DORIS HAS A NEW THEORY
“Well, for gracious sake!” was all Sally could reply to this astonishing
remark. And a moment later, “How on earth do you know?”
“I don’t _know_. I’m only guessing at it,” replied Doris. “But I have
one or two good reasons for thinking we’ve been on the wrong track right
along. And if I’d known about _her_ before, I’d have thought so long
ago.”
“But what _is_ it?” cried Sally again, bursting with impatience and
curiosity.
“Sally,” said Doris soberly, “I’m going to ask you not to make me
explain it all just yet. I would if I had it all clear in my mind, but
the whole idea is just as hazy as can be at present. And you know a
thing is very hard to explain when it’s hazy like that. It sounds silly
if you put it into words. So won’t you just let it be till I get it
better thought out?”
“Why, yes, of course,” replied Sally with an assumed heartiness that she
was far from feeling. Truth to tell, she was not only badly disappointed
but filled with an almost uncontrollable curiosity to know what Doris
had discovered about her secret that she herself did not know.
“And I’m going to ask you another thing,” went on Doris. “Do you suppose
any one around here knows much about the history of Miss Camilla and her
family? Would your grandfather be likely to know?”
“Why, yes, I guess so,” replied Sally. “If anybody knows I’m sure it
would be he, because he’s the oldest person around here.”
“Then,” said Doris, “I want you to let me talk to your grandfather about
it. We’ll both seem to be talking to him together, but I want to ask him
some questions very specially myself. But I don’t want him to suspect
that we have any special interest in the thing, so you try and make him
talk the way you did that night when he told you all about the wrecks,
and the _Anne Arundel_. Will you?”
“Oh, yes,” agreed Sally. “That’s easy. When shall we do it? This
afternoon? I think he’ll be down at the Landing, and we won’t have any
trouble getting him to talk to us. There aren’t many around the Landing
yet, ’cause the season is so early, and I’ll steer him over into a
corner where we can be by ourselves.”
“That’s fine!” cried Doris. “I knew you could manage it.”
“But tell me--just one thing,” begged Sally, “What made you first think
that Miss Camilla had anything to do with this? You can tell me just
_that_, can’t you?”
“It was the little Sèvres vase on the mantel,” explained Doris, “and the
way she spoke of it, I know a little,--just a tiny bit about old china
and porcelains, because my grandfather is awfully interested in them and
has collected quite a lot. But it was the way she _spoke_ of it that
made me think.”
Not another word would she say on the subject. And though Sally racked
her brains over the matter for the rest of the day, she could find no
point where Miss Camilla and her remarks had the slightest bearing on
that secret of theirs.
* * * * *
It was about two o’clock that afternoon, and the pavilion at the Landing
was almost deserted. Later it would be peopled by a throng, young and
old, hiring boats, crabbing from the long dock, drinking soda-water or
merely watching the river life, idly. But, during the two or three hot
hours directly after noon, it was deserted. On this occasion, however,
not for long. Old Captain Carter, corn-cob pipe in mouth, and stumping
loudly on his wooden leg, was approaching down the road from the
village. At this hour he seldom failed to take his seat in a corner of
the pavilion and wait patiently for the afternoon crowd to appear. His
main diversion for the day consisted in his chats with the throngs who
haunted the Landing.
He had not been settled in his corner three minutes, his wooden leg
propped on another chair, when up the wide stairs from the beach
appeared his two granddaughters, accompanied by another girl. Truth to
tell, they had been waiting below exactly half an hour for this very
event. Doris, who had met him before, went over and exchanged the
greetings of the day, then casually settled herself in an adjacent
chair, fanning herself frantically and exclaiming over the heat. Sally
and Genevieve next strolled up and perched on a bench close by. For
several minutes the two girls exchanged some rather desultory
conversation. Then, what appeared to be a chance remark of Doris’s but
was in reality carefully planned, drew the old sea-captain into their
talk.
“I wonder why some people around here keep a part of their houses nicely
fixed and live in that part and let the rest get all run down and go to
waste?” she inquired with elaborate indifference. Captain Carter pricked
up his ears.
“_Who_ do that, I’d like to know?” he snorted. “I hain’t seen many of
’em!”
“Well, I passed a place this morning and it looked that way,” Doris
went on. “I thought maybe it was customary in these parts.”
“Where was it?” demanded the Captain, on the defensive for his native
region.
“Way up the river,” she answered, indicating the direction of Slipper
Point.
“Oh, _that_!” he exclaimed in patent relief. “That’s only Miss
Roundtree’s, and I guess you won’t see another like it in a month of
Sundays.”
“Who is she and why does she do it?” asked Doris with a great (and this
time real) show of interest. And thus, finding what his soul delighted
in, a willing and interested listener, Captain Carter launched into a
history and description of Miss Camilla Roundtree. He had told all that
Sally had already imparted, when Doris broke in with some skilfully
directed questions.
“How do you suppose she lost all her money?”
“Blest if I know, or any one else!” he grunted. “And what’s more, I
don’t believe _she_ lost it all, either. I think it was her father and
her brother before her that did the trick. They were great folks around
here,--high and mighty, we called ’em. Nobody among us down at the
village was good enough for ’em. This here Miss Camilla,--her mother
died when she was a baby--she used to spend most of her time in New York
with a wealthy aunt. Some swell, she was!--used to go with her aunt
pretty nigh every year to Europe and we didn’t set eyes on her once in a
blue moon. Her father and brother had a fine farm and were making money,
but she didn’t care for this here life.
“Well, one time she come back from Europe and things didn’t seem to be
going right down here at her place. I don’t know what it was, but there
were queer things whispered about the two men folks and all the money
seemed to be gone suddenly, too. I was away at the time on a
three-years’ cruise, so I didn’t hear nothin’ about it till long after.
