Chapter X Sailor’s Knots
Just why Bob Dexter didn’t want Ned to wax enthusiastic over the fact that Bob intended taking the trail after the thief who had robbed Hiram Beegle wasn’t quite clear. Perhaps it was Bob’s modesty over ever being praised for his detective work. Perhaps it was just natural caution in the presence of the strange Italian—for certainly he seemed of that nationality.
However it was, Ned desisted from his words of praise, and a silence fell over the group in the auto as the man with the organ and monkey shuffled along.
He had cast a quick glance at all in the machine, his glance lasting longest, perhaps, on the jolly face of Bill Hickey, for on that odd character’s shining countenance a smile was again visible. Bill seemed to have recovered his spirits after telling his story.
The organ man appeared inclined to stop and grind out a tune, hoping, perhaps, to charm some pennies from the pockets of those in the flivver, either by his music, of which the less said the better, or by the antics of his monkey, which was the usual small variety, attired in coat, trousers and a cap—a shameful degrading of a decent simian.
But Bob exclaimed:
“You needn’t play any music for us—we’re going to move along.”
“That’s right,” chimed in Jolly Bill. “I reckon I’ve spun about all of the yarn you need to hear.”
“No music—you no like?” questioned the Italian, with his shock of hair and his curling, matted beard.
“No like,” said Ned, with a laugh.
Once more the auto rolled along the quiet country road, leaving the organ grinder and his monkey staring after them.
“Looks like he was going to settle down here permanently,” remarked Harry.
“Yes,” agreed Bob. “This is the third time we’ve seen him the same day. They don’t often come to Cliffside.”
“Well, as I was saying,” remarked Ned, “if anybody can locate this Rod Marbury it can be done by our young detective friend Bob Dexter.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said Bob with a smile. “But I’d like to have a go at it, if Mr. Beegle will let me.”
“Let you?” cried Jolly Bill Hickey, “why he’ll be glad to have you get his map back! He wants that treasure—any man would, and he can’t tell where old Hank Denby hid it until he looks at the map. Of course he’ll be glad to have you get it back for him.”
“I don’t know that I can do it—or even find this man he suspects,” stated Bob.
“Well, you can have a try at it, anyhow,” decided Harry. “And you did pretty well down at Beacon Beach.”
“There was a lot of luck in that,” admitted Bob.
“Well, maybe luck will break here for you, too,” put in Jolly Bill. “I hope so, for Hiram’s sake.”
“But look here,” spoke out Ned. “Mr. Beegle must have opened his brass-bound box and have looked at the map inside between the time he got home with it and the time it was taken from him. And by looking at the map he must know where the stuff is buried.”
“That’s so,” agreed Harry.
“Not so fast!” exclaimed Jolly Bill. “It isn’t so easy to look at a map and then find the place it refers to. We found that out when we went to the South Sea island. You’ve got to have the map right with you, and work your course along fathom by fathom. Hiram would need the map to find where Hank had hid anything. Hank wouldn’t hide it in any easy place, or a place you could find by one look at the map. And Hiram didn’t have much time to study it.
“No, what I think, is that Rod heard, through the letter he got from Judge Weston, that everything had gone to Hiram. This made him mad and he decided to do things his own way, like he did once before when this happened to me,” and Jolly Bill tapped his wooden leg. “So he got the best of Hiram before Hiram had a chance to study the map. Rod has it now and he’ll dig up that treasure as soon as he gets the chance.”
“Do you think it’s buried around here?” asked Ned eagerly.
“It’s likely to be somewhere around Cliffside,” admitted Bill. “Hank wasn’t much of a hand to go far away from home after our South Sea trip.”
“Then all we’ll have to do is to watch where any stranger begins digging operations,” was Ned’s opinion. “I say stranger, for we don’t any of us know this Rod Marbury.”
“I know him—to my sorrow!” remarked Jolly Bill. “But as for watching for a digger—gosh! any number of holes could be sunk, off in the woods—in the mountains—even at Storm Mountain—and no one in the village would ever know it—not even the police.”
“I guess that’s right,” agreed Ned. “We’ll have to leave it to Bob Dexter.”
“Well, Bob Dexter isn’t going to do anything about it right away,” declared the young detective himself. “I’ve got to get back and report to Uncle Joel. I’ve been away a long time as it is.”
“That’s right,” said his chums.
“Well, I’ll see you again some time,” remarked Jolly Bill, as they left him at the Mansion House—a hotel hardly living up to its name—but good enough for the purpose. “I’m going to stick around a while and see if I can help Hiram. Of course I feel a bit sore that I didn’t get a share in the big part of the treasure, but it served me right for letting Rod lead me astray in attacking Hank. I deserve all I’m getting, and I’m not complaining.”
He seemed quite humble and not a bit jolly now.
“But I’ll do all I can to help Hiram,” he went on, as he stumped into the hotel, attracting many curious glances, for he was as odd a character as had been seen in those parts in many a long day. “And if I can help you solve this mystery, my young detective, call on me,” he said to Bob.
“Thanks, I shall,” was the answer. “I don’t know that I can do anything, but I’m going to try, if my uncle will let me.”
