CLUES IN A BOTTLE
All during the hot July days that followed Judy and Marjorie did indeed
live in bathing suits. Mrs. Powell and Penny tried to make them dress
up for dinner, but they compromised by changing into clean shirts and
blue jeans.
“Aren’t we ever going to do anything about the treasure that’s supposed
to be buried around here?” Judy asked one day. They had been in
swimming and were now lying in the sun on the shore of the lake.
“I suppose we should do something about it,” Marjorie said lazily. “But
it’s been so hot I hate the thought of digging. Helping Pat hoe up his
potatoes was about all I could stand.”
“I’ve still got some blisters,” Judy said with a grin.
Marjorie raised herself on one elbow and squinted up toward the Lodge.
“Penny and Phil don’t think there’s any treasure buried around here any
more than there was a ghost haunting the place.”
“I know _they_ don’t,” Judy said. “But Jimmy, Alf and Brook do. They’ve
been acting very mysteriously ever since we got here. They sneak off
early in the morning with shovels and things, and I’m sure they don’t
spend all their time fixing up their shack.”
“I know,” Marjorie said thoughtfully. “And it would be simply awful if
the boys found the treasure, not us.” She scrambled to her feet. “We’ve
got to find it first. Let’s get out of these wet bathing suits before
we do anything else. While we’re changing into dungarees we can decide
where the best place to start digging is.”
Ten minutes later the girls left the Lodge by the back door and, armed
with shovels, went down to the clearing.
“Oh, golly,” Marjorie moaned. “I thought this would be a swell place to
dig because there’s no grass on the ground here. But just look. There’s
the wash hanging out on the line to dry. Mr. Taggart must have just
brought it back from the laundry-mat.”
“Just our luck,” Judy complained. “We’d better not dig anywhere near
it. We’d be sure to raise clouds of dust. It hasn’t rained in ages.”
“I tell you what let’s do instead,” Marjorie suggested. “Let’s go help
the boys with their shack. They promised to let us work on it, too.
Once it’s finished maybe they’ll go off on that camping trip with Pat.
Then we’ll have the whole place to ourselves.”
“That’s right,” Judy agreed. “If they caught us digging, they’d be
sure to make fun of us. They pretend that we’re silly to believe that
there’s treasure buried around here, but I happen to know that they
believe in it too.”
When they arrived at the shack, the girls’ offer of help was promptly
turned down.
“_Help!_” Alf hooted. “Judy, you don’t know which end of a hammer is
the head.”
“Neither does Marjorie,” added Jimmy with a teasing grin. “Scram, you
two. We men have work to do.”
“But you promised,” Marjorie reminded him crossly.
Jimmy waved her away. “Later, child, later. Right now we’re too busy
to teach you the rudiments of carpentry.”
So Judy and Marjorie wandered forlornly off and returned to the
clearing where they had left their shovels. After that they spent a few
hours every day aimlessly digging here and there for buried treasure.
But it was tiresome work and since they knew the holes had to be filled
up, they never dug very deep or very long at any one spot.
“This is hopeless,” Judy said one day toward the end of July. “What
we ought to look for are clues. Maps and things pirates may have left
around which will tell us exactly where to dig.”
“I don’t think there were ever any pirates around here,” Marjorie said
dubiously. “Didn’t they always stick pretty close to the seacoasts?”
“I guess you’re right,” Judy said disconsolately. “But whoever buried
the treasure should have left some clues or directions.”
“Not necessarily,” Marjorie pointed out practically. “He might have
buried it in a hurry and then the Indians or somebody might have killed
him right afterwards.”
“I give up.” Judy flung her shovel on the ground. “The boys can find
the treasure first for all I care. My hands are so sore I couldn’t
paddle a canoe. So let’s go swimming.”
“All right,” Marjorie agreed. “I do want you to have fun while you’re
our guest, Judy,” she added worriedly.
“Oh, I am,” Judy assured her with a quick smile. “It was my idea to dig
for the treasure, not yours. But let’s forget about it for awhile.”
