WORKING AT THE RIDDLE
But Doris did not have an opportunity to communicate her idea on the
following morning, nor for several days after that. A violent three or
four days' northeaster had set in, and for forty-eight hours after their
expedition to Slipper Point, the river was swept by terrific gales and
downpouring sheets of rain. Doris called up Sally by telephone from the
hotel, on the second day, for she knew that Sally would very likely be
at the Landing, where there was a telephone connection.
"Can't you get well wrapped up and come up here to see me a while?" she
begged. "I'd go to you, but Mother won't let me stir out in this awful
downpour."
"I could, I s'pose, but, honestly, I'd rather not," replied Sally,
doubtfully. "I don't much like to come up to the hotel. I guess you
know why." Doris did know.
"But you can come up to my room, and we'll be alone there," she
suggested. "I've so much I want to talk to you about. I've thought of
something else,--a dandy scheme." The plan sorely tempted Sally, but a
new thought caused her to refuse once more.
"I'd have to bring Genevieve," she reminded Doris, "and she mightn't
behave, and--well, I really guess I'd better not."
"Perhaps tomorrow will be nice again," ended Doris, hopefully, as she
hung up the receiver.
But the morrow was not at all "nice." On the contrary, it was, if
anything, worse than ever. After the morning mail had come, however,
Doris excitedly called up Sally again.
"You simply must come up here, if it's only for a few minutes!" she told
her. "I've something awfully important that I just must talk to you
about and show you." The "show you" was what convinced Sally.
"All right," she replied. "I'll come up for half an hour. I'll leave
Genevieve with Mother. But I can't stay any longer."
She came, not very long after, and Doris rushed to meet her from the
back porch, for she had walked up the road. Removing her dripping
umbrella and mackintosh, Doris led her up to her room, whispering
excitedly:
"I don't know what you'll think of what I've done, Sally, but one thing
I'm certain of. It can't do any harm and it may do some good."
"What in the world is it?" questioned Sally, wonderingly.
Doris drew her into her own room and shut the door. The communicating
door to her mother's room was also shut, so they were quite alone. When
Sally was seated, Doris laid a bulky bundle in her lap.
"What is it?" queried Sally, wide-eyed, wondering what all this could
have to do with their mystery.
"I'll tell you," said Doris. "If it hadn't been for this awful storm,
I'd have told you and asked you about it next morning, but I didn't want
to over the 'phone. So I just took things in my own hands, and here's
the result." Sally was more bewildered than ever.
"What's the result?"
"Why, just this," went on Doris. "That night, after we'd been to Slipper
Point, I lay awake again the longest time, thinking and thinking. And
suddenly a bright idea occurred to me. You know, whenever I'm worried or
troubled or puzzled, I always go to Father and ask his advice. I can go
to Mother too, but she's so often ill and miserable, and I've got into
the habit of not bothering her with things. But Father's always ready,
and he's never failed me yet. So I got to wondering how I could get some
help from him in this affair without, of course, his suspecting anything
about the secret part of it. And then, all of a sudden, I thought
of--_books_! There must be _some_ books that would help us,--books that
would give us some kind of information that might lead to a clue.
"So next morning, very first thing, I sent a special delivery letter to
Father asking him to send me down _at once_ any books he could find
about _pirates_ and such things. And, bless his heart, he sent me down a
whole bundle of them that just got here this morning!"
Sally eyed them in a sort of daze. "But--but won't your father guess
just what we're up to?" she ventured, dubiously. "He will ask you what
you want them for, won't he?"
"No, indeed," cried Doris. "That's just the beauty of Father. He'd never
ask me _why_ I want them in a hundred years. If I choose to explain to
him, all right, and if I don't he knows that's all right too, for he
trusts me absolutely, not to do anything wrong. So, when he comes down,
as I expect he will in a week or so, he'll probably say, 'Pirates all
right, daughter?' and that's all there'll be to it." Sally was at last
convinced, though she marvelled inwardly at this quite wonderful species
of father.
"But now, let's look at the books," went on Doris. "I'm perfectly
certain we'll find something in them that's going to give us a lift."
She unwrapped the bundle and produced three volumes. One, a very large
one, was called "The Book of Buried Treasure." Another, "Pirates and
Buccaneers of Our Own Coasts," and, last but not least, "The Life of
Captain Kidd." Sally's eyes fairly sparkled, especially at the last, and
they hurriedly consulted together as to who should take which books
first. At length it was decided that Sally take the "Buried Treasure
Book," as it was very bulky, and Doris would go over the other two. Then
they would exchange. This ought to keep them fully occupied till fair
weather set in again, after which, armed with so much valuable
information, they would again tackle their problem on its own ground--at
Slipper Point.
It was two days later when they met again. There had not been an
opportunity to exchange the books, but on the first fair morning Sally
and Genevieve rowed up in "45," and Doris leaped in exclaiming:
"Let's go right up to Slipper Point. I believe I've got on the track of
something--at last! What have you discovered, Sally?"