But they say the brother he disappeared and never came back, and the
father died suddenly of apoplexy or something, and Miss Camilla was
left to shift for herself, on a farm mortgaged pretty nigh up to the
hilt.
“She was a bright woman as ever was made, though, I’ll say that for her,
and she kept her head in the air and took to teaching school. She taught
right good, too, for a number of years and got the mortgages off the
farm. And then, all of a sudden, she began to get deaf-like, and
couldn’t go on teaching. Then she took to selling off a lot of their
land lying round, and got through somehow on that, for a while. But
times got harder and living higher priced, and finally she had to give
up trying to keep the whole thing decent and just scrooged herself into
those little quarters in the ‘L.’ She’s made a good fight, but she never
would come down off her high horse or ask for any help or let any one
into what happened to her folks.”
“How long ago was all that?” asked Doris.
“Oh, about forty or fifty years, I should think,” he replied, after a
moment’s thought. “Yes, fifty or more, at the least.”
“You say they owned a lot of land around their farm?” interrogated
Doris, casually.
“Surest thing! One time old Caleb Roundtree owned pretty nigh the whole
side of the river up that way, but he’d sold off a lot of it himself
before he died. She owned a good patch for a while, though, several
hundred acres, I guess. But she hain’t got nothin’ but what lies right
around the house, now.”
“Didn’t you ever hear what happened to the brother?” demanded Doris.
“Never a thing. He dropped out of life here as neatly and completely as
if he’d suddenly been dropped into the sea. And by the time I’d got back
from my voyage the nine-days’ wonder about it all was over, and I never
could find out any more on the subject. Never was particularly
interested to, either. Miss Camilla hain’t nothin’ to me. She’s always
kept to herself and so most folks have almost forgotten who she is.”
As the Captain had evidently reached the end of his information on the
subject, Doris rose to take her leave and Sally followed her eagerly.
“Well, did you find out what you wanted?” she cried, as soon as they
were once more out on the river in old “45.”
“I found out enough,” answered Doris very seriously, “to make me feel
pretty sure I’m right. Of course, I can only guess at lots of it, but
_one_ thing I’m certain of: that cave had nothing to do with smugglers
or pirates--or anything of that sort!”
Sally dropped her oars with a smothered cry of utmost disappointment.
“I can’t believe it!” she cried. “I just can’t. I’ve counted on it _so_
long--finding treasure or something like that, I mean. I just can’t
believe it isn’t so.”
“It may be something far more interesting,” Doris replied soothingly.
“But there’s just one trouble about it. If it’s what I think it is, and
concerns Miss Camilla, I’ve begun to feel that we haven’t any business
meddling with it now. We oughtn’t even to go into it.”
Sally uttered a moan of absolute despair. “I thought it would be that
way,” she muttered, half to herself, “if I shared the secret. I _knew_
they’d take it away from me!” She shipped her oars and buried her face
in her hands. After a moment she raised her head defiantly. “Why, I
don’t even know why you say so. You haven’t told me yet a single thing
of what it’s all about. Why _should_ I stay away from that place?”
“Listen, Sally,” said Doris, also shipping her oars and laying an
appealing hand on her arm, “I ought to tell you now, and I will. Perhaps
you won’t feel the same about it as I do. We can talk that over
afterward. But don’t feel so badly about it. Just hear what I have to
say first.
“I think there has been some trouble in Miss Camilla’s life,--something
she couldn’t tell any one about, and probably connected with that cave.
What your grandfather said about her father and brother makes me all the
more sure of it. I believe one or the other of them did something
wrong,--something connected with money, perhaps, embezzled it or forged
checks or something of that kind. And perhaps whoever it was had to hide
away and be kept so for a long time, and so that cave was made and he
hid there. Don’t you remember, your grandfather said the brother
disappeared suddenly and never came back? It must have been he, then.
And perhaps Miss Camilla had to sell most of her valuable things and
make up what he had done. That would explain her having parted with all
her lovely porcelains and china. And if so much of the land around the
house once belonged to her, probably that part where the cave is did
too.”
“But what about that bit of paper, then?” demanded Sally, who had been
drinking in this explanation eagerly. “I don’t see what that would have
to do with it.”
“Well, I don’t either,” confessed Doris. “Perhaps it _is_ the plan of
the place where something is hidden, but I’m somehow beginning to think
it isn’t. I’ll have to think that over later.
“But now, can’t you see that if what I’ve said is right, it wouldn’t be
the thing for us to do any more prying into poor Miss Camilla’s secret?
It would really be a dreadful thing, especially if she ever suspected
that we knew. She probably doesn’t dream that another soul in the world
knows of it at all.”
Sally was decidedly impressed with this explanation and argument, but
she had one more plea to put forward.
“What you say sounds very true, Doris, and I’ve almost got to believe
it, whether I want to or not. But I’m going to ask just one thing. Let’s
give our other idea just a trial, anyway. Let’s go there once more and
see if that scheme about the floor and the place in the corner is any
good. It _might_ be, you know. It sounded awfully good to me. And it
won’t hurt a thing for us to try it out. If we don’t find anything,
we’ll know there’s nothing in it. And if we do find anything that
concerns Miss Camilla, we’ll let it alone and never go near the place
again. What do you say?”
Doris thought it over gravely. The argument seemed quite sound, and yet
some delicate instinct in her still urged that they should meddle no
further. But, after all, she considered, they were sure of nothing. It
might have no concern with Miss Camilla at all. And, to crown it, the
secret was Sally’s originally, when all was said and done. Who was she,
Doris, to dictate what should or should not be done about it? She
capitulated.
“All right, Sally,” she agreed. “I believe it can do no harm to try out
our original scheme. We’ll get at it first thing tomorrow morning.”