She made no mention of last evening’s occurrences, but she startled us by proposing a plan. “How would you like to have a picnic for your two friends this afternoon?” she asked. “I’m told the young people often go to the beach and cook their supper over an open fire, though I must say it has always seemed to me a most unsatisfactory way of preparing a meal.”

“Oh, a beach picnic!” I cried. “What a perfectly swell idea!”

“And you’ll come too, Aunt Cal?” Eve begged.

Aunt Cal shook her head. “I’m obliged to go into Millport this afternoon on some business,” she said. “But I shall be able to help you with your preparations this morning if you think favorably of my suggestion.”

“Bet your life we do!” I jumped up and gave her a hug. “Oh, Aunt Cal, you are a darling after all—I mean,” I amended hastily, “after all the trouble and worry we’ve caused you. I’ll go call up Hattie May right away!”

“Yes, you’d better,” Eve agreed, “before that Hamish goes off on some wild goose chase or other. When a boy imagines he’s been endowed by a beneficent providence with the mental equipment of a Sherlock Holmes, you can’t tell what he may do!”

I returned from the drug store to find Eve stirring a cake and Aunt Cal making salad. “They’re coming,” I announced, “at least Hattie May is. Hamish has gone off somewhere but she said he’d promised to be back for lunch.”

“Well, I only hope you won’t set yourselves afire,” said Aunt Cal with a sigh. “Or catch your death o’ cold sitting around in those awful bathing suits!”

“Hattie May says we can dress in the Wildwood Inn pavilion,” I said. “And don’t forget we’ll have Hamish on hand in case of accidents!”

Eve was putting the finishing touches to the chocolate cake some time later. As she stood surveying its satiny perfection, she said slowly, “I do wish Michael Gilpatrick could taste that. I’d like to show him that a mere girl is good for something! Besides, I hate to think of Hamish practically gobbling up the whole thing as he’s sure to do if he doesn’t have a competitor to prevent him.”

“Well you don’t need to worry,” I said. “Because I invited Michael to come too.”

“What! You did!” Eve was surprised.

“Yes. I thought we might as well ask him. I got hold of him at the farm in Old Beecham where he works. He didn’t go into ecstasies over the idea but he said he was planning to go for a swim this afternoon anyway, as it’s Saturday half holiday, so I guess maybe he’ll show up. I only hope he and Hattie May won’t come to blows.”

As soon as our rather hurried dinner was over, Aunt Cal, arrayed in her second best black silk, departed for Millport. Although she reiterated her warnings against fire and drowning, I felt somehow that her mind was preoccupied. Indeed she had been vaguely different all day. She seemed in a way softened, and yet more determined. Was that old letter responsible for the change and was it that which was taking her to Millport?

Hattie May and Hamish were waiting on the beach when we got there that afternoon. Hamish wanted to know at once whether Aunt Cal had said anything more about the letter. I told him shortly that she had not. I felt that he deserved a snubbing for what he had done last evening but, as often happens, the people whom you most wish to snub are the very ones who are impervious to such tactics.

Michael was late in arriving. Hattie May said that for her part it didn’t matter whether he came or not as she’d never met a ruder boy. I thought it a good moment to put in a word of warning. “Michael is different from most boys,” I said. “He doesn’t like to be made a fuss about.”

“Why, I just said I thought he was brave in grappling with that burglar,” Hattie May retorted indignantly. “Though now that I come to think it over, I quite see that there was probably no danger at all and that he was just trying to show off.”

“Show off!” This indignantly from Eve. “I tell you Michael’s not that kind.”

“Oh, you needn’t tell me,” retorted Hattie May. “I guess I know all about boys.”

When at last Michael’s tall figure came sauntering down the beach, Hattie May greeted him with a chilly nod. “We thought probably it was milking time and you wouldn’t be able to get away,” she said casually.

Michael grinned. Apparently he had decided that Hattie May was not to be taken seriously. “Oh, no,” he said, “we don’t milk till seven. Guess you’ve never lived on a farm.”

