At first the incoming water seeped through the bank of the river, under
the surface, as Clay’s excavation had cut almost through the narrow bulk
of earth between the house and the water’s edge. Then, as the
underground current carried earth with it, undermining the bank, the
cellar began to fill from the surface and the line of light under the
sills became simply an aperture for the delivery of water into the
basement of the old house.
“This is getting serious!” Clay exclaimed, as the cellar filled to the
depth of a foot or more. “We’ve got to do something right off or we’ll
be drowned like rats in a trap!”
“I learned once, when a kid, how to open this iron door from the
inside,” Tom announced, “but I have forgotten. We lived with Uncle David
for a time, Don and I, until he became too stingy to buy food and
clothing for us, and one day he showed us all about this treasure room,
as he called it. Don remembered, but I did not. If Don were only here
now!”
Clay turned his electric light on the door, weaving it over every inch
of the iron sheathing and the stone walls on each side.
“If there’s a spring or anything of that kind here, we ought to be able
to find it,” he declared. “Was it down low or up high. You were a little
shaver then, did you stand up in a chair to reach it, or did you bend
down to the floor? You ought to be able to remember.”
“But I can’t!” groaned Tom. “I’m afraid! I always was afraid in this old
house. Uncle said there were ghosts in the cellar! I’ll never get over
my dread of the place—never! What shall we do?”
“Keep poking at everything you see,” commanded Clay, annoyed at the
boy’s attitude. “There must be something to push, or something to pull.
We are certain to find it if we keep on looking. We never came to this
country to be drowned like this! Bet your life we never did!”
“But the water is getting deeper every minute,” wailed Tom. “Oh, I can
fight out in the open, and like it, too, but I’m terrified in the dark
and in places where strength doesn’t count!”
“Courage always counts!” Clay answered. “You just keep on looking for
that spring, or that lever, or whatever it is that opens the door!”
The lads did keep on looking, but the water rose higher and higher. They
could now hear voices outside, though they came dully to their ears, and
now and then a crash came which told of falling timbers.
Clay realized that the foundations of the house were falling in more
places than one, and that the sills and studding were giving way, but he
did not care to inform Tom of this new peril. He knew that the boy was
not lacking in courage, as courage is usually classed, but he also knew
he possessed the same natural antipathy to darkness that the house cat
possesses for water. Probably because of prenatal influences, the boy
was a coward at the present time, though he tried hard not to show just
how hopeless, and frightened, and despairing he was.
“There’s a crowd gathering outside,” Clay encouraged, “and they’ll find
some way to get us out. But we’ve got to keep on looking for the means
to open this door. Why, boy, just look here, will you?”
Clay was pulling at a half-concealed lever which he had found pressed
into a niche in the stone wall as he spoke. It came out slowly and a
stone above it moved as he drew it away from its hiding-place “I thought
I had it!” he cried. “It moves something, but not the door! Queer old
trap, this! Look at it!”
As the lever came out a stone in the wall started from above and dropped
down on hinges, revealing an opening about a foot in size.
The boy held his light to the opening for a moment and then drew out a
thick package of papers. One end of the wrapper had been torn off, and
Clay drew a paper out and looked at the lettering on the back of the
fold. Then he thrust the papers into an inside pocket and looked Tom in
the face, his own eyes staring with amazement.
“What is it?” asked Tom. “What did you find?”
“Government bonds!” Clay almost shouted. “There are thousands of
dollars’ worth in that package! Think of drowning with all that wealth
in sight! Buck up, young fellow! You’ll soon be a rich man!”
“I was in hopes the lever opened the door!” Tom muttered. “I’m not
interested in government bonds just now! What good would a million do us
if they found us dead here on this floor?”
“You give me that tired feeling!” Clay exclaimed. “Keep on looking for
the lever or key which opens the door! Listen! Do you know that voice?”
he added. “That’s Captain Joe, and he’s telling us that he is on his way
to the rescue! Clever old dog, that Captain Joe!”
