THE MAP
Marjorie and Judy entered the Lodge by the back door and found Mr.
Taggart in the kitchen with a big bundle of clean laundry.
“Hello, girls,” he said pleasantly. “Find any buried treasure yet?”
“No,” Judy replied, “but down on the beach we--”
Marjorie nudged her and said quickly, “We found a lot of absolutely
worthless shells.” She grinned at Ann Mary who came into the kitchen
then with a bag of soiled linen. “You and your rare specimens! I’ll bet
you sent us off on that wild goose chase just to get us out of your
hair.”
Ann Mary laughed. “Maybe I did.” She turned to Mr. Taggart. “I really
sent them down to the lake to keep them from digging up the whole
place. Pat and Mal worked hard on the vegetable garden behind the
cabin, and I’m not going to have the kids ruin it in their search for
something which they know perfectly well isn’t there.”
“That’s right,” the laundry man said with a grin. “A carrot in the hand
is worth a diamond in the bush.” He picked up the bag and started for
the door.
“Wait a minute, please,” Ann Mary said. “There’s more upstairs. Sit
down and make yourself comfortable while I gather up the bed linen.”
“Do you want me to do it for you, Ann Mary?” Marjorie asked, hoping the
answer would be no.
“Thank you, no,” Ann Mary said emphatically. “The last time you counted
the sheets you counted one of them twice.”
Marjorie giggled, and the girls followed Ann Mary out into the hall. As
she hurried up the stairs to the balcony, Judy said:
“I wish you’d show me the secret room sometime, Marjorie. I think
you’re mean to keep it a secret from me, your very best friend.”
“Why, of course, I’ll show it to you,” Marjorie cried impulsively. “And
there’s no time like the present.” She led the way into the alcove and
said, “See those bookshelves? Now watch, while I press this button.”
Open-mouthed with amazement, Judy watched as the shelves moved aside,
revealing a short flight of stairs that led down into a little room.
“Why, that’s the most marvelous contraption I ever saw,” she said
enviously. “I wish we had something like it at home.”
“We can’t go in,” Marjorie said. “It’s a law we passed at a meeting of
the Allen Lodge Board of Directors. Only Phil and Pat can go in. As
a matter of fact,” she added thoughtfully, “I guess I shouldn’t have
showed you how the door works without first asking their permission.”
“I won’t tell a soul,” Judy promised. “But why all the secrecy?”
“Well,” Marjorie explained, “we keep all the guests’ valuables and all
the money in that little old wall safe in there.” She stopped suddenly.
“Oh, gosh, I guess that was Ann Mary who just went by the alcove. She
must have heard us talking in here and now she’ll guess that I showed
you the secret room.”
“Will she tell Phil and Penny?” Judy asked worriedly. “And will they
bawl you out? Oh, I hope not. It was all my fault! Curiosity killed the
cat,” she finished lamely.
“You mean,” Marjorie said as she closed the door, “let the cat out of
the bag!” She grinned. “No, Ann Mary won’t tell. If she thinks I did
let the cat out of the bag, she’ll bawl me out herself. But she’s no
tattle-tale, and neither is Pat. They’re both grand people. And so are
the Donahues.”
“Everyone at the Lodge is swell,” Judy agreed, and added cautiously:
“Since we’re probably already in Dutch, don’t you think maybe we’d
better ask Penny’s permission before we go through those old trunks in
the storeroom? I know Ann Mary said we could, but after all, Penny is
the housekeeper, isn’t she?”
Marjorie nodded. “We’ll get her permission right now.” She glanced at
her wristwatch. “She’s probably out on the porch having tea with your
parents and Mr. and Mrs. Curtis. And I guess Mr. and Mrs. Sanders, too.”
“I tell you what let’s do,” Judy said. “Let’s put on a fashion show.
Didn’t you say that the trunk you’ve already opened is full of
old-fashioned dresses and costume jewelry?”
“What a wonderful idea!” Marjorie raced ahead of Judy down the spacious
hall to the porch.
Penny, looking very lovely in a pale yellow afternoon frock, looked up
from the tea table with a smile. “Having fun, girls?” she asked. “I
don’t have to ask you if you’re hungry. Help yourselves to sandwiches
and cookies.”
“We’re not hungry for once, Penny,” Marjorie told her with a laugh. “We
came out to ask you if it’s all right if we put on a fashion show for
you while you’re having tea. The boys have deserted us, and Judy and I
want to dress up and parade around in some of the old costumes in the
storage room.”
“Go right ahead,” Penny said. “That’s the best idea you’ve had all
summer, Marjorie.” She turned to Mary Curtis who was sitting on the
other side of the table. “Don’t you think so, too, Mary?”
Mary nodded. “Anything to keep those two out of mischief.”
Marjorie and Judy hurried away to the storage room. “My, why haven’t
we poked around in here before?” Judy asked Marjorie. “What’s in all
those boxes and trunks anyway?”
“I only know what’s in the trunk we already opened,” Marjorie told
her. “These are the old, old trunks.” She pointed to two little trunks
standing side by side. “After the fashion show we’ll go through them
carefully for clues. The other boxes all contain things of ours that
we’ve put away so we wouldn’t clutter up the house with things we
didn’t need.”
