Chapter I: WAS awakened early next morning by the clatter of a heavy wagon on (1)

the road in front of the house. Stealing to the window in order not to awaken Eve, I was just in time to catch sight of a familiar, blue-shirted figure in the driver’s seat. Michael! What was he doing in this part of town so early in the morning?

When I went downstairs I found the explanation. Eve was still asleep and, pleased to have got the start of her for once, I resolved to have breakfast on the table by the time she came down. I unlocked the kitchen door and went out to bring in the milk which is left in a pail every morning. Beside the pail I found a paste-board box. As I stooped to pick it up I saw there were holes pierced in the top. And when I lifted it—it mewed!

A cat! I pulled off the lid. No, a kitten—a plump gray one with china-blue eyes and a white spot in its forehead. The mew changed to a noisy purr as I lifted it.

“What are you doing?” Eve, looking very nice in a fresh blue linen dress, was standing in the doorway. In my absorption I had forgotten all about breakfast. Then Eve saw the kitten. “Oh, the darling! Where did you find it, Sandy?”

I pointed to the box and told her about Michael. “I suppose the idea is,” I said, “that one cat is as good as another. But I doubt very much if Aunt Cal will even give it house room!”

“Well, it was nice of him to think of it anyway!” Eve returned, cuddling the kitten. “I wonder if it’s hungry?”

Aunt Cal returned at ten o’clock. Eve was just taking a loaf of gingerbread from the oven when I heard the car. Miss Rose Blossom was at the wheel, there was no mistaking her broad figure. She was beaming at Aunt Cal as she handed down her bag.

“She’s coming!” I whispered, tiptoeing back into the kitchen. “What shall we do with Daisy June?” I glanced a little wildly toward Adam’s cushion by the stove where the kitten slept.

Before Eve could even answer, a firm step sounded outside. Aunt Cal stood in the doorway. “Well,” she inquired, “how have you been getting on?”

I stood in front of the stove. “Splendid——” I began and then, fearing I sounded too enthusiastic, I changed hastily to “All right.”

“How is your friend?” Eve asked, inserting a knife around the gingerbread.

“A little better. Her sister came over from Millport this morning, so I felt that I could leave. Mercy, child, I didn’t know you could bake!”

“Well, of course, it isn’t as good as yours,” Eve began modestly.

Aunt Cal picked up her bag and started for the stairs. It was this moment that Daisy June took to wake from her nap. With a sinking heart, I felt her between my ankles. Aunt Cal stopped dead in the middle of the room. “Where,” she inquired in a very stuffy voice, “did that come from? And where is Adam?”

I swallowed. “Adam’s visiting—visiting Captain Trout,” I said.

My relative’s face became stonier than before. “Take that cat out of the house!” she ordered.

I took a deep breath and counted ten. Then picking up Daisy June, I retreated to the side yard. Eve joined me there presently, carrying the box of carpet rags we were sewing for Aunt Cal. “Eve,” I asked solemnly, “what is to become of her?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I can’t believe that anything so adorable wasn’t brought into the world for a purpose.”

We didn’t get much sewing done that morning for practically every time we picked up a strip of cloth Daisy June was dangling on the end of it and as fast as Eve wound the balls, the kitten unwound them. When we went in for dinner, we left her sleeping peacefully in the box. She at any rate had no misgivings about the future.

“I see somebody has been trampling the petunia bed,” remarked Aunt Cal, dishing out lamb stew and dumplings. “But I suppose it’s no more than is to be expected when one leaves things to take care of themselves!”

It was Eve who persuaded my aunt to go upstairs after dinner for a rest. “After being up all night,” she urged, “it’s the only sensible thing to do.” And though Aunt Cal declared stoutly that she did not hold with naps in the daytime, she finally yielded.

After we had finished the dishes Eve carried out a saucer of milk for Daisy June. To our dismay the kitten was gone. There was her bed of carpet rags, still matted where her soft form had lain, but no sign of its late occupant. We searched every corner of the yard, calling softly so that Aunt Cal would not hear. But neither the yard nor garden yielded any trace of her.

Could she have got through the hedge, I wondered? I went to look. And there she was, big as life, sauntering up the path toward the Captain’s back door. I beckoned to Eve. “Look,” I whispered, “for all the world as if she was about to drop in on a friend for tea or something!”

I was about to pop through the hedge after her when the back door of the house opened and the owner himself emerged. He was jauntily dressed in immaculate white trousers and a nautical blue jacket. I wondered how he managed, living alone as he did, always to look so spick and span. He was descending the steps when he met the kitten. “Bless my boots!” The words floated across the quiet air. “Now where in blazes did you come from?”

Daisy June’s answer was to leap up the intervening step and begin her accustomed twining movement about the Captain’s ankle. I hurried forward. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I began, “we do have such trouble with our cats!”

Daisy June continued to twine like a boa constrictor. The Captain retreated and abruptly sat down in the big rocker which occupied the center of the porch. Without hesitation the kitten jumped into his lap. I thought for a second that he was going to push her down, but instead he asked abruptly, “How’s your aunt this morning? Much upset, was she?”

I collected my thoughts. “Oh, you mean about Adam,” I was beginning, when Eve came up behind me. “Aunt Cal wouldn’t allow herself to be upset by so little a thing as that,” she said with one of her dazzling smiles. “She’s much too—a—strong-minded.”

