ALEXANDER ENGAGES IN SOME HISTORICAL RESEARCH
When the chorus of surprise and bewilderment and indignation had at
last subsided, they fell to discussing in its every detail this new
phase of the journal and its abrupt ending.
"I tell you," announced Alexander, thumping a sofa-cushion to emphasize
his remark, "something _happened_ to that kid just as she got to the
last,—something happened, sure as wash-day! And it wasn't anything
pleasant, either! Do you get me?"
"You must be right!" agreed Corinne. "When you think of what _was_
going to happen the next day, and the danger she was in, and the fact
that this journal is torn in two, and all that, I'm positive something
terrible must have taken place just then. Poor little Alison! How are
we _ever_ going to know what it was, or whether she ever got out of
it all right and got back home! If the end of the other half of the
journal was maddening, this is about forty-five times worse! I feel as
if I'd go absolutely _crazy_ if this mystery isn't cleared up!"
"There's one thing you must remember," suggested the practical Bess.
"History tells us that the poison plot was discovered in time and
didn't do Washington any harm; and that Phœbe Fraunces gave him the
warning, and he just cleared up the whole thing, and hanged the worst
one of the conspirators,—whoever he might be! Now, if that's the case,
don't you think we could take it for granted that Alison's affairs
turned out all right, too?"
"Not necessarily!" retorted Corinne. "Remember, also, that Washington
didn't know anything about her, and that that horrid steward had been
watching her and plotting about her; and so had Corbie, too. Who knows
but what they took her and carried her off before the thing was to take
place, in order to have her out of the way!"
"And there's another thing," added Margaret. "Do you remember what I
told you Mother said about that trunk of hers? It was found floating
around in an old wreck. Now how did it get there? If there was a wreck
and she was on it, she was probably drowned and never got back to
Bermuda alive. But how did she come to be on a vessel with her trunk if
she had been captured by the steward? Did he put her there?"
"Maybe she wasn't on that vessel at all!" was the contribution Jess
made to the problem. "Somebody else may have taken possession of her
trunk for all you can tell. A trunk is something _anybody_ can use!"
"But did you ever hear of such a maddening thing as that journal
breaking off just the minute she was going to tell where she'd hidden
the signet!" exclaimed Corinne in thorough exasperation. "Why couldn't
it have gone on just a second longer—at least till she'd had time
for a tiny hint! And, see here! Do you realize that she was actually
talking to _us_ (though she didn't know it) when she begs the person
who finds and deciphers this journal in the future to find the signet
and return it to her people?"
"Why, that's _so_!" cried Margaret in a tone of hushed awe. "It didn't
strike me at first. She's actually speaking to _us_—for we _must_ be
the first ones who have read this journal! Isn't it amazing!"
"You don't know whether we are or not," contradicted Bess, with her
usual cold common sense. "Lots of people may have seen it before we
did, and found the signet, too."
"I don't think it's likely," argued Corinne, coming to Margaret's
defense. "And besides, how could they find the signet when she didn't
even have a chance to tell where it was! No, I feel quite sure we're
the first; but how are we ever going to know where she hid it? And even
if we _did_ know, would we be able to find it after the changes that
have come in all these years?"
"Then too," put in Jess, "there's a chance that Alison got out of the
trouble all right, anyhow, and took the signet back to her grandfather
herself. How are you going to tell?"
"There's one thing you all seem to have forgotten," suggested
Alexander. "And it's the biggest boost of the whole outfit! We are wise
to her last name—_Trenham_. Now you, Corinne,—you've been down there
to that little old joint, Bermuda. Did you ever hear of any one by the
name of Trenham?"
"No, I didn't. Of course, I never inquired particularly, not knowing
anything about this, then. But I never heard that name. There's a very
common one on the island that's a good deal like it—Trimmingham—but
that doesn't help much. It probably isn't the same, though the English
do have the funniest way of shortening their names and pronouncing them
in queer ways!"
"Wrong trail!" exclaimed Alexander, briefly. Then, suddenly turning to
Margaret, he added:
"Here, kiddie! Hand me that journal-thing you've doped out. I want
to give it the once-over!" He studied it thoughtfully for several
minutes, tugging viciously the while at a long lock of red hair that
always hung over his eyes. The rest all kept very quiet, watching him
expectantly. Presently he issued his ultimatum:
"There's one other piece of business that you all seem to have pretty
well given the cold shoulder—this song and dance about some plot in
Bermuda that the Alison kid says she was mixed up in. Have you ever
thought of doping that out?"
"No, we haven't," admitted Corinne. "I did think once of hunting it up,
but the whole thing was so awfully vague that there didn't seem to be
any use. What could you hunt up, anyway? You'd have to read up a lot
of Bermuda history, and even then you probably wouldn't strike a thing
that had any bearing on it!"
