Bob Dexter and the Storm Mountain Mystery or, The Secret of the Log Cabin

“Tin horn sports and cheap skate gamblers,” was the way Chief Duncan characterized them, and Bob agreed.

In some places there were dance halls attached to the pool rooms, and these were the worst of all, for women and girls were there who might have done better to have remained away.

The blare of horrible “jazz” shot out of many an open door, and in their quest Bob and the chief entered. The air in some of the dance places was almost as blue with smoke as in the pool “parlors,” but the women and girls – nearly all the latter with bobbed hair – did not seem to mind. In fact, some of the girls were leeringly puffing on cigarettes.

“Not very nice places, eh, Bob?” asked the chief as they left one, filling their lungs with the clean air outside – air filled with rain and frost, but clean – just clean!

“They’re rotten!” declared Bob Dexter.

“Well, there aren’t many more,” said Mr. Duncan. “Are you game?”

“Oh, sure! We’ll go through with it. But the sailor doesn’t seem to be on hand.”

“We may locate him yet. These fellows drift from one night haunt to another. We may go back to the first place and pick him up.”

The rain was now falling smartly, but our seekers did not turn back. They kept on with the quest.

“There’s one place down this street I’d like to look into,” murmured Mr. Duncan.

He turned down what was more of an alley than a street. Here and there a dim gas lamp flickered, adding to rather than relieving the blackness. Halfway down there was a blur of brightness, showing where the light streamed from the doors of another pool place.

“We’ll take a look in there,” said the chief.

They made their way down the alley, splashing in puddles, tramping in the mud and getting more and more wet and miserable every moment.

Suddenly, out of the shadow of some ramshackle building, or perhaps from some hole in the ground, there lurched a swaying figure. And the figure was that of a man who raised his cracked voice in what he doubtless intended for a melody and howled, rather than sang:

“Then spend yer money free,An’ come along o’ me,An’ I’ll show yer where th’ elephant is hidin’!”

The chief caught Bob by the arm, halting him.

“Maybe that’s Rod!” he whispered.

CHAPTER XVI

THE WORM DIGGER

Somehow Bob Dexter thought that the game wasn’t going to fall into their hands as easily as all that It would be too good to be true. Of course they had trailed after the suspect through a long, dreary evening, and at much personal discomfort But here, in front of them, it being only necessary for the chief to step forward and arrest him, was the man answering the description of the free spender.

He had betrayed himself, and yet – Bob could not credit their good luck.

“Never say die, boys! Set ’em up in th’ other alley! I got money to spend an’ I’m spendin’ it! Whoop-la!”

It was a characteristic attitude of one in his condition.

“We won’t have any trouble with him, Bob,” whispered the chief. “He’ll come along with us for the asking.”

“Unless some of his friends, or would-be friends object,” remarked Bob. For, as he spoke, the doors of several dark hovel-like buildings opened, letting out dim shafts of light. And in this illumination stood half-revealed, sinister figures – men and women, too, who were on the lookout for just such a gay and reckless spender as this foolish fellow proclaimed himself to be.

“Oh, I’ll handle them all right,” said the chief.

“You’ve got to be quick then,” remarked the young detective. “There goes some one after him now.”

A moment later there darted from one of the evil buildings, a slouching figure of a man. The shaft of light from the open door put him in dark relief. He ran to the swaying, staggering figure of the singer, who was now mumbling to himself, clapped it jovially on the back and cried:

“Come on, Jack! We’ve been looking for you! Everything is all ready! Right in here, Jack! Everything’s lovely!”

He swung the victim around, and the latter, taken by surprise, followed for a few steps. Then, as Bob and the chief watched, the singer unexpectedly stiffened and braced himself back.

“Whoa!” he exclaimed. “Hold on! Where you goin’?”

“For a good time, Jack! To see the elephants you know!”

“Yep – I know! I seen elephants before – big ones, too – in India! I’m elephant hunter, I am – but my name ain’t Jack.”

“Oh, well, Jill then – Jack or Jill, it’s all the same to me. I’m a friend of yours.”

But a spirit of opposition had been awakened in the victim. It was a small matter – that of a name, but small matters turn the tide in cases like these.

