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 whereIcast 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?”
“He wanted to have a look at the boat,” said Sam. “In fact he was so set on having a look at her that I just had to invite him aboard.”
He said this with a sly glance at David, but if he had expected to get an angry denial he was disappointed, for David, leaning his arms on the rail, appeared to be in such a deep study of the shore as to allow for no interruption.
“The others gone ashore?” asked the skipper, evidently regarding the reason for David’s presence on the boat as a matter of small importance.
“Yes,” said Sam. He pulled a large watch from the upper pocket of his coat and looked at it. “And it’s about time they were coming back.”
There was no sign of them, however; and the sun began to slant toward the west, and then to dip behind the trees, and still there was no boat to be seen coming out from the cove. David, strolling up and down the deck, noticed that Sam was becoming impatient. After a while there was a fragrant odor of cooking, and David, putting his head in at the cabin door, saw that the skipper was getting supper in the galley.
The sun had set when the skipper’s voice announced that food was ready. “Come along,” Sam said to David, and though the invitation was not very cordial David went down to the cabin and ate his fair share of the meal.
Afterwards the three, on deck, watched the shore for a boat. And when the beach was quite dark and Sam had looked at his watch a dozen times, he said, almost angrily, “Well, Captain, I think it’s about time to beat it. They must have changed their plans. We don’t want to stay here all night.”
The skipper glanced at David. “How about him?” he asked, with a jerk of the head.
“He can help you sail the boat down to Gosport. That’ll pay for his supper.”
David was tired of inaction. To sail to Gosport attracted him much more than staying here at anchor any longer. He spoke up quickly:
“Yes, Captain. I know something about handling sails.”
“Good enough. That’s more than Sam does,” remarked the skipper. “He’s about as useful in handling this boat as a belaying-pin.”
Shortly the anchor was up and the fishing-smack under way. David carried out the skipper’s orders with proper efficiency. With a gentle breeze the boat stole southward along the shore, and in half-an-hour the lights of the little settlement of Gosport were glimmering over the water.
The smack came up to a wharf. “Now,” said Sam to David, “you can go ashore if you like. The captain and I may do a little cruising, but we don’t need you any longer.”
“Thanks,” said David. He had a retort on the tip of his tongue, but wisely forbore to utter it. He jumped ashore. “If you come to Barmouth, look me up,” he called back. “I’ll be glad to show you the town.”
There was a laugh from the skipper, but none from Sam. Immediately the fishing-smack pushed out again.
Gosport was a small place, and David knew no one there. He felt in his pocket, and found he had no money to pay his fare to Barmouth. He walked along the waterfront, considering what he should do, and presently came upon a young man, who was starting the engine of a small motor-boat.
“You’re not going anywhere in the neighborhood of Camp Amoussock, are you?” David asked the man in the boat.
The other looked around and surveyed the fellow who had asked the question. “Are you one of the boys from the camp?”
“I was there at dinner.” And in a few words David told the story of what had happened to him during the afternoon.
“Well,” said the man, “that’s a queer yarn. I was just going out for a moonlight spin, and I might as well go up to the camp as anywhere. Jump aboard.”
David accepted with alacrity. The motor-boat chugged out from the landing-stage, and leaving a smooth silver ripple, darted north.
The owner of the motor-boat—he had told David that his name was Henry Payson—said that, although he had only been a month at Gosport, he knew that part of the coast quite well, and had never happened to see any fishermen in the cove that David described. “That fellow Sam was a vindictive chap,” he added musingly. “But you know, it almost seems as if he had some other object than merely showing his spitefulness when he took you off in his boat.”
“That’s what I thought,” agreed David. “But Tom and Lanky were still at the cove. He didn’t lay hands on them.”
“Well,” said Payson, “the cove’s around that next point of land. No use stopping there now, I suppose. Your friends will surely have gone back to camp.”