"You never can tell!" remarked the boy, wisely. "Me for this job,
from now on! Where's that library joint you get all your books from,
Corinne? Little Alexander's going to join the army of high-brows!"
"You can take my card and use it, Alexander, or I'll get you the books
myself," Corinne kindly offered.
"Thanks awfully, but nothing doing!" he returned. "This kid gets right
on the job himself when he strikes the trail. All I want to know is how
you break into the place. If you put me wise to _that_, yours truly
will do the rest!"
In the course of the next few days, Alexander became a duly enrolled
member of the nearest public library, and his family was edified
to behold him deeply immersed in the most unusual occupation of
literary and historical research. As he ordinarily touched no volume
of any nature except his school-books (and these only under severe
compulsion!), the spectacle was all the more amazing. Baseball and
other absorbing occupations of his street life were temporarily
forgotten. He would lie for hours flat on his stomach on the couch, his
heels in the air, pushing back his rebellious lock of hair, and mulling
over the various odd volumes he had brought home from the library.
At intervals he could be heard ejaculating: "Gee!" "Hot stuff!" and
remarks of a similar nature.
But of his discoveries, if indeed he had made any, he would have
nothing to say, conceding only that, when he had found anything of
interest, a meeting of the Antiquarian Club should be called, and he
would then make his disclosures in proper business form. This was
absolutely all they could draw from him. The twins reported to Corinne
at school that Alexander was certainly doing (for him!) a remarkable
amount of reading; and it was not all about Bermuda, either, as they
had discovered from the titles of his books. American history also
figured in his list, and other volumes whose bearing on the subject
they could not even guess. They also expressed their wonder at the
curious change they had noticed in his manner toward them.
"Oh, Alexander's _all right_!" Corinne assured them. "You've always
misjudged that little fellow, girls! He's got heaps of good in him! Of
course, he's a little rough and slangy, and a terrible tease, but most
boys _are_, at his age; and some are lots worse. He's a gentleman at
heart, though. You can tell that by the way he treats Margaret. He's
always just as gentle with her! But you've never taken him right. You
get awfully annoyed when he teases you, and that's just exactly what he
wants; it tickles him to pieces to see you get mad! If you'd only take
him up good-naturedly and give him as good as he gives you, you'd find
yourselves getting along heaps better!"
"That's exactly what you do, I guess!" remarked Bess, ruefully. "And I
can see that he thinks you're fine. He said the other night that you
were 'some good sport,' and that's praise—from him! I'm going to try
and act differently toward him from now on. But, oh! his language is so
dreadful and slangy! It irritates me to pieces, and I just can't help
snapping at him when he talks that way!"
"Do you know," said Corinne, "I've noticed a queer thing about him.
When he's very much in earnest and forgets himself completely,
especially in this mystery business, he hardly uses any slang at
all,—just talks like any one else! I believe he'll grow out of all
that, later, when he's learned that it isn't the way the worth-while
people talk. But he's bright—bright as a steel trap; and think where
we should have been in this affair if it hadn't been for him!"
Meanwhile, all unconscious that he was a subject of such animated
discussion, Alexander was pursuing his researches in grim earnest; and
at length, in the course of a week or so, he announced that a meeting
might be called and he would make his report. When they had gathered
expectantly the following afternoon, he came in with an armful of books
and settled down on the floor before the open fire.
"Now, don't go boosting your hopes sky-high!" he remarked, noting the
tense expectancy of their attitudes. "I ain't doped out anything so
very wonderful—"
"Oh, _haven't_ you, Alexander?" exclaimed Margaret, disappointedly. "I
thought you must have found something _great_, the way you've been
grunting and chuckling and talking to yourself all this time when you
read in the evenings!"
"Sorry to give you the cold shower, kiddie! I've done the best I could;
and if I was chuckling and grunting, it was because I'd struck some
ripping hot stuff in the way of adventures. Say! that Bermuda history
is _some_ little jig-time! I started to wade through it, thinking
it'd be as dry as tinder, and you can knock me down with a plate of
pancakes, but it was rich! Started right in with the greatest old
shipwreck, when old Admiral Somers and his men got chucked off on this
uninhabited island! Gee! it was as good as 'Robinson Crusoe,' that
we're reading about in school. Then they had a rip-snorting old mutiny,
and started in to build another ship, and all that sort of thing! And
later on, after they'd gone home to England and come back and settled
in a colony there, they started up some witchcraft, and ducked a lot of
gabby dames and hung some more, and—"
"But, Alexander," interrupted the impatient Margaret, "you can tell us
all about that some other time. What _I_ want to know is, did you find
out _anything_ that seemed to be connected with our mystery?"
