CHAPTER XVII
BACK TO THE ISLAND
In unscrewing the marked leg of the lock tender’s old fashioned piano, it had not been the intention of my curious companion to run off with it. For he had no right to do that. It was stealing, sort of. Certainly, as he admitted to me later on, he wouldn’t have taken the leg out of its owner’s house if he had known that it was full of money.
He had been led to the piano leg out of curiosity. Having seen the Harmony Hustler turn it, he had wanted to turn it. That, he had concluded, was the way into its secret.
But whatever scattered ideas he and I may have had bearing on the leg’s probable secret, I can truthfully state that our discovery of the money was a smashing surprise. We hadn’t dreamed of a thing like this. And had we made the discovery of the roll of greenbacks while in the house the chances are that we would have dropped the leg in a hurry. For it would have been our natural thought that here was the piano owner’s hoardings. The piano leg was his savings bank.
But it was a mighty lucky thing, as we found out later on, that we did sort of run off unintentionally with the piano leg, to learn, when our excitement in our escape had somewhat subsided, of its surprising contents. For in the act we saved the money from falling into the killer’s thieving hands. More than that we probably saved a man’s life.
We knew now that the money didn’t belong to the lock tender. For he had shown no excitement when he had been told, within our hearing, that a leg of his piano had been stolen. Had he known that the missing leg was full of money—his money—he would have been crazily excited. We had no doubt on that point.
The killer, on the other hand, did know about the money. And in short thought it could have been concluded therefrom that the hidden greenbacks were his. But in our deep distrust of him we didn’t accept the first thought that came into our heads. It was true that he had shown a knowledge of the hidden money, but he had shown, too, in his investigation of the piano’s legs, a definite lack of knowledge of the money’s exact hiding place. This was conclusive in our minds that he hadn’t hidden the money himself. Therefore, we argued, the money wasn’t his.
We had not the slightest intention of returning the greenbacks to the lock tender. Why should we when they didn’t belong to him? If he once got his hands on the fortune he would say that the money was his. We had little more belief in his honesty than we had in the killer’s, and certainly, insofar as we were able to prevent it, the latter was to be given no chance at the money.
The thing to do, we decided, was to keep the money and turn it over to the law, together with a detailed explanation of how it had come into our possession. The law, in fairness to all concerned, would see that the money passed into the hands of its rightful owner. I might add here, in all frankness, that we were not without hope that some share of the money would be awarded to us. We felt that we were earning a right to a part of it.
We counted the greenbacks by the light of the moon, thus learning that the roll consisted of thirty twenty-dollar bills and forty ten-dollar bills—an even thousand dollars!
Of the opinion that the money was no longer safe in the hollow of the piano leg, Scoop stuffed three hundred dollars into each of his two side pockets, dividing the balance into two rolls of two hundred dollars each, which he put away in his two hip pockets. He told me in the conclusion of the money’s distribution that he felt like a walking safe. And I could imagine that he did, all right. For it isn’t every day in a fellow’s life that he has a chance to pocket a thousand dollars.
In resting we had disposed of our apples, sorry, in our hollow hunger, that we hadn’t more of them to eat. The food gave us new pep. Starting out again in our passage to the big wide waters, we took turns carrying the heavy piano leg, which was to back us up in our story when we came before the law.
The big sum of money in our possession was an anxiety to us, and, as can be imagined, we kept a constant eye ahead of us and behind us. Once in looking back I thought I detected a man of the killer’s size in the shadow of the trees. We hid in the underbrush at the next turn in the tow path. But no one overtook us. So it was concluded that what I had mistaken for a man in my nervousness was probably a bush or a tall tree stump.
Where was the white-haired man? Were Red and Peg on his trail? Had he recovered the bonds, as we had concluded, and was he now far away from the island? Or was he, for some reason or purpose unknown to us, still in hiding near by?
I could only speculate in my mind regarding the probable answers to these questions. Nor had I any answer to the riddle of why the two thieves had separated. We knew where one of the evil pair was. The thought of a possible sudden meeting with the other one in the moonlit tow path filled me with shivers.
