V—THE MAHOGANY MAN
Mr. Tuckerman was doing the crawl-stroke—slowly and laboriously, with almost as much splashing as a small paddle-wheel steamboat makes—but still very much better than he had been able to do it two days before. He was heading toward a rock, on which Tom, straight as an arrow and almost as brown as a chocolate drop, stood with his arms pointed outward, ready to dive.
Ben stood back of Tom, slapping his dripping thighs and hopping about on his toes. In the water David was floating, as comfortable and serene as a harbor seal taking an afternoon nap. “Look out, Professor,” he cautioned; “Tom might land on your head. He’s a terrible practical joker. Don’t you let him use you as a cushion.”
Tuckerman plowed along, gasping a little, his eyes fixed on the rock.
Tom dove, and came up alongside David. “If I was picking out a cushion, I’d take you. You’d make a bully springboard. Push right along, Mr. Tuckerman. You’re doing nobly.”
Ben gave a whoop. “Look out there!” Lithe as an eel, and seemingly made of rubber, he sprang from the rock, turned a somersault, and shot smoothly into the water. He reappeared, looking like a porpoise, his black hair all shiny, and with a few lusty flaps reached the rock again just as Tuckerman, breathless, put out his hands to clutch at the slippery side.
“You’re a regular flying-fish,” Ben complimented Tuckerman, as the latter, careful not to scrape too close against the rough edge of rock, drew himself slowly up to the level top. “I don’t believe any of your friends out in the plain country of Illinois would know you if they happened to see you now.”
“I don’t believe they would,” agreed Tuckerman, sitting down gingerly and embracing his knees with his hands. “I know I look like a red Indian, and I feel as if I’d got a thousand more muscles than I ever had before.”
“If you don’t mind——” said Ben; and putting his hands on Tuckerman’s shoulders he made a leap-frog jump over the latter’s head and splashed loudly into the water.
“Well,” said David, changing his position from floating to treading water, “I think the coffee must be boiling now. It’s time I dropped those eggs.” And with leisurely strokes he made for the beach, where he had thoughtfully left a Turkish towel beside his pile of clothes.
The others followed suit, and had soon arrayed themselves in the few garments they thought needful to wear in their island home. David poured the coffee and attended to the toast and eggs, which had been procured the day before from a farmer on the mainland. And as they ate, Ben propounded the question:
“Fellows, what was it Christopher Cotterell said about a mahogany man?”
“He said,” Tuckerman answered, “‘Find the mahogany-hued man with the long, skinny legs and look in his breast pocket.’”
“Exactly,” said Ben slowly. “Well, I’ve got an idea I know where to find that man.”
The other three looked at him in utter amazement. “The dickens you have, Benjie!” retorted Tom. “Why, he couldn’t be alive now.”
“Perhaps Ben thinks he’s a mummy,” suggested David, “or a piece of wood that’s turned to stone.”
“Maybe I do,” Ben chuckled. “You’re getting warm, old horse. Long, skinny legs—doesn’t that remind you of something? Haven’t you seen any that answer that description in this neighborhood?”
“You’re not referring to mine?” asked Tuckerman.
The breakfast-party laughed, the Professor wore such a look of injured dignity.
“No, sir, not to yours,” Ben said. “Yours are fat as a drum compared to those I have in mind.”
“I remember Ben mumbled something about this last night,” mused Tom. “But I was too sleepy to listen. He said something about Sally Hooper, too; something about her giving him an idea.”
Ben nodded. “So she did.”
“Didn’t I always claim that our Benjie was a real detective?” said David. “Clean up first; and then for the yarn.”
Breakfast things were put away in their box, and then the three turned to Ben. “Where’s your mahogany man?” they demanded in one voice.
“There’s no hurry,” was the tantalizing answer. “Perhaps I’d better go fishing first.”
Tom laid his hand on the other boy’s shoulder and twisted him around. “Lead us to him,” he commanded.
Ben shrugged. “Oh, very well. You’re more interested than you were last night. Come along, but don’t make any noise.”
He led them to Cotterell Hall. Tuckerman had locked the front door after the girls had left on the night before, and now he opened it with the key he kept in his trouser pocket.
Ben led them into the hall, and then into the big front room, which was now flooded with sunlight.
“Look around,” he announced; “and tell me what you see.”
They looked about the room with puzzled faces. “Rats!” exclaimed David. “I don’t see any man here.”
Ben glanced at Tuckerman. “Long, skinny, mahogany-colored legs,” he murmured.
“Not Sir Peter’s portrait?” said Tuckerman.
Ben walked across the room in the direction of the secretary. “When Sally came in here last night,” he explained, “she said something about this desk. ‘Mahogany, I suppose—and what long, fluted, shiny legs.’ Well, it has, hasn’t it?” He laid his hand on the secretary. “Mightn’t this be the man?”
“You’re joking,” Tom protested; while David looked from the desk to his friend’s serious face as if he thought Ben must be plain crazy.
Tuckerman, however, laid his hand also on the piece of furniture. “They liked their little joke in the old days,” he observed. “It might be, Ben. If that’s so——” He turned the small brass key in the lock of the lid, and pulling out the two supports on either side of the lower drawers let the lid down on them. “If that’s so; and this is the mahogany man—where’s his breast pocket?”
There were small drawers inside, and a row of pigeonholes to either side of a central compartment that was also locked by a key.
“Somewhere up in his chest,” said Ben.
