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