_THE FIGUREHEAD’S SECRET_
“Gee, this is a terrible storm, for the summer-time,” exclaimed Jo as
they reached the deck.
He and Ann had been sheltered by the great hull of the schooner, for
the wind and rain were driving from the direction of the sea, but now
they felt its full force. The sweeping blasts almost carried Ann off
her feet. A steady sheet of rain was sweeping across the bare deck and
hissing out through the scuppers. She had to lean against the storm as
she pushed her way to the ladder that led below.
“Ann!” her father cried at sight of her. “Are you all right? Where’s
Ben?” He held her tightly, as if he wanted to make sure that his
daughter was once more safe beside him.
“Ben’s down in the hold. Oh, dad! I thought you’d never get here! I
won’t try to solve another mystery without telling you beforehand.”
“‘Mystery’?” repeated Mr. Seymour. “Why are you children here? I
thought that you went to put out a fire in the woods.” In spite of
his relief at seeing Ann unharmed he kept his gun pointed in a very
businesslike manner. “Who are these men? And who is this, tied up?”
“That chap is Warren Bain,” said Mr. Bailey. “He’s been hanging around
the cove all season. No one knows aught of him.”
“He’s a detective!” announced Ann in great excitement.
“You’d better fasten those two before you do much talking,” advised
Bain dryly, speaking for the first time. “In my coat pocket, Bailey.”
A bit doubtingly Mr. Bailey put his hand into Bain’s pocket and took
out two pairs of handcuffs. Finding them there seemed to assure him of
the truth of Ann’s statement and his manner was quite different as he
snapped them around the wrists of Tom and Charlie. Ann and Jo, and Mr.
Seymour, too, never had seen that done and for the moment all their
attention was given to that grim proceeding.
Then, “Where’s Ben?” Mr. Seymour asked again.
“In the hold,” answered Jo, “and I guess we’d better be getting him
out. He’ll be pretty cold and wet.”
Mr. Bailey had cut the strips of blanket that bound Warren Bain, and
now the detective stood on his two feet again, stretching his aching
arms and legs and back. “Boy in the hold,” he said. “I was wondering
where the third one of you was keeping himself. Well, with the tide
that there’s likely to be to-night, it is lucky we can get him up
before the hold is half full of water.”
“You’re right,” said Mr. Bailey. “We don’t often get such a storm as
this in summer. It’s a hummer, all right. Can you take care of these
fellers alone?”
“Just watch me,” answered Bain, bringing out his automatic.
The heavy driving rain had settled to a drumming downpour. The sea
seemed to be flattened under the weight of it, to be spreading out like
a pond when the water rises. The tide had turned and the waves were
breaking nearer and nearer the stern of the wreck.
They reached the open hatchway and Mr. Seymour called, “Ben?”
“Hey, there!” The boy’s voice came faint but cheerful. “Have you really
come at last? I thought a week had gone by!”
“We’ll have you out in a jiffy,” shouted Jo. “Come on up, the coast is
clear.”
“I can’t,” answered Ben. “The ladder’s broken and I can’t reach high
enough.”
Mr. Bailey and Mr. Seymour looked anxiously about. “Any rope?” asked
Mr. Bailey. The bare rain-swept deck offered nothing.
“Get our ladder!” exclaimed Ann, and Jo dashed after it.
That, dropped down to the bottom of the hold and placed against the
ship’s ladder, enabled Ben to climb to safety.
“Did they hurt you, my son?” asked Mr. Seymour, his hand on Ben’s
shoulder.
“Oh, they banged me around a bit--a few black and blue spots, I
suppose, but nothing permanent. What’s been happening, Jo? Tell a
feller, quick!”
“We all want to know,” said Mr. Bailey. “What’s been goin’ on here,
anyway?”
“Those men were robbing the ship--” began Ann.
“Of what?” demanded her father.
“That’s what we don’t know, exactly,” said Ann.
“I don’t believe that anybody knows the whole of it,” Jo said. “Let’s
go back to the cabin; each person can tell what he does know and we can
piece it all together.”
“Great idea,” said Mr. Seymour.
They found Warren Bain grinning sardonically at his two captives.
“Well, I swan!” said Bailey. “An’ you’ve been laying by this wreck all
these weeks, and no one had any notion of what you were here for. We
thought you was a-buttin’ in on our lobster fields.”
“I thought that was how you folks figured; you didn’t act any too
welcoming. But I’d be some sleuth if I went telling my business to
every Tom, Dick, and Harry. I have to count on a little unpopularity
once in a while. Yes, we knew the boat as soon as we came here and
looked her over. She was just the boat we expected she would be. A
government cutter had been trying to pick her up before the blizzard
came down.”
