“Now if Bill can’t make head or tail of it, how could Hiram be expected to?” That was bothering Bob now more than he liked to admit. But he was far from giving up the quest. He must watch Bill.
The one-legged sailor, unconscious that he was being observed in his “undress uniform,” was eagerly looking over the paper. He held it right-side up, and upside down. He turned it this way and that, and held it up to the light. But all to no purpose as indicated by his slowly shaking head.
“No, I can’t make head or tail of you, and that’s a fact,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll have to get help on this. But I don’t want to if I don’t have to. If I could only get Hiram to talk he might give me the lead I want. I’ll have another go at Hiram, I guess. He doesn’t suspect anything yet.”
Bill returned the paper to the little casket, closed the lid with a snap and then put the brass box back in the interior of his wooden leg. Having done this Bill proceeded to get dressed for the day.
And Bob Dexter prepared to make so quiet an exit from the Mansion House that the old sailor would not know he had been there. To this end Bob left before Bill was downstairs, slipping out the back way as arranged with Mr. Beel.
In first planning his work looking to the discovery of the thief who had taken Hiram’s box, Bob Dexter had in mind a very spectacular bit of play. It was based on some of the stories of celebrated detectives—real or imagined sleuths.
How Bob had come, by a process of elimination, to suspect that Jolly Bill was the thief, I think you can reason out for yourselves. If not I shall disclose it to you. Sufficient now to say that Bob did suspect Jolly Bill, and with good reason, though there was one big gap in the sequence of steps leading to the crime. And that was to learn how the key had been put back in the room where the unconscious Hiram lay. But of that more later.
As I say, Bob had in mind a daring bit of work as soon as he discovered for a fact that Bill had the box. This was nothing more or less than a false alarm of fire at the Mansion House. Bob reasoned that if the cry of fire were to be shouted Bill, and all the other guests, would at once rush to save that which they considered most valuable. And that if Bill kept the brass box locked somewhere in his room, he would rush to get it out, Bob fully believed.
However the discovery that the sailor kept the box in what, to him, was the best hiding place in the world, namely his wooden leg, made it unnecessary for Bob to go to the length he had planned.
Bill, himself, had given away the secret. The box was always with him. It was only necessary to take off his wooden leg and the secret of the treasure would be laid bare, so to speak.