When the motor-boat rounded the point, however, Payson changed his mind. On shore there were a score of lanterns; both banks of the cove fairly bristled with them. “Hello,” exclaimed Payson, “there’s something doing there all right!” And he altered his course so as to bring his craft into the mouth of the river.
As the boat ran up to the bridge boys came down from both sides, apparently all the boys of Camp Amoussock.
“Why, it’s Dave!” cried John Tuckerman. And immediately the two in the boat were the target of a volley of questions.
“Hold on!” cried David. “Wait a minute.” He swung himself out of the boat and up to the bridge.
“Where are Lanky and Tom?” someone asked.
“Aren’t they here?” said David. And as Tuckerman and Mr. Perkins and the boys from the camp crowded around he told them briefly his adventures since dinner.
“We’ve been hunting for you ever since supper,” said Mr. Perkins. “I can’t imagine where Larry and Tom can have gone.”
“Those three men rowed in here in the dory,” said David. “Perhaps they carried Larry and Tom off somewhere.”
“We’ve hunted through every shack,” said Bill Crawford. “And we’ve been down the coast a couple of miles.”
The chorus of voices explaining where they had hunted started in again, interrupted by Mr. Perkins giving the order to his troop to take the road back to camp.
David thanked Henry Payson, and the motor-boat chugged away. By the path along the shore the searchers regained Camp Amoussock. And there Mr. Perkins and John Tuckerman and David held a council as to what to do next.
The upshot was that Mr. Perkins got out a small car, and with Tuckerman and David set out to see if they could learn any news of the missing boys.
Ben that afternoon had a long, cool glass of lemonade on the porch of the Gables while his friend Roderick Fitzhugh introduced him to the men and women who were sitting in wicker easy chairs. It seemed to Ben that their names were somewhat fantastic, but then so were their clothes, and the names did appear to suit the costumes.
“This lady,” said Fitzhugh, nodding to a rosy-cheeked girl, who wore her brown hair in two long plaits down her back and whose dress was of primrose yellow, “is the fair Maid Rosalind. She can sing like a nightingale and dance like a wave of the sea, and when she churns butter it comes out pure gold.”
The girl stood up and made a curtsy. “Thanks, kind Master Roderick,” she said. “But perhaps your friend Master Ben doesn’t care for gold on his bread.”
“The more fool he,” answered Fitzhugh.
“However, he can eat plumcake.” And Ben’s host pushed a plate of delicious-looking cake toward his guest.
“Yonder man in the high boots, with the fierce mustaches,” Fitzhugh continued, “bears the high-sounding name of Sir Marmaduke Midchester. He looks like a sword swallower, but he is really as gentle as a lamb. He has been known to eat crumbs out of Maid Rosalind’s hand.”
“Glad to meet Master Sully,” said Sir Marmaduke. “I wrote a song this morning—words and music both—perhaps he would like to hear me sing it.”
Fitzhugh held up his hand. “Not just now, Marmaduke, please. Let my guest digest his plumcake in quiet.”
So the introductions went on, with all sorts of jokes and banter. It was a jolly crowd, and Ben was enjoying it hugely. He began to find his tongue and make retorts of his own. But when he had finished the lemonade and the cake he turned to his host. “I’d like to stay, but I think I had better be getting back,” he said. “I’ve got to go out to Cotterell’s Island.”
“No, no, Master Ben. If you’d like to stay, you shall stay. Cotterell’s Island can wait. We need you here at present.”
“Well, but——” began Ben.
“There are no ‘buts’ about it,” answered Fitzhugh. “List to me, my lad. This place is a green oasis in a desert of modern things. Here we do as we please. And it pleases us now to be ladies and gentlemen of good Sherwood Forest and Nottingham.” Fitzhugh stood up. “Come with me. I’ll find you more fitting clothes than those simple togs you have on.”
Ben grinned. He was fond of dressing up and had often acted in school theatricals in Barmouth. He didn’t know what Fitzhugh and his friends were planning, but he thought he would like to take part in the game. After all, his car would take him quickly back to town and he could paddle out to the island by moonlight, if necessary. So he followed Fitzhugh indoors and up a wide staircase to the second floor.
