FORGOTTEN TREASURE
Pat swiftly untied Taggart’s feet. “Get up,” he ordered. “Your pals are
waiting for you in a nice shiny prowl car in front of the Lodge.”
“The police,” Phil gasped. “But how--?”
Pat grinned. “The whole hold-up was a washout. Oh, some of the ladies
got a little scared when we all suddenly found ourselves facing those
cowboys and their guns. And I was pretty worried about you myself when
I saw the door close and guessed you were trapped down here with the
ringleader.” He chuckled. “Penny saved the day. Just before the hold-up
was to take place, she happened to notice that two of the cowboys, who
were loitering out in the hall, were carrying real guns. She raced
upstairs and called the police.” He laughed at the chagrined expression
on Taggart’s face. “The police arrived shortly after our friend’s pals
had collected their loot. In fact, they walked out of the door and
right into the arms of two of the biggest cops I’ve ever seen.”
“Those fools,” Taggart snarled. “I told Jerry and Rick not to let
anyone out of their sight once the secret door was open.”
Pat, as he deftly emptied Taggart’s pockets, told him, “They didn’t
exactly _let_ her dash upstairs to the phone in her room. She went so
quickly and so quietly they didn’t even know she wasn’t among those
present downstairs. When it finally dawned on them that none of their
victims was dressed as a bride, I imagine they guessed that the game
was up and decided to scram without waiting to see what had happened
to their boss.” He gave Taggart a push. “Get going,” he said gruffly.
“There’s a nice shiny pair of bracelets waiting for you.”
It was after one when the men returned from the precinct station after
preferring charges against the three men. The girls were waiting
excitedly for them on the porch.
“Oh, Phil,” Marjorie yelled, running down the steps. “To think that
Graybeard was Mr. Taggart our laundryman, and none of us saw through
his disguise.”
“Well,” Phil said, “it was a good disguise for one thing, and he was
careful to spend most of his time with Adra who had never seen him.”
Adra smiled rather shamefacedly. “I’m such a lazybones! He usually came
in the morning before I was up. When he did come later in the day I
guess I was always off somewhere having a good time while you Allens
worked.”
“That’s what you were supposed to be doing,” Penny said, smiling.
“You’re our guest, remember?”
“Never mind about that,” Marjorie interrupted impatiently. “What I want
to know is whether or not Mr. Taggart was Mr. X.” She tugged Phil’s
arm, leading him to a seat beside her on the porch glider. “Did he
plant the clues we found and write us the threatening letters?”
Phil nodded. “The other men were merely hired by him for the evening to
keep the guests out of his hair while he looked for a secret drawer
in the safe. He made a complete confession before we left the police
station.”
“Oh, oh,” Marjorie cried jumping up. “Then the mystery is solved. Tell
us everything, Phil, right now.”
He patted her hand affectionately. “Not now, honey. First we must think
of our guests. Family affairs can come later.”
Once everybody was in the dining room, its light and decorations made a
gay setting for the return to normal feelings. As Philip followed the
last guest into the room, Penny said, “Adra and I were just sick with
worry over you, Phil. I want to know every single thing that happened
as soon as possible! Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine,” Phil assured her.
Jimmy, too, caught Philip and said. “Good work, Phil. When do I get to
hear the whole story?”
“As soon as the guests have all gone home or to bed in the Lodge,”
Philip said. “It’s a long story.” He turned to Penny, “And it was your
quickwittedness that made it have a happy ending.”
“I didn’t do anything but dash up to my room and call the police,”
Penny said. “You’re a hero, Phil.”
By now, of course, everyone had removed his mask and all the faces were
familiar ones.
Philip moved on to a space at the central table where he and Adra were
going to sit together. He held her hand in a firm clasp and her fingers
twined in response. Peter smiled at him and clapped his hands together
for order.
“Speech! Speech!”
Philip smiled at everybody and didn’t seem at all nervous or upset
after his experience of the evening.
“I’m very sorry,” he began, “that robbers chose us for their victims
tonight, and that I could not prevent your disagreeable experience.”
“It was fun,” Judy interrupted impulsively. “For the longest time I
thought it was just an act Jimmy and Alf were putting on. What I’ll
have to tell the girls when I get back to Cincinnati!”
Philip smiled at her and continued: “I hope that you all can forget
the unpleasant part of the evening and that you will enjoy the feast
Ann Mary prepared. I have here the jewelry and wallets and handbags
the armed cowboys took from you. As I hold up each item will the owner
please come and get his or her property?”
