The Slipper Point Mystery Part 6

"Can't you guess? The _name_ of this vessel that the lumber came from,--and the _date_. Whatever happened that cave couldn't have been made before 1843, anyhow, and that isn't so terribly long ago. There might even be persons alive here today who could remember as far back as that date, if not further. And if this _Anne Arundel_ was wrecked somewhere about here, perhaps there's some one who will remember that, and--"

But here Sally interrupted her with an excited cry. "My grandfather!--He surely would know. He was born in 1830, 'cause he's eighty-seven now, and he ought to remember if there was a wreck on this beach when he was thirteen years old or older. He remembers lots about wrecks. I'll ask him."

Doris recalled the hearty old sea-captain, Sally's grandfather, whom she had often seen sitting on Sally's own front porch, or down at the Landing. That he could remember many tales of wrecks and storms she did not doubt, and her spirits rose with Sally's.

"But you must go about it carefully," she warned. "Don't let him know, at first, that you know much about the _Anne Arundel_, or he'll begin to suspect something and ask questions. I don't see quite how you _are_ going to find out about it without asking him anyway."

"You leave that to me!" declared Sally. "Grandfather's great on spinning yarns when he gets going. And he grows so interested about it generally that he doesn't realize afterward whether he's told you a thing or you've asked him about it, 'cause he has so much to tell and gets so excited about it. Oh, I'll find out about the _Anne Arundel_, all right--if there's anything _to_ find out!"

They parted that morning filled anew with the spirit of adventure and mystery, stopping no longer to consider the dashed hopes of the earlier day.

"I probably shan't get a chance to talk to Grandfather alone before evening," said Sally in parting, "though I'm going to be around most of the afternoon where he is. But I'll surely talk to him tonight when he's smoking on our porch and Mother and Dad are away at the Landing. Then I'll find out what he knows, and let you know tomorrow morning."

It was a breathless and excited Sally that rowed up to the hotel at an early hour next day.

"Did he say anything?" demanded Doris breathlessly, flying down to the sand to meet her.

"Come out in the boat," answered Sally, "and I'll tell you all about it.

He certainly _did_ say something!"

Doris clambered into the boat, and they headed as usual for Slipper Point.

"Well?" queried Doris, impatiently, when they were in midstream.

"Grandfather was good and ready to talk wrecks with me last night,"

began Sally, "for there was no one else about to talk to. You know, the pavilion opened for dancing the first time this season, and every one made a bee-line for that. Grandfather never goes down to the Landing at night, so he was left stranded for some one to talk to and was right glad to have me. I began by asking him to tell me something about when he was a young man and how things were around here and how he came to go to sea. It always pleases him to pieces to be asked to tell about those times, so he sailed in and I didn't do a thing but sit and listen, though I've heard most of all that before.

"But after a while he got to talking about how he'd been shipwrecked and along about there I saw how it would be easy to switch him off to the shipwrecks that happened around here. When I did that he had plenty to tell me and it was rather interesting too. By and by I said, just quietly, as if I wasn't awfully interested:

"'Grandfather, I've heard tell of a ship called the _Anne Arundel_ that was wrecked about here once. Do you know anything of her?' And he said he just guessed he _did_. She came ash.o.r.e one winter night, along about 1850, in the worst storm they'd ever had on this coast. He was a young man of twenty then and he helped to rescue some of the sailors and pa.s.sengers. She was a five-masted schooner, an English ship, and she just drove right up on the sh.o.r.e and went to pieces. They didn't get many of her crew off alive, as most of them had been swept overboard in the heavy seas.

"But, listen to this. He said that the queer part of it all was that, though her hulk and wreckage lay on the beach for a couple of months or so, and n.o.body gave it any attention, suddenly, in one week, it all disappeared as clean as if another hurricane had hit it and carried it off. But this wasn't the case, because there had been fine weather for a long stretch. Everybody wondered and wondered what had become of the _Anne Arundel_ but n.o.body ever found out. It seemed particularly strange because no one, not even beach-combers, would be likely to carry off a whole wreck, bodily, like that."

"And he never had a suspicion," cried Doris, "that some one had taken it to build that little cave up the river? How perfectly wonderful, Sally!"

"No, but there's something about it that puzzles me a lot," replied Sally. "They took it to fix up that cave, sure enough. But, do you realize, Doris, that it only took a small part of a big vessel like that, to build the cave. What became of all the rest of it? Why was it all taken, when so little of it was needed? What was it used for?"

This was as much a puzzle to Doris as to Sally. "I'm sure I can't imagine," she replied. "But one thing's certain. We've got to find out who took it and why, if it takes all summer. By the way! I've got a new idea about why that cave was built. I believe it was for some one who wanted to hide away,--a prisoner escaped from jail, for instance, or some one who was afraid of being put in prison because he'd done something wrong, or it was thought that he had. How about that?"