When he came down again he wore brown doublet and hose, with a brown cloak slung from his shoulders and a broad-brimmed brown hat on his head. There was a chorus of approval from the group on the porch.
“Master Ben, apprentice to an armorer,” Fitzhugh introduced him. “And now, my lads and lasses, let us hie us out to the greenwood tree.”
There was nothing formal about Roderick Fitzhugh’s friends. The crowd had hardly more than descended the steps of the porch when the girl called Maid Rosalind and the man called Sir Marmaduke Midchester each took one of Ben’s hands and raced across the lawn. Luckily Ben had pulled his broad-brimmed hat on tight. His cloak flew back from his shoulders. And he heard shouts and laughs from the rest of the party as they followed pell mell.
The lawn of the Gables was wide and gently sloping. When Rosalind and Sir Marmaduke finally slackened speed Ben found they had come to a corner where poplars and spruces made a background against a road. One oak tree stood out by itself, and there was a small house with picturesque criss-crossed windows and a door with big curved hinges.
“There,” said Sir Marmaduke, “behold the Forest of Sherwood! There aren’t so many trees, but each of them is a giant.”
Rosalind flung herself down near the oak. “Oh, Master Ben,” she panted, “fan me with your hat.”
And while Ben gallantly flapped his hat close to the red-cheeked lady, the others came bounding into the glade, like so many children just let out from school.
In a few minutes Fitzhugh, a paper in his hand, was calling out directions. Ben, observing everything, saw a couple of men crossing the lawn with what looked like a big camera. He turned to Rosalind. “I know what it is,” he whispered. “You’re moving-picture people doing a play.”
“Good for you,” she answered. She nodded toward Fitzhugh. “He wrote the plot, and we’ve been dressing up and doing it every day this week.”
The play began, and went on for an hour or so, with frequent interruptions. Some scenes were done over and over again before Fitzhugh was satisfied with them. He found a part for Ben, and instructed him carefully how to act before the camera. And whenever the company got tired the cameramen turned off their machine, and the actors lounged on the greensward while somebody sang or did a fancy dance.
It was great sport, and Ben was surprised when, glancing toward the west, he saw that the sun had set behind the trees.
“I must be going,” he said to Fitzhugh. “I’ve had a splendid time.”
Fitzhugh waved his hand at the cameramen. “That’s enough for to-day. We always end with a woodland dance, Ben, and then, back to the house for dinner.”
“I can’t stay to dinner,” began Ben; but before he could say more Rosalind and another girl had each caught a hand of his and the whole company had spread out in a ring. Rosalind started to sing, and all the others took up the song. There followed a dance, in which Ben did his share, and then the crowd formed into a line, each with his hands on the shoulders of the one in front, and led by Fitzhugh they wound across the wide lawn and back to the Gables.
“Now,” said Ben to his host, when they arrived on the porch, “I’ll get into my own clothes and dash back to Barmouth.”
“What? Without dinner? I can’t let you go hungry.” Fitzhugh turned to a servant. “Show this gentleman up to the yellow guestroom and get him whatever he wants.”
It was difficult to argue with such a positive man as that; and moreover Ben was thoroughly enjoying his adventure. To be shown up to the yellow guestroom, and later to dine with such a company of moving-picture people would be a new and delightful experience. He would have a story to tell Tom and David and John Tuckerman when he got back to the island that would make them open their eyes. So Ben followed the servant into the house, where the lamps were already lighted.
There was a gallery on the second floor, with ever so many rooms opening from it. The servant went to a door and turned the knob. “This is the yellow room, sir. You’ll find clean towels in the bathroom. If you want anything, there’s an electric push button.”
Ben went in and shut the door. He had never seen a more luxuriously furnished bedroom. He switched on an electric light and a little orange-shaded lamp on a table shone forth. He threw his hat on the bureau and rolled up the sleeves of his doublet.