The boys searched every square foot of the walls, even reaching up to
the ceiling, but found nothing which would open the door. The water rose
steadily, and the voices outside gradually grew fainter.
Now the water was up to their hips, now to their waists, now it came to
their arm-pits, now Tom was obliged to stand up on an old chest to keep
his head dry. All around them the building was falling, but nothing
seemed to disturb the iron ceiling above.
The walls of the cellar were falling, too, in places, but they only
crumpled down in great heaps of stones, leaving no opening through which
the boys might make their way to the free air outside. It was now broad
daylight outside, but the flashlights were still needed in the cellar.
“We’ve got about a minute more!” Clay admitted, as the water touched his
chin. “We’re up against it at last! I’d like to leave a note for the
boys, but it is too late to write one now. Hear Captain Joe out there?
Say, old sport, I believe he is coming nearer! He surely is! Hurrah!”
Then the iron door swung open and, the water being somewhat higher in
the den than in other parts of the basement, a strong current set toward
the east, lowering the flood a foot or more where the boys stood.
First, they saw Captain Joe’s ugly head poking through the water which
filled the doorway. Then Don’s face showed. However, there was a current
setting toward the main basement from the den, and both the boy and the
dog were forced back.
The outsweep of water had lowered the body of it in the den, so that the
boys were no longer in danger of drowning, but they knew that in time
the little apartment would fill again, as the main cellar filled. Clay
took Tom by the shoulder and pushed him to the doorway.
“Dive through!” he said, “and when you get out into the cellar make for
the stairs and climb up. This old shack will be afloat in no time!
Hurry, now! Perhaps Captain Joe will help you if you tumble down!”
Tom shivered and hesitated until Clay became angry.
“All right!” he said. “I’ll go first. You keep close to me!”
And so the lads dove through the doorway, groped, half strangled, up the
stairs, over fallen timbers and planks, and so on into the main hall,
where there was no water as yet, but where the floor was sagging because
of the washed-out foundations.
Case, Alex, and Don were there to meet them. Outside the crowd was
cheering wildly and shouting congratulations to the boys who had entered
the flooded basement to open the door.
Clay and Tom began expressing their gratitude and their appreciation of
the brave act, but Don cut them off with a question.
“Did you get the wallet?” he asked.
“Of course we did!” replied Clay, “and we got something else, too.”
“What else was there to get?” asked Don.
“Mighty little left in that old house the last time I was there.”
“You’ll see, in time!” Tom said, with a knowing wink at Clay.
“Explanations in the future!” Clay exclaimed. “Just now we’ve got to get
past that sympathetic crowd and back to the boat. Say, Don,” he added,
in a moment, “I can’t wait to get back to the Rambler before asking one
question, and that is this: Did you come aboard the _Rambler_ and get
the money? If you did, say so—quick!”
“I certainly did!” Don answered. “If I hadn’t would have been lost, for
Teddy was playing with it!”
“That’s enough!” Clay said. “I’ll learn how and why later on. Wonder if
King is in that crowd out there? It was he who locked us in.”
“He is not,” grinned Case. “The mob got after him for locking you up in
such a dangerous hole, and he took to his heels! He won’t dare show
himself around here for a few days.”
“Then all we have to do is to get rid of the crowd,” Clay explained.
Of course there were many who wished to shake hands with the rescuers
and the rescued, and even Captain Joe came in for a fair share of
praise, but the boys were soon out of the crowd and on their way to the
boat.
At the water front they found the riverman, still growling and sulking
over the loss of the boat Tom had hired the night before. Tom told him
where the boat had been left, and Clay paid him for the use of it, so he
eagerly consented to row the boys to the _Rambler_, and, later on, to
convey their provisions and gasoline to them.
“I’m glad we find the boat still here!” Alex said, as he mounted to the
deck, “and I’m glad we have gotten rid of King. Now for a trip up the
river! Now for freedom from sleuths and mysteries!”
