“I don’t know whether it is altogether talk and imagination, or not,” said Harris, ruminatively. “Cyrus Pritchett was with Bob Harrison when he died. And he says the old man talked of this hidden money–or treasure–or what-not–up to the very time be became unconscious. He had a shock, you know, and it stopped his speech likethat,” and Harris snapped his finger and thumb.
“It sounds like a story-book,” said Grandma Castle, complacently.
“It doesn’t sound sensible,” observed Lyddy, drily.
“I’m giving it to you for what it’s worth,” remarked Harris, good-naturedly. “Mr. Pritchett was sitting up with Harrison when the oldman had his final shock. Harrison had been mumbling along to Cyrus about what he wanted done with certain of his possessions. And he says:
“‘There’s that hid away that will be wuth money–five thousand in hard cash–some day, Cy.’
“Those are the words he used,” said Harris, earnestly, and watching Professor Spink from one corner of his eye. “He was sitting up, Cy said, and as he spoke he pointed at— Well,” broke off Harris, abruptly, “never mind what he pointed at. He died before he could finish what he was saying.”
“Is that the truth, Harris Colesworth?” demanded ’Phemie, regarding him seriously.
“I got it from Lucas. Then I asked his father. That is just the way the story was told to me,” declared the young fellow, warmly.
“And–and they never found anything?” asked Mr. Bray.
“No. They searched. They searched the old pieces of–of furniture, too. But Mrs. Harrison gave it up when it was found that Bob had been such a–a prevaricator.”
“He probably lied about the fortune,” said Mr. Bray, quietly.
“Well–maybe,” grunted Harris.
But Lyddy remembered that Harris had already told her that he proposed to go to the vendue and buy in several pieces of the widow’s furniture. Did that mean that Harris really thought he had a clue to the hidden treasure?
Lucas Pritchett drove into the yard with the two-seated buckboard about nine o’clock the next forenoon. And, wonders of wonders! his mother sat on the front seat beside him.
’Phemie ran out in a hurry. Lyddy was getting ready to go to the vendue. She wanted to bid in that Dutch oven–and some other things.
“Why, Mrs. Pritchett!” exclaimed the younger Bray girl, “you are welcome! You haven’t been here for an age.”
Mrs. Pritchett looked pretty grim; but ’Phemie found it was tears that made her eyes wink so fast.
“I ain’t never been here but onct since you gals came. And I’m ashamed of myself,” said “Maw” Pritchett. “I hope you’ll overlook it.”
“For goodness’ sake! how you talk!” gasped ’Phemie.
“Is it true you gals have saved that poor oldcritter from the farm?” demanded Mrs. Pritchett, earnestly, and letting the tears run unchecked down her fat cheeks.
“Why–why—”
“Widder Harrison, she means,” grunted Lucas. “It all come out yesterday at church. The widder told about it herself. The parson got hold of it, and he put it into his sermon. And by cracky! some of those folks that treated ye so mean at the schoolhouse, Saturday night, feel pretty cheap after what the parson said.”
“And if my Sairy ever says a mean word to one o’ you gals–or as much aslooksone,” cried Mother Pritchett, “big as she is an’,–an’, yes–oldas she is, I’ll spank her!”
“Mrs. Pritchett! Lucas!” gasped ’Phemie. “It isn’t so. You’re making it up out of whole cloth. We haven’t really done a thing for Mrs. Harrison—”
“You’ve thought to take her in and give her a home—”
“No, no! I am sure she will earn her living here.”
“But none of us–folks that had knowed her for years–thought to give the poor old critter a chanst,” burst out the lady. “Oh, I know Cyrus wouldn’t ’a’ heard to our taking her; and I dunno as we could have exactly afforded it, forme an’ Sairy is amply able to do the work; but our Ladies’ Aid never thought to do a thing for her–nor nobody else,” declared Mrs. Pritchett.
“You two gals was ministerin’ angels. I don’t suppose we none of us really knowed how Mis’ Harrison felt about going to the poorhouse. But we didn’t inquire none, either.
“And here’s Lyddy! My dear, I’m too fat to get down easy. I hope you’ll come and shake hands with me.”
“Why–certainly,” responded Lyddy. “And I am really glad to see you, dear Mrs. Pritchett.”
She had evidently overheard some, if not all, of the good lady’s earnest speech. Harris Colesworth appeared, too, and Professor Spink was right behind him.
“You stopped for me, as I asked you to, Lucas?” asked the young chemist.
“Sure, Mr. Colesworth.”
“Miss Lydia is going, too,” said the young man.
“That’ll fill the bill, then, sir,” said Lucas, grinning.
“But I say!” exclaimed the professor, suddenly. “Can’t you squeezemein? I’m going over the hill, too.”
“Don’t see how it kin be done, Professor,” said Lucas.
“But you said you thought that there’d be an extra seat—”
“Didn’t know maw was going, then,” replied the unabashed Lucas.
“And Somers has driven off to school with his old mare,” exclaimed Spink.
“I believe he has,” observed Harris.
“This is a pretty pass!” and Mr. Spink was evidently angry. “I’ve justgotto get to that vendue.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to walk–and it’s advertised to begin in ha’f an hour,” quoth Lucas.
“Say! where’s your other rig?” demanded the professor. “I’ll hire it.”
“Dad’s plowin’ with the big team,” said Lucas, flicking the backs of the ponies with his whip, as they started, “and our old mare is lame. Gid-up!
“That Jud Spink is gittin’ jest as pop’lar ’round here as a pedlar sellin’ mustard plasters in the lower regions!” observed young Pritchett, as they whirled out of the yard.
“Why, Lucas Pritchett! how you talk!” gasped his mother.
The widow’s auction sale–or “vendue”–brought together, as such affairs usually do in the country, more people, and aroused a deal more interest, than does a funeral.
There was a goodly crowd before the little house, or moving idly through the half-dismantled lower rooms when Lucas halted the ponies to let Harris and the ladies out.
To Lyddy’s surprise, the women present–or most of them–welcomed her with more warmth than she had experienced in a greeting since she and her sister had first come to Hillcrest.