The door of a bathroom stood open. He went in, turned on the water, and washed his face and hands. As he was drying them with a towel he walked over to a window. Looking out, he saw a garage and a circular driveway. Beyond that was a lane that led back of a big barn. And on the stone wall on the opposite side of the lane two boys were sitting.
Ben stopped using the towel, and stared. The two boys looked surprisingly like Tom and Lanky Larry. They were at some distance from the house and the shadow of the barn fell across the stone wall. But they did look like Tom and Lanky. However, it was inconceivable that those two should be sitting there. He must be mistaken. For what could possibly have brought those two to the neighborhood of the Gables? And why should they perch on a stone wall as if they had nothing to do?
Ben turned to go back to the yellow room; but in the doorway he stopped. Someone was there, at the bureau, a man in a brown hat and cloak. He had pulled a bureau drawer out and was looking in it. Some one of the guests must have mistaken this room for his own.
“Hello,” said Ben, “I didn’t know there was anyone here.”
The man looked over his shoulder. “My mistake,” he said. “I thought this was my room. I beg your pardon. My room is next door.”
“I don’t wonder you didn’t know the right one,” Ben said politely. “I never saw a house with so many rooms. I say, in that cloak and hat you look very much like me in my costume. I don’t remember seeing you in the moving-pictures.”
“I changed my things,” muttered the man. “Sometimes I wear one set and other times another.” He walked to the door, opened it, and went down the hall.
“That’s funny,” said Ben, half-aloud. “He keeps his hat on in the house. I suppose he thinks, because it’s part of his costume, it’s a perfectly proper thing to do.”
Before the mirror at the bureau Ben put on his own broad-brimmed hat, turned on the light at a wall-bracket, and surveyed himself in the glass.
“The hat does help to make a fellow look different,” he said to himself. “I guess I’ll keep mine on when I go downstairs; though I don’t suppose it would be the right thing to wear a hat to dinner.”
He switched off both the lights and went out into the hall. The gallery and the lower floor of the big house appeared to be empty; he supposed the guests had all gone to make ready for dinner. He walked around the gallery to the staircase. The afterglow of sunset partly lighted the lower floor, and here and there soft lamps shed circles of radiance, but for the most part the house was pleasantly shadowy, which made its fine furnishings all the more interesting.
Ben went down the stairs and stopped in the large hall to look at a grandfather’s clock that stood opposite the front door. Above the dial was a painted ship that sailed on a deep-blue sea. He was admiring the ship when somewhere in the upper part of the house someone gave a scream.
Ben waited a moment. There was another shout. Doors on the gallery opened. He heard people calling “What’s the matter?” There was confusion above-stairs. Someone shouted “Lock the doors! Don’t let him get away!”
The front door was open. Ben dashed across the polished floor to shut it.
His hand was on the knob when someone caught him from behind. A rug slipped under his feet and he came down hard on the floor.
Someone had fallen on top of him, someone had tackled him tight about the knees, a regular football tackle.
There was a babel of voices. Someone shouted, “We’ve got him all right!”
Ben tried to speak, to explain. “Hold on there!” he grunted.
But someone else was explaining. He heard someone say, “We heard the yells, and we came in at the side door, and we saw this fellow dashing for the front door.”
Then Ben heard Fitzhugh’s voice. “Well, he won’t get away now,” Fitzhugh said. “Suppose you let him up.”
The fellow who had made the tackle released Ben’s knees and Ben turned around and sat up.
“My eye! If it isn’t Ben Sully!”
Ben saw Tom and Lanky Larry staring at him in wide-eyed wonder.
“Of course it is, Tom, you goat!” Ben responded. “Who did you think it was?”
“We thought you were one of the men we tracked here from the cove,” said Tom. “They wore cloaks and hats like yours; and you did look as if you were trying to escape.”
“I was going to lock the front door,” said Ben, getting to his feet. “What’s the trouble anyhow, Mr. Fitzhugh?”
