"I should have told you that the paper was in cipher, and a very elaborate one, so that it had never been completely worked out. This, no doubt, accounts for Roger Dangerfield"s failure.
"Well, in course of time, the cipher became a family relic along with Roger Dangerfield"s diary. His descendants moved to Virginia, where I was born. I recollect, as a youngster, being enthralled by the story of the old piratical Dangerfield"s hidden gold, and resolving that when I grew up I would find it. We had, in our employ at that time, a butler named Jarley. I was an only child, and he was my confidant. I naturally told him about the cipher and what its unraveling would mean.
"This happened when I was about eighteen and home on a vacation. Jarley seemed much interested, but after both he and I had puzzled in vain over the cipher, we gave it up. When I came home on my next vacation, I learned that Jarley had left. His mother and father had died, he declared, and he was required at his home in Maine. Well, I thought no more of the matter, and forming new acquaintances in our neighborhood, which was rapidly settling, I soon forgot Jarley. But one day a notion seized me to look at the cipher and the diary again.
"But when I came to look for them, they had gone. Nor did any search result in my finding them. It at once flashed across my mind that Jarley might have taken them. So fixed an idea did this become, that I visited the place in Maine to which he said he had gone, only to find that he had removed soon after his return from Virginia. However, pursuing the trail, I found that he--or a man resembling him--had visited the spot on the lake where the old-time house had stood, and had made a mysterious expedition into the mountains. The spot was at that time known as Dangerfield, and was quite a flourishing little town, with a pulp mill and a few other local industries. In that quiet community they recollected the mysterious visitor well.
"However, as I learned, Jarley had left the town without paying his guides or the man from whom he had hired the horses, I concluded that the expedition had not been successful. Then I advertised for the man, but without success. Then I was appointed to West Point, and for a long time I thought no more of the matter. In fact, for years it lay dormant in my mind, with occasional flashes of memory; then I would advertise for Jarley or his heirs, but without success.
"The last time I advertised was about a year ago. After six months"
silence I received a letter, asking me to call at an address near the Erie Basin in Brooklyn, if I was interested in the long-lost Jarley. All my enthusiasm once more at fever heat, I set out for the place. The address at which I was to call I found to be a squalid sailors"
boarding-house. On inquiring there for James Jarley, the name signed to the letter, I was conducted into a dirty room, where lay a rough-looking sailor, evidently just recovering from the effects of a debauch.
"So dulled was his mind, that it was some time before I could explain my errand, but finally he understood. He frankly told me he was out for money, and wanted to know how much I would give him for some papers he had which his father--our old butler, it transpired--had left him. His father, he said, had told him that if ever he wanted to make money with them he was to seek out a Major Dangerfield, who would be likely to pay him well for them.
"But it appeared that his father had also told him that he stood a chance of arrest if he did so, and that it might be a dangerous step. However, he told me that he had at length decided to take that chance, and on a return from a long voyage, during which he had encountered my advertis.e.m.e.nt in an old newspaper in a foreign port, he had made up his mind to find me on his return.
"His father, it appeared, had always kept track of me, but fear and shame had kept him from trying to arrange a meeting. The son, I gathered, both from his conversation and the situation in which I found him, had always been a ne"er-do-well. Well, the matter ended with my paying him a sum of money for the papers, which as I suspected, proved to be the yellow-paged old diary and the well-thumbed, tattered cipher. Then I had him removed to a hospital, where a few days later he died in an attack of delirium."
CHAPTER IV.
THE NARRATIVE CONTINUED.
"But it appeared that even while on his deathbed the man had been playing a dishonest game. Before he had made his bargain with me, he had revealed the secret and tried to sell it to a certain money-lender at a seaport in Maine. This man had refused to have anything to do with what he thought was a chimerical scheme, but later confided the whole thing to a friend of his by name Stonington Hunt--a former Wall Street man, who had been compelled to quit in disgrace the scene of his financial operations."
"Stonington Hunt!" gasped Rob, leaning forward in his chair, while the others looked equally amazed.
"Yes, that was the name. Why, do you know him?"
"Know him, Major!" echoed Mr. Blake. "He was concerned in some rascally operations in this village not so long ago. That he left here under a cloud, was mainly due to activities of the Boy Scouts, whose enemy he was. We heard he had gone to Maine. Is he engaged in new rascality?"
"You shall hear," pursued the major. "Well, as I said, this seaport money-lender told Stonington Hunt of the chart and cipher and the old diary recording the burial of the treasure. Hunt, it would seem, placed more importance on the information than had the money-lender, for he agreed, provided the latter would help to finance an expedition, to try to solve the cipher, or else have some expert translate it. He set out at once for Brooklyn, arriving there, as I subsequently learned, just after I had departed with the diary and the papers which young Jarley had carried in his sea-chest for some years.
"He lost no time in tracing me, and offered me a large sum for the papers. But my interest had been aroused. For the sake of the adventure of the thing, and also to clear up the mystery, I had resolved to go treasure hunting myself. With this object in view, I rented a bungalow on a lake not far from the range in which I suspected the treasure cave lay, and devoted days and nights trying to solve the cipher. At this time a college professor, an old chum of mine, wrote me that his health was broken down, and that he needed a rest. I invited him to come and visit me in Ess.e.x County, at the same time suggesting that I had a hard nut for him to crack. Professor Jeremiah Jorum arrived soon after, and his health picked up amazingly in the mountain air. One day he asked about "the hard nut." I produced the cipher, and told him something of its history.
