“Sure, around ten o’clock. I got to work up until that time. Right here will be all right eh?” the laborer said.
“Yes. I’ll pay you well for it, but you are to keep your mouth shut. Good heavens! this thing you’re to bury isn’t worth a dollar, and yet I’ve had more trouble with it than if it cost a thousand. Now, let’s get back and you be sure to go to work tomorrow night.”
With that they separated and Jim could see them going toward the house, but the laborer branched off and left the grounds while Arthur Gates went in the back door. Before he went to his post again Jim looked carefully around the garden where he stood. There was a high wall nearby and he knew that he was at the end of the property.
Then he went back to his post, taking care to approach it from the side of the house, casually and as though he was coming from an errand. Once more he took up his post at the back door.
“So Gates is going to bury the cup?” he reflected. “And it had given as much trouble as though it cost a thousand dollars. Of course, it may not be the cup, after all, but I’ll bet it is. Well, we’ll just dig it up as soon as he gets it planted!”
In another hour all inspection of the Gannon House was over and it once more became simply the home of the Gates family. The cadets on post assembled and marched up to the school reporting in from duty, and soon after that Jim was relating his remarkable story to Don and Terry.
Chapter 20
The Digger in the Garden
“This must be the place!”
Jim whispered it cautiously and the two shadows with him nodded silently. Don and Terry crouched down beside him behind the high wall which ran back of the home of Arthur Gates.
It was on the following night, and three cadets were there with the full permission of Colonel Morrell. Jim, after his talk with his friends, had gone straight to the headmaster with the story. The colonel had also been of the opinion that it was the cup that Gates planned to bury. He agreed that it would be best for them to watch the digging and to get the object at once, before the time elapsing would give the ground a chance to freeze. So the three cadets crouched behind the wall bordering Gates’ place on this February night.