Chapter I: DON’T know what I expected when I heard that key turn in the lock and

knew that Hamish had at last succeeded in opening the door of the hidden cupboard. I felt as I had ever since entering the room, breathless and strangely excited. Of course Miss Rose’s remark about the family skeleton had been just a joke. I did not expect to hear the rattle of bones as the door swung outward and see a cadaverous figure tumble onto the floor. But still I did expect something.

The door squeaked protestingly on its hinges as Hamish pulled it wide. The room was utterly silent as we all gazed blankly on three wide vacant shelves. Empty!

The silence was broken by a scream. It was Hattie May again. “Look!” she cried. “It’s m-moving—the bottom—look!”

She was right. Slowly before our fascinated eyes, the board which formed the base of the cupboard was lifting like the lid of a box. Slowly from under it there was emerging—not a bony grinning skull—but a face of flesh and blood. A head, nearly bald and a lined, leathery face in which little beady eyes gleamed with mingled astonishment and fury.

Hamish seemed to be the only one of us sufficiently in possession of his senses to speak. “Well,” he said triumphantly, “got you at last, didn’t I—you double-crossin’ rat!”

Then came Aunt Cal’s voice. “Gopher!” she cried, her tone odd and uncontrolled.

The man did not answer. He was engaged in raising himself stiffly out of the hole. He was dressed in sailor trousers and a sleeveless shirt. As the bottom of the cupboard fell back into place he turned and glared at Hamish. “So you’re the guy that’s been playin’ them smart tricks!” he snarled.

“If you mean locking you in the cellar,” Hamish returned, “I figured you’d be some annoyed. But the next time you peddle fake hair tonic——”

“It’s a good tonic,” snapped the little man. “I made it myself in Brazil from a native receipt.”

“Yeah, but you had to get yourself a supply of wigs to make folks fall for it!”

This exchange of repartee was interrupted by Michael. “Look here,” he demanded, “what are you hiding in this house for? What are you after?”

The man turned on him sourly. “What business is that of yourn?”

“It’s my business!” Aunt Cal’s voice had regained its customary authority. She had dropped onto one of the straight horsehair covered chairs and was regarding the man with a strange tense look. “Where,” she demanded, “is Carter Craven?”

Mr. Bangs—for of course it was he—seemed to notice her for the first time. And there was recognition in his glance as he answered more respectfully than he had yet spoken.

“Craven’s gone. Died in the Argentine last winter.”

There was a moment’s silence and then Aunt Cal asked tremulously, “You were with him when he died?”

The other nodded. “And that reminds me,” he said, “he sent you a message, said I was to come back and give it to you myself. Or if you wasn’t here to get your address and mail it to you.” He began feeling in the pocket of his trousers, presently bringing out a dog-eared bill folder from which he extracted a dirty envelope.

“And why have you not given me this before?” Aunt Cal inquired as she took the letter from the man’s hand.

He shrugged. “All in good time. I says to myself I’ll just take a look round first and get the lay of the land like.”

Hamish eyed him fiercely. “So you opened the letter,” he accused “and took out the part you thought interesting—the sheet that had those measurements on it!”

Mr. Bangs shook his head. “Naw, Mr. Detective, you got me wrong. I never opened the letter. I found that there paper—since you’re so interested—with Carter Craven’s things after he died.”

“And that’s where you got the key to the house too, I suppose,” Michael put in.

“Right, Buddy.”

“Anyway,” Hamish persisted, “you thought you were going to dig up a neat little fortune out there in the garden, didn’t you? Well, you jolly well got fooled!” He turned to the cupboard and drew out the key. “If you’d dug in the right place—which you didn’t ’cause you were too stupid—that was all you’d have found.”

Mechanically the man’s clawlike fingers reached out and took the key. His glance strayed from it to Michael’s honest gray eyes. “Say,” he asked wonderingly, “is this on the level?”

“That’s right,” Michael told him. “That’s all we found.”

“I suppose,” Hattie May spoke up pertly, “you expected to dig up the blue emerald didn’t you?”

“What’s that?” He turned and looked at her. “No, sister,” he said slowly, “I had all I wanted of the Blue Emerald!”

“What, you found it? You——”

The man nodded grimly. “Yeah, sister, we found the Blue Emerald—me and Carter together. It was there just where the map said.”

“What map?” demanded Hamish.

Mr. Bangs shrugged. “Say, what is this?” he demanded truculently. “A third degree or sunthin’?”

