Ruth reached over and gently took from Neale’s hand the latest bit of
correspondence from Hop Wong. She read it slowly.
“What do you think it means?” she asked, of no one in particular.
“He wants you and Agnes to meet him at midnight! Just fancy that!” cried
Neale indignantly. “He has nerve! I’ll say that much!” He would have
said a great deal more, evidently, but Luke intervened.
“I think he must mean ‘meet’ where he says ‘met,’” was the opinion
advanced by the young collegian. “You girls have never met him, have
you—using the word in its past tense?”
“Never, except perhaps to go occasionally to his laundry,” Agnes
answered.
“But what’s this riddle about a boy-pain tree in ‘glarden,’ by which, I
suppose, he means ‘garden’?” asked Hal.
“That _is_ a puzzler—boy-pain tree,” mused Neale. “I guess we’d better
take it for granted that Hop Wong has a gone crazy and let it go at
that.”
“No!” exclaimed Luke. “I’m beginning to understand it. You have an apple
tree in your garden, haven’t you?” he asked Ruth.
“You ought to know—you and Ruth have sat under it often enough!”
chuckled Agnes.
“That will do, Aggie. This may be serious,” said Ruth rebukingly, but in
a quiet voice. “Yes, there is an apple tree,” she went on.
“Then that’s what Hop Wong means by ‘boy-pain’ tree,” declared Luke.
“Where’s the connection?” demanded Neale.
“I see!” exclaimed Hal. “And if you need a dictionary, Neale, to trace
the parallel between boys and pain and an apple tree——”
“Oh, now I see!” laughed Neale. “Hop Wong didn’t know how to spell apple
tree, but he knew the effects of green apples on boys, and he went from
cause to effect. Pretty good, that!”
“Do you suppose that’s what it is?” asked Nally.
“It would seem so,” answered Luke. “Now the question is—do you girls
think it worth while to humor him, to meet him in this midnight tryst?
You needn’t be afraid, if that’s what you’re thinking of,” he went on,
as he saw Ruth about to demur. “We boys will all be within call.”
“Brave boys!” joked Agnes, and Ruth gave her another warning look.
“What do you think, Luke?” Ruth appealed to her friend. “Would you if
you were us?—I mean Agnes and myself. Of course we won’t ask Nally to
share the danger.”
“Oh, I like _that_!” cried the Boston girl. “Here you invite me to the
Corner House, and as soon as a first-class mystery—better than any
moving picture—crops up, you want to shut me out! No, indeed! Let me
help you keep the tryst. Hop Wong won’t know but what I am a regular
Corner House girl.”
“Yes, I don’t suppose three will make any difference,” replied Luke.
“Hop Wong isn’t likely to be fussy about that. Well, will you go? You
have about an hour to make up your mind,” he went on, as he looked at
his watch, noting that it was nearly eleven o’clock.
“Let’s consider it a moment,” suggested Ruth, and then they talked it
all over again from the time Sammy had first summoned them to meet Hop
Wong in the garden, through the flight of the Chinese and his response
to Luke’s note.
“If I only had an inkling of what it’s all about,” observed Ruth, “I
wouldn’t mind going. But I can’t imagine how Hop Wong can put us in the
way of making a great deal of money.”
“The big point with him, I imagine,” said Neale, “is that he wants a
hundred dollars for himself. Maybe after he gets those he thinks he can
invest it in a Chinese lottery for you and win the capital prize.”
“No, I hardly think that,” replied Ruth. “Well, we’ll take a chance,
girls,” she decided. “With the boys stationed in the bushes near at hand
there can be no danger. We’ll see what Hop Wong wants—will you?” and she
turned to Nalbro and Agnes.
“I’m game!” announced the Boston girl.
“And far be it from me to be a spoil-sport,” declared Agnes. “Come on.”
“Don’t be in too much of a rush; you have a little time yet,” announced
Luke. “We’ll just scout around the apple tree and seek good places for
us to hide. Come on, boys.”
He went out with Neale and Hal. Ruth looked at her sister and guest.
“Nervous?” questioned Nalbro.
“No.”
“Neither am I! Isn’t it thrilling?”
“It may be too much so,” said Ruth grimly.
They sat and talked in the now silent Corner House until the boys came
back. Mrs. MacCall, Linda, and Uncle Rufus had gone to bed, for Ruth
told them she would lock up after the boys had gone home.
“I guess we’re all set for the play,” announced Luke as he and the other
two boys returned. “It lacks a little of midnight, but I fancy Hop Wong
will be a little early. We’ll go down first and hide ourselves away.
Don’t worry if you don’t see us, for it wouldn’t do to show ourselves to
the laundryman. But we’ll be close to you.”
“All right,” said Ruth. “We’ll follow you in about five minutes.”
And at the end of that time, when the three girls went into the garden
and walked toward the apple tree, bathed as it was in moonlight, there
was not a sign of the boys, not so much as loud breathing. Yet Ruth knew
Luke would not fail her.
For several minutes the girls waited under the tree. There was no sound
but the night wind. The situation was growing tense, and Agnes said
later that it was all she could do to keep from giggling hysterically.
Suddenly there was a hiss coming with fierce energy out of the darkness.
“Oh—a snake!” gasped Nalbro. “I’m going to——”
Whether she was about to announce that she would faint or run no one
knew, for a moment later the voice of Hop Wong called:
“Clorner House gals alle lite?”
“Yes, we’re here all right, Hop Wong,” answered Ruth, in steady tones.
“But what does this mean? Why have you asked us out here to meet you? If
you are playing any tricks——”
“No, Missie Luth, no tlicks. Hop Wong play no tlicks. I telle you lite
away quick.”
Out of the moonlight shadows he came, a timid and shrinking figure of a
Chinese. Ruth wondered that she had ever had a sense of fear concerning
him, he seemed so slight and boyish—not much larger, in fact, than Sammy
Pinkney.
“Well, Hop Wong, we are here and we’ll listen to what you have to say,”
remarked Ruth.
“Hop Wong glad Missie Luth come,” said the laundryman, drawing nearer
and standing fully revealed in the silvery radiance under the outermost
branches of the tree. “Other Clorner House gals here?” he asked. Hop
Wong did not speak as he wrote, exactly.
“Yes, we’re all here,” Ruth told him.
“Alle lite. Now Hop Wong tell. Listen! You give Hop Wong one hund’ed
dollals, Hop Wong show you where much money is. You sabby?”
“What do you mean?” demanded Ruth. “Where is this much money you will
show us?”
“Ah, flist you give Hop Wong one hund’ed dollals?” he cunningly
demanded.
“And if we do give you a hundred dollars will you show us where we can
find more than that?” asked Agnes, thinking it wise to show that Ruth
was not in supreme authority.
“That what Hop Wong do.”
“But if you know where there is a lot of money, why don’t you go and get
it for yourself, and not let us take it?” asked Ruth. “Why don’t you get
this big sum yourself, Hop Wong?”
“No can do,” was all he said. “Only Clorner House gals git much money.
Hop Wong git one hund’ed dollals. No can do.”
He seemed quite downcast about it, and to the girls he was rather a
pathetic figure.
“Why don’t you tell us first where this money is, and then let us pay
you the hundred dollars if we find it?” asked Agnes. “Don’t you trust
us, Hop Wong? You have known us long enough to know we are honest and
that we’ll pay you if we find any such large sum as you tell about.
Where is it? Tell us, and if we get it we’ll pay you—maybe two hundred
dollars.”
“No can do,” was all Hop Wong said.
Further arguments seemed to be useless, yet Ruth made one more attempt.
But when Hop Wong stubbornly, or perhaps uncomprehendingly, repeated:
“No can do! Give Hop Wong one hund’ed dollals.”
Ruth exclaimed:
“We’ll have to see our guardian about this. We’ll have to talk with Mr.
Howbridge, our guardian, Hop Wong, and we’ll see you later—at your
laundry. That is all for to-night.”
It was surprising to note the change that came over the Chinese. He
appeared to shrink and grow even smaller and terror was clearly manifest
on his face.
“No tell! No tell him!” he cried. “No call guard and have Hop Wong
alested. No tell! I not bad! Oh! Oh!” and in a perfect wail of fright he
turned and fled, being soon lost among the moonlighted shadows of the
garden.
“Oh!” exclaimed Nalbro, in pity.
In an instant the three boys had leaped from their hiding places and had
joined the girls, so close and ready were they.
“Shall we take after him?” cried Neale.
“No, the poor fellow is frightened to death now,” said Ruth.
“But what happened?” asked Luke. “What did you say to him that made him
yell like that and run as if a dragon were chasing him? We couldn’t hear
all that was said.”
“I merely announced that we would have to see our guardian about paying
Hop Wong one hundred dollars,” stated Ruth. “Then off he ran.”
There was silence for a moment and then Luke exclaimed:
“I see! He thought you said you would call the _guard_. Guess he must
have thought you had a squad of soldiers on hand. Your use of the word
‘guardian’ mixed him up. There is something suspicious in this or he
wouldn’t be so ready to run when he thought you were going to call in
the authorities. That’s it—Hop Wong is afraid of the law.”
And so it seemed. The more they thought about it and talked it over, the
more Luke’s explanation seemed to fit the conduct of the laundryman.
“Well, no use staying out here any longer,” said Ruth, with a little
shiver, for the night dew was chilling. “Let’s go in, or Mrs. Mac will
think we’ve been carried off by some ‘lang-nebbied thing.’”
They went into the house. Neale and Luke offered to remain all night,
but it was not considered necessary with Hal and Uncle Rufus at hand, to
say nothing of the strong-armed Linda.
They talked matters over a little longer, all the while growing more and
more suspicious of Hop Wong’s conduct, and when Luke and Neale departed
it was with the intention of taking serious steps the next day to get at
the bottom of the mystery.