Perhaps I should have told you that Professor Jorum has devoted a good deal of his life to what is known as cryptology--or the solving of seemingly unsolvable puzzles. He had translated Egyptian cryptograms and inscriptions left by vanished tribes on ruins in Yucatan and Old Mexico.
"He worked for several days on the cipher, and one day came to me with a radiant face. He told me he had solved it. No wonder I had failed. It was a simple enough cipher--one of the least complex, in fact--but the language used had been Latin, in which my ancestor, as a well-bred Englishman of that day, was proficient. As he was telling me this, I noticed a man I had hired some days before, hanging about the open windows. I ordered him away, and he went at once. But I had grave suspicions that he had overheard a good deal more than I should have wished him to. However, there was no help for it. I dismissed the matter from my mind, and we--the professor and I--spent the rest of the day discussing the cipher and the best means for recovering the treasure. We agreed it would be dangerous to take men we could not absolutely trust, and yet, we should require several people to organize a proper expedition.
"But, as it so happened, all our plans had to be changed that night. I was awakened soon after midnight by a noise in my room. In the dim light I saw a figure that I recognized as our gardener, moving about. The lamp beside my bed had, for some reason, not gone out when I turned it down on retiring, and I soon had the room in a blaze of light. The intruder sprang toward me, a big club in his hand. I dodged the blow and grappled with him. In the struggle his beard fell off, and I recognized, to my amazement, that our "gardener" was Stonington Hunt himself.
"The shock of this surprise had hardly been borne in upon me when the fellow, who possessed considerable strength, forced me back against the table. In the scuffle the lamp was upset. In a flash the place was in a blaze. Hunt was out of the room in two bounds. He seized the key, as he went, and locked the door on the outside, thus leaving me to burn to death, or chance injury by a leap from the window, which overhung a cliff above the lake. I had just time to throw on a few clothes and grab the papers, which I had luckily placed under my pillow, before the flames drove me out. The wood of the door was flimsy, and without bothering to try to force the lock, I smashed out a panel. Crawling through, I aroused my friend Jorum and my old negro servant, Jumbo.
"We saved nothing but the precious papers, but as the bungalow was roughly furnished, I did not much care. We made our way to a distant house and stayed there the night. The next day we took a wagon to the sh.o.r.e of the lake and went by boat to Whitehall. There we embarked on a train for Albany, where my daughter was at the home of friends. I, too, have a residence there, but, having received an invitation from friends to visit them on Long Island, I decided to give my little girl a motor trip.
"But while in Albany I perceived I was being followed, and by the two men whom you have described to me as taking part in the filching of the wallet. I thought I had thrown them off, however, but your adventure to-day proves that I have not been as successful as I hoped. The most unfortunate part of it is that the cipher was in that wallet."
"And it"s gone," groaned Tubby dolorously.
"I"m not so sure of that. I am hopeful that we may recover it," said the retired officer. "I have wired my friend Jorum, who, with Jumbo, is now in New York, and I am in hopes that he can recollect something of his translation of the cipher. If not--well, there"s no use crossing bridges till we come to them."
"If you do recover it?" asked Rob.
"If I do, I am going to ask your parents to let me borrow a patrol of Boy Scouts to aid in the treasure hunt," smiled the major.
"My dear Major," cried Mr. Blake, holding up his hands, "Mrs. Blake would never consent to----"
"But there would be such a lot of fun, dad," urged Rob. "Think of a camp in the mountains. We"d have to camp, wouldn"t we, Major?"
"Certainly. It would be a fine opportunity for you to perfect yourselves in----"
"Woodcraft," said Tubby.
"Signaling," put in Merritt.
"I"ve got a field wireless apparatus I"d like to try out," put in Hiram, his voice a-quiver with eagerness.
"Well, the first thing to be done is to recover that cipher," said the major; "at present all we know of it is that it is in the hands of two rascals."
"In the employ of another rascal, Stonington Hunt," put in Rob.
"Well, we can do nothing more to-night," said the major.
"No. We were so interested in your story that I think none of us noticed how the time flew by," said Mr. Blake, and Mrs. Blake, entering just then, announced that there was supper ready for the party in the dining-room. Tubby"s eyes glittered at this news.
Soon after the sandwiches, cakes and lemonade had been disposed of, the Boy Scouts set out for home, agreeing to meet the major next morning after breakfast.
They had not gone many steps from the house when Tubby stopped as suddenly as if he had been shot.
"Gingersnaps!" he exclaimed. "I"ve just thought of something."
"Goodness! Must hurt," jeered Merritt unsympathetically.
"No--that is, yes--no, I mean," sputtered the fat boy. "Say, fellows, I heard this afternoon that Sam Phelps from Aquebogue told a fellow in the village that he had seen Freeman Hunt over there this morning."
"You double-dyed chump," exclaimed Rob, who was walking a way with them, "and you never said anything about it. If Freeman was there, I"ll bet his father was, too, and that"s where those two men have gone."
"Gee whiz, if they have they must be there yet, then!" exclaimed Merritt, excitedly, "unless they left by automobile."
"How"s that?" demanded Rob.
"It"s this way. There was no train after those chaps took the wallet, till almost eight o"clock. They must have hidden in the woods and caught it some place below, unless Si arrested them."
"He"d have been at the house to get the reward if he had," rejoined Rob.
"Very well, then. He didn"t catch them, and if the Hunts are at Aquebogue, that"s where they"ve gone."