“If you’re friend of mine, you oughter know my name,” went on the celebrator, swaying and reeling as the other held him up, “You tell me my name an’ I’ll go with you.”

The other laughed and then tried a bluff.

“Sure, I know your name!” he declared. “It’s Bill – good old Bill! Now come on!”

He had made a shot in the dark – in the dark in more ways than one. The chances were in his favor. Bill is a fairly common name, and many a “sport” answers to it even though he may be Tom, Dick or Harry. But again the spirit of perverseness took control of the victim.

“No ’tain’t!” he cried. “I ain’t Bill – never was – never will be. You guessed wrong – you’re no friend of mine. Now lemme be! I’m goin’ to find elephant. Tom’s my name – Tom Black, an’ I’m proud of it. Now lemme go!”

He shook off the hold of the other, and the man who had slipped out of the den of thieves stood irresolute for a moment. He was taken aback, but did not want to use too much force in getting his victim within his clutches. He must try another game, and still be gentle about it.

But at the mention of the name Tom Black the chief nudged Bob.

“Guess we’re on the wrong lay,” he said.

“Do you think he’d give his right name?” asked the lad.

“They generally do – in his condition. Of course he may be going under two names, but I don’t believe this is Rod Marbury.”

Bob had begun to think so from the moment he had seen how easy it was – that is comparatively easy – to pick up the trail of the suspect.

“If we could get a look at him,” the young detective suggested.

“That’s what we’ve got to do, Bob. Come on. It’s getting lighter now. We’ll catch him in front of one of these doorways.”

It was getting lighter, but not because the blackness of the night was passing, nor because the blessed sun was rising, nor because the rain was ceasing – for none of these things were happening. It was still night and the rain was coming down harder than ever.

But down the lane of the sordid street more doors were opening, and from each one streaked a shaft of light. In some mysterious way, like the smoke signal of the Indians, it was being telegraphed through the district of crime that “pickings” were on the way. The aforesaid “pickings” being an intoxicated man with money in his pockets. This was the sort of victim much sought after by the dwellers of the “Barbary Coast,” as the district was called by the police.

The man who had accosted the singer, if such he might be called, had slipped away in the darkness, either to get help, to concoct some new scheme, or to await a more propitious occasion.

But, meanwhile, other would-be despoilers were on the scene. And Chief Duncan proposed to take advantage of the light they were letting into the darkness.

“Come on, Bob,” he whispered. “He’s in a good position now to get a look at.”

The man was again singing, or, rather, groaning about his desire to see where the elephant was hiding. And just as he came in focus of one of the better lighted doorways, the young detective and the officer walked alongside of him. As they did so another man darted from the lighted doorway as if to swoop down like some foul bird of prey.

But, seeing the other two figures – and a glance told him they were not of his ilk – he drew back.

It needed but a glance on the part of Bob and the chief to let them see that this man bore no resemblance whatever to the description they had of Rod Marbury. Neither in build, stature nor appearance did he bear any likeness to the suspected sailor.

“No go, Bob,” spoke the chief, turning to flash a look full in the face of the staggering man.

“No,” was the answer.

“Who says I shan’t go?” angrily demanded the man, mistaking the words spoken. “I’m my own boss. I’ll go see elephant if I like!”

“I’m not going to stop you,” declared the chief. “You’re your own boss, though I wouldn’t give much for your pocketbook when you come off the Barbary Coast. Go ahead, I don’t want you.”

“Don’t you think it would be a good plan,” suggested Bob, “to get him away from this neighborhood? He’s sure to be robbed and maybe injured if he stays here.”

“You never said a truer thing in all your life, Bob Dexter,” spoke the chief. “But trying to get him to come with us wouldn’t do a bit of good. We couldn’t keep him with us all night, or until he is in better senses. He’d only be an elephant on our hands. And if we took him away from here he’d wander back again in a few hours. The night is young yet.”

“Then what can we do? I hate to see him get plucked.”

