Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)









The Corner House Girls Solve a Mystery




[Illustration: Out of the moonlight shadows he came, a timid and
shrinking figure of a Chinese.]




THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS SOLVE A MYSTERY

WHAT IT WAS, WHERE IT WAS, AND WHO FOUND IT

By

GRACE BROOKS HILL

Author of “The Corner House Girls,” “The Corner House
Girls on Palm Island,” Etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY THELMA GOOCH

BARSE & HOPKINS

PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK, N.Y., NEWARK, N.J.




Copyright, 1923 by Barse & Hopkins

The Corner House Girls Solve a Mystery

Printed in the U. S. A.




CONTENTS

     I  A Drop in Eggs
    II  A Queer Pair
   III  Disquieting News
    IV  In a Hurry
     V  Visitors Arrive
    VI  Witches and Warlocks
   VII  Luke Remembers
  VIII  A Futile Chase
    IX  Out of Tune
     X  A Shower
    XI  A Strange Summons
   XII  A Queer Note
  XIII  A Midnight Tryst
   XIV  Suspicions
    XV  Tess and Dot Investigate
   XVI  The Storm
  XVII  The Midnight Noise
 XVIII  Struck Down
   XIX  Dot’s Discovery
    XX  Hop Wong is Caught
   XXI  A Queer Story
  XXII  Another Alarm
 XXIII  The Capture
  XXIV  The White Star
   XXV  The Alligator’s Tail




ILLUSTRATIONS

    Out of the moonlight shadows he came, a timid and shrinking
    figure of a Chinese

    The two men looked up quickly, having been stopped by Ruth’s voice

    There sat Tess on a flat rock in a shallow place in the middle
    of the brook

    The younger Corner House girls poked into the dark corners of
    the cellar




THE CORNER HOUSE GIRLS SOLVE A MYSTERY




CHAPTER I: A DROP IN EGGS


“Hello!”

“Goodness sakes! don’t holler like that again, Sammy Pinkney.”

“He almost made me drop the cake batter!”

Tess Kenway, who had administered the rebuke to the small boy when he
gave a shout, thrusting his head in through the half-opened kitchen
door, fanned herself with her apron as she closed the oven of the stove.
Her sister Dot, who was pouring something from a brown bowl into a tin
pan, set the former down on the table and shook her finger at Sammy.

“What are you doin’?” asked Sammy, as he slid farther into the kitchen
and possessed himself of a chair near the table, looking casually over
what it contained.

“Cakes,” answered Tess. “I guess the oven’s hot enough now, Dot,” she
went on, again opening and closing the door.

“Cakes!” exclaimed Sammy, smacking his lips. “I should think if you made
_one_ cake it would be——”

“We’re _each_ making a cake, if you please!” declared Tess, with a
superior air. “And we wish you wouldn’t come around here bothering
us—don’t we, Dot?”

“Yes, we do,” joined in the other small sister.

“And if you want any of _my_ cake, Sammy Pinkney—Oh, don’t you dare sit
in that chair!” she shrieked as, dropping a spoon covered with cake
batter and thereby spattering the boy, she made a rush for him just in
time to prevent him from occupying another chair nearer to the scene of
the cake-making.

“What’s the matter with that chair?” protested Sammy, in a grieved tone,
as he went back to his original place.

“My—my Alice-doll!” answered Dot faintly.

“You—_you_ nearly squashed her, Sammy.” And, pulling the chair out from
beneath the table, she disclosed her very choicest child—the loved
“Alice-doll.”

“Aw, how’d I know she was there?” asked Sammy.

“You didn’t have to come in,” retorted Tess, who, though older than her
sister, yet shared in the latter’s love for Alice and did not want to
see her “squashed.”

“Pooh, I don’t have to come in if I don’t want to,” declared Sammy
independently. “But I was goin’ to show you how you could have some
fun.”

“Some fun?” questioned Tess, alive to the possibilities in that word.

“What kind of fun?” Dot wanted to know, putting her Alice-doll in a
safer place.

“Aw, what good would it do me to tell you!” and Sammy affected an air of
injured innocence. “All you care about is bakin’ cakes!”

“We do not—so there!” cried Tess, with an uptilting of her little nose,
as she had seen Nalbro Hastings affect on occasions. “If you know any
fun, Sammy Pinkney, you ought to tell us, ’cause we’ll soon have to go
back to school.”

“Oh, dear!” sighed Dot. “When I was on Plam Island I never thought of
school.”

“’Tisn’t _Plam_ Island,” corrected Sammy. “It’s——”

“I know what it is! I don’t have to get you to tell me!” snapped Dot,
for she was a bit sensitive about her mispronunciation, having been
corrected so often. “But when my cake’s done you can have some, Sammy,”
she added, more gently, as if ashamed of her little outburst.

“And I’ll give you some of mine,” offered Tess. “It’s going to be
chocolate.”

“Good!” cried Sammy, and all his ill-feeling vanished.

“Mine’s cocoanut,” said Dot. “And I guess we’d better put ’em in the
oven, Tess. Mrs. MacCall said to put ’em in when the oven felt hot to
your hand.”

“All right.”

The two little girls, having poured their cake batter into separate
tins, placed their concoctions in the oven and closed the door.

“There!” announced Tess. “Now you can tell us about the fun, Sammy,” and
she seemed to have shaken from her small shoulders the cares of the
universe.

“I’m going to be in it, and so is my Alice-doll!” declared Dot, as she
brought the pretend-child from the shelf where she had placed her for
safety.

“Is Mrs. Mac around?” asked Sammy suspiciously, for he was a bit afraid
of the bluff but kind Scotch housekeeper.

“No, she’s away upstairs,” answered Tess encouragingly. “She won’t be
down for a long time. She and Ruth and Agnes are talking about doing
over one of the rooms. That girl who had something the matter with her
teeth is coming to stay a while.”

“We’re going to have a party,” confided Dot. “But these cakes aren’t for
that,” she hastened to say, lest Sammy might think he would have to wait
too long for the promised reward.

“You mean that that Nally Hastings you’re always talking about is
coming?” asked the boy.

“Yes!” answered both little girls. They did not want to talk too much
for they desired to hear what fun Sammy had in prospect.

Miss Nalbro Hastings, from Boston, had become acquainted with the Corner
House girls some time before. At first she had had the reputation of
being affected and “stuck up,” especially in the manner of her talk.

But later it was learned that she was suffering from the loss of some
teeth, which had been knocked out in a runaway-horse accident, and this
accounted for her speaking of Neale O’Neil as:

“That charming Mistah O’Neil, who ith tho interethting!”

“Well, if Mrs. Mac isn’t around,” began Sammy slowly—“But where’s your
Aunt Sarah?” he suddenly demanded, for he had sharp recollections of how
Miss Maltby had more than once sent him “a-kiting,” as she called it,
when he had been up to some of his mischief.

“Oh, Aunt Sarah has gone for a ride,” chuckled Tess. “You can tell us,
Sammy. But we’ve got to stay in the kitchen until our cakes are done,”
she added, lest Sammy’s plan involve going afield with the cake batter
still in the oven.

“Oh, we can have some of the fun right here,” replied Sammy. “I guess
this is the best place for it, anyhow. You sure Mrs. Mac won’t come down
and catch me?” he asked, looking about and cocking his head on one side,
to listen more sharply.

“No, she and Agnes and Ruth just went upstairs,” reported Tess. “They’ll
be there a long time. Mrs. Mac got the things for us to make the cakes
and told us just how to do it. I’ve made a cake before, but Dot hasn’t,”
and Tess assumed her superior air which moved Dot to exclaim:

“Well, I’ve eaten cakes, anyhow!”

“So’ve I!” chuckled Sammy. “And I’m ready to do it again. Well, if
nobody’s coming I’ll show you the fun. Got any raw beefsteak?” he asked,
suddenly.

“Raw beefsteak?” questioned Dot, wonderingly.

“Sammy Pinkney, have you got a new dog?” demanded Tess, excitedly. “If
you have——”

“Naw, I haven’t got a new dog,” declared Sammy. “Maybe I’m goin’ to have
one, though, for Robbie Foote, who delivers groceries for Mrs. Kranz,
the delicatessen lady, says he thinks he knows where he can get me a dog
if my mother’ll let me have it. But I don’t guess she will as long as I
have Buster.”

“I should think not,” said Tess, with an air of motherly wisdom.

“But a dog is nice,” said Dot. “And if you had one with a very soft and
shaggy back, Sammy, I’d let my Alice-doll ride on him. Buster’s only a
bulldog and not at all nice. He’s really horrid!” and Dot sniffed a
little.

“Well, I haven’t got the dog—yet,” Sammy said.

“Then what do you want the raw beefsteak for?” demanded Tess.

“For the alligator,” whispered Sammy, as if he feared that Mrs. MacCall,
the Scotch housekeeper, would hear him, even on the top floor of the old
and rambling Corner House.

“The alligator!” cried Tess.

“The one we brought you from Plam Island?” demanded Dot.

“’Tisn’t _Plam_ Island, I tell you!” insisted Sammy. “It’s _Palm_,
and——”

“I call it _Plam_,” remarked Dot sweetly and with an air of finality.
“But where is he, Sammy—the alligator I mean? He was so cute, even if he
was homely.”

“I have him outside,” Sammy answered. “I didn’t want to bring him in
until I was sure it was all right. That’s the reason I looked in first
and said ‘hello!’”

“And nearly made me drop my cake,” sighed Dot.

“But what about the raw beefsteak?” asked Tess.

“That’s to make the alligator do the trick,” explained Sammy.

“What trick?” cried both little girls at once.

“I’ll show you.”

Sammy went outside again. Tess and Dot were so eager they could scarcely
await his return, but it was not many minutes before Sammy again made
his appearance with a small box which he put on the kitchen table,
shoving to one side spoons, pans and dishes that had been used with
prodigal extravagance in the making of two very small cakes.

“Get the beefsteak,” Sammy ordered, with an air of one used to being
obeyed.

“I’ll get it. There’s some in the ice box,” offered Tess. “But don’t do
the trick until I get back,” she commanded.

“I won’t,” Sammy promised.

While Tess went to the pantry Dot knelt in a chair as close to the
mysterious box as she could get.

“Let me just peek at him until Tess comes back,” she pleaded. “You don’t
need do the trick.”

Sammy obligingly raised the cover of the box slightly.

“Oh, Sammy Pinkney, what have you done to the lovely alligator?” cried
Dot, starting back.

“Keep still! It’s part of the trick,” answered Sammy.

“Oh, you said you wouldn’t do it while I was gone!” cried Tess
accusingly, as she came in with some shreds of meat and heard the last
words.

“I didn’t,” declared Sammy. “I was just showing him to Dot. I’ll lift
him out now. Put the meat on the table.”

“I haggled off one end of a steak,” said Tess. “I hope Mrs. Mac doesn’t
notice it.”

“If she does,” chuckled Sammy, “tell her one of the cats did it.”

“There’s plenty of them around, but of course Dot and I don’t tell
fibs,” declared Tess. “Now come on. Do the trick, Sammy.”

Sammy looked matters over before opening the box. The shreds of meat
that Tess had placed on the table caught his eyes.

“Don’t leave ’em in such big chunks,” he advised. “Snapper will choke on
’em.”

“Is that what you call your alligator—Snapper?” asked Tess, as she
proceeded to cut up the meat into smaller bits. She and her sisters had
brought the scaly reptile back with them from Palm Island as a souvenir
for Sammy.

“Snapper is his name, and my mother says snappish is his nature,”
answered the boy. “But he only snaps when he wants things to eat. I
guess those are all right,” he went on, as he looked at the bits of
steak cut smaller by Tess.

Then he lifted out onto the table a small, tame alligator, at the sight
of which the two girls broke into exclamations of:

“Oh, isn’t he cute! How did you ever do it! Oh, he looks just like a
circus alligator!”

“Maybe I’ll put him in a circus,” said Sammy. “But it wasn’t easy to
dress him up.”

Sammy had, with the expenditure of much time and (for him) labor, made a
sort of clown suit for the alligator, a little red jacket and green
trousers. The two front legs of the small alligator were thrust through
the sleeves of the red jacket, and the two hind legs stuck out of the
green legs of the trousers.

“Oh, he’s too funny for anything!” declared Dot.

“Wait! You haven’t seen half yet!” promised the boy.

Again he reached into the box he had carried over from his home, which
was catercornered from the Corner House, and this time he lifted out a
small wagon, purchased at the five and ten-cent store. To this vehicle
he had fastened a harness so that Snapper could be hitched to the toy.

“Oh, isn’t that a darling!” cried Tess in ecstasy.

“You could have a show with that!” declared Dot.

“Maybe I will,” said Sammy. “But wait, you haven’t seen it all yet. Wait
till he draws the cart. Keep the meat away from him until I hitch him
up,” he went on. “Once he starts to eating raw steak he won’t pull. I
have to bribe him to do it till he gets better trained. Don’t let him
get the meat, Tess.”

At what, it would seem, was the risk of having her fingers snapped at,
the girl removed the bits of meat from in front of the little alligator.
Sammy then hitched it to the cart and next, taking a shred of meat, held
it a few inches away from Snapper’s nose.

Slowly the alligator from “Plam Island” began crawling across the table,
anxious to get the dainty, and, as he crawled, he hauled after him the
toy cart.

“Oh, that’s perfectly wonderful!” cried Tess.

“Too cute for anything!” added Dot. “Look, Alice-doll,” she went on,
holding her most-loved “child” up to see.

“Aw, what does _she_ know about it?” jeered Sammy.

“My Alice-doll knows more’n you do, Sammy Pinkney, so there!” retorted
Dot.

Just then there was a noise at the outer kitchen door, and the three
children turned apprehensively, thinking it might be their Aunt Sarah or
Mrs. MacCall.

“It’s only Billy Bumps,” remarked Sammy, as he caught sight of the goat
entering. Billy was a sort of privileged neighborhood character, but had
Mrs. MacCall been present he never would have entered her clean kitchen.
However, Sammy, Dot and Tess were not so particular. Besides, they were
watching the alligator do his trick with the little cart.

But peace and quiet was not to reign for long. Billy Bumps, discovering
on a small table in a corner a bit of lettuce, began munching this. His
tail was toward the larger table, on which Snapper was performing, and,
as luck would have it, just then the alligator in his wanderings came to
the edge of the table. The goat’s slightly moving tail was within easy
reach of the jaws.

Perhaps Snapper might have recognized in the goat’s tail a resemblance
to some dainty he was accustomed to feed on while a resident of Palm
Island. Or perhaps Snapper took the goat’s tail for a new form of
beefsteak, of which he was very fond.

However that may be, this is what happened.

Snapper reached forward and, aiming to bite out a generous section of
the goat’s tail, took a firm hold.

“Baa-a-a-a!” bleated the goat.

He wheeled around suddenly, and with such force that he swung Snapper
from the table to the floor, the alligator loosening its grip. But Billy
Bumps had been frightened. He also thought he had been mistreated. With
another bleat, in which rage and reproach were mingled, he made a dash
for the door by which he had entered.

Just as he reached it there entered Robbie Foote with some eggs that
Mrs. Kranz, the “delicatessen lady,” had sent up to the Corner House
from her store.

“Oh!” gasped Robbie. And again: “Oh!”

Well might he say that, for the plunging goat took him in the stomach
and down went Robbie.

Down went the eggs also, in a smash of shells, whites and yellows on the
kitchen floor, and Snapper the alligator, wondering what it was all
about, started to crawl through the mess.

“Oh,” gasped Tess faintly.

“Oh dear!” cried Dot, more loudly.

“This—this—this is fierce!” stuttered Sammy, gazing wildly at the scene
of wreck and confusion.




CHAPTER II: A QUEER PAIR


“Agnes, did you hear anything?”

“I’m not sure, Ruth, but I did think I heard something in the kitchen,
still——”

“I shouldn’t have left Dot and Tess there alone to finish making their
cakes, I’m afraid,” went on the oldest of the Corner House girls. “But
they begged and teased so to be allowed to bake something by themselves,
that I gave in against my better judgment. I’m always doing that!”

“Don’t reproach yourself,” murmured Agnes. “Oh, I’m afraid I’ve broken
one of my nails,” she exclaimed, looking at her well-manicured hands.
“Yes, it _is_ broken!” she sighed. “And I was going to——”

“Something else besides a fingernail is broken, to judge by the racket
down in the kitchen!” exclaimed Ruth, interrupting her “beauty sister,”
as she sometimes called Agnes.

Ruth had opened the door of the room in which she and her sister, with
the housekeeper, Mrs. MacCall, had been discussing the advisability of
having it repapered in anticipation of the time when Miss Hastings
should come to visit them, the Boston girl having accepted a very
cordial invitation to stay a few weeks at the Corner House.

“Something _has_ happened!” declared Ruth, with conviction.

“Oh, the puir bairns!” exclaimed motherly Mrs. MacCall. “Hech! Hech!
Mayhap the dratted stove hae burned them! Oh, woe is me!”

“They know better than to get burned,” answered Ruth. “But I think we’d
better go down and see what has happened.”

“You _think_!” gasped Agnes, looking at her fractured nail. “I just
_know_ we had!”

Followed by Mrs. MacCall, with her ominous “hech! hech!” the while
mumbling incomprehensible Scotch words, the two sisters hastened down
the stairs. When they caught sight of the kitchen with its mixture of
eggs and alligator, Ruth felt like saying what Sammy had said—with added
adjectives.

“Oh, what _has_ happened?” cried Agnes.

“Sammy was doing a trick, Aggie, and—” began Dot. Then she caught sight
of her Alice-doll on the floor with a slowly moving trail of egg yellow,
like lava from a volcano, working toward her, and with a cry sprang to
save her.

“Trick!” spluttered Robbie Foote, as he arose and wiped some white of
egg from his face. “If you call that a trick——”

“What’s burning?” asked Ruth.

“Oh, my cake! My cake!” shouted Tess.

Mrs. MacCall simply raised her hands in the air. She was beyond speech.

“This,” said Sammy Pinkney again, “is _fierce_!”

But it was not always thus in the Corner House. Usually the house was as
quiet and orderly as is the normal household inhabited by four healthy,
happy girls and their friends and playmates. However, this confusion
will serve one good purpose. It will enable me to acquaint my new
readers more formally with the characters who are to play their parts in
this story.

Bloomingsburg was the former home of the Kenway sisters when you first
met them in the opening volume of this series, called “The Corner House
Girls.” There was a reason for that name, since the quartette came to
live in the Corner House at Milton. A distant relative of the Kenways,
Uncle Peter Stower, had died and left the four orphan girls all his
property. This included the Stower homestead, known far and wide in that
section as the old Corner House.

Mr. Howbridge, who was named the guardian of the girls, managed matters
for them and saw to it that Ruth, Agnes, Dot and Tess were safely
domiciled in the Corner House. With them came Aunt Sarah Maltby, an old
lady who was rather a trial at times, for she was always afraid
something was going to happen. What this “something” was she never could
be sure of, but it was an ever-present fear.

However, the looking after the girls devolved more upon stanch Mrs.
MacCall and Uncle Rufus, the devoted colored servant of the late Peter
Stower, so Aunt Sarah did not need to be relied upon.

Thus Ruth, the oldest, and her three sisters, came to live in the Corner
House, the poverty days in Bloomingsburg being a thing of the past.

“She might have come along and visited us just as we are, and just as
she was,” complained Ruth. “But I suppose she thought she had to run
back to Boston for more dresses.”

“That reminds me,” said Agnes thoughtfully, carefully filing her broken
nail. “I suppose we shall need new gowns for the party. Oh, can’t we
afford it, Ruth?”

“I think so.” And Ruth smiled. “We haven’t been very extravagant, Mr.
Howbridge says.” She referred to their man of affairs. “He says we have
some of our summer allowance left.”

“Good! Then I’m going to have that voile I’ve wanted so long. And it’s
going to be lavender, too.”

“I suppose that’s Neale’s favorite color,” remarked Ruth.

“What if it is? Doesn’t Luke like those pale, neutral tints, and——”

“I like them myself,” interrupted Ruth demurely, “and I saw the
loveliest shade of—Who are those two men coming in?” she broke off to
ask the housekeeper.

“Wha’ twa min, dearie?”

“Those queer-looking ones—like two tramps. I just saw them going around
toward the side entrance. Dot and Tess are on the porch. I don’t want
tramps to frighten them or Linda. I’d better go down and see who they
are. I don’t like their looks.”

“But we haven’t settled about the paper for Nally’s room!” called Agnes.

“You settle it with Mrs. Mac,” returned Ruth. “I must see about those
two queer men.”

Dot and Tess had not long lived in their new home before they made the
acquaintance of Sammy Pinkney, who dwelt catercornered from the Corner
House, and Sammy, Dot and Tess had royal good times together.

Ruth and Agnes, being older—in fact, Ruth now being quite a young
lady—had more mature friends. Among them might especially be mentioned
Luke Shepard. His name was being coupled with Ruth’s in “quite a
matrimonial manner,” Agnes laughingly remarked, at which Ruth retorted:

“You needn’t talk! What about Neale O’Neil?”

Whereat Agnes had the grace to blush.

Luke Shepard was a young collegian who was more or less at the Corner
House—less when at college and more often during vacation times. Luke
lived with his sister Cecile at Grantham, not many miles away. Their
Aunt Lorena kept house for the young folks. They had a very good
neighbor, and this neighbor had aided Luke in going to college. But now
the young man was helping himself, having become an assistant during his
vacations to a certain Professor Keeps. Often Luke came to Milton,
staying with Neale O’Neil when he did so.

As for Neale, there was a romantic history connected with him. After
running away from the circus he had lived with the Milton cobbler, and
there was a mystery about his father who had gone to Alaska in search of
gold. There were dark days for Neale until his father came back, not
fabulously rich, but in much better circumstances than when he went
away.

However, the wanderlust called Mr. O’Neil, and he went away again,
first, however, providing well for his son. Had he wished, Neale might
have had a house of his own, but he continued to live with old but
loving Con Murphy, and he continued, too, to look after many details for
the Kenway girls around their place. That this gave him a chance to see
Agnes more often, may have had something to do with it.

The Kenway girls made the most delightful friends, and what wonderful
adventures they had is told in the volumes of this series succeeding the
first. These happenings included going to school, camping out, giving a
play, making an odd find, touring, and growing up. Once the four were
snowbound and had a most amazing time, and again they spent a summer on
a houseboat, following which they had a rather “hectic time,” as Agnes
called it, among the Gypsies.

Their latest adventures had been on Palm Island, or, as Dot insisted on
calling it, “Plam Island,” whither the quartette went because a change
to a warmer climate was needed for their health, severe colds having
been contracted when Ruth and Agnes attended a party on a stormy wintry
day.

In spite of some very exciting and not altogether happy adventures
related in “The Corner House Girls on Palm Island,” which is the title
of the volume immediately preceding the one you are now reading, the
girls enjoyed their summer vacation. They had been home now about two
weeks, when there occurred the happening set down in the first chapter
of this volume.

Wishing to bring Sammy Pinkney back some souvenir from Palm Island, an
alligator, not too large, had been selected, though Dot said he had
expressed a preference for a “turkle.” However, the turtles, of which
there was an abundance on Palm Island, were far too large to bring north
and the young alligator had been a compromise.

That Sammy was delighted with his new pet goes without saying. He even
gave Snapper more attention than Buster, his bulldog, received. Then
Sammy got the idea of dressing up the alligator and of hitching it to a
toy cart.

“Oh, children! what happened?” cried Ruth, despair in her voice.

“I—didn’t—drop—those eggs!” declared Robbie, speaking in gasps, for some
yellow was now running into his mouth. “The goat—he butted me.”

“The goat!” cried Agnes, looking around.

“He’s gone out now,” said Sammy mildly. “The alligator bit his tail!”

“The alligator—” Ruth stopped for want of words.

“Our cakes are burning! Oh, our cakes are burning!” wailed Dot.

There was a decided odor of too-much-baked cake permeating the kitchen.

“I’ll take ’em out for ye!” offered Mrs. MacCall. “Oh, ye puir bairns!
Sorrow is the day!”

“Tess, tell me about it!” commanded Ruth, when the cakes had been
rescued, and only just in time.

While the mess of eggs was being cleaned from the floor by Linda, the
maid, who had been down in the laundry during the excitement, and when
Sammy had ascertained by close examination that his alligator was
unharmed (though one wheel of the cart was broken), peace and quiet once
more reigned in the Corner House.

“But don’t ever do anything like that again, Sammy!” cautioned Ruth,
shaking a warning finger at the boy. “If you want to show off your
alligator, do it in the garage.”

“Yes’m,” mumbled Sammy.

The three younger children were sent out-of-doors, with some of the
newly baked cakes, and the conference upstairs, as to what kind of paper
should be put on the guest room, was resumed.

“Nally is so—so particular,” murmured Agnes, “though she is a dear girl.
I’d like her to have a nice room.” They all called Nalbro, Nally now.




CHAPTER III: DISQUIETING NEWS


Ruth Kenway reached the rear porch of the house just as the two queer
men—ragged and dirty they were, too—were starting down the outside
cellar steps. Ruth had noticed that Tess, Dot and Sammy had departed,
probably having gone over to Sammy’s house, so there was no fear that
the children would be frightened by the tramps. And tramps they seemed
to be.

They were really evil-looking men, and for a moment Ruth hesitated. But
she had not acted as mother to her younger sisters all these years for
nothing. Besides, was not the stout Linda within call and was not Neale
in the garage, working over the car? He could be called in a moment.
Therefore it was with a very cool, calm and collected voice that she
asked:

“What do you want?”

“Oh—er—you see, lady——”

The two men looked up quickly, having been stopped by Ruth’s voice on
the topmost cellar step. The two looked up, but the evidently older, and
certainly the uglier, of the pair, did the talking.

[Illustration: The two men looked up quickly, having been stopped by
Ruth’s voice.]

“There’s been—there’s been a leak in the street water main, lady, and
we’ve been sent to look over your pipes,” he mumbled. “We’re from the
water department,” he added. “We just want to make sure your pipes are
all right.”

He mumbled his words and seemed ill at ease, still Ruth, after hearing
that the men were from the water department, did not pay much attention.
Once before there had been a break in their street, and the water had to
be shut off for a whole day. Ruth remembered this and so said:

“I hope you don’t have to turn the water off. If you do, wait until I
have the maid draw some.”

“Oh, I don’t think we’ll have to shut it off, lady,” said the uglier
man, his companion having already disappeared into the black depths of
the cellar. “If we do I’ll let you know.”

“All right,” Ruth assented as she turned away. It was not uncommon for
the gas man, the one who read the electric meter, and the one who kept
tally of the water meter, to enter the cellar by this rear door
unannounced during the summer when the door was kept open. “The water
turns off up in front,” added the girl, thinking the men might not know
where to find the stop. “But don’t shut it off without letting me know.”

“No’m,” muttered the spokesman, as he followed his companion.

Ruth walked through the kitchen, which now, under the powerful
ministrations of Linda, was resuming its wonted neat appearance.

“What was it, Ruthie?” asked Agnes, coming down with Mrs. MacCall.

“Just some men from the water department to see about a leak.”

“They must na shoot it off until I gang away an’ draw some,” protested
the housekeeper. “Linda, lass——”

“No, they won’t turn it off without telling us,” Ruth assured her. “Now
about the paper—did you settle on a pattern? I want to get the room in
shape for Nally.”

“I think this is the prettiest,” suggested Agnes, holding out a sample,
one of several the decorator had left.

“Yes, that will do nicely,” agreed Ruth. “And now—Oh, what about eggs?”
she asked quickly. “I suppose those poor Robbie brought were all
smashed.”

“A regular omelet!” laughed Agnes.

“I must telephone Mrs. Kranz for more,” said Ruth.

“The boy, he have gone after some,” announced Linda. “But he say he hope
he no have to pay for them what is braked, ’cause he——”

“Of course we wouldn’t think of letting poor Robbie pay for them,”
declared Ruth. “It wasn’t his fault. It was Sammy’s—with the girls’ goat
and his alligator.”

“As much the fault of Dot and Tess as Sammy,” declared Agnes. “They
shouldn’t have let him turn the kitchen table into a circus ring.”

“Oh, well,” and Ruth smiled, “I’ll just telephone Mrs. Kranz to put the
second dozen on our bill and not to scold Robbie,” and as she went into
the other room to the telephone, Mrs. MacCall softly observed:

“Your sister, she thinks of everything, Aggie, my dear! She wauld nae
hae Rabbie scoldit the day.”

“And quite proper, too. But you are right, Mrs. Mac. Ruth is an angel!”

When Ruth, unaware of the kind words spoken in her absence, had finished
straightening out the egg matter, Agnes telephoned for the paper hanger
to come and see about redecorating the room Miss Hastings was to occupy
during her stay. There were to be other guests at the house party, which
was to last at least a week, but the Boston girl was the one over whom
the most “fuss” was made.

“We want to give her a good impression of us,” said Agnes.

“Oh, it isn’t exactly that,” declared Ruth. “She isn’t a bit haughty and
stand-offish, as we at first supposed.”

“And since she has her new teeth and talks like a human being I adore
her!” declared Agnes. “But that room needed papering anyhow. Now let’s
talk about our dresses. I wish we could get some one besides Ann Titus
to make them.”

“But she’s the best one in Milton, and she needs the money,” said Ruth,
gently.

“I know, but she does talk so! If she’s working here and we happen to
have corned beef and cabbage for dinner—as we do sometimes—it’s known
all over Milton next day.”

“Yes, she does talk a lot. But—well, we’ll see about it. Have you
invited Cecile, Agnes?”

“Of course. Think I’d forget her? I put her invitation in with Luke’s.”

“Oh—” Ruth blushed a little.

“Didn’t you expect to have him come?” demanded the “beauty sister.”

“Oh, yes, he might drop in——”

_“Drop_ in, my dear! He’ll _fly_ in at the least opportunity. It’s my
firm belief that he has Linda subsidized!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he bribes her to keep him posted about goings on here, and
whenever we have the least bit of festivity Luke arranges his college
schedule so he can get time off—make cuts, you know—so as to be here. Of
course he only comes to see Neale,” and Agnes tilted her pretty nose
into the air.

Ruth laughed, evidently not ill pleased with her sister’s declaration.

“As for Neale,” went on Agnes, “I’m afraid we’ll keep him pretty busy
acting as chauffeur. Nally is sure to want to drive around a lot, and
there are many pretty places here that we can motor to.”

“Neale likes to be busy,” said Ruth. “After all, he’s a nice boy,
rather.”

“I rather like him,” coolly admitted Agnes. “But there’s one thing—he’s
never silly. He never tries to hold your hand——”

“When you don’t want him to!” finished the other sister, with a laugh.
“Well, all foolishness aside, we must begin to make our plans for the
house party. I do hope everything will go off nicely.”

“Oh, I’m sure it will,” declared Agnes. “And when——”

She was interrupted by a crash down in the cellar.

“That sounds as if something went off the swinging shelf!” she
exclaimed. “Some of Mrs. Mace’s preserves——”

“Those men!” cried Ruth.

“What men?”

“The water men who went down some time ago. I forgot all about them.
Maybe they stumbled over something in the dark. I’ll send Uncle Rufus
down to see about it.”

Uncle Rufus was summoned from the garage where he had gone to do some
polishing on the car which Neale had left temporarily, to go down town
for some part that needed replacing.

“Yes’m, Missie Ruth, what is it, please?” asked the faithful old colored
man as he bowed his way in.

“Uncle Rufus, two men from the water department went down into the
cellar about an hour ago to see about a leak,” explained Ruth. “They
must be there yet, for Agnes and I just heard a noise. I wish you’d see
if they’re all right and haven’t broken anything.”

