“Help me, Jerry. She’s fainted!”
There was some excitement then, let me tell you. But, to the woman’s good fortune, her fainting spell wasn’t anything serious. Having carried her upstairs, she opened her eyes when we sprinkled water on her. And soon she was sitting up, quite as well as ever, except that she looked peculiarly white.
“This,” says she, in a weary voice, “is the end. I’m goin’ to move. I can stand it no longer. For me nerves is a wreck.”
Then, to our amazement, she told us a strange story of ghostly raps and muffled hammer blows in the cellar walls. It had started about a month ago, she said. At first she had thought that it was rats. But she soon changed that belief. For no rats could have made the peculiar sounds that she heard, both day and night. Nor did the sounds, as she grew more familiar with them, seem earthly to her, which led to the superstitious conclusion that the house was indeed haunted. What she heard was a ghost! No doubt the ghost of the dead pirate, himself! Yet, poor as she was, and alone in the world, she had tried to fight down her fright. For if she let the ghost drive her out of the house she had no place else to go. Then, too, the fear of ridicule had kept her from going to the neighbors with her story.
We told her then about the gold cucumber and the things connected with it. What she had heard, we said excitedly, wasn’t a ghost, but the one-armed cat killer who was searching in the secret cellars of the old house for the balance of the pirate’s hidden treasure, of which, no doubt, the one gold cucumber that he had found was the key.
“Mither of Moses!” she cried, with terrified eyes. “A cat killer, did ye say? ’Tis this very day I’ll move out of here.”
Poppy grinned.
“Don’t you worry, Mrs. O’Mally. We aren’t going to let him harm you. In fact, we’re going to stay right here with you until we find out the truth about this queer old place. So, there now!” he further comforted her. “Just forget about your fears. And on top of taking good care of you, if we do find the hidden treasure, you’re going to get a third of it. Don’t forget about that.”
Here a swell roadster drove into the yard.
“Young Pennykorn and his grandfather,” Poppy rubbered.