“So do I, and I have a plan. I don’t want the Cardiff police to know I’m in town. But I can telephone to headquarters, in the guise of a citizen who has seen a man with money in this dangerous neighborhood, and they’ll send the wagon and a couple of men in uniform. Brass buttons are the only thing that will impress this fellow.

“Of course they can’t arrest him, for he hasn’t done anything more than get himself into a foolish and miserable state. But they can detain him until morning, when he’ll be sober. That’s often done, and that will save his money for him. Come on, we’ll slip out of here and find a telephone.”

“Yes, but while we’re gone some one of these sharks will pull him into their holes.”

“He’ll be easy to find, Bob. Every resident here wants a chance at picking his bones, and for the one who gets him there’ll be a dozen envious ones ready to squeal. A stool-pigeon will tip the police off as to what den this fellow was hauled into, and they can take him out. There’s time enough – he won’t give up his roll easily. It takes a little time to work the game and before it’s played out I’ll have the officers here.”

Content with this Bob followed the chief out of the vile and evil district. The telephone tip was gladly received, for the police of Cardiff were not anxious to have it broadcasted that irresponsible and foolish strangers were robbed, even along the Barbary Coast. Word was given to the chief, who, of course, did not reveal his identity, that the matter would be looked after.

Having done their duty, Bob and the chief returned to the district long enough to see the clanging wagon rumble in and take away the “elephant hunter.” He had been enticed into one of the dens, but, as Mr. Duncan had said, some one “squealed,” and the police easily located the place.

“Well, I guess this ends it, Bob,” remarked the head of the Cliffside police. “It was a wild goose chase.”

“I wish it had been a wild duck,” murmured Bob.

“Why?”

“Well, a duck’s back would have shed water better than mine. I’m soaked.”

“So ’m I. But it couldn’t be helped. You’ll have to get used to worse than this, Bob, if you’re going to be a detective. And not only one night but many nights in succession.”

“Oh, I know that. I’m not kicking. Only I wish we had picked up Rod.”

“So do I. But it wasn’t to be. It was a good tip, as far as it went. But I guess Rod is safe enough, for a time. But we’ll have another shot at finding him.”

“Of course,” agreed Bob, as they chugged back to Cliffside in the rain and darkness.

It cannot be said that the young detective was very much discouraged or disappointed at the result of this excursion. It had been but a slim chance, at best, but slim chances must be taken when trying to solve mysteries or catch criminals.

As a matter of fact Bob Dexter would have been rather sorry, in a way, had the foolish man turned out to be Rod Marbury. For the credit of the capture would have gone to Chief Duncan. And Bob wanted to solve the mystery himself.

“And I want to find out the secret of the log cabin,” he told himself as he got into bed late that night, or, rather, early the next morning. “I want to find out how the key got back in the room.”

For about a week there were no more moves in the case – that is, moves which appeared on the surface. What was going on beneath no one could tell.

Pietro Margolis continued to dig holes and plant his “monkey nuts,” as Bob called them. Jolly Bill Hickey continued to reside at the Mansion House, now and then going to Storm Mountain to visit Hiram Beegle. The old sailor was now quite himself again, but he could throw no additional light on the strange robbery.

“I don’t know where the treasure is, nor whether Rod is digging it up or not,” he said. “I’m fogbound – that’s about it – fogbound.”

But Bob Dexter was anything except discouraged. He had youth and health, and these are the two best tonics in the world. Of course he would have been glad to come at a quick solution of the mystery.

“Though if I did there wouldn’t be much credit in solving it,” he told himself more than once. “If it was as easy as all that, Ned or Harry could do as well as I, and I wouldn’t like to think that. A regular detective wouldn’t give up now, and I’m not going to!”

Bob squared his shoulders, clenched his hands and walked about with such a defiant air that his chums, more than once, asked him after that why he was carrying a “chip on his shoulder.”

It was one day, about two weeks after Bob’s night trip to Cardiff that, as he passed the log cabin he saw, in what was the garden during the summer, a figure using a spade.

“I wonder if that dago is planting monkey nuts on Hiram’s place?” thought Bob, for the figure, that of a man, had his back turned. “It isn’t Hiram. I wonder – ”

The man with the spade straightened up. It was Jolly Bill. He saw Bob and waved a hand.

