“Well,” said Eve between jolts, “your friend Captain Trout has been harboring a visitor—a kind of cooking recluse, if you know what I mean. But he left in the dead of night arrayed in white trousers and a visored cap.”
Michael did not seem greatly impressed by these revelations. “The Captain knows a lot of seafaring birds,” he said. “Very likely the fellow blew in between sailings.”
“Then you don’t think it was Bangs?” I asked.
“How should I know. But there’s something else you might be interested in—somebody’s been digging up that old garden again.”
XXIV
It Fits!
At these words my heart sank. “There goes all our good resolutions and promises!” I thought. For of course I knew that we’d never go straight home now!
“Digging up the garden!” cried Eve. “How d’you know?”
“I saw it this morning when I stopped to have a look for my flashlight which I mislaid the night I was—ah—pinched! The door was locked, and I couldn’t get into the house. On my way out I noticed that somebody’d been at work in the garden in a new place.”
“Then that creature hasn’t left the country at all,” Hattie May cried. “It’s just as I suspected, he’s still after the treasure!”