The family was not up yet, but the boys did not wait for breakfast in their eagerness to be on the scene of the robbery.
A hasty raid on Martha’s pantry gave each of them enough for a cold bite, and, eating as they went along, and running most of the way, they were soon in front of the village store.
The news had traveled fast, and there was an eager crowd already gathered. All sorts of rumors were about, and in the absence of any real news as to the robbers, one guess was as good as another.
The only thing about which there was no doubt at all was that the robbery had occurred. The open safe and tumbled goods were sufficient proofs of that. Cy Briggs, who had run the store for forty years, and had never had a robbery or fire or anything to disturb the regular order of things, was so flustered that he had not yet been able to find out the extent of his loss.
One or two of the cooler heads were going over the stock with him, while the others clustered on the broad porch in front and waited for developments, keeping up a constant buzz of questions and conjectures.
No one had heard any unusual noise the night before. The village constable, who constituted the entire police force of Oldtown, had made his usual round about ten o’clock, and, as a matter of form, had tried the door. But it had been securely fastened as usual, and there had been nothing to rouse his suspicion. Apart from two or three traveling men who had come in with Jed Muggs, and were now staying at the one hotel, nobody had seen any outsiders.
The whole thing was a mystery, and this was increased by the discovery that while the door had been found open, showing that the thieves had come out that way, they must have found some other means of entrance. The door had been fastened by a bolt, which Cy had pushed into the socket the last thing before leaving. This had not been broken, as it would have been, if the robbers had forced their way in from the front. Cy himself had gone out of a back door, which he had locked, carrying the key away with him, and this door was found still locked when he came that morning to open up.
“Well, Cy, how about it?” was the question from a dozen voices, as the old storekeeper, grizzled and flushed, came out on the porch. “How much did you lose?”
“Don’t know yet,” Cy answered, wiping his forehead with a huge bandana handkerchief, “but I reckon it’ll figger up to close on three or four hundred dollars’ wuth.”
A hum of excitement rose from the crowd. To the boys especially, this seemed an enormous amount of money.