“July 10, 1892. I am desperately ill with the typhoid, and sick at heart because now, when the evidence that would clear my name is at hand, I have not the strength to bring it from where it is hidden. All in this place have gone away, including my dear wife and son. There is none here to whom I can reveal my discovery. My strength is waning too fast for me to hope to reach town with what I now know. Therefore, I shall take these last moments to set down the facts that will clear my name and the name of those who will come after me.
“But what if Jacob’s son should find this account and destroy it for the sake of his own good name? I must hide the ledger in the chimney, hoping that someone of my family will think to look on the secret shelf where I have hidden things before.
“Here let it be known that it was Jacob’s own greed and deceit that caused his death, and not my hand, as so many have claimed. For years he stole from our company, and the proof lies with him below. To cover up his thefts of money, and to direct the guilt to me, he, from time to time, hid parts of various glass shipments, making it appear that they had been stolen from outside. He also entered large debit values in the books to cover his withdrawals of money.
“As I write this, his body lies below, together with the evidence of his guilt. How he was trapped there will probably never be known. Rising waters may have caught him unawares. He did much planning for his crimes, but in the end he was trapped by his own foolishness and sent to a slow death. My strength fails. I must hide the ledger—”
Ronnie turned the page. The next one was blank. “I guess that’s all,” he said quietly. It seemed to the boy as if his great-great-grandfather had been in the room talking to him during those last few moments of his life. He thought of the eyes watching him from the picture over the fireplace in the padlocked building earlier that afternoon. Yes, in spirit anyway, Ezra had come back again to make one last desperate effort to save the Rorth name. Almost as if he knew there wasn’t much time left to get it done, Ronnie thought.
He felt the pressure of Bill’s hand about his arm, and the movement brought his thoughts racing back to the present. He looked up at Bill. His friend’s face was turned toward the window. “Ronnie,” Bill whispered to him, “somebody was watching us through that window!”
Chapter 12
Ronnie went directly to his room when he reached the house. Bill and he had decided that this would be the best place to keep the old ledger after what had happened at their office. And since Bill couldn’t be sure whom he had seen at the window, they had to protect their new possession against an unknown adversary. Anybody, really, could be under suspicion. “I saw him out of the corner of my eyes,” Bill had told Ronnie afterward. “When I swung my head around he was gone. All I know for sure is that he was wearing something red. That’s what first caught my attention.”
“I don’t remember Caldwell wearing red,” Ronnie had said.
They had searched the area outside their office as soon as the initial surprise had worn off, but had failed to catch even a glimpse of the man. And then the search had been interrupted by the arrival of two cars, and by the time they’d taken the two groups around, it was too late to continue hunting.
Now Ronnie stretched out on his bed with the old volume propped up against his pillow. He wanted to reread his great-great-grandfather’s notations and do some thinking about them.
A little while later he got up to find a pencil and a piece of paper. He sat down on the edge of the bed with a magazine beneath the paper. At the top of the paper he wrote: “THE IMPORTANT THINGS I’VE FOUND OUT FROM READING GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER’S DIARY.”
Then underneath he began to jot down each important fact: