Part 8

With the rug they returned to the car. As they drove on again Fitzhugh said, “They used to tell me, when I was a small boy, that you could take one egg from a nest, and if there were several others left the mother bird wouldn’t know the difference. I don’t know whether that’s so. But I’m certain this good woman won’t miss that rug very much. So my conscience is easy, though I got that prize at a bargain. Now, Mr. Benjamin Sully, what do you say? Isn’t hunting for hooked-rugs exciting?”

It was fun to hunt them with this amusing companion. Fitzhugh collected three more at three other houses, paying five dollars for each. At the third house the farmer and his wife and children were just sitting down to dinner and the strangers were invited to join them. They had an excellent meal, during which the man in green did almost all the talking, and when they returned to the car and started on again he rubbed his hands gleefully and said, “Mr. Benjamin Sully, it isn’t so hard to find adventures if you look for them, is it?”

“Well,” Ben answered, “this is all very well; but I set out this morning to see Mr. Hastings and learn if he’d lost a snuff-box.”

“That’s so, you did. Joseph Hastings—a silver snuff-box—found on Cotterell’s Island. What makes you think that the snuff-box you found there belonged to Joseph Hastings?”

Ben considered how much to tell this Roderick Fitzhugh, and finally decided to supply him with more facts. “The snuff-box was bought by Mr. Hastings at a shop in Barmouth, and I found it yesterday in a chest hidden in a crevice in the rocks on the island. Why did he put it there?”

The man in green beamed with delight. “In a treasure chest? Why, that’s splendid!” He looked at Ben with new approval in his eyes. “So you’re mixed up in a real adventure, are you? Treasure hidden in the rocks—on an island! Why, that’s magnificent! No wonder you didn’t get excited over my tame hooked-rugs. Turn the car about, and drive back to the Gables. We must investigate this.”

Half-an-hour later the little car turned in between the gate-posts at the Gables. It clattered up the drive to the front of the house. On the wide porch were at least a dozen people, men and women; and when they saw the occupants of the car they gave a shout of welcome.

“Hello, here’s the lad in green!”

“We thought you’d been kidnapped!”

“Where’d you find the jitney?”

“Hope you’ve had some lunch!”

“We thought you’d been arrested as a suspicious character in those clothes!”

These were some of the exclamations.

The man got out of the car and threw his bundle of rugs on the steps of the porch. “My good friends,” he said, “Roderick Fitzhugh has been adventuring, and there’s his booty. Four beautiful hooked-rugs to add to the collection. And this is Mr. Benjamin Sully. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Sully has found a silver snuff-box belonging to Joseph Hastings in a treasure chest on Cotterel’s Island. What do you think of that?”

There was another chorus of exclamations, expressive of great surprise.

“Mr. Sully,” the man in green continued, “if you’ll get down from your steed we will partake of a long glass of lemonade—two glasses to be exact.”

Ben climbed down and went up the steps. And then he noticed that all the people on the porch were dressed in quaint costumes, as milkmaids or archers or foresters. He looked at Fitzhugh, and the latter nodded. “Queer crowd, aren’t they?” said Fitzhugh. “However, they won’t bite.”

XII—THE ADVENTURE AT THE COVE

That same morning, while Ben had been hunting for the owner of the red automobile with the silver eagle on the radiator cap, Tom and David and John Tuckerman had sailed down to Camp Amoussock in the _Argo_. They found the boys at the camp in their bathing-suits, practicing for some water-sports that were to be held that week. A raft, with a spring-board, was moored off shore, and from this boys were diving and turning somersaults, backward and forward, like acrobats in a circus.

Other boys were swimming, practising for races, and still others were paddling round in tubs, trying to steer with their feet while they propelled the tubs forward by splashing the water with their hands.

“There,” said John Tuckerman, as he saw a fat youngster revolving round and round in a tub, “that’s the game for me. I believe, with my long arms and legs, that I’d make a hit at it.”

The fat boy splashed too hard, and the tub went over neatly. There was a shout of laughter as the boy bobbed up in the water and tried to turn the slippery tub rightside up again. This was hard work; the tub went round and round, continually evading his fingers; and finally he swam to shore, pushing the tub before him.