“All right, yes’m, missie, I’ll look after ’em.”

Rufus shuffled away, and the sisters, resuming their talk about the
coming party, soon heard him returning, muttering to himself the while.
In a moment he appeared before the two girls.

“Did they go, Uncle Rufus?” asked Ruth.

“Yes’m, they done went all right.”

“Just now?”

“No’m, they was leavin’ when I went down.”

“Did they find the leak?”

“’Deed an’ I doan know ’bout dat, Miss Ruth. Dey went out in such a
hurry when I walked in dat dey didn’t say what dey done found.”

“Did they break anything, Uncle Rufus?” demanded Agnes.

“No’m, Ah couldn’t see dat dey did. De swing shelf—whut yo’ spoke
’bout—dat was all right, an’ de preserves. I couldn’t see whut dey done.
But dey sho’ was a queer couple!”

“What do you mean—queer couple?” asked Ruth quickly.

“Well, I means dat dey went off in such a hasty way, an’ dey didn’t say
if dey saw any leak or nuffin’.”

“I guess they didn’t, or they would have told us to shut off the water,”
commented Ruth. “As for being queer—certainly they looked like tramps,
but I don’t suppose men who have to burrow in trenches and sewers all
day long can be spick and span. I’m glad there’s no leak, however. That
will be all, Uncle Rufus.”

“Thank-ee, Miss Ruth. I wants to git de automobubble shined up ’fo
Mistah Neale gits back,” and out he shuffled.

“I hope nothing goes wrong with the water pipes when we have company,”
remarked Agnes. “It would be very inconvenient.”

“Yes, it would. We’ll have the plumber come over to make sure there
isn’t a leak. Those men didn’t look any too intelligent. I wonder how
they ever got their job.”

It was later in the afternoon, when Neale O’Neil came to the house to
announce that the car was now in running order again, that Agnes called
to him:

“Neale, did you hear anything about a break in the street water main
while you were down town?”

“No, I didn’t,” he answered. “What is it, a joke? If it is I’ll bite. Go
on, what’s the answer?”

“It isn’t a joke,” said Ruth, and she detailed the visit of the two
strange men.

“Hum,” mused Neale. “That’s rather odd. There hasn’t been any leak up
this way or the street gang would have been out. I’ll take a look down
cellar myself.”

He did, with the result that he came up shaking his head.

“What’s the matter?” inquired Ruth.

“There isn’t a sign of a leak or a break down there,” the boy replied.
“Those men must have gotten in the wrong house. But I know one of the
water commissioners and I’ll ask him about it this afternoon. I have to
go to the town hall to see about something else.”

That evening, when Neale dropped in, as he often did, and Luke had
telephoned to say that he and his sister were in town and were going to
call, Ruth remembered to ask him about the two strange men.

“Were they from the water department, Neale?” she wanted to know.

“Who, those fakers?” asked the youth.

“Fakers?” repeated Agnes. “Were they——”

“They weren’t from the water commissioner’s office at all,” declared
Neale. “He hasn’t had any men out for a week looking for leaks, for
there haven’t been any. They were just plain tramps, in my opinion.”

“Tramps!” gasped Ruth. “Why should tramps spend so much time in our
cellar? Oh, Neale——”

“Maybe they’re planning to rob the house!” came in strident tones from
Sammy Pinkney, who was sitting in a corner with Dot and Tess. “Maybe
they’re burglars!”




CHAPTER IV: IN A HURRY


Dot Kenway gave a long-drawn-out cry of “Ohoo-oo-oo!” and clasped her
Alice-doll more closely in her arms. Tess looked over her shoulder and
snuggled farther back into the corner. Agnes glanced up from a low chair
where she was polishing her nails, and Ruth uttered sharply:

“Don’t talk nonsense, Sammy!”

“Well,” demanded the boy, ready to defend his opinion, “if they weren’t
burglars, who were they?”

“Stop it, Sammy Pinkney!” demanded Tess. “Don’t you see you’re scaring
Dot?”

“Maybe you’re scared, too,” suggested Sammy.

“I am not!”

“You are so!”

“I am not!”

“Children!” warned Ruth. “Please be quiet. And, Sammy, don’t say such
things.”

“Well, s’posin’ they was the truth?”

“They couldn’t be! Those men weren’t burglars at all.”

“Who were they then?” and Sammy triumphantly waited for the answer.
“Neale says they weren’t from the water department, and I just know they
are burglars and they came in the cellar to look around and see the
easiest way to break in to-night.”

“Cut it out, young man!” ordered Neale. “They were tramps, very likely,
looking for something to eat, and when they couldn’t find it they
quietly went away. They said they were from the water department because
that was the first thing they thought of. Very likely, at the next
house, they’ll say they’re from the fire department.”

“That would be funny!” laughed Tess. “Fire and water.”

And with her laugh the strain they had all been under when Neale gave
the disquieting news, that the strange men were not what they claimed to
be, seemed dispelled.

The feeling did not wholly disappear, however, for Agnes said later that
she thought there might be a good deal of truth in what Sammy said, and
that the men did have some idea they might rob the house.

Dot, too, needed more than a laugh to fully dispel her fears, and this
was evidenced a little later when she was observed to be walking around
the room, as if looking for something.

“What is it, Dot?” inquired Ruth, glancing at the clock to see if it
were time to send Sammy home and put the smaller children to bed, for
Luke and his sister were expected soon.

“I’m looking for a good place to hide my Alice-doll,” answered Dot.

“Why don’t you take her to bed with you as you always do?” Agnes wanted
to know.

“Because those burglars might come in and I don’t want them in my room,”
Dot replied. “And I don’t want them to take my Alice-doll, either.”

“Oh, don’t be silly!” burst out Agnes.

“’Tisn’t silly!” declared Dot. “And Tess is going to hide her doll, too;
aren’t you, Tess?” She appealed to her sister who, though not as
passionately devoted to her dolls as was Dot to Alice, still had some
that she cared something about.

“I was going to hide them,” confessed Tess.

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Ruth. “Go to sleep and forget all about the men.
They were, as Neale says, just tramps. Uncle Rufus will lock up well,
and nothing will disturb you children, or your dolls either. You must go
to bed soon.”

“Well, I’m going to hide my Alice-doll,” declared Dot, and she finally
found a place behind the piano that seemed safe.

“If you want me to,” said Sammy, with an ingratiating voice, “I could
come over and stay all night with you.”

“Thanks, but why should you?” asked Neale, winking one eye at Agnes.

“Well, in case burglars did get in,” answered Sammy, “I could shoot off
the gun.”

“What gun?”

“My father’s got a shotgun,” went on the boy, “and I could go over home
and get it. I could bring Billy Bumps into the house, too! He’d butt the
rob—tramps!”

“Don’t!” cried Ruth, with a laugh. “We’ve had enough of the goat in the
house for one day!”

“Still, a good healthy goat wouldn’t be a bad weapon to turn against a
burglar,” remarked Neale reflectively. “If Billy Bumps would only go at
a midnight visitor in the same manner that he attacked Robbie Foote with
the eggs, there’d be less for the police to do.”

“Do you want me to get the gun and the goat?” asked Sammy, anxiously.

“Thank you—no!” laughed Ruth. “And, Sammy, I don’t want to be impolite,
but your mother said to send you home at eight o’clock, and it’s five
minutes past now.”

“Aw, shucks!” exclaimed Sammy. “That ain’t late!”

“It is for you,” said Ruth kindly. “Run along, Sammy.”

“Then you don’t want me to fight the burglars with your old goat and
pa’s gun?”

“Not to-night, thank you.”

“And don’t bring the alligator over again, either,” added Agnes.

Rather reluctantly Sammy prepared to depart, and after Dot and Tess had
hidden their dolls and some other choice possessions, they were sent
upstairs to bed in care of Mrs. MacCall.

“And don’t tell them any Scotch ghost stories,” cautioned Ruth. “They’re
on edge now, as it is, with what that irrepressible Sammy said about
burglars.”

“Nae, nae! I’ll nae tell them anything excitin’,” promised the motherly
old soul.

“Oh, my!” suddenly exclaimed Agnes, as the door bell rang after Ruth had
returned from seeing Sammy off and Dot and Tess upstairs to bed. “Oh!”
and she sprang up so abruptly that her nail buffer bounced half-way
across the room.

“Well, what’s getting into you?” demanded Neale, with a laugh, as he
picked up the part of the manicure set and restored it to Agnes, making
good an opportunity to hold her hand while Ruth went to see who was at
the door, calling back:

“It’s probably Luke and Cecile!”

And it was. Ruth led them back into the living-room in time to hear
Agnes saying to Neale:

“Stop! Stop it, I say! Aren’t you silly!”

Agnes had rather a red face, but if Luke noticed that Neale’s hair was a
bit tumbled, the young collegian said nothing about it.

“Oh, we’ve had such a fright!” exclaimed Agnes, after greeting the
visitors.

“Fright?” repeated Cecile, questioningly.

“Yes. Two strange men got in the cellar——”

“Oh, they didn’t _get_ in at all, in the way you think Agnes means,”
Ruth was quick to explain. “I saw them go in,” and she told the story,
including what Neale had discovered to the effect that the men had told
false stories about themselves.

“I dare say it doesn’t amount to anything,” suggested Luke easily. “And
it might well be that some assistant in the water department had engaged
two laborers in a hurry and forgot to give them any credentials, or
report their names. I wouldn’t worry.”

“Oh, we aren’t,” declared Ruth. “We have enough other things to think
about. I do hope you two haven’t made up your minds definitely that you
can’t be here for our house party all through its duration. Nally is
coming.

“We want you over as often as either of you can make it, at any rate,
for we will give several small and early affairs to entertain Nally,”
she went on, after Cecile and Luke had assured her that neither of them
would be able to spend the whole time of Nally’s visit with the Corner
House girls.

“Aunt Lorena needs me,” explained Cecile. “But Professor Keeps is not
keeping Luke quite so busy now, and you will have more of him, I think.”

The young people sat about and talked such talk as only young folks
indulge in without any harmful after effects, and then they played a
game, with more regard to fun than to the strict rules the game called
for.

“Well, Neale, I suppose you’re getting ready for the grind soon,”
remarked Luke, after the game and while Ruth gave the word for Linda to
bring in some simple refreshments.

“Meaning high school?”

“That’s it.”

“Yes, I’ll be getting back in a few weeks now.”

“I do hope you won’t be so busy but what you can run our car
occasionally,” suggested Agnes. “I’d feel lost without you at the wheel,
Neale.”

“Oh, I’ll be there,” he promised.

“We shall have to give Nally a good time,” said Ruth, “and I was
planning two or three picnics. You’ll come, won’t you, Cecile?” she
asked, but she looked at Luke.

“Yes, if I can. I don’t know how much time brother can spare from his
work, but——”

“You leave it to brother!” chuckled Luke, with a meaning look at Neale.
“I haven’t been with Professor Keeps all summer for nothing. I learned
more than he thought I did.”

The evening passed pleasantly, and when the time came for Neale, Luke
and Cecile to depart, the two young men insisted on going around the
house to make sure all outer doors were securely fastened.

“Oh, it’s silly to think those men could be anything more than
unfortunate, ignorant tramps,” insisted Ruth.

“Yes, perhaps,” said Luke in a low voice. “But, my dear—” and how
naturally the words came to him—“we mustn’t take any chances.”

And Ruth treasured that “we,” for a long time.

Somewhat to the disappointment of Tess and Dot, and to the expressed
chagrin of Sammy, the Corner House was not robbed that night. Not a
sight or sound of intruders marred the rest of the girls, and even Dot
laughed as she pulled her Alice-doll from behind the piano.

“Well, Agnes,” remarked Ruth, when the household had settled into its
usual calm routine, “shall we go down town and see Miss Ann Titus?”

“About our dresses? Oh, I suppose so. But don’t say a word about those
two men!”

“Oh, of course not! There is no need of its being known all over the
neighborhood, and I know what Ann Titus is as well as you do. Mum is the
word, as Neale would say.”

The girls found Miss Titus, as usual, with a mouth full of pins, as she
draped a dress on one of the forms in her little house. But even the
pins in her mouth did not prevent the village dressmaker from talking:

“So glad you came in. I have some of the loveliest new patterns and
ideas, straight from Paris, my dears! You know they’re wearing fuller
and longer skirts now, and——”

“No extreme styles, if you please, Miss Titus,” said Ruth, firmly.

“Oh, I know, my _dear_. You were always _so_ preservative, and I quite
apprehend what you mean. At the same time if a dress isn’t the least bit
_chick_ nowadays, it is sort of pass, don’t you think?”

The girls could hardly keep their faces straight during this
mispronunciation of French words and misapplication of English ones.
Poor Ann Titus had not formerly been this way, but since a new
dressmaker had started a place in Milton, Miss Titus thought it
necessary to adopt for herself what she considered a French style, and
some of what she thought were their mannerisms, while she had the plate
on her door changed from the word “_Dressmaker_,” to the foreign one
_“Modes_.”

However, she was a good soul, if gossipy, and as long as Ruth and Agnes
knew her failing they were on their guard.

They were in the midst of a discussion over materials and patterns when
Ruth, happening to look from an open window near the street, saw two men
passing.

“There they are now!” she cried, before she thought. She sprang from her
chair to go to the door, but her voice carried more plainly than she had
intended, and the men, hearing it, looked at her and then started off
down the street on the run.

Agnes followed her sister.

“Do you mean those two men who were in our cellar?” she cried.

“Hush! Yes,” whispered Ruth. But Miss Titus had heard.




CHAPTER V: VISITORS ARRIVE


The dressmaker literally “pricked up her ears,” for as Agnes told Neale
later, they actually seemed to rise on her head as she heard the girls
mention the mysterious men.

“What’s that?” exclaimed Miss Titus. “Have those men done something?”

“Not that we know of,” answered Ruth, making a signal to her sister not
to say anything.

“But you seemed so startled on beholding them,” went on the dressmaker,
“that I should impend it might mean something.”

“Oh, nothing at all,” Ruth made haste to say, wanting to laugh, but not
daring to when Miss Titus used “impend” so incorrectly. “I just thought
I had seen them before, but perhaps I was mistaken.”

This was true enough. She was not absolutely sure that these were the
same men she had seen entering the cellar. But she had a pretty clear
conviction that they were, else why should they have made such haste to
get away when they heard her voice? Agnes, of course, had not viewed the
men—that is, Ruth thought she had not—so she could not be expected to
remember them.

“Well, of all things—” began Ann Titus, and the girls thought they were
going to be made the victims of her gossiping tongue when she
unexpectedly swung the suspicions into another channel that suited Ruth
and Agnes. For Miss Titus said: “Maybe they’re some of those men from
Palm Island who were after turtles. They may have come here to sell
turtles or their eggs.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised!” exclaimed Ruth, adapting her mind
to Ann Titus’ and again signaling to Agnes to fall in with this new turn
of the talk. As a matter of fact, nothing the turtle men could do would
have been a surprise to a mind like Ann Titus’. The story of the Corner
House girls’ stay on Palm Island was well known in Milton by this time,
and the actions of the turtle-fishers had been well spread so that Miss
Titus, among others, knew of the doings of those men.

“Well, if they pester you to buy their condiments—rather unpleasant I
should think, turtles’ eggs, myself—” said the dressmaker, “why don’t
you tell the police?”

“I think we shall,” decided Ruth. “It isn’t really anything at all,” and
she tried to make her voice sound casual, for if Miss Titus had the
least suspicion of a secret, or something mysterious, she would never
rest until she fathomed it—or thought she had. And, in either case, she
would have gossiped about it.

But, fortunately for Ruth and Agnes, she accepted the version of turtle
gatherers—a conclusion she herself had leaped at—and because the new
dresses were to be something out of the ordinary, there was something
else to occupy what little mind Miss Titus had and, in consequence, the
incident passed off rather well.

“But I was in mortal terror lest she begin asking a lot of questions we
couldn’t very well answer,” said Agnes, when they were on their way
home.

“So was I,” admitted Ruth. “And it’s just as well to let her suppose
those were turtle gatherers. Everybody in town has been talking about
them, and Ann Titus won’t gain many listeners when she begins speaking
of them.”

“But they weren’t the turtle men,” said Agnes, laughing. “What do you
suppose put that in Ann’s head? But I wish we knew who these two men
were.”

“Yes,” agreed Ruth. “I, too, wish I knew who they were.”

“Does it worry you, Ruth?” her sister asked anxiously.

“A little—yes,” the older sister was forced to admit. “Oh, of course I
know there’s no danger with Uncle Rufus, Linda and Mrs. MacCall with us;
and yet——”

“Why don’t you add Neale and Luke?” inquired Agnes, with a laugh.
“They’ll be with us—more or less—principally more I hope—until after
this house party.”

“Well, since you have named them, I am glad they are going to be
around,” conceded Ruth. “Not that I fear anything will happen, but I
don’t like the way those men acted. Why, they might be lunatics!”

“They didn’t act at all, according to what Uncle Rufus said,” retorted
Agnes.

“No, and that’s just the trouble,” went on Ruth. “If they had done
something while down cellar—if they had dug up a place to find a leak,
if they had tightened the pipes, anything to show that they were what
they claimed to be, it wouldn’t be so mysterious. But now it looks as if
they just went in there, as Sammy said, to look for an easy means of
entering the house after dark.”

“Ruth Kenway, don’t dare say such things!” cried her sister.

“I know it seems a scary thing to say, and perhaps I am foolish for
mentioning it,” sighed Ruth. “I know I’d shake Sammy if he spoke of it
again, but I can’t help thinking it, Agnes.”

“Do you suppose we had better tell Mr. Howbridge?” asked her sister,
pausing at the corner of a street that led to the office of their
guardian.

“Gracious, no!” exclaimed Ruth. “He would only laugh at us.”

“What are you going to do then?” demanded Agnes. “I hope you aren’t
following those two men you saw from Miss Titus’ window! If you are——”

She paused and drew back.

“Of course not!” answered Ruth. “But I’m going to mention it to Neale
and Luke.”

Upon inquiry they learned that Cecile had been called home by her aunt,
but Luke was still staying with Neale.

Those two youths, however, did not attach much importance to what Ruth
told them.

“They might have been the same men,” Neale admitted. “But as long as
they haven’t been back in your cellar it doesn’t mean anything. Very
likely they are tramps, pretending to look for work. I’ll speak to the
policeman whose beat takes in your house.”

“I wish you would,” said Ruth.

There were now busy days at the Corner House. But a few weeks remained
of the summer vacation, and the girls wanted to make the most of it,
Tess and Dot especially. Nor were Luke and Neale unaware of the flight
of the glorious summer time. For though Luke was anxious to complete his
college course, and Neale his high-school studies, that he might get in
the honored class with Luke, neither youth was so abnormal as to wish
for the end of vacation.

“Especially,” remarked Neale to Luke, “when we’re going to have such
good times next week.”

“Yes, we do have good times at the Corner House,” admitted Luke, looking
off in the distance but seeing nothing. “She certainly is a wonderful
girl!”

And he sighed.

“She sure is!” agreed Neale.

And he sighed.

But they were not both sighing for the same girl.

The room which Nalbro Hastings was to occupy had been repapered and
looked “darling,” according to Agnes, who almost wished she had taken it
for herself. “And maybe I will after she goes,” she added. Mrs. Judy
Roach had been at the Corner House nearly every day for a week, helping
Mrs. MacCall and Linda get things spick and span in preparation for the
house party, and there had been almost endless baking, Mrs. MacCall
insisting on making some Scotch scones in honor of the visitors.

Two days before Miss Hastings was expected, Ruth, with a letter in her
hand, sought out Agnes.

“Agnes,” began Ruth, “I want to consult you about something.”

“Don’t tell me Nally isn’t coming!”

“Oh, no, it isn’t that. But we need another boy to make this a
successful affair.”

“Another boy?” inquired Agnes. “Well, there’s Sammy Pinkney.”

“Don’t be silly! You know what I mean—some one for Nally.”

“I thought Luke was supposed to look after her,” and Agnes pretended to
be busily examining a certain pink nail.

“Not any more than Neale is,” retorted Ruth pointedly, to which Agnes
added:

“Just let me catch him at it!”

“What I was going to say,” went on Ruth, “is that if we had another
young man it would even matters up, and when we went out with Neale in
the car——”

“Oh, I see!” interrupted Agnes, with a ringing laugh, “six is a half
dozen and five isn’t. If Cecile was coming we’d need two young men.
Well, ask some young man for Nally. You have my permission.”

“I have asked somebody,” said Ruth calmly.

“You have? Who?” And Agnes sat up with a jerk, her eyes wide open.

“He’s a friend of Nally’s,” went on Ruth. “He lives near her in the Back
Bay section and his name is Hal Dent.”

“Hurray for Hal Dent!” cried Agnes, until Ruth, placing her hand over
her sister’s lips, bade her be silent. “But it’s pretty late to be
asking visitors,” went on Agnes. “He’ll never get here in time to trot
Nally around if you’re only just now writing to him.”

“Oh, this is his answer saying he’ll come,” said Ruth, passing the
missive to her sister.

“Well of all things!” drawled Agnes. “Doing all that—inviting a strange
young man and never saying a word to me!”

“I wasn’t sure he would come,” Ruth said. “After I thought it over and
remembered to have heard Nally mention this Hal Dent, I thought it best
to ask him. I told him Nally was going to spend about two weeks with us,
and suggested that he might like to run over. I said we could put him
up.”

“Did you say put him up, or put up _with_ him?” mocked Agnes.

“You know what I mean,” said Ruth. “Anyhow, he’s coming and we’ll have
to get another room ready.”

“Well, I’m glad he’s coming,” said Agnes. “It will be another defender
for the house when those strange men attempt to break in,” and though
she laughed gayly there was another reason why she was glad Hal was
coming.

Nalbro Hastings was altogether too fascinating to be turned loose into a
company where there were three young ladies and but two young men. In
other words the “balance of trade,” to use a business term, was now more
even.

And perhaps Ruth had a thought for herself as well as for Agnes and
Neale, since she had seen Luke, more than once, looking admiringly at
the Boston girl.

“There, she’s as shiny as a new dishpan from the five and ten-cent
store!” announced Neale, as he put the finishing touches to the Kenway
automobile, two days later.

“And we’d better start,” suggested Ruth. “We don’t want Nally to have to
come up in a taxicab.”

“Especially the kind of taxicabs at the Milton station,” laughed Agnes.
“Will Hal be on the same train?”

“He said he would,” Ruth answered.

“I wonder what he’s like.”

A little later Miss Hastings, followed by the devoted Hal, alighted, the
youth burdened with Nally’s bag as well as his own.

“Oh, Nally! So glad to see you!”

“It seems an age since we said good-by! How are you?”

“Oh, perfectly fine!” All traces of Nalbro’s lisping had vanished.

“You look splendid.”

“Like a nectarine!” chimed in Neale.

“Oh, hello, Neale! I didn’t see you!” called Nally.

“No, I didn’t think you’d recognize me without my mustache!” retorted
the high-school lad, with a chuckle.

“I knew I’d be glad to see you,” remarked Agnes, “but didn’t know until
you got here how really and awfully glad I’d be. And this is——?”

“Oh, Hal, pardon me,” said Nally quickly. “Allow me——”

The presentations were made amid laughter, and then the visitors were
carried off to the Corner House where, though the girls knew it not, a
mystery remained to be solved.




CHAPTER VI: WITCHES AND WARLOCKS


There were whisperings in the “cubby hole” beneath the front stairs.
This was a favorite conspiring place for Tess and Dot, and the two small
Kenway girls were even now in that retreat, lowering their voices so
they would not be heard by Ruth and Agnes.

But there was small danger of this, for the older Corner House girls
were preparing to entertain their two Boston guests that evening by
inviting in other friends to meet Nally and Hal.

And, be it known, Tess and Dot were preparing to do some “entertaining”
on their own account. Hence the whispers and the hiding away in the
cubby hole.

“We’d better tell Sammy about it,” suggested Dot. “He’ll know best what
things to do to s’prise ’em.”

“Well, maybe,” agreed Tess reluctantly.

“We could borrow Sammy’s alligator to make everybody remember about Plam
Island,” went on Dot.

“’Tisn’t _Plam_—” began Tess, but she stopped, for she, as well as the
others, had begun to realize that it was of no use to correct Dot in
this respect. To her it was “Plam Island,” and it always would be so.

“Yes, we can get Sammy’s alligator,” agreed Tess, falling in with the
scheme of her younger sister. “But all it can do is to walk around the
room drawing the little cart. Sammy’s trained it to do that very well.
But there isn’t anything very _exciting_ about that.”

Tess, be it known, liked excitement.

“Well, maybe Sammy can think up some other way to have fun,” said Dot.
“We’ll go ask him, and if they don’t let us come in to their old party
we’ll have one of our own.”

“I guess they’re not going to let us in,” remarked Tess, as they crawled
from the dark closet beneath the stairs. “I heard Ruth tell Mrs. Mac to
set some places for us up in the playroom. Pooh! It isn’t any fun for us
to eat ice cream and cake up there all alone when they’re having loads
and loads of fun down here.”

“No, it isn’t,” agreed Dot. “There, Alice-doll, don’t you cry,” she
added, as she soothed the pretend child she carried in her arms. “You’re
going to come to the party all right.”

“Are you going to take her along over to Sammy’s?” inquired Tess.

“Take my Alice-doll? Of course!” cried Dot, for they were now out on the
side porch. “You’d cry, wouldn’t you, Alice-doll, if I left you behind?”

“She’ll only be in the way, and Sammy doesn’t like dolls,” went on Tess.
Sometimes the solicitude of Dot for the Alice-doll rather got on Tess’s
nerves—or she would so have expressed it had she been a little older.

“Oh, all right,” assented Tess, after a brief pause, “bring her along,”
and she assumed the resigned air she had sometimes noticed in Agnes when
Ruth insisted on something being done in a certain correct way.

“Did bad sister Tess want me to leave you home, Alice-doll?” crooned
Dot, as they walked across the street, catercornered, to Sammy’s house.
“Well, I just wouldn’t!”

Tess and Dot found Sammy on his back porch, in the sun, busy feeding
bits of meat to the pet alligator.

“Look how big he’s getting!” cried the boy proudly. “I guess maybe by
next summer he’ll be big enough to hitch to my regular express wagon and
he can draw me around.”

“Oh, that would be scrumptious!” cried Dot, clapping her hands. “Could I
ride with you, Sammy?”

“Sure!”

“Hum!” murmured Tess, as she smoothed out her dress. “I think it would
look very queer, and maybe you would be arrested.”

“Arrested for what?” scoffed Sammy. “Not for speedin’, that’s sure.
Snapper can’t go very fast.”

“Well, maybe you’d be arrested for _something_,” declared Dot, ready now
to agree with Tess. “I don’t know what. But it’s _something_.”

“Maybe she means cruelty to animals, like that Italian banana peddler
who was arrested once,” suggested Tess.

“Aw, a alligator isn’t an animal!” declared Sammy. “Anyhow, I wouldn’t
be cruel to him. Why, I keep feedin’ him meat all the while. He has it
easy!”

And certainly the alligator from Palm Island did seem to fare very well
in Sammy’s care. After he had eaten some of the meat, Snapper was
hitched to the little cart and drew it about the porch. Dot was finally
persuaded to entrust her Alice-doll to the small wagon, and the girls
and Sammy laughed in delight as they saw the alligator pulling her about
the porch.

“This is what we came over about,” explained Tess, when Snapper was
allowed to eat some meat scraps in peace. “There’s going to be a party
over at our Corner House to-night. There’s going to be ice cream and
cake and lemonade.”

“Oh, boy!” murmured Sammy, rubbing his stomach. “Am I coming?” he
suddenly demanded, realizing that, so far, he had not been invited.

“Of course you are,” declared Tess. “And we want you to make some fun.
Can you do something exciting, Sammy, when that girl from Boston is
there, and her fellah?”

“I love to hear her scream,” said Dot. “To-day she screamed when she saw
a caterpillar on the walk.”

“What can you do exciting, Sammy?” eagerly asked Tess.

“He could make a tic-tac and put it on the window,” suggested Dot.

“That isn’t exciting!” scoffed the boy. “It wouldn’t scare even your
Aunt Sarah.”

“It used to scare me,” confessed Dot.

“But we want something new,” stipulated Tess. “Can you think of
something like—like a ghost, Sammy?”

“Oh, _a ghost_!” shrilly whispered Dot.

“Not a _real_ ghost, of course,” went on Tess. “There aren’t any. But a
make-believe ghost, Sammy. Could you make one?”

Sammy thought long and deeply—at least for him. Then he clapped his
hands and cried:

“I have it! The very thing!”

“What?” demanded the girls.

Then they put their heads together and whispered.

“Where are the children?” asked Ruth of Agnes, a little later, when they
were both down in the kitchen, making arrangements with Mrs. MacCall and
Linda about the serving of refreshments at the little affair that
evening. It was the first of some informal gatherings to entertain
Nalbro Hastings and Hal Dent.

“The bairns?” repeated the Scotch housekeeper. “I think they have gang
awa’.”

“Where?” asked Ruth.

“Sammy’s hame. Hech! Hech! An’ I’m not so sure but what they’ll be up to
mischief foreby.”

“Oh, well, if they’re with Sammy they’re all right,” said Agnes.

“You never can tell,” remarked Ruth.

But when she had taken a look, and made sure that the three youngsters
were on Sammy’s porch, she worried no longer, but devoted herself to the
business on hand. However, if she could have heard the plotting and
planning, Ruth might have not been so easy in her mind.

Neale stopped the Kenway car on the drive and leaped out, carrying
several packages.

“There, I think I have everything,” he announced. “Except perhaps rings
for the lady-fingers.”

“Did you order the ice cream?” asked Ruth.

“It’ll be here on the dot!” answered Neale. “And I doubt not a portion
of it will be inside our Dot,” he added, with a laugh.

“A wretched pun,” scoffed Agnes. “If that’s a sample of what you are
going to work off on us this evening——”

“Oh, I’ve some a lot better than that!” boasted Neale. “Has Luke been
over?” he inquired.

“No,” answered Ruth. “And that reminds me—we must ask some one for
Cecile.”

“Only one person you dare ask for her,” laughed Agnes. “Telephone and
tell her loving garage man, Gene Barrows, to come, Neale. Maybe he’ll
bring her over in a car.”

“I will,” he promised, for the devotion to Cecile of this red-haired,
but most excellent, young man was well known, and they had been engaged
for some time.

“Well, I guess everything is all ready then,” remarked Ruth. “But we had
better go over some matters again, Agnes, to make sure.”

“Oh, I can’t!” cried the younger sister. “I’m sure it will be all right.
I’m going riding a little with Neale.”

She ran down the porch and took her place beside the high-school lad.

“You don’t mind, do you, Ruthie?” she asked pleadingly.

“Oh, no, go ahead. I can manage. Everything is practically done, anyhow.
But make sure about the ice cream while you’re down town.”

“We will,” promised Neale.

“Ruth takes everything so seriously,” said Agnes, as the car was rolling
down the street.

“Yes, she does,” admitted Neale. “But maybe it’s a good thing. Luke’s
the same way.”

“They’re a good match,” assented Agnes, with a mischievous glance at
Neale, but when he slid his hand along the seat toward her rosy palm she
laughed and, extending a finger, asked:

“Did you see anything of our cow down that way?”

“No. But I see a pretty, saucy girl, and I don’t have to look very far,
either,” retorted Neale, a bit put out. Thereupon Agnes kindly patted
his hand that was firm on the steering wheel.

Nally and Hal Dent, who had been strolling afield, came home just before
supper time.

