Part 4

Ben gave a whoop. “Look out there!” Lithe as an eel, and seemingly made of rubber, he sprang from the rock, turned a somersault, and shot smoothly into the water. He reappeared, looking like a porpoise, his black hair all shiny, and with a few lusty flaps reached the rock again just as Tuckerman, breathless, put out his hands to clutch at the slippery side.

“You’re a regular flying-fish,” Ben complimented Tuckerman, as the latter, careful not to scrape too close against the rough edge of rock, drew himself slowly up to the level top. “I don’t believe any of your friends out in the plain country of Illinois would know you if they happened to see you now.”

“I don’t believe they would,” agreed Tuckerman, sitting down gingerly and embracing his knees with his hands. “I know I look like a red Indian, and I feel as if I’d got a thousand more muscles than I ever had before.”

“If you don’t mind——” said Ben; and putting his hands on Tuckerman’s shoulders he made a leap-frog jump over the latter’s head and splashed loudly into the water.

“Well,” said David, changing his position from floating to treading water, “I think the coffee must be boiling now. It’s time I dropped those eggs.” And with leisurely strokes he made for the beach, where he had thoughtfully left a Turkish towel beside his pile of clothes.

The others followed suit, and had soon arrayed themselves in the few garments they thought needful to wear in their island home. David poured the coffee and attended to the toast and eggs, which had been procured the day before from a farmer on the mainland. And as they ate, Ben propounded the question:

“Fellows, what was it Christopher Cotterell said about a mahogany man?”

“He said,” Tuckerman answered, “‘Find the mahogany-hued man with the long, skinny legs and look in his breast pocket.’”

“Exactly,” said Ben slowly. “Well, I’ve got an idea I know where to find that man.”

The other three looked at him in utter amazement. “The dickens you have, Benjie!” retorted Tom. “Why, he couldn’t be alive now.”

“Perhaps Ben thinks he’s a mummy,” suggested David, “or a piece of wood that’s turned to stone.”

“Maybe I do,” Ben chuckled. “You’re getting warm, old horse. Long, skinny legs—doesn’t that remind you of something? Haven’t you seen any that answer that description in this neighborhood?”

“You’re not referring to mine?” asked Tuckerman.

The breakfast-party laughed, the Professor wore such a look of injured dignity.

“No, sir, not to yours,” Ben said. “Yours are fat as a drum compared to those I have in mind.”

“I remember Ben mumbled something about this last night,” mused Tom. “But I was too sleepy to listen. He said something about Sally Hooper, too; something about her giving him an idea.”

Ben nodded. “So she did.”

“Didn’t I always claim that our Benjie was a real detective?” said David. “Clean up first; and then for the yarn.”

Breakfast things were put away in their box, and then the three turned to Ben. “Where’s your mahogany man?” they demanded in one voice.

“There’s no hurry,” was the tantalizing answer. “Perhaps I’d better go fishing first.”

Tom laid his hand on the other boy’s shoulder and twisted him around. “Lead us to him,” he commanded.

Ben shrugged. “Oh, very well. You’re more interested than you were last night. Come along, but don’t make any noise.”

He led them to Cotterell Hall. Tuckerman had locked the front door after the girls had left on the night before, and now he opened it with the key he kept in his trouser pocket.

Ben led them into the hall, and then into the big front room, which was now flooded with sunlight.

“Look around,” he announced; “and tell me what you see.”

They looked about the room with puzzled faces. “Rats!” exclaimed David. “I don’t see any man here.”

Ben glanced at Tuckerman. “Long, skinny, mahogany-colored legs,” he murmured.

“Not Sir Peter’s portrait?” said Tuckerman.

Ben walked across the room in the direction of the secretary. “When Sally came in here last night,” he explained, “she said something about this desk. ‘Mahogany, I suppose—and what long, fluted, shiny legs.’ Well, it has, hasn’t it?” He laid his hand on the secretary. “Mightn’t this be the man?”

“You’re joking,” Tom protested; while David looked from the desk to his friend’s serious face as if he thought Ben must be plain crazy.

