THE LONG-HIDDEN TREASURE IS UNCOVERED
And now, while the weary young searchers were hastening resolutely into
the woods to the north of the lake, they were leaving in the forest to the
south one who would well bear watching. I do not mean Chip Slider sitting
alone, tired and melancholy, beside the shelter of poles, wondering if
there could possibly be any place where trouble did not come. No--not
Chip, but a man who at this moment stood looking into the little valley
where the last camp of the road builders had been.
A somewhat portly, somewhat pompous and self-important appearing
individual was this man. His bristly hair, cut very short, was tinged
with gray under the large, loose-fitting cap such as golfers and motorists
wear. His face was smooth, puffy and red. His very eyes, more touched
with red, also, than they should have been, as well as his pudgy hands
indicated self-indulgence and love of ease.
Presently the cap and the person under it moved from the rise of ground,
above the road builders' last camp, down into the valley. With a smile
that had too much of a sneer about it to be pleasant, the man ground his
heel into the gravel where the Longknives' road had come to its troubled
ending. With the same disagreeable sneer in his manner that accompanied
his unpleasant smile, he turned here and there, noting how the brush
and stunted stalks of mullen were springing up all about the unfinished
task the workmen had left.
Startled suddenly out of his reverie by a bluejay's scream, or some
other noise--he may have fancied it, he thought--the man looked hastily,
searchingly about him; but satisfied, apparently, that he was alone,
he moved leisurely into a shaded place and sat himself down on a
stump--another token of the great road that had been begun but never
completed. Quite carefully he drew up his trousers at the knees, then
picked from his hosiery, whose bright color showed in considerable
expanse above his oxfords, some bits of dry grass and pine needles
gathered in his walk. Mr. Lewis Grandall had come, apparently, to view
the work his perfidy had caused to be abandoned.
For a long time the unfaithful treasurer of the ambitious Longknives sat
in silent meditation. He had noted with some satisfaction that a growth
of brush screened his position from easy discovery should anyone chance
to pass that way; and now his thoughts ran back over the circumstances
leading up to his present personal situation. Quite steadily his eyes
were fixed upon the unleveled bank of gravel, the half-hewn logs and all
the unfinished work in the general picture of desolation and abandonment
before him.
It is doubtful, perhaps, if Grandall realized his own responsibility for
the waste and ruin on which he looked. At least his face bore no trace
of sorrow, no expression of sincere regret. The same dull sneer was in
his eyes, the same defiant air was in even the poise of his body and the
heel that, with a certain viciousness, he dug into the dry earth.
Lewis Grandall's start in life had been attended by bright prospects.
If only he had been found out the first time he yielded to temptation
in scheming to get money by dishonest means, he might still have made
his life a success by turning at once to the right road; but not being
detected, he became bolder. From mere trickery and deceit it is but a
step to out-and-out thievery. Grandall took that step and more. Yet he
managed for long to cover his tracks sufficiently that few suspected and
no one publicly accused.
One would have supposed that, being accustomed to the handling of other
people's money in his banking work, he would not easily have been tempted
when he found himself with a large sum of the Longknives' funds in his
possession. Neither had he any pressing need of this money at the time he
laid his plan to appropriate to his own use the cash intended for Nels
Anderson's army of road builders. He merely thought he might some day be
glad to have at his command a secret reserve large enough to maintain him
indefinitely.
So did he plan the pretended robbery by which a former woodsman he had
long known made off with the suit-case wherein he carried the money for
Anderson's long overdue payroll. His original purpose had been to make
some sort of division of the cash with Murky; but there was not anywhere
in the Grandall code either honor or honesty. It was a particularly
bright idea, indeed, so Grandall himself considered when the thought came
to him that he might have the unsuspecting Murky relieved of the suit-case
before the fellow had so much as seen what was in it.