The other boys echoed the sentiment, but when they opened the cabin
door, a moment later, and looked in, there sat King, busy with the cold
pancakes Don had cooked just before he left the boat to assist in the
rescue of Clay and Tom. He smiled as the boys entered.
“Well, of all the iron nerve—”
Alex could not finish the sentence. There were no words which could do
justice to the occasion, he thought.
“Help yourself!” Clay said. “If you’ll wait a little while we’ll give
you hot coffee. We’re going to make some for ourselves!”
Tom’s greeting was not so cordial.
“If this was my boat,” he said, “I’d break you in two with my foot. You
came near drowning us. Do you know that?”
“The people on shore told me!” smiled King. “They came near stringing me
up by the neck for what I did.”
“You deserved it!” grumbled Don. “Indeed you did.”
“Now, see here, boys,” King went on, “I had my duty as an officer to do.
If you had been relieved of fifty thousand dollars and valuable papers,
you would expect the law to get them for you, wouldn’t you?”
No one replied, and the officer went on, calmly eating cold cakes as he
did so—eating and tossing a piece to Teddy now and then.
“You see,” he resumed, “I hold no grudge against the bear, if he did
dump me into the river! He did just what I would have done under the
circumstances. I don’t blame him. He is a good little beastie!”
“You wasn’t helping the law any by locking us in there to be drowned!”
Clay remarked, his eyes flashing.
“Wasn’t I?” asked King. “Let us see about that. You, Don, took fifty
thousand dollars of another man’s money out of Chicago. You carried it
in a belt about your waist. I had to find that money, didn’t I? I
searched the _Rambler_ for it! I had to maroon two of the boys on a sand
island and tie Captain Joe up in order to do it.”
Captain Joe licked his chops as if he was thinking of making settlement
for the insult right there. Clay called him away, or he would have taken
hold of the deputy’s leg.
“Yes, I searched the _Rambler_, and got up-river in a steamer after
being dumped off. Here I heard that lights had been seen in the old
house the night before. Now, what was more reasonable than to suppose
that Don had visited the old shack and buried the money in the cellar? I
was there looking for it when you boys came in. I should have released
you as soon as I had finished my search, only I couldn’t unlock the
door. All I could do was to go for assistance, and you all know how that
came out. I nearly lost my life at the hands of a mob, any member of
which would have done exactly as I had done.”
“You say it well!” snarled Tom. “I don’t trust you, though!”
“Now,” King continued, without taking notice of the remark, “I’ll tell
you what I’ll do. I understand that there is a question as to whom this
money belongs. It may belong to Don, for all I know! Well, if you will
put the cash in the hands of a banker here I’ll go back home and say
nothing about the deal until you boys have had time to turn around. But
I want it understood, too, that my client, this Josiah Trumbull, is not
to be molested by you for anything he has done in the past.”
Don agreed to this, and King continued.
“I have a notion that my client is a roughneck, as well as a three-card
sharp, but I’m going to do the best I can for him, for all that. If it
can be shown that the money belongs to you, Don, or to you, Tom, it
shall be turned over to you. But if this cannot be shown, Trumbull is to
have it, as against any other claimant. Is that right?”
This was reluctantly agreed to, and then the boys and King prepared the
best meal the larder was capable of, and enjoyed it hugely. After this
they went to the town, leaving Tom and Clay on board, and the money was
put in escrow in one of the banks. Don also put the government bonds on
deposit there. King’s eye stuck out when he saw the bonds and was told
where they had been found, but he only expressed congratulations.
All this business completed, provisions and gasoline bought, and letters
sent away, the boys went back to the _Rambler_ to study up the three
mysterious papers as forming a whole. But the black wallet held no paper
of any kind! There were a few half-rotten banknotes in it, a small flat
key, and nothing else!
“We are up against it again!” cried Case. “Well,” with a smile, “we’ll
go right on and try to uncover the mystery without the third piece of
paper. I wonder what this key fits, and if King got that third paper? He
might! What?”