“No,” said Hattie May, “I must admit I’ve never had that pleasure. None of my family are farmers!”

This did not seem to be a very auspicious beginning for our picnic. Eve threw herself into the breach. “Do let’s get into the water,” she urged, “before it gets any later.”

Michael, as one might have guessed, proved to be by far the best swimmer of us all, though Eve was a good second. Hattie May’s efforts were punctuated by blood curdling screams and calls for somebody to “save her”; but as no one paid the slightest attention, she soon gave up and returned to land. Hamish, too, after paddling about rather blindly without his spectacles, sat down on the sand where, replacing his glasses on his dripping countenance, he began making entries in a notebook.

“What is it, Hamish?” I inquired. “Your diary or memoirs or something?”

He shook his head absently. “No, just bringin’ my notes on the Craven case up to date.”

I raised myself on my elbow and looked at him. Was he just a rather overgrown little boy playing at being detective? Or had he really found out something of importance? Suddenly he fixed me with his thick lenses. “I know what you think,” he said astutely. “You think I’m one of those playboy detecitifs like in the books!”

“Oh, no, indeed,” I assured him hastily. “Of course I don’t think anything of the kind!”

“Yes, you do,” he stated. “But I’m not, I’m different. I figure things out. I’m smart. I got ideas.”

“I’m sure you have,” I murmured, and waited for what I hoped was coming. But Hamish just went on writing. At any rate he was keeping his own counsel in the approved manner of the perfect sleuth.

The day was perfection and, as I lay there on the warm sand and gazed out over the blue bay with its flecks of white where it met the sea, the question of why someone had written something in an old letter grew suddenly unimportant in the face of that bigger wonder of earth and sea and sky. Then I fell to remembering another blue bay on the other side of the world across which I had sailed away from Mother and Dad nearly a year ago.

“Sandy’s being homesick!” Eve’s mellow voice broke into my thoughts.

I sat up. “No such thing!” I declared stoutly. “I was just thinking that a blue emerald couldn’t hold a candle to the color of that water out there!”

I caught a glint of appreciation in Michael’s eyes as he stood with the shallow water swirling about his ankles. But Hamish said, “Guess you wouldn’t talk like that if you should see it once! Chap I talked to this morning said it was as big as a quarter!”

“What!” exclaimed Hattie May. “Why, Hamish, you never told me!”

“Had this chap seen the blue emerald?” Eve inquired.

“Well, no, not exactly. But he’d heard his folks talk about it when he was a youngster.”

“So far as I can discover,” said Eve, “no one ever did see the thing.”

“I suppose you’ll be saying next that Captain Judd himself never saw it,” remarked Hattie May. “I suppose he was maybe blind when he buried it!” she added with heavy sarcasm.

“We don’t know that he did bury it,” I remarked. I glanced at Michael for confirmation, but he only shrugged and grinned and said he was going up to dress.

“Wait,” I said, “I’m going to take some pictures first.” Some impulse—for which I was later to thank my lucky stars—had moved me to bring along my kodak. I took several groups and Eve took some more with me in them. Then I finished off the film with some snaps of a fleet of little yachts that were just entering the harbor. Michael said it was the annual cruise of a Boston yacht club and that they came into the harbor every year at this time.

“I used to get a great kick out of them when I was a youngster and first started coming here,” he said. “I was sure I’d be a skipper when I grew up.”

“Why,” exclaimed Eve, “I thought you were a native of Fishers Haven, Michael. Weren’t you born here?”

“Oh, no, my home’s in Connecticut. My folks used to come here for summer vacations. So this summer when I had to get some work, I came up and got me a job on Cousin Al’s farm.”

After we had dressed we all set to work on preparations for supper. The boys built an oven in the sand while we collected firewood. Then we buried potatoes to bake and sharpened long sticks for roasting bacon over the coals. Eve and Hattie May and I made coffee and spread the table.