But the auctioneer began to put up the household articles for sale very soon and that relieved Lyddy of some embarrassment in meeting these folk who so suddenly had veered toward her.
There were only a few things the girl could afford to buy. The Dutch oven was the most important; and fortunately most of the farmers’ wives had stoves in their kitchens, so there was not much bidding. Lyddy had it nocked down to her for sixty cents.
Mrs. Harrison seemed very sad to see some of her things go, and Lyddy believed that every article that the widow seemed particularly anxious about, young Harris Colesworth bid in.
At least, he bought a bureau, a worktable, an old rocking chair with stuffed back and cushion, and last of all an old, age-darkened, birdseye maple desk, which seemed shaky and half-ready to fall to pieces.
“That article ought to bring ye in a forchune,Mr. Colesworth,” declared the auctioneer, cheerfully. “That’s where they say Bob hid his forchune–yessir!”
“And it looks–from the back of it–that worms had got inter the forchune,” chuckled one of the farmers, as the wood-worm dust rattled out of the old contraption when Harris and Lucas carried it out and set it down with the other articles Harris had bought.
“So you got it; did you, young man?” snarled a voice behind the two youths, and there stood Professor Spink.
He was much heated, his boots and trousers were muddy, and his frock coat had a bad, three-cornered tear in it. Evidently he had come across lots–and he had hurried.
“Why–were you interested in that old desk I bought in?” asked Harris with a grin.
“I’ll give ye a dollar for your bargain,” blurted out the professor.
“I tell you honest, I didn’t pay but two dollars for it,” replied Harris.
“I’ll double it–give you four.”
“No. I guess I’ll keep it.”
“Five,” snapped the breakfast food magnate.
“No, sir,” responded Harris, turning away.
“Good work! keep it up!” Lyddy heard Lucas whisper to the other youth. “I bet I kin telljest what dad told him. Dad’s jest close-mouthed enough to make the professor fidgetty. He begins to believe it all now.”
“Shut up!” warned Harris.
The next moment the anxious professor was at him again.
“I want that desk, Colesworth. I’ll give you ten dollars for it–fifteen!”
“Say,” said Harris, in apparent disgust, “I’ll tell you the truth; I bought that desk–and these other things–to give back to old Mrs. Harrison. She seemed to set store by them.”
“Ha!”
“Now, the desk is hers. If she wants to sell it for twenty-five dollars—”
“You hush up! I’ll make my own bargain with her,” growled the professor.
“No you won’t, by jove!” exclaimed the city youth. “If you want the desk you’ll pay all its worth. Hey! Mrs. Harrison!”
The widow approached, wonderingly.
“I made up my mind,” said Harris, hurriedly, “that I’d give you these things here. You might like to have them in your room at Hillcrest.”
“Thank you, young man!” returned the widow, flushing. “I don’t know what makes you young folks so kind to me—”
“Hold on! there’s something else,” interrupted Harris. “Now, Professor Spink here wants to buy that desk.”
“And I’ll give ye a good price for it, Widder,” said Spink. “I want it to remember Bob by. I’ll give you—”
“He’s already offered me twenty-five dollars for it—”
“No, I ain’t!” exclaimed Spink.
“Oh, then, you don’t want it, after all,” returned Harris, coolly. “I thought you did.”
“Well! suppose I do offer you twenty-five for it, Mis’ Harrison?” exclaimed Spink, evidently greatly spurred by desire, yet curbed by his own natural penuriousness.
“Take my advice and bid him up, Mrs. Harrison,” said Harris, with a wink. “He knows more about this old desk than he ought to, it seems to me.”
“For the land’s sake—” began the widow; but Spink burst forth in a rage:
“I’ll make ye a last offer for it–you can take it or leave it.” He drew forth a wad of bills and peeled off several into the widow’s hand.
“There’s fifty dollars. Is the desk mine?” he fairly yelled.
The vociferous speech of the professor drewpeople from the auction. They gathered around. Harris nodded to the old lady, and her hand clamped upon the bills.
“Remember, this is Mrs. Harrison’s own money,” said young Colesworth, evenly. “The desk was bought at auction for two dollars.”
“Well, is it mine?” demanded Spink.
“It is yours, Jud Spink,” replied the old lady, stuffing the money into her handbag.
“Gimme that hatchet!” cried the professor, seizing the implement from a man who stood by. He attacked the old desk in a fury.
“Oh! that’s too bad!” gasped Mrs. Harrison. “Ididwant the old thing.”
Spink grinned at them. “I’ll make you both sicker than you be!” he snarled. “Out o’ the way!”
He banged the desk two or three more clips–and out fell a secret panel in the back of it.
“By cracky! money–real money!” yelled Lucas Pritchett. “Oh, Mr. Harris! we done it now!”
For from the shallow opening behind the panel there were scattered upon the ground several packets of apparently brand-new, if somewhat discolored banknotes.
Professor Spink dropped the axe and picked upthe packages eagerly. Others crowded around. They ran them over quickly.
“Five thousand dollars–if there’s a cent!” gasped somebody, in an awed whisper.
“An’ she sold it for fifty dollars,” said Lucas, almost in tears.
But Professor Lemuel Judson Spink did not look happy–not at all!
While the neighbors were crowding around, emitting “ohs” and “ahs” over his find in the broken old desk, the proprietor of “the breakfast for the million” began to look pretty sick.
“Five thousand dollars! My mercy!” gasped the Widow Harrison. “Then Bobdidn’tlie about bringing home that fortune when he came from the army.”
“It’s a shame, Widder!” cried one man. “That five thousand ought to belong to you.”
“Dad got it right; didn’t he?” said Lucas, shaking his head sadly. “He allus said Harrison was trying to tell him where it was hid when he had his last stroke.”
Harris Colesworth spoke for the first time since the packages of notes were discovered:
“Mr. Harrison told Cyrus Pritchett that he had hid away ‘that that would be wuth five thousand.’ It’s plain what he had in his mind–anda whole lot of other foolish people had it in their minds just after the Civil War.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Colesworth?” cried Lyddy, who was clinging to the widow’s hand and patting it soothingly.
