Chapter XXIV The Treasure
“Let him go,” suggested Bob with a laugh. “His game’s played out and he knows it. No use arresting him and having a long-drawn out case in the police court. That is if you’re satisfied, Mr. Beegle?”
Hiram looked a bit disappointed at the escape of Jolly Bill. The old sailor was accustomed to seeing punishment meted out to those who deserved it. And certainly Bill deserved something in this line. But, after all, Hiram was a bit of a philosopher.
“If he isn’t taking away any of my treasure with him, I don’t mind letting him go,” he said, as he stood in his doorway and watched Bill stumping off down the rugged trail.
“No, he won’t take any of the treasure with him,” said Bob. “I’ll guarantee that. But whether we can find it or not is another question. Bill tried his best and didn’t succeed.”
“I don’t see how anybody could succeed with this to work on,” complained Ned as he looked at the seeming jumble of words which had been written down by Hank Denby, to guide his heir to the buried treasure, and to keep others from finding it. It looked as if he might succeed in keeping it even from the one entitled to it. “There’s no making any sense of this,” concluded Ned, dubiously.
“Oh, we haven’t had a real try at it yet,” said Bob, cheerfully. “Let’s go at it systematically. But first I’d like to clear up a few loose ends. Do you know anything about this man with the hook arm, Mr. Beegle? The one who calls himself Jake Dauber, and who went off with Rod in such a hurry?”
“No, he’s a stranger to me,” answered the old sailor. “He wasn’t one of us in on the secret of the treasure. But he might have had some deal with Rod to help him get my share away from me. And when Rod couldn’t, this man with the hook got tired and took Rod off on some other trick.”
“Perhaps,” admitted Bob. “But in the light of what has come out, Mr. Beegle, do you still think it was the organ grinder who attacked you on the road and tried to take the box away from you? And do you think he visited you here in the cabin, and made his way into your strong room while you were looking at this paper,” and Bob indicated the cipher, for such it was.
“I don’t know what to think,” admitted the old sailor with a puzzled shake of his head. “I certainly didn’t see any one like an organ grinder attack me on the road that day you found-me, Bob. And, as I say, I didn’t see the man who got in here, made me senseless and took this box.”
“I think it’s pretty safe to assume,” said Bob, as he sat down at a table and spread the mysterious square of parchment out in front of him, “it’s pretty safe to assume that Jolly Bill was the guilty man in both instances. He sneaked out on you from the bushes, Mr. Beegle, and struck you down before you had a chance to get a good look at him. You assumed that it was Rod because you had him in your mind.
“Then, finding that his first assault wasn’t a success, Bill tried other tactics. He sneaked up here in the night, and saw you in the room, looking over the paper from the brass box. He made use of some mysterious chemical, I think—something that overpowered you and made you fall unconscious. He could have tossed a sponge, saturated with it, into the room while you were intent on studying this cipher, Mr. Beegle. Then, when the fumes had blown away, after having knocked you out, he entered, took the box away with him, locked you in and put the key back.”
“But how did he do that?” demanded the sailor. “I can understand all but that part of the key.”
“We’ll come to that in time,” said Bob. “I’m not worrying about that. The main mystery is solved. We know who stole the brass box, and we have it back—with the cipher, or map, if you want to call it that, which tells where the treasure is buried.”
“But does it tell?” asked Ned. “It isn’t exactly a map. But does it tell about the treasure?”
“Of course it does!” declared Bob.
“Then you’re smarter than I give you credit for being if you can make head or tail of this,” commented Harry.
“We’ll see,” and the young detective smiled. “At any rate we have cleaned up the loose ends. Jolly Bill was the robber, and as many another criminal has done, instead of fleeing he remained on the spot to throw suspicion off, which he succeeded in doing very well. Then came Rod on the scene, disguised as an Italian organ grinder to see if he couldn’t get at the treasure after Hank Denby died. It was a good game but it didn’t work.”
“Rod was always up to tricks like that,” said Hiram. “He would play them on board the ships we sailed in. I think he had some Italian blood in him, for once, when we were at an Italian port, he was as much at home as any of the natives, and he could talk their lingo, too. But I didn’t know him in his false beard and wig. He was always smooth-shaven.”
“It wasn’t a false beard nor wig, either,” said Bob. “He just let his hair and whiskers grow. He was clean shaved when he and the man with the iron hook took the milk train. Well, we’ll let them go. They don’t figure in this mystery any more.”
“Unless they’ve already dug up the treasure and skipped out with it,” suggested Ned.
“It couldn’t have been done,” declared Bob. “Rod was only digging at random in the bramble patch, though why he hit on that is more than I can tell. But we’d better get to work on this.”
“I’ll say you had!” exclaimed Harry. “And there’s a long trail ahead of you—a long, long trail.”
However, Bob Dexter went to work with a certain system in mind. He had made a sort of study of puzzles, ciphers and the like, and knew certain fundamental rules governing them. That the secret of the treasure was a comparatively simple one he felt convinced.
“One of the things to do is to see if this paper contains any secret writing,” he said. “I mean certain words may be written in with a chemical so as to remain invisible until heated or treated with other chemicals.
“Now Mr. Denby wouldn’t be very likely to make a complicated affair—one that would need other chemicals to bring out the writing. He would know that Mr. Beegle, here, couldn’t have such chemicals at hand. Consequently the simplest way would be the one he would select—that is heat. Let’s see if, like the cipher in Poe’s ‘Gold Bug,’ heat will bring out anything.”
