We then went over the outside walls inch by inch, not only tapping, but searching, as with a microscope, for a possible secret door, on the order of those amazing secret doors that we bumped into while working on the mystery of the spotted gander, as related in an earlier book, POPPY OTT AND THE GALLOPING SNAIL. At the end of our work we were dead sure that there were no secret doors here. So, unless the man got into the hidden rooms from within the house, which seemed impossible, the only other view to take was that he did the trick from underground.
“Didn’t you tell me something about a tunnel, Jerry?”
“I’ve heard there is a tunnel,” I answered.
“But you haven’t seen it?”
“No,” I shook my head.
If there was a tunnel leading from the river to the stone house, with a secret entrance at the cellar end, certainly we ought to be able to find it, the leader said. But here again we bumped our noses against a solid brick wall, as the saying is. And after an hour’s unsuccessful search up and down the shore of the river, where the bank for the most part was nothing but a mud-baked slope sprinkled with willows, we came to the conclusion that the “tunnel” also was a pipe dream.
Cutting a willow club for myself, with the thought that I might need it before the night was over, I came back to the shore to find Poppy staring across the wide stretch of water at the sandstone bluffs that have been given earlier mention in my story.
“Quick, Jerry!” he beckoned.
What he had seen was a man in a rowboat, nothing unusual in itself except that the boatman, who was little more than a speck to us, disappeared into one of the unfrequented canyons, sort of pushing the boat along with a pole.
Poppy, of course, as could have been expected of him under the circumstances, was now bound and determined to cross the river. And remembering about old Cap’n Tinkertop’s hidden rowboat, I led the way to the sheltered mouth of Weir creek. But the boat was gone! And then the truth of the situation slowly percolated into my bean. It was the Cap’n’s boat that we had seen across the river. The one-armed man had stolen it, which explained why the boat, as we had gotten a glimpse of it at a distance, was being pushed along with a pole.