The Captain appeared as surprised as I was to hear this. “Well, well, well,” he said, “I want to know!” Mechanically, it seemed, his hand went out to stroke the kitten’s back and, thus encouraged, she reached up one fat paw for the large gold chain that spanned his waistcoat. “Hi, there, look at that now! Caliph allus used to go after that chain when he was a kitten. Well,” he added, “I’m glad to hear your aunt wasn’t upset. Old Judd Craven allus did say she was the only sensible one in the family!”

“Judd Craven?” I repeated. “Who was he?”

“What? What’s that? Mean to say you ain’t never heard of Cap’n Judd? Why, he was related to you in a sort of way.”

“Related to me? But how? Do you mean that he was related to Aunt Cal?”

“Mercy me, yes. He was her uncle. Cal’s mother was Susan Craven. Cap’n Judd used to set great store by Cal when she was a young one, used to bring her things every time he come back from a voyage.”

Eve dropped down on the step. “Do tell us about Captain Judd,” she begged. “You see, we were up at the place they call Craven House the other day, so we’re interested. Did he build it?”

The Captain shook his head. “No, it was an old house—dates back to the early settlers. Cap’n Judd bought it and made it over. It was one of the show places of the countryside in his day. He fixed it up for his wife, Emily, who wanted to live inland out of sight of the sea. Emily hated the sea. Besides that, Judd had a kind of notion he wanted to go in for farming. It was the dream of his life to found a landed estate like the ones he’d seen in England—handed down from father to son like. But—well, it didn’t work out. Carter didn’t take to farming; he was a restless chap, wanted to see the world.”

“Carter was his son?” I prompted.

“Aye, Carter was his only child.”

“It sounds quite like a story out of a book,” Eve commented.

The Captain chuckled. “Yeah, it would make good reading, I calculate, if all the facts of Judd’s career was set down. A lively old bird he was, full of funny ideas, allus getting himself talked about. Not in a bad way, you understand, just odd—doing things different from the run of folks.”

“Was it he who set up those statues and vases and things in the garden?” I asked.

“Aye, that was one of the things. Those statues made a great stir. Folks round here had never heard tell of statues in a garden. They used to drive from all around just to see ’em.”

“But where in the world did he get them?” asked Eve. “They look awfully old.”

“Uh-huh, they was meant to. Judd said he got ’em from a Greek temple, but I guess more likely he picked them up in a second-hand shop in Athens. Judd allus was one for a joke. There was one he called Mercury and one Diana.”

“Diana—Mercury,” Eve repeated thoughtfully. “There wasn’t—wasn’t one called Circe, was there?”

I held my breath. The Captain began to fill his pipe. “Circe? Well now, there might have been at that; I can’t rightly tell all the names he gave ’em.”

“Tell me,” Eve demanded, leaning forward with sudden eagerness, “did Captain Craven leave any—any money—or valuables or anything?”

Captain Trout shook his head. “I guess Carter got most of the money before the old man died. Judd used to say in his later days that all he had in the world was the place. That and the blue emerald,” he added, with a chuckle.

“The blue emerald?” I cried. “But how could an emerald be blue? I thought they were green.”

“That’s what I never could figger out myself,” the Captain answered. “I never saw it myself. Some said it was give him by a Rajah in India ’count of some service he done him. But the Cap’n allus was pretty mysterious about it—liked to keep folks guessing. Me, I didn’t take much stock in that Rajah chap. But most folks used to eat up the whole story.”

“Did anyone ever see the emerald?”

“Never heard as they did. But then I was away for years. After the Cap’n retired and built his house, I didn’t see him very often. But every now and then when I’d come home, I’d hear talk about the blue emerald and every time it was wo’th a little more. It sure had the villagers mesmerized.”

“And Captain Judd’s son?” I asked hesitantly. “What became of him?”

The Captain puffed on his pipe and absently put down his hand to stroke the kitten’s back. “Carter disappeared about a year after his father’s death,” he said. “I ain’t heard tell of him since.”

“He didn’t,” inquired Eve, “take the blue emerald with him, did he?”

“Some said so,” Captain Trout answered. “But I reckon no one rightly knows. But the house—that rightly belongs to your aunt, I was told.”

“To Aunt Cal!” I cried in astonishment.

“Aye. Judd promised her she should have it. But the will, they say, was never found. Some say Carter didn’t want it should be, that he was jealous of Cal for bein’ in the old man’s good graces. But that’s just gossip, I reckon.”

“I think Captain Judd must have been a very interesting person,” declared Eve. “I wish I’d known him.”

“Aye, he was a fine chap. Great loss to the community, his death was.”

“Thank you very much for telling us about him,” I said. I felt that we ought to go back before Aunt Cal came downstairs. I got up, looking doubtfully at the sleeping kitten. It seemed a pity to disturb her.

The Captain appeared to read my thoughts. “Better let her sleep,” he said. “You can stop by for her later—if you want.”

As he uttered these words, I was conscious that another figure had joined our group. Adam had come out of the open kitchen door. He stood for a moment surveying us, advanced to the Captain, sniffed gingerly at the object in his lap; then, without a word—as it were—turned and walked down the steps.

“Caliph,” called the Captain, “where you going?” But only a wave of the tail answered him.

When we got back to our house, a half emptied saucer of fish was on the back porch and Caliph, alias Adam, was asleep on his cushion by the stove.

“I feel,” I giggled, “a little dizzy with all this cat business!”

“To say nothing,” added Eve, “of blue emeralds!”

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X

Where Is Circe?