Scoop got his eyes on me.
“What’s the matter, Jerry? Are you cold?”
“Cold and scared both,” I admitted, my teeth chattering.
He looked me over.
“I should think you would be cold in your underwear and shoes. Why don’t you put on the nightshirt?”
“Aw!…”
“Go ahead. Shucks! What do you care how you look?” he urged, reading my thoughts.
None of us had been wearing stockings with our shoes. And I realized now that my bare legs were colder in the damp night air than I had imagined. So I acted on the other’s advice and got into the long white nightshirt. It was a big help to me, I found, in keeping my legs warm.
Coming to the big wide waters, we had a moonlight view of the island to our right. A thing that puzzled us was the occasional flicker of a campfire on the rise where the bonds had been buried. While we were discussing the campfire a rowboat came into sight around the head of the island. For all we knew to the contrary the boat’s occupant was an officer bent on our capture. So the thing for us to do, we wisely concluded, was to get out of sight.
After an elapse of several minutes we detected the sound of oarlocks. We could hear, too, in the approach of the boat, the intermittent swish! swish! of the rower’s blades as they bit into the water. It appeared that the boat was heading up the canal in the direction of the lock where we had been held prisoners. This strengthened our belief that the rower was probably the Ashton policeman, on his way to his brother’s house.
“I’m hungry,” a low voice complained.
“Huh!” came another and gruffer voice. “You’re always hungry.”
“I haven’t had any supper.”
“Nor have we. But you don’t hear us growling about it.”
“I wish I was home.”
My companion put a quick hand on my arm.
“Recognize that yap, Jerry?”
“It’s Red Meyers.”
“Sure thing.”
We guardedly put up our heads to get a better view of the boat’s passengers. It was our chums, all right! The girl was in the boat, too. My heart gave a happy bound.
At our signal Peg brought the boat quickly to shore, as tickled to see us as we were to see him.
I was a bit backward about showing myself in front of the girl in my ridiculous gown. I didn’t want her to think that I was foolish.
Scoop read my embarrassment in my actions.
“Miss Garber,” he introduced in mock gravity, dragging me into sight, “allow me to present to you my charming friend, Miss Pansy Blossom.”
Red forgot all about his hollow stomach in my confusion.
“ ‘Miss Pansy Blossom!’ ” he hooted. “Haw! haw! haw!”
Joining Scoop in the fun of the nonsensical introduction, the girl gave me her hand in a sort of stylish-like way, telling me the while that it was indeed a great pleasure for her to make the acquaintance of “Miss Pansy Blossom.”
The joke was on me, all right. And I decided on the instant that the best way out of the embarrassing situation would be to pretend as much hilarity and fun in my crazy appearance as the others.
Well, in getting down to business, we told our chums the story of our spectacular flight from the lock tender’s house with the piano leg. There was amazement in their eyes, and in the girl’s eyes, at sight of our money.
Then Peg told us of his and Red’s movements since their escape down the rope. They had waited for us in the underbrush. When we had failed to appear, and they had been made to realize from the vanished rope that we had been shut off in our intended escape, they had held guarded counsel, thus deciding to go to the island to learn if the girl were still there. It had been their further plan to return to the lock at dusk to help us to possible freedom.
Arriving at the wide waters, the big one had fashioned a sort of bathing suit of his underwear and shirt and had swum to the island, where he had promptly come in contact with the girl, informing her in the meeting of the attack upon her grandfather and of her position in the tangle. The white-haired uncle, the swimmer had learned in turn, had not been to the island, nor had the warty-nosed man been there.
“I told Lizzie,” Peg concluded, “that the thing for us to do, now that her grandfather was in the hospital, was to dig up the bonds and get them into a bank as soon as we could. Then her uncle wouldn’t be able to steal them. She agreed to the suggestion. And if we had dug up the bonds then, everything would have been lovely. Instead, I borrowed her boat, which was hidden in the shore willows at the head of the island, and rowed to the tow path for Red.
“And now comes the sad part,” freckle-nose put in, wagging his head.
There was an anxious look on Scoop’s tired face.