“Why didn’t your aunt come to the picnic?” Hamish asked unexpectedly, while we all sat about waiting for the potatoes to get done.

“Oh, picnics aren’t in her line I guess,” I said.

“Don’t you suppose she _ever_ went to one—when she was a girl, I mean?” asked Hattie May.

“Don’t know, I’m sure,” I found it hard somehow to think of Aunt Cal as a girl at all.

“Well, I’ll bet that old salt next door has been to plenty of ’em,” said Hamish. “I’ll bet he hasn’t missed much that went on, picnics or anything else!”

Michael chuckled. “You should hear the sea yarns he can tell when he gets going!”

“By the way,” continued Hamish casually, “I picked up a little present for him when I was over in Millport this morning, something practical and yet fancy.”

“A present for Captain Trout!” We all gazed with curiosity as Hamish proceeded to extract from the pocket of his jacket an oblong package.

“Hamish,” giggled Eve, “is the world’s great gift giver. He just showers tokens of esteem about among his acquaintances. He hasn’t given me anything yet but I’m living in hopes. By the way, when did you get acquainted with the Captain, Hamish—you only came yesterday?”

“Well,” he returned, “of course I’m not exactly acquainted with him. But I noticed him walkin’ round his garden last night. And so when I came across this—this present that I got—I thought right away that that was just what this sailor fellow needed. Even if I don’t know him, I think we all ought to help each other all we can.”

“Hamish,” I murmured feelingly, “I never dreamed what deep springs of unselfishness were—er—slumbering——” I dabbed at my eye as the smoke from the fire was drifting my way.

“Springs don’t slumber!” put in Eve.

“Well, open it up and do let’s see what fool contraption you’ve bought now!” demanded Hattie May impatiently.

“’Tisn’t either.” Hamish pulled off the string of the package. “You see, I noticed as soon as I saw this fellow Trout that he was goin’ bald. So naturally when I ran into a fellow peddlin’ hair tonic——”

“Hair tonic!” came in a chorus from Eve and me.

“Yup.” Hamish held up a large black bottle. Somehow I knew what the label would say before I read it—“Harry’s Hair Restorer”!

“Hamish,” I demanded tensely, “where did you get it?”

“Why, I just been tellin’ you, on the street in Millport. A fellow was peddlin’ it—said it was his own secret formula that he’d used for twenty years. And, boy, you oughta seen his hair!”

“Golly!” said Michael, swallowing half a sandwich at a gulp. “Can you beat that?”

“Well, what’s eatin’ you?” Hamish’s gaze traveled from him to Eve’s face and mine. “You all look ’sif I’d committed a crime or sumpin! I guess the stuff isn’t poison and anyhow nobody’s going to drink it. The way I figure with a head like Trout’s, anything he can do—even if it only grows him a couple of hairs—is better than leavin’ things go the way they are!”

“Look here,” asked Michael. “This fellow you bought the stuff of, is he still in Millport?”

“How do I know? I didn’t ask him where he was going. Say, what’s all the excitement anyway?”

“The excitement is,” I said, “that our Mr. Bangs, in addition to carrying cryptic documents in his suitcase, also carried a cargo of hair tonic which I guess we forgot to tell you about—bottles labeled ‘Harry’s Hair Restorer’ and so forth.”

“Sufferin’ sunfish! You don’t mean it? Then this guy is the very same villain that’s been diggin’ up that garden and that broke into your aunt’s house the other night!”

“Looks like it,” said Michael. “He must have got himself another wig somewhere.”

“And me talkin’ to him face to face!” moaned Hamish. “Just the very man I was lookin’ for! And me falling for that yarn of his that he’d lost all his hair from jungle fever when he was twenty-one and how this restorer had brought it all back in ninety days! Golly, I could go kick myself into the ocean—him and his old hair tonic!”

He took out the cork from the bottle and sniffed it disgustedly. “Uh! Smells like glue and kerosene!”

“Let me smell,” said Hattie May.