“Oh, Ruth, you are going to so much trouble on our account!” protested
the Boston girl, when she saw how prettily, if simply, the rooms of the
Corner House were arranged.

“I love to do it,” Ruth said, and she really did. Giving pleasure to
others was her own chief source of happiness.

In the evening the little affair was in full swing. Ruth thought it
rather strange that Tess and Dot did not protest more when told that
they must have their refreshments served in their playroom upstairs. But
they had gained a point in having Sammy invited to the party, and Ruth
thought perhaps this accounted for their unnatural submissiveness.

But mischief was brewing.

Linda had been sent up to the room of the children with sufficiently
generous portions of ice cream and cake, and downstairs there was merry
talk and laughter.

Suddenly, as Mrs. MacCall was coming down the hall and into the
living-room with a tray filled with glasses of lemonade, the Scotch
housekeeper was heard to scream.

“Oh!” gasped Ruth and to her mental vision was presented the faces of
the two ugly men who had entered the cellar.

Into the room burst Mrs. MacCall, her trembling hands barely able to
hold the tray on which the glasses were clattering and tinkling.

“What is it?” demanded Ruth.

“Ghosties! Ghosties!” gasped Mrs. MacCall. “There’s witches an’ warlocks
an’ lang-nebbied things abroad the nicht! Hech! Hech!”

Luke sprang forward just in time to catch the tray she was about to
drop, and then into the room after the housekeeper came a queer, white
object, rolling over and over in a most erratic fashion.




CHAPTER VII: LUKE REMEMBERS


“Goodness, what is it?” cried Nalbro, and she turned toward Hal, not a
very difficult operation as he had been near her all evening.

“Where did it come from, Mrs. MacCall?” asked Ruth, as she observed the
object, which looked like an immense white egg, rolling farther and
farther into the living-room.

“It was in the hall. Hech! Hech! It’s a ghostie, sure! A witch! A
warlock! Lang-nebbied—lang-nebbied!”

“It hasn’t a long nose at all, if that’s what you mean,” declared Agnes,
for she was sufficiently familiar with the housekeeper’s Scotch dialect
to interpret these words.

“Aye, lassie, mebby not the noo. But e’er it’ll gang awa’——”

“Why, it’s a football!” exclaimed Luke. “A football painted white!”

“So it is,” agreed Neale, for many a blown-up pigskin he had help shove
over the goal line.

“Who kicked it in here?” demanded Ruth, but, even as she asked, she
began to suspect Sammy, Dot and Tess.

“’Twas nae kicket,” asserted Mrs. MacCall, who had sunk trembling into a
rocking chair. “’Twas nae kicket. But ’twas rollin’ alang by its
anesel’.”

And, truly, the white football—ghostly enough alone—was making its way
over the floor in a strange fashion, rolling first to one side and then
to the other.

“It moves like one of those Mexican beans with a bug inside,” laughed
Neale.

“Well, a football was made to kick, and here goes!” cried Luke,
advancing toward the pigskin.

“Don’t kick it! Don’t!” cried a voice outside the living-room door, and
from the hall in sprang Sammy Pinkney, followed by the giggling Tess and
Dot, the latter carrying her Alice-doll.

“Why shouldn’t I kick it, young man?” demanded Luke.

“’Cause there’s—now—there’s somethin’ inside,” asserted Sammy.

“What?” was called at him in a chorus.

“My alligator!”

“Alligator!” Again the chorus, but in different-toned voices.

“Yes, I’ll show you.”

Sammy knelt over the white-painted football—for it was that—and began
unlacing it to remove the outer cover of pigskin which inclosed the
rubber bladder within, as an automobile tire is made of a casing and
inner tube.

And from between the blown-up bladder and the outer skin Sammy lifted
his pet Palm Island alligator.

“Sammy Pinkney!” cried Agnes.

“Did you do it on purpose?” demanded Ruth, though she sensed the
futility of the question almost as soon as she had propounded it. Sammy
seldom did anything without a purpose—good or bad.

“I just put Snapper inside the football after I put some whitewash on
it, and——”

Sammy was about to say that Tess and Dot had teased him to do something
“exciting,” and that this was the outcome of the idea that had come to
him during the conference on his porch. But Sammy was, after all, a
gentleman in his own way, and one of the articles of his creed was:

“Never tell on another.”

Therefore he said:

“Yep! I did it.”

But Tess and Dot were not proof against this chivalry and
self-sacrifice. Bravely they faced the music.

“I helped blow up the bladder,” confessed Tess.

“And I—er—I helped stuff Snapper in, because he was all the time
sticking his tail out, and his tail had to go in,” admitted Dot.

“Oh, you children!” sighed Ruth, hardly able to refrain from laughing.

“The puir beastie!” came from Mrs. MacCall. “’Tis a wonder he were nae
smotherit in there.”

“He had plenty of air—he wasn’t inside the bladder!” explained Sammy.
“He was just in the leather part, and there was air he could breathe,
’cause there’s holes for the lace to go through. And I left it loose
enough so he could wiggle.”

“Then I wasn’t far out with my guess about the Mexican bean,” said
Neale.

Doubtless most of you have seen those queer beans, or seeds, which move
so oddly when you place them on the palm of your hand. The movements are
caused by an insect, or worm, that has developed from an egg laid within
the seed.

“The ’gator wiggled inside the ball, and that caused it to roll over and
over in a manner that only a Rugby football can roll,” chuckled Neale.
“I give you credit, Sammy!”

“Don’t!” begged Ruth, in a low voice. “He’ll think he’s being praised
and he’ll try something else.”

“Well, but you’ve got to give him credit,” insisted Neale. “For it was a
clever trick for the kid.”

“Stop it!” commanded Agnes, and she put her hand over his mouth, whereat
he pretended to bite her and the two skylarked about the room to the no
small annoyance of Ruth.

“It’s a mercy I didna’ drapit the lemonade,” said Mrs. MacCall, as she
took the tray from the chair where Luke had placed it and began serving
the refreshments. “I’ll hae a settlement wi ye, syne, Sammy, me lad,”
she promised, and there was more to this than appeared on the surface.

“Well, I didn’t mean any harm,” muttered the boy, as he gathered up the
alligator and football.

Sammy never did mean harm, and, to tell the truth, his tricks and jokes
seldom really harmed any one. Mrs. MacCall had strong nerves, even when
she thought she saw “witches, warlocks an’ lang-nebbied things,” and so
she soon recovered her wonted spirits.

Had Sammy, Tess and Dot not already been supplied with their share of
the ice cream and cake they might have been punished by being deprived
of these dainties. But they must have sensed that something of this
order would be put in operation if they played their joke before the
refreshments had been passed. So they were saved, though Ruth insisted
on her younger sisters going to bed, and, of course, this meant that
Sammy would have to go home.

But he did not go willingly, for when he saw that the older boys and
girls were settling themselves for an evening of talk, music, and the
playing of games, he wistfully inquired:

“Is there anythin’ you’d like me to do?”

“Thank you, no, Sammy,” replied Ruth, with sarcastic sweetness. “You
have done full and plenty for one evening.”

But Agnes, with ever a soft spot in her heart for the children, slipped
Sammy a large piece of chocolate cake, unobserved, as she let him out of
the side door to go to his own home.

“And don’t let Dot and Tess lead you into mischief again,” warned Agnes,
giggling.

“No’m, thank you,” answered Sammy. The thanks, be it known, were for the
cake, not for the well-meant warning.

The Corner House, for some time rather silent and gloomy following the
death of Uncle Peter Stower, now rang with laughter and the singing of
the merry voices of young people. Certainly it was a jolly crowd that
Ruth and Agnes had gathered about them, and Nalbro was very glad she had
accepted the invitation. As for Hal—he was always glad to be where Nally
was, and Luke and Neale were satisfied with their choices.

Perhaps, just for a moment or two, Ruth and Agnes might have felt some
twinges of jealousy, especially when Nalbro offered to do some
“second-sight” experiments and offered to tell what a person was
thinking of.

To do this, she declared, it was necessary that she hold the hand of the
person on whom she was experimenting, and as soon as this was announced
three eager young men pressed forward, clamoring to be the first
subject.

“I think she could just as well have done it some other way, don’t you?”
asked Agnes of Ruth, when they were getting ready for bed later. “She
took a very long time with Luke, I notice, and he asked her to take
_both_ his hands.”

“Oh—it—it didn’t mean anything,” declared Ruth. “It was all in fun.”

“Well, I told Neale what I thought of _him_,” said Agnes, the least bit
sharply.

“Was that wise?” asked Ruth, quietly.

“I don’t care whether it was or not!” came the quick retort. “She is
pretty and her clothes are a lot better than ours. I’m never going to
Ann Titus again! She has no more style——”

“I think you are tired, Aggie,” said Ruth, stroking her sister’s head.
“And you must remember that Nally is our guest.”

“Oh, yes, I know I’m just horrid. But——”

However, the first little affair passed off most successfully, even with
the mysterious white football, and when Uncle Rufus was locking up,
after Neale and Luke and the others had gone, he chuckled as he said:

“Dish suah am laik ole times when Massa Stower done hab parties his own
self.”

“They’re a gay bonnie lot of lads an’ lassies!” said Mrs. MacCall. “Aw,
it’s a gran’ thing to be young!”

“It suah am!” chuckled Uncle Rufus. “An’ if I was as spry as dey are I
suah would hab tuck after dem cellar men dat day dey wuz heah makin’
believe mend a pipe.”

“Ye hae na seen them ag’in, hae ye?” asked the housekeeper, quickly,
with a startled look down the hall.

“No’m, Miss Mac, I hasn’t,” replied Uncle Rufus. “But if I does——” And
he shook his black fist suggestively as he shuffled off to his own
quarters.

Hal and Nalbro smiled at each other across the breakfast table the next
morning, and Ruth and Agnes, if they felt any little jealousy against
their pretty girl guest, did not show it.

“Did you rest well, Nally?” inquired Ruth.

“Wonderfully!”

“Like a top!” was Hal’s description. “And what wild round of gayeties do
we indulge in to-day?” he asked, with a grin.

“Nothing very strenuous, I hope,” said Miss Hastings, with rather a
drawl that she was “affecting,” Agnes declared, since her lisp had gone.
“But of course I’m ready for anything,” she added quickly, lest it be
thought she intended to cast a wet blanket on the festivities.

“We planned an auto ride to the Glen,” said Ruth. “It’s a beautiful
place, and we can eat lunch there.”

“Sounds good to me,” declared Hal. “Especially that lunch part. I’m with
you.”

“It will be delightful,” said the Boston girl.

“Neale will run the car. He’ll be here about ten o’clock,” announced
Agnes.

“Oh, I think Neale’s the dearest boy!” declared Nally.

“What about me?” demanded Hal brazenly.

“Oh, you don’t count. You’re one of the family!” laughed the Boston
girl.

And so with merry quip and laughter the breakfast proceeded.

Luke was to be a member of the auto party that would go to the Glen, and
he and Neale arrived at the Corner House together, for Luke was staying
with Neale at Con Murphy’s. The two lads, with Hal, were about to go out
to the garage to see that the car was in readiness when suddenly Ruth,
who was looking from the window toward the street, cried:

“There they are again!”

“Who?” demanded Agnes, impressed by something in her sister’s voice.

“Those two queer men who were in our cellar! I really believe they are
spying on us. They were sneaking around the side entrance. Quick!
Luke—Neale—see them!”

“I see them!” exclaimed Neale.

“Those men!” cried Luke, as Ruth pointed to two ragged, shiftless
figures hastening down the street, for they had changed their intentions
on seeing Ruth at the window. “Why, I remember them!”

“You remember them!” repeated Ruth. “What do you mean?”

“Tell you later. Come on, Neale, let’s see if we can’t round them up!”
cried Luke, and, without answering Ruth’s question, he dashed from the
house in pursuit of the mysterious individuals, Neale at his heels.




CHAPTER VIII: A FUTILE CHASE


Hal Dent stood for a moment in the room with Ruth, Agnes and Nalbro,
looking toward the door through which Luke and Neale had started in
pursuit.

“What’s this all about?” demanded Hal. “Is this part of the daily
morning exercise, or——”

“Don’t stop to ask questions, Hal, but run!” advised Nally.

“Run? Why should I run? I don’t need the training, and——”

“But don’t you understand?” persisted the Back Bay girl. “Ruth knows
something about those men—they’re burglars or something—and she wants
them caught. Go help Luke and Neale!”

“I don’t know anything about the men—that’s the trouble,” voiced Ruth.
“But I would like to have them caught to find out about them. This is
the third time they have been sneaking around where I was. Once they
were in our cellar!”

“Say no more! A detective shall have nothing on me!” cried Hal, and he,
too, dashed from the house while the three girls followed more slowly,
though none the less eagerly.

Dot and Tess, who had been given their breakfast earlier, in charge of
Mrs. MacCall, came out in time to see the start of the pursuit.

“Oh, it’s a game they’re playing!” cried Dot, hugging her Alice-doll,
who always shared breakfast with her. “May we play, Ruth?” she begged.

“We want to have some fun!” added Tess.

“It isn’t a game,” said Agnes. “Don’t ask questions, my dears. There may
be trouble.”

“Is it some of the men from Plam Island?” Dot inquired.

“No,” Ruth replied. “You had better take them back into the house,” she
added, in a low voice to Mrs. MacCall, and then she raised her voice to
say to Hal, who was running toward the rear of the house:

“They didn’t go that way!”

“I know it, Ruth,” he answered. “But I was going to get out the car.
Those men had a good start, from what little I saw, and we can get after
them better in the car.”

“That’s a good idea!” complimented Nalbro, and she felt not a little
proud of her Boston cavalier.

“I think it will be best—if he can get the car to run,” remarked Ruth, a
bit dryly.

“Isn’t it like other cars?” Nally wanted to know, somewhat suspicious.

“Not always. Sometimes it takes a notion to start easily, and again
Neale will have to ‘monkey with it,’ as he calls it, five or ten minutes
before it consents to behave.”

“Oh, I do hope it runs!” murmured the Boston girl.

Alas! It was a vain hope. Hal did everything called for in the book of
directions, from retarding the spark, turning on the gas and ignition to
stepping on the self-starter button, but all that resulted was a humming
of the starting motor. There were no welcome explosions in the
cylinders.

“What’s the matter with this boat?” demanded Hal wrathfully, after he
had done several things on his own account in trying to get the machine
in motion. He had even tried to turn it over by hand.

“I fancy it hasn’t had its bath this morning,” dryly remarked Agnes. “Or
perhaps it wants a dusting with violet talcum powder.”

“Never mind,” consoled Ruth. “You aren’t the only one it acts that way
with, Hal. Sometimes I’m so provoked at it that I could just cry. Then I
go off without it and it must feel ashamed of itself. For the next time
I step on the button it goes with a hum and a purr like a contented
kitten lapping up cream.”

“We need a new car—that’s what we need!” declared Agnes. “But Guardy is
so queer. He——”

“He isn’t exactly _queer_,” broke in Ruth, coming to the defense of the
absent Mr. Howbridge. “But he insists that we must run on a strict
budget system, and we have not yet gotten out of this car the maximum of
what it is supposed to deliver before it is ready to be turned in. When
that time comes we shall have a new car.”

“I wish you’d take this one out and wreck it then, Hal!” said Agnes, a
bit vindictively.

“Willingly, my lady, if I could get it out at all,” replied the youth,
rubbing one hand where he had skinned his knuckles trying to crank the
motor.

“Never mind. Perhaps Luke and Neale will catch the men, and then we
shall find out all about the secret,” suggested Nalbro.

“I hope they do get them!” cried Agnes.

“I’m wondering what it was Luke meant when he said he remembered them,”
murmured Ruth. “There was something queer in that.”

“Come on—let’s go out in the street and see if we can find out
anything,” suggested Agnes, for when Hal had his inspiration about the
car they had followed him to the garage, only to lose time.

The street, down which the two strange men had run, followed by Luke and
Neale, was apparently deserted. The girls and Hal strained their eyes
for a sight of either the pursuers or their quarry, and then from an
upper window of the Corner House came a shrill voice asking:

“Are the engines coming?”

“What engines?” asked Ruth, as she caught sight of Tess and Dot leaning
from the casement at a dangerous angle. “Get right back in there!” she
instantly ordered.

“The fire engines! Are they coming?” went on Tess.

“Fire engines? There isn’t any fire!” laughed Agnes. “Though from the
way we’re running around I haven’t a doubt but what the neighbors think
so,” she added, noting that several curious looks were cast in the
direction of the Corner House from residents on either side and across
the street.

Then along came Robbie Foote, with a basket of things from Mrs. Kranz,
the “delicatessen lady,” as Tess always called her.

“Anything the matter?” asked Robbie.

“No, nothing much,” answered Ruth, with a warning look at the others,
telling them not to go into particulars. “And you’d better hurry around
to the kitchen with those eggs,” she added. “Mrs. MacCall is waiting for
them.”

“And don’t smash them as you did the others,” added Agnes, thinking to
so occupy Robbie’s mind with this remark as to exclude from it any
desire to ask embarrassing questions. In this Agnes succeeded, for the
delivery boy cried:

“I didn’t bust the eggs! It was the goat, and he wouldn’t ’a’ done it if
the alligator hadn’t nipped his tail!”

“Yes, I guess that’s right,” admitted Agnes. “But, anyhow, Mrs. MacCall
is waiting for you.”

“Oh, aw right,” mumbled Robbie, with an air of having been unjustly
treated.

“There’s no use of our waiting out here,” remarked Ruth. “We’re only
exciting remark.” If there was one thing more than another Ruth did not
like it was to attract attention. “Let’s go in and wait for Luke and
Neale to come back.”

Meanwhile the two boys were not having much success in their pursuit of
the strange characters. They had a glimpse of the twain as Ruth had
called out about them, and then lost it as they dashed for the street.

“There they go!” Neale had cried, after he and Luke had turned a corner.

For a time they had the two mysterious strangers in view and then the
men darted into some side alley, or perhaps into some building, going
out a rear entrance and over the back fence. For when Luke and his
friend reached the place where they thought they could dart in and find
their quarry, there was no trace of the men.

“Guess they’ve given us the slip,” remarked Neale, after they had
searched about for some time.

“Looks like it,” agreed Luke.

“Anything wrong?” asked a man, who had been watching the two youths.

“Oh, no, not much,” answered Luke, in an indifferent manner. “Just a
couple of fellows we wanted to speak to.”

“Oh, I thought maybe they had stolen something.”

“No,” answered Luke, and this was true enough, for nothing had been
missed from the Corner House cellar.

“It was just as well not to tell that fellow too much,” Luke went on, as
he and Neale started back to join the girls.

“That’s right.”

As they walked into the yard of the Corner House, on the porch of which
Ruth, Agnes, Nalbro, and Hal were gathered, the last looked at a patch
of red on Luke’s left hand.

“Hello,” Hal cried. “Did he bite you?” The hand was bleeding.

“What? Oh, that! I hit it against a brick wall and rubbed off some of
the skin. It isn’t anything.”

“I can match you!” chuckled Hal, displaying his bruised knuckles. “Say,
what kind of a car is that, anyhow?” and he nodded in the direction of
the garage. “Must be a new model. She wouldn’t start for me.”

“Oh, so that’s how it happened!” chuckled Neale. “I guess you forgot to
cross your fingers and say ‘eenie-meenie-miney-mo’ before you stepped on
the starter, didn’t you?”

“I reckon I did,” admitted Hal, with a grin.

“Luke, let me see that cut,” demanded Ruth.

“Oh, it isn’t anything. I’m not going to have any iodine put on it.”

“Yes you are!” she insisted. “And you, too, Hal. Come up to the bathroom
right away. There’s nothing like treating a cut in time. There’s no
telling what germs may be in it, and iodine will kill them. Come on.”

“Not for me!” answered Hal. “If you have a bit of sticking plaster——”

“The worst thing in the world!” cried Ruth. “Come! I insist! And then,
Luke, I want you to tell us what you meant when you said you remembered
those men.”

“That’s so!” exclaimed Neale. “You didn’t let out a word about that when
we were chasing them.”

“We needn’t ask if you got them,” commented Agnes.

“That’s right—they gave us the slip,” remarked Luke, ruefully.

He and Hal suffered their hands to be treated with the iodine, and Luke
created laughter by pretending to cry when the fluid stung, as it
certainly did, for he had rather a deep cut, caused when his hand came
in contact with a brick wall as he and Neale swung around a corner in
futile pursuit of the strange men.

“Thanks,” murmured Hal, when his hand had been dressed. “I shall
recommend you to the Red Cross, Ruth.”

“Oh, Ruth is a dandy little nurse,” added Luke. “I can certify to that.
You ought to have her hold your hand and rub your head when it aches,
Hal.”

“Oh, such a pain!” cried Hal, clasping his brow with an assumed agonized
look on his face.

“Silly!” murmured Ruth, blushing as she put away the iodine. “And now,
if your fever isn’t too high,” she went on with gentle sarcasm to Luke,
“you might tell us what you remembered.”

“It isn’t much,” he said, modestly enough. “However, I’ll tell you all
about it. As soon as you cried out about those men a little while ago,
and I had a glimpse of them—I remember your telling me about the cellar
mystery—it at once flashed into my mind that I had seen the fellows
before.”

“Not in our cellar!” exclaimed Agnes.

“No, for I wasn’t here at that time. But it was about two weeks ago, on
the train. I’d been to Hamilton on an errand for Professor Keeps, and I
happened to occupy a seat directly behind those men. I didn’t pay much
attention to them until I heard them mention ten thousand dollars.”

“Whew!” whistled Hal. “They must be garage men! They’re the only fellows
who ever have that much money nowadays.”

“But is that the only strange thing about them?” asked Ruth.

“No. The men kept on talking, and though I couldn’t hear all they said I
caught something about dividing up this ten thousand dollars. Then one
of the men—the taller—said: ‘If we let them know it’s there we’ll get
nothing.’ The other agreed with this, and then I had to leave the train.
But I got a good look at the men, and I’m sure they’re the same fellows
Neale and I just chased.”

“Ten thousand dollars!” murmured Agnes.

“I wonder what it means?” murmured Nalbro.

And then, before they could begin a series of surmises, Uncle Rufus
shuffled out on the porch where this talk was proceeding and announced:

“De tellyfoam’s been ringin’ its haid off, Miss Ruth, an’ it’s somebody
what wants yo’!”




CHAPTER IX: OUT OF TUNE


With a murmured “excuse me,” Ruth arose from where she had been sitting
near Luke, and started into the house.

“Maybe it’s the police telephoning they have captured the two men!”
cried Agnes, who was as much given to looking for excitement, on certain
occasions, as was Sammy Pinkney.

“It couldn’t be,” commented Luke. “The police didn’t know the men were
wanted. And, as a matter of fact, I don’t see that we can make any
charges against them.”

“Didn’t they break into your cellar?” asked Hal, who had not heard all
the particulars, or else had forgotten some of them.

“No, they didn’t break in,” remarked Agnes. “In fact, they went there on
invitation, you might say.”

“Invitation!” cried Nally. “You don’t mean to say you _invited_ them
in?”

“I believe that’s what it is called in law,” went on Agnes. She had an
idea she was going to study law some day. “Ruth saw the men going into
our cellar and she did not forbid them. In fact, she actually told them
to enter—at least, a lawyer would call it that. It’s a sort of
invitation by inference where you don’t forbid a person to enter.”

“Well, I never would have let them go in if I hadn’t thought they were
from the water department,” said Ruth, who had come back to the porch in
time to hear the latter part of this talk.

“Which they weren’t,” remarked Neale. “I found out that much!”

“Was the telephone message anything about the men?” asked Agnes.

“No, just Carrie Poole saying she could come to-morrow night.”

“That’s good.”

Carrie Poole was one of a number of girl and boy friends invited to
another little gathering in honor of Nalbro and Hal.

“But, Luke, can you tell us any more about those men and their queer
talk of ten thousand dollars?” asked Neale.

“Not a thing,” answered the collegian. “I thought it queer at the time,
and for that reason I noticed the men rather more closely than otherwise
I should have done. But, as a matter of fact, I thought perhaps they
were talking of some moving picture plot, and so the thing went out of
my mind.”

“Moving picture plot! What do you mean?” demanded Agnes.

“Well, you know, every one is writing for the movies nowadays,” went on
Luke, smiling. “Every fellow in my class has one or more scenarios out,
hoping for an acceptance, and on the campus all you hear is continuity,
close-up, flashback and the like. And more than once, in trains, I’ve
overheard conversations something like this: ‘Well, we could kill off
the man and kidnap the girl.’ ‘It would be easy to have the house
robbed.’

“One might think some desperate crime was being planned, but all it is,
really, is a talk on the plot for a moving picture, or what they hope
will turn out to be one. So when I heard these men saying something
about ten thousand dollars and about not letting some one know or they
wouldn’t get anything, for a time I thought they might be writing a
moving picture scenario.”

“Do you think so now after you’ve had a second look at them?” asked
Neale.

“I certainly do not—especially after the way they ran,” answered Luke.
“And that makes me suspicious that they were around here for no good
purpose. If they had been, they would not have run when they saw that
Ruth had noticed them.”

“It’s just what they did before—the time Agnes and I were in to see Miss
Titus,” said Ruth. “I do hope it doesn’t mean anything! I hope they
haven’t any designs on the house.”

“Nonsense!” laughed Luke, patting her hand which was conveniently near
his as they sat together on the porch. “They’re just a couple of
tramps—that’s all.”

“But their talk of ten thousand dollars! Really, I don’t know that we
ought to go on this little picnic and leave Dot and Tess at home.”

“Take them with us,” suggested Neale.

“There isn’t room in the car.”

“I’ll come back and get them,” offered the good-natured lad; and so it
was arranged, though Ruth, after all, admitted that there could be no
real danger to her younger sisters with Uncle Rufus, Linda and sturdy
Mrs. MacCall in the house.

You may imagine with what delight Tess and Dot received the news that
they were to be permitted to go to the picnic. They had been mourning
the fact that they were obliged to stay at home, and they had just
concocted a scheme of sending over for Sammy Pinkney and his alligator
when there was a rift in the dark clouds.

“I’ll take my Alice-doll!” cried Dot.

“I’ll take Clarissa,” decided Tess. “She wears a black dress and I can
drop her in the mud and not care.” Tess lately had, for some reason
unfathomable by Ruth and Agnes, taken to playing with her dolls.

“Alice is going to wear white,” said Dot, with a superior air. “White is
best for picnics.”

“Um!” murmured Tess, who was not so particular.

Hal followed Luke and Neale out to the garage while the girls finished
their preparations for the lunch they were taking to the Glen.

“I’m anxious to see how you start that old boat,” remarked Hal, rubbing,
tenderly, his bruised knuckles.

“It’s easy. All you do is—this.” Neale turned the ignition key, stepped
on the starter switch, and the steady throb and hum of the motor at once
followed.

“You must have it charmed,” commented the Boston lad.

“You have to humor ’em,” chuckled Neale.

After all, it was not necessary for Neale to make a second trip to take
Tess and Dot to the Glen. A neighbor happened to be going out in that
direction and volunteered to take the younger girls.

“Coming home we can pile in anyhow,” remarked Agnes, “for there won’t be
so many lunch boxes and baskets.”

“You verged dangerously near the truth then,” solemnly remarked Luke. “I
shall empty at least half a dozen lunch boxes myself.”

It was a beautiful day, the Glen was looking its best after a light
shower, and there was a “romantic” waterfall among other natural
wonders. Nalbro called it romantic, and she ought to have known what
that word meant. As for Neale, he said he couldn’t see what there was in
a waterfall, anyhow.

“As the Irishman said, what’s to prevent it from coming down?” he
demanded. But no one paid much attention to this ancient joke.

“Now, Tess and Dot,” said Ruth, taking her younger sisters off to one
side when they had been safely delivered, “I don’t want you to give me
any trouble to-day.”

“We never do,” declared Tess.

“You don’t mean to, but you do,” said Ruth patiently and with a kind
smile. “Don’t go off by yourselves exploring, and——”

“Well, you don’t want us tagging around after you and Luke all day, do
you?” asked Tess, though why she should couple the names Ruth said she
could not imagine.

“I want you to be within call, if not within sight, all the while,” was
the stipulation. “There are many little places where you might wander
off and be lost. You needn’t ‘tag’ us around, as you call it, but don’t
get too far away.”

“We won’t,” promised Dot. “Oh, I just love it here and so does my
Alice-doll.”

Indeed they all seemed bent on having a good time, and when the lunch
had been put away until such time as it would be needed they strolled
about the Glen, talking and laughing.

As might be expected, there was a pairing off into couples. Agnes and
Neale found something to look at down one path, Nalbro and Hal declared
they wanted to get to the top of the waterfall, and Ruth remarked:

“Well, if they want to tire themselves out by scrambling up there, let
them. I think——”

“Here’s a quiet place—a regular bosky dell,” laughed Luke, and he led
the way.

And then, for a time, the murmuring talk of the young people mingled
with the murmur of the water as it slipped over the mossy, green stones.

It was, as might have been expected, Tess and Dot who put an end to what
seemed an ideal period, for Ruth soon heard the voice of Tess calling:

“Where are you? Where are you?”

“Oh, I wonder if anything has happened!” Ruth exclaimed, with a startled
glance at Luke, who sat beside her on a mossy bank.

“What’s wrong?” he cried, his stronger voice echoing through the forest.

Back came the unromantic answer:

“We’re hungry!”

“Oh, is it noon?” asked Ruth, looking at her wrist watch, and, finding
that it was half-past twelve, she added: “No wonder the poor things are
looking for us. We’ll eat!”

“It seems a pity to leave this,” remarked Luke, glancing around on their
trysting place.

“Oh, we can come back,” conceded Ruth.

“Thanks,” he said softly.

There was the usual merry ado about setting out the lunch boxes and
baskets, and the usual ants walked, true to form, into the butter and
cloyed themselves with sweetness in the sugar. But this is always
expected at picnics.

As Neale remarked:

“No outing is complete without them.”

But Nalbro rather shuddered when a grasshopper alighted on her slice of
bread and threw it quickly away from her with a muttered:

“Ugh! The horrid thing!”

“You don’t give him credit!” laughed Luke. “Like the bees to the
flowers, he was attracted by your magnetic personality.”

“Thank you!” murmured the Boston girl, flashing a look at Luke, who was
boldly regarding her. And Agnes, by means of her eyes, telegraphed some
message to Ruth.

After lunch, which, if it did nothing more, rendered Tess and Dot less
active, for it made them sleepy, there was a period of sitting about,
wondering what next to do, for it was too warm for much strenuous
exercise.

“Come on!” offered Nalbro suddenly, “I’ll tell the boys’ fortunes.”

“How?” asked Agnes.

“I’ll read their hands.”

“I’m first!”

“No, I!”

“She came with me!”

In turn Luke, Neale and Hal thus cried as they crowded around the
fascinating Boston girl—there was no denying that she was
fascinating—and pretty, though Agnes, at least, had no lack of beauty
and Ruth’s sweet face always gave pleasure to a beholder.

“Oh, I can’t tell your fortunes all at once. And no one must hear the
others’,” declared Nally, with a pretty air of bewilderment, as three
tanned hands were thrust toward her, each one eager to be first.

“Decide by lot then,” suggested Neale.

“How?” asked Nalbro.

“Shut your eyes and take a hand,” he went on, and this was done.

The Boston girl, with closed eyes, groped among the three palms held
before her, and whether it was accident or design, she took that of
Luke.

Then the other two lads, after some protesting, were sent out of hearing
while Nalbro proceeded to study and trace the lines in the hand of the
young collegian.