MICHAEL was waiting for us at The Corners at five that afternoon. He had left the horses tied there in order not to attract attention to our visit to Craven House. “Haven’t seen anything more of Bangs, have you?” was his first question.

Eve shook her head.

“Well, he’s left Trap’s,” Michael said. “I went in there just now and inquired for him. They said he departed the day after he came and they don’t know anything about him. Didn’t leave any address or say where he was going.”

“Then he never got his letter back,” I said. “It must be at the Inn now.”

“No, it isn’t, I’ve got it in my pocket. I just told old man Trap that a friend of mine had mailed a letter to him and that, as long as they didn’t know where he was, I thought this person would like to have it back. So he just handed it out without a word and here it is.”

“Oh, I’m glad you got it,” exclaimed Eve. “For after what Captain Trout told us this afternoon, I can’t help thinking maybe it is important.”

“So you’ve been talking to the Captain?” Michael queried.

“Yes, you see it was Daisy June’s doing,” Eve began.

“The kitten you left on our doorstep this morning,” I put in. “That was a marvelous idea of yours, Michael!”

“Say, did it work?” he demanded eagerly. “Did your aunt really take to it?”

“Aunt Cal? Not on your life! It was Captain Trout. We left Daisy June asleep on his knee with every appearance of being settled for life. And when Adam saw her, he just walked out—came back to us!”

Michael threw back his head and roared. We went on to tell him what Captain Trout had told about Judd Craven and the blue emerald. He nodded, “I guess everybody around here has heard of old Captain Judd,” he said.

“But Aunt Cal has never mentioned him to us,” I said. “Though I did fancy she looked sort of funny the other day when we told her about being locked in the old house. I expect maybe she knows it well.”

“Wills make a lot of trouble, don’t they?” I went on. “Whether one makes one or doesn’t, it seems to be always the same. Bad feeling of some kind.”

Michael grinned at this. “Well, what would you do about it?” he inquired.

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess maybe it’s better not to have anything to leave when you die. Then your relatives and friends will go on loving you.”

“Yeah, or forget you entirely,” he retorted cynically.

We had been climbing the hill as we talked and had come once more to the tumbling stone wall which bordered the Craven property. We climbed over it and made our way through the tall grass and bushes to the spot where we had found Mr. Bangs and his measuring tape two weeks before. The grass was considerably trampled around the stone figure but, at first glance, that was the only sign that anybody had been near the spot.

Michael dropped on his knees and at once set to work examining the ground. Presently he took a tape measure from his pocket and began measuring. “You look,” remarked Eve, “quite like Mr. Bangs himself, except that you’ve got more hair on your head.”

Michael paid no attention. He measured thirteen feet and six inches south from the statue. Then, turning west at a right angle, counted off another seven feet. “There,” he exclaimed at last, “that ought to be the spot, if any!”

We were kneeling beside him now, all three of us, bent eagerly over the matted grass. Suddenly Michael’s finger dug into the earth and he lifted bodily forth a big square of ragged turf. “Why!” I stammered, “how queer!”

“Golly!” cried Eve. “He’s dug here already! We—we’re too late!”

“You mean he fitted the turf back like that to cover his tracks?” I cried with rising indignation.

“Looks like it,” returned Michael, gazing down at the newly disturbed earth. “Naturally he didn’t want to leave traces of his operations for anyone to see. Especially after you two came spying on him.”

“The old villain! What right has he got to Captain Judd’s treasure, I’d like to know!”

Michael looked up with his quizzical grin. “Did you really expect to find treasure buried here?” he asked.

“W-well,” I stammered, somewhat embarrassed by the amusement in his gray eyes. “After what Captain Trout told us—I mean about the blue emerald and all——”

“Oh, that!” returned Michael scornfully. “That story sounds pretty fishy to me.”

“But there must have been something here,” put in Eve. “Or else Mr. Bangs wouldn’t have been carrying around those measurements and all.”

“If you didn’t believe there was anything, why did you bother to come up here and look?” I demanded a little hotly.

“Well,” he returned slowly, “I was curious to know what the fellow was up to for one thing. Then,” he grinned again, “I knew you girls wouldn’t sleep nights till you’d had a look.”

“Oh, is that so!” I retorted haughtily. “Of course, we’re just a couple of weak, credulous females——”

Michael paid no heed to my ill temper. He had drawn the letter out of his pocket and was studying it. “I’d give a lot,” he remarked, “to know who wrote this!”

“What I can’t understand,” mused Eve, “is this: why, if Mr. Bangs found what he was after, was he so anxious to get the letter back? Anxious enough, in fact, to break into Aunt Cal’s house last night to look for it?”

Michael shot her an approving glance. “That’s just the point that has me guessing,” he said. “It rather looks to me as if the fellow’s excavations didn’t prove successful after all.”

“But he had the measurements right—we’ve proved that, haven’t we?”

Michael nodded. He seemed to be thinking deeply.

Suddenly Eve got up and wandered over to the blackened stone figure. She stood with her back to us for several minutes, examining it. At last she turned around. “Suppose,” she said slowly, looking down to where Michael and I were sitting, our backs propped against the bowl of the fountain, “suppose this isn’t the statue of Circe after all!”

“What!” Michael was on his feet like a flash. “I say,” he cried, “that’s an idea! Maybe the old fellow got the wrong statue!”

“You see,” went on Eve, “Captain Trout told us there were several statues which Captain Judd brought home from his travels. He said there was one of Diana and one of Mercury. And this statue, even though it is so dingy and weatherbeaten, looks to me a lot more like Mercury than anyone else. Look, you can see the places where the wings were broken off on his back.”

