We knew now that the money didn’t belong to the lock tender. For he had shown no excitement when he had been told, within our hearing, that a leg of his piano had been stolen. Had he known that the missing leg was full of money—his money—he would have been crazily excited. We had no doubt on that point.
The killer, on the other hand, did know about the money. And in short thought it could have been concluded therefrom that the hidden greenbacks were his. But in our deep distrust of him we didn’t accept the first thought that came into our heads. It was true that he had shown a knowledge of the hidden money, but he had shown, too, in his investigation of the piano’s legs, a definite lack of knowledge of the money’s [[184]]exact hiding place. This was conclusive in our minds that he hadn’t hidden the money himself. Therefore, we argued, the money wasn’t his.
We had not the slightest intention of returning the greenbacks to the lock tender. Why should we when they didn’t belong to him? If he once got his hands on the fortune he would say that the money was his. We had little more belief in his honesty than we had in the killer’s, and certainly, insofar as we were able to prevent it, the latter was to be given no chance at the money.
The thing to do, we decided, was to keep the money and turn it over to the law, together with a detailed explanation of how it had come into our possession. The law, in fairness to all concerned, would see that the money passed into the hands of its rightful owner. I might add here, in all frankness, that we were not without hope that some share of the money would be awarded to us. We felt that we were earning a right to a part of it.
We counted the greenbacks by the light of the moon, thus learning that the roll consisted of thirty twenty-dollar bills and forty ten-dollar bills—an even thousand dollars!
Of the opinion that the money was no longer [[185]]safe in the hollow of the piano leg, Scoop stuffed three hundred dollars into each of his two side pockets, dividing the balance into two rolls of two hundred dollars each, which he put away in his two hip pockets. He told me in the conclusion of the money’s distribution that he felt like a walking safe. And I could imagine that he did, all right. For it isn’t every day in a fellow’s life that he has a chance to pocket a thousand dollars.
In resting we had disposed of our apples, sorry, in our hollow hunger, that we hadn’t more of them to eat. The food gave us new pep. Starting out again in our passage to the big wide waters, we took turns carrying the heavy piano leg, which was to back us up in our story when we came before the law.
The big sum of money in our possession was an anxiety to us, and, as can be imagined, we kept a constant eye ahead of us and behind us. Once in looking back I thought I detected a man of the killer’s size in the shadow of the trees. We hid in the underbrush at the next turn in the tow path. But no one overtook us. So it was concluded that what I had mistaken for a man in my nervousness was probably a bush or a tall tree stump.
Where was the white-haired man? Were Red [[186]]and Peg on his trail? Had he recovered the bonds, as we had concluded, and was he now far away from the island? Or was he, for some reason or purpose unknown to us, still in hiding near by?
I could only speculate in my mind regarding the probable answers to these questions. Nor had I any answer to the riddle of why the two thieves had separated. We knew where one of the evil pair was. The thought of a possible sudden meeting with the other one in the moonlit tow path filled me with shivers.