“What happened?” he inquired in a somewhat dull voice, plainly prepared to hear the worst.
“In the time that we were away,” Peg continued, “campers landed on the island from down the canal. The Stricker gang. Seven of them. We had a time getting back to our harbor unseen.”
“The dickens!” Scoop cried, with troubled eyes. He looked at me. “That explains the campfire, Jerry.”
“Returning to the island,” Peg went on, “we lay in hiding, in the hope that the enemy would leave the place long enough for us to climb the knoll and dig up the bonds. No such good luck, though. Not only were the others in complete possession of the island, but they actually pitched their tents on the knoll over the buried bonds.”
The leader was staring open-mouthed.
“What’s that?” he cried.
“I say,” Peg repeated patiently, “that Bid Stricker’s tent is set up directly over the spot where we buried the bonds. Of course he doesn’t know that the bonds are there. And it is well for our purpose that he doesn’t.”
It was news to Scoop and me that a reward of two hundred dollars had been offered by the Ashton police department for information that would lead to the granddaughter’s arrest and to the subsequent recovery of the stolen bonds. Peg and the others had learned of the reward by listening, unseen, to the campers’ conversation.
“It’s still the crazy belief of the police,” the big one went on, “that Lizzie tried to murder her grandfather. And it was largely on her account that Red and I held back on the Strickers. For we didn’t want to run the chance of defeat and have them drag her off to jail in order to claim the reward.”
Scoop got the granddaughter’s eyes.
“You needn’t worry,” he said quickly, “about going to jail. For your story of your uncle’s presence in the house at the time of the assault will clear you.”
“That’s what I told her,” Peg waggled. “She’s anxious, of course, to get back to town … she wants to be with her grandfather. And to that point I was hopeful that we all would be able to say good-by to the island before dusk. With the recovered bonds in our possession, it was planned that Red was to go to town with the girl in the boat while I headed for the lock to help you fellows. But, as I say, the Strickers were constantly in our way. And when it came eleven o’clock, and we were no nearer to getting the bonds than we had been at sundown, I told the others that we had best head for the lock. We owed you our help. And if we could free you, we would then have your help.”
Red laughed.
“We found out something else by listening in on the Strickers’ gab.”
“Well?” Scoop encouraged.
“Remember the night they came to the boat, intending to smash up our show truck?”
“Sure thing. Jerry and Peg were on guard.”
“They saw a ghost, all right.”
“It was the sudden appearance of the ghost on the boat,” Peg put in, “that scared them away.”
Scoop laughed in a reflective way.
“Our ‘friendly ghost’! I’d like to know who this spooky person is who has taken such a shine to us. Did you hear them say what the ghost looked like?”
“They described it as being tall and white. When it came over the side of the boat, out of the canal, sort of, they beat it, scared out of their wits.”
Scoop got his eyes on me.
“If they get a look at you In that outfit, Jerry—I beg pardon,” he bowed, grinning, “I mean Miss Pansy Blossom—they’ll think they’re seeing another ghost.”
Matching his grin with one of my own I sort of posed in my fancy gown. It wasn’t an embarrassment to me now, as it had been on the start.
Peg gave a gesture of impatience.
“Let’s cut out the nonsense,” he suggested, serious. “For we’ve got a man’s size job on our hands tonight in getting the bonds. This is our last chance, fellows. For a dozen cops will be nosing around here to-morrow.”
Scoop was looking at me steadily, his eyes sort of narrowed and probing. Laughing in the conclusion of his thoughts, he started for the boat.
“Come on, Miss Pansy Blossom,” he beckoned to me. “This is your busy night.”
“What do you mean?” I inquired quickly.
But I couldn’t get him to expose his thoughts. All the way to the island he kept going, “Tra-la-lee-tra-la-lum!” in imitation of the piano tuner. And at intervals he would look at me and laugh.
I saw that he was up to some scheme bearing on the recovery of the buried bonds from under Bid Stricker’s tent. I couldn’t imagine what the scheme was. But plainly I was involved in it.
I was not without anxiety in the prospect of what lay ahead of me.