Tuckerman, however, laid his hand also on the piece of furniture. “They liked their little joke in the old days,” he observed. “It might be, Ben. If that’s so——” He turned the small brass key in the lock of the lid, and pulling out the two supports on either side of the lower drawers let the lid down on them. “If that’s so; and this is the mahogany man—where’s his breast pocket?”

There were small drawers inside, and a row of pigeonholes to either side of a central compartment that was also locked by a key.

“Somewhere up in his chest,” said Ben.

Tuckerman pulled out the drawers and emptied their contents, small objects, keys, pencils, bits of sealing-wax, a few sheets of blank paper. He put his hand in the pigeonholes and drew out several bundles of letters. “I’ve been through all these things before,” he said with a shake of his head.

“That place in the middle,” Tom suggested.

“Only an ink-stand,” said Tuckerman; and unlocking the little door he drew forth a big glass inkstand with a brass top. That was all there was in the little cupboard; all the contents of the upper part of the secretary were arrayed on the lid.

“No go,” said David. “The man hasn’t anything in his pocket to give us any clue.”

“I must say,” said Tom, “it does seem ridiculous to me that anyone could have meant that desk——”

“I’ve heard,” mumbled Ben, who was paying no attention to what the others were saying, “that old desks have secret compartments. My grandfather has an old one that looks something like this. Let me see——” He slipped his hand into the pigeonhole on the right of the little door Tuckerman had unlocked, and began to feel around. “I say! Here’s something. It feels like a wooden spring.”

Tuckerman put his hand into the central compartment. “Push on the spring,” he directed.

Ben pushed and Tuckerman at the same moment pulled out the cupboard that had harbored the inkstand. It was a box that fitted snugly into the centre of the secretary.

“Well, that’s a great stunt,” said Tom. “It comes to pieces like a nest of drawers.”

The four, their heads close together, looked into the space from which the cupboard had come.

All they saw was an unvarnished piece of pine board, apparently the back of the desk.

“Looks like my grandfather’s,” said Ben. “Yes, there’s a couple of holes.” And putting his forefinger and thumb into two indentations in the wood at the back, he wriggled his hand around and drew out a small drawer.

“Empty!” he muttered, disappointed, holding the drawer so that the others could see.

Again he put his hand into the opening and drew out a second drawer that had been under the first one. This also was empty.

“One more chance.” He pulled out the bottom drawer. In this there was something. Holding it upside down, a small roll of paper fell out on the lid of the desk.

“A piece of parchment,” said Tuckerman, picking up the roll. He opened it out, holding it taut in his two hands.

All eyes focussed on the sheet, on which were scrawled, in a faint purplish ink, these lines:

I took the box cliff where was meaning to es but they were and so I hid pocket in the are two big make a mark

Tuckerman read these words aloud, three times over. Then he gave a grunt. “Well, that’s that. And it’s not so very illuminating, is it?”

Ben took the parchment. “Somebody’s cut it across. See, the right hand words are close to the edge. How disgusting!”

David and Tom each handled the parchment, which was finally laid on the desk-lid, with the inkstand to keep it from curling up into its original tight roll.

David stroked his chin, pretending to be lost in thought. “Somebody took the box—to the cliff—but they were—and so somebody hid the box—in his pocket—there are two big—that make a mark. I gather from that line about the pocket that the box was pretty small.”

“It doesn’t say he hid it in his pocket,” Ben objected. “It might have been a pocket in the cliff just as well.”

“Who do you suppose he was?” asked Tom.

“Why, Peter Cotterell, of course,” David answered promptly.

“I don’t know about that,” said Tuckerman. “This handwriting doesn’t look like that of a man who was used to holding the pen. See how he’s gone over some of the letters several times, as if he wasn’t precisely sure how he ought to form them. Sir Peter was a well-educated gentleman. He must have known how to use a quill.”

“Perhaps he wanted to disguise his handwriting,” David suggested.