Half an hour later the girls appeared on the porch and marched sedately
up and down, hoping they were behaving like professional models.
It was all Penny could do to keep from laughing. To her they looked as
stiff as wooden puppets in a Punch and Judy show.
“What period are you representing?” Brook’s mother asked, suppressing a
smile. “Jane Austen?”
Marjorie relaxed enough to shrug. “We haven’t the faintest idea, Mrs.
Sanders. Let’s pretend that the audience has to guess.”
“All right,” Mrs. Sanders agreed. “I’ll stick to _Pride and Prejudice_.”
“I’d say that the black velvet was of the nineties, after the big
sleeves and hideous bustles had gone out,” Mrs. Powell said.
Mrs. Curtis thought it was of a later period. She laughed and said,
“Wouldn’t it be funny if those bustles came back in again. I’m afraid
they wouldn’t look quite as cute on us as they do on those two young
ladies!”
Mary told them she thought the blue satin dress was meant to be worn
with hoops and was probably from a period dating near the Civil War.
“Let’s go see if we can find the hoop,” Marjorie said, taking Judy by
the hand and heading back to the storeroom.
They had had enough of dressing up by this time, and they got back
into their blue jeans and proceeded to turn the contents of the trunks
inside out. They felt every part of the inside of the trunks for
hidden places, they shook all the clothes carefully and examined them
minutely, but all to no avail.
“Maybe all of the costume jewelry in that box isn’t set with imitation
stones,” Judy said without much hope.
“But it is,” Marjorie said. “Do you want to look at it?” She
impatiently yanked off the lid and the old velvet lining fell away.
Then they both saw it--an old map, pasted inside the cover!
Marjorie was so surprised she sat right down on the storage room floor.
“Oh, my goodness,” she finally got out, “to think, if it hadn’t been
for you, we might not have even opened the jewelry box. I never would
have thought of looking here because I examined it so carefully when
Phil and Penny first opened this trunk.”
But Judy wasn’t listening. She had hurried to a window with the lid
and was examining the map carefully. “Marjorie,” she groaned, “this is
positively the worst thing that ever happened to us!”
Marjorie scrambled to her feet and hurried to peer over Judy’s
shoulder. In another minute she, too, was groaning. “There’s no doubt
about it,” she mumbled sadly. “This map tells exactly where the
treasure is buried. And where it is buried is right under the potato
hills in Pat’s garden!”
“That’s the way it looks to me,” Judy said mournfully. “He won’t dig up
those potatoes until the fall. The vines have hardly begun to blossom.”
Very near to tears she added, “And--and you’ll find the treasure after
I’ve gone back to school!”
Just then Penny appeared at the door. “What on earth is the matter
with you two?” she asked. “I could hear your moans and groans from the
balcony.”
“We’ve found the map that shows exactly where the treasure is buried,”
Marjorie wailed. “B-but Pat won’t let us dig it up.”
Penny’s blue eyes were dark with surprise. “Don’t be silly, Marjorie,”
she said. “Of course, Pat will let you dig it up.”
Marjorie hurried across the room to show Penny the map. “See,” she said
pointing. “The big X is behind the Donahues’ cabin on the west side.
Judy and I know what’s planted there. We got blisters on our hands the
day we helped Pat and Mal hoe up those potato hills!”
Penny glanced at the map and then she laughed. “You silly girls! Don’t
you know that this is a joke the boys played on you?” She went back
into the hall and called up the stairs:
“Jimmy, come down here right away, please.”
Jimmy took the stairs two at a time. “What’s up?” he demanded. “The
house on fire?”
For answer Penny handed him the jewelry box lid. “Didn’t you paste that
map there to play a joke on the girls?”
Jimmy stared at the map in amazement. “Honestly, Penny,” he said
soberly. “I never saw the darn thing before.”
“How about Alf and Brook?” Penny asked sternly. “A joke’s a joke,
but this one might have caused serious trouble. If someone not as
thoughtful as Marjorie had found it and followed directions he would
have ruined Pat’s potatoes.”
“I know,” Jimmy said, still staring at the map. “But neither Alf nor
Brook did it, Penny. They’ve never been inside the storage room, so
they couldn’t possibly have planted this map in the cover of the
costume jewelry box.”
“Well then,” Penny said firmly. “The person who did, did it purposely
to annoy us.”
“I don’t know how you can be so sure of that,” Marjorie objected. “_I_
think someone put it in the lid long before Pat and Mal planted the
garden.”
Penny gave her a fond pat. “I hate to disillusion you, honey, but the
map was pasted in the lid quite recently. Last week when I opened the
box to show Mary the costume jewelry the old velvet lining fell out.
And there wasn’t any map there then.”
Marjorie sighed with disappointment. “Oh, dear,” she began, “then I
suppose the same mean person put that scrap of paper in the bot--”
But she never finished what she had planned to say. For just then Phil
called out excitedly from the porch:
“Penny, _Penny! Peter’s here!_”