Chapter XII Monkey Land
Hiram Beegle was feeling much better. Several days had passed since the two assaults on him—being knocked down on his way home with the brass-bound box, and the attack in his own cabin. He was almost his own, hearty self again as he sat there looking at Bob, trying to fathom what the young detective was driving at.
“I don’t understand this potato business, young man,” said the old sailor.
“Neither do I,” admitted Bob, “unless you have a pet elephant somewhere around this cabin,” and he laughed.
“An elephant! I should say not, though I’ve seen plenty of ’em, and wild ones, too, in my time. More likely I’d have a monkey.”
“A monkey?” questioned the lad.
“Yes, I heard there was one camping on my doorstep while I was sick over at Tom Shan’s.”
“Oh, the organ grinder’s monkey—yes. But he’s gone away. He’s stopping over in Cliffside—at the Railroad House.”
“You don’t tell me! What’s the idea?”
“Guess he must be making money with his wheezy music,” laughed Bob. “But to get back to this subject, have you any idea what made the funny marks around at the side of your cabin, Mr. Beegle?”
“No, I haven’t, but I’ll go out with you and take a look at them. And say, I wish you wouldn’t call me Mr. Beegle?”
“Isn’t that your name?” asked Bob, thinking perhaps the inheritor of some of the old pirate’s hidden treasure might be masquerading.
“Yes, it’s my name, but all my friends call me Hiram, and since you’re one of my friends—I’m sure you must be or you wouldn’t go to all this work on my account—why can’t you call me Hiram?”
“I will, if you wish it,” answered Bob. “But as for work—I don’t call this work—I mean trying to solve a mystery.”
“You don’t? Well, have it your own way. Now let’s go out and have a look at those marks. Though I’m afraid there aren’t many of them left. We had a shower in the night, and that fellow who calls himself the chief of the Storm Mountain police has been pottering around.”
“Was he here to-day?” asked Bob.
“Yes, just before you came. He didn’t know anything, though, and never will, in my opinion.”
Bob did not subscribe to this, feeling that it was not just exactly ethical, since Mr. Drayton was a sort of fellow practitioner so to speak.
Hiram Beegle was right in his surmise that not many of the “potato marks,” as Bob called them, remained. There had been a little shower over Storm Mountain early that morning, and the raindrops, together with the tramping of feet about the cabin, had obliterated, for a great part, the strange impressions.
But Bob found a place, sheltered by the trunk of the tree which grew close to the cabin, where there was one mark plainly visible.
“And if that isn’t the impression of a jute bag, the kind that holds potatoes, I don’t know what is,” declared the young detective.
Hiram Beegle put on his spectacles and bent over to make a closer inspection. Long and earnestly he gazed at the mark.
“That’s been made by a bit of bagging,” he declared. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say the bag had potatoes in it, though.”
“No, it needn’t have had potatoes in,” agreed Bob. “But it was a bag and it had something heavy in. You could tell that more easily, before, by seeing the depth of the impressions. Chief Drayton would have it that your box was carried off in a sack and it was so heavy that the thief had to set it down every now and then.”
“Nonsense!” laughed the old sailor. “That box wasn’t at all heavy nor big, but it did contain a treasure. It had a map in that showed where old Hank had buried his share of the gold—his share and that which would have gone to Jolly Bill and Rod if they had done what was right. It’s partly my treasure, too, for I didn’t use up my share.”
“And haven’t you any idea where it is buried, even without reference to the map?” asked the lad.
“Nary an idea,” was the answer with a dubious shake of the head. “I don’t reckon I’ll ever lay my eyes on it now.”
“Oh, you may,” said Bob, cheerfully. “Of course I’m pretty young at this business, but——”
“I’ve heard good reports of you,” complimented Hiram.
“Thanks. But of course there’s lots I’ve got to learn. But I know enough about cases like this to feel sure that, somewhere or other, the thief has made a slip. He’s left some sort of a clew, and if I can get on the trail of it we may catch this Rod Marbury.”
“Yes, Rod did it all right,” declared Hiram. “He and Jolly Bill were the only ones, except me, that knew of the treasure. Old Hank wrote to each of them, just before he died, telling how he had willed the treasure to me, and had left me the brass box in which the map was always kept.
“Now Jolly Bill appears, fair and square and above board, and he’s man enough to say he’s sorry for what he did. Well, he may be, for he’s out of pocket by it.