“Why would he want to do that?” Ben retorted. “Whoever wrote that meant to leave a record of what he’d done with the box. There wouldn’t be any sense in faking his handwriting—certainly not if he intended to hide the parchment away in a secret drawer of the desk.”

“What sense would there be in his cutting it in two then?” Tom inquired.

Tuckerman, who was sitting on the arm of a chair, threw back his head and laughed. “Here we are arguing about something that happened ever so long ago, and we haven’t the least idea why it happened this way.” He turned to the portrait on the wall and shook his finger at it. “You—or some of your household—knew how to make first-class puzzles, Sir Peter.” Then, as he swung around to the three boys, he added:

“My guess is that there’s a pocket in a cliff somewhere on this island, and that there is—or was—a box hidden in it.”

“Find the cliff,” said Tom.

Ben shook his head. “There are dozens of cliffs.”

“Well, you won’t find anything more in your mahogany man’s breast pocket,” Tom answered. “You can see for yourself it’s empty.”

“My idea is,” said David, “that we get the _Argo_ and sail round the island till we sight a likely-looking cliff.”

“That appeals to me,” agreed Tuckerman, “and Tom can give me another lesson in how to handle a boat.”

The parchment was put in its drawer, the three drawers replaced, the cupboard pushed back and caught by its spring, and the desk-lid lifted and locked.

“I’d a heap rather hunt for clues out of doors on a day like this,” said David.

But Ben sat down on a divan. “I want to do a little thinking, fellows. You go along without me. Maybe I’ll go fishing for dinners off the rocks after a while.”

They laughed at Ben; but he would not be dissuaded. He wanted to do some thinking, and he meant to. “Stubborn as a mule,” said Tom. “He gets his mind set on a thing, and dynamite won’t budge him.”

So the others went down to the sailboat; and presently Ben, getting up from the divan, went out and cut himself a stick of willow. He brought it back and began to whittle shavings all over the hardwood floor of Cotterell Hall. He had seen men down on the Barmouth docks whittle shavings for hours, and he had copied the habit. He found it a great help when he wanted to think things out.

VI—THE CLIPPER SHIP

Ben Sully was a boy who would rather work out a puzzle than do almost anything else. He had a tremendous amount of patience, which possibly explains why he was such a successful fisherman, since he could wait longer, dangling a piece of bait in the water, than nine out of ten fishes could resist the temptation to find out what the bait tasted like. Any kind of a _puzzle_, from cut out sections of cardboard that fitted together to make a picture all the way to ingenious contraptions of metal links that didn’t want to come apart, was a delight to Ben. He had boxes and boxes of them stored away in a closet at home. He had invented secret codes and cryptograms by the score, and when he was only ten years old had constructed a private language of twenty-five words that he had taught to Tom and David and which the three of them had used among themselves to the great admiration and envy of all the rest of their school.

Naturally then Ben felt that this _puzzle_ of Peter Cotterell’s treasure was right in his line, and the finding of the half-sheet of parchment whetted his appetite to discover more. He walked about the room, whittling shavings right and left, he sat down and kept on whittling, he stood up again, and since by now the willow-stick had been whittled down to almost nothing, he threw what was left in the fireplace.

That done, he went to a bookcase and took down from the shelf on top the old notebook that Tuckerman had found in his uncle’s bedroom. He thumbed the pages until he came to the place where Tuckerman had inserted a slip of paper. Ben read the words at the top of the page out loud. “Find the mahogany-hued man with the long, skinny legs and look in his breast pocket. That’s a saying my father handed down. What can it mean?” Ben looked at the desk. “Well, we’ve done that, anyhow.” He shook his head in deep thought. “I don’t understand why that piece of parchment wasn’t discovered before. They might not have taken the desk to be the mahogany man; but surely Crusty Christopher or his father would have known of those three little drawers. However, they might have found that writing and left it there. That’s possible, of course. Probably it didn’t tell them any more than it’s told us so far.”