Tuckerman pulled out the drawers and emptied their contents, small objects, keys, pencils, bits of sealing-wax, a few sheets of blank paper. He put his hand in the pigeonholes and drew out several bundles of letters. “I’ve been through all these things before,” he said with a shake of his head.
“That place in the middle,” Tom suggested.
“Only an ink-stand,” said Tuckerman; and unlocking the little door he drew forth a big glass inkstand with a brass top. That was all there was in the little cupboard; all the contents of the upper part of the secretary were arrayed on the lid.
“No go,” said David. “The man hasn’t anything in his pocket to give us any clue.”
“I must say,” said Tom, “it does seem ridiculous to me that anyone could have meant that desk——”
“I’ve heard,” mumbled Ben, who was paying no attention to what the others were saying, “that old desks have secret compartments. My grandfather has an old one that looks something like this. Let me see——” He slipped his hand into the pigeonhole on the right of the little door Tuckerman had unlocked, and began to feel around. “I say! Here’s something. It feels like a wooden spring.”
Tuckerman put his hand into the central compartment. “Push on the spring,” he directed.
Ben pushed and Tuckerman at the same moment pulled out the cupboard that had harbored the inkstand. It was a box that fitted snugly into the centre of the secretary.
“Well, that’s a great stunt,” said Tom. “It comes to pieces like a nest of drawers.”
The four, their heads close together, looked into the space from which the cupboard had come.
All they saw was an unvarnished piece of pine board, apparently the back of the desk.
“Looks like my grandfather’s,” said Ben. “Yes, there’s a couple of holes.” And putting his forefinger and thumb into two indentations in the wood at the back, he wriggled his hand around and drew out a small drawer.
“Empty!” he muttered, disappointed, holding the drawer so that the others could see.
Again he put his hand into the opening and drew out a second drawer that had been under the first one. This also was empty.
“One more chance.” He pulled out the bottom drawer. In this there was something. Holding it upside down, a small roll of paper fell out on the lid of the desk.
“A piece of parchment,” said Tuckerman, picking up the roll. He opened it out, holding it taut in his two hands.
All eyes focussed on the sheet, on which were scrawled, in a faint purplish ink, these lines:
I took the box
cliff where was
meaning to es
but they were
and so I hid
pocket in the
are two big
make a mark
Tuckerman read these words aloud, three times over. Then he gave a grunt. “Well, that’s that. And it’s not so very illuminating, is it?”
Ben took the parchment. “Somebody’s cut it across. See, the right hand words are close to the edge. How disgusting!”
David and Tom each handled the parchment, which was finally laid on the desk-lid, with the inkstand to keep it from curling up into its original tight roll.
David stroked his chin, pretending to be lost in thought. “Somebody took the box—to the cliff—but they were—and so somebody hid the box—in his pocket—there are two big—that make a mark. I gather from that line about the pocket that the box was pretty small.”
“It doesn’t say he hid it in his pocket,” Ben objected. “It might have been a pocket in the cliff just as well.”
“Who do you suppose he was?” asked Tom.
“Why, Peter Cotterell, of course,” David answered promptly.
“I don’t know about that,” said Tuckerman. “This handwriting doesn’t look like that of a man who was used to holding the pen. See how he’s gone over some of the letters several times, as if he wasn’t precisely sure how he ought to form them. Sir Peter was a well-educated gentleman. He must have known how to use a quill.”
“Perhaps he wanted to disguise his handwriting,” David suggested.
“Why would he want to do that?” Ben retorted. “Whoever wrote that meant to leave a record of what he’d done with the box. There wouldn’t be any sense in faking his handwriting—certainly not if he intended to hide the parchment away in a secret drawer of the desk.”
“What sense would there be in his cutting it in two then?” Tom inquired.
Tuckerman, who was sitting on the arm of a chair, threw back his head and laughed. “Here we are arguing about something that happened ever so long ago, and we haven’t the least idea why it happened this way.” He turned to the portrait on the wall and shook his finger at it. “You—or some of your household—knew how to make first-class puzzles, Sir Peter.” Then, as he swung around to the three boys, he added:
“My guess is that there’s a pocket in a cliff somewhere on this island, and that there is—or was—a box hidden in it.”
“Find the cliff,” said Tom.
Ben shook his head. “There are dozens of cliffs.”
“Well, you won’t find anything more in your mahogany man’s breast pocket,” Tom answered. “You can see for yourself it’s empty.”
“My idea is,” said David, “that we get the Argo and sail round the island till we sight a likely-looking cliff.”
“That appeals to me,” agreed Tuckerman, “and Tom can give me another lesson in how to handle a boat.”
The parchment was put in its drawer, the three drawers replaced, the cupboard pushed back and caught by its spring, and the desk-lid lifted and locked.
“I’d a heap rather hunt for clues out of doors on a day like this,” said David.
But Ben sat down on a divan. “I want to do a little thinking, fellows. You go along without me. Maybe I’ll go fishing for dinners off the rocks after a while.”
They laughed at Ben; but he would not be dissuaded. He wanted to do some thinking, and he meant to. “Stubborn as a mule,” said Tom. “He gets his mind set on a thing, and dynamite won’t budge him.”
So the others went down to the sailboat; and presently Ben, getting up from the divan, went out and cut himself a stick of willow. He brought it back and began to whittle shavings all over the hardwood floor of Cotterell Hall. He had seen men down on the Barmouth docks whittle shavings for hours, and he had copied the habit. He found it a great help when he wanted to think things out.