What she told him is neither here nor there, nor is what she pretended
to prophesy for Neale and Hal. But as she continued to be a center of
attraction for the young men, while Agnes and Ruth tidied up the
luncheon ground, there were uneasy glances cast in the direction of the
fortune-telling section of the Glen.

“Isn’t it queer how silly boys are about having their hands held?”
remarked Agnes, with a distinct “sniff.”

“She has a certain way about her,” admitted Ruth. “Perhaps we should be
a little more——”

“Giddy! Silly! Why don’t you say it?” challenged Agnes. “I didn’t
imagine Nally was like that. But you never know a girl until——”

“Hush!” suddenly commanded Ruth. “I thought I heard Tess calling! Yes,
she is! Oh, what has happened?”

Through the woods echoed the sobbing voice of a little girl shouting:

“She’s fallen in! She’s fallen in!”




CHAPTER X: A SHOWER


The little “out of tune” feeling which had begun to manifest itself in
the hearts of Ruth and Agnes was instantly dispelled as they heard the
voice of Dot crying—for it was Dot they heard.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Nalbro, for she was so intent on finishing
the telling of Hal’s fortune, holding his hand in her warm one, that she
had not caught the alarm.

“Something has happened to Tess or Dot—maybe both,” gasped Ruth, as she
sped past.

“One of them has fallen in the brook, probably,” added Agnes, for the
waterfall was the result of a small brook toppling down an incline. It
was not a wide stream; nor was it deep, except in a few places.

“Come on, Neale!” cried Luke, springing up from a hummock where he was
lying under a tree, possibly thinking over the “fortune” that Nalbro had
outlined for him. “To the rescue!”

“I don’t imagine it amounts to much. Those kids are always falling in or
falling out or getting into some sort of trouble,” commented Neale.
Nevertheless, he followed Luke, and now Nalbro and Hal joined in.

At intervals the cry came from Dot:

“She’s fallen in! She’s fallen in!”

It was by this cry that Ruth, with the others following her, was able to
get to the place whence Dot had sounded the alarm. Ruth saw her little
sister through a fringe of bushes on the edge of the brook.

“Dot, what is it? Where is Tess?” demanded Ruth, not stopping to inquire
whether Tess had fallen in, since it seemed obvious, with Dot there in
plain sight, and not wet.

“I don’t know!” sobbed Dot.

“What don’t you know?” demanded Agnes, catching Dot by the arm and
giving her a little shake to quiet the hysterical sobbing that was
rendering Dot unintelligible.

“I don’t know where Tess is,” Dot sobbed. “She went down there with her
Clarissa-doll——” She pointed toward a part of the stream that the boys
knew to be deep, and went on: “Then I heard her yell and there was a
splash and——Oh, she’s fallen in, I know she has!”

The boys waited no longer, but dashed away in the direction of the spot
Dot had pointed out. Agnes and Nalbro remained to comfort Dot, who was
now wiping away her tears on the dress of her Alice-doll, and Ruth
followed the boys.

It was Luke who first shouted back some definite news.

“I have found her!” he announced.

“Is she—is she——” Ruth could not form the words.

“She’s all right!” came the reassuring answer. “But she’s soaking wet.
Tess, come out of that!” he commanded.

By this time the others had pushed through the underbrush and had come
upon a scene which, after a moment, brought roars of laughter from Neale
and Hal. And Luke, after a glance at Ruth to make sure she was smiling,
joined in.

They simply could not help it.

There sat Tess on a flat rock in a shallow place in the middle of the
brook and she was washing her doll’s dress. The water was flowing down
on either side of Tess, as if she might be a rock herself, as she sat
there in the midst of the brook.

[Illustration: There sat Tess on a flat rock in a shallow place
in the middle of the brook.]

The stream was up to her waist as she sat down, but she was wetter than
this, for she was splashed up to her shoulders, and as she held up the
black dress of Clarissa, to see if it needed further scrubbing, water
ran from the garment down her freckled face.

“Tess Kenway! What in the world are you doing?” demanded Ruth. “Come
right out of there this instant!”

“All right,” said Tess calmly. “I guess Clarissa’s dress is clean,
anyhow.”

“Why did you do it? Why are you sitting there?” went on Ruth, for Tess
had not yet arisen.

“Did you fall in?” Agnes wanted to know.

“Yes, I did,” answered Tess slowly. “And when I was wet I thought I
might as well stay in and be wetter and wash Clarissa’s dress. It was
easier out here, and I found a rock just like a washboard.”

“Oh, you terrible child!” scolded Agnes. “You have frightened us all!
How did it happen? If it hadn’t been for Dot’s calling that you had
fallen in, we might never have known it.”

“Pooh! I was going to tell you, anyhow, so there!” said Tess.

“Yes, but when?” asked Ruth. “Why did you leave Dot?”

“Oh, she wouldn’t wash her Alice-doll’s dress, and I wanted to wash
mine,” explained Tess. “So I came down here.”

“And left Dot alone? That wasn’t kind,” commented Ruth. “She heard you
fall in.”

“She couldn’t have.”

“Yes, I did, too,” declared Dot, for she had been brought along by
Nalbro and Agnes to the scene of the immersion. “I heard you splash.”

“Pooh! That wasn’t me; that was a rock,” laughed Tess, shaking her wet
hair out of her eyes while Ruth endeavored to wring some water from her
skirts. “I was leaning over a rock to wash Clarissa’s dress,” she
proceeded, “and the rock splashed in. I guess that’s what you heard,”
she said to Dot, “because I didn’t make any noise—that is, not much—when
I slipped in.”

“Then you did fall in?” asked Agnes.

“Yes, I fell in,” admitted Tess. “But that was after the rock splashed,
and Dot couldn’t have heard me. I slipped in and got my feet wet and it
felt so nice—and I was wet anyhow—that I waded out and sat down. You
ought to see that rock! It’s all ribs and crinkles like a regular
washboard. If you could take it home, I’ll show you where it is!”

She tried to pull away from Ruth as if with the intention of wading out
into the stream again, but her sister held her back.

“No, none of that any more!” decided Ruth.

“Oh, but you’re a _sight_!” giggled Agnes.

“Pooh! Let ’em dry on me,” suggested Tess indifferently. “I’ve been wet
before, lots of times. If you had been here I could have taken
Alice-doll’s dress out and washed it,” she said to Dot.

“I wouldn’t have her dress washed. It’s clean now. And you can’t tell
whether your doll’s old black dress is clean or not.”

“Oh, it’s clean,” declared Tess. “I sozzled it in the water a lot of
times and I rubbed it on the washboard rock.”

“Well, you’ve given us all something of a fright,” sighed Ruth. “Though
I don’t suppose you meant it. Dear me! we haven’t anything dry to put on
you, though I suppose we might go to some house.”

“I’ll run her back in the car and let Mrs. MacCall look after her,”
offered Neale. “I’ve got to get gasoline, anyhow.”

“All right,” agreed Ruth, and so Tess had the advantage of getting an
extra ride, and all by herself, in the machine with Neale.

“Honestly, it was comical,” said Agnes, telling some of her girl friends
about it afterward. “In her wet, bedraggled clothes, Tess sat on the
rear seat, as prim and stiff as some old-fashioned lady, and she seemed
to be pretending that she was some millionaire’s wife out in her auto
taking the air.”

This was just Tess—a queer little body if ever there was one.

“Oh, ye puir bairn!” cried Mrs. MacCall, when she saw Tess. “An’ are ye
the only one saved?”

“Gracious, you don’t think all the rest are drowned, do you?” laughed
Neale.

“I was fearin’ that,” murmured the housekeeper. “I was fearin’.”

Tess was soon clothed again in dry garments and she went back to the
picnic ground with Neale after he had stopped at the service station to
have the gas tank filled.

The day was nearly over—and a glorious one it had been in spite of the
accident to Tess—and soon the jolly little party was on the way home,
all managing to crowd into the one automobile.

“Oh, I am having such a wonderful time!” sighed Nalbro that evening on
the porch, when the boys had come over for a little talk. “It was
darling of you girls to ask me down.”

“We are glad you are enjoying it,” said Ruth. “And we hope you can stay
a long time.”

“If it weren’t for getting ready to go to boarding school—which means
having a lot more frocks made,” murmured the Boston girl—“I could stay
longer.”

“I wish our dressmaker was up to ‘frocks,’ don’t you, Ruth?” Agnes
asked, with a half envious sigh. “But poor Miss Titus, though she does
have a sign reading ‘Modes,’ has never risen above a gown—and she used
to call everything a dress.”

“Sickening—that’s what I call it,” grunted Neale. “What say you,
fellows?”

“Oh, you boys make me tired!” declared Agnes. “You’re fussier over one
necktie than we are over two dresses! Aren’t they, Nally?”

“I should say so!”

And so the merry quips were exchanged.

“Speaking of water,” remarked Luke, as he came out with a glass which
Ruth had requested him to get, “are you girls going to do anything about
those strange men?”

“What can we do?” demanded Ruth. “We don’t know who they are, and we
aren’t even certain that they did anything more than make a mistake.”

“It might have been a mistake, getting into your cellar once,” commented
Neale. “But when the same men have been seen hanging around the Corner
House—well, it’s time something was done, in my opinion.”

“What would you do?” inquired Ruth. “I have thought of speaking to Mr.
Howbridge about it.”

“Let me mention it to the police,” offered Neale. “I know the chief and
all the officers who have this beat—there are different ones on
different nights. I’ll tell them to keep their eyes open for suspicious
characters.”

“I wish you would,” said Ruth. “And I’ll also speak to Mr. Howbridge
about it.”

“If you girls are nervous,” said Luke, speaking particularly for the
benefit of Ruth, “I can leave Neale and come over to stay here
to-night.”

“What? With me on the job? Boy, you are insulting!” cried Hal, in mock
heroics. “Why, I’ll defy any twain of alleged water inspectors that ever
misread a meter!”

“Oh, we’re not a bit afraid,” said Ruth.

“We have Uncle Rufus and Linda, to say nothing of Mrs. MacCall,” added
Agnes.

“Well, you can always get Neale and me on the telephone,” suggested
Luke, with a laugh.

“And by the time you got over here we’d be kidnaped!” declared Agnes.
“No, we’ll depend on Uncle Rufus.”

However, there was no need for any dependence, for nothing untoward
happened that night.

For the next evening a little affair had been planned, to which some
guests Nalbro Hastings had not yet met were invited. Ruth and Agnes were
busy arranging the details of this, and planning with Mrs. MacCall what
the refreshments should be, when Tess came in looking somewhat warm and
excited.

“What have you been doing, dear?” asked Ruth, smoothing her hair.

“Oh, Dot and I just now gave Uncle Rufus a shower,” explained Tess.

“A shower?” Ruth cried.

“You mean you have been giving one of your dolls a bridal-engagement
shower, and you let Uncle Rufus in on some of the things?” questioned
Agnes. “It was kind of you, but——”

“No, we gave him a regular shower. Like a showerbath, you know.”

“You what?” gasped Ruth.

“That’s it. Yes, a shower. Dot’s doing it now. I got tired. It’s lots of
fun! Oh, she wet him good that time! Look!”

She pointed out of the window.




CHAPTER XI: A STRANGE SUMMONS


What Ruth and Agnes saw was this. Stretched over the lawn was a hose
that had been used for sprinkling the grass. Uncle Rufus, having
finished wetting down the dry places, had laid the nozzle end of the
hose down, with the water still running, and had walked back to the
faucet to shut it off.

But as Ruth and Agnes watched, Dot picked up the nozzle end of the hose,
with the water still spurting from it, and directed it toward the old
colored man, spraying him well.

“Heah, yo’ li’l missie! Stop that!” cried Uncle Rufus.

“Ho! Ho!” Dot laughed, as she continued to spray Uncle Rufus.

Then he made a dash for her, at which sign of danger she dropped the
nozzle and ran away, whereat Uncle Rufus resumed his shuffle toward the
faucet, perhaps a hundred feet away.

But no sooner was his back turned than Dot again made a rush for the
nozzle, again spraying Uncle Rufus.

He shouted and shook his finger at her, but Dot only laughed the more
and doused him well. But as soon as he started to run toward her she
dropped the hose and ran in her turn.

“That’s what I was doing, but I got tired,” explained Tess. “Oh, we gave
Uncle Rufus a fine shower!”

Ruth and Agnes looked at each other. Then Ruth, shaking Tess rather
severely by one arm, exclaimed:

“You naughty girls! The idea of wetting poor, old Uncle Rufus! You must
be punished for this, Tess. Agnes, go and get Dot and bring her here.”

When Dot saw Agnes coming out, the mother of the Alice-doll beat a hasty
retreat, not quite fast enough, though, for she was caught as she ran
across the lawn and stumbled.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Dot. “I wasn’t doing it all.”

“Ruth will attend to you,” remarked Agnes, in her sternest voice. “You
and Tess are going to be punished.”

And punished they were, though Tess protested, with tears, that Uncle
Rufus had on his oldest clothes that he wore when he weeded the garden
in the rain, adding that he did not mind being wet.

Really, he did not seem to, though, as a matter of fact, he was pretty
well soaked. For when the two little girls had been sent up to bed, to
have the shades pulled down, without a toy to play with, not even the
Alice-doll, and no picture books to look at or stories to read, it was
Uncle Rufus who interceded for them and begged them off.

“Look heah, Missie Ruth,” he humbly pleaded when he had on dry garments,
“dem young uns didn’t mean no harm, nohow. An’—ha! ha!—I doan mind de
wettin’!”

“I know, Uncle Rufus,” answered Ruth, with a smile. “It is very good of
you to forgive them and to try to get them off, but they did wrong and
they must be punished. If I don’t do something to them they will act
worse the next time.”

“Yes’m, Missie Ruth, I knows dat, but I done guess dey has been punished
nuff!”

He looked so eager and had such a pleading, loving look on his honest,
wrinkled black face, that Ruth could not resist him. She knew how he
loved Tess and Dot.

“Very well,” Ruth finally said, “I’ll let them stay in bed half an hour
longer, and then you may go up and tell them that you forgive them,
Uncle Rufus, and that they may come down just before supper.”

That was perhaps the shortest half hour ever registered on the clock of
the Corner House, for it could not have been more than ten minutes after
Ruth had remitted the punishment that Uncle Rufus went up to the girls’
room and timidly knocked on the door.

“We can’t come out,” said Tess meekly, in what she doubtless intended to
be a martyr’s voice. “You’d better go away!”

Uncle Rufus gave one of his inimitable chuckles.

“Oh!” gasped Dot.

“Oh!” gasped Tess.

“Yo’-all kin come down now,” announced Uncle Rufus.

“Did Ruth say so?” asked Tess.

“Yes’m, she done say dat!” declared Uncle Rufus. “Miss Ruth say she done
mitigate yo’ punishment, whateber dat means, an’ I wants to say dat I
forgibs yo’. Ha! Ha! I guess I done needed de baff anyhow.”

“Oh, Uncle Rufus, we’re awfully sorry if we gave you a bath before it
was time,” said Dot.

“Doan yo’-all worry none ’bout dat!” chuckled the old colored man. “Come
’long down ’fore supper!”

Tess and Dot, much chastened in spirit, descended. They were grateful
that none of the boys were around to see their humiliation, and for a
time they went about much subdued, trying to make it appear that they
were more sinned against than sinning.

But Ruth knew them, and so did Agnes, for they had done such pranks
before and always the same thing followed their just punishment. So,
though Nalbro felt sorry for them and was inclined to “mother” them, she
was advised against it by the older Corner House girls.

The result was that little attention was paid to Tess and Dot, except
that they were treated with exaggerated politeness by their sisters,
perhaps in contrast to their rude but thoughtless showering of Uncle
Rufus.

In a short time the little girls forgot all about it and were playing
about as before, much to the delight of Uncle Rufus, who would not have
slept well had he kept on his mind any longer the vision of his little
tormentors being punished.

“I just love it here!” declared Nalbro, as they were sitting on the
porch, waiting for Linda and Mrs. MacCall to announce the evening meal.
“It’s so different from my own home. It’s stupid there, though it’s nice
enough. Something always seems to be happening here.”

“You’re right there!” laughed Ruth.

“And sometimes things don’t always happen for the best!” added Agnes.

“I just wonder where they got that idea of spraying Uncle Rufus?” mused
Ruth. “I do hope they didn’t see it in the movies, for they are sure to
mention it if they did, and Mrs. MacCall will say it’s a sin and a shame
that we ever let them go.”

“Yes, that would be a bit awkward,” admitted her sister. “But I have a
faint suspicion that they must have made it up out of their own heads.”

“Perhaps,” agreed Ruth. “I do hope Luke comes to-night,” she went on.

This was so unexpected, coming from Ruth, who seldom let anything be
known about her liking for the young collegian, that Agnes stared at her
sister in some surprise, and even Nalbro raised her pretty eyebrows.
Luke had been called away from Milton for several days by Professor
Keeps, who had some work for the young man to do.

“Oh, it’s just a matter of business!” Ruth made haste to say, as she
sensed the underlying meaning her words might have conveyed. “He was
going to make inquiries about those two men,” she went on. “Do you know,
I don’t at all like the fact that they have been seen around here so
frequently,” and there was a worried look on her face.

“Don’t start any fretting,” advised Agnes. “I don’t believe it will
amount to anything. But what was Luke going to find out?”

“He was going to see some railroad men he knows—the conductor or
brakeman on the train the time he sat behind the men who talked about
the ten thousand dollars—and he’s going to ask if the railroad men know
anything about the fellows.”

“Oh, so that’s the only reason you’re wishing Luke to come this
evening—on a matter of _business_! I see! The plot thickens!” mocked
Agnes.

“Oh, don’t be silly!” advised Ruth, in a small tone of voice.

“Worse and worse!” laughed Agnes. “See her blushes, Nally?”

“Nally, if you side with her,” began Ruth, “I’ll never——”

But the appearance of Mrs. MacCall with the announcement that the meal
was served put an end to what might have proved an embarrassing
situation.

Toward the end of the meal Tess and Dot were observed carrying on some
secret interchange of ideas.

“Go on—you ask her,” urged Dot to Tess.

“You said you would,” retorted Tess.

“What is it?” Ruth wanted to know.

The two children looked self-conscious for a moment, and then Dot
blurted out:

“Couldn’t we stay up for the party a little while to-night?”

“Why, yes, I intended you should—for a little while,” replied Ruth.
“What made you think you couldn’t? Oh, I see! About Uncle Rufus! Oh,
that’s all forgiven and forgotten.”

“And could Sammy be over?” Dot was quick to ask, taking advantage of the
unexpected softness on Ruth’s part.

“Oh, Sammy! Well, I don’t know. I hadn’t intended to ask him.”

“He’s got a new suit of clothes!” burst out Dot, as if that clinched
matters. And in the laugh that followed, Ruth said:

“All right. Have him over for a little while. But mind! He must go home
early!”

Tess and Dot would have rushed away before the pudding was served, so
anxious were they to convey the welcome news to their prankish partner,
but Ruth insisted on the forms of politeness being observed, at any
rate, and not until she had given the signal for all to leave were Tess
and Dot allowed to depart on their joyous errand.

The young men all came, Luke getting back to Milton just in time to
attend. Cecile, too, motored over from Grantham and arrived with her
intended, Gene Barrows. So that soon the Corner House was echoing to the
merry laughter of happy hearts.

“Dish yeah shore would ’a’ done Uncle Peter Stower good ef he could ’a’
heerd dis!” remarked Uncle Rufus, as he helped Mrs. MacCall in the
kitchen. “He got kinder ole an’ crusty towards de las’, but he had lots
ob pain.”

“’Twould be a marcy were the puir mon able to see a little of the
brightness he’s brought about,” agreed the Scotch housekeeper. “But it’s
nae gi’en ta any mon to see what gaes on when he’s depart!”

“’Ceptin’ he turns into a ghost,” Uncle Rufus observed.

“Hech! Hech! Dinna ye start any o’ that talk with the nicht comin’ on!”
warned Mrs. MacCall, with a glance over her shoulder.

Ruth could scarcely wait for a chance to get Luke off in a corner by
himself to put to him some questions that were troubling her. But when
she did she derived little satisfaction.

“About those men—” she began. “Were you able to find out anything,
Luke?”

“Nothing worth mentioning,” he replied. “I talked with the conductor of
the train I was on when I heard the strange talk, and he didn’t even
remember the fellows. Small wonder, when you stop to think how many
tickets he has to take up in the course of the day. Then I tackled the
brakeman, and had a little better luck.”

“Did he know the men?”

“He didn’t exactly know them,” Luke replied. “But he remembered them
when I called them to his mind. Luckily, I had noticed them pretty
closely and could give a good description. Perhaps I may turn out to be
a detective—who knows?”

“You’ll have to work up a few more details on this case before I’ll give
you a certificate and a badge,” said Ruth, with a smile. “But what did
the brakeman say?”

“That’s right—stick to the main point,” returned Luke. “Well, he said
the men had ridden on the same train a couple of times before, but what
their business was or what they talked about, he didn’t know.”

“Were they in the moving picture business?”

“That he couldn’t say. In fact, I didn’t mention it,” was the
collegian’s answer. “The more I stop to think of it the less I like that
moving picture theory.”

“But there must be some explanation of their remark about ten thousand
dollars,” insisted Ruth. “Ten thousand dollars don’t grow on every bush,
you know.”

“More’s the pity,” remarked Luke. “If it did I’d be out picking some
now. College is frightfully expensive!” he added, with a sigh.

“I’m sure it must be. But you haven’t much longer.”

“I don’t know. When I look ahead to the time when I’ll graduate—if I
don’t flunk out—it seems——”

There came an interruption. Sammy Pinkney, who had been playing in the
yard in the bright moonlight with Tess and Dot, came up to the corner of
the porch where Ruth and Luke were having this conversation.

“Excuse me,” said Sammy, with startling politeness for him, “but some
one wants to see you, Ruth.”

“Some one to see me, Sammy?”

“Yes’m.”

“Who is it, and where is he—or she?”

“It’s a he.”

“Well, Sammy, why all this mysteriousness?” asked Luke, with a laugh,
for there was a queer air not only about Sammy, but about the two little
girls who stood just behind him.

“Who wants to see me, Sammy?” asked Ruth, encouragingly.

“It’s Hop Wong, the Chinaman!” blurted out the boy. “And he wants you to
come down to the end of the garden!”




CHAPTER XII: A QUEER NOTE


Ruth started up from the porch where she had been sitting in some
seclusion with Luke. In other secluded places Agnes and Neale were
talking over matters that concerned them, and Hal and Nalbro were
similarly engaged.

“Hold on! Where are you going?” asked Luke, as he put a detaining hand
on Ruth’s arm.

“I’m going to see Hop Wong. Poor man, probably he’s in trouble. He does
work for us sometimes, and at Christmas he brought me the loveliest,
cutest little chest of tea—the best I ever drank. He has a quaint little
laundry at the end of our street, and——”

“You don’t take this message seriously, do you?” asked Luke, and Ruth
could see by the moonlight that he was smiling.

“Take it seriously? Of course I do, Luke. Hop Wong isn’t the kind of
Chinese to play jokes; though when he first came here the boys played
enough mean jokes on him. But he was patient. Of course, I take it
seriously. Maybe some new boys have been annoying him—none of those who
know him would bother him,” and Ruth started down the steps.

“Wait a minute!” counseled Luke, with a laugh. “I think this is one of
Sammy’s tricks,” he whispered to the Corner House girl. “We’ll see if we
can’t turn it on Sammy himself.”

But Ruth did not take this view of it, and instead of pretending to
believe what Sammy had said, which was Luke’s intention, she at once
“spilled the beans,” as Luke said afterward, by blurting out:

“Sammy, you’re not joking, are you?”

“Sure not, Ruth!”

“Does Hop Wong really want to see me?”

“Cross my heart he does!” and Sammy quickly performed this childish
rite, than which there is no stronger confirmation.

“Did he say what he wanted?” demanded Luke. “And how did he come to send
word by you, Sammy? Why didn’t he come to the front door, or even the
back door, himself?”

“’Cause he was skairt, I guess,” was all Sammy could think of.

“Frightened by what?” demanded Luke.

“I dunno. All I know is that Dot and Tess and me was playin’ hide and
coop at the end of the garden an’ Hop Wong comes slidin’ along—you know
how funny he walks.”

“What did he say?” asked Ruth.

“Oh, he talked so funnily Dot and I had to laugh!” put in Tess.

“You shouldn’t laugh at the poor man. Think how silly you would sound
trying to talk Chinese,” chided Ruth.

“I can almost talk it. Anyhow, I can say words that sound like it,”
declared Sammy. “Want to hear me?” he asked hopefully.

“Tell us what Hop Wong said,” suggested Luke.

“Oh, he just gibbered away,” reported Sammy. “And all I could make out
was that he wants to talk to Ruth. He said for me to come and tell her
to come down where he was at the end of the garden.”

“He said,” giggled Tess, “‘Tell Missie Luth I wanna spleak her muchy
qulick!’” And Tess gave such a good imitation of the funny talk of Hop
Wong that even Luke laughed.

“Well, I’ll go see what he wants,” said Ruth. “I imagine it must be
something about his laundry business. Once before he came to me. It was
when the man who owns his shop was going to raise the rent to a
prohibitive figure. I went to see Mr. Howbridge about it, and he was
able to arrange matters so poor Hop Wong didn’t have to pay so much.
Ever since then Hop thinks I regulate the universe, I guess.”

“You do—for some of us,” said Luke, as he reached forward and pressed
Ruth’s hand.

“Silly!” she whispered.

“I hope he gives her some lichi nuts,” said Sammy to the two little
girls, as they followed Ruth and Luke to the path that led to the end of
the yard. Nothing was said to the other two young couples.

The moon shone brightly on the old-fashioned garden of the Corner House,
casting fantastic shadows where the old pavilion stood—the pavilion,
vine-covered, where Uncle Peter had spent his last lonely days.

“Where is Hop Wong?” asked Ruth, as they neared the place where Sammy
had said the Celestial Kingdom’s citizen was waiting.

“Oh, I guess he’s around here. He was right under the apple tree when I
saw him first,” the boy reported.

Then, as they all looked about and saw no slant-eyed figure waiting for
them, Sammy raised his voice and called:

“Hop! Oh, Hop Wong! Where are you? Here’s Ruthie!”

There was no answer—just the white, silent moonlight over everything.

“Hop Wong!” called Sammy again. “Ruth Kenway is here.”

“Maybe you’d better say ‘Missie Luth’ like he does,” suggested Tess.

“Hush!” came from her oldest sister.

They waited in silence.

“I guess he’s gone,” said Sammy at length. “Got tired of waitin’,
maybe.”

Luke walked about, peering amid the bushes. Then Dot called:

“What’s that white thing?”

“Where?” demanded Tess. “Don’t you go seeing white things now!”

“It’s on the apple tree,” went on Dot.

They all looked toward the nearest apple tree. Gently fluttering in the
night breeze was a piece of paper, caught in the crevice of the apple
tree bark. Luke reached for it.

“Guess Hop Wong left your laundry check here,” he said, as he opened a
bit of folded paper of the typical Chinese kind and saw on it some marks
in very dull black India ink. “It must have been forgotten when the
laundry was left at his shop,” Luke went on.

“We haven’t sent him any laundry this week,” declared Ruth. “Are you
sure it’s a laundry check?”

Luke looked at it again. Then he started in surprise.

“Why, no!” he exclaimed. “It isn’t a laundry check, and it isn’t written
in Chinese characters, as I thought at first! It’s a note to you, Ruth!”

“A note to me, Luke?”

“Well, perhaps not to you exactly. It’s to all of you. Wait, I guess I
can read it.”

He stepped from beneath the shadowy apple tree into the stronger
moonlight and held up the paper with its black characters. Then he read,
and afterward Ruth perused the queer note which said:

    “Korner Hous gals pay Hop Wong 100 dols
    Hop Wong mak grat much money gals.”

For a moment neither Ruth nor Luke spoke. With heads close together they
again read the queer note, while Sammy, Tess and Dot stood idly there,
rather awed by the strangeness of it all.

“Hum,” murmured Luke, “I wonder if he wrote this himself or got some one
to do it for him.”

“Hop Wong can write a little English,” said Ruth. “A very little, as
perhaps you have noticed,” she went on to Luke. “He told me once he had
gone to a Mission School.”

“Then he should have been taught not to play tricks,” and Luke’s tone
was a bit severe.

“Do you think this is a trick, Luke?”

“I’m sure of it! Aren’t you?”

Ruth paused a moment before replying. She again read the note.

“No,” she answered, “I think it is genuine.”

“You mean he isn’t trying to play a joke, perhaps put up to it by some
one else?” demanded Luke.

“I think Hop Wong is in earnest,” said Ruth, simply.

“Well,” began Luke, “I——Let’s take this up and see what the others
think,” he said, with a change of thought.

“Perhaps we’d better look about and see if Hop Wong has really gone,”
suggested Ruth. “His courage may have failed him at the last moment. See
if he’s hiding in the bushes. Sammy, please call him again. He seemed to
trust you.”

But neither hails nor search revealed the Chinese, and after a short
period the party returned to the piazza.

“We were just coming to look for you!” exclaimed Nalbro. “Where in the
world have you been?” and she and Hal halted on the side path up which
came Luke and Ruth.

“We have been—picking cherry blossoms,” answered Ruth.

“Cherry blossoms!” echoed Hal.

“I think she has confused Japan and China,” remarked Luke, with a laugh.

“This is worse and more of it!” chimed in Agnes, who had come along with
Neale. “What’s the big idea?” she asked slangily. Ruth disapproved of
slang, but Agnes, backed by Neale, liked to use it.

“Hop Wong has been trying to stage a mystery,” explained Luke. “Here is
the concrete evidence of it. I claim it’s a joke, but Ruth takes it
seriously.”

“Let’s see!” demanded Neale, reaching for what Luke had taken for a
laundry check.

“Suppose we go into the house where the light is better,” suggested
Ruth. “And, Sammy, I don’t want to be impolite, but perhaps your mother
wants you to go to bed.”

“Oh, no’m, she doesn’t!” quickly declared the boy. “I asked her an’ she
said I could stay up late to-night on account of your party.”

“Well——” went on Ruth.

“Suppose we keep Sammy here a little while,” suggested Luke in a low
voice. “It isn’t very late and we might need him. I have an idea,” he
added.

“All right,” agreed Ruth, after a quick look at her friend. “You may
stay a little longer, Sammy.”

“Goodie!” cried Tess and Dot.

The children were not much interested in the odd note—particularly when
they saw Linda come in with cake and ice cream. And while Sammy and the
small girls were enjoying this feast in one corner of the room, the
others gathered under the light to read again the strange message.

What did it mean?




CHAPTER XIII: A MIDNIGHT TRYST


There could be no question but what the message was from a Chinese.
Everything about it indicated that—the paper, the ink, and the peculiar
manner in which even the English letters were formed with a brush in its
bamboo holder, worked in an upright manner, after the style of Chinese
from time immemorial.

“Yes, I guess Hop Wong wrote it all right,” agreed Neale. “But wait a
minute. I have one of his laundry checks in my pocket now, and I mustn’t
forget to call for my clean shirts. You’re going to have some more
parties, aren’t you?” he appealed beseechingly to Ruth and Agnes.

“Oh, I suppose so, silly boy!” laughed Agnes. “But what has that to do
with this?”

“A lot, maybe,” declared Neale. “I’ll compare a laundry check that Hop
Wong positively gave me with this paper and we’ll see if they are
alike.”

“I’m pretty sure they will be,” remarked Luke. “Though, after all, it
isn’t much of a test.”

“Why not?” demanded Neale.

“Because these Chinese laundrymen get all their paper and other supplies
from the same wholesale house, and the stuff seldom varies. However, it
will do no harm to make the comparison.”

