The balance of this story, as I shall tell it to you, was gleaned from the detailed accounts given me by Tom after his return to Bridgeboro. Brent’s story would have been interesting, but, alas, no sprightly characteristic narrative was to come from him. Somewhat I have fallen back on the newspapers, but only when their rather highly colored accounts were confirmed by bare facts coming from other sources.
Knowing Tom Slade as I do, I am able to record not only his adventures but his reaction to the extraordinary things which happened. I know how he felt and thought and acted and so I can give you, I think, a well-rounded yarn which, albeit true, shall have a little of the pleasing color of romance. For I know Tom Slade as I know a book. And what is more, he knows that I know him....
CHAPTER XIII—Down-Down—
You will remember the story that Long Buck Sanderson told me: how he was returning from New York with a sum of money. His partner, Mink Havers, was waiting for him near a swamp some distance from their cabin to advise him of the visit of Barney Wythe and others. Mink wished to hide the money and they agreed upon Conner’s well as a safe place. Nothing could be more certain than that Mink started off to hide the money there.
Now, when I read that newspaper article which Tom brought me, I noted that this mysterious John Mink out in a western asylum had spoken of some treasure or other in a bait-box. I thought it altogether unlikely that Long Buck would carry his money from New York in any such container. But on thinking it over afterward, I saw that here one thing hitched up plausibly with another. Perhaps Mink had taken such a box to the meeting place when he went to wait for his partner. They had intended to secrete their money for only a few days at most. Yet clearly a wallet would not be a suitable thing to leave in a swamp or in the bottom of an old well. So, after all, the metal box was not a false note in the story.
As soon as Tom had gone away I began to have a little respect for his enthusiastic reasoning. He had certainly scored a triumph over me in his investigation of that old game warden of bygone times. In face of this it seemed a rational supposition, at least, that the money was still secreted in that forsaken fastness. I had to admit as much.
Therefore, it seemed to me altogether sensible for my adventurers to begin by an exhaustive exploration of the old well. “Tom has some sense, at that,” I said to myself on reading Brent’s letter. To be sure, old Buck must have explored that black hole more than once; I could picture him visiting it again and again in those weary last years of his. Still, mud and débris accumulate in such a place, and it was barely possible that even within a day or two of the secreting of a box there, it might have been swallowed up in the oozy bottom of the dank hole.
It was Brent who volunteered to descend into that forbidding place, and he insisted on having his way. They first took the precaution of getting some wood on fire and throwing it in so that they might see the bottom. They found the place to be very deep and the bottom covered with stones and rotten wood. Together they tumbled a heavy rock in to ascertain if the bottom was solid. Of course, the material below yielded under the weight of the rock, but Tom and Brent decided that there was no treacherous quicksand or even a perilous accumulation of mud below.
Brent then let himself down, sliding over the edge and clinging to the branches of root which projected into the well through crevices in the rough masonry. Those damp, earthy tentacles were not pleasant to the touch. Here and there he could find a foothold on some slight projection of rock. But, after descending a few feet, he found himself with no dependable foothold below him and he was still a considerable distance from the bottom.
“Don’t see how I’m going to make it,” he called.