“Why,” chuckled Harris, “there were folks who believed–and they believed it for years after the Civil War–that some day the Federal Government was going to redeem all the paper money printed by the Confederate States—”
“What?” bawled Lucas, fairly springing off the ground.
“Confederate money?” repeated the crowd in chorus.
No wonder Professor Spink looked sick. He broke through the group, flinging the neat packages of bills behind him as he strode away.
“How about the desk, Professor?” shouted Harris; “don’t you want it?”
“Give it to the old woman–you swindler!” snarled Spink.
And then the crowd roared! The humor of the thing struck them and it was half an hour before the auctioneer could go on with the sale.
“No; I did not know the bills were there,” Harris avowed. “But I thought the professor was so avaricious that he could be made to bid up the old desk. Had he bid on it when it wasput up by the auctioneer, however, Mrs. Harrison would not have benefited. You see, the best the auctioneer can do, what he gets from the sale will not entirely satisfy Spink’s claim. But the money-grabber can’t touch that fifty dollars in good money he paid over to Mrs. Harrison with his own hands.”
“Oh, it was splendid, Harris!” gasped Lyddy, seizing both his hands. Then she retired suddenly to Mrs. Harrison’s side and never said another word to the young man.
“Gee, cracky!” said Lucas, with a sigh. “I was scairt stiff when I seen them bills fall out of the old desk. I thought sure they were good.”
“I confess I knew what they were immediately–and so did Spink,” replied Harris.
The young folks had got enough of the vendue now, and so had Mrs. Pritchett. Lucas agreed to come up with the farm wagon for the pieces of furniture with which Harris had presented the Widow Harrison–including the broken desk–and transport them and the widow herself to Hillcrest before night.
Mrs. Pritchett was enthusiastic over the girls taking Mrs. Harrison to the farm, and she could not say enough in praise of it. So Lyddy was glad to get out of the buckboard with Harris Colesworth at the bottom of the lane.
“You all talk too much about it, Mrs. Pritchett!” she cried, when bidding the farmer’s wife good-bye. “But I’d be glad to have you come up here as often as you can–and talk on any other subject!” and she ran laughing into the house.
Lyddy feared that Professor Spink would make trouble. At least, he and Harris Colesworth must be at swords’ point. And she was sorry now that she had so impulsively given the young chemist her commendation for what he had done for the Widow Harrison.
However, Harris went off at noon, walking to town to take the afternoon train to the city; and as the professor did not show up again until nightfall there was no friction that day at Hillcrest–nor for the rest of the week.
Mrs. Harrison came and got into the work “two-fisted,” as she said herself. She was a strong old woman, and had been brought up to work. Lyddy and ’Phemie were at once relieved of many hard jobs–and none too quickly, for the girls were growing thin under the burden they had assumed.
That very week their advertisements brought them a gentleman and his wife with a little crippled daughter. It was getting warm enough now so that people were not afraid to come toboard in a house that had no heating arrangements but open fireplaces.
As the numbers of the boarders increased, however, Lyddy did not find that the profit increased proportionately. She was now handling fifty-one dollars and a half each week; but the demands for vegetables and fresh eggs made a big item; and as yet there had been no returns from the garden, although everything was growing splendidly.
The chickens had hatched–seventy-two of them. Mr. Bray had taken up the study of the poultry papers and catalogs, and he declared himself well enough to take entire charge of the fluffy little fellows as soon as they came from the shell. He really did appear to be getting on a little; but the girls watched him closely and could scarcely believe that he made any material gain in health.
With Harris Colesworth’s help one Saturday, he had knocked together a couple of home-made brooders and movable runs, and soon the flock, divided in half, were chirping gladly in the spring sunshine on the side lawn.
They fed them scientifically, and with care. Mr. Bray was at the pens every two hours all day–or oftener. At night, two jugs of hot waterwent into the brooders, and the little biddies never seemed to miss having a real mother.
Luckily Lyddy had chosen a hardy strain of fowl and during the first fortnight they lost only two of the fluffy little fellows. Lyddy saw the beginning of a profitable chicken business ahead of her; but, of course, it was only an expense as yet.
She could not see her way clear to buying the kitchen range that was so much needed; and the days were growing warmer. May promised to be the forerunner of an exceedingly hot summer.
At Hillcrest there was, however, almost always a breeze. Seldom did the huge piles of rocks at the back of the farm shut the house off from the cooling winds. The people who came to enjoy the simple comforts of the farmhouse were loud in their praises of the spot.
“If we can get along till July–or even the last of June,” quoth Lyddy to her sister, “I feel sure that we will get the house well filled, the garden will help to support us, and we shall be on the way to making a good living—”
“If we aren’t dead,” sighed ’Phemie. “Idoget so tired sometimes. It’s a blessing we got Mother Harrison,” for so they had come to call the widow.
“We knew we’d have to work if we took boarders,” said Lyddy.
“Goodness me! we didn’t know we had to work our fingers to the bone–mine are coming through the flesh–the bones, I mean.”
“What nonsense!”
“And I know I have lost ten pounds. I’m only a skeleton. You could hang me up in that closet in the old doctor’s office in place of that skeleton—”
“What’sthat, ’Phemie Bray?” demanded the older sister, in wonder.
’Phemie realized that she had almost letthatsecret out of the bag, and she jumped up with a sudden cry:
“Mercy! do you know the time, Lyd? If we’re going to pick those wild strawberries for tea, we’d better be off at once. It’s almost three o’clock.”
And so she escaped telling Lyddy all she knew about what was behind the mysteriously locked green door at the end of the long corridor of the farmhouse.
Harris Colesworth, on his early Sunday morning jaunts to the swimming-hole in Pounder’s Brook, had discovered a patch of wild strawberries, and had told the girls. Up to this time Lyddy and ’Phemie had found little time in which to walk over the farm. As for traversing the rocky part of it, as old Mr. Colesworth andProfessor Spink did, that was out of the question.