When the two pieces of paper were placed in conjunction, Neale’s laundry
check and the strange message left in the apple tree, they were
identical, and so was the hue of the ink.

Again Ruth read the message which seemed particularly hers, since the
Chinese had sent word to her first that he wanted to see her.

    “Korner Hous gals pay Hop Wong 100 dols
    Hop Wong mak grat much money gals.”

“What in the world does it mean?” demanded Nalbro, clinging to Hal with
a pretty air of proprietorship. “It sounds like a comic opera. What’s
that one we went to see in Boston, Hal?”

“You mean the Mikado?”

“That was it. Wasn’t it lovely? Dear Little Buttercup—” and she hummed
the air.

“Only that happened to be Japanese instead of Chinese, and ‘Dear Little
Buttercup’ wasn’t in the Mikado at all! That’s the only difference,”
observed Luke, with a grim chuckle.

“Oh, well, the idea is the same,” Nalbro asserted. “But what does it
mean, anyhow?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” said Ruth.

“Isn’t it plain?” asked Agnes. “Hop Wong, for all his meekness, wants us
to pay him a hundred dollars so he’ll make a great lot of money.”

“That isn’t the way I read it,” declared Neale.

“What do you make of it?” asked Luke.

“It seems to be a sort of promise,” went on Neale as he again studied
the note. “Translating—ahem—I’ll pretend I’m in high school now, giving
a recitation in Latin. Translating, I should say it ought to read like
this:

“‘If the Corner House girls will pay Hop Wong one hundred dollars, Hop
Wong, in return, will make a greater amount of money for the Corner
House girls.’ That’s what it means.”

“Well, perhaps,” admitted Luke. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“But how does he propose to make money for us?” asked Ruth.

“Perhaps by enlarging his laundry,” suggested Agnes. “That’s it, I’ll
wager a cookie!”

Neale, who had started toward her, turned aside with a disappointed air.

“I thought you were going to say—kiss!” he sighed.

“There is a time and place for everything!” Agnes told him.

“Go on with your theory, Agnes,” begged Luke. “It sounds interesting, to
say the least.”

“Well, couldn’t it be that Hop Wong wants to do more business?” asked
the girl. “You know how those Chinese are. They come over here, start a
little place, and then get in a partner who does most of the work. I
think Hop Wong wants to expand—to get in a partner—and he needs a
hundred dollars to finance it. If we advance it he’ll give us a share in
his laundry—make us stockholders, perhaps. Fancy being in the Chinese
laundry business, Ruth! Wouldn’t it be grand?”

“I don’t know,” and Ruth spoke doubtfully. “If I thought he meant that
I’d try to help him get a partner.”

“It would be just like your unusual kind spirit,” said Luke. “But I am
not sure it does mean that. Read it again, Neale, just as it sounds.”

Neale read:

“‘Korner House gals pay Hop Wong 100 dols——’”

He was stopped by a cry from Dot.

“Oh, don’t give him my Alice-doll!” she begged.

“Silly child, what do you mean?” asked Agnes.

“Well, doesn’t that Chinaman want a hundred dolls?” asked Dot, tears
coming into her eyes. “We haven’t got that many—not even Tess and me
together. And, anyhow, I won’t give that Chinaman my Alice-doll and I
don’t see why they call ’em Chinamen anyhow, ’cause they aren’t made of
china. But he can’t have my Alice-doll!”

“He doesn’t want her, Dottie!” explained Ruth. “That’s just his way of
saying dollars.”

“Oh! Are you sure?”

“Certainly she is,” put in Agnes. “And, Ruth, if you let these children
stay up any later, eating ice cream and cake, they’ll be sick to-morrow
and you’ll have to look after them alone, for Neale and I are going
away.”

“Oh, are you, indeed?”

“Yes. But, seriously, Tess and Dot ought to go to bed.”

Instantly the little ones began begging for a half hour more, but Ruth
decided that Agnes, for once, was right, and off to bed they were sent.

“I s’pose that means I’ve got to go,” sighed Sammy.

“Well—” began Ruth, with a look at Luke.

“Wait a minute, Sammy,” suggested the collegian. “We must get to the
bottom of this,” he went on. “And to do so we must have a talk with this
Chinese laundryman. Now it would seem that he trusts Sammy, though he
may be very fond of you and Agnes, Ruth, for what you have done for him.
Are you and Hop Wong good friends, Sammy?”

“Sure we are! I always take my pa’s collars there and he gives me those
funny lichi nuts—I mean Hop Wong does.”

“Then Sammy is the boy to proceed with this,” went on Luke.

“What do you mean to do?” Ruth wanted to know.

“I want to send word to Hop Wong to come and explain this note, and I
think if Sammy goes to the laundry alone and asks Hop Wong to come here,
it will do the trick. If one of us goes, or if all of us go, it will
look as though we suspected something. But we can safely send Sammy.”

“Will he go?” asked Ruth, half doubtfully.

“Sure I’ll go!” declared Sammy. “I’d like to. Maybe he’ll give me lichi
nuts.”

“Oh, forget the nuts!” advised Luke. “This may mean business! Skip
along, Sammy, and go in casually. Wait a minute!”

“What’s cas-casally?” inquired Sammy.

“I mean as if you just happened in,” explained Luke. “But I have a
better plan. Can’t you send some laundry to be done up?” he appealed to
Ruth.

“Yes, I could make up a bundle.”

“Please do so. We’ll make this seem as natural as possible.”

“Will he be open as late as this?” asked Hal.

“Oh, sure!” asserted Sammy. “He’s workin’ all night, Hop Wong is.”

A little later Sammy was dispatched with a bundle of things which needed
the peculiar attention of the Chinese, and then the party of young folks
at the Corner House waited.

Sammy came back much more quickly than they expected him. He gave the
peculiar check to Ruth and said:

“He wasn’t there.”

“How did you leave the laundry then?” asked Luke.

“Oh, there was another Chink in the place—his partner, I guess. I asked
him when Hop Wong would be back, but I couldn’t make out anything he
said except ‘Tlhusdlay.’ I guess he meant Thursday.”

“But surely Hop Wong wouldn’t remain away that long!” said Agnes.

“No, he meant the laundry would be ready then,” suggested Neale. “That’s
the first thing a new Chinese learns to say—the days of the week. So you
didn’t see any sign of Hop Wong, Sammy?”

“Nope.”

“Maybe one of us had better go,” suggested Hal.

“Guess we had,” agreed Luke. “Come on, we three will stroll down there.
Maybe Hop Wong will be back soon.”

But when the three young men reached the steaming laundry, with its
peculiar acrid smell, Hop Wong was not in sight. A shuffling, slant-eyed
and smiling representative came out from behind the calico curtains,
however, and stretched forth a very clean hand with long nails.

“You got chleck?” he clicked.

“No check,” said Luke.

“No lauldly,” was the sententious reply.

“We haven’t any laundry,” went on Luke. “But listen here, friend, where
is Hop Wong?”

“Hop Wong gone.”

“When Hop Wong come back?” and Luke tried not to listen to the chuckles
of his friends at his vernacular talk.

“Hop Wong clum black mebby t’mollo.”

“Not until to-morrow? But maybe he come back to-night?”

“Maybe. You no glot lauldly?”

It seemed to worry Hop Wong’s partner (if such he was) that the visitors
had neither laundry to leave nor a check with which to claim shirts and
collars.

“No laundry,” said Luke again. “I think I’ll leave a note for the jolly
beggar to call at the Corner House,” he said to Neale and Hal. “What do
you say?”

“Can he read it after you write it?” asked Neale.

“Oh, I guess so. ‘Friend,’” and he turned to the other laundryman, “Hop
Wong read let-letter—English letter—not Chinese?” His tone was
questioning.

“Oh, shlure! Hop, he lead Englis’!”

“All right—here goes,” and Luke printed with the bamboo brush on a piece
of laundry wrapping paper a request in as simple words as he could for
Hop Wong to call at the Corner House as soon as he returned.

“There! Give it to Hop Wong as soon as he comes in,” said Luke. “Pronto!
Quick, you know!”

“Pronto is Spanish—not Chinese,” chuckled Neale.

“Oh, well, what is it you say when you want a Chinese to hurry?”

“Chop-chop!” declared Hal.

“All right—chop-chop it is,” said Luke. “You give Hop Wong this
chop-chop,” and he handed the other the message.

“All lite,” was the bored answer, and they filed out, leaving Hop Wong’s
partner gravely trying to read the note which he held upside down.

“I only hope he doesn’t think ‘chop-chop’ means that he’s to bring up a
bowl of rice and chop sticks,” said Neale, as they were on their way
back.

“We’ll have to trust to luck,” replied Luke.

They found the girls eagerly and anxiously awaiting their return.

“Well?” asked Ruth.

They told her what had taken place.

“Then the only thing to do is to wait,” observed Agnes.

It seemed a long time, but really it was not more than an hour. Sammy
had been sent home and Luke was about to propose that he and Neale and
Hal should pay another visit to the laundry, when there came a tapping
on the window of the room where they were all sitting. It happened to be
the only window that was not raised, for the night was warm.

“What’s that?” exclaimed Nalbro, as the tapping on the glass sounded
very loud, coming, as it did, after a period of silence.

“Look!” exclaimed Ruth.

She pointed to the casement, and in the light from the room they all saw
the face of a Chinese peering at them.

“Hop Wong!” exclaimed Neale. “Hey, you!” he shouted, “come in here and
stop playing your tricks!”

But, even as he spoke, the face of Hop Wong faded away and disappeared
from sight.

“Well, what do you know about that!” cried Hal.

“After him!” cried Luke.

The three young men dashed from the house, scattering to search for the
Chinaman. But he was not to be found anywhere around the house nor in
the adjacent garden.

“Well, if he isn’t the limit!” exclaimed Luke, in exasperation. “What do
you suppose his game is?”

“Give it up,” remarked Neale. “Maybe he’s hiding in the bushes under the
window. We didn’t look there.”

An investigation of the shrubbery, however, failed to disclose any
Chinese. But they did see, on the window sill, another note. It was
written like the first, on laundry paper.

“Hang the fellow!” chuckled Luke. “He’s as bad at writing notes as
Wilkins Micawber. Let’s see what this one says.”

They carried it into the house. There they read this:

    “Hop Wong met Korner House gals midlight
    under boy-pain tree in glarden.”

“Whew!” whistled Neale. “More of the same mystery! Wants the girls to
meet him at midnight, does he? Not much!”




CHAPTER XIV: SUSPICIONS


Ruth reached over and gently took from Neale’s hand the latest bit of
correspondence from Hop Wong. She read it slowly.

“What do you think it means?” she asked, of no one in particular.

“He wants you and Agnes to meet him at midnight! Just fancy that!” cried
Neale indignantly. “He has nerve! I’ll say that much!” He would have
said a great deal more, evidently, but Luke intervened.

“I think he must mean ‘meet’ where he says ‘met,’” was the opinion
advanced by the young collegian. “You girls have never met him, have
you—using the word in its past tense?”

“Never, except perhaps to go occasionally to his laundry,” Agnes
answered.

“But what’s this riddle about a boy-pain tree in ‘glarden,’ by which, I
suppose, he means ‘garden’?” asked Hal.

“That _is_ a puzzler—boy-pain tree,” mused Neale. “I guess we’d better
take it for granted that Hop Wong has a gone crazy and let it go at
that.”

“No!” exclaimed Luke. “I’m beginning to understand it. You have an apple
tree in your garden, haven’t you?” he asked Ruth.

“You ought to know—you and Ruth have sat under it often enough!”
chuckled Agnes.

“That will do, Aggie. This may be serious,” said Ruth rebukingly, but in
a quiet voice. “Yes, there is an apple tree,” she went on.

“Then that’s what Hop Wong means by ‘boy-pain’ tree,” declared Luke.

“Where’s the connection?” demanded Neale.

“I see!” exclaimed Hal. “And if you need a dictionary, Neale, to trace
the parallel between boys and pain and an apple tree——”

“Oh, now I see!” laughed Neale. “Hop Wong didn’t know how to spell apple
tree, but he knew the effects of green apples on boys, and he went from
cause to effect. Pretty good, that!”

“Do you suppose that’s what it is?” asked Nally.

“It would seem so,” answered Luke. “Now the question is—do you girls
think it worth while to humor him, to meet him in this midnight tryst?
You needn’t be afraid, if that’s what you’re thinking of,” he went on,
as he saw Ruth about to demur. “We boys will all be within call.”

“Brave boys!” joked Agnes, and Ruth gave her another warning look.

“What do you think, Luke?” Ruth appealed to her friend. “Would you if
you were us?—I mean Agnes and myself. Of course we won’t ask Nally to
share the danger.”

“Oh, I like _that_!” cried the Boston girl. “Here you invite me to the
Corner House, and as soon as a first-class mystery—better than any
moving picture—crops up, you want to shut me out! No, indeed! Let me
help you keep the tryst. Hop Wong won’t know but what I am a regular
Corner House girl.”

“Yes, I don’t suppose three will make any difference,” replied Luke.
“Hop Wong isn’t likely to be fussy about that. Well, will you go? You
have about an hour to make up your mind,” he went on, as he looked at
his watch, noting that it was nearly eleven o’clock.

“Let’s consider it a moment,” suggested Ruth, and then they talked it
all over again from the time Sammy had first summoned them to meet Hop
Wong in the garden, through the flight of the Chinese and his response
to Luke’s note.

“If I only had an inkling of what it’s all about,” observed Ruth, “I
wouldn’t mind going. But I can’t imagine how Hop Wong can put us in the
way of making a great deal of money.”

“The big point with him, I imagine,” said Neale, “is that he wants a
hundred dollars for himself. Maybe after he gets those he thinks he can
invest it in a Chinese lottery for you and win the capital prize.”

“No, I hardly think that,” replied Ruth. “Well, we’ll take a chance,
girls,” she decided. “With the boys stationed in the bushes near at hand
there can be no danger. We’ll see what Hop Wong wants—will you?” and she
turned to Nalbro and Agnes.

“I’m game!” announced the Boston girl.

“And far be it from me to be a spoil-sport,” declared Agnes. “Come on.”

“Don’t be in too much of a rush; you have a little time yet,” announced
Luke. “We’ll just scout around the apple tree and seek good places for
us to hide. Come on, boys.”

He went out with Neale and Hal. Ruth looked at her sister and guest.

“Nervous?” questioned Nalbro.

“No.”

“Neither am I! Isn’t it thrilling?”

“It may be too much so,” said Ruth grimly.

They sat and talked in the now silent Corner House until the boys came
back. Mrs. MacCall, Linda, and Uncle Rufus had gone to bed, for Ruth
told them she would lock up after the boys had gone home.

“I guess we’re all set for the play,” announced Luke as he and the other
two boys returned. “It lacks a little of midnight, but I fancy Hop Wong
will be a little early. We’ll go down first and hide ourselves away.
Don’t worry if you don’t see us, for it wouldn’t do to show ourselves to
the laundryman. But we’ll be close to you.”

“All right,” said Ruth. “We’ll follow you in about five minutes.”

And at the end of that time, when the three girls went into the garden
and walked toward the apple tree, bathed as it was in moonlight, there
was not a sign of the boys, not so much as loud breathing. Yet Ruth knew
Luke would not fail her.

For several minutes the girls waited under the tree. There was no sound
but the night wind. The situation was growing tense, and Agnes said
later that it was all she could do to keep from giggling hysterically.

Suddenly there was a hiss coming with fierce energy out of the darkness.

“Oh—a snake!” gasped Nalbro. “I’m going to——”

Whether she was about to announce that she would faint or run no one
knew, for a moment later the voice of Hop Wong called:

“Clorner House gals alle lite?”

“Yes, we’re here all right, Hop Wong,” answered Ruth, in steady tones.
“But what does this mean? Why have you asked us out here to meet you? If
you are playing any tricks——”

“No, Missie Luth, no tlicks. Hop Wong play no tlicks. I telle you lite
away quick.”

Out of the moonlight shadows he came, a timid and shrinking figure of a
Chinese. Ruth wondered that she had ever had a sense of fear concerning
him, he seemed so slight and boyish—not much larger, in fact, than Sammy
Pinkney.

“Well, Hop Wong, we are here and we’ll listen to what you have to say,”
remarked Ruth.

“Hop Wong glad Missie Luth come,” said the laundryman, drawing nearer
and standing fully revealed in the silvery radiance under the outermost
branches of the tree. “Other Clorner House gals here?” he asked. Hop
Wong did not speak as he wrote, exactly.

“Yes, we’re all here,” Ruth told him.

“Alle lite. Now Hop Wong tell. Listen! You give Hop Wong one hund’ed
dollals, Hop Wong show you where much money is. You sabby?”

“What do you mean?” demanded Ruth. “Where is this much money you will
show us?”

“Ah, flist you give Hop Wong one hund’ed dollals?” he cunningly
demanded.

“And if we do give you a hundred dollars will you show us where we can
find more than that?” asked Agnes, thinking it wise to show that Ruth
was not in supreme authority.

“That what Hop Wong do.”

“But if you know where there is a lot of money, why don’t you go and get
it for yourself, and not let us take it?” asked Ruth. “Why don’t you get
this big sum yourself, Hop Wong?”

“No can do,” was all he said. “Only Clorner House gals git much money.
Hop Wong git one hund’ed dollals. No can do.”

He seemed quite downcast about it, and to the girls he was rather a
pathetic figure.

“Why don’t you tell us first where this money is, and then let us pay
you the hundred dollars if we find it?” asked Agnes. “Don’t you trust
us, Hop Wong? You have known us long enough to know we are honest and
that we’ll pay you if we find any such large sum as you tell about.
Where is it? Tell us, and if we get it we’ll pay you—maybe two hundred
dollars.”

“No can do,” was all Hop Wong said.

Further arguments seemed to be useless, yet Ruth made one more attempt.
But when Hop Wong stubbornly, or perhaps uncomprehendingly, repeated:

“No can do! Give Hop Wong one hund’ed dollals.”

Ruth exclaimed:

“We’ll have to see our guardian about this. We’ll have to talk with Mr.
Howbridge, our guardian, Hop Wong, and we’ll see you later—at your
laundry. That is all for to-night.”

It was surprising to note the change that came over the Chinese. He
appeared to shrink and grow even smaller and terror was clearly manifest
on his face.

“No tell! No tell him!” he cried. “No call guard and have Hop Wong
alested. No tell! I not bad! Oh! Oh!” and in a perfect wail of fright he
turned and fled, being soon lost among the moonlighted shadows of the
garden.

“Oh!” exclaimed Nalbro, in pity.

In an instant the three boys had leaped from their hiding places and had
joined the girls, so close and ready were they.

“Shall we take after him?” cried Neale.

“No, the poor fellow is frightened to death now,” said Ruth.

“But what happened?” asked Luke. “What did you say to him that made him
yell like that and run as if a dragon were chasing him? We couldn’t hear
all that was said.”

“I merely announced that we would have to see our guardian about paying
Hop Wong one hundred dollars,” stated Ruth. “Then off he ran.”

There was silence for a moment and then Luke exclaimed:

“I see! He thought you said you would call the _guard_. Guess he must
have thought you had a squad of soldiers on hand. Your use of the word
‘guardian’ mixed him up. There is something suspicious in this or he
wouldn’t be so ready to run when he thought you were going to call in
the authorities. That’s it—Hop Wong is afraid of the law.”

And so it seemed. The more they thought about it and talked it over, the
more Luke’s explanation seemed to fit the conduct of the laundryman.

“Well, no use staying out here any longer,” said Ruth, with a little
shiver, for the night dew was chilling. “Let’s go in, or Mrs. Mac will
think we’ve been carried off by some ‘lang-nebbied thing.’”

They went into the house. Neale and Luke offered to remain all night,
but it was not considered necessary with Hal and Uncle Rufus at hand, to
say nothing of the strong-armed Linda.

They talked matters over a little longer, all the while growing more and
more suspicious of Hop Wong’s conduct, and when Luke and Neale departed
it was with the intention of taking serious steps the next day to get at
the bottom of the mystery.




CHAPTER XV: TESS AND DOT INVESTIGATE


Mr. Howbridge chuckled in silent amusement when Ruth and Agnes paid him
a visit at his office the next day and told what had happened.

“What do you think of it?” asked Ruth.

“Not much, my dear. If you want my private and unofficial opinion, I’ll
say I think very little of it.”

“But, Guardy,” broke in Agnes, “perhaps we’d better have your official
opinion.”

“Yes,” agreed Ruth, “that’s what we came for.”

“I can’t give you an official opinion until I look further into the
matter,” he said, growing a bit grave as he saw how much these two
Corner House girls were affected by what had taken place. “Let me have
the documents in the case,” he begged.

“Meaning these laundry checks, as Luke calls them?” asked Ruth.

“Yes. You know we lawyer fellows depend a great deal on documentary
evidence. Not that I think I can get much from these, however,” he went
on, as he looked over Hop Wong’s notes.

“What shall we do?” Ruth wanted to know.

“Just nothing for the present,” was the lawyer’s advice. “Leave it to
me. I’ll see the official court interpreter whom we always have whenever
there is a Chinese case in court, and I’ll get him to have a talk with
Hop Wong. It is just possible that he may be misunderstood, both in his
writings and talk.”

“Yes, that’s possible,” admitted Ruth. “I wouldn’t want to do the poor
fellow an injustice.”

“He seemed to have a guilty conscience,” remarked Agnes, with a giggle,
as she remembered how Hop Wong had run at the mention of the word
guardian.

“Perhaps he isn’t the only one,” replied Mr. Howbridge, with a smile,
looking at several documents on his desk. “We lawyers run across some
queer cases. Not to raise your hopes too high, however, I think I
wouldn’t anticipate too much from what Hop Wong said,” he went on. “I
mean about a great sum of money coming to you. I handled all of your
Uncle Peter’s affairs and, as far as I know, his estate is all settled
and you have the most of it.”

“For which we are duly grateful,” said Ruth.

“And we don’t hope for nor really want any more,” remarked Agnes.
“Though if you could see your way clear to letting us have a new car, of
course we’d——”

“There you go again!” chuckled the guardian. “Isn’t that a perfectly
good car you have now?”

“Oh, it’s _good_ enough, if you mean it that way,” sighed Agnes. “But if
you could see the look, sometimes, on Nally Hastings’ face when she gets
in it!”

“Oh, ho! Sets the wind in that quarter?” exclaimed Mr. Howbridge, using
one of his favorite expressions. “And don’t tell me I should say ‘sit,’
either!” he hastened to remark, thus forestalling an objection on the
part of Ruth, who held that the old adage should be “sits the wind,” and
not “sets.” However, this time she was too anxious over the matter of
Hop Wong and the mystery with which he was connected to “start
anything,” as Neale would have said.

“Well, you go home and be good girls—No, I won’t say that for you’re
always good,” joked Mr. Howbridge. “But I’ll see about letting you have
a new car. I’m going over some of your accounts now, and if I find the
balance on the right side——”

“If you don’t, perhaps we can get Hop Wong’s money,” laughed Agnes.

“Don’t count your chickens until you hear them coming over the bridge,
as Uncle Rufus would say,” remarked Ruth. “Well, Mr. Howbridge, we’ll
leave it to you,” and she and Agnes went back to the Corner House.

“Has Hop Wong been around again?” asked Ruth of Mrs. MacCall.

“Not a glint of him, and small pleasure do I have at a sight of the
yellow-faced heathen!” exclaimed the Scotch housekeeper.

“Oh, well, don’t be too harsh on him,” laughed Agnes. “He may be the
means of our getting a new car. We certainly need one,” and she looked
toward the old one which Neale was bringing out of the garage, for they
were to take a ride that afternoon.

After lunch there was a merry party on the cool porch of the Corner
House. Luke was there, bringing word that he had had a telegram and that
his sister and her intended would be unable to get to Milton, as had
been planned, in order to accompany them on the little outing.

“And what is the opinion of the learned Mr. Howbridge concerning the
collar-cleansing representative of the Celestial Empire?” asked Luke of
Ruth.

“Meaning Hop Wong?” asked Neale.

“Yes, my son,” replied Luke, with a patronizing air.

“He doesn’t attach much importance to it,” Ruth answered.

“Same here,” voiced Neale.

“I think he’s a faker!” exclaimed Hal.

“Well, I don’t know but what I shall have to agree with you,” said Luke
slowly. “I’ve thought it all over, and I can’t see but what it doesn’t
amount to anything. Hop Wong must have been dreaming.”

“Call it a pipe dream,” suggested Neale, with a laugh.

“Oh, do you think he smokes opium?” asked Nalbro, shocked.

“Oh, I guess not. Don’t saddle that on him,” said Luke. “But I didn’t
mean that way. I think Hop Wong has been day-dreaming, perhaps, and he
may have heard some story about fabulous wealth in the Corner House. You
know, before you girls succeeded to Mr. Stower’s estate,” Luke went on,
“there was a rumor, so I’ve heard, that he was a sort of miser.”

“We never heard that!” declared Ruth.

“Well, probably it wasn’t spread broadcast,” proceeded Luke. “But I
understand there was some talk of it, and I think this is what Hop Wong
has gotten hold of and he thinks maybe there is a treasure buried
somewhere.”

“Just like that treasure that was found in the album in the attic—the
fortune that went to Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill,” said Agnes.

“But where, Luke, could this present fortune be buried?” asked Ruth.

“Just nowhere!” chuckled Luke. “It’s all bosh, of course, and that’s why
I think Hop Wong is a faker.”

“But what about what was said by those men on the train?” asked Agnes.
“I mean about the ten thousand dollars.”

“Oh,” murmured Luke. “You mean those men I overheard talking?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe there’s any connection between them and Hop Wong. It’s
all just bunk, if you will excuse my use of a slang term,” laughed Luke.
“Now let’s forget all about it and go riding. It’s a glorious day.”

Neale and Hal brought around the automobile, and as Nalbro was getting
in Agnes could not help saying:

“We were down this morning to see Mr. Howbridge, and he said we could
get a new car. I hope it comes before you go home, Nally.”

“A new car!” whooped out Neale. “Glory be! Then I won’t have to tease
this one along much more.”

“Oh, Agnes, Mr. Howbridge didn’t say for sure we could have one,”
expostulated Ruth.

“No. But he didn’t say we _couldn’t_,” countered Agnes. “And when he
doesn’t do that it almost always happens. Anyhow, I’m going to look at
some of the new models.”

“There’s certainly no harm in looking,” chuckled Neale. “But I do hope
Mr. Howbridge loosens up. If he doesn’t we may get stalled out in the
country some day and have to be towed in.”

“Is this machine as risky as that?” asked Nalbro.

“Nothing of the sort!” declared Luke. “It’s perfectly reliable.”

With merry quips and laughter the party of young folks started off,
leaving Dot and Tess at home to play with Sammy Pinkney.

Now, as it happened, Tess and Dot had overheard more of the talk of
their older sisters than Ruth and Agnes were aware of. It was distinctly
a case of “little pitchers with big ears,” and when the automobile party
was well out of the way, Tess with a queer, secretive air about her, led
her sister and Sammy to a secluded place around the corner of the house.

“Don’t you tell a soul,” whispered Tess.

“What’s a soul?” asked Sammy.

“It’s a person,” Tess informed him. “Don’t you dare tell anybody, will
you?”

“Tell ’em what?” Sammy wanted to know.

“What I’m going to tell you and Dot now.”

“All right, I won’t tell,” promised Sammy.

“Cross your heart!”

This rite was performed rapidly.

“You, too, Dot!”

“Can’t I tell even my Alice-doll?”

“Oh, her! Yes. But nobody else! Cross your heart!”

Dot did it for herself and for her doll.

“Now listen,” went on Tess, and her voice sank to a lower whisper. “It’s
in _our cellar_!”

She brought out the last two words with such force that Dot dropped her
Alice-doll.

“What’s in your cellar?” asked Sammy. “My alligator?”

“No. The ten thousand dollars!” went on Tess, eagerly.

“What ten thousand dollars?” Sammy questioned excitedly.

“The money those men told Luke about on the train and——”

“They didn’t tell him about any money,” objected Sammy. “It was just
that he heard them say it.”

“It’s the same thing,” declared Tess, with a fine disregard for trifles.
“The men know about ten thousand dollars in our cellar and so does Hop
Wong!”

“He does?” cried Sammy, with wide-open eyes.

“Yes!” went on Tess, with a wise shake of her head. “Now you listen to
me, both of you, and don’t you breathe it to a soul!”

This was more exciting than any imaginary happening Sammy had ever
brought up, not excepting his dramatic one about the Russian wolves.

“There’s ten thousand dollars in our cellar,” declared Tess. “Those
funny men who came pretending to fix a water pipe were after it, but
Uncle Rufus scared them away. Hop Wong knows where it is, but he’s
scared, too.”

“Where ’bouts you s’pose it is?” asked Sammy in a whisper.

“I don’t know exactly,” answered Tess. “But it’s in our cellar and we’re
going to find it. Come on! We’ll go get it now!”

She started toward the slanting, open cellar door. For a moment Sammy
and Dot watched her and then, fired by the spirit of what they had
heard, the other two children started down into the dark depths, intent
on making some explorations.




CHAPTER XVI: THE STORM


Rather scary it was, this venturing into the seldom-visited regions
beneath Corner House. In fact Tess and Dot never remembered having gone
there before unaccompanied by their older sisters. But they were driven
by a powerful motive—two motives, in fact.

One was curiosity, than which there is no stronger for a child or
animal. The other was the desire to “show off” before the older
folks—Ruth, Agnes and the boys.

“Won’t they be surprised when we hand them the ten thousand dollars!”
exclaimed Tess, as she led the way down the outside cellar steps.

“Oh, won’t they, just!” agreed Dot.

“Will they give you any of the money?” Sammy asked, somewhat enviously.

“Of course they will,” declared Tess.

“How much?” Sammy inquired.

“Oh, maybe forty dollars,” said Tess, vaguely.

“I’d rather have sixteen,” declared Dot.

“Listen to her!” exclaimed Tess. “She thinks sixteen dollars is more
than forty!”

“Ho! Ho!” chuckled the boy.

“Well, it is!” declared Dot, indignantly. “Look! When you have sixteen
dollars you have a one and a six,” and on the bottom step, in the dust,
she traced the figures. “You have a one and a six,” she repeated. “But
when you have forty dollars you have only a four and a nothing. So
there!”

“Well, forty’s more’n sixteen, I know that!” declared Sammy, though he
was a little impressed by Dot’s logic.

“Come on, let’s find the ten thousand dollars first,” suggested Tess,
foreseeing a long argument if she did not intervene, and the search
started at that part of the cellar nearest the outside door.

“There’s a lot of places to look,” complained Sammy, when the trio had
ventured in a little way. “I wonder if it’s in a box or a barrel?”

“It’s buried—that’s where it is,” declared Tess.

“Buried?” questioned Dot and Sammy.

“Yes, buried treasure is always buried, else how could they call it
buried treasure?” Tess wanted to know, with an affectation of superior
wisdom.

“Well, I guess that’s right,” agreed Sammy. “Buried under the cellar
bottom, I s’pose.”

“Yes,” said Tess. “And we’ll have to get a shovel to dig it up.”

“Dig up the whole cellar?” cried Sammy. “That’s a heap of work!”

“Buried treasure always means a lot of digging,” Tess calmly informed
him. “We’ll all help.”

“Got to have shovels then,” decided Sammy. “Well, I’ll go get ’em.”

He started up out of the cellar.

“I—I guess—maybe we’d better come with you,” said Tess, falteringly as
she looked at the black depths stretching far, far into the rear of the
cellar and thinking of the two men who had claimed to be from the water
department. “Maybe you wouldn’t know the right kind of shovels to get,
Sammy.”