The plan was put into effect. Slider, weak of morals, but strong of arm,
was chosen for the work. To him Grandall told as much of his whole scheme
as he thought necessary, but told him nothing whatever that was wholly
true, with the possible exception of the statement that Murky was not to
be trusted because he talked too much.
Having been a beneficiary in a small but largely crooked lumber deal
Grandall had once managed, Slider entered into the robbery scheme most
willingly. With the general result the reader is familiar; but in detail
it may be added that, in keeping with the promoter's plan, he who relieved
Murky of the suit-case hid it later just where few would suspect it might
be hidden.
That place was almost within gunshot of the very spot where the money
would have been distributed had it reached those for whom it was intended.
This not only suited Mr. Grandall's convenience, but kept Slider in a
comparatively safe locality, as well. So many men had been engaged on
the work near Opal Lake that the presence of any kind of person in working
clothes, in that vicinity, would occasion no remark.
Thus had Slider secreted the suit-case in a decaying heap of drift along
the identical little stream beside which the great gravel road had ended.
There had Grandall found and quietly removed the riches the very next
day. Then the dishonest treasurer limped back to his hotel, for he was
supposed to be scarcely able to move, owing to his "injuries," as a result
of the robbery.
Nearly three years passed. The suit-case lay undisturbed where Grandall
hid it and its valuable contents were intact. If the Longknives' treasurer
had had occasion to make use of this money, meanwhile, he had been
either afraid or unwilling to do so. But he knew where it was. He knew
that in an emergency he could lay hands on a moderate fortune whose
existence he believed none suspected. The thought bolstered his courage
in scheming the method of more than one piece of trickery and dishonesty.
Then came the end, as sooner or later in crooked plans it must
come--Failure! They all fail,--it is inevitable,--at last. The
wrong-doer faced the necessity of flight.
Grandall's defalcations in the bank did not appear at once. A small
matter--the "padding" or falsely increasing of some petty bills for
material furnished the city--had started an investigation. It was to
the amazement of everyone who knew the man that a long, long chain of
shady operations and even petty stealing, even the robbery of his own
friends, was by slow degrees uncovered.
Toward the last, it was apparent, Grandall had been driven to the most
painful desperation. Night and day he must be on guard to keep his
deceptions covered up. Constantly he must devise new practices in deceit
to conceal others that once had served, but now, daily and hourly, were
opening at most unexpected points revealing the treachery, falsehood,
hypocrisy and rottenness they erstwhile had secreted.
Like a common thief, the guilty Grandall stole away in the night. Behind
him he left all that might have made life useful and pleasant--home,
friends, hope and ambition. Lying for some time hidden in a distant city,
he at last felt it safe to travel by a circuitous route to Opal Lake.
At a country railroad station he stepped quietly off the train. With no
luggage but a small handbag he slipped into the woods. A long tramp
brought him the following day to the abandoned clubhouse. The very
atmosphere of oppressive loneliness there pleased him because of its
assurance of his safety from discovery.
How little Grandall guessed, or even suspected, that at just this time
he could not have come to a place more fraught with danger to himself
will never be known. No knowledge had he of the eyes that stealthily
watched him. No thought had he that the moment he appeared with the stolen
suit-case in hand, ready to slip away to hoped-for safety in a distant
country, a lurking enemy would leap upon him.
The thief sat for a long time contemplating the ruins where so abruptly
the road building had ended. It was not until near evening that he
strolled slowly toward the clubhouse. The general course of the gravel
drive he followed, but in the main kept a few feet to one side, that
the trees and brush might screen him.
He had no fear here, yet he knew some boys were in camp not far away and
not even by them did he wish to be observed. For he would spend one night
of rest in the clubhouse room that once had been his own; and then he
would be away--gone for all time from these and all the scenes of his
younger life.
Yet a pair of heavy, scowling eyes watched Grandall's every footstep--saw
him enter the clubhouse--saw him seat himself restfully in the empty
living-room beside the great fireplace and proceed to make a supper of
sandwiches and fruit from his small satchel.