“No,” said Tuckerman, “that isn’t the game for me. I used to be pretty good at picking up a pea in a tablespoon, but that was on dry land. When it comes to wrestling with a tub in the water—” He gave an expressive shrug—“I’d rather let the fishes do it.”

The _Argo_ landed, and the three guests were provided with bathing-suits from the camp’s supply. For half-an-hour they swam and dived and perched on the raft, watching the boys in tubs. Then a bugle sounded on shore, telling them it was time to get ready for dinner.

The guests did full justice to dinner, sitting between Mr. Perkins, the Chief Counsellor, and Lanky Larry. Afterwards Mr. Perkins and John Tuckerman had a chat, while Lanky invited Tom and David to take a walk along the shore.

“There’s a queer sort of place a couple of miles to the south,” said Lanky. “It’s a cove with a lot of shanties. Fishermen used to go there; there are boats and nets lying around; but I think it must be deserted. I saw some men there one day last week, but they didn’t look like fishermen.”

“Lead us to it,” said David. “Deserted villages are right in our line.”

The path along the shore brought them to the cove. A little tidal river ran inland, wandering up into marshes. On each side of the river was a stony beach, and a rickety bridge, with a single handrail, connected the banks of the stream. Small weatherbeaten shacks, doors and shutters sagging outward, fishing-dories, rusty anchors, lobster-pots, a few nets with round black buoys, these cluttered up either shore.

“Nice place, if it wasn’t for the shanties,” said David, regarding the cove.

“I found a chap painting here one day,” said Lanky. “He told me it made a great picture; he liked the shanties first-rate.”

“Funny what things painters like,” chuckled David. “The more ramshackle a house is, the more they want to paint it.”

They went down a rocky path to the nearer beach, and sat on the bottom of an upturned scow. As they were chatting they heard the creak of a door, opening on rusty hinges. A man came out from one of the nearer shacks. His clothes were fairly new, he wore a brown slouch hat and tan shoes—evidently he was not a fisherman; neither was he a farmer nor a common loafer; he looked as if he came from a town. He was smoking a small briar pipe.

“What are you doing here?” The man’s tone was a little peremptory, though not exactly surly.

David enjoyed such a question. With a pleasant, friendly smile he answered, “Just sitting here and thinking.”

“That’s all you’re doing, eh?”

“It is at present,” David answered. “What are you doing yourself?”

The man frowned; looked up the creek, looked across at the opposite shore. “Nobody lives here now,” he stated after a minute. “Sometimes I come and fish from that bridge.”

“What’s happened to the place?” asked Lanky.

“I don’t know. Only nobody comes here now.”

“Well, we came this afternoon,” said David. “You see, we’re explorers.”

“You won’t find anything to explore.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.”

The man shot a glance at David, not a very amiable glance. And with that he walked to the bridge, crossed it, and went into the huddle of shacks on the other bank.

“Pleasant sort of customer,” said Lanky.

“He’d make a cow laugh,” said Tom.

“He didn’t like our being here,” observed David, “Now I wonder why.”

“He wants it all to himself,” said Lanky. “He must be some sort of hermit.”

“And just for that,” said David, “I feel like sitting right here on this scow till he gets more hospitable.”

As a matter of fact, however, sitting on the upturned boat and watching the waves surge gently up over the stony beach and then withdraw in a network of little rivulets that made the stones and pebbles glisten was not entertaining enough to keep the three boys there more than five minutes. Tom got up. “I’m going over the bridge,” he said. “If our friend the hermit doesn’t like it—well, he’ll just have to lump it.”

The bridge shook as the three of them stepped upon it. “For goodness sake, don’t lean against that railing,” Lanky warned. “Stop bouncing up and down as you walk, Dave, or you’ll have us all in the water.”

David went on bouncing; but in spite of that they reached the other shore safely. No one was to be seen here; somewhere in the clutter of shanties the man had disappeared.

“I’d like to know what that precious hermit is up to,” said David, and he walked toward the shacks that were furthest from the bridge.

Lanky and Tom investigated in the other direction, where a clump of oaks came close down to the stream. At the edge of the trees was a shack a little larger and better built than the others. The door was open, and the two boys looked in. “Hello!” exclaimed Tom. “What’s that on the bench? It looks like jewelry.”

