Now there’s one thing about me, if somebody starts to run I’ve got to
start to run myself. I didn’t stop to think why, but just dug out after
Mr. House and Catty, tearing down the street like a runaway sheep. Mr.
Dunn wasn’t built for running, and I guess he didn’t wake up to what was
going on any more than I did. We just left him flat. For a while he was
out of the story altogether.
Catty headed for the water and then turned off to the left. Mr. House
wasn’t ten feet behind him, and I was right at Mr. House’s heels. It was
dark except where the street lights showed and nobody was on the street
to see the circus. I gained on Mr. House, and he gained some on Catty.
Catty isn’t as good a runner as he ought to be. Running is my strong
point. When a fellow gets scared of as many things as I do, he naturally
learns to use his legs.
About a hundred yards farther Mr. House was so close to Catty he could
almost grab him. I put on a little more steam, and just as he was
reaching out for the back of Catty’s neck I jumped and butted him in the
hip. Somehow he didn’t grab Catty just then. Things happened to his
feet. He tried to twist his right leg around his left leg, and then he
tried to step on his right foot with his left foot, and then he turned
himself into a flying machine. I never saw a man who could fly so far as
he did without any wings. No, sir. He left the ground and soared, and I
thought he wasn’t ever coming down. But he did—eventually—all spraddled
out in the street. I didn’t stop to ask him what he meant by such
antics. Uh-uh. I kept on going after Catty.
We got down to the dock, still going strong. Right ahead of us, maybe a
hundred yards out, we could see the riding light of the _Albatross_.
Catty never stopped, he took a header into the water, and I was right
behind him. I don’t know whether Mr. House got up to chase us or not.
And we swam.
The next I knew we were climbing up the ladder to the deck of the
_Albatross_, and for the first time in two or three days, I felt safe.
Dawn was just beginning to show in the east, but I wasn’t interested in
dawns. What I wanted was coffee and a place to sleep.
“Well,” says I to Catty, “what kind of a circus was that?”
“I don’t know,” says he, “but I saw Mr. House wanted this chart case, so
I started. It wasn’t any time to ask him why or what ailed him. I lit
out.”
“You did,” says I.
“What become of him?” says he.
“I turned him into an airship,” says I. “Just as he was going to grab
you, I butted him—and he was all through running.”
“Good for you,” says Catty. “We better wake somebody up. No telling
what’ll happen now.”
But we didn’t have to do any waking. Rameses III poked his head above
the decks all full of sleep and irritation.
“Hey,” says he, “who be you, and what in tunket be you boardin’ this
ship fer?”
“It’s us,” says Catty.
“It better be,” says he. “Where you been, and what you been up to. Mr.
Browning’s most crazy. Figgered you was drownded.”
“We’ve been busy,” says Catty. “Where’s Mr. Browning.”
“Here I am, young man,” says Mr. Browning’s voice. “Now, suppose you
give an account of yourselves.”
“While we’re giving it,” says Catty, “have Rameses III get us a cup of
coffee.”
“I cook meals at mealtimes,” says Rameses III, as cross as a snapping
turtle.
“I guess we’d better feed them,” says Mr. Browning. “Now come below and
tell me what you’ve been doing with yourselves. I never saw such a pair
of kids.”
“We’ve been in a mutiny,” says Catty.
“Mutiny!”
“Yes, and we rescued Mr. Dunn and Mr. House....”
“Hold on there. Start at the beginning.”
“Well, we figured we ought to get that treasure for Mr. Topper, seeing
as we gave away the place where it was hid. How is Mr. Topper?”
“Coming along fine,” says Mr. Browning.
“That’s good.... So we went over to scout around the enemy’s camp. We
cut their wire and got inside, and hid under a tarpaulin. The first
thing we knew the men mutinied.”
“They what?”
“Mutinied. Honest. They wanted the treasure, so they seized the yacht
and everything, and started to dig for gold. Then they caught Wee-wee
and me, and tied us and Mr. Dunn and Mr. House all in a tent.”
“Land o’ Goshen!” says Mr. Browning.
“So Wee-wee and I rescued Mr. Dunn and Mr. House, and got them to
Nantucket a few minutes ago, and then Mr. House started to chase me, and
Wee-wee butted him, and we dove off the dock, and here we are.”
“What made him start to chase you after you’d rescued him?”
“I dropped the chart case, and he saw it.”
“What chart case?”
“This one,” says Catty, and he picked the tin cylinder off the floor and
showed it to Mr. Browning.
I thought Mr. Browning would jump through the ceiling.
“Where’d you get this?” he says.
“Oh, we were poking around the hole where they’d been digging for the
treasure, and we found it. I kind of wanted it for a souvenir, so we
took it away and hid it. That was a day or so ago. We buried it in the
sand near a fish shanty. Then, last night, we hid from the mutineers in
the same shanty, and we went out and dug it up. Pretended it was full of
sacred jewels.”
“You got this where they were digging for treasure?”
“Yes.”
“Um....” He started to take the cap off the cylinder and then he pulled
a thick roll of paper out of it. “Doesn’t look like charts, does it? So
House saw this and chased you?” He started to laugh. “If this don’t beat
the Dutch. Right under their noses....”
“What is it?” says Catty.
“Look and see,” says Mr. Browning.
We did, and it was just sheets of paper covered all over with figures
and funny marks that didn’t mean a thing.