Turning again to the notebook, he ran his eye down the page. Nothing but Christopher Cotterell’s comments on all sorts of subjects, nothing that interested Ben. He turned a page, two pages, another, and then his glance fell on this: “I’ve heard that the old clipper ship got some of the cargo that the mahogany man carried. But if she did, what use is that to us now? She sailed out of Barmouth Harbor during the Revolution.”

On and on down the page Ben’s eyes traveled, but lighted on nothing that caught his special attention. So he went back and reread that passage. Then he closed the book, replaced it on the shelf, stuck his hands in his pockets, and stared through the window.

“I wonder if there was a real mahogany man,” he mused, “and a real ship. There might have been. There were men from the West Indies in this part of the country in those days. One of them might have had valuables in his clothes, and part of the things he was guarding might have been carried off in the hold of a ship. Was there a real man, or was it that secretary? And how about the ship?”

Presently Ben walked around the drawing-room, as if he were searching for something. From there he went to the dining-room and the kitchen, and then upstairs to Christopher Cotterell’s bedroom. He looked into closets and behind curtains, he pulled open wardrobe doors and peered in at the shelves. But each time he shook his head, as much as to say: “There’s nothing there that I want.”

Under the slanting roof at the top of the house was an attic, already explored by Tuckerman and the boys. It was filled with every kind of thing, from an ancient lacquered Indian temple—the green and gold of the lacquer now sadly tarnished and chipped—to a collection of Red Men’s arrowheads, neatly fastened to a board by small straps of leather. Ben looked around at the strange medley of objects, thinking how many countries and how many different races of men had contributed to the furnishing of this attic; and then his roving eyes lighted on something that made them glisten—on a bracket against the wall sat the model of a ship.

Ben knew the model to be that of a Yankee clipper—three masts, loftily rigged, with three sky-sail yards, and a long mainyard. She was beautifully built, every detail complete, the deck and hull shining with varnish. “Hello,” sang out Ben, “clipper ship ahoy!” And pushing a box close against the wall he stepped up opposite the bracket.

In the deck of the model was a little lid. He pried this up with his knife-blade. There was just room for him to squeeze his fingers through, and when he drew them out again they held a small roll of paper.

“Yes,” said Ben, “it’s parchment,” and very much thrilled he took his find over to the window and smoothed it out.

The ink on this parchment was faint and purplish, like that on the sheet already found in the desk, and the left hand words were close to the edge. Ben read them aloud:

to the north the boat cape with it off the shore it in the rocks. There veins that like a cross. James Sampson.

“Good enough!” said Ben, and ran down the stairs to the first floor.

The little drawer in the secretary was again made to disgorge its half-sheet of parchment and Ben laid the two papers side by side on the desk-lid. They fitted perfectly; now their message was complete.

I took the box to the north cliff where was the boat meaning to escape with it but they were off the shore and so I hid it in the pocket in the rocks. There are two big veins that make a mark like a cross. James Sampson.

“Well, that’s clear enough,” said Ben, “though why anyone should cut James Sampson’s writing in two is more than I can understand.” He copied the words on a sheet of paper and put the two pieces of parchment in the secret drawer. “Now let’s see what we’ve got. Sampson meant to leave the island with his box at the northern end, but he saw some enemies waiting there, so he hid the box in a crevice where the rocks are marked like a cross. All right for Mr. Sampson. That’s easy sailing. But why didn’t some of the Cotterells find what was in the hold of that little ship’s model long before this? Funny—that is.” Again his brows bent in thought. “Was James Sampson the real mahogany man? Was there a real clipper ship?” At last he shook his head. “I don’t know. But at least I’ve found something.”

Ben left the house. It was noon, and warm. The others were sailing around the island; there was no knowing when they would be back. He debated whether to go fishing, and finally decided against it. Without any definite purpose in mind he took the path at the back of Cotterell Hall that led toward the little creek.

It was only a short distance across to the inlet where David and he had landed. He went through the bushes and trees until he saw the water before him. There was the creek and there was the marshy ground where they had found the footprints. He descended the bank to look at the marks again.

There were no footprints there now: they had utterly vanished!

