AUNT CAL was as brisk and decisive as ever next morning. She made no
mention of last evening’s occurrences, but she startled us by proposing
a plan. “How would you like to have a picnic for your two friends this
afternoon?” she asked. “I’m told the young people often go to the beach
and cook their supper over an open fire, though I must say it has
always seemed to me a most unsatisfactory way of preparing a meal.”
“Oh, a beach picnic!” I cried. “What a perfectly swell idea!”
“And you’ll come too, Aunt Cal?” Eve begged.
Aunt Cal shook her head. “I’m obliged to go into Millport this
afternoon on some business,” she said. “But I shall be able to help you
with your preparations this morning if you think favorably of my
suggestion.”
“Bet your life we do!” I jumped up and gave her a hug. “Oh, Aunt Cal,
you are a darling after all—I mean,” I amended hastily, “after all the
trouble and worry we’ve caused you. I’ll go call up Hattie May right
away!”
“Yes, you’d better,” Eve agreed, “before that Hamish goes off on some
wild goose chase or other. When a boy imagines he’s been endowed by a
beneficent providence with the mental equipment of a Sherlock Holmes,
you can’t tell what he may do!”
I returned from the drug store to find Eve stirring a cake and Aunt Cal
making salad. “They’re coming,” I announced, “at least Hattie May is.
Hamish has gone off somewhere but she said he’d promised to be back for
lunch.”
“Well, I only hope you won’t set yourselves afire,” said Aunt Cal with
a sigh. “Or catch your death o’ cold sitting around in those awful
bathing suits!”
“Hattie May says we can dress in the Wildwood Inn pavilion,” I said.
“And don’t forget we’ll have Hamish on hand in case of accidents!”
Eve was putting the finishing touches to the chocolate cake some time
later. As she stood surveying its satiny perfection, she said slowly,
“I do wish Michael Gilpatrick could taste that. I’d like to show him
that a mere girl is good for something! Besides, I hate to think of
Hamish practically gobbling up the whole thing as he’s sure to do if he
doesn’t have a competitor to prevent him.”
“Well you don’t need to worry,” I said. “Because I invited Michael to
come too.”
“What! You did!” Eve was surprised.
“Yes. I thought we might as well ask him. I got hold of him at the farm
in Old Beecham where he works. He didn’t go into ecstasies over the
idea but he said he was planning to go for a swim this afternoon
anyway, as it’s Saturday half holiday, so I guess maybe he’ll show up.
I only hope he and Hattie May won’t come to blows.”
As soon as our rather hurried dinner was over, Aunt Cal, arrayed in her
second best black silk, departed for Millport. Although she reiterated
her warnings against fire and drowning, I felt somehow that her mind
was preoccupied. Indeed she had been vaguely different all day. She
seemed in a way softened, and yet more determined. Was that old letter
responsible for the change and was it that which was taking her to
Millport?
Hattie May and Hamish were waiting on the beach when we got there that
afternoon. Hamish wanted to know at once whether Aunt Cal had said
anything more about the letter. I told him shortly that she had not. I
felt that he deserved a snubbing for what he had done last evening but,
as often happens, the people whom you most wish to snub are the very
ones who are impervious to such tactics.
Michael was late in arriving. Hattie May said that for her part it
didn’t matter whether he came or not as she’d never met a ruder boy. I
thought it a good moment to put in a word of warning. “Michael is
different from most boys,” I said. “He doesn’t like to be made a fuss
about.”
“Why, I just said I thought he was brave in grappling with that
burglar,” Hattie May retorted indignantly. “Though now that I come to
think it over, I quite see that there was probably no danger at all and
that he was just trying to show off.”
“Show off!” This indignantly from Eve. “I tell you Michael’s not that
kind.”
“Oh, you needn’t tell me,” retorted Hattie May. “I guess I know all
about boys.”
When at last Michael’s tall figure came sauntering down the beach,
Hattie May greeted him with a chilly nod. “We thought probably it was
milking time and you wouldn’t be able to get away,” she said casually.
Michael grinned. Apparently he had decided that Hattie May was not to
be taken seriously. “Oh, no,” he said, “we don’t milk till seven. Guess
you’ve never lived on a farm.”
“No,” said Hattie May, “I must admit I’ve never had that pleasure. None
of my family are farmers!”
This did not seem to be a very auspicious beginning for our picnic. Eve
threw herself into the breach. “Do let’s get into the water,” she
urged, “before it gets any later.”
Michael, as one might have guessed, proved to be by far the best
swimmer of us all, though Eve was a good second. Hattie May’s efforts
were punctuated by blood curdling screams and calls for somebody to
“save her”; but as no one paid the slightest attention, she soon gave
up and returned to land. Hamish, too, after paddling about rather
blindly without his spectacles, sat down on the sand where, replacing
his glasses on his dripping countenance, he began making entries in a
notebook.