“I’ll go, too,” said Dot. “Maybe I’d better leave my Alice-doll out in
the sun,” she added, as they tramped back up the steps. “She might catch
cold in the damp cellar.”

“All right,” agreed Tess, though it could be seen she had small
sympathy, at least just now, with Dot’s doll.

Sammy found a shovel for himself in Uncle Rufus’ tool-house and the
girls got two smaller ones that they at times used to play with. Thus
equipped, they went back down cellar, not attracting the attention of
Uncle Rufus or Linda or Mrs. MacCall.

“Well, now let’s dig,” suggested Sammy.

The cellar of the Corner House was not an up-to-date cement one, being,
in fact, very old-fashioned and of dirt. But the dirt was packed hard
with years of use, and it was no easy matter to dig in it. The children
soon found this out.

“This isn’t any fun!” complained Dot, after a while.

“We _have_ to do it!” insisted Tess. “All treasure hunting is hard work.
Isn’t it, Sammy?”

“Sure,” he agreed, though this was his first attempt.

They dug around a bit more, their hardest efforts, however, not making
much of an impression on the well-packed cellar bottom, and at last Tess
said:

“I guess we’ll have to go where the dirt’s softer. They just _couldn’t_
bury any treasure here.”

“Where’ll we go?” Dot asked.

“Up there,” and Tess pointed to the farthermost depths of the cellar.

“It’s dark there—terribly dark,” complained Dot. “We can’t see to dig.”

Tess pondered on this for a moment.

“We’ll have to get candles,” she decided. “But if we go into the kitchen
and take away any candles, Linda’ll see us, or Mrs. MacCall, and they’ll
ask us what we’re doing, and——”

“I’ll go get my cigar-box lantern,” offered Sammy.

“What’s that, Sammy?” asked Tess.

“Oh, it’s a cigar box with a candle in it,” said Sammy. “It’s a dandy.
I’ll get it.”

He hurried out of the cellar, and Tess and Dot waited for him up in the
open, for the little girls did not like to stay in the gloomy place when
they were not busy with their treasure hunting.

Sammy’s lantern, manufactured as he had said, out of a cigar box, with a
hole cut in the lid and a square of glass set in, was not a half-bad
illuminant. It gave fitful gleams down in the cellar, and, not much to
the amusement of the children, cast fantastic shadows on the whitewashed
walls.

“Now we’ll go away back where the dirt is soft and get the buried
treasure,” said Tess.

And into the gloomy depths the children advanced, rather hesitatingly
and with more than one glance back over their shoulders, it is true.

Meanwhile the older Corner House girls and Nally and their boy friends
were enjoying themselves on the automobile trip. They went to a summer
resort where there was a small lake, and soon were floating about in
idle pleasure, a couple in each of three boats.

“Beautiful here, isn’t it?” asked Luke of Ruth. The boat was slowly
drifting, beneath an overhanging arch of green branches.

“Very,” she agreed. “But——”

“But me no buts,” he quoted, laughingly. And then, as he noticed that
she was rather serious he added: “I’ll double the proverbial penny.”

“For what?” she asked, hardly comprehending.

“Your thoughts,” he answered. “What are you thinking of? May I hope that
I am——”

“I don’t want to spoil your romance,” she broke in laughingly; “but I
was really wondering what Tess and Dot were doing. I hope they’re all
right.”

“Why shouldn’t they be?”

“Well, that queer Chinese and——”

“Oh, Hop Wong won’t bother them. If he comes around I fancy Linda will
send him flying.”

“It isn’t so much him as those two men——”

“Don’t give them another thought,” advised Luke. “I’m sure they will
never come near the Corner House again.”

“I wish I could be sure,” said Ruth. “I don’t want to stay here too
long. Somehow—I can’t explain it—I have a feeling that something is
happening back home!”

“Just nerves,” declared Luke. “But if you really want to go back——”

“I’d like to. It is almost time, anyhow, and shortening the outing by an
hour or so, if you don’t mind——”

“Not at all,” Luke hastened to assure her. “We’ll go back just as soon
as I can round up the others.”

“You are very good,” murmured Ruth, with a grateful look at him, and she
did not too quickly draw away her hand when Luke stretched his fingers
over hers.

“Oh, say! What’s the idea? Going back so soon!” expostulated Neale, when
he and Agnes were signaled to, and came rowing up to the boat dock.
“Why, the day isn’t half gone!”

“Ruth thinks we had better get back, and so do I,” said Luke quietly.
“It looks as though we might have a storm,” he went on, “and you know
the car wasn’t exactly on its best behavior on the way out, old man.”

“Oh, I worked the crankiness out of her,” declared Neale. But when he
saw that Ruth was really in earnest about going back he made no further
protest. Nor did Hal nor Nalbro.

Contrary to Luke’s partial prediction, the car behaved beautifully, and
they were soon on their homeward trip. But the other remark of the
collegian—to the effect that a storm was brewing—seemed likely to be
borne out. In the west black clouds were gathering.

“We’ll be home before it breaks,” declared Neale, and he stepped on the
accelerator.

“I hope so,” murmured Ruth. “Tess and Dot are so careless, and I ought
to be on hand if there is a heavy storm.”

They sped along right merrily, perhaps a little more subdued than on the
outgoing trip, for, after all, anticipation is a bit more romantic than
realization in nearly every case. But they had had a pleasant day.

A few drops of rain were falling as Neale drove the automobile into the
yard of Corner House, and the girls hastened up on the porch as he
continued on to the garage.

“Where are Tess and Dot?” asked Ruth of Mrs. MacCall, as the Scotch
housekeeper came out on the porch.

“Oh, the bairns are down in the cellar.”

“In the cellar!” Ruth exclaimed. “Why——”

“It is only the noo that I diskivered it,” asserted Mrs. MacCall,
lapsing into some of her Scotch. “I warned them to come oop tha once.
Then ye came spirin’ alang——”

“But what are they doing down in the cellar?” asked Ruth. “I hope they
haven’t been playing there long. Is Sammy with them?”

“Yes. They’re playin’ some game, I’ll wager. I’ll call them ag’in,
an’——”

But at that moment a dreadful crash sounded from the direction of the
cellar.

“Oh!” cried Ruth. “What has happened?”

“I’ll see!” offered Luke, making a dash for the inside cellar stairs.

“I’m with you!” added Hal, for Neale had not come in from the garage.

Anxious, the three girls waited at the head of the stairs. They could
see a flickering light down in the blackness.

“Oh, if it should be those men or Hop Wong!” half sobbed Ruth.

But a moment later Luke’s cheery voice, most reassuring in its tone,
came floating up.

“It’s all right,” he announced. “They just knocked down a shelf of glass
preserve jars. Nobody hurt! Up you go, children!”

A moment later Luke reappeared, carrying Tess, covered with dirt and
cobwebs, while Hal followed with Dot in a similar condition. Sammy, with
his cigar-box lantern, trailed behind, a woeful figure.

“What in the world have you children been doing?” cried Ruth.

“Digging for buried treasure,” announced Tess, as though that were an
everyday occupation. “We haven’t found any yet. And then the shelf fell
down and——”

Her words were muffled in a terrific clap of thunder which shook the
house. Agnes and Nalbro screamed and covered their ears with their hands
while Mrs. MacCall murmured:

“What a terrible storm!”




CHAPTER XVII: THE MIDNIGHT NOISE


Silence followed the terrific clap of thunder—a silence almost as
startling as the noise which had preceded it. And then the rain came
down in torrents.

It was as if that awful blast had opened the flood-gates of heaven and
let down the waters accumulated there for ages past. A pelting, driving,
overwhelming storm it was, punctuated by intermittent flashes of
lightning and rumbling thunder.

But, as if that were not enough, the condition of the three
children—woebegone, dirty and on the verge of tears—was enough to cause
a disturbance.

“What has happened? What is going to happen?” murmured Ruth, for once,
at least, feeling that her nerves were going to give way.

It was Agnes who saved the situation. Having gained her own equilibrium,
she turned to Nalbro and asked:

“What do you think of the Corner House now? Isn’t it an ideal place? So
quiet and restful!”

And as she asked this Dot burst into tears and wails, which made her
inquiry seem all the more contrasting.

But Nally let out a peal of jolly laughter and exclaimed:

“I just love it! It’s so different!”

“Yes, it’s different, all right!” chuckled Neale.

“Well, now that we’re at least all here, whole and not in pieces,” said
Ruth, “perhaps we can have some explanation of what it is all about—I
mean what you children have been doing,” she explained. “First, though,
is any one hurt?”

“I ain’t,” declared Sammy Pinkney.

“You shouldn’t say ‘ain’t,’ Sammy,” remarked Tess primly, intent on
improving her playmate notwithstanding the noise and confusion all about
her.

“I aren’t hurt, but I is scared,” announced Dot.

At this Hal and Luke laughed in glee, at which Dot looked a little hurt.
Neale, however, was a great comfort, as usual, for he looked gravely at
her and said:

“Never mind, Dotums. Almost any one would be scared.”

“Well, I know something else Sammy shouldn’t do,” said Agnes, after the
laughter subsided. “And that is to have that old smelly lantern in here.
It’s bad enough when the windows are open, but when they’re all closed
it’s terrible. Blow it out, Sammy, do!”

The candle in the cigar box was making a smudge, and Sammy obligingly
extinguished it.

“Now let’s have the story,” suggested Ruth.

While the storm raged outside the children told how they had conceived
the idea of searching in the cellar for buried treasure—the treasure of
Hop Wong and the two men.

“But what makes you think there is treasure in our cellar?” asked Ruth.

“Because,” was all Tess or Dot would say.

As for Sammy, he only pointed to the girls. This was a case of shifting
the blame, it seemed.

By degrees, however, it was drawn out of the trio how Tess had put this
and that together, and had, in a way, added what she had overheard
concerning the Chinaman and the two tramps. Thus she had arrived at the
decision that there must be a store of gold in the cellar of the Corner
House. She had then taken Dot and Sammy into her confidence.

“And we dug and dug, but we didn’t find any,” reported Tess. “We were in
the back part of the cellar, where it’s awfully dark, when we heard a
noise. We ran and we knocked down something that fell on the swinging
shelf, and that fell down and——”

“It’s a mercy you weren’t all cut by the broken glass jars!” exclaimed
Ruth. “I suppose the cellar’s a sight!” she sighed.

“Oh, it isn’t so bad as if the jars had been filled with fruit,”
chuckled Luke. “There’s a lot of broken glass, it’s true, but glass jars
are cheap. It might have been worse.”

“Indeed, yes, if the children had been hurt,” agreed Ruth.

A close inspection showed no damage beyond what soap and water would
remedy. Then, as the household settled down to a more normal state of
existence, preparations were made for getting supper, and more details
of the searching expedition of Tess, Dot and Sammy were drawn out while
the storm raged.

“What sort of noise was it you heard that made you run? You said you
knocked down something that broke the swinging shelf, didn’t you?” asked
Ruth, when Mrs. MacCall and Linda were preparing the evening meal.

“Oh, it was just a noise,” replied Tess, vaguely. Ruth’s evident
idea—evident, at least, to the older ones—was to learn if any attempt
had been made by Hop Wong or the two strange men to enter the cellar
under cover of the approaching storm.

“But can’t you tell me what sort of noise?” persisted Ruth.

“It was—now, it was a noisy noise!” exclaimed Sammy, with a triumphant
air.

And he wondered why some of them laughed.

“Never mind, Sammy,” said Neale consolingly, “most noises are noisy. And
that’s the sort of noise that annoys an oyster, if I remember the joke
aright.”

“If you get off any more old ones like that,” threatened Hal, “we’ll
sentence you to stand out in the rain and sing a song.”

“And it’s some rain!” murmured Luke.

Indeed, though the first fury of the storm was over, culminating, it
seemed, in that one terrific crack, there was now a steady downpour
which seemed likely to last all night.

“Sammy, you’d better stay here to supper,” said Ruth, when the meal was
nearly ready. “I’ll telephone over to your mother to say you’re all
right.”

“Oh, I guess she knows I’m all right,” Sammy announced, with cheerful
irresponsibility.

“I’ll make sure,” Ruth declared.

It was still thundering and the lightning was flashing when she
approached the instrument.

“Don’t go near it!” cried Agnes.

“Why not?” Ruth asked.

“It’s always dangerous in a thunder storm to go near a telephone! Keep
away!”

But Ruth was one not easily frightened. Though after she had got her
connection with the Pinkney house and had relieved his mother’s feelings
by saying that Sammy would remain where he was for the present, Ruth
leaped back as a loud clicking from the telephone indicated some sort of
electrical disturbance on the wire.

“There! What did I tell you?” cried Agnes.

“No harm done,” Ruth replied.

It was almost time for the meal to be served when Luke arose, took Neale
by the arm, and started for the hall, saying:

“Well, we’ll bid you young ladies good-evening.”

“What?” cried Agnes.

“You aren’t going—not in all this storm!” objected Ruth.

“I didn’t hear you invite us to supper,” returned Luke with a simulated
injured air. “And you didn’t offer to telephone to Grantham and say I
was all right.”

“Or to Con Murphy,” added Neale, with a serious face.

“Silly!” murmured Ruth. “Of course you boys will stay. Stay all night,
if you like. We have plenty of room.”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” agreed Neale, looking out of the window,
down the panes of which little streams of rain were running. “What say,
Luke?”

“I’m with you! It looks like a good imitation of the original flood
outside.”

“You really would have to go around; you couldn’t climb the back fence
in this storm. Yes, you’ll have to stay,” put in Agnes.

“Then we’ll have a jolly evening of it!” cried Hal. Perhaps he thought
three girls to one youth was all out of proportion.

Indeed, now that they were all safe within doors there was no need to
worry about the storm. The members of the picnic party congratulated
themselves that they had left the lake and grove in time to escape the
outburst of the elements.

It was an intermittent sort of storm, and there would be lulls in it
when it seemed about to stop. The rain would almost cease and the
thunder die away, while the flashes of lightning would hardly be
noticeable.

Then, with a suddenness that was appalling, would come a crash of
thunder which would shake the house, and the lightning preceding it
would crackle and snap on the electric-light wires.

Sometimes the rain would decrease to a mere drizzle, and again it would
pelt down as if about to bore through the roof.

But the Corner House was stanch—Uncle Peter Stower had seen to that—and
not a drop entered.

Supper was a jollier meal with all the company present, than otherwise
would have been the case.

But to storm and conversation alike Sammy Pinkney was seemingly deaf. He
paid strict attention to the affair in hand, which affair consisted in
getting outside as much food as possible. Neither thunder, lightning nor
rain disturbed Sammy.

As Neale observed him clean off plate after plate, which Linda filled,
Agnes’ chum could not help remarking:

“Treasure hunting makes you hungry, doesn’t it, Sammy?”

“Sure!” Sammy answered, not lifting his eyes from the piece of pie.

“I only hope he isn’t made ill,” murmured Ruth.

“Doesn’t thunder or lightning or something have some effect on food or
something?” asked Agnes.

“You’re thinking of lightning turning milk sour, I guess,” answered
Neale.

“Perhaps,” agreed Agnes.

After the meal they went into the sitting room and sat about talking,
the late treasure-hunt, among other topics, being discussed. Ruth had
just gone to the telephone again to tell Mrs. Pinkney that Sammy could
remain all night if the storm did not cease when a series of queer
happenings began.

The first was a sudden dimming of the electric lights. They had been
glowing brightly when, all at once, they went from a white brightness to
a dull red in their vacuum globes.

“Oh!” exclaimed Ruth. “I hope we aren’t going to be left in darkness. We
took out most of the gas. I must see if Linda has any candles.”

“I can light my cigar-box lantern,” offered Sammy.

“Thank you—no!” protested Agnes. “I’d rather sit in darkness than be
smothered.”

“It’s only the lightning,” said Neale. “The lights always go down when a
big flash comes.”

As he spoke the lights went dim again, but they all noted that this
happened when the storm was comparatively quiet. There was no thunder
and no lightning.

“How do you account for that?” asked Nalbro, nervously.

“Trouble in the power house,” said Luke promptly.

“Well, maybe,” Nally conceded.

The house was comparatively quiet for a while, though the storm kept up,
and Ruth had just returned from putting the children to bed—Sammy, to
his delight being given a room to himself—when Nalbro called:

“Some one’s at the telephone!”

“I didn’t hear the bell ring,” said Hal.

“No. But listen! Hear that clicking?”

They all heard a peculiar tapping in the receiver, as when one is
connected with a “busy” wire.

“Maybe it’s off the hook,” suggested Luke.

He went to look, and when he came back to report that the instrument was
as it should be, they all looked one at the other.

“There it is again!” exclaimed Agnes.

Once more the clicking sounded.

“I’ll ask Central what it is,” volunteered Neale.

He started toward the instrument, but at that moment there came almost
as terrific a crash of thunder as the one that opened the storm.

“Neale!” screamed Agnes. “Keep away from that telephone!”

“There’s no danger,” he asserted, his voice sounding strangely loud in
the quiet that succeeded the booming of the thunder.

Then, again the lights went dim—so low as almost to go out—and there
came a gasp of fear even from Ruth.

“Do you suppose the house was struck?” she asked in a whisper of Luke.

“Nonsense! If it had been we’d all know it. Lightning isn’t that gentle
when it strikes.”

At that moment a clock somewhere in the Corner House softly gave the
hour of midnight. And almost as if it had been timed for that weird and
spookish hour there came, from the cellar, seemingly, a strange sound—a
sound of a heavy fall, followed by a moan.




CHAPTER XVIII: STRUCK DOWN


Nothing more was needed to increase the nervous tension of the young
people in the Corner House, especially of Ruth and Agnes, on whom
responsibility rested.

The hurried trip home before the storm, the discovery of the plight of
the children, the crash of the broken shelf and the freaks of the
storm—all this had added up and piled on with the result that all were
keyed to the highest pitch.

And when, on top of this, that weird noise sounded, each and every one
gave a nervous start, though the boys, at least, were ashamed of
themselves a moment later.

“Did you hear that?” gasped Agnes, the first to recover her startled
breath.

“Did we _hear_ it?” murmured Nally. “I should say we _did_! What was
it?”

“And where was it?” asked Ruth, looking around nervously.

“The Corner House is living strictly up to its reputation of a quiet,
homelike family hotel,” joked Luke.

“No, but seriously, that was—something!” declared Neale. He had paused
before the last word as if in doubt what name to put to the strange
noise.

“It was _something_ all right,” asserted Luke. “And we’ve got to find
out what it was.”

“Locate it first—that would be my suggestion,” came from Ruth.

“It was in the cellar!” declared Neale.

“That’s what I’d say,” remarked Nalbro.

On this point there seemed to be little doubt.

“If it had been in the upper part of the house we’d have heard Mrs. Mac
or Linda up and about by now,” asserted Ruth. “It was below us here—in
the cellar, I’m sure.”

“It came right after that clap of thunder,” said Nalbro. “At first I
thought we’d been struck.”

“The rumble of the thunder might have rattled down something in the
cellar,” suggested Agnes. “I’ve known it to bring down a stack of tins
in the pantry.”

“Maybe part of the swinging shelf and some of the glass jars that didn’t
fall before, took a tumble now,” suggested Ruth.

Luke shook his head.

“If you had seen that shelf, after the children had finished with it,
you wouldn’t say there was anything left to fall,” he remarked. “It was
a wreck.”

“Then what was this noise?” asked Ruth.

“That’s what we’ve got to find out,” asserted Luke. “I’ll go down and
find out. Maybe a water pipe burst in real earnest this time,” he
suggested, with a glance at Ruth.

“Oh, don’t say anything now to make me more nervous!” she begged.

“Why does that make you nervous?” Nalbro asked.

“It reminds me of those two horrid men—not that I think they’re around
now, or Hop Wong either, but——”

“Oh, say! Maybe it _is_ Hop Wong searching for treasure under cover of
the storm!” cried Agnes.

“Stop!” commanded Ruth. “If you’re going to suggest such things——”

She made a tragic gesture. Usually Ruth was not nervous. Clearly
something had occurred to upset her usual poise.

“I only suggested water pipes,” remarked Luke, “because I thought maybe
this terrific rain might have washed away a drain or something,
accounting for the gurgling noise.”

“Gurgling noise!” exclaimed Neale. “It was a groan that I heard.”

“So did I!” chorused some of the others.

“Well, air and water mingling and going through a pipe will make a
groaning noise sometimes,” commented Luke.

“If any water going through a pipe made a noise such as we heard—then
that pipe and water had better go on the stage and do a vaudeville
turn,” declared Neale. “It would bring down the house!”

“Well, we’ll soon settle what it is,” remarked Luke. “I’m going down
cellar. You have lights there, haven’t you?” he asked, turning to Ruth.
“Can they be switched on from up here?”

“Yes. But you mustn’t go down there alone, Luke! Wait until I call Uncle
Rufus!”

“Nonsense!” expostulated the young collegian.

Uncle Rufus had gone to bed earlier in the evening before the retirement
of Mrs. MacCall and Linda.

“We’ll go with him!” offered Neale and Hal.

“One of you boys has got to stay with me, for I’m not going near that
cellar!” declared Nalbro.

“Now, wait a minute,” said Luke slowly. “This thing—this
investigation—must be done aright. I’m going to scout around down the
cellar by myself. I can do it better alone. If two of us go, one is sure
to think he sees something. He’ll call out and attract the attention of
the other, perhaps just at a time when a valuable discovery is about to
be made. Whereas one, alone, can devote his whole mind to the business
in hand. So I’ll go down alone and if I find I need help I’ll sing out
and some of you can follow.

“Neale, you and Hal stay here with the girls. No, Ruth, you are not
going!” he added hastily, seeing determination in her eyes. “Burr-r-r-r!
that was a bad one,” he exclaimed, as a vivid flash of lightning was
followed almost immediately by a terrific crash of thunder.

“Oh, Luke, I don’t want to have you go down in that cellar alone!”
begged Ruth.

“Nonsense!” he laughed. “I can do a lot better alone. And if I need help
I’ll sing out. Don’t be afraid.”

He patted her hand tenderly, and she did not resent this little caress,
given in public as it was. Luke had a masterful way with him.

Suddenly, while they stood there after Luke’s decision had been
announced, and while they were mentally trying to picture what had taken
place in the cellar of the Corner House, the lights again went dim.

“What if the current goes off when you’re in the cellar?” suggested
Agnes to Luke.

“I’d better have a flashlight, I suppose.”

“Take this one,” and Neale offered his. “I always carry it when I’m in
the car,” he added. “They’re mighty handy.”

Luke accepted the miniature electric torch and started for the kitchen,
whence entrance was to be had to the cellar. The others followed him,
Ruth pointing out the switch that controlled the cellar lights. It was
thrown on and Luke prepared to descend.

“We’ll be listening for you,” said Neale, to inspire confidence. “Don’t
let the bogey-man get you!”

“I won’t,” laughed Luke, starting down the stairs. “I think it will turn
out to be, just as I said, some water gurgling through a drain-pipe. But
if I should be——”

Before he could complete the sentence the front doorbell suddenly pealed
out its electric warning.

Luke was already half-way down the cellar stairs.

“Goodness! Callers at this time of night!” gasped Agnes.

“Probably some one who wants shelter from the storm,” suggested Luke,
calling the words from the cellar stairway.

“Agnes, you and Hal go and see who’s at the front door, and Neale and I
will wait in the kitchen to see what Luke finds,” suggested Ruth.

“I’ll appoint myself a member of the door committee!” remarked Nalbro.
“Unless you want me to stay with you and Neale?” she added, turning to
Ruth.

“No, go ahead,” Ruth answered.

A dim glow came up from the cellar, showing that the electric lights
there were working properly. But Luke did not trust them. He held in his
hand, ready, the little electric torch Neale had given him.

Agnes, Nalbro and Hal went to the front door to answer the bell, while
Ruth and Neale remained in the kitchen.

“He’s moving around down there,” murmured Neale, for he could see that
Ruth was under a nervous strain, and he thought perhaps that a little
talk might relieve her.

“Yes,” she answered. “I hope he doesn’t get cut on the broken glass jars
from the swinging shelf. I must tell him. Oh, Luke!” she called down the
cellar stairs.

“Yes? What is it?” he asked, his voice showing that he had not yet moved
far away from the foot of the flight.

“Be careful of the broken glass.”

“I will—thank you.”

“See anything yet, old man?” asked Neale.

“No. Not a thing. The outside back cellar door is open, though,” he
said, “and the rain’s coming in there in a regular stream.”

“Oh, dear!” murmured Ruth. “I suppose those children left it open when
they were treasure-hunting!”

“I’ll shut it,” volunteered Luke.

Neale and Ruth could hear him moving about below them. Neale was just
going to say that perhaps, after all, nothing would develop, that they
would have all their fears for nothing, when Agnes, Nalbro and Hal came
back from the front door.

“Well?” asked Ruth.

“No one was there!” announced Agnes in a strained voice.

“No one?”

“Not a soul!”

“The street’s deserted—a regular rain-swept desert!” remarked Hal.

“That _is_ strange,” murmured Ruth. “Someone must have rung the bell. I
wonder——”

At that moment a cry came from the cellar—a cry that caused them all to
start.

It was Luke’s voice!

“What’s the matter, old man?” called Neale, for the cry had in it
something of terror and alarm.

There was no answer.

“We must go to him!” declared Ruth.

Without waiting for any of the others, she darted down the stairs, but
Neale was after her in a trice. They saw a dim light in the cellar as
they almost fell down the narrow stairs. The light came from the front
part of the dark depths, up toward the street.

“Luke! Luke!” called Neale.

“Is anything the matter?” Ruth demanded anxiously.

“Want any help?” asked Hal. “Shall we come down?”

“No, stay up there and watch the front door!” cried Neale, with sudden
suspicion. “There’s queer work going on here! Watch the front door,
Hal!”

Neale and Ruth caught a glimpse of a dim form moving about the cellar.

“There’s Luke!” cried Neale. “Luke! Luke! What’s wrong? Why did you cry
out?” he asked.

There was no answer. But as Neale and Ruth started forward from the
cellar stairs they saw Luke struck down by a club in the hands of some
one invisible to them. He fell like a log, and the next moment the
cellar was plunged into darkness.




CHAPTER XIX: DOT’S DISCOVERY


Beyond a low moan and a gasp Ruth uttered no sound when she saw her
dearest friend, Luke Shepard, fall in the dimly lighted cellar, struck
down, as he was, by the hand of some one unknown. She and Neale darted
forward at the same time to go to the rescue.

It was after this first involuntary rush to help Luke that Neale
bethought himself that caution might be needed, so he put out a hand to
hold Ruth back and said:

“Maybe we’d better wait a moment.”

“Wait? And with Luke hurt? No, never!” cried Ruth. She would have
proceeded alone to the spot where Luke was stretched out insensible but
that Neale, resolving to fling caution to the winds, hastened ahead of
her.

There was no sound in the cellar now save the noise made by Ruth and
Neale, and they saw no dim forms flitting about. Luke was lying alone,
strangely and ominously quiet.

Outside the rain was still pelting down, though the lightning and
thunder was less, but the storm was keeping up.

“Luke! Luke!” called Neale, as he neared the prostrate body of the young
collegian. “Are you much hurt?”

There was no answer, but in the kitchen over his head Neale could hear
Agnes, Nalbro and Hal moving about uneasily as they caught the sound of
his voice.

“Some one struck him with a club,” murmured Ruth. “Did you see it,
Neale?”

“Yes, I saw. We must try to catch the man who did it. He’ll try to get
out the rear door, I think.”

“Oh, if he does, we——”

“Let him go!” broke in Neale. “We’ve got to look after Luke.”

By this time those waiting in the kitchen had sensed that something was
wrong, for Hal called:

“What’s going on down there? Want any help? We heard a cry——”

“Yes, you’d better come down,” answered Neale. “Just you, Hal. Leave the
girls up there. Luke’s been hurt and——”

“We won’t stay up here!” cried Nalbro. “We’re all coming down.”

“You’ll only be in the way!” snapped back Neale, speaking more sharply
than he intended to, as he wanted to impress the girls. “We have to
carry Luke up the stairs. Don’t crowd down. Come on, Hal!”

By this time Neale and Ruth had reached Luke’s side. The flashlight he
carried was still glowing on the cellar floor at his side. By the gleam
of this, and by the glimmer of his own torch, Neale saw that Luke bore
no apparent injury.

“Luke, old man, do you know us?” called Neale, bending over the form of
his friend and gently shaking him. “We’re here with you—Ruth and Neale.”

Ruth had taken Luke’s listless head into her lap, and was smoothing back
the hair from the forehead. Then a big bruise was visible.

“That’s where he was hit,” she whispered.

“Yes,” assented Neale.

By this time Hal had reached the scene and he and Neale lifted Luke up,
intending to carry him to the kitchen. But now he opened his eyes and
said weakly:

“I’m all right. Just a bit stunned—for a—minute. Did
you—get—those—fellows?”

“What fellows?” asked Hal quickly, looking about the cellar.

“Some man with a club struck Luke down,” explained Neale. “We just saw
it—that’s all.”

Luke’s brain, momentarily stunned by the blow, was rapidly clearing. He
was firmer on his feet.

“See that those fellows don’t get out!” he gasped. “Guard the back door,
boys, and then telephone for the police!”

“We’re going to take care of you first!” insisted Neale. “We’ll get you
upstairs and then we’ll look after these fellows. I fancy they have
gotten away, anyhow. They wouldn’t stay after striking you.”

This seemed to be the case, for when Luke had been assisted upstairs and
when Neale and Hal, with Uncle Rufus’ help, had made an investigation in
the cellar no trace of the man who had struck the collegian could be
found.

“He must have slipped around past us and gotten out of the back door
when Ruth and I were going to Luke,” said Neale.

Luke was found not to be badly hurt. He had received only a glancing
blow on the side of the head with a wooden club. Had the full force of
the blow fallen, serious consequences might have resulted. But, as it
was, the blow had little more than a temporary stunning effect.

“Though I expect you’ll have a fierce headache in the morning,”
prophesied Neale.

“If it isn’t anything worse than that I ought to be thankful,” Luke
remarked.

“Tell us all about it,” suggested Hal.

But before this there had been the suggestion on the part of the girls
that the police be sent for, and an effort had been made to communicate
with police headquarters. However, the telephone seemed to be out of
order, only a strange crackling and buzzing sound resulting when the
receiver was taken down. Then Luke had said:

“Don’t call in the police!”

“Why not?” asked Hal.

“Because it will only bring unpleasant notoriety to the Corner House.
Let’s solve this mystery ourselves.”

“It’s a mystery all right!” declared Neale.

“Yes,” gravely assented Luke, “it is a mystery. The police couldn’t get
here now in time to do anything, and what evidence is left we can look
at as well as they. Since the telephone doesn’t work don’t bother with
the police.”

“I could go out and telephone,” offered Neale.

“No, let it go. In the morning we’ll take a look ourselves,” decided
Ruth.

And so it was arranged. Then, after some witch-hazel had been rubbed by
Ruth on the bump on Luke’s head, he told his story:

“You know the first part of it as well as I do,” he said to his friends
gathered around him at this midnight session in the Corner House. “I was
going along carefully, looking for any sign of intruders, when, all at
once, I saw what I thought was a shadow moving.

“It was near one of the brick pillars that hold the floor beams, and I
know now the shadow must have been caused by a man who was hiding behind
this pillar, though I didn’t realize this at the time.

“I kept on going. Then I saw another flashlight—I mean another than
yours and mine, Neale—and a moment later I saw a club raised in the air.
Before I could think that it was raised to come down on my head it came
down, and I don’t remember anything more except that it got black all of
a sudden.”

