Ben walked up and down the living-room. “Well,” he answered slowly, “I think somebody has mixed up the trails. Let’s see how the matter stands. We know that your Uncle Christopher thought there was a secret. We found that out from the note in the frame of the picture.”
“Uncle Christopher knew there was a secret,” agreed Tuckerman. “I think that’s very clear.”
Ben nodded. “What did we find next? Those jottings your uncle made in his notebook.” Ben stopped at the secretary, took out the notebook, turned to the marked page, and read aloud. “‘As regards the saying that the hiding-place is just beyond the three pines that stand between two rocks where the sun goes down, I have scoured and scoured the island, and come to the opinion that the extreme southwestern point must be the place intended, although to-day there are only two pines there. I have dug at this place, but found only sand.’ That’s what your uncle wrote. But he didn’t find the treasure at the southwestern point.”
Tuckerman smiled. “So far so good.”
Ben ran his eye down the page. “Now we come to this. ‘Find the mahogany-hued man with the long, skinny legs and look in his breast pocket. That’s a saying my father handed down. What can it mean?’ Well, it seems to me that’s where the trails begin to get mixed.”
“Why, I thought we decided that referred to the mahogany secretary,” said Tuckerman.
“So we did,” answered Ben. “But were we right? Let’s see. We looked in the secretary and found a piece of parchment with half a message on it. We couldn’t make out much from that. Then I read this in the notebook.” He turned again to the page, “‘I’ve heard that the old clipper ship got some of the cargo that the mahogany man carried. But if she did, what use is that to us now? She sailed out of Barmouth Harbor during the Revolution.’”
“I’ve always thought you were mighty clever in finding that model of the clipper ship up in the attic,” said Tuckerman.
“Well,” agreed Ben, “I’m not denying that I was pretty well pleased with that myself. But what did we learn? That James Sampson took a box to the north cliff, meaning to put it on a boat, but found that there were some people off shore in another boat and so hid the box in the rocks, and that the rocks were marked like a cross. Very good. We found the place and we found a box there. But there wasn’t anything very valuable in the box when we found it.”
“That’s so,” Tuckerman assented. “But I don’t see any other clue to the treasure.”