“But this scoundrel Rod sneaks into town, waylays me to get the box away and when he can’t do that, because he’s scared off, he comes back to my cabin, drugs me in some way, either by dropping something into my buttermilk, or by throwing a gas bomb into my room, and then he takes the box, after tapping me on the head.”
“Do you think that’s how it happened?” asked Bob.
“Of course it was! I’ve told you, but I’ll tell you again. I went in my strong room, and I was looking at the brass box and the map, when all of a sudden I felt sort of weak like. The next I knew was when I came to, and found myself lying on the floor, locked in, the big key close to my hand, and my box and map gone.”
“And you never saw Rod nor any one else?”
“Nary a soul. It was like a dream.”
“But you must have been expecting some sort of attack as this,” reasoned Bob, “else why did you build the strong room, with no entrance to it except by the door, and the chimney barred? Why did you do that?”
“I’ll tell you why, son,” was the answer, “it was because I have always feared this Rod Marbury! I’ve feared him ever since he and Jolly Bill tried to bilk old Hank—not that Bill started that plan—it was Rod. But I knew from that he was a desperate man, though Jolly Bill got the worst of the deal—he lost a leg and the fortune that had been his, while Rod only lost the money. But now he’ll get it all—that’s the way in this world—the wicked sure do flourish like a green bay tree, as the Good Book says, and many’s the bay tree that I’ve sat under, though I never thought, at the time, I’d have this bad luck.”
“Maybe it will turn out all right,” suggested Bob, hopefully.
“I’m afraid not,” was the gloomy answer. “Anyhow, as I was telling you, I built this strong room in my cabin after I heard what Rod had tried to do to Hank. I thought my turn would come some day, and it did—but not as I planned. It was the first time I ever went in my strong room, to do anything, without locking the door behind me. If I had done that Rod couldn’t have gotten in. But I figured that after he got fooled on the road he wouldn’t try again. But he got in, and of course, after that, it was easy for him to get out, after locking me in.”
“But how did he get the key back in?” asked Bob. “That’s the secret of this log cabin that I’d like solved.”
“I’ll never tell you,” said old Hiram with a shake of his head. “Any more than I can tell you what made those funny marks, like a sack of potatoes.”
“Well, that’s what I’ve got to work on,” decided Bob. “I’ve got to discover the secret of the log cabin, and locate Rod. But you might help in the last.”
“How?” asked Hiram.
“By giving me some idea of where he might start to dig for the hidden treasure—telling me the probable location of the place where Hank Denby might have hidden it.”
Hiram Beegle shook his head dubiously.
“Might as well try to look for a needle in a hay stack,” he said. “Hank was a strange man. He’d pick out a hiding place you nor I would never dream of. He must have taken a leaf out of the book of the old pirate who originally had this money. How he got it—I mean how the pirate came by the wealth—no one knows. Perhaps it’s just as well not to inquire. Anyhow the real owners couldn’t be found after all these years. And I intended doing good with the money after I got it. I was going to leave most of it to a hospital.”
“That would be good,” remarked Bob. “So we’ll have to try to get it back for you. But can’t you give me a clew as to where this Rod might start to look for the wealth? He’ll know where it is, having the map, you see.”
“Oh, yes, he’ll know,” agreed Hiram. “But I can’t say, for the life of me, where it might be.”
“Do you think it would be in Cliffside?”
“Yes, I should say so. Hank never went far from home of late years, and he certainly would keep the treasure near him. He didn’t believe in banks, you know.”
“So I’ve heard. Well, well see what can be done about it. There isn’t anything more I can find out here, since you say there was no secret opening into the strong room.”
“Not an opening, but the chimney.”
“And when we dropped the key down the flue it just fell in the ashes,” said Bob. “So it couldn’t have been that way.”
He remained a little longer, talking to Hiram and puzzling over the queer case, and then rode back to town. As he passed the office of Judge Weston, the lad saw, coming from it, the Italian organ grinder.
Surprised at this, Bob stopped his car and looked after the man who had neither his organ nor monkey with him this time. Then, as the Italian passed on down the street, Judge Weston came out.
So excited that he hardly observed the veneration due the old gentleman, Bob exclaimed:
“What was he after?”
He pointed to the retreating Italian.
“Why, he came in to buy monkey land!” answered the judge with a laugh.