"Nothing at all,--just nothing," declared Sally rather discouragingly.
"It was an awfully interesting book, though. I just devoured it. But it
didn't tell a thing that would help us out. And I've made up my mind,
since reading it, that we might as well give up any idea of Captain Kidd
having buried anything around here. That book said he never buried a
thing, except one place on Long Island, and that was all raked up long
ago. All the rest about him is just silly nonsense and talk. He never
_was_ much of a pirate, anyway!"
"Yes, I discovered the same thing in the book I had about him," agreed
Doris. "We'll have to give up Captain Kidd, but there were some pirates
who did bury somewhere, and one I discovered about did a lot of work
right around these shores."
"He _did_?" cried Sally, almost losing her oars in her excitement. "Who
was he? Tell me--quick!"
"His name was Richard Worley," answered Doris. "He was a pirate about
the year 1718, the same time that Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet were
'pirating' too."
"Yes, I know about them," commented Sally. "I read of them in that book.
But it didn't say anything about Worley."
"Well, he was only a pirate for six weeks before he was captured," went
on Doris, "but in that time he managed to do a lot, and it was all along
the coast of New Jersey here. Now why isn't it quite possible that he
sailed in here with his loot and made that nice little cave and buried
his treasure, intending to come back some time. He was captured finally
down off the coast of the Carolinas, but he might easily have disposed
of his booty here before that."
Sally was filled with elated certainty. "It surely must have been he!"
she cried. "For there was some one,--that's certain, or there wouldn't
have been so much talk about buried treasure. And he's the likeliest
person to have made that cave."
"There's just one drawback that I can see," Doris reminded her. "It was
an awfully long time ago,--1718, nearly two hundred years. Do you think
it would all have lasted so long? The wood and all, I mean?"
"That cedar wood lasts forever," declared Sally. "He probably wrecked
some vessel and then took the wood and built this cave with it. Probably
he built it because he thought it would be a good place to hide in some
time, if they got to chasing him. No one in all the world would ever
find him there."
"That's a good idea!" commented Doris. "I'd been wondering why a pirate
should take such trouble to fix up a place like that. They usually just
dug a hole and put in the treasure and then killed one of their own
number and buried his body on top of it. I hope to goodness that Mr.
Richard Worley didn't do that pleasant little trick! When we find the
treasure, we don't want any skeletons mixed up with it."
They both laughed heartily over the conceit, and rowed with increased
vigor as Slipper Point came in sight.
"You said you had an idea about that queer paper we found, too," Sally
reminded her. "What was it?"
"Oh, I don't know whether it amounts to much, and I'll try to explain it
later. The first thing to do is to try to discover, if we can, some idea
of a date, or something connected with this cave, so that we can see if
we are on the right track. I've been thinking that if that wood was from
an old, wrecked vessel, we might perhaps find something on it somewhere
that would give us a clue."
"That's so," said Sally. "I hadn't thought of that before."
With this in mind, they entered the cave, lit the candle, seated
Genevieve on the chair with a bag of candy in her lap for solace, and
proceeded to their task.
"The only way to find anything is just to scrape off all we can of this
mold," announced Sally. "You take one side, and I'll take the other and
we'll use these sticks. It won't be an easy job."
It was not. For over an hour they both dug away, scraping off what they
could of the moss and fungus that covered the cedar planks. Doris made
so little progress that she finally procured the ancient knife from the
table and worked more easily with that implement. Not a vestige nor a
trace of any writing was visible anywhere.
When the arms of both girls had begun to ache cruelly, and Genevieve had
grown restless and was demanding to "go out," Sally suggested that they
give it up for the day. But just at that moment, working in a far
corner, Doris had stumbled upon a clue. The rusty knife had struck a
curious knobby break in the wood, which, on further scraping, developed
the shape of a raised letter "T." At her exultant cry, Sally rushed over
and frantically assisted in the quest. Scraping and digging for another
fifteen minutes revealed at last a name, raised on the thick planking,
which had evidently been the stern name-plate of the vessel. When it all
stood revealed, the writing ran:
_The Anne Arundel_
_England 1843._
The two stood gazing at it a moment in puzzled silence. Then Doris threw
down her knife.
"It's all off with the pirate theory, Sally!" she exclaimed.
"Why so?" demanded her companion, mystified for the moment.
"Just because," answered Doris, "if Richard Worley lived in 1718, he
couldn't possibly have built a cave with the remains of a vessel dated
1843, and neither could any other pirate, for there weren't any more
pirates as late as 1843. Don't you see?"
Sally did see and her countenance fell.
"Then what in the world _is_ the mystery?" she cried.
"That we've got to find the answer to in some other way," replied Doris,
"for we're as much in the dark as ever!"