“Gee, Eve, you’re dead right!” Michael cried appreciatively. “Pretty dumb of me not to notice that myself!” It was the first time that Michael had addressed either of us directly by our first names. I felt that it was a tribute to Eve’s intelligence.

“We simply took it for granted that it was the right statue,” Eve continued. “And, of course, our friend Bangs couldn’t be expected to know a great deal about mythology. I suppose one statue looks pretty much like another to a fellow like him.”

“Then the thing to do,” I burst in excitedly, “is to find the right one—the missing Circe! She surely must be somewhere around.”

The garden, as I have said, was so overgrown with weeds, tall grass, rambling rosebushes and every other variety of shrub that the space around the fountain where Mr. Bangs had made his measurements was practically the only clear spot in sight. But we now set to work to make a thorough search of the entire place. But though we combed it from one end to the other, startling toads from their lairs and stirring up swarms of mosquitoes, we found not the slightest trace of any other statue.

We were so absorbed in our search that none of us had noticed the swiftly darkening sky till Eve exclaimed suddenly, “Goodness, it’s going to rain.”

“Sure is,” Michael agreed, emerging from a thicket of blackberry bushes, with a scratch across one cheek. “Guess Circe’ll have to stay wherever she’s hiding for tonight. I’ll run on ahead and get the wagon and meet you.”

The drops were already beginning to fall before we reached him. “Better get in behind,” he ordered, “and put this blanket over your heads.”

It was pouring by the time we reached Fishers Haven. Michael did not let us out at the farmhouse as he had done before but drove on to Aunt Cal’s gate. There was no time for any further plans that night. We just called out our thanks and made a dash for the house. But I was sure that Michael would not be satisfied until he had fathomed the mystery of the old garden, whatever it was. For my own part, I was determined to go back and continue the search at the earliest possible moment.

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XI

Hamish on the Job

THE morning mail brought a letter from Hattie May. Eve was busy spreading carpet rags on the tin roof of the porch outside our bedroom window. We had forgotten and left them in the side yard and, as it had rained practically the entire night, the results can be imagined. Our only hope now was that the warm sun would dry them before Aunt Cal discovered what had happened.

“Eve,” I called, “here’s a letter from Hattie May. What do you think it says!”

Eve poked her head in at the window. “I think the colors are really going to be improved,” she said. “The fading has made them softer, sort of artistic looking.”

“Maybe,” I agreed, “though I doubt if Aunt Cal will appreciate the effect! But don’t you want to know what Hattie May says? Aren’t you at all curious?”

“Nothing sensible, I’ll be bound. What’s she up to now?”

“She’s coming here!”

“What! Not to Fishers Haven?”

“Yup. She wants to help us solve the mystery, she says.”

Eve climbed into the room. “Sandy,” she demanded sternly, “what have you been writing her?”

“Why, nothing. I thought she ought to know that our vacation wasn’t promising to be as dull as she had prophesied, so I just mentioned a thing or two—guardedly, of course.”

“Too guardedly, I guess,” Eve retorted. “She probably thinks there’s a lot more to it than there is!”

“But isn’t there?” I asked. “I mean to say, we don’t know yet what there is to it!”

“Sandy, you know perfectly well that Hattie May can’t keep even the tiniest secret five minutes.”

“Well, she’s coming anyway and it’s too late to head her off. And that isn’t all,” I giggled. “She’s bringing Hamish with her—or rather he’s bringing her. Seems he’s got a car.”

“Not—not that boy with the sticky-out ears! Not actually!” Eve dropped onto the sea chest, consternation in every line of her face.

“Yup, they’re driving up from Mason’s Cove, wherever that is. It appears their family is spending the summer there. They’re going to stay at a hotel or inn or whatever there is, Hattie May says. She says her parents consented because she told them my father was a missionary, so they’re sure we’re respectable.” I gave another giggle.

Eve groaned. “No doubt their parents are only too pleased to lose sight of Hamish for a while,” she remarked.

“Oh,” I returned lightly, “I can imagine worse boys than Hamish.”

“Well, I haven’t your imagination,” Eve returned feelingly. “When did you say they were coming?”

“Well, the letter says tomorrow. But as it isn’t dated and the postmark is blurred, it might be they’ll be here today.”

“Today! Well you’d better go down and break the news to your aunt!”

“But I don’t see why that’s necessary—they won’t bother her.”

“Don’t be too sure,” returned Eve darkly.

Aunt Cal departed soon after dinner that day to attend the weekly meeting of the Ladies’ Civic Betterment Society. The carpet rags were all dry and Eve and I determined to get a lot of sewing done on them to make up for our carelessness in leaving them out in the rain. Eve thought that, once they were sewed and wound into balls, Aunt Cal might not notice the change in color which many of the pieces had undergone.

We established ourselves in the shade of the side yard. Adam came and stretched himself in the sun nearby. He had shown no desire to leave the premises since Daisy June had taken up her residence next door and had manifested considerable irritation that morning when the kitten had pounced at his tail from underneath the hedge.

We were discussing what we now termed The Craven House Mystery as we did much of the time when we were alone. We could not decide what we ought to do with the old letter which Michael had returned to us. “Well, whatever you do, don’t show it to Hamish or Hattie May,” Eve was saying. And it was just at that moment that I looked up and saw a green roadster drawing up at the gate. I knew at once by the frantic waving of the girl beside the driver that it was Hattie May. “There they are!” I cried, jumping to my feet. “Come on, Eve!”

