III—BEN AND DAVID MAKE A DISCOVERY
Although David Norton could get around the bases on the Barmouth High School baseball diamond as fast as anyone else, when there was need of it, and could keep on doing a clog-dance in a Minstrel Show until the audience rose up and begged him to quit, he could also at times be as lazy as a jelly-fish stranded on the beach, which as everyone knows is just about the laziest creature in nature. At the present moment he lay extended on the stern seat of the sailing dory, while little Ben Sully, as patient and expert a fisherman as was to be found in Barmouth Harbor, was watching his line for any indication of a flounder nibble.
“Funny old bird,” said David. “Reminds me of someone out of a story book.”
“Old bird?” queried Ben. “Do you refer to Sir Peter Cotterell or to Crusty Christopher?”
“To neither of them, Benjie. Our friend Professor Tuckerman is the particular feathered creature to whom I was alluding. I opened one eye last night; and what do you think I saw? Professor Tuckerman was sitting up, in his suit of flannel pajamas, staring out at the water as if he saw something.”
“Perhaps he did. Or maybe he was only thinking. Some people do think sometimes, you know, Dave. I did some thinking myself last night.”
“About old Christopher’s secret?”
At the moment Ben was too busy to reply. With practised care he drew up his line and threw a fine, flapping flounder on the bottom of the boat.
“Yes, about the secret,” Ben said, as he rebaited his hook. “I believe there is one. And I think that Christopher Cotterell rather hoped his nephew John Tuckerman would find out what it was.”
“Why didn’t he tell him then, instead of leaving that crazy note?”
Ben shook his head. “Christopher wasn’t like most people. But it seems to me he was rather proud of that secret,—it had been in the family so long,—and he didn’t want it to be entirely forgotten. So he meant to let it be known there was a secret, even if nobody ever found out what it was. A person might do that, you know.”
“It would take a mighty queer sort of person,” sniffed David.
Ben resumed his fishing, watching his line as a cat watches a mouse-hole.
But David, in spite of posing as an unbeliever of all things he couldn’t see for himself, had a well-developed bump of curiosity. When he saw that Ben didn’t mean to continue the subject he raised himself on one arm and demanded, “Do you take any stock in there being a mystery on the island that goes back to the Revolution?”
“Sure,” was the prompt answer. “The house goes back that far, and some of the furniture in it, I suppose. Why not a mystery?”
“Well, it might, perhaps. But see here, Benjie——”
“Sh-sh-ish, you’ll frighten the fish.” Ben brought up another flounder and unhooked it.
As he dropped in the line again he continued, “Mr. Tuckerman told me a few things this morning. You see, this Sir Peter was a man of means. He had a lot of valuable things in this house, silver and such things he’d had brought over from England. When the people of Barmouth were trying to do all they could to help George Washington and his army they thought their rich neighbor out here ought to do his share. But he was a Tory and wanted King George to win, and so he wouldn’t do anything when they asked him. The colonists came to his house, but they found very little; his famous silver plate was gone; they took some things, but they always thought he had tricked them. And after that they wouldn’t have anything to do with Sir Peter.”
“Served him right, the old scamp.”
“Now Mr. Tuckerman thinks the secret may have something to do with the things the neighbors couldn’t find. At least that’s a possibility.”
“Huh,” chuckled David, “the Revolution was more than a hundred years ago. If that was the secret, some of the Cotterells since then would have found out about it. And when they did, there’s an end to the secret.”
Again Ben was busy. A third flounder appeared and was carefully landed. “You’re right, my boy,” said Ben, “if they did find out what became of Sir Peter’s valuables. But suppose they didn’t? Suppose Crusty Christopher and his father, and his father before that, knew the old story, but never could find the things? How about that, my lad?”
“Well, in that case,” answered David slowly, “I should say the betting was a thousand to one the secret would stay a secret.”
“Mr. Tuckerman calls it a sporting chance,” said Ben. “I said to him just about what you’ve said to me now; but he grinned and told me he never gave up conundrums.”