Murky could not have been more vigilant had his own life been at stake.
Not only his determination to gain again the stolen money that had
been taken from him, but his hatred of that person the victim of whose
double-dealing he had been, made him watchful, and a very dangerous man.
Quite suddenly in the afternoon had the vexed and oft-disappointed tramp
discovered Grandall. It was while the latter stood beside the ruins
where the gravel road had reached its ending. In delighted surprise
Murky with difficulty suppressed a cry. Dropping instantly to the ground,
he pressed over his mouth both his dirty hands lest some exclamation he
could scarcely resist should betray him. "Blame _me_!" Under his breath
he muttered the words with almost fiendish pleasure.
His worst enemy then was the occasion of those sounds that had startled
Grandall from his reverie. But he felt himself so entirely alone, so
wholly free from any probability of being observed, that he had given the
slight noise not a second thought. During all his afternoon of sinister
gazing upon the ambitious enterprise his act had wrecked, he still
believed himself as completely alone as a man well could be in any vast
woods or wilderness.
And even when Grandall left the little valley and walked in silent
meditation to spend one night more--but one--in the old house on the Point
he heard no footsteps coming on behind. His thoughts were far from
pleasant ones but they occupied him fully. The sullen hatred so clearly
shown in the expression of his eyes and lips was but a reflection of all
that passed within his mind. Friends or foes, men were all alike to
him, and those who had never voiced a word against him he reviled equally
with those who had been his dupes, and with the men whose accusations had
caused his flight, as well.
Coming to the clubhouse, Grandall lingered for a time up and down the
weed-grown walk leading to the garage. Then while it was yet light he
went down to the rotting pier and looked long and earnestly across and
up and down the lake. Slowly he returned and, entering the house, went
at once down cellar.
In the pitch darkness he felt his way to the rear of the steps leading
from above. Striking a match or two, he examined by such flickering flames
the rough uneven wall. With bare hands, then, he seized a projecting
corner of one of the large flat stones and pulled it easily from place.
If this part of the wall had been laid up with cement or mortar it had
been broken down some time before, as would appear very probable, for the
masonry that Grandall now brought tumbling to the floor concealed a deep
aperture in the dry, sandy earth.
The thief's next lighted match revealed the hole and also revealed a damp
and discolored leather case.
Still crouching in the dark cellar Grandall managed to work the rusty
lock and lay the suit-case open. Then he struck another match and its dim
glow disclosed the carefully packed bundles of bills, and among them a bag
of coin. He nodded his head in a satisfied way. He had assured himself
on first arriving at the old house that the treasure was safe; but he
would not remove it from the hiding place until he was prepared to leave,
he had decided. Now he was ready.
And where was Murky?
As a matter of fact, from his concealment among the bushes near by, he
was trying to decipher the room upstairs that this lone visitor to the old
house would probably occupy. He had lost sight of Grandall when the latter
had quickly entered and gone to the cellar. But it was only for a little
while that the scowling eyes searched the open door and the windows in
vain.
As Grandall came up to the living-room carrying the discolored suit-case,
he glanced quickly all about him. Possibly some sense of his guilt came to
his mind now that the evidence of his theft was squarely in his hands,
and for the first time he appeared apprehensive. Yet he paused only for
a few seconds. He saw to it that all the first floor doors were bolted
from within, and slowly climbed the stairs to the sleeping rooms above.
As if quite at home the man entered that room whose long, low window
opened upon the little balcony toward the lake. He smoothed down the
mattress and brought a blanket from an adjoining chamber. Opening the
window wide, for these upper rooms were very close and warm, he drew the
suit-case to the better light he thus admitted and proceeded to count the
money it contained.
The night was hot, the air seemed stifling, but when he had satisfied
himself as to the amount of the treasure, Grandall returned the packages
of bills and the bag of gold and silver pieces to their places, then
closed and locked the window. He locked his chamber door also, before
lying down to sleep. As if that could save him now!