Aunt Cal, still clutching the unopened envelope close to her side, spoke again unexpectedly. “The Blue Emerald was the gold mine I suppose, the one Carter went to find after his father died?”

Mr. Bangs nodded. “Yeah, he found the map among the old man’s papers. He put all he had or could borrow into her but”—he shrugged again—“he might as well have thrown the money over the ship’s rail and it would have saved us both a good sight of sufferin’.”

“A mine!” Hattie May said wonderingly. “The Blue Emerald was the name of a gold mine! But—then—what _were_ you after? Why were you digging up the garden?”

For a minute it seemed as if he were not going to answer. But Eve spoke up quietly, “You were measuring the ground the very first day we came here.”

“Well what if I was?” he snapped. “I figured a man don’t set down measurements on paper unless they mean somethin’.”

“Carter’s mind was always running on buried treasure,” Miss Blossom, seated comfortably on the old sofa behind him, put in. “It was kind of an obsession as you might say. I calculate he buried that key hoping to fool somebody the way he’d been fooled so often.”

“But that doesn’t explain about the cupboard,” I cried. “If it was just a—a joke, why did he have the cupboard covered up?”

Mr. Bangs honored me with a glance. Then turning to the spot from which he had so recently emerged, he lifted up the false bottom again and began fumbling about below. At last he drew out a long dusty brown envelope, tied with red cord. “Reckon that’s the answer,” he said tossing it across to Aunt Cal. “Guess Carter didn’t want that will to be found till he was good and ready. He figured on comin’ back a rich man!” He laughed hoarsely.

“If that wasn’t just like him!” Miss Blossom exclaimed. “I always said he never destroyed that will!”

Aunt Cal was untying the envelope with unsteady fingers. Inside was a sealed one. “Yes,” she said, “it is Uncle Judd’s will!”

“And Craven House is yours at last,” Miss Blossom gave a vast sigh of satisfaction. “I always knew you’d get it some day but I was afraid it might come too late for you to enjoy it. Dear me, if these children hadn’t found that key and all——”

Hattie May, too excited to remember her manners, burst in here. “But I don’t understand yet! I mean how Mr. Bangs—or whatever his name is—how he happened to come popping out just at the moment Hamish opened the door? Why, it was exactly like a jack-in-the-box!”

This characterization of his appearance in our midst seemed to tickle Mr. Bangs for he grinned for the first time. “Yeah,” he agreed, “reckon it did give you kind of a surprise. I’d been a-poundin’ on that trap door for quite a spell after this smart detective guy locked the cellar door on me.”

“Hamish dotes on locking doors on people,” his sister remarked. “It’s one of his pet tricks!”

“The cupboard must open into that underground passage that Uncle Judd had walled up years ago,” Aunt Cal remarked thoughtfully.

The man nodded. “Yeah, I remembered hearin’ talk of it. I poked around and found the entrance to it under the cellar stairs, and this here ladder between the floors. But it was dark as a ship’s hold down there and I couldn’t get the trap door open. Then you opened the cupboard and let in some light through the crack and I see where she was hooked down. I reckoned I could manage this smart guy here without much trouble—I didn’t figure on runnin’ into a whole tea party!” he finished with a cackle.

“I suppose that was the passage you were hiding in the night the cops searched the house for you?” Michael remarked.

The man shot him a sardonic glance but did not answer.

Aunt Cal got up. “I really think, Rose,” she said, “we should be starting for home. It’s growing dark and we’ve had quite enough excitement for one day.” She turned to the sailor and fixed him with a stern glance. “I sincerely trust, Gopher,” she said, “that you will not leave the neighborhood until I’ve had a further talk with you. I—I naturally wish to hear more details of my cousin’s last days.”

The man did not answer for a moment. But there was an insistence in Aunt Cal’s tone that was not to be disregarded. Perhaps he thought that, since the game was up in any case, his best chance lay in compliance. “Okay,” he said with another lift of his bony shoulders. “I’ll hang round for a spell.”

As Miss Blossom’s little car rolled away down the hill, no one spoke for a time. Eve and I were in the rear seat. Hattie May had gone with Hamish in his car. It was with some difficulty that we had succeeded in prying the latter loose from the man whom he considered his lawful prisoner. What was the use, he insisted, of pulling off a capture if you had to turn the fellow loose again?

But Aunt Cal’s wishes of course had prevailed and Hamish, still grumbling, had been obliged to depart and leave the villain, as he dubbed him, to his own devices.