“Two of the ladies found things missing from their rooms—jewels,” explained Fitzhugh. “And one of the men saw a fellow sneaking down a passage.” He turned to Tom and Lanky. “I don’t know who you two are, but Ben seems to, so that’s all right. Let’s see if we can find the thief.”
Immediately everyone was busy. Some went outdoors, some hunted through the house. The Gables blazed with light; the garage and the other outbuildings were thoroughly searched. But no thief was found, and half-an-hour later the whole company met on the porch to talk over the matter.
Tom and Lanky by turns told their tale, how they had seen the three men at the cove put on cloaks and hats and how they had followed the men to the Gables. The butler, looking rather sheepish, admitted that the boys had spoken to him about the strangers and that he had not thought their story merited his attention. Then Tom said that he and Lanky had sat on the stone wall until they heard shouts in the house, and had then run in at a side door, and in the hall had seen a fellow dressed just like the three they had followed apparently making his escape. “We didn’t know Ben was anywhere near here,” he added; “and anyway we wouldn’t have recognized him in that blooming hat.”
Ben told about his finding the stranger, dressed like himself, hunting through the bureau drawer in the yellow room. The guests who had missed their jewels and the man who had seen someone stealing along a passage repeated their stories. “Well,” said Fitzhugh, when they had all finished, “you remember we couldn’t find some of the things we left in the playhouse the other day. I believe these fellows took them, and thought they could pass themselves off as some of my guests and ransack all the rooms in the house.”
“They did it,” said Marmaduke Midchester. “And they must have got away by one of the back doors while we were all here at the front.”
“Do you suppose they’ve gone back to the cove?” asked Lanky. “They might have. They didn’t know we were following them.”
“That’s an idea,” agreed Fitzhugh. He spoke to the butler, and in a few minutes the chauffeur and two other men were receiving instructions to take the car and drive to the cove, look for the men, and if they were not to be found there to drive on to Barmouth and report the thefts to the police.
“And now, my friends,” Fitzhugh added to his guests, “let us have dinner. Master Ben’s two pals must need sustenance after their long tramp. Come, the soup will be getting cold.”
They were still at the dinner table when a motor horn sounded outside. Everyone ran to the door. It was not Fitzhugh’s car, however, but a much smaller one. From it descended David, John Tuckerman and Mr. Perkins.
“Well, I declare,” exclaimed Tuckerman, “here’s Tom and Larry! And that fellow in doublet and hose—why, I do believe that’s Benjamin Sully!”
John Tuckerman and David and Mr. Perkins went up on the porch, where Ben introduced them to Roderick Fitzhugh. Fitzhugh, after shaking hands cordially with each of them, bowed toward his house-guests. “My friends,” said he, “we have the pleasure of welcoming the worthy Chief Counsellor of Camp Amoussock, and Mr. Tuckerman, who is the owner of famous Cotterell Hall on Cotterell’s Island in the harbor of Barmouth, and Mr. David Norton—, er, Ben, what is the best way to describe your good-looking friend?”
“The best batter in New England,” piped up Lanky Larry. “I ought to know. He knocked me out of the box.”
“Thank you,” said Fitzhugh in his amusingly formal manner. “Mr. David Norton, the famous Yankee slugger.” He turned to the three new arrivals. “Gentlemen, let me present you to my friends,” and he called out the names, beginning with Maid Rosalind and the other ladies and ending with Sir Marmaduke Midchester.
Tuckerman laughed. “I’d no idea Ben mixed in such high-sounding company. What is he?—Sir Marmaduke’s squire?”
“He’s the apprentice to an armorer,” said Fitzhugh. “Incidentally he was mistaken this evening for a robber.”
Then Fitzhugh told the story of the robbery, including the adventure of Tom and Larry with the men from the cove.
“Those men must be the three that belonged to the fishing-smack,” said David. “I thought there was something crooked going on. That’s it—they’re a gang of thieves.”