While the food was being served, Philip distributed the stolen articles
to their owners.
“I was much too surprised to be frightened at first,” said Mrs. Curtis,
calmly pouring cream into her coffee. “Indeed, like Judy, I thought for
quite a while that it was some stunt the boys had thought up. The young
people today are always doing some crazy thing.”
“I was nearly speechless at those guns,” said Mrs. Powell. “I don’t
know what the country is coming to! But it was all over so quickly I
don’t suppose I was much more frightened than I would have been trying
to get across a busy street.”
“That, my dear, is slightly underestimating it--at least for me,” said
Mr. Powell. “I was just plain worried one of those guns would go off.”
“I certainly hated to see my jewelry gathered in,” remarked Mrs.
Sanders.
The prizes were awarded, and there was music afterwards. Some of
the older people retired soon, but as this was the last general
celebration, the younger set preferred to linger.
Philip, whose duties as host had been accomplished, wasted no time, but
took Adra to a moonlit walk and pretty nook on the shore where they sat
on the sand and talked.
Philip told Adra of his feeling of responsibility for his brother and
sisters. “Now Penny is engaged to Peter as I suppose she told you.
This summer’s venture will see Jimmy and Marjorie through school.” He
hesitated. “And, er, college. At last, Adra, I feel I have a right to
say, well, that the only treasure I ever wanted is you!”
Adra’s blush was most becoming and gave Philip courage to go on. “Could
you possibly care for me, Adra? You know your father has invited me
into his office and I want to go on with my college education evenings,
but somehow, whatever I decide to do depends on you. If you care, I
think we can--”
“Manage the rest,” finished Adra calmly, though her heart was beating
fast. “Yes, Phil, I care enough.”
Two happy young people walked back to the Lodge about half an hour
later. As Phil and Adra entered they found most of the guests gone and
Marjorie and Jimmy curled up in big chairs on the porch, sound asleep.
“Those two wouldn’t dare go to bed for fear they’d miss something.”
Adra and Philip laughed and went back to find Peter and Penny raiding
the pantry for a snack.
“Ha!” cried Phil. “More burglars!”
“Yes; come join us,” replied Penny, unwrapping some brick ice cream.
“Delighted,” returned her brother. “We need to celebrate. Adra and
I have just reached a momentous decision and this Lodge can hardly
contain me, big as it is.”
“Honest? Oh, Adra, you perfect dear!” and Penny dropped the ice cream
to hug Adra with enthusiasm. And Peter, who had caught the ice cream
on his plate, shook hands with Philip after carefully setting down his
burden.
“You know,” said Peter slyly, “Philip was going to tell us what
Mr. Taggart said when he confessed, but I guess Adra has made him
completely forget it.”
“That she has,” answered Philip. “Anything else that happened tonight
is very unimportant by comparison with this. After all, that’s over.
Exciting enough while it lasted, but not nearly as interesting as plans
for my future life with Adra.”
“Listen to the hero make little out of his great adventure,” cried
Penny. “Phil, I can’t stand it another minute. Begin at the beginning
and tell us every word Mr. Taggart said when he confessed. How did he
know there was a secret drawer in the safe, and what was in the drawer?”
For answer, Peter led the way to the porch. “Wake up, Sleepy Heads,”
he said, nudging Marjorie and Jimmy. “Wake up and hear a bedtime story
about hidden treasure!”
“Hidden treasure,” Marjorie repeated, instantly wide awake. “Phil!
You’ve been keeping something important from us.”
“I told you it was a family matter,” Phil said, putting his arm around
Adra. “And before I told the tale I wanted to be sure that Adra as well
as Peter will soon be members of our family.”
“I knew it,” Marjorie cried, giving Adra a hug. “I told you so, Jimmy.”
“Congratulations, you two,” Jimmy said. “I mean, you four. Now, can we
hear what went on in the secret room tonight, Phil?”
“The story,” Phil began, “goes back to about twenty years ago when
Uncle John was a very rich man and living in New York City. At that
time he invested $20,000 in a small company belonging to one of his
friends who told him that the stock was sure to go up. But the stock
didn’t go up. It went down and finally its name disappeared from the
Stock Exchange boards and from the newspaper stock lists. Naturally,
Uncle John thought his certificates were worthless, but, lucky for us,
he didn’t destroy them.”
“Golly, Phil,” Jimmy cried enthusiastically. “When you say ‘lucky for
us’ do you mean the old stock is worth something? Can I have a sailboat
after all?”