David dropped back into his former comfortable position, his hands clasped under his head and his cap pulled down over his nose, so as to shield that sensitive feature from burning a more fiery red than it was already. “So Tom and the Professor are prowling around the old house this morning?” he said reflectively. “Well, they’re not apt to run into any ghosts at this time of day.”
Ben, absorbed in his fishing, continued his careful handling of his line until half-a-dozen flounders were deposited in the boat. Then he stowed away his tackle, stretched his arms, and looked around. “Now, Dave, you old duffer, I’m going to take a cruise about our island home. There’s nothing like knowing all the ins and outs of the place where you’re living. Do you think you’re strong enough to handle the tiller, or would you rather dangle your feet over the bow?”
David sat up with a grunt. “Don’t you get sarcastic, young feller. I can sail this dory with one hand behind my back.” And shortly he had the Argo headed up into the wind, keeping well out from shore so as to avoid the occasional spits of rock that ornamented the coast.
They started to make the circuit. Cotterell’s Island, so far as they could judge from the water, was very much like all the other islands that lay out from Barmouth, thickly wooded for the most part, with alternating beaches and headlands, and here and there a cliff, with little rock-bound basins at the foot. On the eastward side, however, there was an opening, where the tide ran inland for some distance, a fair sort of harbor except when the wind should blow from that quarter. “There,” said Ben, “there’s a snug landlocked channel. If I’d been one of the Cotterells and wanted to keep a boat hidden that’s the place I’d have picked out.”
“You’re making the Professor’s ancestors sound like pirates or smugglers,” objected David. “What do you think they did that they wanted to keep so dark?”
“That little inlet can’t be so far from the back of the house either,” Ben went on, paying no attention to his companion’s question. “Yes, that would be the place to steal away when the neighbors came to call.”
“I’ll take a look up there,” declared David, who was beginning to feel that Ben was giving himself airs. “I guess I can find my way up that inlet as well as any of your blessed Cotterells could.” And suiting the act to the word, he brought the Argo about and kept her bow a little to the north of west until she had cleared a seaweed-covered reef that was high up out of the water at ebb-tide.
Ben said not a word, but picked up a boathook, in case it should be necessary to fend off the dory at some turn of the shore. But David knew his business. Up the winding channel he made his way until the Argo’s bottom gently ran on to gravel at the head of the stream.
“Yes, I was right,” said Ben. “There’s the roof of the house on the other side of those trees.” A leap, and he landed on shore, the dory careening on one side from the force of his jump.
“Hi there, young feller, what are you trying to do?” cried David. “I didn’t tell you you could go ashore.”
Again Ben paid no attention to the other’s words. He was looking about him as if he was very much interested in the place where he had landed.
David, making sure the Argo was safely aground, clambered over the side. “Was it your intention, Mr. Sully, to scuttle our good ship here?” he inquired with mock politeness.
“Look,” said Ben, in a deep and earnest tone.
David looked. In the marshy ground a little in front of them were two distinct footprints, uncommonly large footprints, with very wide toes and very deep heels.
“My word!” whistled David. “Benjie, we’ve come to the lair of the mastodon!”
“Footprints!” murmured Ben, regarding the marks with the same awed surprise with which Robinson Crusoe first gazed at the prints in the sand of his island.
Distinct Footprints
“A giant’s footprints,” said David.
“They’re never Mr. Tuckerman’s or Tom’s,” said Ben.
“The Professor has rather small feet,” stated David, “and I happen to remember that Tom wore sneakers this morning.”
“They can’t have been there very long,—not for more than a few days at the most.”
“I should say not. Benjamin, somebody has been trespassing on our island.”
“I wonder if there are any more.” Ben began to search.
There were no more footprints, however. The stretch of soggy ground was very limited, almost immediately the soil grew stony. So, after a brief hunt, the two came back to the shore. “Now I wonder,” mused Ben, “what that very large-footed person was doing here.”
“Do you think,” asked David, “he can have been looking for the Cotterell treasure?”
“It’s much more likely,” said Ben, “he was looking for something easier to find. However—suppose—there’s an off chance——” And Ben went on mumbling to himself, while he jingled a bunch of keys in his pocket, as was his custom when he was lost in thought.
