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.