Accordingly lunch baskets had been packed and now this glorious summer morning they were about to start. The boys, their kind offer refused, had gone off on a fishing jaunt—that is, all but Will, and he had not returned from Boston. Grace had a hasty note from him in which he stated that work connected with his new duties would keep him busy for a week or so, after which he hoped to join his friends at Edgemere.
"No news of a diamond robbery around Boston," he wrote, in a letter. "I've written to a fellow in New York about it, though. Sometimes the police keep those things out of the papers for reasons of their own. Maybe they think the robbers won't know the diamonds have been taken, if nothing is printed about it, at least that's the way it looks."
At any rate Will reported no news, and Mr. Nelson had pretty much the same story to tell. His wife had written to him about the men in the cellar, and he had advised getting some fisherman of the neighborhood to stay on guard every night, until he could come down to Ocean View again.
"We might get Old Tin-Back," suggested Betty.
"It would only make me nervous," her mother said. "I don't believe the men will bother us again."
"Well, they won't find the diamonds down cellar if they do pay us another visit," Betty had said. She had, after some thought, hidden the precious stones in her own room, wrapping the box in some sheets of asbestos, which Allen had left over after putting some on the muffler of the motor boat.
"The asbestos will protect the diamonds in case of fire," Betty said, "and I'll protect them in case of thieves. Anyhow, no one, not even the servants, know where they are, and it would take a good while to find them in my room."
For she had discovered an ingenious little hiding place for the mysterious black box.
The boys, after the scare of the men in the cellar, had offered to take the diamonds up to Boston, or some other city near Ocean View, and put them in the vault of some bank.
"But you might be robbed on the train, going up," objected Betty. "We'll keep them here until the secret is discovered. That will be the best thing to do."