“What in the world are you doing?” demanded the exasperated David.
“Putting two and two together—or at least trying to.”
“Well, they make four. There are times, Benjie,” David continued, imitating the manner of a teacher at the school they both attended, “when I find myself almost on the point of losing patience with you. The crew will now return aboard the Argo, leaving the mystery of the mastodon’s footprints unsolved.”
When they returned to the beach in front of their camp they found Mr. Tuckerman and Tom already getting dinner. That is to say, Tom was actually getting it, while John Tuckerman was carrying out his orders. At the moment the latter was peeling potatoes. His flannel shirt open at his throat, his golf-stockings stuck full of little burrs and his face and arms already showing blisters of sunburn, he looked decidedly different from the very dignified person who had come upon Tom Hallett in the lane.
“Flounders,” announced Ben, laying his string of fish on a board that served as a table. “The very best eating, in my humble opinion.”
“Put them in the refrigerator for supper,” said Tom. “You two were gone so long I decided to knock up an omelette for our midday meal.”
“‘Knock up’ is good,” agreed David. “I suppose, Mr. Tuckerman, Tom cracked the shells with a baseball bat.”
“I don’t know how he did it,” Tuckerman said; “it seemed like a miracle to me. But there’s the result; and if anybody ever saw anything more truly beautiful—anything so calculated to make the mouth water in anticipation—well, I don’t believe anybody ever did.” He pointed his paring knife at a golden-brown, crisp object that lay, garnished with watercress, on a big tin plate.
“And speaking of water,” said Tom, “we found the well back of Cotterell Hall. Fresh water, guaranteed sweet and pure. There’s a bucket of it.”
They sat down to dinner, and between mouthfuls they talked.
“Wonderful old house,” said Tom. “We explored it from cellar to attic. Four post bedsteads——”
“With wonderful canopy tops!” added Tuckerman, his spectacled eyes gleaming.
“And enormous chests of drawers,” continued Tom.
“Full of all kinds of clothes,” Tuckerman added. “Ladies’ laces and muslins, shawls, mantillas, gentlemen’s pantaloons, neckerchiefs, and what waistcoats!”
“Funny old kitchen,” said Tom. “With a fireplace as big as a cabin.”
“And a crane and a hob and a whole fleet of earthenware crocks,” Tuckerman supplemented.
“I say, Mr. Tuckerman,” cried David, “why don’t you turn the place into a museum? All the people who tour through Barmouth in the summer would jump out of their skins to see such a place as that.”
“What I want to know,” said Ben, “is whether you got any clue to the Cotterell treasure.”
Tuckerman shook his head. “Rome wasn’t built in a day, Benjamin; and a treasure that’s been hidden for over a century doesn’t come to light in twenty-four hours.”
“Ah, just you wait till our Benjie gets busy,” said David, waving his finger wisely. “There’s the bright lad for you. While you two pottered about those gigantic bedsteads and chests of drawers and fireplaces, what did our Benjie discover?” He paused to heighten his announcement. “Benjamin Sully discovered a pair of gigantic footprints!”
It took a moment for this to sink in.
“Footprints?” said Tuckerman, puzzled.
“Someone has landed at the little creek near the back of the house,” explained Ben, “and since the last rain, too.”
“Someone with enormous feet,” added David. “Now what do you suppose such a person as that could be doing here?”
Tuckerman put his hand into his coat pocket and drew out a very small and crumpled handkerchief. “We found this on a table in the kitchen. My Uncle Christopher only had a negro man-servant. And yet this belonged to a lady,—a very particular lady, I should say, a dainty lady.” He spread the handkerchief out. “With beautifully embroidered initials—A. S. L.” He lifted it to his nose. “And it smells of lavender—and quite fresh, too.”
Solemnly the tiny handkerchief was handed around. Each smelled it and nodded his head.
“Someone’s been in the house,” said Tuckerman, “although all the doors were locked.”
“A lady with enormous feet,” declared David. “My eye, how the plot thickens!”