The stricken man was moving in an odd way the fingers of his right hand on the arm of his chair. And then Bob Dexter guessed what it was he wanted.
“He will write it out!” exclaimed the lad. “Give him pencil and paper and he can write out what happened since he can’t talk straight. Why didn’t we think of that before?”
“I said it would be a good thing to have Bob here,” remarked Chief Duncan while Chief Drayton looked for pencil and paper. And when these were given to Hiram Beegle a look of satisfaction came over his face. He began writing more rapidly than one would have supposed an old sailor could have done, and he handed the finished sheet to Bob.
“Read it,” suggested Harry.
Bob read:
“The young man has partly the right of it. After he left me I locked up the box Judge Weston gave me. It was mine by right but I knew some who might try to take it from me. Never mind about them now.
“After supper I sat here thinking of many things, and then I wanted to look in my box again. I opened my strong room, left the door ajar, took the brass-bound box out of my chest and sat looking over the contents when, all of a sudden, I felt faint. Then I fell out of my chair—I remember falling—and that’s all I remember until I woke up early this morning.
“I was lying on the floor, and beside me, close to my right hand, was the big brass key to my strong room. But the door was locked, and my box was gone. I couldn’t understand it. First I thought I had just fainted from the blow I got in the afternoon. I thought maybe I had put my box back in the chest, but it wasn’t there. I had been robbed, and there was another lump on my head. Whether I was hit again, or whether I hit myself when I fell out of my chair I don’t know.
“But there I was, locked in my own strong room, the key was beside me and my treasure was gone. That’s all I know about it.”
“But didn’t he see anybody?”