“Oh, Sandy, darling, it seems perfect months since I saw you!” Hattie May threw herself upon me in her usual effusive manner. Her brother, climbing out of the other side of the car, was peering around with small bright eyes behind thick glasses, as if he fairly expected some mysterious phenomenon to develop right there before his eyes!

“I say,” he demanded without the formality of greeting, “have you seen the fellow who wears a wig again?”

“Oh, yes, do tell us all the latest developments!” Hattie May cried. “I can hardly wait to hear.”

“Mr. Bangs has left town,” replied Eve coldly. “And nothing more has happened. I’m really afraid you’re going to be disappointed, Hattie May, if you think anything is going to. I’m afraid Sandy has given you a wrong impression—this isn’t like a mystery thriller, you know!”

“But my dear,” my roommate exclaimed, “surely there is some treasure buried in that old garden. What else _could_ that cryptic message mean? Tell me, haven’t you found a thing?”

Well, I guess we both saw that there was nothing for it but to tell them everything. If we didn’t, Hattie May would begin to imagine all sorts of startling things that weren’t so, and might even end in blurting out something and getting us in bad with Aunt Cal.

So we all repaired to the side yard and sat down on the grass. And while Eve went inside for cold tea and cookies, I told Hattie May and her brother briefly just how far we had got—or hadn’t got, rather—in unravelling the mystery and how we had gone about it.

Hattie May, as was to be expected, kept interrupting and asking all sorts of foolish questions. Hamish said nothing at all but his eyes were very bright and eager as he listened. When I had finished, he got up. “Well,” he said, “I guess I’d better go right out there and have a look round.”

I suppressed a giggle. The pride of Scotland Yard, called in as a last resort, to solve a baffling crime, couldn’t have spoken with more importance! “But gracious, Hamish,” I exclaimed, “there’s nothing to see!”

“Just let me have a look at that letter,” he continued, “so’s I’ll get the measurements straight.”

Eve came out with the refreshments. “Hamish,” I said, with I fear, a trace of sarcasm, “is going right out to dig up the treasure!”

“He’ll have to wait for me,” declared his sister. “I’m going to have some tea first.”

Hamish’s eyes lighted on the cookies. “Oh, well,” he said and sat down.

It ended finally in our producing the letter and then all piling into the car and driving out to Craven House. Neither Eve nor I was willing to let Hattie May and, her brother go without us. But I did wish that Michael were along, somehow it seemed his affair as much as ours.

Hattie May went into ecstasies over the house and, most of all, over the garden. “My _dear_,” she cried, “I think it is absolutely the most romantic place. Can’t you just see that old miser bringing his gold and jewels out here on a dark night——”

“But he wasn’t a miser,” I protested. “And he didn’t have any gold.”

“Nonsense, you needn’t tell me,” she retorted. “He buried something, didn’t he?”

“Well, we don’t actually know——” I began, but Hattie May had disappeared after Hamish into a thick growth of underbrush.

For my own part, the old garden had never appeared so thoroughly unattractive as it did today. It was very hot in the mid-afternoon sun and heavy with the scent of overgrown vegetation. I sat down on the edge of the fountain and tried to imagine what it had been like in the old days, the days when Captain Judd had taken such pride in it and folks had driven from all around in their buggies to see the funny statues he had brought from over the sea. I tried to see it with the paths and flower beds that were now almost entirely lost to view. I wondered what the Captain’s wife had been like, the woman called Emily, who hated the sea. Had she loved the flowers and tended them as Aunt Cal would have done?

Then I fell to thinking of Aunt Cal and wondering what she would have done to the place had it fallen to her. I could fancy how she would have enjoyed scrubbing and painting the house and putting it in order again. And the garden—I smiled to myself when I thought of my indomitable relative coming to grips with that garden.

Meanwhile the others were wandering about, poking into every niche and corner for some trace of the missing statue. I believe Hattie May had expected to discover it almost at once and I could see that she was considerably crestfallen when she at last returned to join me at the fountain. “It’s very baffling!” she sighed, wiping her burning face. “If we could only find the pedestal where the thing stood, that would be enough.”

Hamish did not give up easily. But at last we persuaded him to abandon his efforts for the time being, for as Eve pointed out there was really no fear that Mr. Bangs would get ahead of us so long as the Circe was missing.

“Unless,” said Hamish astutely, “he has taken it away on purpose!”

“You don’t mean you think he has stolen the statue?” cried his sister. “Why should he do that?”

“To keep anyone else from finding the treasure of course, stupid. It looks to me as if we were up against a very clever crook!”

I giggled. “Oh, don’t be absurd,” I said. “Mr. Bangs doesn’t know we’re interested in his search—why should he? And if he knew where Circe was, he’d go ahead and dig and find out what there was to find.”

Hamish however clung to his theory. It was the only explanation, he said, for the absence of the statue. As we were packing ourselves into the car for the return trip the rattle of a wagon sounded up the road and Michael drove into view. Eve called to him and at the mention of his name, Hattie May was out of the car with a bounce.

“Oh,” she cried, “I’ve been wanting so much to meet you! Ever since I heard how you chased that desperate villain the other night! I think you were absolutely the bravest thing!”

Michael’s face assumed its stoniest aspect. I feared that he and Hattie May were not going to get along. “We’ve been looking about the garden again,” Eve said hurriedly to fill up the awkward pause. “But we didn’t find anything.”

Michael nodded. “Guess there’s nothing to find,” he remarked noncommittally. With that he gathered up the reins and drove on.

“Well, I must say he’s a queer acting boy!” Hattie May exploded.

“You shouldn’t have gushed over him,” Eve said. “He doesn’t like that sort of thing.”

The car was bumping down the road now. We passed Michael on the way, but he didn’t look around. Hattie May and her brother engaged rooms at Wildwood Lodge, a quiet little inn on the shore road. That and the big Seaside Hotel farther down the beach were the only accommodations Fishers Haven offered to summer guests.

Eve and I were late for supper. Aunt Cal was pouring her second cup of tea when we came in. We told her about the arrivals and added casually that we’d been for a drive in Hamish’s car.

“A boy of that age has no business with a car,” Aunt Cal stated severely. “First thing you know you’ll be in one of those accidents the papers are full of. In my day young folks didn’t go careering around the country!”

As if he realized that his reputation was at stake, Hamish himself reappeared directly after supper. We heard the already familiar honk of his horn as we were finishing the dishes and a moment later, his bespectacled face appeared at the screen door. “Is your aunt in?” he demanded. “I’ve brought her a little present.”

“She’s in the garden,” I answered. “Just a minute and I’ll take you out.”

But he did not wait for me to take off my apron. “I’ll find her,” he called and was striding down the path. Eve giggled. “I warned you,” she said, “how things would be if that boy came to town.”

I wasn’t present at the meeting of my relative and Hamish. By the time we reached the spot where Aunt Cal and Adam were sitting, the moment for introductions had passed. Hamish had just pulled a queer looking package out of his side pocket and was proffering it to my aunt. “Here’s a little gadget I picked up on my way down today,” he remarked. “I said to myself as soon as I saw it that it was a thing any good house-keeper’d like to own.”

Aunt Cal, apparently stunned by the quick movement of events, took the parcel without a word and began unwrapping it. “It’s a combination mousetrap and insect sprayer,” Hamish explained. “A new invention, just on the market.”

“Dear me,” said Aunt Cal, turning it over. “You don’t say. Much obliged, I’m sure.”

“Glad you like it,” returned Hamish complacently. “Thought you would. What a handsome cat!” He stooped to give Adam’s back a rub.

But Adam—perhaps resenting the mousetrap—got up and with a backward swish of his tail, started up the path.

“Here, kitty, kitty!” Hamish pulled a length of twine from his pocket and began dangling it before the cat’s nose. As he did so a piece of paper fluttered to the ground, unseen by him as he walked away.

I recognized it instantly and stooped to grab it. But Aunt Cal was nearest and reached it first. Papers scattered about her garden were not to be endured even for a second. She was about to crumple it in her hand when her eyes fell on the handwriting. In an instant I saw her face change. She was staring hard at the paper and the hand which held it was shaking. “Wh-what is this?” she demanded in a hard strained voice.

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XII

Over the Banister

WHEN Aunt Cal saw that letter and I watched that funny, almost frightened look pass over her face, I knew of course that there was nothing for it but to tell her everything. But I never am good in a crisis and this time was no exception. Aunt Cal had picked up the paper, as I have said, and now sat staring at it just exactly as if she were seeing a ghost. “What is this?” she demanded again, and this time I knew that somebody had to answer.

“It’s a paper we found in that suitcase,” I began. “I mean it dropped out when we opened it to look for an address and found all those bottles and afterward it got under the bed somehow but as we had returned it by this time—though of course we could tell by the smell where it had come from——”

“My dear Sandra,” Aunt Cal had regained some of her composure in the face of my stumbling recital, “I am sure that I find myself quite unable to follow you.”

“Perhaps I’d better tell it,” Eve put in quietly. Whereupon she gave Aunt Cal the facts as they had happened in a few words, including the evening visit of the mysterious Mr. Bangs on the night when Aunt Cal had been absent in Old Beecham. Eve made no mention, however, of what Captain Trout had told us of Aunt Cal’s own connection with the Cravens, nor of the blue emerald. But she did tell about our search for the missing statue.

When she had finished I waited breathlessly for what Aunt Cal would say. Would she be very angry with us for keeping all this from her? But I was to realize anew that evening that it was part of my aunt’s code of life to conceal her emotions. And her only comment when Eve had ended her recital was, “So that explains the condition of my bureau drawers.”

“But we put everything back just——” I was protesting when a look from Eve silenced me.

“We expected to tell you all about everything,” she said, “just as soon as we found out something definite. You see we—we were afraid you wouldn’t like to have us go out there at all if you knew—about Mr. Bangs being a housebreaker and all.”

“You are quite correct in that,” returned my aunt severely. “After all I am responsible for your safety.”

“But of course now,” I put in anxiously, “now that he has left, it is different—I mean it can’t do any harm just to go out and—and look around, I mean——”

“I doubt if your investigations will lead you anywhere,” she returned frostily. “And now if you have quite finished with your extraordinary revelations, I think I will go in. Here in the country as you know”—she looked pointedly at Hamish—“we are accustomed to retire early.”

Well so much for Aunt Cal’s connection with the mystery, I thought, as we sat in silence and watched her spare, uncompromising figure with Adam closely at heel disappear inside the kitchen door. Hamish, who had kept silence for a longer period than I would have deemed possible, now let out an explosive “Whew!” And added gloomily, “And she went and left my present behind!” It was true; the combination mousetrap and insect sprayer still lay in its wrappings on the bench. But the letter was gone!