“Let’s,” Marjorie agreed. “Besides, I haven’t been much of a help to
Penny lately. I’m supposed to be assistant hostess, you know, and help
her entertain the guests.”
“Well, I’m a guest,” Judy said with a giggle. “And you’ve entertained
me royally.”
From then on Marjorie spent more time helping Penny and Ann Mary and
Theresa.
By the first of August the boys had made great progress with the shack.
Mal, Pat and Phil helped out whenever they could and some of the guests
pitched in occasionally. The walls and the roof were now up, the doors
and windows were in place and the boys had even spent two nights
sleeping there on cots. They were now putting in the finishing touches,
and true to their promise they had let Marjorie and Judy help.
Marjorie, in her enthusiasm over being allowed to put up a shower wall
all by herself, had banged her finger with the hammer and the boys
had suggested that she and Judy take some time off to recuperate. So
Marjorie and Judy were looking for shells down on the beach.
“Oh, golly,” Judy said in disgust after awhile, “all the nice ones seem
to get as far under the rocks as they can.”
“They certainly do,” Marjorie agreed. “But let’s keep looking. We might
find some really valuable ones which we could sell to collectors for a
lot of money.”
For the next few minutes they were very busy pushing and shoving at the
rocks, upturning some and giving up others that were too heavy to budge.
Finally they came across one huge stone that seemed to be imbedded in
the sand. Marjorie knew that even with Judy’s help she couldn’t move
it, and she was just about to crawl by it when she saw something.
“Judy,” she cried excitedly. “Come here, quickly. Doesn’t it look as
though someone had been digging around this rock a little while ago?”
Judy scrambled to her feet and joined Marjorie. “You’re right,” she
said. “Some one _has_ been digging here. I’ll bet whoever it was buried
something under that rock.” She flopped down on her knees beside
Marjorie and together the girls began to dig frantically with their
fingers.
And then Marjorie’s sharp eyes caught a glimpse of something that
glittered in the sunlight. “Diamonds,” she gasped. “Judy, help me.
Let’s see if we can’t inch the rock up a little so we can see better.
Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was real honest-to-goodness
treasure buried here?”
Judy, tugging at the heavy rock, could only pant, “There. Now we’ve got
it!”
They both fell to digging with renewed vigor, and in another second
Marjorie could see that the glittering object was only a dark green
glass bottle.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she moaned disappointedly. “And I thought we
were at last going to find the buried treasure.” Crossly she yanked the
bottle out of the warm sand and raised her arm to toss it into the lake.
“Wait a minute!” cried Judy, grabbing her arm just in time. “There’s
something in that bottle, Marjorie. When you held it up in the sunlight
I could see right through the dark green glass.”
Marjorie held the bottle up again and stared at it. “You’re right,
Judy,” she said. “It looks like a piece of paper. Oh, golly, maybe it’s
a map which’ll tell us exactly where the treasure is buried!”
As she talked, Marjorie was prying out the cork with a piece of broken
shell.
“Hurry, hurry,” Judy cried impatiently, hopping up and down. “Now
you’ve got it out at last. Turn it upside down and shake it, Marjorie.
Oh, oh, it _is_ a piece of paper!”
The piece of paper was battered and torn, and it had been crumpled into
a small ball. Carefully Marjorie smoothed it out, and together they
tried to read the smudged words.
After half an hour of intensive studying they were able to figure
out that the scrap was a fragment of a message, and the message had
something to do with “the Log Cabin” and “a well that.”
“Oh, Judy,” Marjorie gasped. “The well must be the one we dug up. If
we could only find the other fragment, I’ll bet the two together would
tell us where the treasure is buried!”
“Who do you suppose wrote the message?” Judy asked wonderingly. “And
how did it get torn? And how did one half get into this bottle?”
“I can guess what happened,” Marjorie said, her imagination completely
running away with her. “Two men knew about the buried treasure near the
old well. They wrote down just where they were supposed to dig. Then
they got into a fight when they talked about how they were going to
divide the loot. In the tussle, one man got off with one half, and the
other put his half in this bottle and buried it here for safekeeping.”
