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.