David related his adventure, and then Mr. Perkins told how he and Tuckerman and the boys from the camp hunted for the three missing fellows. “We drove in here on the chance that you might know something about them,” he said to Fitzhugh. “We came straight up the road from the cove, but we didn’t see any men answering the description of the thieves.”
“Well,” said Fitzhugh, “we’ll get the police on their track, and I’ll telephone down to Gosport to have the people there keep an eye out for that fishing-boat. And now won’t you come in and let me offer you some refreshments? Master Ben will want to change his clothes before he sets out in his racing-car.”
While the others were in the dining-room Ben exchanged his doublet and hose for his everyday garb. Then he went to the garage and got out the little car he had borrowed from his uncle in Barmouth. It clattered up to the front door and a few minutes later Fitzhugh was saying good-night to Tuckerman, Perkins and the boys.
David got into Ben’s car. The car from Camp Amoussock moved off along the driveway. Roderick Fitzhugh came up to Ben, who was starting his engine. “I regret that Mr. Joseph Hastings wasn’t at home,” he said, “so that you could have learned whether he did lose a silver snuff-box on Cotterell’s Island. I’ll ask him when I see him.”
Ben grinned. “I’d almost forgotten about the snuff-box,” he answered, “but I think you’ll find when you ask Mr. Hastings that he did lose it there.”
“You’re a bright fellow, Master Sully.”
Fitzhugh gave a wink. “Don’t tell all you know. And if you’re in the neighborhood any time come in and see Joseph Hastings.”
The little car rattled away, following the tail-light of the other automobile.
“Who is that man?” asked David, as they turned into the highroad.
“Do you mean Mr. Roderick Fitzhugh?” inquired Ben innocently.
“Chuck it, Benjie. That isn’t his real name.”
“Why isn’t it, smartie?”
“Roderick Fitzhugh! Marmaduke Midchester!” David repeated the names of some of the other people he had met at the Gables. “Stuff and nonsense, Benjie! They made them up.”
Ben said nothing, and after a few minutes David began again.
“Where’d they get those clothes?”
“Where do people usually get their clothes? Tailors and dressmakers made them, I suppose.”
“What are they? A crowd of actors?”
Ben smiled. “They’re not professional actors. They’re doing a play that Mr. Fitzhugh wrote for the moving-pictures, and they like their costumes so much they keep them on most of the time. I’m in the pictures,” he added in a tone of pride.
The car clattered loudly over a rough stretch of road. Then David resumed his questions. “How in thunder did you happen to get mixed up with them?”
“I was driving along this morning and I met Mr. Fitzhugh and he suggested that we go on a hunt for hooked-rugs.”
“Hooked-rugs!” exploded David.
“Yes. They don’t grow on trees. They’re to be found in the cottages around here. We caught some fine specimens.”
David put his hand on Ben’s knee. “It was time we rescued you from that fellow, my boy,” he said. “I don’t know anything about hooked-rugs, but I think your Mr. Fitzhugh has bats in his belfry.”
The car driven by Mr. Perkins had stopped, and Ben brought his own noisy equipage to a standstill at the side of the road. “We’re going to have another look at the cove,” said Tuckerman. “We can’t drive in through the woods.”
But the cove, when they reached it by the path through the woods, was as deserted as it had been when the boys from Camp Amoussock explored it earlier in the evening. Lanky and Tom pointed out the dory, still beached on the shingle, in which the three men had come ashore, and the shack in which they had kept the costumes. “I think the dory is pretty good proof that they didn’t come back here,” said Tom. “I guess they must have made off toward Gosport, to join the fishing-smack somewhere in that neighborhood.”
They returned to the two cars and drove on to Camp Amoussock. There Tom and John Tuckerman embarked in theArgoto sail back to Cotterell’s Island, while Ben and David continued their clattering ride to Barmouth.
At Barmouth, Ben restored the car to his uncle, and the two boys went down to the harbor and launched the canoe. Over the placid water they paddled easily, for they were old hands at handling a canoe together. And presently they landed at the island, and found the other two sitting on the pier.
