CHAPTER XXIV
COINS AND POSTAGE STAMPS
Chet looked bewildered for a minute—then disgusted, an expression that was faithfully reflected on the faces of the other boys.
"A ghost! That?" he said, pointing scornfully at the dead rat. "What do you mean?"
"Oh, Chet!" cried Billie, springing to her feet in her turn. "That's another thing we forgot. This is Mr. Rat, the piano player."
"Have you all gone crazy, or have I?" cried poor Chet, looking still more bewildered. But suddenly Teddy saw light.
"You mean the musical ghost," he cried, laughter in his voice. "The one that has had us chasing down flights of stairs on dark nights?"
"With the chills running up and down our spines and our hair standing on end?" added Ferd, following his lead.
"The very same," responded Mrs. Gilligan, the gleam deepening in her eyes.
"But how did you catch it?" asked Violet, for the girls, all except Billie, who had originated the idea, were as much in the dark as the boys.
"With a trap," said Billie, her own eyes beginning to sparkle.
"But who thought of it?" Violet insisted, ignoring the sarcasm.
"You see before you the girl who invented it," said Billie with a chuckle.
"Great pumpkins, another inventor!" groaned Ferd, and sent them off into a spasm of laughter.
"Oh, tell us about it, Billie," Laura entreated. "You can be the most aggravating thing!"
"Stop calling me names or I'll never tell you," threatened Billie, at which Laura looked as meek as Laura could ever look.
Thereupon Billie recounted to an interested audience the events that had led to her idea that it might be a rat that was making a joke of them all and how she had decided to put her idea to the test.
"Say, think of getting excited about a mouse!" cried Ferd incredulously, when she had finished.
"It wasn't a mouse—it was a rat," corrected Billie.
"But it might have been a mouse," Ferd protested, but Billie broke in again.
"No it mightn't," she said decidedly. "A mouse could never have made noise enough for us to hear when we were upstairs in bed."
"Right you are," said Ferd, taking off an imaginary cap to Billie. "I have to hand it to you, Billie—you're right there."
"You said it that time, old man," murmured Teddy very softly, but Billie heard him and looked up at him with laughing eyes.
"Come help us open our trunk," she said, turning away suddenly.
"Whose trunk is it?"
"Where did you get it?"
"Looks as if it had come out of Noah's ark."
These and many more comments piled one on top of the other as the boys looked at the old trunk, which did indeed appear old enough to have satisfied the most ardent collector of antiques.
"Why, it's my trunk," said Billie, when she could make herself heard above the babble. "We found it in the attic. But I don't see what difference it makes where we got it," she added impatiently, getting down on her knees once more and shaking the trunk as if it were to blame. "Won't you please get busy and open it, boys? Aren't you a bit curious to see what's inside?"
"Is there a key?" asked Ferd, and Billie looked up at him in despair.
"Of course not, silly," she said. "Don't you suppose we'd have had it open ages ago if there had been a key? You'll have to break it open, or pick the lock, or something."
"Say, she's insulting us! Thinks we're thugs," murmured Ferd, as he, with the other boys, got down on the floor and began to examine the trunk eagerly.
"Yes, where do you suppose we got our experience in picking locks?" added
Chet, looking aggrieved.
"Goodness, I don't care whether you pick the lock or what you do as long as you get it open," cried Billie, half wild with impatience now that the fateful moment had arrived. "You can use dynamite for all I care."
"Maybe that's what's in it," suggested Teddy, and the girls screamed.
"Teddy! Of all the wet blankets!"
"Well, you never can tell," said Teddy, adding wickedly, as Ferd started to set the trunk on end: "Be careful there, Ferd; she may explode, as the aeroplane did."
"Somebody give me something to throw at him," cried Laura indignantly. "Anyway," she added triumphantly, "we know there isn't dynamite in it or we'd have been blown to bits long ago. We dragged it down stairs."
"Yes, and we didn't do it very gently either," added Violet.
"It has a pretty strong lock," said Chet, getting to his feet and rumpling up his hair thoughtfully. "I'll have to get a hammer and a wedge of some sort."
"Oh, there are all sorts of tools down in the tool-house," Billie cried eagerly, and Chet looked at her as though she had said she had discovered a gold mine in the back yard.
"Tools!" he repeated, his eyes shining. "Are they good ones?"
"I don't know anything about tools," said Billie. "But it looked as if there were hundreds of them—"
Chet waited to hear no more. Like a streak of lightning he was out of the room and racing down the stairs.
"Tools!" he was saying gloatingly to himself, "hundreds of them!"
Upstairs Billie turned and looked at Teddy in dismay.
"Now what have I done?" she cried. "If he once gets among those tools we won't see him for hours. Teddy," and she looked appealing enough even to melt Teddy's hard heart, "won't you go after him? You will have to just tear him away—"
However, the two boys were back sooner than the girls expected, for they were very curious about the contents of the small shabby trunk, which had so evidently been hidden away in the darkest corner of a dark closet in the attic.
"Say, those are some tools, Billie," said Chet jubilantly, as he pried away at the lock. "You could do just about anything with them—anything from making a house, to breaking into one. I say," he added, stopping work to look at her entreatingly, "don't you remember mother saying that Aunt Beatrice left you the house and me—the tools?"
The girls and boys laughed, and Billie patted his shoulder fondly.
"No, I don't remember anything of the sort," she said, imitating his tone to perfection. "But if you're a good boy and open the trunk in a hurry, I'll deed them to you, Chet—every last tool in the tool-house."
"Honest to goodness?" cried Chet, his eyes beaming.
"Honest to goodness, brother mine."
Then Chet fell to work with fresh enthusiasm on the lock.
It was a stubborn old lock, and required a good deal of patience—which the girls had not—and tinkering to make it give way.
But it gave at last, and girls and boys leaned forward with sighs of pure excitement.
"Open it," cried Laura impatiently, but Billie put her hand on the lid and faced them with shining eyes.
"We'll each have just one guess," she said, "and see who comes nearest to guessing right."
"I bet it's money," cried Chet.
"That isn't fair, I was going to bet that too."
"So was I—"
"And I—"
Billie threw up her hands in despair.
"Of course, if you're all going to guess the same thing it's all ruined," she said, then added, as she bent forward and started to lift the cover: "I don't know that I blame you, though, for I was going to guess the very same thing!"
"Oh, Billie, hurry! You're so slow!" cried Laura, jumping up and down with excitement. "Do get at it!"
"Shall I do it?" asked Violet, feeling an almost irresistible desire to push Billie away and fling back the lid. Why was she so slow?
"One—two—three!" cried Billie, and then the lid was off and they were staring down into the contents of the trunk.
For a minute they stood motionless. Then, as though moved by one impulse, they dropped to their knees and buried their hands in something that jingled at their touch!
The trunk was full to the brim with old coins, many quite rare, while scattered here and there were postage stamps on sheets and loose, queer, foreign looking things that made Billie's eyes glisten as she looked at them.
"It must have all belonged to Uncle Henry," she said, in an awed voice. "Aunt Beatrice once said he had a hobby for collecting postage stamps and old coins—"
"But it is money," cried Laura, finding her voice at last, her blue eyes dark with excitement. "Why, Billie, these old coins must be worth a big lot of money!"
"You bet! It's a treasure," said Teddy soberly. Then with a little smile he turned to Billie—Billie who was vivid and breathless with the great discovery. "Allow me to present to you, ladies and gentlemen, our old friend, Captain Kidd!"