“There is an easy way to settle the question, and, at the same time to dispose of this boy’s fears,” suggested Clarence Neale. “I will walk home with him!”
That seemed to be the best course and so Mr. Neale, reassuring their dusky charge, put a hand on his shoulder and gently urged him from the room.
“I don’t care much for this situation,” said Mr. Gray. “It seems to me that some human agency is at work, trying to frighten you lads. I assure you that there is no ghost. Whatever Tom may have seen, and whatever the boy saw, there is a human being behind it. And no ghostly hands took your paper!”
“I think that way too,” Nicky declared, and Cliff nodded his agreement. Tom also gave a rather lame assent.
“Anyhow,” stated Nicky, practically, “if there was a ghost—if Captain Kidd did watch!—he sent part of the map to my own ancestor. He wouldn’t want to scare us! If he scared anybody, or took a map from anywhere, he would go after the colored fellow, Sam. His half of the cipher wasn’t rightfully his, the way mine is.”
“But there is no ghost,” repeated Mr. Gray. “If you ever get the true facts you will see that some person is at the bottom of this.”
“Sam, most likely!” declared Tom, entering into the spirit of the discussion and reassuring himself.
“No,” said Mr. Neale, coming in, his arm around the shoulders of the colored man they had just named, “no—Sam isn’t at the bottom of it.”
They looked at Sam. He was weak and shaken, and slumped down in a chair, rather limp and groggy.
“I found Sam out by the gate,” Mr. Neale explained. “He had been knocked out, actually, by a blow. He was on his way here, he managed to tell me. He thought he saw something light-colored near the house and he stopped by the gate. But whatever—whoever—it was, disappeared behind the house and he stood a moment wondering. Then he heard the voice in the house, here, and wondered whether to come in or to wait. Before he guessed what was happening, some one was behind him and struck him. That is all he remembered.”