"That's right, kid! We'll get down to business, and do our spieling
afterward. Well, I didn't strike a blooming thing that seemed to be
even a forty-second cousin to our affairs till I got down to the year
1775; and then I hit the trail of a piker called Governor Bruère, who
was the reigning high Mogul in Bermuda just then. He was some pill,
too, you can take it from me! And everybody seemed to hate him like
poison, he was such a grouch. Well, it was just about the time when
the Revolution busted out in the U. S. Washington was up there around
Boston, keeping the British on the jump. But he was scared stiff,
because gunpowder was so short. There were only about nine rounds left
for each American soldier. But they were chucking a good bluff, and of
course the British weren't wise to it.
"Just about then, somebody put Washington on to the fact that down in
Bermuda there was a whole mint of gunpowder concealed somewhere in the
government grounds, and it wouldn't be so hard to get hold of it. At
the same time, too, the Bermudians were pretty nearly starving, because
they got all their food supplies from America, and since the war broke
out, England had cut them off at the meter. So Washington doped it out
that here was a good chance to make an exchange. He sent a couple of
fellers to tell the Bermudians that, if they'd give him that powder,
he'd send them a whole outfit of eats. And you'll admit that was square
enough!
"But wouldn't this jar you! When they got there, they found the
whole place up in the air and the governor sizzling around like a
cannon-cracker, because some one had got in ahead of them, stole the
powder, and carted it off to America! They just turned tail and beat
it for home and mother as quick as they could, before the governor got
wind of their business! So long as Washington got the powder, they
should worry!
"But the how of it was like this: a fellow named Captain Ord,—or some
say it was one called George Tucker, but most think it was Ord,—had it
all fixed up with some Bermudian friends that he should get the powder
on the q. t., load it on board his ship, and beat it while the going
was good. The powder-magazine was in the government grounds at a dump
called St. George's, and Governor Bruère always slept with the keys
under his pillow. Well, some smooth guy managed to swipe those keys one
dark night, and they rolled down no end of barrels to a place called
Tobacco Rocks, loaded 'em on whale-boats, and rowed out with 'em to
the ship that was anchored off Mangrove Bay, wherever that may be, and
Captain Ord was off with it before morning. Well, you can take it from
me that, when Bruère got wise to what had happened, he went up in the
air! He was a hot sketch, and he made it warm for the Bermudians; but
it didn't do any good, as nobody knew much about the business—or if
they did, they wouldn't tell!
"Anyhow, Washington got his powder, and it's on record that afterward
he sent a heap of swell eats down to pay for it! Gee! wouldn't I like
to have been in on that fun though—the night they swiped the loot!"
"But, Alexander, I don't see what all this has got to do with Alison!"
cried Margaret. "There's nothing in it about a girl, or the least thing
that concerns her!"
"That's just where I knew you'd throw me down!" remarked Alexander.
"I told you to begin with that I hadn't found anything positive about
it, didn't I? Well, this is the _only thing_ that even passed it on
the other side of the gangway! That Alison kid keeps talking about a
plot in Bermuda and something that happened that the government didn't
cotton to, and there isn't another blooming hook to hang your hat on
but that, unless it's something that isn't spoken of or known about in
history. Then there's one other reason. She speaks of some one called
H., and his uncle, and his uncle's ship, and how they were afraid to go
back to Bermuda because one of the sailors had turned piker and given
way on them. Of course, it's all guesswork! And what in thunder a kid
like Alison could have to do with such a piece of work, beats me! But
there you are! I'm done!"
There was considerable disappointment in the Antiquarian Club, when
Alexander had ceased, that nothing more definite had been unearthed
by him. It seemed highly unlikely to them all that this strange
little historical incident could have any bearing on the affairs of
the mysterious "lass" whose secret they had stumbled upon. None but
himself appeared to put any faith in the connection between the two,
and they discussed it for a time hotly. At last Corinne, perceiving
that Alexander was becoming piqued that his efforts were not more
appreciated, declared:
"I think you've done splendidly, Alec, in discovering anything at all,
among such a lot of uncertain stuff; and perhaps we'll come across
something later that will make us sure. But you seem to have been
reading quite a pile of books. Are they all about Bermuda?"
"Nope! Not on your tintype! There are precious few about Bermuda alone,
anyway. So after I'd chewed up what there was, I took to doping out
American history, and I came across some hot stuff there, too! The main
guy over there in the library advised me to read Washington Irving's
'Life of George Washington' when I told her I was tracking down
American history. And say, that's going some, too—in spots! I fell
over something last night that'll make you all put on the glad smile—I
found out the name of the feller that was soft on Phœbe!"
"Oh, what is it?" they shouted in a satisfying chorus.
"Thomas Hickey!" announced Alexander, proudly.
"But how do you know?"
"'Cause that's the name of the feller Washington hung! It was a member
of his life-guard who was one of the conspirators!"
"Alexander, you're _some_ trump!" declared Corinne. "In all my
browsing, I never came across _that_!"