It was, and when Bob had left the fishermen at the lake, promising, if he had time, to call and take them home, he went on to his uncle’s store.
Contrary to expectation, Bob did not find anything to do. Mr. Dexter had wanted him to deliver a special order over in Cardiff, but the man called for it himself, and this gave the lad some free time.
“I think I’ll just take a run back to Storm Mountain,” mused the young detective. “Hiram won’t be back for some time, and I’d like to take a look around the place all by myself. He wouldn’t mind if he knew of it, especially when I’m trying to help him. But I’d rather not have to ask him. This gives me a chance to get in alone.”
Bob told himself that he would go in the cabin, and he knew he could do this, for he knew the old man never carried with him the key of the outer door, hiding it in a secret place near the doorstep. No one had ever yet found it, and probably Bob was the only one the old man had taken into the secret—and this only after Bob’s attention to Hiram after the latter was attacked when carrying home his treasure box.
“I’ll just slip in and have a look around,” decided the lad. “Maybe I might discover something, though what it can be I don’t know. If I could only figure out a way by which that key was put back in the room, after the door was locked on the outside, I might begin to unravel this mystery.”
Bob flivvered up to the log cabin, but he did not alight at once from his little car. He wanted to make sure he wasn’t observed. Not that he was doing anything wrong, for it was all along the line of helping Hiram Beegle. But he felt it would be just as well to work unobserved.
Satisfied, after having sat in his auto for five minutes, that no one was in hiding around the log cabin, and making sure that no one was ascending or descending the Storm Mountain road, Bob ran his car in the weed-grown drive and parked it out of casual sight behind what had once been a hen house. But Hiram had given up his chickens as he had his horse. They required too much care, he said.
Bob found the key where Hiram had told him it would be hidden. Then, with a last look up and down the lonely road in front of the log cabin, the lad entered.
Ghostly silent and still it was, his footfalls echoing through the rooms. But Bob was not overly sentimental and he was soon pressing the hidden spring that opened the niche where the key to the strong room was concealed.
It was this room that held the secret, or, rather that had held it, and it was in this room that the young detective was most interested.