Chapter XI No Potatoes
Bob Dexter was not at all alarmed by hearing the footsteps of some one in the rear of the log cabin where Hiram. Beegle had his home. The young detective knew that it had been, and probably would be, visited by many curiosity seekers, though now that the first wave of excitement was over there was less morbidness about the cabin.
But the lad was somewhat surprised when he met, coming around the corner of the shack, Chief Drayton of the Storm Mountain force—the whole force, one might say, though the chief did swear in constables on the few occasions when they were needed.
“Hello! What are you doing here, young man?” demanded Mr. Drayton in rather a harsh voice. He did not seem to have recognized Bob.
“Oh, just looking around the same as you are,” was the lad’s easy reply.
“You can’t be looking around the same as me!” snapped out the officer.
“Why not?” coolly demanded Bob, thinking the chief was going to question his right to be on the premises.
“Because I’m here in my official capacity as chief of the Storm Mountain police. I’m here to solve this mystery, and you can’t be here on any such errand as that.”
“Well, I happen to be,” and Bob smiled. “I have permission from Chief Duncan of the Cliffside police to do what I can on this case.”
A light seemed to break over Mr. Drayton.
“Oh, now I know who you be!” he said, though not much more genially than at first. “You’re that young detective feller that was here the day Hiram was knocked out. Um, what you doin’ here?” and there was suspicion in the question.
“Just looking around—that’s all—same as you are.”
“Um! Find out anything?”
“No, not a thing. It’s as deep a mystery as ever. I was wishing I could get inside. I’d like to take a look at the walls of that room again, and see if there was a secret opening in them. There must be, in order for that key to have gotten back inside.”
“Um, maybe there is—unless Hiram did all this himself.”
“Do you believe that, Chief?”
“Um, I’m not sayin’ what I believe. But I know one thing.”
“What’s that, Chief?” Bob thought it best to give the man his tide. It might make him more friendly.
“I know that you aren’t going to get inside—not while I got the keys!” and the self-important individual drew himself up like a turkey gobbler.
“Oh, there’s no hurry,” said Bob, easily. “Any time will do. I was just wondering—that’s all.”
“Yes, there’s a lot of folks wondering about this case,” said the Storm Mountain official. “And they’ll wonder a lot more when I arrest the man that robbed Hiram Beegle.”
“I thought you said Hiram did it himself—locked himself in the room and then told a story of being held up,” said Bob with a sly smile. He was not averse to taking a “fall” out of the conceited chief.
“I never said no such thing, young feller, and you know it!”
“You said Hiram might have done all this himself.”
“Well, I may have said it, but I didn’t mean it. And don’t you go to takin’ me up so short, neither! I’m in charge here and if I don’t want to let you snoop around I don’t have to.”
“No, I suppose you don’t,” agreed Bob. “But I didn’t intend to take you up short. I want to get at the bottom of this mystery as much as you do. I don’t believe Hiram Beegle robbed himself. What object would he have?”
“Um! I’m not here to discuss this case with you! I’ll solve it in the official way. And I don’t need any help from outsiders. I called in Chief Duncan because I thought he’d like to be associated with me in this, but I really don’t need him. I can get along alone, and I’m going to!”
“Suit yourself,” replied Bob easily, and he smiled as he moved away. He had left his flivver out in the road, and as he got into it he saw, farther down the highway, the Italian organ grinder trudging along.
“You’re a queer character,” mused Bob to himself as he started off. “You certainly were tying sailors’ knots in that rope. Must have picked it up on your way over from Italy in a ship. If you weren’t what you are, I’d say you had been a sailor some day.”
Bob had an errand to do for his uncle in a town beyond Storm Mountain, and it was not until late in the evening when he returned. He found Ned and Harry at the house waiting for him.
“Come on to the movies,” urged Harry. “You haven’t anything to do, have you, except eat?”
“I haven’t got to do even that,” answered Bob. “I had supper in Yardley. Yes, I’ll go to the movies with you.”
“Unless you’re going to work on your latest case,” added Ned with a laugh.
“No, there isn’t much I can do until I have a talk with old Hiram,” replied Bob. “There are one or two points I want him to help me clear up before I get down to brass tacks. I guess it will do me good to get a sight of a movie. Is the show any good?”
“It’s a sort of a circus yarn,” answered Ned. “They show a lot of the acts in the big tent, so Joe Wright was telling me.”
“Good! Let’s go!”
It was a lively movie and the boys enjoyed every moment of it. There was one act where a performer slid down a slanting wire cable, attached to the highest point of the tent, suspending himself by his teeth on a sort of trolley wheel that spanned the taut wire.
He whizzed down the inclined cable with great speed, landing on a big mattress at the lower end where the wire was fast to a peg in the ground.
“Say, that was nifty!” whispered Ned to Bob. “Wasn’t it?”
“What was?” asked Bob, somewhat absently.
“For cats’ sakes! Didn’t you see that fellow slide down the inclined wire rope?”
“Oh, you mean that?”
“Sure! What else would I mean? Did you see it?”
“No, I didn’t take particular notice,” replied Bob. “I was thinking of something else.”
“Well, for the love of stamps! Say, what did you come for, anyhow, if you aren’t enjoying it?” chuckled Harry.
“Oh, I’m enjoying it all right,” remarked Bob.
His chums shook their heads knowingly at each other. Well they realized that the detective virus was working in the veins of Bob Dexter.
It was two days after this, during which time Bob and his chums had paid a visit to Jolly Bill at the Mansion House, that something else happened. Jolly Bill had made himself at home in the town’s most pretentious hostelry, though that isn’t saying much. He was an easy person to make friends, and seemed to be well liked.
“Well, have you located the treasure yet, or that rascal Rod?” he asked Bob.