“Did you think you were struck by lightning?” asked Hal.

“I don’t know what I did think. But what did you and Ruth see, Neale?”

“Not much more than you did, old man. We saw the shadow of the club and
a man’s arm raised to strike you. But before we could do a thing—or even
call out a warning—it was all over.”

“The question—or at least one of them—” said Hal, “is what became of the
man or men who attacked Luke? Where did they go?”

“They must have slipped past Ruth and me and gotten out the rear outside
cellar door,” suggested Neale.

“I’m sure no one passed us,” asserted Ruth.

“Then the only other way they could have gotten out would be to have
come up into the kitchen,” declared Neale.

“And I know they didn’t do that!” said Agnes.

“Is there any entrance to your cellar that isn’t much used—a side door
or anything?” asked Luke, turning to Ruth.

“None that I know of,” she answered. “Perhaps Uncle Rufus might know.”

“’Deed, missie, I doan know ob any,” declared the colored man. “De back
do’ an’ de one from de kitchen—das all.”

“Well, we’ll look into it in the morning,” murmured Luke, wearily
passing his hand over his head, which was now aching severely.

“You must get right to bed,” declared Ruth. “Indeed, I’m not sure but
what I’d better send for Dr. Forsyth.”

“No, don’t,” begged Luke. “I’ll be all right in the morning.”

“It seems silly, I suppose, but I’m almost afraid to go to bed,” said
Nalbro, with a little shiver.

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Ruth. “All danger is over now, even danger from
the storm. And we have the boys here.”

“We’ll stay up on guard,” offered Hal.

“There will be no need,” decided Ruth.

“But with the telephone out of order—” began Nalbro.

“Perhaps it’s all right now,” suggested Neale. “I’ll try it.”

Somewhat to the surprise of all of them, Central answered promptly,
asking Neale “what number?”

“I just wanted to see if the machine would go,” he explained, talking
rather as if it were an automobile instead of a telephone. “It was out
of order a little while ago,” he added.

“Yes, a number were, on account of the storm,” the operator explained.

“Well, with the telephone in order we can go to bed, I guess,” Agnes
remarked. “Though I would like to know who rang our front doorbell and
ran away.”

“Perhaps the lightning did that, too,” said Luke, with a somewhat wan
smile.

“Maybe,” agreed Ruth. “And now don’t talk any more, Luke; get up to bed.
Uncle Rufus will help you.”

“Oh, I’m not as much knocked out as all that, Ruth.”

But he was weaker than he thought and staggered a bit as he started for
the stairs, so he was rather glad of the assisting arm of the old
colored servant.

Gradually the wonted silence of the night settled over the Corner House
and there was peace and quietness following the outburst of the storm
and the other disturbances. But to Ruth, sleepless for a long time, it
seemed that some strange mystery overshadowed the old mansion which
overlooked the Milton Parade Ground.

In the morning Luke was almost himself again, and soon after breakfast
he proposed an examination of the cellar. Sammy and the younger girls
were told only as much of the affairs of the night before as would
explain why the others were so interested in searching the basement.

“Are you looking for the treasure?” asked Dot.

“No, just for traces of two tramps who got in here during the storm last
night, my dear,” explained Ruth.

“We’ll help,” offered Tess, and at intervals the younger Corner House
girls poked into the dark corners of the cellar.

[Illustration: The younger Corner House girls poked into the
dark corners of the cellar.]

The investigations of any of them amounted to nothing. Beyond a few
places where the dirt cellar bottom appeared to have been dug up—and it
was not certain but what Sammy and the little girls had done this—there
was nothing unusual to be seen.

“Not even a secret door,” lamented Neale, who rather hoped to find this.

“I guess the man who struck Luke was just a tramp who came into the
cellar to get out of the rain,” suggested Hal. “And when he thought he
was going to be caught he struck out and ran.”

It seemed this explanation was the only one that would hold.

“But there is still Hop Wong to be accounted for,” observed Agnes.

“He’s a faker, pure and simple,” declared Luke.

“Maybe—and maybe not,” returned the flyaway sister glibly.

At this moment Dot, who had persuaded Sammy to let her take the precious
cigar-box lantern, went into a far and dark corner of the cellar to make
further search. Suddenly an excited cry came from her.

“Oh, I’ve found something! I’ve found it! Come quick! Look!” shrieked
the littlest Corner House girl.




CHAPTER XX: HOP WONG IS CAUGHT


The others, rushing toward her, found Dot standing near a barrel,
flashing upon it the rays from Sammy’s cigar-box lantern.

“What is it, Dot?” asked Ruth. She and the others had been about to give
up exploration of the cellar, since nothing had developed. “What have
you found and where is it?”

“I don’t know what it is,” Dot answered, “but it’s in that barrel. It’s
a—Oh, listen! It’s a noise!” she finally told them.

“A noise!” cried Agnes. “Is that all?”

“Many things start with a noise,” remarked Ruth. “In fact, this whole
affair started from a noise in the cellar. Stand back, Dot, and let us
see what it is.”

With a more powerful light than Sammy’s improvised lantern, Luke leaned
over and peered into the upright barrel. Grouped behind him the others
waited anxiously.

Suddenly Luke laughed, and this relieved the strain under which the
older ones, at least, were laboring.

“Yes, Dot’s found something all right!” chuckled Luke.

“Oh, do tell us what it is!” begged Nalbro.

“A batch of kittens!” laughed Luke. “Sandyface has gone and done it
again. She’s raising another family!”

And that is what Dot had found—just a batch of Sandyface’s kittens in
the barrel.

“Mew!” plaintively called the mother cat, as she saw so many faces
peering into her privacy.

“You poor thing!” said Ruth. “Well, we won’t bother you. Only don’t
bring them all up into the parlor at once, as you did on a former
occasion.”

“Did she?” asked Nalbro, to whom Sandyface was rather a new
acquaintance.

“She did,” asserted Agnes, with a laugh, “and just when the minister was
calling. Oh, it was funny, but Ruthie didn’t see the fun.”

“The minister took it good-naturedly,” said Ruth. “No, children, you
can’t bring the kittens upstairs!” she decided, for Tess and Sammy,
having heard of Dot’s discovery, were eager to carry the kittens into
the light of day.

“Oh, just for a little while!” pleaded Tess.

“No, not even for a little while. Wait until they get older.”

“But they’re so cute!” pleaded Dot.

“No!” and Ruth was firm about it.

“I’ll carry ’em up, and I won’t spill ’em!” offered Sammy.

“Children, go right upstairs!” ordered Ruth, and they thought it best to
obey.

“And so, after all, we haven’t found out anything,” remarked Agnes, as
they all trailed up after the youngsters. “The mystery is as deep as
ever.”

“Yes,” agreed Ruth. “And I don’t know what we are going to do about it.
I think we ought at least to tell Mr. Howbridge—that is, if you think we
shouldn’t notify the police?” she said to Luke.

“Tell your guardian, by all means,” he quickly agreed. “As for the
police, I don’t see what they could do at this time. If they had been
here when that fellow gave me a blow over the head with his club they
might have gotten after him. But as for picking up clews on a cold
trail, I don’t believe they can do it as well as we can.”

“Not so well,” declared Neale. “And what I propose is that we start now
and make a systematic search of this whole house, including the cellar,
to see if there is any treasure hidden in it.”

“You seem to side with the children,” observed Hal.

“Well, I think there is something queer around here,” asserted Neale.
“Those men didn’t come in to inspect water pipes without an object. That
Chinese didn’t write those queer notes for nothing. What it’s all about
we have to find out.”

“Go down and tell Mr. Howbridge,” suggested Agnes. “I thing he ought to
be told everything.”

“I agree with you,” assented Ruth. “I’ll telephone down asking what time
we can see him.”

“And while you girls go there, some of us will take another look around
the cellar,” said Neale. “I think the whole mystery centers there.”

“Well, we haven’t found much so far—except kittens,” chuckled Luke.

Mr. Howbridge looked rather grave when Ruth told him the story of the
night of the storm and what had happened in the cellar. Luke went with
her to the lawyer’s office, leaving Neale and Hal to “putter around,” as
Mrs. MacCall called it, in the cellar.

“Certainly something seems wrong,” admitted the lawyer. “I am afraid,
though, that I can’t agree with you—as I have said before, I
believe—about a fortune being hidden in the cellar. I attended to your
Uncle Peter’s affairs, and I’m sure if he was so foolish as to hide a
fortune away in a cellar I would know something about it. Of course I
may be wrong——”

“Yes, but remember about our strange find in the attic? That album
filled with all sorts of valuable papers.”

“Ah, that is true,” and the girls’ guardian nodded slowly. “Lemuel
Aden’s money!”

“What about Hop Wong?” went on Ruth. “Did you find out anything more
from him? You were going to get an interpreter and——”

“Yes, my dear, I obtained the services of the court Chinese interpreter,
but I might as well have saved my time. What with the roundabout manner
in which the conversation had to be carried on and the fright of Hop
Wong—well, we didn’t get anywhere at all.”

“Didn’t he tell you a thing?” asked Ruth.

“Practically not a thing, my dear girl. He seemed to think he was about
to be executed, or, at any rate, jailed. About all the interpreter
reported that Hop Wong said was: ‘No can tell,’ and he asserted this
over and over again until I wearied of it. No, I think as far as Hop
Wong is concerned, there is no mystery.”

“I’m not so sure of that, Mr. Howbridge,” said Luke. “Those Chinese are
queer fellows. Once they get frightened they lose their tongues.”

“Yes, but I did my best to assure Hop Wong that he had nothing to fear,”
said the lawyer. “I declare, it’s beyond me.”

“But what of the two men—the tramps who struck Luke down?” asked Ruth.

“That may be a different matter altogether,” her guardian admitted.
“There, I am willing to confess, may lie some danger and there may be a
mystery at the bottom of it. But that it has to do with a fortune—or
even a sum of money—I am not so willing to admit.”

“What had we better do?” Ruth inquired. “Shall we tell the police?”

“I say no!” cried Luke, with perhaps more energy than he intended. “I
beg your pardon for my excitement,” he went on. “But I think we can
solve this ourselves, Mr. Howbridge. At least, we or some of us would
like to try it a bit longer. If we call in the police we shall have to
report to them every little trifling thing that happens, and they’ll be
running to the Corner House at all hours of the day and night.”

“Yes, there is that probability,” admitted Mr. Howbridge. “But have you
any plan, Luke?”

“Not yet, no, sir. I’d like to think it over a bit longer.”

“But you mustn’t run into danger!” stipulated Ruth. “You and Agnes and
Neale are all rash.”

“No, that would be foolish,” said Mr. Howbridge with a quick, discerning
glance at the two young people. He understood how matters were going
between his ward and the young collegian.

“Oh, we’ll be careful,” promised Luke.

“Well, of course, being a lawyer, I suppose I ought to advise you to
call in the authorities,” said the girls’ guardian. “But as there is
nothing yet to interest the public, I don’t see why you can’t carry on
your private investigations a bit longer, if you like.”

“Thank you. We will.”

“Only, as Ruth says, don’t run into danger,” went on Mr. Howbridge.
“You, Luke, have had one example of how desperate these men are—provided
the one who struck you down is one of the same pair that first was seen
around the Corner House. They will not stop at injuring those who get in
their way. So be careful!”

“I will, yes, and I’ll warn the others. And now to solve the mystery of
the Corner House!” he cried, more gaily than he felt, for his head was
still painful.

Returning to the old mansion, Ruth and Luke found there had been no new
developments since they had left to see the lawyer. Neale and Hal and
Agnes had “prospected” around the cellar, as they called it, but had
discovered nothing.

An investigation of the doorbell wires and battery disclosed, however,
the reason for the erratic behavior of that piece of apparatus. There
was a loose wire, and when the house was jarred, as by a thunderclap,
the wire made a connection and started the bell to ringing.

“So the men in the cellar had nothing to do with that,” declared Neale,
when he had found and remedied the trouble.

“I’m glad of that,” said Ruth. “If the bell had been rung by them it
would mean they had a regular band, some of whom were on the outside
while others were on the inside of the house, searching for the
fortune.”

“Do you really think some one is after money hidden in the house?”
Nalbro asked.

“I do!” declared Neale.

“It’s delightfully romantic, I know,” the Boston girl admitted, “but it
doesn’t seem reasonable.”

“We found a fortune once in the attic for Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill.
Why not find one for ourselves in the cellar?” questioned Agnes.

“Anyhow, we’ll have fun searching for it,” said Luke.

However, as the vacation days passed and the time approached for the
delightful house party to end, no new discoveries were made. No secret
entrance or egress was found in the cellar, Hop Wong made no further
efforts to communicate and no trace was seen of the two strange men.

As a matter of fact, Hop Wong had disappeared. He was not at his
laundry, the business being carried on by the bland and strange
Celestial, and to all inquiries he answered:

“Hop Wong, he mebbe come back bly-an’-bly.”

It seemed that the mystery of the Corner House would never be solved
when, all unexpectedly, there began a series of events which rapidly
moved to a startling conclusion.

It began one pleasant afternoon when Luke and Neale were out riding
through a beautiful country district in the automobile with Ruth and
Agnes. Hal and Nalbro had gone to the railroad station to see about
getting chair-car tickets for Boston, for the time for their return was
drawing near.

Neale drove through a little country village and was preparing to
suggest, since the afternoon was waning, that they turn about, when Luke
uttered an exclamation.

“What’s the matter?” asked Neale. “Did I run over a chicken?”

“No. But this has to do with something closely connected with chickens.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean a Chinese—they’re very fond of chicken, you know. There goes one
now—a Chinese, I mean!”

He pointed toward a small, ramshackle house standing alone in a field
near the highway, just outside the village. And, as the others looked,
they saw a Chinese enter this hut.

“Hop Wong!” cried Neale.

“I thought that’s who it was, but I didn’t want to be too certain,”
remarked Luke. “So this is where Hop Wong has been hiding!”

“Come on! Let’s get hold of him and see if he’ll talk,” suggested Neale.
He ran the car up close to the side of the road near the lonely hut and
started to alight.

The Chinese—it was Hop Wong beyond doubt—heard the noise of the brakes
and turned. With a yell he fled around the rear of the hut.

“Come on, Luke!” cried Neale. “Let’s capture him and see if we can get
to the bottom of this!”




CHAPTER XXI: A QUEER STORY


Hop Wong was the very personification of fear. He was a small Chinese at
best, but now he appeared no larger than a child, so much did he shrink
within his garments when he found himself in the grasp of the two young
men.

“Oh, the poor fellow!” murmured Ruth, with ready sympathy. “Be kind to
him!”

Hop Wong heard her and held out his queer hands with their rather long
nails—hands abnormally clean from much dabbling in soap, water and
whatever chemicals the Chinese laundrymen use for making clothes white.

“Missie Luth, Hop Wong—he no did do!” he wailed. “He no did do!”

“We know you didn’t do anything,” said Ruth kindly. “Oh, don’t hold him
so tightly, Luke.”

“He’s a slippery beggar, Ruth, and——”

“Oh, he won’t run away, I’m sure. Will you, Hop Wong?” she asked.

“No lun! No can do,” he said, with pathetic indifference. “You call
p’liceman—take Hop Wong jail. No can do,” and he sighed wearily.

“Now look here, Hop Wong,” began Luke, in what he doubtless intended for
businesslike tones. “There’s no use trying to fool us. You know
something about money hidden in Miss Ruth’s house and you’ve got to tell
us! Do you understand? You’ve _got_ to tell us!”

Turning to his companions Luke said in a low voice:

“I think Mr. Howbridge made a mistake trying to be kind to him. What Hop
Wong needs is firmness!”

Luke’s manner seemed to have its effect. For, as if by a shake and a
shudder he had cast from him some garment for which he no longer had
need, the Chinese straightened up somewhat. He appeared to fill his
clothes better, and then he said:

“All lite! Hop Wong tell!”

“I thought he would!” chuckled Luke. “Now we’ll get at the bottom of
this puzzling mystery.”

Hop Wong accompanied the boys and girls into the hut where, it appeared,
he had taken up his abode. It was simply furnished, and looked as though
Hop Wong had been about to start a laundry in this country town, but had
not yet done so.

“He came here—ran away—so he couldn’t be questioned,” decided Neale. “It
was lucky you saw him, Luke,” he said.

“It may prove so,” agreed Luke.

But it was one thing for Hop Wong to promise to tell; the performance
was another matter. He was willing, but his choice, use and command of
the English language left much to be desired.

Sitting amid his humble possessions in the lonely cottage, while on
empty boxes for seats Ruth, Agnes, Luke and Neale faced him, the
Celestial began his recital.

He gibbered and slithered about “two men—topside man—number lun man—much
dolls—Clorner House”—and so on until Luke raised his hands in despair.

“I don’t wonder Mr. Howbridge couldn’t make anything of it,” he groaned.
“It’s worse than I expected.”

“What can be done?” asked Ruth. “He seems willing to tell, but I can’t
make any sense of it.”

“Nor I,” sighed Agnes.

“Tell him to sing it!” chuckled Neale, at the conclusion of a long-drawn
and high-pitched stream of words of which only a few were intelligible
to Hop Wong’s auditors.

“Wait a minute! We’ll get something out of this yet,” declared Luke.
“You don’t have to be back any certain time, do you?” he asked Ruth and
Agnes. “I mean at home?”

“No, I suppose not,” admitted Ruth. “Mrs. MacCall and Linda will look
after Dot and Tess. As for Hal and Nalbro, they are going to the movies
in town, after they get their tickets, and they won’t be home till late.
But why do you ask, Luke?”

“Because I want to take Hop Wong and all of us over to Millville. It
isn’t far and there’s a Chinese student there, spending his vacation,
who, I think, can take Hop Wong in hand and get something out of him.”

“Well, but if the Chinese court interpreter couldn’t get at anything for
Mr. Howbridge,” began Neale, “how do you expect——”

“I think Charlie Sing—that’s the chap I know in college—can sling a
little better brand of English than even a court interpreter,” said
Luke. “Anyhow, it’s worth trying.”

“All right, it’s worth trying,” agreed Neale.

“Perhaps Hop Wong won’t accompany us,” remarked Ruth.

“Oh, I guess he will,” asserted Luke, with confidence. “Hop Wong come
for ride in buzz-buzz wagon?” he inquired, pointing to the automobile.

A cheerful grin spread over the features of the Celestial. He seemed to
have lost all his fears now.

“Sule!” he cried. “Hop Wong velly much like buzz-buzz wagon.”

“Hurray!” cried Neale. “So far, so good!”

“I’ll stop at the nearest telephone and let Mrs. MacCall know we’ll be a
bit late,” said Ruth, as they started for the car again. Hop Wong was
now a willing captive and seemed delighted at the chance of riding in an
automobile.

“I think this is the best thing to do,” went on Ruth to her sister, when
they were once more under way, having stopped for a moment in the
village to telephone to the Corner House.

“Yes,” agreed Agnes. “We never could get anything from Hop Wong by
ourselves, and Guardy didn’t seem much more successful.”

They made a good run to Millville and drove up to the boarding house
where Charlie Sing was spending the long college vacation, his home
being in far-off China.

“Hello, Charlie! Got a job for you!” called Luke in greeting, as he saw
the Celestial walking in the garden of the boarding house.

“That’s good!” replied Charlie, with a cheerful grin. “It is fine to see
you again, Luke,” he went on. “It’s been pretty lonesome with all the
boys scattered.”

“I imagine so. Well, we’ll all soon be back at college again. It won’t
be long now. Charlie, you can talk this man’s language, can’t you?” and
he indicated Hop Wong.

“Oh, yes, after a fashion, I suppose,” replied Charlie, who spoke a very
good English the girls noticed. He was introduced to them and at once
proved himself a gentleman as well as a scholar. “Of course,” he said,
“he talks a dialect rather than the pure Chinese language,” and he made
this statement after a brief conversation with Hop Wong. “But I think he
can make himself understood to me, and I’ll tell you what he says to the
best of my ability.”

“All right, let go!” said Neale, with cheerful carelessness. “Maybe
we’ll find out something now.”

Then began a rapid exchange of strange-sounding syllables and
intonations between Hop Wong and Charlie Sing. There was little use for
the others to listen, for they could not, of course, understand a word
that was said on either side. But there was a strange fascination in
hearing the age-old language.

Luke had briefly told his college friend what it was they desired to
find out—about the mystery of the cellar—and finally, after a somewhat
lengthy conversation, Charlie Sing held up a hand to signify that Hop
Wong should stop talking, for he was flowing on, as Agnes said, “like
the brook—forever.”

“This is his story,” said Charlie Sing, “making some allowances for
words that he uses for which, in the proper language, there is no
equivalent. Some time ago, before he was in the laundry business in your
town, Hop Wong worked as a servant in a house where there were two men.
One was a gardener and the other did odd jobs about the place. Handy
man, I believe they call such a worker.”

“That’s right, Charlie,” said Luke.

“One of these men was named Rother and the other called himself Meggs,”
went on the Chinese student. “The house was a large, country
establishment of wealth, and among the visitors was an old man who was
not as good as he might have been. I mean he was addicted to the vice of
drink,” said Charlie, with a shudder of disgust.

“However, I must not get on to that,” went on the Chinese student. “It
always fills me with disgust. But this old man who came to the house
where Rother and Meggs worked with Hop Wong was a drinker. Rother and
Meggs forced Hop Wong to get them some liquor so they could sell it to
this old man, whose name the laundryman does not know. This man, cut off
from his liquor supply because of police activities, was glad to rely on
the scoundrels Rother and Meggs.”

“But where does the Corner House come in?” asked Neale.

“I am coming to that,” replied Charlie. “It is a curious story. It
depends on you, yourselves, how much you believe. This man—this old
toper, I think you call it, knew a Mr. Peter Stower——”

“Why, he was our uncle!” cried Ruth. She was greatly surprised.

“Well, there is supplied the connection,” remarked the translator,
calmly. “This old man knew Mr. Peter Stower and had often, so he told
Rother and Meggs, visited at the Corner House, as you call it. Once,
while there, he says he helped Mr. Stower hide an iron box of money in
the cellar.”

“He did?”

“When?”

“Where?”

“How much money was in it?”

“Why did he do that?”

These were some of the questions shot at Charlie Sing when he had
translated thus far in the strange story of Hop Wong. The student held
up his hand for patience.

“I cannot tell you the reasons,” he said. “Hop Wong does not know them
himself. All he knows is that Rother and Meggs were told by this old
toper that Mr. Peter Stower had hidden a big iron box of money in the
cellar.”

“That tlue! Them say so! Them know whele money is—Hop Wong not know!”
broke in the laundryman. “Two men know—Hop Wong not know!”

He seemed pitifully eager that they should believe him.




CHAPTER XXII: ANOTHER ALARM


There was a pause. On the part of Charlie Sing and Hop Wong it was for
breath, as they had been talking at a pretty steady rate. On the part of
Luke, Neale, Ruth and Agnes the pause was welcome because so many ideas
had crowded in on them that they wanted time, as Neale said afterward,
to untangle their thoughts.

The pause gave them all a chance to do a little thinking, which was
absolutely needed at this time. It cannot be said that any of the four
had, up to this time, placed much faith in the suggestion that wealth of
some sort—possibly a fortune—was concealed in the Corner House cellar.
Now, with this unexpected confirmation, came a gasp of surprise.

“Is this all he knows about it?” asked Ruth.

“Why didn’t he tell all this to the other interpreter?” Agnes demanded.

“I can answer that last question first,” replied the Chinese student,
“by saying that Hop Wong could not understand the other interpreter’s
talk very well. They were at cross purposes, neither one comprehending
the other.”

“Then why didn’t that court interpreter say so?” demanded Ruth.

“I suppose he thought he wouldn’t be paid his fee if he had to admit
failure,” suggested Luke. “Anyhow, we’re getting the straight of it
now.”

“It’s only the beginning,” said Neale. “Have him go on. Where in the
cellar is the box of gold?”

“And why in the world did Uncle Peter hide his money there?” asked Ruth.
“He wasn’t a miser if he was queer. He left us the Corner House in his
will, why should he conceal part of his money in an iron box, like a
miser?”

“I’ll ask Hop Wong about that,” volunteered Charlie Sing.

There was another session of talk, and at its conclusion the Chinese
collegian said:

“Hop Wong really knows only what he overheard. These men, Rother and
Meggs, never took him into their confidence, so of course you must
accept what Hop Wong says with a dash of pepper.”

“I guess you mean a grain of salt,” suggested Luke, with a smile.

“Possibly. Oh, yes, it is salt!” chuckled Charlie Sing. “You have almost
as many proverbs as we Chinese. Well, Hop Wong can tell only what he
overheard. As to the motives of Mr. Stower, he knows nothing. But he
heard what these two men said. Later, when Hop Wong left the house where
he worked with them and found the Corner House and saw the young ladies
there, he decided to try to let them know about the fortune and,
independent of the two men, to reap a small reward for himself.”

“Well, he tried all right!” said Agnes, snappily.

“But he meant no harm. I’m glad to know that,” put in Ruth, who seemed
to champion the cause of Hop Wong. “But why did he run away?”

Charlie did some more questioning and replied:

“Hop Wong left his laundry in Milton after he tried to disclose to you
the secret of the fortune because he was afraid of being arrested. Then,
too, he says he saw Rother and Meggs in the town and he thought they
might do him some harm for telling their secret.”

“Ah, ha! So those men have been in town, have they?” cried Neale. “Those
must be the two fake water inspectors!” he added.

“Sure, they are!” exclaimed Agnes. “There is more to this than appears
at first sight, boys. I’m not so sure we did well by not getting the
police in on it. Perhaps we had better——”

“Oh, we’ve gone this far alone, let’s finish it,” suggested Ruth. “But
we can’t stay here all night. We’d better be getting back to Milton.
What are we going to do with Hop Wong? Have we gotten all the
information from him we need?”

“He seems to have told all he knows,” answered Charlie Sing. “As for
taking him back to Milton, I don’t believe he’ll go. He seems to be
afraid—probably of those two men. And I don’t see how you can take him
back against his will.”

“No, probably not—unless we bring in the police,” agreed Ruth. “And I
don’t want to do that. Poor fellow!”

“If he is going to stay where we found him it will do as well—perhaps
better, as the men won’t know anything about him and we can run over and
see him whenever we need to,” observed Luke.

“Ask him,” suggested Ruth.

And when Charlie again talked to the laundryman, the latter promised not
to run away again, but to hold himself in readiness to help the Corner
House girls locate the fortune. He would remain at his new location,
where he hoped to start another laundry, he said.

“One thing more,” suggested Ruth, after thinking over all that had been
said. “Hop Wong says he doesn’t know this man—this unfortunate old toper
who saw Uncle Peter hide the box of gold. But ask him if he knows any
clew by which we might find it or look for it in our cellar. Those men
were evidently after something hidden there. They must have had some
idea where it was. Ask Hop Wong if he can put us on the track.”

“I will,” said Charlie Sing.

Again he talked in those peculiar, slurring inflections that seem part
and parcel of the Chinese language, and when he had finished he slipped
easily into English, saying:

“Hop Wong says to look for a white star!”

“A white star!” exclaimed Agnes. “Where?”

“In your cellar,” replied Charlie. “Hop Wong says the white star is the
mark that shows where the fortune is buried. He heard Rother and Meggs
say this.”

“Well, now we seem to be getting on the right trail at last,” commented
Luke. “Much obliged, Charlie. We’ll get along back now, and restore Hop
Wong to his hut. We’ll be back again at college with the boys soon.”

“And I’ll be glad,” said the Chinese student. “It’s been a lonesome
vacation for me.”

Hop Wong, on the journey back, seemed quite a different Chinese from the
chap who had written queer notes and appointed midnight trysts under the
“boy-pain” tree. He smiled and even tried to perpetrate jokes, it
seemed, in his native tongue—an attempt that was wasted on his auditors,
though they laughed at his efforts, which seemed to please the
laundryman.

Fortunately, Hop Wong did not begin to joke until they were nearly at
his new home, and it was soon over.

“Good-night, Hop Wong. See you again soon, maybe,” remarked Luke, as
they parted.

“Alle same good-by,” he answered blandly. “Hop Wong stay hele alle time
now. Much good place, but no much money yet.”

“Oh, that reminds me!” exclaimed Ruth. “I want to give him something for
his information, and if we do find any such fortune as he has provided
information about, he’ll be entitled to a share. I’m sure Mr. Howbridge
would say so. I want to give Hop Wong some money, Luke.”

“Well, I don’t believe he’d object to it. What say, Hop Wong? You like a
little cash?”

“Sule! Cash alle same much good alle time,” was the smiling response.

So Ruth, from her purse, provided him with what, to him, must have been
a goodly sum, and there was the promise of more should events warrant
it.

“Good-by!” called the young people, as they left Hop Wong at his hut and
turned the automobile toward Milton.

“Good-by!” he echoed. “You velly good me. Alle same you look white stal
get much money. Good-by!”

For a time the four young people rode on in silence. They were all
thinking over what had happened. It had come about so suddenly—the chase
and capture of Hop Wong, and the strange story he told. Then Luke spoke,
asking Ruth:

“What do you think of it?”

“I’m almost afraid to think,” she answered.

“If you ask me,” put in Neale, “I’ll say it’s a dream.”

“Dream, nothing, Neale O’Neil! There’s a fortune awaiting us—a buried
treasure right in our cellar,” declared Agnes.

“Seriously,” went on Neale, “here’s a person—I mean the old man who
drank heavily. We all know what that means—the brain doesn’t act at its
best. And this toper originates a more or less sensational story about a
chest of gold being hidden in the cellar of the Corner House. Do any of
you believe it?”

“I do, for one!” declared Agnes.

“It does seem far-fetched, even silly,” admitted Ruth. “But then, those
two men must have believed it, or else they never would have tried to
get into our cellar to hunt for the iron box. And Hop Wong believes it,
too.”

“That’s easily accounted for,” replied Neale. “The three of them are
persons of limited intelligence and low mentality.”

“La, la, la!” spluttered Agnes. “I just told you I believe it, Neale
O’Neil!”

For a while there was more or less idle talk, then there was a return to
the subject of the box of treasure, and Luke said:

“At first I was not much inclined to put faith in Hop Wong’s story. As
soon as he said the old man drank I began to ‘hae me d’ubts,’ as Mrs.
MacCall would say. But then, have you stopped to think that it might not
have been your Uncle Peter, Ruth, who hid the box?”

“Not Uncle Peter Stower? Why, Hop Wong said it was!”

“I know he did—repeating what he overheard Rother and Meggs say. But
they might have been mistaken.”

“In what way?” asked Neale.

“Well, Mr. Stower might have concealed the box for his friend, the
drinker.”

“Oh, that’s a new theory!” cried Agnes.

“The only plausible one, I think,” went on Luke. “Here is how it sizes
up to me. Mr. Stower and this unknown man might have been good
friends—in fact Mr. Stower may have tried to break him of the dreadful
habit. Perhaps, failing in that and desiring to save for the poor fellow
some of the wealth he would otherwise squander on drink, he might have
hidden the iron box of this man’s gold away in the cellar, marking it,
as Hop Wong says, with a white star.”

“But if he did hide another man’s wealth for that other man’s good,”
asked Agnes, “why didn’t he leave some word about it so the man’s heirs
could claim it?”

“Perhaps,” suggested Neale, “he may have intended to leave some sort of
memoranda about this hidden wealth—provided there really is any—and when
his end came there was no time. Also he might have forgotten it.”

“Here’s another thought!” exclaimed Luke. Ideas were coming thick and
fast now. “Mr. Stower may really have sent word to this man’s relatives
or heirs about the chest of money in the cellar, and these
scoundrels—Rother and Meggs—may have intercepted that message and be
trying for the gold on their own account.”