But fruit was high, and the chance to pick a dish for supper–enough for all the boarders–was a great temptation to the frugal Lyddy.
She caught up her sunbonnet and pail and followed her sister. ’Phemie’s bonnet was blue and Lyddy’s was pink. As they crossed the cornfield, their bright tin pails flashing in the afternoon sunlight, Grandma Castle saw them from the shady porch.
“What do you think about those two girls, Mrs. Chadwick?” she demanded of the little lame girl’s mother.
“I have been here so short a time I scarcely know how to answer that question, Mrs. Castle,” responded the other lady.
“I’ll tell you: They’re wonderful!” declared Grandma Castle. “If my granddaughters had half the get-up-and-get to ’em that Lydia and Euphemia have, I’d be as proud as Mrs. Lucifer! So I would.”
Meanwhile the girls of Hillcrest Farm had passed through the young corn–acres and acres of it, running clear down to Mr. Pritchett’s line–and climbed the stone fence into the upper pasture.
Here a path, winding among the huge boulders,brought them within sound of Pounder’s Brook. ’Phemie laughed now at the remembrance of her intimate acquaintance with that brook the day they had first come to Hillcrest.
It broadened here in a deep brown pool under an overhanging boulder. A big beech tree, too, shaded it. It certainly was a most attractive place.
“Wish I was a boy!” gasped ’Phemie, in delight. “I certainly would get a bathing suit and come up here like Harris Colesworth. And Lucas comes here and plunges in after his day’s work–he told me so.”
“Dear me! I hope nobody will come here for a bath just now,” observed Lyddy. “It would be rather awkward.”
“And I reckon the water’s cold, too,” agreed her sister, with a giggle. “This stream is fed by a dozen different springs around among the rocks here, so Lucas says. And I expect one spring is just a little colder than another!”
“Oh, look!” exclaimed Lyddy. “There are the strawberries.”
The girls were down upon their knees immediately, picking into their tins–and their mouths. They could not resist the luscious berries–“tame” strawberries never can be as sweet as the wild kind.
And this patch near the swimming hole afforded a splendid crop. The girls saw that they might come here again and again to pick berries for their table–and every free boon of Nature like this helped in the management of the boarding house!
But suddenly–when their kettles were near full–’Phemie jumped up with a shrill whisper:
“What’s that?”
“Hush, ’Phemie!” exclaimed her sister. “How you scared me.”
“Hush yourself! don’t you hear it?”
Lyddy did. Surely that was a strange clinking noise to be heard up here in the woods. It sounded like a milkman going along the street carrying a bunch of empty bottles.
“It’s no wild animal–unless he’s got glass teeth and is gnashing ’em,” giggled ’Phemie. “Come on! I want to know what it means.”
“I wouldn’t, ’Phemie—”
“Well,Iwould, Lyddy. Come on! Who’s afraid of bottles?”
“Butisit bottles we hear?”
“We’ll find out in a jiff,” declared her younger sister, leading the way deeper into the woods.
The sound was from up stream. They followed the noisy brook for some hundreds of yards. Then they came suddenly upon a little hollow, where water dripped over a huge boulderinto another still pool–but smaller than the swimming hole.
Behind the drip of the water was a ledge, and on this ledge stood a row of variously assorted bottles. A man was just setting several other bottles on the same ledge.
These were the bottles the girls had heard striking together as the man walked through the woods. And the man himself was Professor Spink.
The two girls, almost at once, began to shrink away through the bushes again–and this without a word or look having passed between them. Both Lyddy and ’Phemie were unwilling to meet the professor under these conditions.
They were back at the strawberry patch before either of them spoke aloud.
“Whatdoyou suppose he was about?” whispered ’Phemie.
“How do I know? And those bottles!”
“What do you think was in them?”
“Looked like water–nothing but water,” said Lyddy. “It certainlyisa puzzle.”
“I should say so!”
“And there doesn’t seem to be any sense in it,” cried Lyddy. “Let’s go home, ’Phemie. We’ve got enough berries for supper.”
As they went along the pasture trail, the younger girl suggested:
“Do you suppose he could be making up another of his fake medicines? Like those ‘StonehedgeBitters?’ Lucas says they ought to be called ’StonefenceBitters,’ for they are just hard cider and bad whiskey–and that’s what the folks hereabout call ‘stonefence.’”
“It looked like only water in those bottles,” Lyddy said, slowly.
“And he’s so afraid old Mr. Colesworth–or Harris–will come up here and find him at work–or come across his water-bottles,” continued ’Phemie. “Lucky this new boarder–Mr. Chadwick–isn’t much for long walks. It would keep old Spink busier than a hen on a hot griddle, as Lucas says, to watch all of them.”
“Well, I wish I knew what it meant. It puzzles me,” remarked Lyddy. “And I never yet asked Mr. Pritchett about the evening we saw him and a man whom I now think must have been Professor Spink at the farmhouse.”
“Ask him–do,” urged ’Phemie, at last curious enough to have Lyddy share all the mystery that had been troubling her own mind since they first came to Hillcrest.
“I’ll do so the very first time I see him,” declared Lyddy.
But something else happened first–and something that brought the mystery regarding Professor Lemuel Judson Spink to a head for the time being, at least.
’Phemie lost the key to the green door!
Now, off and on, that missing key had troubled Lyddy. She had seldom spoken of it, for she had never even known it had been in the door when the girls came to Hillcrest. Only ’Phemie, it will be remembered, had the midnight adventure in the old doctor’s suite of offices in the east wing.
Lyddy only said, occasionally, that it was odd Aunt Jane had not sent the key to the green door when she expressed all the other keys to her nieces when the project of keeping boarders at Hillcrest was first broached.
At these times ’Phemie had kept as still as a mouse. Sometimes the key was worn on a string around her neck; sometimes it was concealed in a cunning little pocket she had sewn into her skirt. But wherever it was, it always seemed–to ’Phemie–to be burning a hole in her garments and trying to make its appearance.