There was much to talk over, and none of them were sleepy. They sat on the bank above the beach and swapped adventures. “I’ve been wondering,” said Tom, “whether there was any connection between the men who stole those things at Mr. Fitzhugh’s house and the men I saw here on the island last night.”
“And the gigantic footprints,” said David. “I’ve been thinking about that, too. But how would you explain the lady’s handkerchief, with the initials A. S. L.?”
They argued about that for some time before they went to bed. Ben, however, took little part in the discussion. He was trying to find a reason for the discovery of the silver snuff-box that Joseph Hastings had bought in Barmouth in the chest hidden in the cliff.
Next morning Ben went with Tuckerman to Cotterell Hall. “What do you make of it, Ben?” said Tuckerman. “We don’t seem to be any nearer to finding the treasure than we were when we first came here. I know you’ve got some theory in that wise head of yours.”
Ben walked up and down the living-room. “Well,” he answered slowly, “I think somebody has mixed up the trails. Let’s see how the matter stands. We know that your Uncle Christopher thought there was a secret. We found that out from the note in the frame of the picture.”
“Uncle Christopher knew there was a secret,” agreed Tuckerman. “I think that’s very clear.”
Ben nodded. “What did we find next? Those jottings your uncle made in his notebook.” Ben stopped at the secretary, took out the notebook, turned to the marked page, and read aloud. “‘As regards the saying that the hiding-place is just beyond the three pines that stand between two rocks where the sun goes down, I have scoured and scoured the island, and come to the opinion that the extreme southwestern point must be the place intended, although to-day there are only two pines there. I have dug at this place, but found only sand.’ That’s what your uncle wrote. But he didn’t find the treasure at the southwestern point.”
Tuckerman smiled. “So far so good.”
Ben ran his eye down the page. “Now we come to this. ‘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?’ Well, it seems to me that’s where the trails begin to get mixed.”
“Why, I thought we decided that referred to the mahogany secretary,” said Tuckerman.
“So we did,” answered Ben. “But were we right? Let’s see. We looked in the secretary and found a piece of parchment with half a message on it. We couldn’t make out much from that. Then I read this in the notebook.” He turned again to the page, “‘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.’”
“I’ve always thought you were mighty clever in finding that model of the clipper ship up in the attic,” said Tuckerman.
“Well,” agreed Ben, “I’m not denying that I was pretty well pleased with that myself. But what did we learn? That James Sampson took a box to the north cliff, meaning to put it on a boat, but found that there were some people off shore in another boat and so hid the box in the rocks, and that the rocks were marked like a cross. Very good. We found the place and we found a box there. But there wasn’t anything very valuable in the box when we found it.”
“That’s so,” Tuckerman assented. “But I don’t see any other clue to the treasure.”
Ben was staring through the window at the trees glistening in the sunlight. “I think that box was hidden in the cliff since we’ve been on the island,” he said reflectively, “and I don’t believe that any of the things in it ever came from Cotterell Hall.”
“You don’t!” exclaimed Tuckerman.
“And that means,” continued Ben, who was following the line of his own thoughts, “that somebody was trying to set us on a wrong trail by hiding those two pieces of parchment in this house.”
“But what object would anyone have in doing that?” Tuckerman asked. “I can’t see any good reason for their taking so much trouble.” He considered this idea for several minutes, while Ben continued his study of the trees and the glimpse of blue water that was to be seen from the window.
“And we thought we’d kept the problem of the Cotterell treasure pretty much a secret,” Tuckerman said presently.
“Gigantic footprints, lady’s handkerchief, men prowling about the house in the dark.” Ben chuckled softly. “That doesn’t look as if we had the island much to ourselves, does it?”
“No,” Tuckerman admitted. “We haven’t kept up the Cotterell tradition for exclusiveness.”