They held the parchment near the flame of a candle, but aside from producing rather an unpleasant odor, nothing developed. The writing remained the same.
“The next thing,” said Bob, “is to pick out from this mass of words certain ones that mean something. As it stands it might be just part of an essay on astronomy or geography. Now in ciphers of this kind certain key words are used, say beginning with the second or third from the start of the message, and then letting the words follow in a certain numerical sequence. Let’s try that.”
He and his chums tried—over and over again they picked out certain words, setting them down on separate sheets of paper, but all they got were meaningless, jumbled sentences.
“Perhaps it’s certain letters in certain words,” suggested Ned.
“Maybe,” agreed Bob. “We’ll try that way.”
But that was of little use, either, and finally, in despair, the young detective turned to Hiram, who had done little toward helping solve the riddle, and asked:
“Did Mr. Denby ever say anything to you about how you were to proceed to search for the treasure?”
“Well,” remarked Hiram slowly, “he said he’d leave me something in his will, and he left me that,” and he motioned to the box.
“Yes, I know!” exclaimed Bob, impatiently. “But did he ever tell you how to use what he left you? He knew he was going to leave the directions to you in a cipher. Now did he give you the key to it?”
“You mean this brass key?” and Hiram held up the big one that locked his strong room.
“No, I mean some sort of directions for solving this puzzle.”
The old sailor arose and went to the strong chest in the corner of the strong room. He brought back an envelope.
“He gave me this letter, some years ago,” he said. “It just tells me that he’s going to leave me the gold as my share, being the only survivor that kept the agreement Here’s the letter.”
Bob eagerly read it. As Hiram had said, it contained just that information, and nothing more. But at the end of the letter were these words:
“Don’t destroy the envelope.”
“Now what did he mean by that?” asked Bob, puzzled. “Is there anything else in the envelope? Let’s look, Harry.”
He took from his chum the envelope that had contained the letter. Looking inside Bob gave a cry of surprise and exultation.
“I’ve found it! I’ve got it!” he cried “What?” asked his chums.
“The key to the cipher! Look!”
With his knife Bob slit the envelope down each end. It was of thick, manila paper, and on the inside of what was the front there were marked off in black ink a number of small oblong spaces, placed here and there irregularly.
“I don’t see how that’s going to help any,” observed Ned.
“You don’t? Just wait a minute!” cried Bob.
With his knife he cut away from the envelope the loose flap and the back, leaving an oblong piece of opaque, manila paper, marked off in those queer blank spaces. Then Bob began to cut out the spaces along the black border lines until he had a piece of paper containing fifteen oblong holes. The holes were at irregular places, and arranged in lines.
There was one space on the first line, two on the second, three on the third, five on the fourth and two each on the fifth and sixth lines.
“It’s getting more complicated than ever!” sighed Harry.
“On the contrary it’s getting clearer and clearer,” cried Bob. “Give me the cipher,” and he reached for it. “How many lines in it, Ned?”
“Just six,” was the answer.
“Exactly the number of lines represented by these cut-out spaces. Now look!”
Bob placed the piece of envelope over the parchment containing the seemingly meaningless message. Only the words now showed that could be read through the cut-out openings. All the others were covered by the opaque manila. And these words stood out like a message in flame.
“Listen!” read Bob:
“Dig ten feet due east and ten south of Red gate post in buttercup lot.”
For a moment no one spoke. Then Ned cried:
“The buttercup lot! That must be Mr. Denby’s pasture near the bramble patch. Why, Rod was away off! He was in the wrong lot!”
“That’s right!” exclaimed Bob. “I think this gives us the secret of the treasure.”
They looked again at the message as revealed by the cut-out key. There was no doubt as to its meaning. Hank Denby had adopted a very simple form of cipher, yet one almost impossible to solve if one hasn’t the key-paper. He had put in several points of the compass, and a number of measurements in his queer message and one might have dug for a long time without hitting on the right spot. But now it was easy.
“So that’s why he didn’t want me to destroy the envelope!” murmured Hiram, as he saw to what use it could be put. “Well, I’m glad I saved it all these years. Oh, he was a cute one, Hank was!”
“Do you think he planned it all this way?” asked Ned.
“He must have,” asserted Bob.
“It was leaving a good deal to chance,” was Harry’s opinion. “Just supposing Hiram hadn’t saved that envelope?”
“In that case we’d be out of luck,” Bob said. “But I think Mr. Denby must have known Hiram would save the key to the cipher. If he hadn’t thought that he’d have made up some other way of letting it be known where the treasure was buried.”
“Maybe it’s all a joke,” murmured Ned. “I mean, maybe there isn’t any treasure buried after all. How’ll we know?”
“Well, let’s get busy!” suggested Bob. “Let’s see if the story of the cipher is borne out. Let’s dig for the treasure!”
“That’s the idea!” cried Hiram. “Wait, I’ll get some shovels. We’ll go to the buttercup lot. Hank always called it that, for it’s fair like a plate of butter in the summer time, with yellow flowers. But he never pastured any cows there. I wondered at him writing about cows.”
“You should worry now!” joked Ned. “You’ll be a rich man in a little while, if things turn out right.”
Then they set out to dig up the treasure.