The Heart of the Red Firs: A Story of the Pacific Northwest

by Ada Woodruff Anderson

"No," she answered, "No. Don't ask me." Then she turned and looked down at him, and through the anguish in her eyes he saw the old heart-breaking appeal. "I—I did it—for—little Silas." Her voice broke in a great tearless sob. She went in and closed the door.

After a moment Forrest turned and followed the officers around to the ruin. As he approached he heard the sound of blows. What wall had they found to require such battering? He was there in time to see the hinges of the old tap-room door wrenched out of the soft wood. It fell inward, starting a cloud of dust from the rotting floor. Bates stepped on it, and flashed his lantern over the interior. His keen eyes swept the empty place and came back to meet the glance of the other inspector. He laughed. "Well, Bates," he said, "I guess we're fooled."

Bates's eyes moved to the fallen door. "This lock was put on this room for a purpose," he said. "And the Phantom could land almost under these walls at high tide. She may be stumbling around out there now, feeling her way in through the smoke."

"The Phantom?" Forrest started. He leaned an instant on the bar behind him, then he pulled himself erect and stood staring into the empty tap-room. The lantern shining in his face showed it hard and gray with the deepening furrow cleaving his brows. "The Phantom was here," he told himself. "The stuff was left in there—and she—knew it. She concealed it, moved it, somehow, while those men were at the house."

Bates turned and looked at him. "I suppose, Forrest," he said, "you can't account for this lock? You could hardly think of using this old ruin for storage purposes."

"No, no." His voice rang. He met the inspector's look clearly, with his quick, upward fling of the head. "I ought to know all about it, but I never saw it before. My work kept me in the other direction, at the mills."

"Of course," said Bates slowly, "of course, as I thought. I've simply got to patrol this beach, to-night, and wait for daylight to pick up a clue."

Forrest walked with the officers back towards the cutter. "I should have known about that lock," he told himself. "I should have found out why that horse was up there on the bluff that day. I should have learned what brought Stratton here alone. A little investigation would have shown how things were going. I might have kept Philip out of the scheme; brought things to a climax in time."

When the trio made the turn in the bluff that shut them off from a view of the ruin, Smith swung himself down from the rear balcony to the rim of beach which the ebbing tide had bared. He groped under the stringers and found a dark lantern, which he lighted and held beneath the building. It showed the top of the chest above the water, and he pushed along between the wall and the bluff to the side of the tap-room, and dipped under the floor. Presently he emerged, dragging the chest. He stooped and lifted, worked it on to his shoulder, and went splashing knee-deep and waist-deep in hollows, around to the western exposure of the headland. When it seemed accessible he used his lantern again and found the path. A short distance up he wormed himself, crouching, through a tangle of hazel and salal and reached a little spur flanked by an old cedar snag.

He put his burden down, and by the light of his lantern took two pairs of saddle-bags from the hollow heart of the trunk, and filled them with the contents of the chest. What remained he put into a coarse sack. Then he picked up the empty chest and ran back a pace or two and hurled it out into the tide. He waited, listening, but he heard only the rush and ebb of the sea, and he returned to the cedar, and taking the weighted bags on his shoulders, pushed on up to the summit.