“Well,” said Ben, “if somebody has been trying to set us on a wrong trail, the question is was it the giant, the lady, or the night-prowlers? Or did the three belong to one party.”
“The lady is a stumbling-block,” nodded Tuckerman.
“If there were two parties,” said Ben, turning around, “my own opinion is that it’s the giant and the lady who’ve been making game of us.”
“Benjamin, what are you driving at?”
For answer Ben laughed. “Never mind, Professor. If I should tell you what’s in my mind, and it shouldn’t prove to be true, think how flat I’d feel. And now I think it’s time we went back to camp if we’re going in swimming before dinner.”
Just before sunset that afternoon the chug of a motor-boat broke the stillness of the water around the island. The boat stole up to the landing-stage and two men got out. They went up the walk toward Cotterell Hall. “A beautiful mansion, Marmaduke,” said the man in the white flannel suit to the one in brown jacket and knickerbockers.
“I agree with you, Roderick,” said the other. “I suppose you would like to pick it up and carry it off to the Gables.”
“Not at all. But what is to prevent us from making use of it here? Sir Peter Cotterell defying the people of Barmouth.” Roderick Fitzhugh pointed in this direction and that, talking eagerly, until his companion interrupted him with a whispered, “They’re coming up in their sailboat.”
TheArgotouched the landing-stage, and Fitzhugh and his friend went out on the pier. “Hello, lads,” cried Fitzhugh. “We came out to take a look at the famous island Ben told us about.”
“Did you learn anything about the thieves?” Tom called from theArgo.
“No, not yet. But we’ve got the local police scouring the country. I don’t expect much from them,” added Fitzhugh. “What I hope is that the rascals will make us another call.”
“We’ve been fishing,” said Ben. “Hope you’ll stay to supper.”
“Well,” said Fitzhugh, “I’ve got my guests at the Gables.”
“You wouldn’t take any excuse from me yesterday,” Ben retorted. “Turn about’s fair play. You’ve never tasted Dave’s fried flounder.”
“That’s so, we haven’t,” said Marmaduke Midchester. “I vote to stay.”
They had supper on the beach, and afterwards Ben urged Midchester to sing the song he had written.
“Oh, Master Ben,” Fitzhugh protested, “why break in on the evening calm?”
“Go ahead,” said Tom. “We’d all like some music.”
“Music?” echoed Fitzhugh. “Who said anything about music? Well, if you’re determined to have him commit the crime, on your own heads be it!”
Midchester, who was a big man, stood up and sang in a deep bass, a song about a knight who loved a lady but who rode off to the wars. It had a spirited chorus, with many gestures, such as drawing a sword, waving a hand, and shaking a knight’s banner. By the time that Midchester sang the second chorus all the others were up, singing loudly and imitating his motions. It ended in a final loud cheer that could be heard at least a mile away.
“That’s better than I expected,” said Fitzhugh. “See, it scared the geese.”
He pointed to the western sky, across which a distant triangle of wild geese were flying.
“Now,” said Tuckerman, “I will give you a song of the sea as sung in the prairie schooners of the west.”
He had a good voice, and his song was so popular that he had to give an encore. Afterwards Fitzhugh said that he must take Midchester away or he would break out again.
Good-nights were exchanged on the pier and the motor-boat headed south.
“Well,” said Tuckerman, “they’re a good pair of scouts. I don’t suppose this island has heard so much noise since old Sir Peter’s day. I like guests myself. And as there doesn’t seem any likelihood of finding the Cotterell treasure, I don’t see why we shouldn’t keep open house.”
“Oh, we haven’t given up hope of finding it, have we?” asked Tom.
“Benjie hasn’t,” said David.
They all looked at the black-haired boy.
“Why, of course, I haven’t,” he answered calmly. “And the more people who come out here to look for it, the more chance we have of finding it, I think. You don’t suppose Fitzhugh and Midchester came here just to see us, do you?”
“I bet they did,” said Tom.
“I bet they didn’t,” said Ben. “They took us in as a side-show on their way to the big tent.”