“What is it, Hamish?” I inquired. “Your diary or memoirs or something?”
He shook his head absently. “No, just bringin’ my notes on the Craven
case up to date.”
I raised myself on my elbow and looked at him. Was he just a rather
overgrown little boy playing at being detective? Or had he really found
out something of importance? Suddenly he fixed me with his thick
lenses. “I know what you think,” he said astutely. “You think I’m one
of those playboy detecitifs like in the books!”
“Oh, no, indeed,” I assured him hastily. “Of course I don’t think
anything of the kind!”
“Yes, you do,” he stated. “But I’m not, I’m different. I figure things
out. I’m smart. I got ideas.”
“I’m sure you have,” I murmured, and waited for what I hoped was
coming. But Hamish just went on writing. At any rate he was keeping his
own counsel in the approved manner of the perfect sleuth.
The day was perfection and, as I lay there on the warm sand and gazed
out over the blue bay with its flecks of white where it met the sea,
the question of why someone had written something in an old letter grew
suddenly unimportant in the face of that bigger wonder of earth and sea
and sky. Then I fell to remembering another blue bay on the other side
of the world across which I had sailed away from Mother and Dad nearly
a year ago.
“Sandy’s being homesick!” Eve’s mellow voice broke into my thoughts.
I sat up. “No such thing!” I declared stoutly. “I was just thinking
that a blue emerald couldn’t hold a candle to the color of that water
out there!”
I caught a glint of appreciation in Michael’s eyes as he stood with the
shallow water swirling about his ankles. But Hamish said, “Guess you
wouldn’t talk like that if you should see it once! Chap I talked to
this morning said it was as big as a quarter!”
“What!” exclaimed Hattie May. “Why, Hamish, you never told me!”
“Had this chap seen the blue emerald?” Eve inquired.
“Well, no, not exactly. But he’d heard his folks talk about it when he
was a youngster.”
“So far as I can discover,” said Eve, “no one ever did see the thing.”
“I suppose you’ll be saying next that Captain Judd himself never saw
it,” remarked Hattie May. “I suppose he was maybe blind when he buried
it!” she added with heavy sarcasm.
“We don’t know that he did bury it,” I remarked. I glanced at Michael
for confirmation, but he only shrugged and grinned and said he was
going up to dress.
“Wait,” I said, “I’m going to take some pictures first.” Some
impulse—for which I was later to thank my lucky stars—had moved me to
bring along my kodak. I took several groups and Eve took some more with
me in them. Then I finished off the film with some snaps of a fleet of
little yachts that were just entering the harbor. Michael said it was
the annual cruise of a Boston yacht club and that they came into the
harbor every year at this time.
“I used to get a great kick out of them when I was a youngster and
first started coming here,” he said. “I was sure I’d be a skipper when
I grew up.”
“Why,” exclaimed Eve, “I thought you were a native of Fishers Haven,
Michael. Weren’t you born here?”
“Oh, no, my home’s in Connecticut. My folks used to come here for
summer vacations. So this summer when I had to get some work, I came up
and got me a job on Cousin Al’s farm.”
After we had dressed we all set to work on preparations for supper. The
boys built an oven in the sand while we collected firewood. Then we
buried potatoes to bake and sharpened long sticks for roasting bacon
over the coals. Eve and Hattie May and I made coffee and spread the
table.
“Why didn’t your aunt come to the picnic?” Hamish asked unexpectedly,
while we all sat about waiting for the potatoes to get done.
“Oh, picnics aren’t in her line I guess,” I said.
“Don’t you suppose she _ever_ went to one—when she was a girl, I
mean?” asked Hattie May.
“Don’t know, I’m sure,” I found it hard somehow to think of Aunt Cal as
a girl at all.
“Well, I’ll bet that old salt next door has been to plenty of ’em,”
said Hamish. “I’ll bet he hasn’t missed much that went on, picnics or
anything else!”
Michael chuckled. “You should hear the sea yarns he can tell when he
gets going!”
“By the way,” continued Hamish casually, “I picked up a little present
for him when I was over in Millport this morning, something practical
and yet fancy.”
“A present for Captain Trout!” We all gazed with curiosity as Hamish
proceeded to extract from the pocket of his jacket an oblong package.
“Hamish,” giggled Eve, “is the world’s great gift giver. He just
showers tokens of esteem about among his acquaintances. He hasn’t given
me anything yet but I’m living in hopes. By the way, when did you get
acquainted with the Captain, Hamish—you only came yesterday?”
“Well,” he returned, “of course I’m not exactly acquainted with him.
But I noticed him walkin’ round his garden last night. And so when I
came across this—this present that I got—I thought right away that
that was just what this sailor fellow needed. Even if I don’t know him,
I think we all ought to help each other all we can.”
