“I think he’s Mr. Joseph Hastings,” volunteered Ben.
The buff-coated gentleman nodded, “You are both right. Joseph Hastings, Roderick Fitzhugh, and Peter Cotterell. I’m quite a versatile fellow. I’ve a passion for acting, to tell the truth.”
“I thought you were Joseph Hastings,” said Ben, “when I met you at the Gables.”
“Yes, that’s my right name. But Roderick Fitzhugh sounded so much more romantic. And I’d invited a houseful of guests to help me act a play I’d written for the moving-pictures. We all took the names we were to have in the play.” He pointed to Penelope Boothby. “She was the fair Maid Rosalind. And my steward Sampson yonder was Sir Marmaduke Midchester. And we liked our costumes so much that we wore them most of the time. That’s how I happened to be in Lincoln green when Master Ben drove up.”
“And it was the snuff-box you bought in Barmouth that I found in the chest in the cliff,” asserted Ben. “How did it happen to come there?”
Joseph Hastings pushed his chair back from the table and crossed his legs. “That’s quite a long story. But I suppose you’d like to hear it. I have a friend who knows John Tuckerman very well, and he wrote me that Tuckerman had come here to take possession of this island and its house. That sounded very interesting. So I came over here in my motor-boat with Martin Locke—that’s Sir Marmaduke, alias Sampson, and Miss Adelaide Lawson—that’s Penelope Boothby—it was a day or two before you campers arrived—and we found we could open one of the drawing-room windows and get into the house that way. Then we discovered the note stuck in the picture frame, and so we learned there was a secret about a family treasure.”
“And you left the window open a little when you went out,” put in Tom. “That’s how it happened that Ben’s candle blew out.”
“Did we?” said Hastings. “I didn’t know we did that. But we found some wax and took an impression of the key-hole in the front door, and I had a key made to fit it in Barmouth. I thought we’d have some fun with John Tuckerman and his friends.”
“You did, all right,” said Tuckerman. “I’ll forgive you for making that key. I suppose that’s what those men from the fishing-smack did when they broke in here.”
“I’m sorry if I set a bad example,” Hastings answered. “But they didn’t learn the trick from us. Well, a day or two later we three came back again.”