“Hamish dotes on locking doors on people,” his sister remarked. “It’s one of his pet tricks!”
“The cupboard must open into that underground passage that Uncle Judd had walled up years ago,” Aunt Cal remarked thoughtfully.
The man nodded. “Yeah, I remembered hearin’ talk of it. I poked around and found the entrance to it under the cellar stairs, and this here ladder between the floors. But it was dark as a ship’s hold down there and I couldn’t get the trap door open. Then you opened the cupboard and let in some light through the crack and I see where she was hooked down. I reckoned I could manage this smart guy here without much trouble—I didn’t figure on runnin’ into a whole tea party!” he finished with a cackle.
“I suppose that was the passage you were hiding in the night the cops searched the house for you?” Michael remarked.
The man shot him a sardonic glance but did not answer.
Aunt Cal got up. “I really think, Rose,” she said, “we should be starting for home. It’s growing dark and we’ve had quite enough excitement for one day.” She turned to the sailor and fixed him with a stern glance. “I sincerely trust, Gopher,” she said, “that you will not leave the neighborhood until I’ve had a further talk with you. I—I naturally wish to hear more details of my cousin’s last days.”
The man did not answer for a moment. But there was an insistence in Aunt Cal’s tone that was not to be disregarded. Perhaps he thought that, since the game was up in any case, his best chance lay in compliance. “Okay,” he said with another lift of his bony shoulders. “I’ll hang round for a spell.”
As Miss Blossom’s little car rolled away down the hill, no one spoke for a time. Eve and I were in the rear seat. Hattie May had gone with Hamish in his car. It was with some difficulty that we had succeeded in prying the latter loose from the man whom he considered his lawful prisoner. What was the use, he insisted, of pulling off a capture if you had to turn the fellow loose again?
But Aunt Cal’s wishes of course had prevailed and Hamish, still grumbling, had been obliged to depart and leave the villain, as he dubbed him, to his own devices.
As we turned into the main highway at The Corners, Miss Rose settled back. “Well, it does beat all,” she said, “the mysterious ways Providence does work. To think of that rascal Carter sealing up that old cupboard with the will in it and going off to the ends of the earth!”