AUNT CAL listened to our story without interruption at supper that
night. Only at my first mention of the old Craven House, I fancied I
saw an odd expression flit across her face. But her only comment, when
we had finished, was the dry remark that the next time we felt moved to
go poking about empty houses, we’d better make sure that the key was on
the inside.
Following Eve upstairs that night, I found her standing in the middle
of the room, scowling over a scrap of paper. “Is this anything of
yours, Sandy?” she asked.
I peered at it over her shoulder. It was a soiled and dog-eared piece
of notepaper which had been folded twice. Scrawled across the middle, I
read: “Circe south 13-6, 90 degrees W. 7 dig here.”
“I never saw it before. Where did you find it, Eve?” I said, looking at
it curiously.
“Saw it lurking under the bed as I came into the room,” she explained.
“It doesn’t seem like Aunt Cal to leave pieces of old letters about.”
“What do you think it is?” I asked, still staring at the strange
inscription. “A ship’s log maybe? Circe sounds like the name of a ship.”
“Perhaps. But ‘dig here’—what about that? That’s not exactly nautical,
is it?” Eve returned musingly. Suddenly she lifted the paper to her
face and sniffed at it. “Harry’s Hair Restorer!” she exclaimed.
“What!” I sniffed too. She was right. The scent of Mr. Bangs’ lotions
when we had opened his suitcase had permeated everything. It was
unmistakable. “Then—then,” I stammered, “this letter, or whatever it
is, must be his. Must have fallen out when we opened the suitcase!”
“Looks like it. And the wind probably blew it under the bed when you
opened the window. That’s why we didn’t notice it before.”
“I wonder if it’s anything important,” I mused. “What do you make of
it, Eve?”
Eve sat on the sea chest, her eyes round and big. “Sandy,” she said
slowly, “if I read it in a story book, I would think of just one thing!”
“You mean—treasure?” I asked in a half whisper.
She nodded. “But of course in real life,” she went on hurriedly, “well,
you know yourself, Sandy, real life is different, however much you try
to make yourself believe otherwise.”
“Yes,” I admitted, “I know it is. But—look here!” I shot bolt upright
on the bed with the suddenness of the thought that had come to me.
“What do you suppose that man was doing in that garden today?”
“Why,” said Eve, “he was measuring, surveying or something, I suppose.”
“Surveyors don’t crawl on their knees,” I said. “And besides, he hadn’t
any instruments, only a tape measure.”
Eve looked at me solemnly. “What are you driving at?” she asked.
“Well, this paper is his, isn’t it? And it’s got measurements on it.
And he was measuring. It sounds crazy, of course, still——”
“But he didn’t have the paper; it was here under the bed!”
“Yes, I know. But he might have had it in his head, mightn’t he—the
numbers, I mean?”
“You don’t mean you actually think, Sandy, that that man was looking
for buried treasure?” Eve’s voice had fallen to a whisper, too, now.
“I don’t know what to think,” I returned.
“He certainly was annoyed when he saw us watching him!” Eve said
thoughtfully.
“Annoyed is putting it mildly,” I said. “I thought he was going to
strangle!”
Eve nodded. “Do you know,” she said, “I felt there was something very
odd about him from the first. Take his hair, for one thing——”
“Somebody has taken it, or most of it!” I giggled. “He certainly isn’t
much of an advertisement for his old lotions!”
“Not today. But he was yesterday when we saw him on the bus, don’t you
remember?”
“Why, that’s so! I do remember he had thick brown hair that stuck out
all around under his hat. I noticed it particularly, it didn’t seem to
go with his face somehow. You don’t think it could have been——”
“A wig, of course!” Eve cried. “That settles it! That man is up to some
funny business, you can depend upon it. Of course he wasn’t expecting
to see anybody out there in the garden today. I dare say he’d found the
wig hot and had taken it off and laid it in the grass or hung it on a
branch or something!”
“Still, whatever he’s up to,” I said thoughtfully, “I suppose we’ll
have to return his property to him. We can mail it to him in care of
Trap’s Inn, I suppose.”
“All right. You’ll find an envelope in that top drawer.”
When I turned with the envelope, Eve was jotting down something in her
diary. “No harm keeping a copy of those figures,” she remarked. “Just
as a matter of curiosity, you know.”
We mailed the letter to Mr. Bangs next morning. We hoped that we would
receive some acknowledgment of its receipt, something which might shed
some further light on the mystery. But the days went by and nothing
came.
Of course, a man who wears a wig may or may not be a villain. As Eve
pointed out, he may have worn it for professional purposes solely. If
he was a vendor of hair lotions, then the wig was a kind of
advertisement. But even so, I argued, it was deceitful and misleading
and I felt that our first impression of the man was abundantly
justified.
We spoke frequently of making another trip to the old house to try to
find out for ourselves what he was up to. But fear of incurring Aunt
Cal’s disapproval held us back. It would be extremely difficult to
explain to my severe-minded relative what had taken us there. To
discuss anything so fantastic as buried treasure with Aunt Cal seemed
out of the question.
Meanwhile our life at Fishers Haven flowed along serenely. We found
that Aunt Cal was not hard to get along with, once you adapted yourself
to her ways. She had lived so long alone that she couldn’t help being
rather set in her habits, Eve said. Indeed it was due mostly to Eve’s
tact and diplomacy that things went so smoothly. Eve had had some
experience in visiting relatives and, though she admitted that none of
them was in the least like my aunt, still, as she said, when you go to
stay in somebody else’s house, you just have to make up your mind to
doing things differently than when you are in your own home.