“Then she wasn’t a phantom ship at all,” Ann remarked. And her
disappointment must have shown in her voice, because her father and
Warren Bain seemed to think that was one of the funniest things they
ever had heard. But was all that excitement and anxiety over nothing
but an ordinary boat that had been wrecked in a perfectly natural way?
Bain went on with his story.
“She ran under the name of _The Shadow_ although she carried no name,
and her owner, Jim Rand, captained her. She carried a crew of five men
besides himself and she ran a good trade, smuggling Italian silk and
Indian spices into the North Atlantic harbors. She wasn’t hard to pick
up because of that figurehead, but Rand wouldn’t give it up. It was
his mascot and the crew believed that he talked things over with that
wooden image. Rand was a clever one. This boat was stopped many a time,
but when the men from the government cutter climbed aboard to examine
her they never found anything. She seemed to be running empty. We never
found a cargo and consequently we never could pin anything on Rand.”
“Well, you got it on him now,” Fred said heartily. “Which one o’ these
is Rand?”
“Neither one,” and Warren sounded contemptuous. “Rand was a lawbreaker
but he wasn’t like either of these two low-down thieves and murderers
here. Rand is up in your burying ground. You put him there with the
mate and two of the crew.”
“So, one o’ those was the captain, hey?” Fred rubbed his chin
thoughtfully. “Well--I guess he’s glad to be resting in the ground.”
“He made the worst mistake of his life when he shipped these two,” went
on Bain, “both of them with criminal records, although he didn’t know
it. Of course he couldn’t expect to get too high-class sailors for his
business, but those he’d had were harmless, at least. As near as I can
make out from what Tom tells me, Rand had just sold a cargo of silk
in Boston and for some reason or other refused to divide the cash the
minute the crew wanted it. So they mutinied, on the advice of these two
jail birds. The captain went overboard, but he accounted for three of
the crew before he went. Tom and Charlie hid on the wreck until after
you searched her”--he nodded to Fred--“and then they blew for shore to
wait until the excitement cooled down and our hero Charlie was tucked
into jail, somewhere upcountry, for taking a lady’s pocket-book while
he was stealing her chickens.”
They all turned to look at Charlie, who acted very sheepish. Ann had a
suspicion that his shame came from having been caught, rather than from
the actual crime. So that was why his face had that queer pallor.
“They were hidin’ on the boat when we came on?” Mr. Bailey demanded
incredulously. “We looked her over well; there weren’t a cubic inch in
her that we didn’t see.”
Charlie snickered and Tom growled, but both sounds gave Ann to
understand very clearly that Tom and Charlie knew things about that
boat that would be forever hidden from Mr. Bailey.
“It wasn’t strange you didn’t find them,” said Bain, “if our government
inspectors couldn’t find where the men had tucked away whole cargoes.”
“Well, God was good to the whole of us, that is all I have to say.” And
Mr. Bailey gripped his rifle tighter as he looked at the two captives.
Sailors they were not; they were just two criminals who had gone to sea
for a time.
“So that was why you felt as if some one was there!” exclaimed Ben.
“They were peeking at you, and you didn’t know it!”
Tom must have been on the boat the day she and Jo so strongly felt
that impression of eyes upon them, thought Ann, and shivered as she
thought it. Anything might have happened if Tom had chosen to come out
and frighten them. Her mother had been right, after all, when she had
worried about their playing on the wreck.
“And we peeked at you, Mr. Bain, when you didn’t know it,” Ben went on.
“Will you tell us, please, what you meant when you said, ‘Stay there,
babies, and wait for me.’”
“Yes!” cried Ann. “What was in the closet? We couldn’t find anything
there.”
Warren Bain looked at Ann and Jo with a wide smile. “You kids were on
the job all right, weren’t you! So you saw me at that! Well, I’ll show
you something pretty.”
Tom had wrenched the closet door from its hinges and now Bain took
it in his hands. “This panel looks exactly like the others, but it
actually is a sliding panel that goes back like this.” Under Bain’s
fingers the thin board slid back and revealed a space filled with
papers closely covered with writing. “These are Jim’s bills of lading;
I tell you, he knew how to hide his stuff.” Bain put the door down and
looked at Tom and Charlie. “Even after he was dead you couldn’t beat
him. You were foolish to try.”
Charlie nodded his head miserably, but Tom did not deign to acknowledge
that he had heard.
“As you children are so interested,” Bain continued, “it won’t do any
harm to let you see the whole of it. Do you want to see where Rand hid
the money?”
“You’d better believe we do!” exclaimed Jo.
Even Tom showed signs of excitement at this, although any chance of his
getting any of that money had vanished, money for which he had thrown
away all freedom for the rest of his life.
“It is just where Rand left it,” said Bain, “double safe and out of
his cabin. I knew that Tom was around because the blankets here were
shifted.”