As we turned into the main highway at The Corners, Miss Rose settled back. “Well, it does beat all,” she said, “the mysterious ways Providence does work. To think of that rascal Carter sealing up that old cupboard with the will in it and going off to the ends of the earth!”

“No, Rose, not a rascal,” Aunt Cal returned, “you mustn’t think of him like that. It was just a—a kind of prank. He never meant to keep the house from me for long, he says so in this note. You see I—I was away out West at the time he left. I think it was just as Gopher said, he wanted to come back a rich man——”

“And make you sorry you’d married Tom Poole instead of him,” put in Miss Rose calmly. “That was just like him, always believing that money was all that counted even in a love affair.”

“He says,” said Aunt Cal softly, “that he hopes I will forgive him everything. I believe he realized—at the end—the mistakes he’d made.”

Miss Rose nodded. “Yes, Carter wasn’t a bad fellow at heart,” she said.

“And Mr. Bangs?” Eve asked hesitantly, “you knew him before, Aunt Cal?”

“Oh, yes. His real name is Gopher—Harry Gopher. He shipped as cook with Uncle Judd for years and used often to be around town between voyages. Uncle always said he was a rascal but he had a fondness for him too. I shall have to see what can be done for him.”

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XXVI

The Unveiling

A MONTH had gone by. August was already drifting into September. School loomed ahead but we hardly gave it a thought. Each day as it came along was too absorbing, for Eve and I agreed that the business of making an old house come to life again was about the most thrilling experience in the world.

Yes, Aunt Cal had really moved into Craven House. After much deliberation and lengthy conferences with her lawyer, she had at last yielded to the combined persuasion of Miss Blossom, Mrs. Viner, Eve and myself and decided to give up the little cottage in Fishers Haven and make the old place she had loved as a child her permanent home. So the first of August had seen us established. Painters, plumbers and paper hangers had overrun the place. Miss Blossom had closed her own house in the village for the time being in order to help get things going. And from the day when she and Aunt Cal had gone to work with broom and scrub brush, all the latter’s doubts and misgivings seemed magically to disappear. It was as if, with the vanquishing of dust and cobwebs, something equally oppressive had vanished from Aunt Cal’s mind. Her figure seemed actually to grow more erect and her eyes to grow brighter.

Today we were waiting for Michael to come. He’d formed the habit of stopping on his way down from the farm. Sometimes it was his advice Aunt Cal wanted about grading the lawn or the laying out of paths or flowerbeds. Sometimes he was needed to bolster up the flagging energies of our man of all work. For Gopher, though freed of the charge hanging over him through the intervention of Mr. Templeton and Captain Trout, did not take kindly to the job with which Aunt Cal had provided him. “Tillin’ the soil” he stated was out of his line as, I strongly suspected, was labor of any sort. But with Aunt Cal’s sharp eyes never long withdrawn and the knowledge that but for her he would now be sojourning in a far less pleasant place, he kept grimly at it. I used to feel sorry for him sometimes as I saw him stop to wipe his seamed, weatherbeaten face and gaze sadly down the road. And some fine morning, I felt sure, when the wind blew from the sea, Aunt Cal would come out to give directions for the day’s work and he just wouldn’t be there.

“Well, here’s your letter at last!” Eve came up the newly graveled path. She’d been to town with Miss Rose to do some errands and get the mail. My heart gave the little leap that it always does at the sight of the thin paper envelope, bearing the Chinese stamp. Aunt Cal came out to listen as I read it aloud:

“My dear daughter:

Your account of your adventures at Craven House gave us quite as
much of a thrill as they must have given you. I am immensely
pleased that Calliope has decided to move into the old place. I
remember it well. Your mother and I stopped there with you when you
were three years old, and your curious recollection of the cupboard
by the fireplace undoubtedly dates from that visit.

Your mother had come down for a last visit with your grandmother
Poole before we sailed for the East. It was just after your Aunt
Cal had married and gone West to live. We stopped for a call on
Captain Judd Craven, a fine old man of the best seafaring
traditions. We were grieved to get the news of his death the
following year.

I recall the big front parlor and the jar of some sort of incense
on the cabinet. Very likely you got a good whiff of it, one that
your sensitive nerves of smell have never forgotten. The
associative power of odors is well known, and so the cupboard and
particularly the china duck which you say it contained became
associated in your mind with the strange new smell. Thus when you
smelled it again, even after the lapse of thirteen years, the
particular brain cells into which the memory had been packed away
released the recollection. I have heard of many similar instances,
but few which have led to so dramatic a development as in your
case.”