Judy stared at her in admiration. “You’re wonderful, Marjorie,” she
said. “That’s just what happened. Now all we have to do is find the
other half.”
Marjorie’s elfin blue eyes were bright with suppressed laughter.
“_All?_” she demanded sarcastically. “The other half of the message
could be anywhere in the world.” She stared thoughtfully down at the
scrap. “The two letters ‘tr’ might be part of the word ‘trunk.’ What do
you think, Judy?”
“I think you’re absolutely right,” Judy said emphatically. “Aren’t
there some old trunks in the storeroom that you haven’t opened yet? Oh,
Marjorie, do you suppose there’s another clue in one of them?”
“Let’s look anyway,” Marjorie said. “Tuesday when I was helping Ann
Mary get the soiled linen ready for Mr. Taggart to take into town, I
asked her if you and I couldn’t go through those old trunks some rainy
day. And she said we could. She laughed at me and said, ‘You won’t find
any treasure there. If you’re smart you’ll search for rare shells down
by the lake.’ That’s how I got the idea of trying to find some which
rich collectors might buy from us.”
“Well,” Judy said, “we didn’t find any worth bringing back to the
Lodge. Let’s don’t waste any more time looking for rare shells. Let’s
go show this clue to the boys.”
Marjorie hesitated. “Okay, but I’ll bet they just make fun of us. Jimmy
won’t even consider that it just might be a clue.”
“But,” Judy objected, “he’s bound to realize that the message had
something to do with the well and the Lodge. Let’s go.”
Marjorie carefully tucked the torn paper into the pocket of her blue
jeans. Then they raced back to the Lodge.
Out in the shed the girls found that Jimmy, Alf and Brook had finished
closing in the shower. They banged on the door and Jimmy called out in
a dramatic voice:
“Who invades our privacy? This is the bachelors’ retreat and we want
no women around here!” Marjorie heard him add in a loud whisper: “And
especially not dimwit girls!”
She yelled at the top of her lungs: “Oh, come on out, Jimmy. Quit being
so mean to us. We have something important to show you.”
But Jimmy was adamant. “_You_ quit banging on the door, dopes. We’ll
open it when we’re ready and not a minute before.”
Marjorie turned to Judy. “Try Alf. He’s your brother.”
“Alf Powell,” Judy screamed. “You’ll be sorry if you don’t come right
out. What we have is something really yummy!” She added quietly to
Marjorie, “That’ll get him!”
“Yummy,” they heard both Alf and Brook repeat, and then from Jimmy as
he opened the door and stuck his head out:
“Why didn’t you say you had food in the first place?”
“Look,” said Marjorie, showing him the piece of paper. “Judy and I
found this in a bottle buried in the sand under a big rock on the
beach. We think it’s part of a message that has something to do with
the buried treasure.”
“Oh, you dopey kids,” Jimmy said in a very condescending tone of voice.
“Your imagination works overtime. It’s fantastic,” he said over his
shoulder to Alf and Brook, “what they can think up in their spare time.”
But Jimmy took the paper from Marjorie, and gave it a contemptuous
glance. “What a mess,” he said. “You know perfectly well you rigged
this up yourselves, but you can’t fool me.”
“We didn’t, honest,” Marjorie said, tossing her blonde head. “But if
that’s the way you feel about it, give it back to me. Furthermore,
if we find any more clues you’ll be the last person in the world we
consult.”
Jimmy tossed it to her with a grin. “Run along, kids. We haven’t time
for your monkey business. We’re going for a swim, and then we’re going
to get the Bronc ready for our camping trip.” He slammed the door in
Marjorie’s face. “Scram. Later, if we men haven’t anything better to
do, you can try to fool us with your phony clues.”
“See?” Marjorie bitterly asked Judy. “That’s a brother for you! If we
do find anything in the storage room, let’s not tell a soul!”