“But it wasn’t Tom,” Ann said quite defiantly. “We did it, to see if
they were being used.”
“H-u-mm--” said Bain.
“And you aren’t solving any of our mysteries,” Ann went on. “You’re
clearing things up for the sailors and Mr. Bailey, but I want to know
what made the noise that frightened us, and frightened you, too, last
night.”
“That’s true,” admitted Bain. He rumpled the hair on his head, knocking
his cap sidewise. “And I knew that you must have heard it, some time
or other, when you used it just now to scare the men away from me.” He
looked at Mr. Seymour. “You haven’t heard the half of it yet. These
children had the wit to imitate this strange noise in order to frighten
these gentlemen away from trying to make me tell where to find Rand’s
money. The scheme would have worked, too; Charlie’s nerve was gone and
Tom’s was growing weak. Our Charlie was half paralyzed with fright when
you came. That’s why you held them up so easily.”
Ann and her father exchanged a glance; she was glad he knew without her
telling of her splendid idea. It might have sounded like boasting. And
to have her father proud of her was one of the things Ann most desired.
“When we were watching them by their camp fire I heard them say that
the noise frightened them,” she explained modestly.
“What made the noise?” inquired Mr. Seymour.
“Nobody kn--” began Ben, but Charlie interrupted him.
“That blasted figurehead makes it, coming to scare folks away from the
captain’s money. I told you, Tom Minor, that no good would come from
signing on a ship with that figurehead.”
“Do you suppose the figurehead really walked about?” asked Jo, his
confidence shaken by Charlie’s firm belief. “The sound was just like
scaly feet rubbing over the deck boards.”
Instead of laughing at him, Bain was considerate enough of the boy’s
feelings to answer soberly, “No, I can’t think that. But it is a queer
noise, I’ll admit that much. You see, the other night I thought it
was made by the men, so it didn’t occur to me to attribute it to the
figurehead.”
“And who took Mr. Bailey’s milk and our cheese?” asked Ben.
“Foodstuff stolen from your place?” inquired Bain of Mr. Bailey.
“I never touched a crumb of it!” denied Tom. “Don’t you say I did.
Everything I ate I bought! Don’t you dare say I stole your milk!” He
glared at Mr. Bailey.
“Yes,” said Mr. Bailey, “enough was stolen so it wasn’t safe to leave
anything about; but nothin’ else ever was took.”
“That’s curious,” commented Bain thoughtfully. “Well, who is coming to
see where Rand hid the treasure? How about it, Bailey? Will you stay
down here to guard the prisoners and let these young people have the
first look?”
“Sure,” Fred answered, and settled himself on the broken edge of the
captain’s berth.
“It makes me laugh,” said Jo as he crossed the deck with the others,
“to think of pop holding a gun on them down in the cabin!”
They had left the lantern with the men below but Bain’s torch carried
ample light. It gave Ann a thrill to think that she should be crossing
the deck with a moving light. How often she had looked toward the wreck
before she climbed into bed, hoping to see a pin prick of yellow there
as she had seen it on the night she arrived at the Bailey house! And
now that the light was here she was here with it! Not she, but her
mother, was looking at it from the house windows, looking out through
the rain and wondering what was happening down here.
She wondered where Bain could be taking them, and then she realized
that they were headed straight for the demon figure.
Bain strode up to it and flashed his light over its grotesque outlines.
He looked back over his shoulder to the Seymours and laughed. “Jim Rand
knew his best friend aboard this boat.”
Reaching forward he thrust his hand into the mouth of the figurehead,
fumbling and stretching to the end of his reach, and when he brought
his hand back it held a huge roll of paper money.
“All in hundreds” he explained. “A pretty good haul for Uncle Sam. I
never found it until to-night! And it was a lucky thing that I left
them where they were before I went down to the cabin.”
“Oh--may I touch them?” asked Ann with a shiver of excitement.
Bain handed them to her. “Take them, if you like.” And to Mr. Seymour
he said, “I’ll be glad to get that safely into some one else’s care.”
“I don’t doubt it,” replied Mr. Seymour. “Hold them tight, daughter; we
can’t have the wind blowing any of it away.”
Ben and Jo crowded around, and the three children looked at the money
with silent awe. Suddenly the sharp-eared Jo lifted his head. Then they
all heard.
Again that sound! Sussh-sussh, sussh-sussh.
“It’s the money,” Jo exclaimed. “He’s after the money.”
The shuffle did not waver this time nor did it stop. It came steadily
down the deck toward them although whatever made the noise was veiled
by the storm. Warren Bain snatched the bills from Ann’s paralyzed hands
and dropped them into his pocket.
The sound was very near the group by the figurehead when it stopped.