“Well, well, that does beat all!” exclaimed Aunt Cal. “And to think of your being only three at the time!”

“I think it’s perfectly weird!” said Eve.

“Not weird at all,” I said. “Just perfectly normal and scientific as Dad explains. And I must say I’m glad to have it established that I’m not subject to trances or—what was it—cataleptic fits as Hamish so darkly hinted!”

“There’s Michael, and in a clean shirt too, if my eyes do not deceive me! Let’s go tell him about it, he’ll be frightfully interested.”

Hurriedly skimming through the rest of my letter—leaving the real reading of it till bedtime—I followed Eve across the yard. Aunt Cal went inside again to superintend the cutting of the cake, leaving the big front door wide open as it stood most of the time nowadays. This was against all the conventions of Old Beecham, but Aunt Cal was too busy just now to give much thought to the conventions.

Today we had been working from early dawn, getting ready for our first social event. It was to be—somewhat to Aunt Cal’s dismay—a garden party.

We found Michael standing in the middle of the garden, surveying the arrangements. “Well,” inquired Eve, “is your Majesty pleased?”

He grinned at her. “Say,” he said, “am I going to be the only man at this party?”

“No, don’t worry. Captain Trout’s coming and perhaps Mr. Templeton and Hattie May wrote that she and Hamish would drive down if she could possibly manage it. But listen to the explanation Sandy’s just had of her vision the day we discovered the cupboard!”

“I object to having it called a vision!” I said. “It was just a memory—coming out.”

When I had finished reading him what Father had written, Michael said, “That’s mighty interesting! And what a piece of luck that you happened to make that visit here when you were a kid.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t have mattered really,” I said. “Aunt Cal has never told us just what Carter Craven said in that note he sent her but I think he must have told her where the will was, at least he gave her a clue.”

“Yes,” put in Eve, “but how do we know that Gopher would ever have given her the note at all if we hadn’t cornered him like a rat in a hole. Just like it to slip his mind—he’s got about the slipperiest mind I ever had the pleasure to deal with.”

“He hasn’t done so badly with this garden though,” Michael observed.

“Would you ever have believed it could look so lovely!” Eve asked.

“Yes. You can do most anything with land if you put enough time and patience into it, providing of course the soil’s fairly good. Next year, I hope it will look even better.”

“In the spring!” Eve said, her eyes shining a little. “Oh, I do hope I shall see it in the spring when the daffodils and tulips first come up!”

“And I’ll probably be grubbing for exams about that time!” Michael said. “But maybe I can get away for a week-end. I’d like to see how those bulbs come up.”

“And us and Circe?” Eve asked teasingly. “Shan’t you want to see us?”

“I hope the frost next winter doesn’t crack that new arm I made for her,” he answered, ignoring the question and looking across to where, above the clean bowl of the fountain, the restored statue stood, veiled today in white cheesecloth.

Miss Rose drove up just then with Mrs. Viner and we hurried out to greet our first guest. “My, how pretty everything looks!” she murmured as we escorted her to a seat. “Seems ’sif that golden glow there by the wall sort of lights up the whole place! And how that larkspur by the fountain has come on! What pride Emily Craven used to take in her larkspur.”

“Next year,” remarked Aunt Cal, coming up, “I shall have asters and mignonette in that bed too.”

“There comes a car up the hill,” I cried. “Maybe it’s Hattie May and Hamish!”

“No,” Michael shook his head. “It’s Captain Trout in Fishers Haven’s one and only taxicab.”

Just behind came a string of other cars, bearing the members of the Ladies Civic Betterment Society.

Miss Rose in a large flowered muslin, which made her look for all the world like a mammoth piece of upholstery, moved among the guests, banishing all vestige of stiffness with her good natured small talk and banter.

“Bless my boots, what a transformation!” exclaimed Captain Trout. “How delighted the old Cap’n would be if he could see it!” he added, turning to Aunt Cal.

“Yes,” she agreed simply, “I think he would approve of what we have done.”

“How is Daisy June getting along?” I asked. “Do you think she misses us any?”

“Well, now I can’t say that I’ve noticed her a-pinin’,” he chuckled. “She’s still able to take a running jump at my back when I ain’t looking.”

“Adam loves it here,” I said. “You ought to see him walk down the hall, waving his tail, as if he were the lost heir restored to his patrimony.”