Phil grinned. “Let me finish, puh-leeze. About five years ago, the
company started paying dividends, but it couldn’t locate a great many
of its stockholders, among them, Uncle John. He had changed his address
several times before he settled down here. So the company officials
turned the matter over to a special detective agency which specializes
in tracking down owners of forgotten stocks. Notices also appeared
in newspapers throughout the country, and Mr. Taggart saw one of the
notices.
“With forged credentials, he got a job with the detective agency and
was assigned the duty of finding Uncle John. Guessing that Uncle John
was dead, he planned to get hold of the stock certificates, and, with
more forged credentials, prove that he was his sole heir.”
Phil turned to Penny who was holding hands with Peter. “If it hadn’t
been for you, Taggart might well have succeeded. A girl not quite so
level-headed might have screamed when she saw those ‘cowboys’ drawing
real guns from their holsters.”
Peter squeezed her hand more tightly. “I can’t bear to think about what
might have happened if those gunmen had seen you darting up the stairs.”
“Stop it, both of you,” Penny protested, blushing. “Get on with the
story, Phil!”
“Okay,” Phil said, smiling. “Taggart finally traced Uncle John to
the Lodge only to find that he was dead and that we had started our
business venture here. He had hoped to find the Lodge deserted so he
could search undisturbed for the certificates. He knew that people
leave old stocks and bonds in all sorts of places. Sometimes they slip
them under the paper lining of bureau drawers or cupboards, or between
the pages of books. False-bottom trunks and secret drawers in old
safes, and so forth, and so forth. Taggart realized that one of us,
while we were getting the Lodge ready for guests, might come across the
certificates. So the first thing he did was to try to frighten us away.”
“That was silly of him,” Marjorie said with a sniff. “He might have
known that the Allens don’t frighten easily.”
“Be quiet, imp,” Jimmy said. “He didn’t know anything about us then.”
He added to Philip: “So it was Taggart who wrote the two threatening
letters? And left his footprint on the ground under the shed floor?”
“That’s right,” Phil told him. “He confessed that he wrote the one to
Penny _after_ she fell down the well. And he also confessed that he
was our night prowler. Actually he did a lot of prowling we didn’t
know about, trying to find out if his anonymous letters had any effect.
The first night he came snooping around he listened outside the living
room window and heard us joking about digging in the well for buried
treasure. That gave him the idea of keeping us busy digging outside,
instead of searching around inside.”
“I can guess what he did next,” Marjorie said with a rueful laugh. “He
wrote that note on an old piece of paper, put one half in the bottle
Judy and I found down on the beach, and the other half in the pocket of
the old suit Brook found when the boys were out camping.” She stopped
suddenly, her blue eyes wide with amazement. “But how and when did he
manage to put that map in the lid of the costume jewelry box?”
“I can answer that one,” Penny said with a sigh. “The day our first
guests arrived, I heard someone rummaging around in the storage room. I
thought it was you, Marjorie, and thought you were fibbing later when
you insisted you were out in the Donahues’ cabin helping Ann Mary count
their laundry.” She laughed. “I owe you an apology, honey. While you
and Ann Mary were busy, and Phil and I were upstairs hanging curtains,
Taggart must have sneaked into the storage room and pasted that map
behind the rotten lining of the old jewelry box.”
“You’re both two jumps ahead of me,” Philip said, laughing. “Taggart
did put the map where you found it, but first he had to have some
excuse for coming out here. He heard in the village that we were
looking for someone who would take the soiled linen in to the
laundry-mat and applied to Penny for the job.”
Penny moaned, covering her pretty face with both hands. “Oh, why did I
fall into his trap so easily? I should have guessed when he offered to
do it so cheaply, that something was wrong.”
“Not at all,” Peter said protectively. “Taggart did handle the laundry
situation in a very satisfactory manner, so I don’t think anyone can
blame you for not suspecting him of an ulterior motive.”
Phil nodded. “That’s right, Penny, nobody blames you. The trouble
was that no one paid much attention to him when he came out here. I
imagine Ann Mary didn’t always have the bundle ready, or his pay when
he brought out the clean wash. Once when she left him alone in the
kitchen he slipped down to the beach and stuck the bottle containing
half the note under a rock.”
“We made everything so easy for him,” Marjorie groaned. “He was there
in the kitchen, I remember, the day Ann Mary suggested that Judy and
I search for rare shells. He was also there the time I asked her if
it would be all right for us to spend the first rainy day rummaging
through the old trunks in the storage room.”