After finding Professor Spink filling the bottles with water up by Pounder’s Brook, the girl was more than usually troubled about the east wing and the mystery.
She moved the key about from place to place. One day she wore it; another she hid it in some corner. And finally, one night when she came to go to bed, she found that the cord onwhich she had worn the key that day was broken and the key was gone.
She screamed so loud at this discovery that her sister was sure she had seen a mouse, and she bounded into bed, half dressed as she was.
“Where–where is it, ’Phemie?” she gasped, for Lyddy was as afraid of mice as she was of rats.
“Oh, mercy me!” wailed ’Phemie, “that’s what I’d like to know.”
“Didn’t you see it?” cried her trembling sister.
“It’s gone!” returned ’Phemie.
Lyddy got gingerly down from the bed.
“Then I’d like to know what you yelled so for–if the mouse has disappeared?” she demanded, quite sternly.
And then ’Phemie, understanding her, and realizing that she had almost given her secret away, burst into a hysterical giggle, which nothing but Lyddy’s shaking finally relieved.
“You’re just as twittery as a sparrow,” declared Lyddy. “I neverdidsee such a girl. First you’re squealing as though you were hurt, and then you laugh in a most idiotic way. Come! do behave yourself and go to bed!”
But even after ’Phemie obeyed she could not go to sleep.
Suppose somebody picked up that key? Shehad no idea, of course, where it had been dropped. Certainly not on the floor of her bedroom. Some time during the day, inside, or outside of the house, the key, with its little brass tag stamped with the words “East Wing,” had slipped to the ground.
Now–suppose it was found?
’Phemie got out of bed quietly, slipped on her slippers and shrugged herself into her robe. Somebody might be down there in old Dr. Phelps’s offices right now.
And that somebody, of course, in ’Phemie’s mind, meant just one person–Professor Lemuel Judson Spink.
Why had he come to Hillcrest to board, anyway? And why hadn’t he gone away when he had been made the topic of many a joke about old Bob Harrison’s treasure trove?
For nearly a fortnight now the professor had stood grimly the jokes and laughing comments aimed at him by the other boarders. The presence of Mrs. Harrison, too, in the house, was a constant reminder to the breakfast food magnate of how his own acquisitiveness had made him over-reach himself.
’Phemie went downstairs, taking a comforter with her, and went into the long corridor leading from the west wing entry to the green door.The girls had never taken the old davenport out of this wide hall, and ’Phemie curled up on this–with its hard, hair-cloth-covered arm for a pillow–spread the quilt over her, and tried to compose her nerves here within sight and sound of the east wing entrance.
Suppose somebody was already in the offices?
The thought became so insistent that, after ten minutes, she was forced to creep along to the green door and try the latch.
With her hand on it, she heard a sudden sound from the room nearby. Was somebody astir in the Colesworth quarters?
This was late Saturday night–almost midnight, in fact; and of course Harris Colesworth was in the house. Sometimes he read until very late.
So ’Phemie turned again, after a moment, and lifted the latch. Then she pushed tentatively on the door, and—
It swung open!
’Phemie gasped–an appalling sound it seemed in the stillness of the corridor and at that hour of the night.
Often, while the key had been in her possession, she had tried the door as she passed it while working about the house. It had been securely locked.
Then, she told herself now, on the instant, thekey had been found and it had been put to use. Somebody had already been in the old doctor’s offices and had ransacked the rooms.
She crossed the threshold swiftly and groped her way to the door of the second room–the old doctor’s consulting room. Here the light of the moon filtered through the shutters sufficiently to show her the place.
There seemed to be nobody there, and she stepped in, leaving the green door open behind her, but pulling shut the door between the anteroom and the office.
There was the old doctor’s big desk, and the bookcases all about the room, and the jars with “specimens” in them and–yes!–the skeleton case in the corner.
She had advanced to the middle of the room when suddenly she saw that the door into the lumber room, or laboratory, at the back, was open. A white wand of light shot through this open door, and played upon the ceiling, then upon the wall, of the old doctor’s office.
’Phemie’s heart beat quickly; but she was no more afraid than she had been the moment before, when she found the green door unlocked. There was somebody–the person who had found the lost key–still in the offices of the east wing.
The wand of white light playing about her was from an electric torch. She stooped, and literally crawled on all fours out of the range of the light from the rear doorway.
Before she knew it she was right beside the case containing the skeleton. Indeed, she hid in its shadow.
And her interest in that moving light–and the person behind it–made her forget her original terror of what was in the box.
She heard a rustle–then a step on the boards. It was a heavy person approaching. The door opened farther between the workshop and the room in which she was hidden.
Then she recognized the tall figure entering. It was as she had expected. It was Professor Spink.
The breakfast food magnate came directly toward the high, locked desk belonging to the dead and gone physician, who had been a kind friend and patron of this quack medicine man when he was a boy.
’Phemie had heard all the particulars of Spink’s connection with Dr. Polly Phelps. The good old doctor had been called to attend the boy in some childish disease while he was an inmate of the county poorhouse. His parents–who were gypsies, or like wanderers–had deserted the boy and he had “gone on the town,” as the saying was.
Dr. Polly had taken a fancy to the little fellow. He was then twelve years old–or thereabout–smart and sharp. The old doctor brought him home to Hillcrest, sent him to school, made him useful to him in a dozen ways, and began even to train him as a doctor.
For five years Jud Spink had remained with the old physician. Then he had run away with a medicine show. It was said, too, that he stole money from Dr. Polly when he went; but the physician had never said so, nor taken any means to punish the wayward boy if he returned.
And Jud Spink had never re-appeared in Bridleburg, or the vicinity, while the old doctor was alive.
Then his visits had been few and far between until, at last, coming back a few months before, a self-confessed rich man, he had declared his intention of settling down in the community.
But ’Phemie Bray believed that the false professor had come here to Hillcrest for a special object. He was money-mad–his avariciousness had been already well displayed.
She believed that there was something on Hillcrest that Jud Spink wanted–something he could make money out of.
She was not surprised, then, to see a short iron bar in the professor’s hand. It was flattened and sharpened at one end.