“Hamish,” I murmured feelingly, “I never dreamed what deep springs of
unselfishness were—er—slumbering——” I dabbed at my eye as the smoke
from the fire was drifting my way.
“Springs don’t slumber!” put in Eve.
“Well, open it up and do let’s see what fool contraption you’ve bought
now!” demanded Hattie May impatiently.
“’Tisn’t either.” Hamish pulled off the string of the package. “You
see, I noticed as soon as I saw this fellow Trout that he was goin’
bald. So naturally when I ran into a fellow peddlin’ hair tonic——”
“Hair tonic!” came in a chorus from Eve and me.
“Yup.” Hamish held up a large black bottle. Somehow I knew what the
label would say before I read it—“Harry’s Hair Restorer”!
“Hamish,” I demanded tensely, “where did you get it?”
“Why, I just been tellin’ you, on the street in Millport. A fellow was
peddlin’ it—said it was his own secret formula that he’d used for
twenty years. And, boy, you oughta seen his hair!”
“Golly!” said Michael, swallowing half a sandwich at a gulp. “Can you
beat that?”
“Well, what’s eatin’ you?” Hamish’s gaze traveled from him to Eve’s
face and mine. “You all look ’sif I’d committed a crime or sumpin! I
guess the stuff isn’t poison and anyhow nobody’s going to drink it. The
way I figure with a head like Trout’s, anything he can do—even if it
only grows him a couple of hairs—is better than leavin’ things go the
way they are!”
“Look here,” asked Michael. “This fellow you bought the stuff of, is he
still in Millport?”
“How do I know? I didn’t ask him where he was going. Say, what’s all
the excitement anyway?”
“The excitement is,” I said, “that our Mr. Bangs, in addition to
carrying cryptic documents in his suitcase, also carried a cargo of
hair tonic which I guess we forgot to tell you about—bottles labeled
‘Harry’s Hair Restorer’ and so forth.”
“Sufferin’ sunfish! You don’t mean it? Then this guy is the very same
villain that’s been diggin’ up that garden and that broke into your
aunt’s house the other night!”
“Looks like it,” said Michael. “He must have got himself another wig
somewhere.”
“And me talkin’ to him face to face!” moaned Hamish. “Just the very man
I was lookin’ for! And me falling for that yarn of his that he’d lost
all his hair from jungle fever when he was twenty-one and how this
restorer had brought it all back in ninety days! Golly, I could go kick
myself into the ocean—him and his old hair tonic!”
He took out the cork from the bottle and sniffed it disgustedly. “Uh!
Smells like glue and kerosene!”
“Let me smell,” said Hattie May.
The bottle was passed from one to the other and we all made faces in
turn. As I handed it back to Hamish, he seized it violently and,
rising, with a savage gesture, flung it into the sea. It fell far out
in the green water with a plump. “I’m goin’ to get even with that
fellow,” he declared dramatically, “if it’s the very last act of my
life—even if it takes me ten years!”
“Poor Captain Trout,” Eve murmured, “destined to a hairless old age!”
Hamish glared at her. “I say,” he demanded, “when do we start eatin’?”
Michael bent over the oven. “The potatoes are done,” he announced.
While we ate, we continued to discuss the case of Mr. Bangs. What sort
of a man was this? One day appearing as a real estate agent, another as
a burglar and a third, as a street peddler! And if he had failed to
find what he was after in the old garden, why was he still hanging
about? Were the wigs he wore intended merely as an advertisement of his
wares or were they worn for disguise?
As we talked the sun dropped lower and the slanting rays turned the
blue-green water to rose and gold and crimson. The waves grew quiet
under its gilded touch. At their moorings, the little yachts rocked
gently with furled sails. For a moment our chatter subsided. It was
Hamish’s falsetto voice that broke the spell.
“Say, isn’t it about time we got started home? Isn’t anything more to
eat, is there?”
“One sandwich left,” I said.
He shook his head. “Haven’t got time.”
“Time?” Hattie May cried. “Hamish Farragut Lewis what are you going to
do now?”
“Oh, nuthin’,” he muttered. “Just thought it was getting pretty late
and if I was goin’ to drive the girls home—on account of their aunt
bein’ so particular and all——”
His sister eyed him suspiciously. Apparently this explanation of his
haste did not altogether satisfy her. However, we began to pack up the
things. Michael extinguished the last remnants of the fire and Hamish
went to get his car.
We walked up to the Inn with Hattie May. Hamish was waiting to drive us
home. Michael refused a lift, saying he had to see a fellow in the
village.
“Now you come right straight back, Hamish,” Hattie May ordered. “If you
don’t, I’m going to write to Mother first thing in the morning.”
Hamish’s mutterings were unintelligible as he bent over the starter.
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