“And,” Penny added, “he knew exactly when the boys left on their
camping trip. Remember? Ann Mary told him he had to bring back their
clean shirts before they left. I imagine it was simple for him to find
out from her where they were going.”
“Uh huh,” Phil said. “_Very_ simple. Ann Mary had no reason to suspect
him. He followed them to Uncle John’s fishing camp only to find that
they had moved deeper into the woods. He saw the Bronc’s tire tracks
and followed them to the lake. Early in the morning before Brook’s
adventure, he rigged up the coat with the other half of the note in the
pocket. He could count on the fact that one of the boys, while out
canoeing, would be sure to notice what looked like the torso of a human
body.” Phil smiled. “Taggart also knew that Jimmy, like Marjorie, was
sure treasure was buried around here and was looking for clues.”
“And,” Peter added, “the man knew that no boy could resist going
through the pockets of an old coat he found.”
Jimmy’s tanned cheeks were very red. “Well,” he said, “that clears up
all the mysterious clues and letters. And we certainly all played right
into his hands when we issued invitations to the masquerade.”
“And,” Penny added, “when I dropped hints all over the village that we
were going to show our guests the secret room that night.” She sighed.
“What I don’t understand is how Taggart knew there was a secret drawer
in the safe.”
“Because,” Philip explained, staring at Marjorie, “one day when he was
out here he caught a glimpse of the safe. Not only is he a notorious
forger, but, in between sessions in jail, he’s made an exhaustive study
of safes. He knew that the particular style and make of the one in the
secret room had a hidden drawer in the top. Since we obviously hadn’t
found the certificates while we were cleaning up the Lodge, he guessed
that they might be in the secret compartment of the safe.”
“But,” Jimmy interrupted. “When on earth did he get a glimpse of the
safe? Up until tonight--I mean last night--nobody but you and Pat ever
went into the secret room. And I’m sure neither of you was careless
enough to open the door unless you were sure no one was lurking around.”
It was now Marjorie’s turn to cover her red cheeks with both hands.
“I can answer that one,” she confessed miserably. “One day when Mr.
Taggart was here, I showed Judy how the door opened. He must have been
hiding in the alcove when the bookshelves moved back. I heard someone
moving down the hall just before we left, and thought it was Ann Mary
with a bundle of soiled laundry. But I guess there’s no doubt that it
was Mr. Taggart.” She raised her face, on the verge of tears. “Thinking
back, I remember now that he was in the kitchen, and Judy and I had
just left there when she begged me to show her how the secret door
worked. Oh,” she finished, “how can I be so dumb?”
“’Tain’t easy,” Jimmy said, grinning. “You’ve got to have a lot of
practice before you can be as hopeless as you are!”
“Never mind, honey,” Penny said to Marjorie in a comforting voice.
“After all, in a way you helped to set the trap that caught Mr. X.” She
turned to Philip. “We’re all trying to tell your story for you, and I,
for one, am getting confused. Once Taggart got a glimpse of the safe
and knew how to get into the secret room, why did he wait until the
masquerade to go in there?”
Phil chuckled. “Because he didn’t know the combination of the safe. He
could, of course, have sneaked out here at night after we’d all gone to
bed and used dynamite to open the safe, but that would have been pretty
risky. Soon after he saw the safe and the room, we issued blanket
invitations to the masquerade and you slyly hinted that part of the
evening’s entertainment would be a visit to the secret room. Taggart
promptly decided that the safest way of getting what he wanted was to
let us lead him right to it.”
“In other words,” Peter added, “while we were setting our little trap,
Mr. X was setting one of his own. While his gangster friends were
holding up the rest of the party, he planned to force one of you Allens
to accompany him into the secret room and open the safe.”
“That’s right,” Philip said. “And I made things easy for him when I
asked him to lend atmosphere by posing by the safe; and then, to cap
the climax, I stayed behind after everyone else had left. The only
thing I can say for myself,” he finished, “is that I did have the
presence of mind to close the door as soon as I realized I’d walked
into the trap we had set for him. And even that,” he admitted, “was
sort of a reflex action.”
“Call it what you like,” Jimmy said, “but it was important. Otherwise,
Taggart would have heard the outraged cries of his gunmen when they
walked into the arms of the police. During that commotion he might have
escaped--with the real loot.” He leaned forward to tap Phil’s knee.
“Now that we’ve all, with the exception of the inlaws-to-be, confessed
to being dimwits in one way or another, let’s hear more about those
stock certificates, Phil. Answer me, yes, or no, are they worth enough
so I can get a sailboat?”