By the light of the hand-lamp the man went to work on the locked desk. It was of heavy wood–no flimsy thing like that one which he had burst open so easily the day of the Widow Harrison’s vendue.
The man inserted the sharp end of the jimmy between the lid and the upper shelf of the desk. ’Phemie heard the woodwork crack, and this time she didnotsuppress a gasp.
Why! this fellow was actually breaking open the old doctor’s desk. Aunt Jane had not even sentthemthe keys of the desk and bookcases in this suite of rooms.
Then ’Phemie had a sudden thought. She wasreally afraid of the big man. She did not know what he might do to her if he found her here spying on his actions. And–she didn’t want the lock of the old desk smashed.
She reached up softly and turned with shaking fingers the old-fashioned wooden button that held shut the door of the case beside which she crouched.
She remembered very clearly that it had snapped open before when she was investigating–and with a little click. The door of this case acted almost as though the hinges had springs coiled in them.
At once, when she released the door, it swung open–and in yawning itdidmake a suspicious sound.
Professor Spink started–he had been about to bear down on the bar again. He flashed a look back over his shoulder. But the corner was shrouded in darkness.
’Phemie sighed–this time with intent. She remembered how she had been frightened so herself at her former visit to this office–and she believed the marauder now before her had been partially the cause of her fright.
The jimmy dropped from Spink’s hand and clattered on the floor. He wheeled and shot the white spot of his lamp into the corner.
By great good fortune the ray of the lantern missed the girl; but it struck into the yawning case and intensified the horrid appearance of the skeleton.
For half a minute Spink stood as if frozen in his tracks. If he had known the old doctor had such a possession as the skeleton, he had forgotten it. Nor did he see any part of the case that held it, but just the dangling, grinning Thing itself, revealed by the brilliance of his spotlight, but with a mass of deep shadow surrounding it.
Professor Spink had perhaps had many perilous experiences in his varied life; but never anything just likethis.
He might not have been afraid of a man–or a dozen men; no emergency–which he could talk out of–would have feazed him; but a man doesn’t feel like trying to talk down a skeleton!
He didn’t even stop to pick up the jimmy. He shut off the spotlight; and he stumbled over his own feet in getting to the door.
He was running away!
’Phemie was up immediately and after him. She did not propose for him to get away with that key.
“Stop! stop!” she shouted.
Perhaps Professor Spink verily believed thatthe skeleton in the box called after him–that it was, indeed, in actual pursuit.
He didn’t stop. He didn’t reply. He went across the small anteroom and out of the open green door.
But he had made a lot of noise. A big man with the fear of the supernatural chilling his very soul does not tread lightly.
A frightened ox in the place could have made no more noise. He tumbled over two chairs and finally went full length over an old hassock. He brought up with an awful crash against the big davenport in the corridor, where ’Phemie had tried to keep watch.
And there, when he tried to scramble up, he got entangled in ’Phemie’s quilt and went to the floor again just as a great light flashed into the corridor.
The Colesworths’ door stood open. Out dashed Harris in his pajamas and a robe. He fell upon the big body of Spink as though he were making a “tackle” in a football game.
“Hold him! hold him!” gasped ’Phemie.
“I’ve got him,” declared Harris. “What’s the matter, Miss ’Phemie?”
“He’s got the key,” explained ’Phemie. “Make him give it up.”
“Sure!” said Harris, and dexterously twitched the entangled Spink over on his back.
“By jove!” gasped the young man, standing up. “It’s the professor!”
“But he’s got the key!” the girl reiterated.
“What key?”
“The one to the green door.”
“The door of the east wing?” demanded Harris, turning to stare at the open door, on the threshold of which ’Phemie stood.
“Yes. I lost it. He found it. He’s got it somewhere. I found him trying to break into grandfather’s desk.”
“Bad, bad,” muttered Harris, stepping back and allowing the professor room to sit up. “Your interest in old desks seems to be phenomenal, Professor. Did you expect to find Confederate notes inthisone?”
“Confound you–both!” snarled Spink, slowly rising.
“I don’t mind it,” said Harris, quietly. “But don’t include Miss Bray in your emphatic remarks.Give me that key.”
Harris had something beside a square and determined jaw. He had muscular arms and he looked just then as though he were ready to use them. Spink gave him no provocation.
He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a key.
“Is this the one, Miss ’Phemie?” asked the young fellow.
The girl stepped forward, and in the lamplight from the bedroom doorway identified the key of the green door–with its tag attached.
“All right, then. Go to your room, Professor,” said Harris. “Unless you want him for something further, Miss ’Phemie?”
“My goodness me! No!” cried ’Phemie. “I never want to see him again.”
The professor was already aiming for the stairs, and he quickly disappeared. Harris turned to the still shaking girl.
“What’s it all about, Miss ’Phemie?” he asked.
“That’s what I’d really like to know myself,” she replied, eagerly. “He is after something—”
“So my father says,” interposed Harris. “Father says Spink has something hidden–or has made some discovery–up there in the rocks.”
“I don’t know whether he really has found what he has been looking for—”
“And that is?” suggested Harris.
“I wish we knew!” cried ’Phemie. “But we don’t. At least,Idon’t–nor does Lyddy. But he tried to buy the farm of Aunt Jane once–only he offered a very small price.
“He has been hanging around here for months trying to find something. He got into the old offices to-night, and tried to break into grandfather’s desk—”
Harris nodded thoughtfully.
“We want to look into this,” he said. “I hope you and your sister will not refuse my aid. This Spink may be more of a knave than a fool. Now, go back to bed and–and assure Miss Lyddy that I will be only too glad to help ‘thwart the villain’–if he really has some plan to better himself at your expense.”
’Phemie picked up her quilt, locked the green door, and returned to her room. Throughoutall the excitement Lyddy had slept; but ’Phemie’s coming to bed aroused her.
The younger girl was too shaken by what had transpired to hide her excitement, and Lyddy quickly was broad awake listening to ’Phemie’s story. The latter told all that had happened, including her experiences on the night they had come to Hillcrest. There was no sleep for the two girls just then–not, at least, until they had discussed Professor Spink and the secret of the rocks at the back of the farm, from every possible angle.
“I shall tell him that his absence will be better appreciated than his company–at once!” declared Lyddy, finally.
“But sending him away isn’t going to explain the mystery,” wailed ’Phemie.
In the morning, before many of the other boarders were astir, the two girls caught the oily professor just starting off with a handbag.
“You’d better get the remainder of your baggage ready to go too, sir,” said Lyddy, sharply, “for we don’t want you here.”
“It’s packed, young lady,” returned Professor Spink, with a sneer. “I shall send a man for it from the hotel in town.”
“Well,that’sall right,” quoth the girl, warmly. “You’ve paid your board in advance, and I cannotcomplain. But I would like to have you explain what your actions last night mean?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about. I heard people moving about the house and–naturally–I went to see—”
“Oh, you story-teller!” gasped ’Phemie.
“Ha! I can see that you have both made up your minds not to believe me,” said the odd boarder, haughtily. “Good-morning!”
“I honestly believe we ought to get a warrant out and have him arrested,” observed the older girl, thoughtfully.
“What for? I don’t believe he took anything,” said ’Phemie.
“Well! he was trying to break into grandfather’s desk, just the same,” said Lyddy, and then Harris Colesworth joined them.
Now, Lyddy believed that this young man was altogether too prone to meddle with other people’s affairs; yet ever since the Widow Harrison’s vendue she had been more friendly with Harris.
And now when he began to talk about the professor and his strange actions over night, she could only thank the young chemist for his assistance.
“Of course, we have no idea that that man took anything,” she concluded.
“But you know that he is aftersomething. There is a mystery about his actions–both here at the house and up there in the rocks,” said Harris.
“Well–ye-es.”
“I have been talking to father about it. Father has seen him wandering about there so much. His anxiety not to be seen has piqued father’s curiosity, too. To tell the truth, that is what has kept father so much interested in getting specimens up yonder,” and the young man laughed.
“He tells me that he is sure there can be no great mineral wealth on the farm; yet Spink has found, or is trying to find, some deposit of value here—”
“Do tell him about the bottles, Lyd!” cried ’Phemie.
“Oh, well, that may be nothing—”
“What bottles?” demanded Harris, quickly. “Come on, girls, why not take me fully into your confidence? I might be of some use, you know.”
“But they were nothing but bottles of water,” objected Lyddy.
“Bottles of water?” repeated the young chemist, slowly. “Who had them?”
“Spink,” replied ’Phemie.
“What was he doing with them?”
She told him how they had watched the professor with his inexplicable water bottles.
“Foolish; isn’t it?” asked Lyddy.
“Sure–until we get the clue to it. Foolish to us, but mighty important to Professor Spink. Therefore we ought to look into it. Father doesn’t know anything about this bottle business.”
“Well, it’s Sunday,” sighed ’Phemie. “We can’t do anything about the mystery to-day.”
But her sister was fully roused, and when Lyddy determined on a thing, something usually came of it.
After breakfast, and after she had seen Lucas and his mother and Sairy drive past on their way to chapel, she put on her sunbonnet and started boldly for the neighboring farm, determined to have an interview with Cyrus Pritchett.
Lyddy did not have to go all the way to the Pritchett farm to speak with its proprietor. The farmer was wandering up Hillcrest way, looking at the growing corn, and she met him at the corner where the two farms came together.
“Mr. Pritchett,” she said, abruptly, “I want to ask you a serious question.”
He looked at her in his surly way–from under his heavy brows–and said nothing.
“You knew Mr. Spink when you were both boys; didn’t you?”
The old man’s look sharpened, but he only nodded. Cyrus was very chary of words.
“Mr. Spink left Hillcrest this morning. Last night my sister caught him in the east wing, trying to break open grandfather’s desk with a burglar’s jimmy. I am not at all sure that I shan’t have him arrested, anyway,” said Lyddy, with rising wrath, as she thought of the false professor’s actions.
“Ha!” grunted Mr. Pritchett.
“Now, sir, you knowwhySpink came to Hillcrest,whyhe has been searching up there among the rocks, andwhyhe wanted to get at grandfather’s papers.”
“No, I don’t,” returned the farmer, flatly.
“You and Spink were up at Hillcrest the first night we girls slept there. And you frightened my sister half to death.”
The old man blinked at her, but never said a word.
“And you were there with Spink the evening Lucas took ’Phemie and me down to the Temperance Club–the first time,” said Lyddy, with surety. “You slipped out of sight when we drove into the yard. But it was you.”
“Oh, it was; eh?” growled Mr. Pritchett.
“Yes, sir. And I want to know what it means. What is Spink’s intention? What does he want up here?”
“I couldn’t tell ye,” responded Pritchett.
“You mean you won’t tell me?”
“No. I say what I mean,” growled Pritchett. “Jud Spink never told me what he wanted. I was up to the house with him–yep. I let him go into the cellar that night you say your sister was scart. But I didn’t leave him alone there.”
“Butwhy?” gasped Lyddy.
“I can easy tell you my side of it,” said thefarmer. “Jud and me was something like chums when we was boys. When he come back here a spell ago he heard I was storing something in the cellar under the east wing of the house. He told me he wanted to get into that cellar for something.
“So I met him up there that night. I opened the cellar door and we went down. I kept a lantern there. Then I found out he wanted to go farther. There’s a hatch there in the floor of the old doctor’s workshop—”
“A trap door?”
“Yes.”
“And you let him up there?”
“Naw, I didn’t. He wouldn’t tell me what he wanted in the old doctor’s offices. I stayed there a while with him–us argyfyin’ all the time. Then we come away.”
“And the other time?”
“On Saturday night? I caught him trying to break in at the cellar door. I warned him not to try no more tricks, and I told him if he did I’d make it public. We ain’t been right good friends since,” declared Mr. Pritchett, chewing reflectively on a stalk of grass.