The bottle was passed from one to the other and we all made faces in turn. As I handed it back to Hamish, he seized it violently and, rising, with a savage gesture, flung it into the sea. It fell far out in the green water with a plump. “I’m goin’ to get even with that fellow,” he declared dramatically, “if it’s the very last act of my life—even if it takes me ten years!”

“Poor Captain Trout,” Eve murmured, “destined to a hairless old age!”

Hamish glared at her. “I say,” he demanded, “when do we start eatin’?”

Michael bent over the oven. “The potatoes are done,” he announced.

While we ate, we continued to discuss the case of Mr. Bangs. What sort of a man was this? One day appearing as a real estate agent, another as a burglar and a third, as a street peddler! And if he had failed to find what he was after in the old garden, why was he still hanging about? Were the wigs he wore intended merely as an advertisement of his wares or were they worn for disguise?

As we talked the sun dropped lower and the slanting rays turned the blue-green water to rose and gold and crimson. The waves grew quiet under its gilded touch. At their moorings, the little yachts rocked gently with furled sails. For a moment our chatter subsided. It was Hamish’s falsetto voice that broke the spell.

“Say, isn’t it about time we got started home? Isn’t anything more to eat, is there?”

“One sandwich left,” I said.

He shook his head. “Haven’t got time.”

“Time?” Hattie May cried. “Hamish Farragut Lewis what are you going to do now?”

“Oh, nuthin’,” he muttered. “Just thought it was getting pretty late and if I was goin’ to drive the girls home—on account of their aunt bein’ so particular and all——”

His sister eyed him suspiciously. Apparently this explanation of his haste did not altogether satisfy her. However, we began to pack up the things. Michael extinguished the last remnants of the fire and Hamish went to get his car.

We walked up to the Inn with Hattie May. Hamish was waiting to drive us home. Michael refused a lift, saying he had to see a fellow in the village.

“Now you come right straight back, Hamish,” Hattie May ordered. “If you don’t, I’m going to write to Mother first thing in the morning.”

Hamish’s mutterings were unintelligible as he bent over the starter.

XIV

Sunday

LITTLE did I think that night as I snuggled into my pillow, trying to find a comfortable spot for my sunburned shoulder, what momentous events the coming week held in store.

Sunday was quiet enough, however. Eve and I both overslept but this, Aunt Cal supposed, was no more than was to be expected after our “dissipation.” She had apparently forgotten that the dissipation had been her own suggestion. Indeed her Sunday morning severity seemed to have quite erased all traces of that softened mood I had imagined I detected yesterday.

Sunday at Aunt Cal’s had its own particular ritual. Breakfast was half an hour later, a concession to the day of rest. Or perhaps to keep us from getting too hungry for the cold dinner which followed church.

I enjoyed going to the service in the little white meeting house with its faintly musty smell, which reminded me somehow of things I had never known but which seemed curiously a part of me nevertheless. Eve said it was my New England ancestry coming out. Eve likes to dwell on the fact that her own ancestors were among the pioneers who made tracks into the western wilderness and it is to this fact that she attributes her own love of change and adventure. Though, as I pointed out to her, both our family trees probably had their roots in the same soil—so where was the difference really? It is a subject we never tire of discussing, that of ancestry and the chances of life which made us what we are!

We were talking about it that morning as we got ready for church, taking Aunt Cal as an example of what the past in the shape of tradition and custom could do for one. Aunt Cal had never spoken of her family or forbears but I felt practically certain that her direct ancestral line included a Scotch Covenanter, a Puritan preacher and one of the judges who sentenced the Salem witches to be burned!

Hattie May was at church in ruffled organdy and a floppy hat with Hamish, looking very much like a rebellious little boy in his stiff white collar. I guessed that his sister had him well in hand for the time at least.

As we walked home in the bright midday sun, one on either side of Aunt Cal, I felt as if I were taking part in a scene which had happened over and over again. Perhaps not so long ago, Aunt Cal had walked like this with her mother on Sunday morning.

