“Go down and tell Mr. Howbridge,” suggested Agnes. “I thing he ought to be told everything.”
“I agree with you,” assented Ruth. “I’ll telephone down asking what time we can see him.”
“And while you girls go there, some of us will take another look around the cellar,” said Neale. “I think the whole mystery centers there.”
“Well, we haven’t found much so far—except kittens,” chuckled Luke.
Mr. Howbridge looked rather grave when Ruth told him the story of the night of the storm and what had happened in the cellar. Luke went with her to the lawyer’s office, leaving Neale and Hal to “putter around,” as Mrs. MacCall called it, in the cellar.
“Certainly something seems wrong,” admitted the lawyer. “I am afraid, though, that I can’t agree with you—as I have said before, I believe—about a fortune being hidden in the cellar. I attended to your Uncle Peter’s affairs, and I’m sure if he was so foolish as to hide a fortune away in a cellar I would know something about it. Of course I may be wrong——”
“Yes, but remember about our strange find in the attic? That album filled with all sorts of valuable papers.”
“Ah, that is true,” and the girls’ guardian nodded slowly. “Lemuel Aden’s money!”
“What about Hop Wong?” went on Ruth. “Did you find out anything more from him? You were going to get an interpreter and——”
“Yes, my dear, I obtained the services of the court Chinese interpreter, but I might as well have saved my time. What with the roundabout manner in which the conversation had to be carried on and the fright of Hop Wong—well, we didn’t get anywhere at all.”