“And you don’t know what it’s all about?” demanded Lyddy, disappointedly.
“No more’n you do,” declared Mr. Pritchett; “or as much.”
“Oh, dear me!” cried Lyddy. “Then I’m just where I was when I started!”
“You wanter watch Jud Spink,” grumbled Mr. Pritchett, rising from the fence-rail on which he had been squatting. “Does he want to buy the farm?”
“Why–I guess not. He only made Aunt Jane a small offer for it.”
“He’ll make a bigger,” said Pritchett, clamping his jaws down tight on that word, and turned on his heel.
She knew there was no use in trying to get more out of him then. Cyrus Pritchett had “said his say.”
When Lyddy got back to the house again she found that Grandma Castle’s folks had come to see her in their big automobile, and she and ’Phemie had to hustle about with Mother Harrison to re-set the enlarged dining table and make other extra preparations for the unexpected visitors.
So busy were they that the girls did not miss Harris Colesworth and his father. They appeared just before the late dinner, rather warm and hungry-looking for the Sabbath, Harris bearing something in his arms carefully wrapped about in newspapers.
“Oh, what have you got?” ’Phemie gasped, having just a minute to speak to the young man.
“Samples of the water Spink has bottled up there,” returned Harris.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. But we’ll find out. Father has an idea, and if it’sso—”
“Oh, what?” cried ’Phemie.
“You just wait!” returned Harris, hurrying away.
“Mean thing!” ’Phemie called after him. “You oughtn’t to have any dinner.”
But there was little chance for Harris to talk with the girls that day. Before the dinner dishes were cleared away, a thunder cloud suddenly topped the ridge, and soon a furious shower fell, with the thunder reverberating from hill to hill, and the lightning flashing dazzlingly.
Behind this shower came a wind-storm that threatened, for a couple of hours, to do much damage. Everybody was kept indoors, and as the night fell dark and threatening the Castles had to be put up until morning.
The wind quieted down at last; so did the nervous members of the party inside Hillcrest. When Lyddy and ’Phemie thought almost everybody else was abed but themselves, and they were about to lock up the house and retire, a candle appeared in the long corridor, and behind the candle was Harris Colesworth, fully dressed.
“Sunday is about over, girls,” he said, “and I can’t possibly sleep. I must do something. Didn’t you tell me, Miss ’Phemie, there were retorts and test-tubes, and the like, in your grandfather’s rooms?”
“In the east wing?” cried Lyddy.
“Yes.”
“Why, the back room was his laboratory. All the things are there,” said the younger girl.
“Let me go in there, then,” said Harris, eagerly. “I want to test these samples of water father and I brought down from the rocks to-day.”
“My mercy me!” gasped ’Phemie. “You don’t suppose there’s gold–or silver–held in solution in that water—”
Lyddy laughed. “How ridiculous!” she said.
“Perhaps not exactly ridiculous,” returned Harris, shaking his head, and smiling.
“Why, Harris Colesworth! who ever heard of such a thing?” cried Lyddy. “I’m no chemist, but I knowthatwould be impossible.”
“Will you let me have the key of the green door?” he demanded.
“Yes!” cried ’Phemie, who had continued to carry it tied around her neck. “But we’ll go with you and see you perform your nefarious rites, Mr. Magician!”
Lyddy went for a lamp and brought it, lighted. “A candle won’t do you much good in there,” she said to Harris.
“Verily, it is so!” admitted the young man, with an humble bow.
“Now, let me go first!” cried ’Phemie. “You’d both be scared stiff by my friend, Mr. Boneypart.”
“Your friendwho?” cried Lyddy.
Harris began to laugh. “So you claim Napoleon as your friend; do you, Miss ’Phemie? What do you suppose old Spink thinks about him?”
’Phemie giggled as she ran ahead with the young man’s candle and closed the door of the skeleton case in the inner office.
“For the simple tests I have to make,” said Harris, as Lyddy’s lamp threw a mellow light into the room, “I see no reason why those old tubes won’t do. Yes! there’s about what I want on that bench.”
“But, oh! the dust!” sighed Lyddy, trying to find a clean place on which to set the lamp.
“Your grandfather must have been something of a chemist as well as a medical sharp,” observed Harris, gazing about. “I’m curious to look this place over.”
“We ought to ask Aunt Jane,” said Lyddy,doubtfully. “We really haven’t any business in here.”
“She’s never told us we shouldn’t come,” ’Phemie returned, quickly.
“Now you young ladies sit down and keep still,” commanded Harris, authoritatively, removing his coat and tying an apron around his waist–the apron being produced from his own pocket.
“Now if you had your straw cuffs you’d look just as you used to—”
“At the shop, eh?” finished Harris, when Lyddy caught herself up quick in the middle of this audible comment.
“Ye-es.”
“So youdidnotice me a bit when you were working around the little kitchen of that flat?” chuckled the young man.
“Well!” gasped Lyddy. “I couldn’t very well help remembering how you looked the night of the fire when you came sliding across to our window on that plank.Thatwas so ridiculous!”
“Just so,” responded Harris, calmly. “Now, please be still, young ladies and–watch the professor!”
And for an hour the girls did actually manage to keep as still as mice. Their friend certainly was absorbed in the work before him. He testedone sample of water after another, and finally went back and did the work all over upon one particular bottle that he had brought down from Spink’s hiding place among the rocks.
“Just as I thought,” he declared, with a satisfied smile. “And just as father suspected. Prepared to be surprised–pleasantly. Your Aunt Jane must be warned not to sell Hillcrest atanyprice–just yet.”
“Oh, why not?” cried ’Phemie.
“Because I believe there is a valuable mineral spring on it. This is a sample of it here. Mineral waters with such medicinal properties as this contains can be put on the market at an enormous profit for the owner of the spring.
“I won’t go into the scientific jargon of it now,” he concluded. “But the spring is here–up there among the rocks. Spink knows where it is. That is his secret.Wemust learn where the water flows from, and likewise, see to it that your Aunt Jane makes no sale of the place until the matter is well thrashed out and the value of the water privilege discovered.”