“Looks like a crazy man wrote it,” says Catty.
“He didn’t,” says Mr. Browning. “A very sane man wrote it. This is
cipher.”
“What for? Can you read it?”
“No,” says Mr. Browning, “because Mr. House has the key.”
Then he started to laugh again and he laughed and laughed. “You’ve
really had this thing for days! Oh, that’s too good! Didn’t know what it
was!... Oh, my. Well, that’s our fault. We should have told you all
about things. Can’t you guess what it is?”
“No, sir.”
“This,” says Mr. Browning, “is the treasure.”
“Aw, shucks,” says Catty.
“It is, and there aren’t many treasures worth more money—if we only had
House’s key to the cipher. As it is, maybe well have to divide with him.
If we just had that key. But we haven’t.”
Just then Catty looked over at the table, and there lay Mr. House’s
black leather document case.
“Where’d you find that?” says Catty.
“I never saw it before. What is it?”
Rameses III came in with the coffee and heard what Mr. Browning said. “I
found it,” says he. “’Twas under the seat of the starboard dinghy.
Picked it out last night.”
“And we looked high and low for it,” says Catty.
“What is it?” says Mr. Browning.
“Mr. House’s document bag. When we were prisoners on the _Porpoise_, we
hooked it and threw it aboard the _Albatross_.”
Then Mr. Browning did get excited. He jerked the case open and spilled
out the things in it. One of them was a kind of a note book and he
pounced on it with a yell.
“You can’t beat it,” says he. “You kids’ll be the death of me. Not only
do you carry off the treasure right under the noses of fifty men, but
you gobble onto the key to the cipher.”
“Honest?” says Catty.
“Honest Injun.”
“And that thing is worth money?”
“It’s worth more than all the diamonds you could pack in that case.”
“Mr. Dunn said the treasure was worth a million.”
“It is—and then some,” says Mr. Browning.
“But that—it’s nothing but a scribbling.”
“It’s the most valuable scribbling in America.”
“What is it?”
“Formulae,” says Mr. Browning.
“What are they?” says I.
“Just like recipes,” says Catty, “for making biscuits or pie.”
“Exactly,” says Mr. Browning, “only these are recipes for making
dyes—German dyes. All the world has to go to Germany for its fine
colors. We don’t know how to make them. And this cipher gives all the
directions. Anybody who has this can manufacture dyes as good as are
made in Germany, and make so much money he won’t know what to do with
it.”
“How did it ever get buried out there?” says Catty.
“Do you remember that super-submarine Germany sent over with a cargo to
New London? Well, on board that was an American who had lived in Germany
for years. He was one of the crew. But he was a good American, and,
somehow, he got hold of these formulae, and was trying to find a way to
smuggle them across the ocean.... He waited his chance and shipped on
that submarine. One night the ship was running along on the surface, and
he saw land. An officer said it was Nantucket. So the man slipped below,
got this case, and when he thought nobody was looking, he slid overboard
and swam for it. He knew it would be only a matter of days before the
German secret service got after him, so he buried the formulae where you
found them.”
“But how did Mr. House get the key to the cipher?”
“Somehow the American got acquainted with him, but never gave him his
whole confidence. As I get the story, the American was killed, maybe by
the German secret service, and House found the key to the cipher in his
pocket.... The American was Mr. Topper’s brother.”
“Oh,” says Catty, “so Mr. Topper is really entitled to the treasure,
fair and square?”
“He is,” says Mr. Browning.
“Well,” says Catty, “I’m glad he’s got it.”
“What d’you suppose the enemy’ll do now?” says I.
“We won’t give them a chance to do much,” says Mr. Browning. “I’ll get
word ashore to Topper. This will do more to make him well than all the
doctors in the country. Then we’ll hoist anchor and get this stuff in
the strongest safety deposit vault in New York. I won’t feel safe till
it’s there.”
------------------------------------
Well, that’s about all there is to the story, except that we got the
formulae safely to New York, and Mr. Topper got well, and Mr. Dunn came
to see Mr. Browning and Mr. Topper and offered them a million dollars
cash for the formulae, or he offered to finance the manufacture of it
and give them half the stock. But they wouldn’t do business with him.
No, sir. They didn’t like his style.
They started right out and formed a company of their own, and right now
they’re building factories and putting in machinery. In a couple of
months the business will be going, and they say it is going to make
everybody mixed up in it as rich as all git out.
But here’s the best of the whole business. One day, after Catty and I
got home, Mr. Browning and Mr. Topper got off the train and came to
Catty’s house, and they took a couple of envelopes out of their pocket
and gave one to each of us.
“What’s this?” says Catty.
“Your share of the treasure,” says Mr. Browning. “We would have lost it
if it hadn’t been for you boys. We owe the whole thing to you.”
“But we just did it for fun,” says Catty.
“You’ll find it the most profitable fun you ever had,” says Mr. Topper.
“If this business goes the way we know it is going to go, this stock
we’re turning over to you will fix you for life. It’ll give you a
handsome income as long as you live.”
“No,” says Catty. “You mean we’ll be rich?”
“Pretty close to it,” says Mr. Browning.
“Don’t that beat the Dutch,” says Catty. “The money’s fine, but I
wouldn’t have missed the show for twice what we’ll get out of it.”
Which was just like him. As for me—well, I can do without so much
excitement. But I never will so long as I chum around with Catty Atkins.
The End
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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