As we approached Captain Trout’s cottage, the Captain himself, dressed immaculately as usual, rounded the corner of the house. “Good morning, ladies!” he swept off his blue visored cap, revealing the shining expanse of his bald head. “A beautiful day!”

We smiled at him but Aunt Cal’s only response was a stiff inclination of the head. As she was about to sweep on, however, a light-footed gray form darted from behind the hedge, made a wild spring into the air and landed clinging on the fringe of Aunt Cal’s sash.

“That miserable cat!” cried the Captain, darting spryly through the gate. But Eve had the kitten first and was gently detaching her sharp little claws. The Captain’s apologies were almost abject.

“Oh, no damage, I think.” Aunt Cal, unbending a little, was smiling in spite of herself. “She seems a very lively kitten.”

“Madam, I assure you my life is quite dizzy with keeping up with her. After—er—my other one——. But you know how it is—these young things!” He smiled expansively upon Eve and me. “For all their wild ways, they do help to keep us young!”

To this outburst Aunt Cal’s only response was a murmured word that she must be getting on. But Eve and I lingered to watch Daisy June who was now half way up a telegraph pole. “Captain Trout,” asked Eve unexpectedly, “did you ever happen to know a man by the name of Bangs? Harry Bangs, I think he is—a barber or something?”

The Captain shook his head. “Can’t say that I have. I’ve met some queer barbers in different quarters of the globe but I don’t recall any by that name. Is the gentleman a friend of yours?”

“Oh, no,” returned Eve hastily. “Not at all. We—just heard of him. And no doubt that isn’t his real name anyway!”

“Sandy,” said Eve that afternoon. We were in our room supposed to be writing letters. But I had finished mine and Eve said she didn’t believe in making the Sabbath a day of work. “Sandy, I wish we could take just one more look for that Circe. I’m not half satisfied yet that she isn’t somewhere about.”

“I know,” I agreed, “I feel that way too. And if you can think of any plausible excuse to give Aunt Cal for our going out there again—you see, now that she knows about things, she’s pretty sure to keep here eye on us from now on.”

Eve nodded. “Don’t I know it! But I’ve been wondering if we couldn’t go out and make a call on that friend of hers in Old Beecham. Mrs. Viner, you know, the one who was sick. Don’t you think we might take her out—oh, some soup or something? Or just drop in on her to cheer her up?”

“Maybe she don’t want to be cheered up,” I said. “Maybe she enjoys being gloomy like Aunt Cal!”

“Just the same I’m going to suggest it,” returned Eve. “’Twon’t do any harm to try.”

“Well you’d better wait till tomorrow anyway,” I said. “I don’t think she’s in a very auspicious mood today. I guess maybe her trip to Millport yesterday had a bad effect on her.”

I was making the bed next morning when Eve came racing up the stairs. “I’ve done it!” she said, her eyes dancing. “I asked her wouldn’t she like to have us go out and inquire about Mrs. Viner as it was such a lovely cool morning and we’d enjoy the trip.”

“Well?”

“Well, she was a little surprised. Guess she suspects some hidden motive but she did admit that she’d like to know how Mrs. V. is getting along. So she finally agreed and said she’d send her a bottle of dandelion wine. She lives in the big stone house next the feed store and we’re not to stay more than ten minutes and not to talk any nonsense.”

“The shorter, the better for me,” I said. “Invalids give me the jitters! Make me feel sorta creepy like.”

“Sandy, I’m ashamed of you! And you a missionary’s daughter!”

“What’s that got to do with it? Besides you can’t pretend that your own—er—motives are purely hu—what d’you call it?”

“Humanitarian, you mean. Well, what if they’re not! I guess,” she added sagely, “hardly anybody’s are when you come right down to it!”

“You don’t know my father,” I said.

“Well, I said hardly anybody. Anyway don’t let’s stand here arguing. I guess you can stand a ten minute call.”

“But what shall we talk about?” I persisted.