“That sounds plausible, except that we’d have heard of the matter before
this, I think,” admitted Neale. “But the first thing to do, I’m
thinking, is to find out if there really is any gold in the cellar.
After we get it, we can settle to whom it belongs.”

“That’s what I say!” chimed in Agnes.

“It may not be as far-fetched as I thought at first—Luke’s explanation
is a good one,” observed Ruth thoughtfully.

“But it is silly to try to settle who owns a lot of gold you don’t even
know there is,” declared Agnes. “Besides, I’m tired and hungry.”

“That’s well said!” cried Neale. “We’ll get home, have something to eat,
and to-morrow we’ll have another go at this mystery.”

They found Dot and Tess in bed when they arrived. It had been a
strenuous day Mrs. MacCall reported, for the three children (Sammy
Pinkney being the third member of the trio) had gotten into all sorts of
mischief.

“What was the worst thing they did?” asked Ruth.

“Well, they played ‘Plam Island,’ as Dot calls it,” reported the
housekeeper, “and Sammy fastened that beastie of an alligator on the
tail of Sandyface, the cat, to pretend, as he says, that the alligator
was going to eat the cat up.”

“Oh, the cruel boy!” gasped Ruth. “And Sandyface with a new batch of
kittens!”

“But Tess never stood for that, did she, Mrs. Mac?” asked Agnes.

“Oh, she and Dot did their best to stop him, but they couldn’t. So I
boxed his ears well and sent him hame!” declared Mrs. MacCall. “He’ll
not come near me for a day or two, I wager!”

“Do tell us all that happened to you,” begged Nalbro. “You look so
excited about something!”

“We are,” whispered Agnes. “It’s—the _fortune_!”

And later, when Mrs. MacCall and Linda had retired, the story of the
day’s outing was repeated with many exclamations of wonder.

“This settles it!” declared Hal firmly. “Not a step do I stir in the
direction of Boston until we have a search for the buried treasure!
Crackie! To think that Dot and Tess weren’t so far out after all. Ho,
for the buried gold!”

“Under the mystic white star!” declaimed Nalbro.

“Hush!” begged Ruth, with an uneasy glance at the doors and windows. “Do
you want those ruffians breaking in on us?”

“What ruffians?” demanded Nalbro.

“Rother and Meggs!” fairly hissed Neale, giving a fair imitation of a
stage villain.

They laughed at him, but it might be noticed that before Luke and Neale
left that night, Ruth went about looking well to the fastenings of all
doors and casements.

“We’ll be over early and have a look for the white star as the guiding
mark to the gold,” promised Luke, as he and Neale left.

Had Tess and Dot a remote suspicion that a treasure-hunt was in progress
that day they never would have gone on the little picnic that Ruth and
Agnes arranged for them with Sammy and Linda. But, as it was, the little
girls departed in blissful ignorance.

Then a search of the cellar was made, a systematic search by six young
people who carried lanterns and flashlights.

“We might as well look for the star first of all,” declared Agnes, as
they started in.

“And where would you suggest it might be found?” asked Neale.

“Somewhere around the walls,” Agnes answered.

“The box of gold is probably buried in the cellar floor—it’s mostly of
dirt and could have been easily dug up,” Ruth said. “Then, to make sure
the location would not be lost, a white star was painted on the side
wall—somewhere. We must look for the white star! Otherwise we’ll have to
excavate the entire cellar bottom.”

Accordingly a search for the white star was made. It was no easy search,
as the cellar was large and rambling. But six pairs of eyes divided the
task and the side walls were thoroughly gone over.

But there was not a trace of a white star.

“It must have been washed away when the cellar was flooded last year,”
suggested Ruth. The others agreed with her.

“Well, then, the other thing to do—lacking the guiding star—is to start
and dig up the whole cellar—foot by foot,” decided Luke.

“It’s a job,” groaned Neale.

“But it’s worth it!” declared Agnes.

“Crickets!” exclaimed Hal. “Think of telling the fellows at home that I
took part in a treasure-hunt—a real treasure-hunt! And right here in the
settled part of the U. S. A.!”

“The hunt is going to be real, whether the treasure is or not!” laughed
Nalbro, who did not take the matter very seriously.

“We’ll find it yet!” declared Agnes. “You’ll see!”

“But I suggest that we wait until to-morrow before digging up the
cellar,” said Ruth. “It’s getting late.”

This was true. Their preparations, the sending away of Tess and Dot and
the search of the cellar, had taken up most of the day. Evening was now
coming on.

“All hands on deck bright and early in the morning!” commanded Agnes
gayly. “Wear your old clothes!”

As Nalbro’s visit was drawing to an end it was planned to have a little
gathering of friends at the Corner House that evening, and soon after
supper the young people began to arrive.

The jolly little affair passed off successfully. By a mighty effort
only, Agnes restrained herself from telling of the treasure she had
fully persuaded herself was buried in the cellar.

When all had departed save Luke and Neale and while they were taking
their leave of Ruth and Agnes, Ruth suddenly exclaimed:

“Hark! I hear something!”

“Where?” asked her sister.

“In the cellar! Listen!”

They all listened amid tense silence.




CHAPTER XXIII: THE CAPTURE


There was no mistake about it—a noise was audible in the cellar of the
Corner House. It was not an insistent noise, rather it was a subdued
one, as though the cause of it, whether man or beast, was desirous of
concealing something.

“Do you suppose it could be them?” whispered Agnes.

“Who?” asked Neale, though he could guess.

“Those men Hop Wong told about. Are they coming back to have another
search for the buried gold?”

“We’ll soon find out!” declared Hal, who stood with Nalbro and the
others in the hall, where the leave-taking had been going on. “Us for
the cellar, boys!” and he looked at Neale and Luke.

“Wait a minute!” begged Ruth. “Let’s be sure of them this time! Don’t
let them get away—provided it’s those men!”

“It’s somebody all right,” declared Nalbro, with a little shiver which
brought her closer to Hal. “And they seem to be digging. Listen! Don’t
you hear a thudding sound?”

In the silence that followed the whispers they were all aware of a
distinct thudding sound as if picks were being wielded on the soft
bottom of the Corner House cellar.

“I think they have nerve to come and dig under our very noses!” declared
Agnes. “When we’re entertaining company, too!”

“It’s because of the company that they came, I fancy,” replied Ruth.
“They figured that so much noise would be going on that they wouldn’t be
heard. They probably have been watching their chance to sneak in when
the house was busy.”

“This is terrible!” complained Agnes. “We are being spied upon the whole
time! Something must be done! Neale, what are you going to do?”

“Is there a gun or anything like it around the house?” Neale asked, by
way of answer to Agnes’ appeal.

“Oh, don’t have any shooting!” pleaded Nalbro.

“It isn’t pleasant, but it may come to that,” said Neale.

“Oh, Luke—” began Ruth, appealing to him.

“I think it would be better if we had some sort of weapon,” was Luke’s
reply. “It would be rather foolish, to say nothing else, for us to go up
against these men, who may be desperate, if we have nothing to force
them to surrender in case we corner them. If there is a gun or a
revolver——”

“I have put Uncle Peter’s old revolver away,” Ruth said. “Come and we’ll
get it.”

“Better be a bit lively,” suggested Agnes. “They may skip out with the
gold any minute.”

“If they don’t find it any quicker than we did they’re not likely to,”
chuckled Hal.

“It might not be a bad scheme for us to lay low and let them locate the
treasure for you, girls, and then take it away from them,” suggested
Neale.

“Oh, why don’t you?” asked Agnes. “They must know just where to search
for it, white star and all!”

“The only trouble is,” answered Neale, “that they might skip out with it
before we could stop them. No, on second thought, I’d say let’s tackle
them at once, capture them, and make them tell the secret.”

Luke and Ruth came back into the hall, Luke carrying the revolver.

“This is more like it!” declared Hal. “Now we can talk business to them.
They’re still at it down there.”

Some sort of noise was still audible in the cellar. Whether it was what
the young folks supposed it to be—men digging after treasure—or
something else, who could say?

“Maybe it’s only Sandyface making a new home for her family,” suggested
Ruth, with a smile.

“She wouldn’t make all that noise,” declared Neale. “Well, shall we go?”
he asked the other two young men.

“Better make up a plan of campaign first,” suggested Ruth. “The other
time these fellows got away—the time they struck Luke on the head. We
don’t want that to happen again.”

“Perhaps you’re right, Ruth,” said Luke. “We’d better divide forces. Two
of us——”

“We’re only three altogether,” objected Hal. “You can’t divide three
evenly and——”

“We can call Uncle Rufus,” decided Ruth. “He is old and not very strong,
but he’ll add to our numbers. I’ll get him.”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” agreed Luke. “At least he can be posted at
one vantage point to give an alarm if the men try to escape.”

“Provided, of course, that it is men and not a cat,” put in Agnes
flippantly.

“Oh, I think it will prove to be those fellows all right,” was Luke’s
opinion.

Uncle Rufus was eager and ready for the coming battle, or whatever it
should resolve itself into. It was planned that Luke and Hal should go
down the inside cellar stairs, while Neale and Uncle Rufus stood at the
outside cellar door to capture the men if they came out that way.

“We haven’t a gun,” objected Neale, when his part was assigned.

“Bang ’em on de haid wif a club,” suggested Uncle Rufus. “We kin hit ’em
w’en dey comes up de cellar steps.”

“That’s a good idea, Neale,” said Agnes.

“A club it shall be, then,” replied Neale.

He and the colored man thus armed themselves and took their places.

Meanwhile, Mrs. MacCall and Linda had been roused to remain with the
girls; though Agnes, in order not to miss any of the excitement,
followed Neale and stationed herself not far from him and Uncle Rufus
where she could see all that went on, if, indeed, anything did happen.

Ruth stood near the telephone to send at once the alarm in to the
police, once the supposed visitors should be captured. It had been
ascertained by a cautious test that the telephone was in working order.

At last all was in readiness. Luke and Hal, with the former carrying the
revolver ready for quick aim, and Hal with a flashlight, started down
the inner stairway to the cellar. They had drawn on, over their shoes,
at the suggestion of Ruth, old stockings to make their footfalls softer.

Neale and Uncle Rufus, each armed with a stout stick of wood, went out
the back kitchen door and took their places at the back cellar entrance,
followed by Agnes. It was here that Neale made a discovery that struck
him as being curious.

“Why,” he whispered, “they didn’t leave this door open after they went
in this way.”

“Eh? Why should dey leave it open?” asked Uncle Rufus.

“So they could get out again in a hurry if they had to—and they may have
to. I never heard of such stupid fellows. They close their way of
escape. Hum! That makes me think!”

“What’s dat?” asked Uncle Rufus, whose hearing was not of the best.

“I was just thinking,” went on Neale, “that perhaps they didn’t get into
the cellar this way after all. If they didn’t—and if there is some other
way out and in than the inside stairs—it may explain a lot of things.
But never mind that now. We won’t open this door, Uncle Rufus. In fact
we’ll just sit down on it.”

“Sit down on it?”

“Yes, that will make it all the harder for the fellows to lift it up and
get out. Come, let’s take it easy.”

Uncle Rufus laughed and Agnes giggled. This drew Neale’s attention to
the girl.

“Aggie!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here? Go back into the
house!”

“I’ll not, so there! I want to see all that’s to be seen. And then you
don’t think for a minute, do you, that I’m going to let you be all
pounded up or something, Neale O’Neil, and not be near to help you?”

“Oh, come, Agnes. You’re my faithful chum, I know. But please go in now.
Uncle Rufus and I are safer than you would be, for if the fellows saw
us, they would run away from us, probably right in your direction. Then,
for you, it would be good-night.”

After some further talk, in which Uncle Rufus joined, Agnes consented to
return to the house. Neale and Uncle Rufus took their seats on the
slanting cellar door as soon as Agnes disappeared.

Meanwhile Luke and Hal were going softly down the inner stairs. Hal held
the flashlight in readiness for instant use, but he and his companion
had no sooner started to descend the stairs than they became aware of a
dim light in the cellar and they knew, since the regular electric lights
were not switched on, that it came from the intruders.

“We’ll keep ours dim,” whispered Luke. “That will give us an advantage.
It’s always best to be in the dark when you’re hunting a burglar.”

“Better be careful,” whispered Agnes, who, banished from the outside
door, had taken her place in the kitchen, to be as near the excitement
as possible.

“We will,” promised Luke.

Step by step he and Hal descended, their stocking-covered shoes making
no sound. It was nervous work and they were under a strain. But they
wanted to see the outcome of it all.

They reached the cellar bottom and started away from the foot of the
stairs. The dim light was growing brighter, the light used by some
intruders in their search.

A few seconds later Luke and Hal caught sight of two men bending over a
hole they had dug in the cellar bottom. They were near one of the walls,
and on the ground beside them was an electric flashlight turned on. The
forms of the men were plainly visible, though their faces were in the
shadow.

“They’re the same ones!” whispered Luke, meaning the same twain who had
been in the cellar before and the same men Luke had heard talking in the
railroad train.

Suddenly the silence of the cellar was broken as one of the men
remarked:

“Nothing here!”

“No,” agreed the other, “we’ll have to——”

At that instant one of them either caught sight of Luke and Hal or else
heard some noise made by the lads, for the man who had first spoken
cried:

“Look out! We’re caught! Come on!”

In an instant the two intruders leaped up, and one picked the light from
the floor. Then, to the surprise of Luke and Hal, the men, instead of
dashing toward the outer door of the cellar, sprang toward the front,
inner wall.

“Come on!” cried Luke, for further concealment was useless. “They can’t
get out that way. It’s a solid stone wall! We’ll have them!”

“Go on!” yelled Hal.

At the same time he switched on his own flashlight, since it was
necessary to show a gleam on the path he and Luke were to take, and the
men were now using their own little torch.

It was now an open pursuit, with the intruders speeding toward the front
wall of the cellar and Luke and Hal after them.

But Luke was mistaken when he cried out that the men could not get out
the way they were going. Piled up in the front of the cellar of the
Corner House were some old boxes. Dodging in around and among these the
two men were lost to sight for a moment.

Daringly Hal and Luke followed and, to their surprise, they saw where
the boxes had been pulled away from the wall, showing an old door, the
existence of which was unknown, at least to the present owners of the
Corner House.

It was out of this door that the men fled. Evidently it was by this way
they came in, rather than the back door, and they seemed to be familiar
with the egress.

Undaunted, Luke and Hal followed. Outside the newly disclosed door was a
short flight of stone steps. They led up beneath what Luke recognized as
the front porch, and the situation was now clear to him.

In years past there had been a front areaway entrance to the cellar.
This had gone out of use and the porch had been built over it, a lattice
work around the lower part of the porch concealing the door leading into
the cellar.

Up the steps ran the two men. A quick motion served to throw down part
of the lattice work, which, doubtless, had been previously loosened by
the intruders, and in a few seconds they were out in the open, speeding
away in the moonlight.

But Luke and Hal were close behind them, for they, too, ran up the steps
and scrambled out beneath the front porch.

“Hold on there! Stop! We want you!” cried Luke.

“Neale! Uncle Rufus! Come around to the front!” cried Hal, realizing
that the two on guard would know nothing of this frontal escape.

“Stop, or I’ll shoot!” ordered Luke.

For a few seconds more the midnight visitors sped on. Hal was racing
after them, and around the house could be heard coming Neale and Uncle
Rufus.

Then the three boys and Uncle Rufus sprang upon the midnight intruders
and bore them to the ground.




CHAPTER XXIV: THE WHITE STAR


The capture of the two men took place in a cleared spot in the yard
around the Corner House, a place well illuminated by the brilliant
moonlight. So every move of the suspects was plain to be seen.

Neale gave a gasp as he saw Agnes emerging from the door under the
porch. Hearing the commotion in the cellar when the pursuit of the two
intruders had begun, she had dashed down the stairs and followed as
quickly as possible in their wake.

From the house now came Ruth and Nalbro, with Mrs. MacCall and Linda.
Ruth caught sight of the man who had first fallen. He was just then
starting to rise.

“Oh, Luke!” she cried, “don’t shoot him. Please don’t!”

“I won’t,” answered the boy. “It won’t be necessary.”

“Do you surrender?” demanded Neale, swinging his club suggestively.

“I reckon we’ll have to,” growled one of the men sullenly. “I stumbled,”
he went on, as he arose. “But——”

“But if you think you’re going to pull off anything because the young
lady says not to shoot, get that idea out of your head!” cried Neale
menacingly, as he advanced with his substantial club.

“Oh, we know when we’re beaten,” growled the other man. “We weren’t
doing anything, anyhow.”

“No? Not even trespassing in the cellar?” asked Luke, with sarcasm.

“Oh, well, if we’d found anything we’d have given you folks a share,”
said the second man, who was now on his feet again.

“I suppose we can believe that or not, as we see fit,” remarked Luke.

Now the question arose of what to do with the two captured men. Captured
they were, since they must see the futility of trying to escape from
double their number of males, to say nothing of Mrs. MacCall and Linda,
who, in actual strength, were the equal of the tramps.

“You fellows may as well consider yourselves under arrest,” said Luke.
“You can take it quietly, or you can make a fuss if you please. I’d
advise you to take it quietly and come with us.”

“I hope they tell us where the iron box of gold is hidden!” exclaimed
Agnes, and they all noticed that the men started in surprise.

“Do you know about it?” asked the one afterward identified as Max
Rother.

“We certainly do!” declared Ruth. “Hop Wong has given us all the
particulars.”

“That Chink!” growled Simon Meggs. “I always was suspicious of him.”

“Settle one thing first,” suggested Luke. “Are you coming with us
quietly or shall we use force?”

“Oh, we’ll come along,” snapped out Rother. “But where are you taking
us? We haven’t done anything to be arrested for—except maybe sneak in,
trespass as you call it. You can’t do much to us for that. We haven’t
taken a thing.”

“Maybe we won’t send for the police after all,” said Ruth. “It all
depends on what you tell us. As you say, you haven’t done anything yet.”

“Except frighten us all a bit, and bang Luke Shepard over the head,” put
in Agnes. “And if you are willing to tell us where the box of gold is,
maybe we’ll let you go, provided you promise not to come back.”

“I guess we’ll have to do as you say. There’s no help for it,” grumbled
Meggs. “But I don’t believe you’ll find the money. We couldn’t, and
we’ve had several trials after it.”

“In the first place—is there any money?” asked Ruth.

“We think there is, lady,” answered Rother.

“Whose money is it?” demanded Luke. “Suppose you tell us about it.
Everything you do to save us work will count in your favor.”

“Well, it was going to be our money if we found it,” said Rother. “But
at the start it belonged to Collis Ingleton.”

“The heavy drinker?” asked Luke at a venture.

“How’d you know that?” asked Meggs with a perceptible start.

“Never mind how. Was he a drinker?”

“He was a soak, if that’s what you mean, asking the ladies’ pardon for
giving it a plain name,” said Rother. “And when he couldn’t get what he
wanted elsewhere we supplied him. He said we would be rewarded by
finding the box of gold in this cellar and we’ve been trying for it ever
since.”

“Then the money didn’t belong to Mr. Stower?” asked Ruth.

“Maybe some of it did. He and this Ingleton were in business together
once on a time,” Meggs answered. “But Ingleton said it was all his, and
Mr. Stower took it from him to save it and buried it.”

“But Ingleton said we could have it if we found it. That was to pay for
keeping him in liquor,” said Rother. “Oh, I know it’s a terrible bad
thing,” he admitted, as he saw the look of loathing on the faces of the
girls. “We’re bad men—not as bad as some, maybe, but bad enough. This
man suffered a lot. And he couldn’t stop. He just had to have liquor.”

“We got into it against our will, and we made up our minds to quit and
live straight after we got this money,” added Meggs.

“Do you think there is any chance of getting it?” asked Agnes.

“We did at one time,” Rother replied. “But I’m not so sure now. We
looked around and dug whenever we could without letting you folks know
about it. But the white star doesn’t seem to give the location as we
thought it would.”

“The white star!” cried Ruth. “Is there a white star in the cellar? We
couldn’t find it.”

“Where did you look?” asked Rother.

“All around the walls.”

“You should have looked overhead—on the beams. It’s there all right,”
said the man, with a grin. “Stars are always overhead, lady.”

“That’s so! We never thought of that!” cried Agnes. “Of course a star
would be as high up as it could be placed!”

“Do you mean, to say you have located the star in the cellar? The star
that Hop Wong said indicated the location of the iron box of gold?”
asked Neale.

“Reckon Hop Wong told all he knew,” murmured Meggs. “Yes, we have
located the star.”

“Come and show us,” ordered Luke. “And no tricks, mind!”

“Oh, we’re past tricks,” said Rother humbly enough. “We’ll play into
your hands now. Only, if you do locate any money—well, maybe you’ll give
us enough to get a fresh start.”

“We’ll see,” Ruth replied guardedly.

The boys carefully guarded the men, surrounding them as they all went
back to the cellar.

“We never knew that other door was there!” exclaimed Ruth, when they saw
how the men had entered and left the cellar.

“That’s one of the things Uncle Peter kept to himself,” said Agnes.
“There seems to have been a number of them.”

The lights were turned on in the cellar, and then, followed by the
Corner House girls and their friends, the men led the way to the corner
where they had been digging when surprised by Luke and Hal.

“There’s the white star,” remarked Rother, pointing to a beam overhead.

And there, showing faintly in the half darkness, was a white star
painted on one of the beams. Just beneath it was the beginning of an
excavation in the cellar bottom.




CHAPTER XXV: THE ALLIGATOR’S TAIL


“There’s the white star, surely enough!” exclaimed Agnes, when they had
all seen it.

“You started to dig just beneath it, is that it?” Luke asked the two
men.

“Yes, that’s what we understood we were to do,” remarked Rother.

“But so far—” began Meggs, when Neale with a cry interrupted and
demanded:

“You fellows haven’t found the gold and hidden it somewhere else, have
you?”

“Found the gold? Not much! If we had we wouldn’t be coming back at the
risk—well, we wouldn’t have come back and be caught as we are if we had
the coin,” answered Rother.

“As a matter of fact, we hadn’t finished digging when you saw us,” went
on Meggs.

“But I don’t think we will find it, not if we dig down to China,” went
on his partner.

“Why not?” asked Hal, quickly.

“You haven’t dug far enough to find out. You’ve only scratched the
surface here,” said Neale as he looked where the earth had been turned
up.

“No matter. I went far enough to make sure this ground hadn’t been
disturbed in a hundred years,” declared Rother. “It was as hard as
flint. If any box had ever been buried there the ground would show some
sign of it, and it doesn’t. I think we’re fooled, if you asked me,” he
concluded.

“Well, perhaps it was all a fairy story,” assented Luke. “But we’ll have
a try at it.”

“To-night?” asked Ruth, for she saw Luke take up a spade.

“To-night—yes. There is no time like the present. And since your
visitors, Ruth, seem to like the work we’ll let them do it,” and Luke
handed the implement to Rother and motioned to him to begin.

“Maybe this is only fair. I reckon we did give you a lot of trouble,”
said the tramp. “But we won’t find anything—not if we dig all night.”

And he was right. Though he and his companion turned up the earth in
many parts of the cellar, working at each point of the star as an
indicator, nothing was found.

It was nearly morning when Ruth gave the word to stop. But no one was
weary, unless it was the tramps who had been made to do most of the
labor.

“Well, I guess it was all a hoax,” said Agnes, with a sigh that had in
it something of disappointment. “I think your toper friend was
romancing.”

“I’m sure of it,” declared Rother. “He fooled us all right, as might
have been expected from an old soak. Well, if you’ll let us go, we’ll
clear out and not bother you again. We thought there was gold in the
cellar; but, well, there just isn’t.”

“What do you say, Ruth, shall we let them go?” asked Luke.

“Oh, yes. They really have done nothing except trespass, and I don’t
like the idea of appearing in court against them, as we should need to.
Let the poor fellows go.”

“Thanks, lady,” mumbled Meggs. “I’m sorry there wasn’t any money.”

“Perhaps it’s just as well,” said Ruth.

“Oh, and we wanting a new automobile the worst way!” gasped Agnes. “I
like your nerve!”

But it seemed the best way out, and the men were allowed to depart. This
they did hurriedly, thankful in one respect and doubtless much
disappointed in another. Their dream of wealth was over.

But when Luke and Neale had gone home for a few hours’ sleep and had
come back again, the young people took another look down in the cellar
by such daylight as entered through the opened rear door and the
long-unsuspected entrance beneath the front porch.

However, even that search resulted in nothing, and the Corner House
girls and their friends came to the somewhat reluctant conclusion that
the whole story was more or less of a hoax.

As for Sammy, Tess, and Dot, they were bitterly disappointed at the
outcome of it all when they were told of the night’s adventure.

“I wish I’d ’a’ been there to help capture the robbers!” cried Sammy.

“They weren’t robbers,” said Agnes. “They didn’t steal anything.”

“Well, they would ’a’ been if they could ’a’ found the chest of gold!”
declared Sammy. “Hi, where you goin’ with my alligator, Dot?” he called,
for he had brought his Palm Island pet over to the Corner House with
him, following the giving up of the search on the part of Luke and the
others.

“I’m not going anywhere with your old alligator,” Dot answered. “But
he’s wiggled himself down cellar and I’m going after him, so there!”

Sammy was eager to hear all the particulars of the night’s chase, and he
did not go down cellar, even to rescue his beloved saurian. Dot,
however, was not one to give up once she started a mission, and
presently she was heard moving about amid the boxes and barrels,
doubtless after the scaly creature.

“Well, there’s one thing we won’t have to worry about,” said Ruth, “and
that is the presence of those two mysterious men. When we didn’t know
who they were and what they were after, it was a constant source of
anxiety. Now they have gone for good.”

At that moment Dot came up out of the cellar and hurried to where all
the others were sitting in chairs beneath the shade of the grape arbor
near the rear door. There was a strange look on her face.

“What’s the matter?” asked Ruth, sensing that something had happened.

“Sammy’s alligator! He went down in the cellar, and I went after him
and—and—” began Dot excitedly.

“Well, is he lost or did you find him?” interrupted Sammy. “If he’s
gone, Dot Kenway——”

“No, he isn’t zactly gone,” explained Dot, with wounded dignity. “But he
crawled in a crack between two stones and only his tail was sticking out
and I got hold of it and I pulled, and it—it came _right out_!”

“Mercy! You don’t mean to say you pulled off the poor alligator’s tail,
did you?” cried Agnes.

“Maybe he’ll grow another as a crab grows a new claw,” Luke said
consolingly, as he saw the look of anguish on Sammy’s face.

“No, I didn’t pull the alligator’s tail off!” declared Dot. “It was on
too fast, I guess. But I pulled him and he came out of the crack, and
the stone came out with him and there’s a hole there, and there’s an
iron box in the hole, and——”

Dot did not finish. With whoops on the part of the boys and shrieks on
the part of the girls, the whole party made a rush for the cellar. The
afternoon sun was now shining in it, making the place fairly bright.

“Show me where you pulled the ’gator out, Dot!” begged Neale.

“There. You can see the hole and the iron box!”

And there it was!

The lost treasure! Curiously, as they discovered later, one of the
points of the white star on the beam overhead pointed directly to the
stone in the wall behind which the iron box had been hidden for so many
years. It was thus the clew should have been interpreted, it seemed.

It was an old box of thin sheet iron, and not heavy cast iron, and as it
was rusty it was soon opened. Out on the bench in the yard the hidden
wealth, for the first time in many years, was exposed to the light of
the sun.

“Then those men were right after all!” murmured Ruth.

“In a way, yes,” admitted Luke. “But it took Dot and Sammy’s alligator
to get at the real secret.”

“Well, I’m glad it was one of the Corner House girls who actually solved
the mystery,” said Ruth.

And the mystery was solved.

The wealth did not amount to as much as perhaps Neale and Agnes in their
wild dreams had dared to hope, but it was a substantial sum. It would
have been a small fortune to the two tramps had they been able to secure
it for themselves.

“What shall we do with it?” asked Tess, as they saw the piles of gold
and paper money.

“Buy a new auto the first thing!” cried Agnes.

“No, we must give it to whoever owns it,” said Ruth. “Put it all back,
Luke. We must take it to Mr. Howbridge.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “that’s the only thing to do.”

The girls’ guardian was greatly surprised.

“I never imagined there was anything to that queer story,” he said. “It
wasn’t at all like Mr. Stower to do something he didn’t tell me. But I
suppose he had his reasons. Well, now to find out whose money it is, and
if there are no heirs—well, it goes to the Corner House girls, of
course.”

“And boys!” added Ruth. “For they helped us find it.”

“Hop Wong ought to get some,” said Dot. “I like him, even if he is a
funny man. But he doesn’t seem to be made of china.”

“Yes, Hop Wong will get his share,” said Mr. Howbridge, amid laughter.

“And maybe those two tramps ought to have some, too. We’ll see,” added
Ruth.

Though the finding of the money was kept as quiet as possible, yet it
made a stir in Milton, and many a throng of curious ones came to stare
at the Corner House and the inmates thereof.

Mr. Howbridge made diligent inquiries and found the story to be
substantially as told by Rother and Meggs. The unfortunate friend of
Uncle Peter, whose failing Mr. Stower had done his best to hide, really
owned the money. It had been hidden to try to save it from going for
liquor. As he died without leaving any relatives, there was none to
claim the wealth.

After that a diligent search was made through the papers left by Mr.
Stower and finally a document was brought to light in which the former
partner left all his earthly possessions to the owner of the Corner
House.

Then, as the Corner House girls succeeded to all of Uncle Peter’s
belongings they, naturally, fell heirs to the iron box of money.

“And now may we have the new car?” asked Agnes, when it was all settled.

“Yes,” chuckled her guardian, “if only to keep you quiet.”

So Agnes was made happy, and so, also, was Hop Wong, for he was given a
substantial sum, enough to enable him to clear off the debt on his
laundry and start afresh. And later still, the two tramps were located
and given new outfits of clothing and a little cash.

“If Agnes has a new car I think we ought to have new playthings,”
declared Dot, “’cause I found the money.”

“And there ought to be a new basket for Sandyface to keep her kittens
in,” added Tess.

“That shall be done!” laughed Ruth.

“And I should think maybe we could give Sammy a little chain for his
alligator so it wouldn’t get lost again,” suggested Dot.

“I think that’s the least we can do for Sammy, after the part his pet
played in revealing the hidden gold,” agreed Ruth. And so it was done.

“Well,” remarked Nalbro when she left for Boston with Hal, “I must say I
have had a most delightful vacation at the Corner House. And it was so
romantic!”

“Glad you liked it,” returned Agnes.

“Come again next summer,” put in Ruth. “Maybe something else will
happen.”

And something else did, and what it was will be related in another
volume, to be called “The Corner House Girls Facing the World.” In that
book we shall see what all of the girls were capable of doing under very
trying circumstances.

From his papers Ruth and Agnes learned much concerning their Uncle
Peter’s work in behalf of the partner who had all but drunk himself to
death. He had done his utmost to reform the man, but without avail. Then
he had done what he could to save the unfortunate one’s money, and this
had occurred just before his own death.

And so the mystery came to an end and the puzzling noises around the old
Corner House ceased. Sammy got his new chain for the alligator and was
correspondingly happy.

“He is going to make the alligator learn new tricks,” announced Dot.

“Mercy! haven’t we had tricks enough?” cried Agnes.

“What I can’t understand,” went on Dot, frowning, “is about Mr. Hop
Wong.”

“What can’t you understand?” asked Agnes.

“I’ve looked and looked and looked,” went on the littlest Corner House
Girl, “and he isn’t a Chinaman! There isn’t the least bit of china about
him, so there!”

                               THE END