A brown cloak, a brown hat with a red feather stuck at one side, and a chain of gold links with a large green stone as a pendant, were piled on the bench.

Tom picked up the ornament. “It’s imitation,” he said. He looked around the room. “Why, there’s a whole wardrobe of queer hats and cloaks and things here!”

“So there is,” said Lanky. “What do you suppose they are? Actors’ things?”

“Actors’ things?” Tom glanced at the outfit of costumes that hung on pegs on one wall. “They’re certainly not fishermen’s things. But what would actors be doing in this cove?”

“I don’t know,” Lanky admitted. “It is funny, isn’t it?”

They looked at the costumes more closely, and then went out of the shack. “I wonder if that man knows something about them,” Lanky suggested. “He might have been keeping guard.”

“Let’s see what Dave’s doing,” said Tom, and started along the bank.

He had only taken a few steps, however, when he stopped. “Here comes a boat around the point. Let’s beat it, and see what they do.”

The two slipped back of a cabin, then to a shelter of bushes. Crouching there, they watched the boat nose its bow into the cove.

The boat was a dory. One man was rowing, two others sat in the stern. They looked no more like the usual type of fishermen than had the man whom the boys had first encountered.

With considerable splashing the boat was rowed up to the bridge. The tide was low, and there was hardly enough water at that point to float the dory. The rower shipped his oars and tied the boat to the railing of the bridge. Meantime the other two men stepped over the side and came up on to the beach.

All three headed toward the shack that the boys had just left and went in at the door.

“They seem to know their way about,” whispered Lanky. “I wonder why Dave’s friend didn’t come down to meet them.”

In a few minutes the three men came out again, and now they had some of the cloaks and hats in their hands. Each put on a cloak and a hat and strutted about; they laughed and joked at each other.

“What in the world——” muttered Lanky. “Actors. I told you,” Tom whispered. “They look like highwaymen.”

The men now seemed satisfied with their costumes. Hats pulled well down on their heads and cloaks thrown over their shoulders, they took the path toward the clump of oaks.

“I say,” muttered Lanky, “what do you suppose they’re going to do? Hold up some farmer’s wagon? Come on, I want to find out what’s their game.”

“I’d better get Dave,” said Tom. “You follow them. I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”

“All right.”

Lanky went one way, and Tom the other.

Tom ran over the stones between the shanties, and looked in at the open doors; but he did not see David nor the man they had met first. He gave the whistle he used to call David in Barmouth. There was no answer. The shacks on this side of the stream all appeared deserted.

David was not to be found, and Tom supposed he must have gone further along the shore. Meantime he would be losing the chance of finding Lanky, so after whistling several times more Tom turned and ran toward the oaks.

The path along the cove was well marked, it traversed the high ground at the edge of the marshes and turned into fairly thick woods. At a dog-trot Tom soon came up with Lanky. “I couldn’t find Dave,” he grunted. “I guess he found the hermit so fascinating he went for a stroll with him.”

“I’ve kept my eye on the three highwaymen,” said Lanky. “This seems to be the only path around here, marshes on one side and the forest primeval on the other.” He glanced at his wrist-watch. “I ought to be getting back to camp; but I can’t leave an adventure like this. It wouldn’t be decent, would it?”

“It would not,” Tom assented. “If they try to blame you, you refer them to me. I’ll say that we thought those fellows were up to some kind of mischief, and that it seemed to be our duty to investigate them. And that’s telling the truth; they’re what Benjie would call ‘suspicious characters.’”

Every once in a while the boys would catch a glimpse of one or other of the cloaked men through the vista of the trees. Then the boys would stop and let the others get well ahead of them. And presently they reached a dusty road and saw the men tramping along to the south.

Tom and Lanky had to come out in the open then, but, as Lanky pointed out, there was no reason why the men, if they saw them, should think the two boys were at all interested in what they were doing. They walked a half-mile without encountering anyone, and then the boys saw an automobile coming toward the three in front.

“Now,” said Tom, “we’ll see if they’re highwaymen. This is a nice quiet place to hold up a car.”

But the men disappeared by jumping over a fence that ran along the woods on the left. The automobile, a man and a woman in it, dashed by the boys, leaving a cloud of dust.

