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!”