All Cliffside was soon buzzing with the news of the attack on the lonely old man, and there were various rumors as to the size of the fortune taken from him. Of course there was some disappointment that there had been no murder—I mean disappointment from a strictly sensational standpoint, for no one wanted to see the harmless old man killed. But, all in all, there was plenty of excitement for a time.
The real story was known only to Bob, his two chums and Jolly Bill, and the lads had agreed to keep silent about it. Jolly Bill had no inducement to tell something that was not to his credit. And Ned and Harry wanted to give Bob a chance to exercise his detective abilities, in which they hoped to share.
As for Rod Marbury, he would have the greatest incentive in the world to remain in hiding, and Hiram was so ill and hazy as to what had happened that he would not be likely to tell the story of the buried and recovered treasure. Re-buried to be exact, for it had been hidden by Hank Denby and was still hidden, unless Rod Marbury had used the map to get the location of it and had removed it.
“Well, Bob,” remarked his uncle at home that evening, when they were talking the matter over, “of course I want you should make your way in life. I did hope you’d sort of succeed to my business, but I can see you’re not cut out for a hardware merchant I don’t altogether hold with this detective business, but I like to see a young man go in for what he likes best, other things being equal. Now you’re asking me to let you off from your regular work so you can solve this Storm Mountain mystery.”
“That’s what I’d like, Uncle Joel.”
“Well, then, I’ll agree to it with this understanding, that you don’t run into danger. I’m responsible for you—almost as much as if I was your father.”
“You have been a good father to me,” said Bob, feelingly.
“I’ve tried to be,” said Mr. Dexter, quietly. “So I want you to take care of yourself.”
“I will,” promised the lad. “Thanks, Uncle Joel.”
“I don’t reckon you’ll find out much,” went on the hardware man. “From what you tell me it’s as queer and complicated as some of the moving pictures we’ve had here in town. But they always work out some way, and maybe this will.”
“I’m sure it will,” said Bob, who had told his uncle the whole story. “Of course there are some points that seem pretty hazy—especially about this Rod Marbury—how he could be around, attack Hiram on the road and get in his cabin without being seen either time. And that trick of getting the key back in the locked room—that is a puzzler!”
“There must be some secret about the old log cabin,” ventured Mr. Dexter.
“A secret! I’ll say there is!” declared Bob. “But I’ll find it!”
Having arranged with his uncle to get time off from his work in the store, which work he had promised to do since there was no school for a time, Bob began to lay out some plans. Most of all he wanted a talk with Hiram Beegle, to clear up some points.
“I want to know more about this mysterious Rod Marbury,” said the lad to himself. “When Mr. Beegle gets better he can talk more about what happened just before he was stricken.”
The next day Bob went to see the log cabin hermit at the home of Tom Shan, but Mr. Beegle was still a bit weak and uncertain in his mind, and the physician forbade any one bothering him with vexing questions.
“Those two chiefs of police have been here,” said Tom to Bob, “but they didn’t find out much, and I guess they never will.”
“Well, I’ll be around again to-morrow,” said Bob, as he took his leave, followed by a friendly smile from Hiram Beegle who was slowly improving. He had been knocked out by some sort of gas, or else by something given him to drink, the doctor decided. But the effects were passing off.
On his way back from visiting the chief character in this new mystery that had engaged him, Bob took the road to Storm Mountain and passed near the log cabin. It was deserted and locked, for Chief Drayton still had the keys, though he promised to give them to Mr. Beegle as soon as the latter wanted to get back in his home.
“I wish you could talk,” murmured Bob to the silent logs. “You’d tell me how that key got inside the locked room. As soon as I can I’m going to have a look at that room more closely, and have a talk with Hiram. He’ll know whether there are any secret sliding panels in the walls, through which the key could have been tossed in as it could have been had there been a transom over the door.”
Bob then walked around to the chimney side. He wanted again to look at those marks in the soft ground—the marks that his chum had first taken for the prints of an elephant’s foot They were somewhat less plain now—those queer marks, but Bob could think of nothing more that they looked like than a sack of potatoes set down again and again because of its weight.
“It’s a queer case,” mused Bob as he turned away from the old log cabin. “A queer case—more so than that of the Golden Eagle or the wreck of the Sea Hawk. I don’t know how I’m going to make out on it.”
As he walked around to the front of the little dwelling, he saw, sitting on the low doorstep, the organ grinder. The Italian had leaned his wheezy instrument up against a tree, and the monkey was swinging from a low branch.
“Nobody home,” said Bob, thinking the fellow might have stopped to play, hoping, thereby, to earn some pennies.
“Nobody home,” murmured the other.
He held in his hand the long string that was attached to the collar of his monkey, and as Bob looked the fingers of the man began tying into the cord a number of sailors’ knots.
Idly, and seemingly unconsciously, the man made a square knot, he loosened that and threw a clove hitch—then a half hitch. Next he made a running bowline, all the while looking at the lad.
“Nobody home,” the Italian said, musingly. “Aw-right. I go—come, Jacko!”
And jerking on the string, which was a signal for the monkey to perch on top of the organ, the fellow shouldered his instrument and walked off toward the road.
“Sailors’ knot!” mused Bob to himself as he stood watching. “Sailors’ knots—I wonder——”
But his wondering was interrupted by hearing footsteps at the rear of the log cabin.