“Never mind, Hamish,” I said consolingly. “I think Aunt Cal really was upset you know, though she didn’t show it. I’m sure nothing but great stress of mind would have made her forget your lovely present!”

“Well, maybe,” he returned. “I suppose I’d better be going. Glad I made a copy of that letter though!”

So Hamish had copied the “cryptic message” too. Well, there were plenty of copies going around. Eve had one, and now Hamish, and I would not have been surprised if Michael—for all his seeming indifference—had one too. Besides that, Mr. Bangs apparently had the measurements in his head, as he had proved. At this rate, all Fishers Haven might soon be in the secret of the whereabouts of Captain Judd’s treasure.

“Eve,” I said, after we had locked the back door and gone up to bed, “do you think Aunt Cal will do anything?”

Eve shook her head slowly. “I can’t make her out,” she said. “I’m as sure as anything that she recognized the handwriting on that paper but that’s absolutely all I am sure of. If Hamish thought he had pulled a coup, he jolly well must have been disappointed.”

“What?” I demanded. “You mean Hamish dropped that letter on purpose?”

“Why of course he did,” returned Eve. “He wanted Aunt Cal to see it; he thought he’d find out something.”

“But,” I protested indignantly, “didn’t we practically swear both him and Hattie May to secrecy before we showed it to them!”

“They agreed not to say anything. They didn’t agree not to drop things around apparently by accident.”

“That Hamish!” I cried; “somebody ought to—to sit on him so hard—well hard enough to make him yell.”

“I warned you there’d be trouble,” said Eve, “just as soon as Hattie May put her nose into this business.”

I was just ready for bed when I found that I had left my wristwatch downstairs on the kitchen shelf. Slipping into my bathrobe, I was about to steal down after it when I was surprised to see a light coming from the front room below stairs. Had Aunt Cal gone down again, I wondered—or was this another evening visitor?

For a second I hesitated there on the top step. If it was Aunt Cal I’d better not go down, but if it was somebody else—Mr. Bangs perhaps, returned to make another search for his missing property——. The thought sent me creeping forward. My slippered feet didn’t make a sound on the carpeted stairs. Over the banister I now had a clear view into the lighted room below, and there, seated at the old-fashioned secretary in the corner, was Aunt Cal. The desk was open and spread with papers—letters by the look. And I had no doubt that Mr. Bangs’ mysterious document was among them.

As quietly as I had descended, I stole back to our room and told Eve what I had seen. “I think she’s comparing the handwriting with some she’s got, don’t you?”

“Perhaps,” Eve agreed. “I do hope she isn’t awfully upset by it all,” she added. “If I thought we’d been the means of worrying her or anything, I’d be sorry we ever found that letter, Sandy. I really would.”

“Yes—of course,” I agreed. “Still we weren’t really responsible for finding it—it isn’t as if we had meant to take it. And anyhow maybe some good will come of it; you can’t tell.”

“If you mean finding treasure,” Eve shook her head. “No, I’m inclined to agree with Michael about that. Don’t forget,” she added wisely, “that we’re living in the twentieth century!”

“No-o, I won’t,” I said with a sigh. “Very likely you’re right, Eve—very likely we’d better just drop the whole thing, forget about it entirely. Still—there’s the letter! People don’t write down measurements, do they, unless there’s something to measure?”

“Or unless they want to fool somebody!”

“Fool somebody?” Oh, that was a disconcerting thought! But fool who? Mr. Bangs, or Aunt Cal—or us? No, the last two possibilities were absurd. For our own possession of the letter had been purely accidental, as, for the matter of that, was Aunt Cal’s. The more I though of it in the light of Eve’s rather startling suggestion, the more confused I became. And it was perhaps no wonder that, falling asleep at last, I should dream that Daisy June’s eyes had turned into blue emeralds but that, when I put out my hand to take them, it was Adam’s green ones which I found coldly regarding me.

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XIII

Harry’s Hair Restorer

AUNT CAL was as brisk and decisive as ever next morning. She made no mention of last evening’s occurrences, but she startled us by proposing a plan. “How would you like to have a picnic for your two friends this afternoon?” she asked. “I’m told the young people often go to the beach and cook their supper over an open fire, though I must say it has always seemed to me a most unsatisfactory way of preparing a meal.”

“Oh, a beach picnic!” I cried. “What a perfectly swell idea!”

“And you’ll come too, Aunt Cal?” Eve begged.

Aunt Cal shook her head. “I’m obliged to go into Millport this afternoon on some business,” she said. “But I shall be able to help you with your preparations this morning if you think favorably of my suggestion.”

“Bet your life we do!” I jumped up and gave her a hug. “Oh, Aunt Cal, you are a darling after all—I mean,” I amended hastily, “after all the trouble and worry we’ve caused you. I’ll go call up Hattie May right away!”

“Yes, you’d better,” Eve agreed, “before that Hamish goes off on some wild goose chase or other. When a boy imagines he’s been endowed by a beneficent providence with the mental equipment of a Sherlock Holmes, you can’t tell what he may do!”

I returned from the drug store to find Eve stirring a cake and Aunt Cal making salad. “They’re coming,” I announced, “at least Hattie May is. Hamish has gone off somewhere but she said he’d promised to be back for lunch.”

“Well, I only hope you won’t set yourselves afire,” said Aunt Cal with a sigh. “Or catch your death o’ cold sitting around in those awful bathing suits!”