“So ho!” exclaimed Lanky, “our friends don’t want to be seen! Suppose we make ourselves scarce till they come back to the road.”

The boys hid in the woods, and presently the three men reappeared on the road. Tom and Lanky followed suit, and the march was resumed.

A mile more, and the men came to a crossroad. They turned toward the west. When the boys reached the crossroad Lanky stopped. “This is a private lane,” he said. “See, it leads up to that barn and stable. And there’s a big house. Our friends are going in the back way.”

There was a screen of trees at the corner. The boys went along the lane until the screen gave way to a close-cropped hedge. Here they had a view of a wide, velvety lawn and the large house, red-striped awnings at the windows, on a gently-rising slope.

“Hello!” exclaimed Tom. “Look there!”

There was no heed of his telling Lanky to look. Lanky was staring at that part of the lawn that was shielded by the trees at the corner. There was a small, one-story house that looked as if it were made of cardboard, a very picturesque building, brightly painted to resemble cross-timbers, with two little lattice windows. And grouped about the grass in front of the house were a dozen or so men and women, all of them dressed in fancy costumes, looking as if they had just stepped out of a picture book or down from the stage of a theatre.

“My eye!” said Tom. “What is it? A fancy dress party?”

“Looks like a Robin Hood scene,” said Lanky. “Some of them have bows and arrows. See that girl in pink working that churn.” He watched for a moment; then added, “So that’s why our friends the highwaymen came along this way.”

“They don’t seem to have joined the crowd,” said Tom. “Why didn’t they jump over the hedge?”

The people on the lawn were too busy to notice the boys in the lane. Lanky nodded. “That’s so. And it seems to me, Tom, that that crowd are a different type from our three friends. These people belong here; but I don’t think the others do.”

The boys looked up the lane. The three men had entered at a gate that led to the rear of the big house.

“Let’s see what they’re doing,” said Tom.

Along the lane went the two boys, and turned in at the gate.

The men had disappeared. Lanky shook his head. “It’s queer, mighty queer. Of course those fellows may belong here. But why should they come all the way from that cove? And bring those hats and cloaks with them?” He scratched his ear, as he did when he was puzzled.

“Come along,” said Tom. “Nobody’ll throw us out.”

They crossed the lawn to the steps of the porch. A man came out from the front door, a man in livery, apparently the butler. He held himself very straight, he was an angular person, with a fishy eye.

“Yes?” he said; and though the word was a short one he managed to express in it a cold sense of disapproval.

“Er—” began Tom, “we would like to know if three men, wearing brown cloaks and big slouch hats, just came into this house.”

The butler shrugged his shoulders. “There are gentlemen and ladies wearing every kind of costume coming in and going out all the time,” he answered stiffly.

That seemed to put an end to further questions; but Lanky, after considering the matter for a moment, inquired, “Whose place is this?”

“It belongs to Mr. Hastings,” said the butler, eyeing the boys most disapprovingly. “He is not at home at present. But I can answer any questions for him.”

Neither Lanky nor Tom, however, could think of any questions to ask. It seemed absurd to tell this fishy-eyed servant that they had followed the three men from the cove. And after all the men might have a perfect right to have entered the house.

“Very well,” said Tom, and turned on his heel, followed by Lanky.

But when they were out in the lane again, Lanky said, “I’m going to wait around here a little longer. That servant’s a fool. Anybody could put anything over on him.”

So they climbed up on the stone wall on the other side of the lane and sat there like two sentries.

XIII—ON THE FISHING-SMACK

When Tom and Lanky had turned to the right and investigated the fishermen’s shanties that were nearest to the marshes, David had turned to the left, in the direction of the ocean. He had no particular object in view, except to see what the man they had met on the other bank of the cove was doing and exchange a few more words with him, if the opportunity offered.

He looked through the clutter of small, weatherbeaten sheds without seeing the man, and came to the beach on the ocean side. A short distance to the south was a spit of sand, and there, seated on a log, was the fellow with the straw hat.

David enjoyed an argument. He was not by nature so curious about other people as Ben was, but he liked to tease. So, with his hands stuck in his pockets and a little swagger in his walk, he went toward the man.