"Then what about the queer piece of writing we found?" demanded Sally.

Doris had to admit she could not see where that entered into things.

"Well," declared Sally, at length, "I've got a brand new idea about it too. It came from something else Grandfather was telling me last night.

If it wasn't pirates it was--_smugglers_!"

"Mercy!" cried Doris. "What makes you think so?"

"Because Grandfather was telling me of a lot of smugglers who worked a little farther down the coast. They used to run in to one of the rivers with a small schooner they cruised in, and hide lots of stuff that they'd have to pay duty on if they brought it in the proper way. They hid it in an old deserted house near the sh.o.r.e and after a while would sell what they had and bring in some more. By and by the government officers got after them and caught them all.

"It just set me to thinking that this might be another hiding place that was never discovered, and this bit of paper the secret plan to show where or how they hid the stuff. Perhaps they were all captured at some time, and never got back here to find the rest of their things. I tell you, we may find some treasure yet, though it probably won't be like what the pirates would have hidden."

Doris was decidedly fired by the new idea. "It sounds quite possible to me," she acknowledged, "and what we want to do now is to try and work out the meaning of that queer bit of paper."

"Yes, and by the way, you said quite a while ago that you had an idea about that," Sally reminded her. "What was it?"

"Oh, I don't know as it amounts to much," said Doris. "So many things have happened since, that I've half forgotten about it. But if we're going up to Slipper Point, I can show you better when we get there. Do you know, Sally, I believe I'm just as much interested if that's a smuggler's cave as if it had been a pirate's. It's actually thrilling!"

And without further words, they bent their energies toward reaching their destination.

CHAPTER VIII

ROUNDTREE'S

At Slipper Point, they established Genevieve, as usual, on the old chair in the cave, to examine by candle-light the new picture-book that Doris had brought for her. This was calculated to keep her quiet for a long while, as she was inordinately fond of "picters," as she called them.

"Now," cried Sally, "what about that paper?"

"Oh, I don't know that it amounts to very much," explained Doris. "It just occurred to me, in looking it over, that possibly the fact of its being square and the little cave also being square might have something to do with things. Suppose the floor of the cave were divided into squares just as this paper is. Now do you notice one thing? Read the letters in their order up from the extreme left hand corner diagonally.

It reads r-i-g-h-t-s and the last square is blank. Now why couldn't that mean 'right' and the 's' stand for square,--the 'right square' being that blank one in the extreme corner?"

"Goody!" cried Sally. "That's awfully clever of you. I never thought of such a thing as reading it that way, in all the time I had it. And do you think that perhaps the treasure is buried under there?"

"Well, of course, that's all we _can_ think it means. It might be well to investigate in that corner."

But another thought had occurred to Sally. "If that's so," she inquired dubiously, "what's the use of all the rest of those letters and numbers.

They must be there for _something_."

"They may be just a 'blind,' and mean nothing at all," answered Doris.

"You see they'd have to fill up the s.p.a.ces somehow, or else, if I'm right, they'd have more than one vacant square. And one was all they wanted. So they filled up the rest with a lot of letters and figures just to puzzle any one that got hold of it. But there's something else I've thought of about it. You notice that the two outside lines of squares that lead up to the empty squares are just numbers,--not letters at all. Now I've added each line together and find that the sum of each side is exactly _twenty-one_. Why wouldn't it be possible that it means the sides of this empty square are twenty-one-something--in length. It can't possibly mean twenty-one _feet_ because the whole cave is only about nine feet square. It must mean twenty-one inches."

Sally was quite overcome with amazement at this elaborate system of reasoning it out. "You certainly are a wonder!" she exclaimed. "I never would have thought of it in the world."

"Why, it was simple," declared Doris, "for just as soon as I'd hit upon that first idea, the rest all followed like clockwork. But now, if all this is right, and the treasure lies somewhere under the vacant square, our business is to find it."

Suddenly an awful thought occurred to Sally. "But how are you going to know _which_ corner that square is in? It might be any of the four, mightn't it?"

For a moment Doris was stumped. How, indeed, were they going to tell?

Then one solution dawned on her. "Wouldn't they have been most likely to consider the square of the floor as it faces you, coming in at the door, to be the way that corresponds to the plan on the paper? In that case, the extreme right-hand corner from the door, for the s.p.a.ce of twenty-one inches, is the spot."

It certainly seemed the most logical conclusion. They rushed over to the spot and examined it, robbing Genevieve of her candle in order to have the most light on the dark corner. It exhibited, however, no signs of anything the least unusual about it. The rough planks of the flooring joined quite closely to those of the wall, and there was no evidence of its having ever been used as a place of concealment. At this discouraging revelation, their faces fell.

"Let's examine the other corners," suggested Doris. "Perhaps we're not right about this being the one."