“Hattie May says we can dress in the Wildwood Inn pavilion,” I said. “And don’t forget we’ll have Hamish on hand in case of accidents!”

Eve was putting the finishing touches to the chocolate cake some time later. As she stood surveying its satiny perfection, she said slowly, “I do wish Michael Gilpatrick could taste that. I’d like to show him that a mere girl is good for something! Besides, I hate to think of Hamish practically gobbling up the whole thing as he’s sure to do if he doesn’t have a competitor to prevent him.”

“Well you don’t need to worry,” I said. “Because I invited Michael to come too.”

“What! You did!” Eve was surprised.

“Yes. I thought we might as well ask him. I got hold of him at the farm in Old Beecham where he works. He didn’t go into ecstasies over the idea but he said he was planning to go for a swim this afternoon anyway, as it’s Saturday half holiday, so I guess maybe he’ll show up. I only hope he and Hattie May won’t come to blows.”

As soon as our rather hurried dinner was over, Aunt Cal, arrayed in her second best black silk, departed for Millport. Although she reiterated her warnings against fire and drowning, I felt somehow that her mind was preoccupied. Indeed she had been vaguely different all day. She seemed in a way softened, and yet more determined. Was that old letter responsible for the change and was it that which was taking her to Millport?

Hattie May and Hamish were waiting on the beach when we got there that afternoon. Hamish wanted to know at once whether Aunt Cal had said anything more about the letter. I told him shortly that she had not. I felt that he deserved a snubbing for what he had done last evening but, as often happens, the people whom you most wish to snub are the very ones who are impervious to such tactics.

Michael was late in arriving. Hattie May said that for her part it didn’t matter whether he came or not as she’d never met a ruder boy. I thought it a good moment to put in a word of warning. “Michael is different from most boys,” I said. “He doesn’t like to be made a fuss about.”

“Why, I just said I thought he was brave in grappling with that burglar,” Hattie May retorted indignantly. “Though now that I come to think it over, I quite see that there was probably no danger at all and that he was just trying to show off.”

“Show off!” This indignantly from Eve. “I tell you Michael’s not that kind.”

“Oh, you needn’t tell me,” retorted Hattie May. “I guess I know all about boys.”

When at last Michael’s tall figure came sauntering down the beach, Hattie May greeted him with a chilly nod. “We thought probably it was milking time and you wouldn’t be able to get away,” she said casually.

Michael grinned. Apparently he had decided that Hattie May was not to be taken seriously. “Oh, no,” he said, “we don’t milk till seven. Guess you’ve never lived on a farm.”

“No,” said Hattie May, “I must admit I’ve never had that pleasure. None of my family are farmers!”

This did not seem to be a very auspicious beginning for our picnic. Eve threw herself into the breach. “Do let’s get into the water,” she urged, “before it gets any later.”

Michael, as one might have guessed, proved to be by far the best swimmer of us all, though Eve was a good second. Hattie May’s efforts were punctuated by blood curdling screams and calls for somebody to “save her”; but as no one paid the slightest attention, she soon gave up and returned to land. Hamish, too, after paddling about rather blindly without his spectacles, sat down on the sand where, replacing his glasses on his dripping countenance, he began making entries in a notebook.

“What is it, Hamish?” I inquired. “Your diary or memoirs or something?”

He shook his head absently. “No, just bringin’ my notes on the Craven case up to date.”

I raised myself on my elbow and looked at him. Was he just a rather overgrown little boy playing at being detective? Or had he really found out something of importance? Suddenly he fixed me with his thick lenses. “I know what you think,” he said astutely. “You think I’m one of those playboy detecitifs like in the books!”

“Oh, no, indeed,” I assured him hastily. “Of course I don’t think anything of the kind!”

“Yes, you do,” he stated. “But I’m not, I’m different. I figure things out. I’m smart. I got ideas.”

“I’m sure you have,” I murmured, and waited for what I hoped was coming. But Hamish just went on writing. At any rate he was keeping his own counsel in the approved manner of the perfect sleuth.

The day was perfection and, as I lay there on the warm sand and gazed out over the blue bay with its flecks of white where it met the sea, the question of why someone had written something in an old letter grew suddenly unimportant in the face of that bigger wonder of earth and sea and sky. Then I fell to remembering another blue bay on the other side of the world across which I had sailed away from Mother and Dad nearly a year ago.

“Sandy’s being homesick!” Eve’s mellow voice broke into my thoughts.

I sat up. “No such thing!” I declared stoutly. “I was just thinking that a blue emerald couldn’t hold a candle to the color of that water out there!”

I caught a glint of appreciation in Michael’s eyes as he stood with the shallow water swirling about his ankles. But Hamish said, “Guess you wouldn’t talk like that if you should see it once! Chap I talked to this morning said it was as big as a quarter!”

“What!” exclaimed Hattie May. “Why, Hamish, you never told me!”

“Had this chap seen the blue emerald?” Eve inquired.

“Well, no, not exactly. But he’d heard his folks talk about it when he was a youngster.”

“So far as I can discover,” said Eve, “no one ever did see the thing.”

“I suppose you’ll be saying next that Captain Judd himself never saw it,” remarked Hattie May. “I suppose he was maybe blind when he buried it!” she added with heavy sarcasm.

“We don’t know that he did bury it,” I remarked. I glanced at Michael for confirmation, but he only shrugged and grinned and said he was going up to dress.