The Mystery Cleared
Mrs. Walsh looked round her with mingled pleasure and pain. The pleasure was because the old house was so unchanged, and it made her feel almost young again to be shot back into the scenes of her girlhood, and to find that the environment had scarcely altered at all. But there was keen pain in the thought of what the old man’s lonely years must have been like, and the mystery of his disappearance was brought home to her so much more forcibly now that she stood in her old home once more.
The boys and Muriel had rushed off with Jack to see the barn and the pigs, and the calves which were the pride of Pam’s heart. They had two, one that belonged to their own cow, and another that Pam had bought from Mrs. Buckle when it was a week old, and had brought up by hand.
“There are quite a lot of things missing from the house,” said Mrs. Walsh with a troubled air, as she walked from room to room. “Of course in an ordinary way this would not have seemed wonderful, but knowing my father as I do, I cannot think he would have parted with Mother’s picture, which always hung in his own room. Then there was the safe that he kept his money in, a small iron affair, which used to stand by the side of his bed. Have you seen it anywhere?”
“There is no safe in the house that I know of, and we have turned out every hole and corner,” replied Pam. “A finer collection of rubbish was surely never found outside a second-hand shop, but we brushed and dusted it all and put it back for you to sort when you came.”
“I cannot think what he could have done with the safe, unless he has buried it somewhere,” said Mrs. Walsh in a musing tone. “He did not believe in banks, and he often used to keep a lot of money in the house. It was locked up in the safe and he thought it was all right, but I think it was a very risky thing to do.”
“Especially if people got to suspect it, for even this wilderness is not too remote for light-fingered folk.” Pam was thinking of Mose Paget as she spoke, and there was, as always, a pang of pity in her heart for the man whose life had been so wasted.
“To me it looks as if his going was a planned affair, and in view of your expected arrival it makes things seem very strange,” went on Mrs. Walsh; and then, the two of them being at this moment in the end bedroom downstairs, which had been prepared for her use, she went down on her knees and started peering curiously at the floor.
“What are you looking for?” demanded Pam with a ring of alarm in her voice, for her mother’s conduct was certainly strange.
“I am looking for the mark on the floor where the safe stood, and—yes, there it is! Do you see those screw-holes? It was screwed to the floor, and by the look of things it has not been removed from the place so very long. Pam, he must have moved that safe when he expected to have one of you children here with him. I expect he buried it, only the puzzle will be to find where. He must have had money in it, and was afraid that you would be curious about it. Oh, what a wearing mystery it all is!”