“Looking for a boat to come along and take you for a sail?” he said. “It’s a long walk to town.”

“You’d better be on your way then,” the man retorted. His tone was not very civil, and it made David flush.

“I can look out for myself.”

“Oh, you can, can you?” The man turned round and glared at the young fellow. “Well, my advice to you is to make yourself scarce pretty quick.”

David squared his shoulders. “You don’t want me and my friends round here, do you? A person might think you owned the beach.”

“No,” said the man, “I don’t want you round here.” He looked at the boy fixedly for a minute. “That’s plain enough, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s plain enough,” David admitted. “But I don’t see that it’s any reason why we should go.”

“I’ve business here, and you haven’t.”

“Business? You don’t seem very busy.”

The man got up from the log and walked away, down the beach toward a ledge of rock that shut off the southern end.

What was the man’s business? David, rather amused at the other’s surliness, followed after, walking jauntily.

He climbed the ledge of rock. There was another scallop of beach, with bushes close down to the sand. The man was not in sight. But there was a small fishing-smack at anchor not far from the shore, and a dory was just pulling away from her.

David stepped down on the beach, and the first thing he knew something had knocked him flat. He lay sprawling on the sand, a heavy weight on his back. Someone had caught his two hands and held them like a vise.

“Holler if you want to,” said the man with the straw hat.

David had no wish to shout. The breath was knocked out of him.

The man pinned him down, and after kicking a little, David decided the wisest course was to lie still.

After a few minutes there was a grating sound on the sand. David twisted his head enough to see that the dory had landed and that two men were coming ashore.

“Hello, Sam, what you got there?” exclaimed one of the strangers.

“A fresh guy, who wouldn’t mind his own business,” was the answer. “Now I’m going to teach him not to meddle:”

“Good for you, old sport! Give him a good licking.”

“Pity we left the cat-o’-nine-tails out on the boat,” said the second man.

“Three of them came to the cove,” said the man on David’s back. “The other two went away; but this fellow had to go nosing around into other people’s business. I told him to make himself scarce. But not he! Oh no, he had to find out what I was doing. And now I’m going to take him out on the boat and watch me do some fishing.”

There was a laugh at this. “You’ll let him bait your hook, won’t you, Sam?” asked one.

“I’ll let him take the fish off,” Sam retorted. “You fellows row us out, will you?”

The others agreed. The man on David’s back eased his position. “Now,” said he, “you can come along without any fuss or trouble, or you can come with a black eye. Suit yourself; it doesn’t make any difference to me.”

Three to one was greater odds than David cared to tackle. “I’ll go along,” he grunted.

The man got up. David followed. Assuming a care-free manner he walked to the boat and climbed over the high side. A man sat at the oars, and Sam and the two others took seats on the thwarts. The oars dipped in the water, and the dory was rowed out to the smack.

David and Sam went aboard, and the dory with her crew of three rowed away again in the direction of the cove.

“Now,” said Sam, “make yourself comfortable. You’ve found out my business. I’m going to fish for flounders.” And he walked aft and down into the cabin.

David was puzzled. He could understand that this man might have had a grudge against him, even that he might have lost his temper and attacked him as he had; but why should he carry a grudge so far as to make him a prisoner on his fishing-boat?

He stared at the shore some time, then walked up toward the bow. Sam had reappeared from the cabin with fishing-tackle and was angling over the side. There was a line for David, and so, there being nothing better to do, David also set to fishing.

Fish were not biting on that particular afternoon, however. Presently Sam hauled in his line. “The pesky things never come when you want them,” he said morosely. “I suppose there are lots of them swimming around everywhere except where _I_ cast my hook.”

“You’re not a real fisherman,” said David. “There’s a knack to catching fish.”

“No, I’m not; and I don’t want to be,” was the man’s answer. “Of all the stupid jobs, I think fishing takes the cake.”

David was about to argue this point when another man came out from the cabin and joined them. At once David, wise in the look of sailormen from his acquaintance with them on the docks of Barmouth, decided that this was the skipper. The new arrival stretched his arms and yawned prodigiously. “Golly, I’m only half-awake yet,” he declared. “Sam, where’d you pick up this fellow?”