“We still don’t know,” Jimmy admitted. “He’s never come back.”
“How do you know he hasn’t?” Alf demanded.
Jimmy groaned, clutching his dark hair in mock dismay. “Will you guys puh-leeze let me try to explain to you why I want to look at the footprints in the clearing? Of course we don’t know for sure,” he said sourly to Alf, “that our snoopy friend didn’t come back. We only watched out for him that first night. But with all the people who are at the Lodge now I feel certain one of us would have heard a night prowler.”
“I’m not at all sure of that,” Alf said stubbornly. “We all sleep like logs. After a day with a slave driver like you I can barely keep my eyes open long enough to get undressed and topple into bed.”
“Shut up, Alf,” Brook said over his shoulder. “Let the slavedriver tell us why we’re taking this long trek through the thickest part of the woods.”
“Footprints,” Jimmy said in exasperation. “After Phil and Pat fired a couple of shots in the air, the prowler scrammed. Then we went down to have a look at the shed. And sure enough, somebody had been there since we had left. Right near the spot where Penny fell through the rotten wall, some floor boards had been ripped up and there was a footprint in the dirt staring us in the face.”
“That guy was dopey,” Alf muttered. “If he had to go around leaving footprints all over the place, why didn’t he at least put the floor boards back so you wouldn’t find them?”
Jimmy shrugged. “I figure he sneaked out from the village to dig around near where we found the well. But just as he got started he realized that we might not yet have gone to bed. In that case one of us might have seen the flashlight he must have been using. So he slipped up to the house to have a look-see. And then Penny saw him.” He chuckled. “After that he didn’t have time to think about covering up his traces.”
Brook stopped again and mopped his brow. “I’m beginning to see that there’s a method in your madness. If the footprints I saw in the clearing match the one you discovered under the shed floor, then we’ll know that the same man left the old coat out on the point.”
“Your reasoning, my dear Watson,” Jimmy said, grinning, “is excellent. I will elucidate further. The same man is the owner of the scrap you found in the pocket of said old coat. And since said note contained the two words ‘buried’ and ‘shed’ my guess is that the rumor about buried treasure is more truth than poetry!”