The three boys laughed. “We don’t play all the time by any means,” said Ben.
“Not a bit of it,” said David. “Sometimes we wash the dishes.” And taking Ben by the collar of his flannel shirt he lifted him to his feet. “Benjie’ll show you how we do it.”
When they had cleaned the dishes they walked over to Cotterell Hall. Tuckerman opened the front door, which was unlocked. “While I was so very particular about the key,” he chuckled, “both Joseph Hastings and the crew of the fishing-smack were coming in whenever they wanted. They made their own keys to fit the locks. Well, I ought to have been more hospitable.”
A week had passed since the famous party, and in that week the police of Barmouth had found the jewels that were stolen from the Gables, and also duplicate keys to the front and back doors of Cotterell Hall, hidden in the cabin of the fishing-smack. On the strength of that, and of the testimony of Tom and David and Lanky Larry as to what they had seen on the afternoon when they were at the cove, Sam and the other men had been held in jail for the next term of court.
“There’s one thing,” said Ben, as the four went into the big room on the left of the hall, “that still puzzles me a bit. Why did Christopher Cotterell write those lines in his notebook? ‘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?’” Ben looked at the others. “What do you suppose the mahogany man did have in his pocket?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Tuckerman. “He certainly didn’t have Sir Peter’s silver plate. That may be one of those legends, Ben, that get changed from their original meaning as they are handed down from one to another.”
“I suppose that may be it,” agreed Ben, though he did not look altogether satisfied.
“Every colonial house,” Tuckerman continued, “ought to have some legend to make it interesting. The mahogany man can be the legend of Cotterell Hall.”
Tuckerman looked at the portrait of his ancestor. “We’ve found what you meant by the place of the three pines and the two rocks where the sun goes down,” he said; “but we haven’t found what it was that the mahogany man had in his breast pocket. So you’ve still provided a conundrum for Ben to puzzle over. Sir Peter, I don’t believe you’d have any objection to our having found the plate. I think that to-day you’d be as good an American as any of the rest of us.”
“Of course he would,” said Tom, “I can understand how he’d have objected to his neighbors telling him to hand over his silver to them. I’d have objected myself.”