“No, not yet. I’ve been waiting to have a talk with Mr. Beegle.”
“So have I,” said Jolly Bill. “That’s why I left my home out west and traveled here. And no sooner do I arrive than I find my old messmate in difficulties. But I reckon he’ll soon be better, and then we’ll visit and spin many a yarn together. He may be able to give you a clew that will lead to Rod Marbury.
“I’m hoping he will,” said Bob. “I expect to see him to-morrow.”
“I’ll try and stump my way up there,” said the wooden-legged man. “It’s a fair walk, but——”
“I’ll take you,” kindly offered Bob.
“Thanks—that’s good of you. Let me know when you go.”
But Bob wanted a private and lone conversation with Hiram Beegle before he took the wooden-legged man to Storm Mountain, and so, with that end in view, the young detective decided to anticipate the visit by one day.
“I think he’ll be well enough to talk to me now,” Bob reasoned.
On his way to the log cabin the lad in his flivver passed a small hotel or boarding house on the outskirts of the town. It was not a very choice or reputable place, and it did not much surprise Bob to see, sunning himself out in front, the bewhiskered Italian organ grinder.
“Business must be pretty good that he can afford to stay there,” thought the lad. “Of course the board isn’t so very expensive, but I always thought these organ grinders had to sleep under hay stacks and beg their food in order to get along. But there he is!”
The Italian seemed to know Bob, or at least remember him, for he nodded in friendly fashion as the flivver chugged past.
“He’s taking a day off from grinding,” thought the young sleuth, for he had sight of neither the monkey nor the organ.
Arriving at the house of Tom Shan, Bob was met by the farmer’s wife who said:
“He isn’t here!”
“Who?” asked the youth.
“Hiram,” was the answer. “He’s much better now and he’s gone back to his cabin.”
“That’s good!” exclaimed Bob. “I’ll go on over there to talk to him. How did he get back? I sort of figured on coming after him.”
“Oh, Tom hitched up and took him over this morning. Hiram is much better. He says his head is all clear now.”
“Then can he remember what happened—I mean when he was robbed in his strong room?” asked Bob.
“Well, not exactly,” answered Mrs. Shan. “But you better talk with him yourself.”
“I will,” decided Bob, and he drove over to the log cabin.
“Who’s there?” demanded a voice inside, when he had knocked at the door—a voice he recognized as that of the old sailor.
“I am—Bob Dexter,” was the reply.
There was a moment of silence, and then a movement within—the sound of a chair being pushed back over the floor.
“Oh—all right—I’ll let you in,” went on Hiram Beegle.
There was the sound of a key being turned in the lock, and a rattle, denoting a chain being slipped from its fastenings.
“He isn’t taking any more chances,” thought Bob with a smile.
The door was finally opened, and the old man peered out. That dazed look was gone from his face, but he seemed a trifle weak. As he caught sight of Bob he murmured:
“Oh, the young detective who helped me! I remember. Come in. But is there any one with you?” he asked, suspiciously.
“Not a soul,” answered Bob.
“Good! All right, come in.”
The place had been straightened out since the night of the robbery, and there were evidences of a woman’s hand. So Bob judged Mrs. Shan had been putting the log cabin to rights.
“I thought I’d like to satisfy myself on a few points about this case,” began Bob. “Chief Duncan said I might try my hand at solving it.”
“Somebody needs to do it,” spoke Hiram Beegle. “It’s a queer case. If I don’t get back that map I’ll never know where the treasure is hid, and I’ll never get it.”
“Did you have a chance to look at the map and find the location before you were robbed?” asked Bob.
“No, I only glanced at the papers in the box Hank Denby left me in his will. The map was quite complicated—it would take a deal of study to puzzle it out. But now it’s gone.”
“And is all that story true that Jolly Bill told—about treasure on a South Sea island?” asked Bob.
“Well, I don’t know what Bill told you,” was the reply. “But there was treasure on an island. It was dug up and we four agreed to share it—that is until Rod and Bill went to the bad when they forfeited their shares. It wasn’t so much Bill’s fault though—I don’t hold it against him. It was that Rod Marbury.”
“So I understand,” spoke Bob. “We’ll pass over that for a while,” he said, glad to have, however, this much confirmation of the tale told by the wooden-legged sailor. “What I’d like to find out now, Mr. Beegle, is how that key got inside the room where you were lying unconscious. Are there any secret openings by which the key could have been tossed in—the opening being closed later?”
“No, Bob, not a one. I watched that room built and I know. That’s the deepest mystery of all.”
“Well, we’ll pass that for the time being. But tell me—were you out around your cabin, just before you were attacked, carrying a bag of potatoes which you had to set down every now and then because it was too heavy? Were you?”
“A bag of potatoes? No!” exclaimed Hiram, wonderingly.
“Did anybody bring you a sack of potatoes, or did you sell any one a sack, which they carried away?” went on the lad. “There are marks of a potato sack having been set down in the soft ground near the side of your cabin where the chimney of the fireplace in your strong room is built. Somebody had a sack of potatoes.”
“No potatoes!” cried Mr. Beegle. “I didn’t carry any, and no one brought me any. It must be something else, my boy. But no potatoes!”
He looked at the young detective earnestly. Then some sort of doubt, or suspicion seemed to enter his mind, for he said:
“Look here, Bob, my boy! You aren’t stringing me, are you?”
“Stringing you, Mr. Beegle? No, of course not! Why do you ask that?”
“Because of this potato business. I thought maybe you were trying to play a joke. Lots of people think they can joke with a sailor.”
“No,” replied the lad, “I’m in dead seriousness. I want to find out all I can about this matter. If you say there weren’t any potatoes that ends my theory in that direction.”
“But what could have made those marks if it wasn’t a sack of potatoes?” thought Bob in wonderment as he went back over the case.