“Do you know him?” asked Bob.
“I did, son,” replied Jolly Bill with the trace of an accent on the second word. “I knew him well. Had a letter from him just before he went on his last long voyage. Pals we were—Hank and I and Hiram.”
“What about Rod Marbury?” asked Bob.
“Bah! That pest and scoundrel! He sailed with us, of course, but he wasn’t a true messmate in the real meaning of the name. You never could trust Rod Marbury—that’s why Hiram built his strong room.”
“I was wondering why he had the place so much like a bank vault, with the key hid in a secret place,” spoke Bob.
“Secret place—for the key—say, boy, what do you know about that?” cried Jolly Bill, all the jollity gone from him now. “What do you know?” and he gripped Bob’s arm, so that the latter had to shake loose the grip in order to steer down the trail.
“Don’t do that again,” he said, somewhat sharply. “This is a bad hill.”
“Excuse me,” murmured Bill, obviously ashamed of his show of feeling. “But I was wondering if Hiram had showed you any of his secrets.”
Conscious that he had made a mistake in betraying any knowledge of the place where the old man hid the key to his strong room, Bob tried to shift it off with a laugh as he said:
“Oh, well, it stands to reason that careful as Mr. Beegle was of that room, he’d keep the key to it in a secret place, wouldn’t he?”