“I think I’d like to come, too,” observed Toby. “In the name of all-possessed! This is a queer business.”
“It certainly is,” Doc agreed, and without invitation he ranged himself alongside of the theatre manager as the latter went with the party.
Mr. McLeod and the control chief joined them in the designing room.
Chairs and benches were brought. Everybody found a seat.
Chick, before he sat down, hurried to the developing room, as Don supposed, to estimate the damage done. Chick went in, did something, came out. Water was heard in the washing tanks.
“What did you mean by saying you thought we were the ones who had stolen a map?” demanded Garry, as Chick took his place again.
Readily enough, the Indian began to explain.
“My father has met a good many strange people, because he is so well-known for his cures,” he began. “A good many years ago he nursed an old sailor, and when he found he couldn’t cure him, Father told him the truth. The man was grateful, though, because he knew Father had done his best. He knew he couldn’t live, and he turned over to us a map.”
The map, he explained, was old and tattered. It showed, the sailor had claimed, a place in the Long Island swamps where, during a bad gale, many years before that, a pirate brig had been blown at high tide inland so far that it had become caught in the mud, and that ship, thus held prisoner, had been sucked down in a spot even then known as the Devil’s Sinkhole.
“And, as the man told us,” John continued, “the ship had some chests of jewels and gold and silver aboard.” He had been given a map, and the story, by his father. Coming down from generation to generation, the tale and the chart had yielded nothing to searchers.