We began to feel quite at home too in the village, at the stores where
Aunt Cal “traded” and at the post office where we went for the mail
each morning and at any other odd moment when time hung too heavily on
our hands. We explored the shore for miles and, covering our bathing
suits modestly with coats in deference to Aunt Cal’s proprieties,
walked to the beach for a swim nearly every day.
It was one afternoon when we returned rather late from one of these
expeditions that we found the kitchen door locked. The key was under
the mat where Aunt Cal—with what Eve called a painful lack of
imagination—always placed it if she went out while we were away. We
let ourselves in and found a note on the kitchen table addressed to me.
“Have gone to Old Beecham to see a sick friend who has just sent
for me. Rose Blossom is driving me out. May have to spend the
night. If I am not back by nine, put Adam in the kitchen, lock up
and go to bed.
Hastily,
Aunt Cal.”
“Hurrah!” I cried, seizing the startled Adam from his cushion and
beginning to waltz with him about the kitchen.
“You don’t,” remarked Eve, “seem so awfully depressed at the news of
Aunt Cal’s suffering friend!”
“I wasn’t thinking of her at all,” I confessed. “I was wondering if we
couldn’t make a Welsh rarebit for supper. I’m fed up with beans and
fried potatoes.” For some reason Aunt Cal’s note had filled me with a
strange exhilaration. The thought of being on our own, if only for a
few hours, was exciting. “Why, we won’t even have to wash the dishes if
we don’t want to! And we can sit up as late as we please.”
The odor of toasting cheese is delectable at all times. Never have I
known it so delicious as it was that night. Adam, too, seemed to find
the atmosphere of the kitchen particularly attractive for, even after
he had finished his supper of fried fish, he lingered, purring and
twining himself about my feet.
“He wants some of the rarebit, I guess,” Eve said, dropping a morsel
onto his plate.
Somewhat to my disappointment, Eve elected to wash the dishes as usual.
“Better cover up all guilty tracks,” she laughed.
But we soon had them out of the way and after everything was in order
again, we went out into the soft, sweet smelling dusk, the cat at our
heels. There is a little bench under the locust tree where we had
formed the habit of sitting in the evening and watching Adam at his
capers. For, while in the daytime, he is staid and dignified in the
extreme, in the evening he loosens up considerably and, given a toad or
a grasshopper, will cavort with mild abandon up and down the garden
path and beds. But we were always cautioned by Aunt Cal to keep our
eyes on him and be sure that he did not stray beyond the hedge into her
neighbor’s domain.
Tonight the rarebit or something seemed to have made him unusually
lively. He darted about quite wildly and even in one moment of abandon
so far forgot his years as to chase his tail. “It’s because Aunt Cal’s
away,” I said. “I know just how he feels.”
Eve was lying on her back, trying to find Jupiter. “I wish we could
think of something exciting to do,” I said.
“You might try chasing your tail,” she murmured. “I think stars are
exciting.”
“Of course, if you start thinking about them,” I agreed. “Still, you
can look at them most any time.”
“You hardly ever see so many as there are tonight. See, there’s the
Little Dipper!”
It was while I was trying to see the Little Dipper that Adam saw his
chance. I think very likely the sly thing had been waiting for just
that moment when both our heads should be lifted to the sky.
“Where’s Adam?” Eve asked presently, coming back to earth.
“He was here just a moment ago.” I got up. “Adam, Adam!” I called.
Then suddenly, almost like an echo—but not quite—from the other side
of the hedge I heard a voice. “Caliph, Caliph!” it said.
I stopped short. In the darkness of the adjoining yard, I saw the
figure of Aunt Cal’s neighbor, a short plump gentleman of seafaring
aspect who went in the village by the title of Captain Trout but whom
Aunt Cal herself referred to with some asperity as “that man next
door.” “Caliph, Caliph!” he called again.
“I didn’t know he had a cat,” whispered Eve at my side. Then just in
front of us we saw Adam scurrying toward the hedge. In a second he was
through it and bounding across the yard toward the summoning voice. “He
thinks he’s calling him,” I said. “I guess I’d better go after him.”
I negotiated the hedge with only a scratch or two on my legs and flew
after the runaway. “Adam,” I called. “Come back here, you bad cat!”
But even as I spoke the words, I saw the round figure beyond me stoop
and gather the cat in his arms. “Caliph, you rascal,” he scolded,
“where have you been keeping yourself?” He did not appear to see Eve or
me at all but just went on stroking and scolding the cat by turns.
Finally Eve cleared her throat. “I think,” she said politely, “you’ve
got the wrong cat, haven’t you? That’s our Adam, you know.”
At the words, the man’s head jerked up. “What,” he snapped, “are you
talking about?”
“About Adam, our cat,” said Eve coolly. “It’s long past his bedtime.”
There was quite a pause after this during which the Captain went on
stroking the cat. “You see,” I put in at last out of sheer
embarrassment, “he had Welsh rarebit for supper and it sort of went to
his head——”
But I never finished the sentence. With a sudden soldierly swing, the
figure in front of us turned round and, still bearing the cat in his
arms, marched toward the back door of his house.
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