“Found a tunnel, did you?” the sheriff asked, looking at Barry with interest. “There used to be some counterfeiters operating around here, in an old cabin that stood where this lodge is, and I guess they was the ones used it. So Mr. Morganson has been hauntin’ his own aunt’s property! These Frenchies have been helpin’ him right along, and I guess squeezin’ plenty of money out of him.”
Barry suddenly remembered something. “Which one of you shot at Wolf and his friends the night they sat on the front porch?” he asked.
“I try scare heem away,” the Frenchman admitted.
After some further conversation the sheriff agreed to take Morganson to his aunt in Cloverfield. The would-be ghost of the lodge insisted upon seeing her, and so at last he and his French allies went off with the two county officials. Jordan, Bill Jefferson, and Tom Bailey hitched up a sleigh and drove them to Fox Point, where the sheriff took Morganson and the woodsman and his wife on to Cloverfield in his own conveyance.
The boys from Rake Island did not stay long after the sheriff left. Carter Wolf thanked everybody with averted eyes and went off with his friends, who dragged the sleighs back to the lake bank before disappearing. In the morning it was an easy task for the boys to pull them on up the slope and hitch up the horses.
Barry was somewhat mussed up and quite sore, but he was the hero of the hour. They sat around the living-room fire and listened with rapt attention while he told of his trip along the tunnel, and when Coach Jordan and the others came back, it had to be told all over again. They sat up until late in the night excitedly discussing the events of the evening.
“But we still do not know why Morganson pretended to be kidnaped and then hung around haunting the place,” Tim reminded them.
“I have an idea, from some things that he admitted to Sheriff Paulson, that he did it to knock down the value of the place and buy it from his aunt for a mere song,” spoke up the coach. “He always had a perfect passion for the lodge and was determined to have it by fair means or foul. I believe that he was trying to buy it through Brand Curry.”
In this Coach Jordan was correct. Felix Morganson had always had a great longing to own Bluff Lodge, and with Brand Curry and his French friends he had planned to ruin the reputation of the place and have his friend buy it very cheaply. Until Mrs. Morganson died, Brand Curry would continue to own the property, as far as outward appearances were concerned, and then Felix would take it over when his indulgent aunt passed away. So he had acted a false kidnaping part and had lived in a small cabin down in the hollow of a mountain spur close to the abandoned quarry.
With the capture of Felix Morganson, all mysteries were cleared up. He was the one who had taken their sled and who had dropped the snow behind the chimney upstairs in the hunting lodge. Having a key to the lodge, he entered it at will. The Frenchman and his wife had been writing to him for money, and as he did not send them any, they came in person to collect it and he joined them at Fox Point. Officers of the law had become suspicious and had trailed the French couple.