“Yeah, that’s like him—Caliph always did put on airs!” The Captain chuckled at his own wit.

Gopher dressed in his borrowed white trousers appeared awkwardly carrying a tray. “Hi, Biscuits, what you got here?” Captain Trout demanded.

The sailor set down the cups of raspberry sherbet with an apologetic grin. “Say, Skipper,” he whispered hoarsely, “like to have me stir you up a batch of flapjacks ’fore you go?”

“No, no, certainly not!” Captain Trout took one of the pink filled glasses and passed it to Mrs. Viner. He helped himself to another.

At last came the moment when the sun touched the top of the fountain—the moment I had been waiting for. At a nod from Aunt Cal, Michael disappeared into the house. A moment later I got his signal from the cellar window. Everybody stopped talking as I advanced to the fountain and, reaching up, pulled the cord which held the veil about the statue.

At the same instant, Michael turned the tap in the cellar and the water gushed forth in a myriad sparkling rainbow streams. Everybody clapped! It was exactly as if the delicate figure of the Enchantress poised there had really waved her wand and performed a miracle!

A belated car came puffing up the hill, a green roadster covered with dust. From the seat Hattie May waved frantically. Eve flew down the path, I after her. Hamish peered out at the group about the fountain. “Say,” he demanded, “we ain’t too late for the refreshments are we?”

“No, indeed, there’s lots left,” I told him laughing.

“We had a blow-out of course,” Hattie May said as she climbed out. “My how pretty everything looks!”

As we came up the path Hamish caught sight of Gopher collecting plates. “My aunt!” he exclaimed, “Mean to say you let that fellow go round loose?”

“Oh,” giggled Eve. “he’s quite tame now really—just like the garden. You’d be surprised!”

Eve came out with a heaping tray. “Hasn’t anything more queer been happenin’, I suppose?” Hamish inquired hopefully between mouthfuls.

“No, I’m afraid not,” I answered. “No more mysteries—except of course what became of the china duck. And I’m afraid that’ll never be solved.”

Hamish set down his empty plate regretfully. “By the way,” he remarked, “I brought along a few little souvenirs I picked up on the way. They’re out in the car.”

“More gifts! Oh, Hamish!”

After the other guests had departed Hamish distributed his presents. There was a vanity case for Aunt Cal whose countenance to date has been innocent of make-up; shell-covered workboxes for Eve and me; a combination pocket knife and can opener for Michael and a huge heart-shaped box of chocolates for Miss Rose.

“Oh, you cruel boy,” Miss Rose cried, “to tempt me so!” She selected a plump one before passing the box.

As Aunt Cal turned to walk with Mr. Templeton to his car Hattie May whispered quite loudly, “I must say, Sandy, that your aunt has changed. Why she’s like a different person almost.”

“Hush!” I warned, “It’s all Circe’s doing! Magic, you know!”

“I guess more likely it’s two living Circes that have done the trick,” said Miss Rose slyly, selecting another chocolate.

“Oh, you mean you and—and Gopher?” Eve inquired mischievously.

Miss Rose giggled. “Fancy me on a fountain! No, it’s a fact, Cal told me so herself, that she’d never have had the gumption to go ahead with everything if it hadn’t been for you girls. She said she wanted Sandra to have a place to come to that she’d feel was a real home.”

“Oh, Miss Rose,” I cried, “did she really say that?”

Aunt Cal came back down the path, Adam at her heels. “Well now that that’s over,” she said, “we’ll be able to settle down to normal living again! Michael thinks I should put that south pasture into potatoes next year. What do you think, Rose?”

“Farmer Gilpatrick advises!” Eve twinkled at him.

“Well?” he inquired challengingly, “what’s the matter with that? Suppose I should turn into a farmer, what then?”

“Why, then,” she returned, “you’ll buy a farm next to ours—next to Craven House I mean—and make it the very finest, most scientific, up-to-date farm in the whole countryside.”

“Well, you might do worse,” Hamish remarked solemnly. “I read the other day where a fellow was out plowin’ up a field and what d’you s’pose he turned up? An old gold piece, yes sir! And come to find out when he dug down there was a whole lot of ’em buried where some early settler fellow had hid ’em when the Indians was comin’. What d’you think of that!”

“That settles it!” laughed Michael. “I shall become a farmer.”

THE END

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Transcriber’s Note

Italicized words and phrases are indicated by _surrounding underscores_.

Some presumed printers’ errors have been corrected, including normalizing punctuation.

The following specific corrections have been made: