“Not a soul,” answered Bob.
“Good! All right, come in.”
The place had been straightened out since the night of the robbery, and there were evidences of a woman’s hand. So Bob judged Mrs. Shan had been putting the log cabin to rights.
“I thought I’d like to satisfy myself on a few points about this case,” began Bob. “Chief Duncan said I might try my hand at solving it.”
“Somebody needs to do it,” spoke Hiram Beegle. “It’s a queer case. If I don’t get back that map I’ll never know where the treasure is hid, and I’ll never get it.”
“Did you have a chance to look at the map and find the location before you were robbed?” asked Bob.
“No, I only glanced at the papers in the box Hank Denby left me in his will. The map was quite complicated—it would take a deal of study to puzzle it out. But now it’s gone.”
“And is all that story true that Jolly Bill told—about treasure on a South Sea island?” asked Bob.
“Well, I don’t know what Bill told you,” was the reply. “But there was treasure on an island. It was dug up and we four agreed to share it—that is until Rod and Bill went to the bad when they forfeited their shares. It wasn’t so much Bill’s fault though—I don’t hold it against him. It was that Rod Marbury.”
“So I understand,” spoke Bob. “We’ll pass over that for a while,” he said, glad to have, however, this much confirmation of the tale told by the wooden-legged sailor. “What I’d like to find out now, Mr. Beegle, is how that key got inside the room where you were lying unconscious. Are there any secret openings by which the key could have been tossed in—the opening being closed later?”