Ben hunted along the edge of the creek, although he was positive where the marks had been. There was not a sign of them. There had been no rain to wash them out. The soggy ground was above the reach of the tide. There was only one explanation: someone had been there since David and he had landed and had carefully removed any sign of footsteps.

To discover footprints on a supposedly uninhabited shore is thrilling, but to discover that those footprints have disappeared is even more exciting. What did it mean? Well, to Ben it clearly indicated that the person who had made those marks in the first place had some very good reason for wanting no one to know that he had been there.

Cotterell’s treasure was an ancient mystery; but this was a new one, no older in fact than the day before yesterday. This was new matter over which to cudgel one’s brains, and Ben, sitting on the bank, gave deep consideration to it until he saw the sail of the _Argo_ creeping up from the south.

Should he tell the others of his discoveries or not? He decided to keep them a secret, including the vanished footprints, for a short time at least. But he jumped up, and ran down to the shore, and sent an ear-piercing yell across the water. The answer was a wave from Tom, and presently the _Argo_ drew closer inland and laid her course for a small, grass-topped headland on Ben’s side of the creek.

“Don’t jump; slide down, Benjie, slide,” directed Tom.

“And slide gently,” added David. “Not as if you were making for third base with the ball getting there before you. Remember the Professor’s at the helm and we don’t want to tilt the boat.”

“Don’t you worry,” sang out Ben. “I’ll drop in so you’ll think I’m as light as a feather.” And as the _Argo_ slipped along under the headland he let himself down, lightly and easily, but, as it happened, right on the shoulders of David.

The big fellow gave a growl. Ben’s legs had somehow contrived to twine themselves around David’s neck, and Ben was sitting there on the broad shoulders, his hands on the other boy’s head.

“Hi there! Look out!” cried Tuckerman. “You’ll upset the whole shebang!”

But Tom came to the skipper’s rescue. A steadying hand on the tiller and the _Argo_ moved out from the shore.

Slowly Ben pushed David forward until they both came down in a heap in the little cockpit. “Behave yourselves,” ordered Tom. “I’ve got a dipper here and I’ll souse you both with cold water!”

The threat was enough. The two sat up. David grinned. “The little feller’s all right; he’s got some muscle. I shouldn’t wonder if I could make a real man out of him some day.”

Under Tom’s teaching John Tuckerman was learning something about handling a sailing dory, just as Ben had given him lessons in flounder fishing, David in making flapjacks, and the three in various swimming strokes. It was true that he still regarded the _Argo’s_ sail, when a sudden puff of wind filled it, as an inexperienced driver regards his horse when the animal shows signs of shying—his muscles grew tense, and he frowned, and stopped talking—but he didn’t ask Tom what to do and he managed to keep the dory fairly close to the course he intended. And he was a good sport! He didn’t try to crawl out of his mistakes by arguing about them; he admitted them with a grin, and that grin was always so whole-souled and hearty that it made one want to slap him on the back and tell him that he hadn’t really made a mistake after all.

When Tuckerman had the _Argo_ well in hand again and could think of other matters, he said to Ben, “We’ve seen plenty of rocks and ledges, but nary a thing that could properly be called a cliff. A cliff, I take it, is something fairly high and mighty, not so steep as Gibraltar perhaps, but as large as a good-sized barn-door.”

“While we’ve been hunting for cliffs,” said David, “I suppose Ben has worked this all out. What are your conclusions, oh wise one?”

“Never you mind, my boy. The clever magician waits till he has everything in order before he performs his trick.”

“Ben’s got something up his sleeve,” put in Tom. “I can always tell when he talks in that grand way. But there’s no use trying to make him tell us, Dave. The way to make an oyster talk is to pay no attention to it.”

Ben said nothing, though the temptation was great as the _Argo_ reached the northern end of the island, where high rocks came down to the water.

Tuckerman admitted these were cliffs, but there were a number of them, and how was he to tell which was the one they wanted? They sailed slowly along, watching the shore and speculating as to what the message in the desk referred. And while the other three talked Ben sat silent, trying to picture what had happened to James Sampson there more than a century before.