“I’m digging worms!” he called. “Not having much luck though.”

“Digging worms?” repeated the young detective in questioning tones. “I wonder what his game is?” he said to himself as he alighted from his flivver.

CHAPTER XVII

BOB GIVES A PARTY

Had Jolly Bill Hickey announced that he was digging in Hiram’s old garden to locate the treasure buried by the dead and gone Hank Denby, the young detective would not have been more surprised than he was when the laughing sailor declared that he was digging worms.

“Worms!” repeated Bob as he made his way toward the gate in the fence. “Worms!” He spoke the last aloud.

“Sure – worms!” declared Jolly Bill. “Guess I’ve got as much right to dig worms to go fishing with as that dago has to plant monkey nuts!” and he laughed genially.

“Oh – you’re going fishing,” exclaimed Bob.

“Sure I am – what else would I be digging worms for? Hiram and I are going fishing.”

“Oh – of course,” murmured Bob.

It was perfectly obvious and natural now. There was good fishing in Lake Netcong or Rockaway river, both near Cliffside. Bob had been to both places, with both good and bad luck at times. And he had fished with worms as well as with hellgrammites, and grasshoppers. The lads of Cliffside inclined to natural bait rather than spinners, plugs or artificial flies.

“Don’t you want to come along?” invited Jolly Bill as Bob stood looking at him turn over the brown earth, scanning each spadeful, meanwhile, for a sight of worms.

“Don’t believe I can,” answered the lad. “But you won’t find any worms here, no matter how long you dig. It isn’t the right kind of earth.”

“Do you know,” said Jolly Bill with a frank and engaging smile, “I am beginning to believe that myself. All I’ve turned up the last half hour has been one poor, miserable little worm. Must be an orphan, I reckon,” and he laughed heartily.

“That’s what I been telling him,” spoke the voice of Hiram Beegle from the doorway of his log cabin. “You’ll never get any bait there, Bill, and you might as well quit. Down back where the stable used to be are worms aplenty.”

“Oh, all right,” assented the other. “You ought to know the lay of the land better than I do. And I certainly haven’t had any luck here. I’ll take your advice.”

At one time Hiram had kept a horse which hauled a ramshackle wagon that took him to and from Cliffside. But he had sold the animal some years ago, as requiring too much care from an old man.

However, land about a stable, no matter how long the equine dweller has been away, seems to be a homestead for worms, a fact which Jolly Bill soon demonstrated. From his digging he called:

“I’m getting slathers of ’em now. Get your pole ready, Hiram.”

“All right,” was the answer.

Bob had been talking to the old man while Jolly Bill had transferred the scene of his digging operations.

“Think you’ll get any fish this time of year?” asked the young detective, for it was rather late in the season for the fish to bite well. The finny tribes were “holing up” for the winter, or doing whatever fish do in preparation for snow and ice covering the lake and river.

“Well, no, Bob, I don’t expect we’ll get many,” was the cautious answer. “It was Bill’s idea to take me fishing. He proposed it.”

Bob had begun to suspect that much.

“And he suggested coming here to dig for worms, didn’t he?” asked the lad.

“Why, that’s what he did!” exclaimed old Hiram. “How’d you know that, Bob Dexter?”

“Oh, I sort of guessed it, I reckon. Has he been digging long?”

“No, he just started a little while before you came around. But he says he and I will go fishing every day as long as the weather holds good. I’m not much of a hand for fish myself, but I didn’t want to refuse Bill.”

“He has a jolly way with him,” conceded the lad. The wooden-legged sailor stumped up with a tomato can half filled with worms.

“If we have luck like that at fishing,” he remarked as he scraped some mud off his timber-leg on the spade, “well be doing well.”

“I should say so!” laughed Bob. He had marveled at the skill with which Bill used the wooden leg. It served him at spading almost as well as did the foot and leg of a normal person. Bill stood on his good foot, and putting the end of his wooden stump on the top edge of the spade, where it is made wider to give purchase, he pressed the keen, straight, garden implement down in the soft soil. Then, with a quick motion, the spadeful of earth was turned over, and beaten apart with a quick blow, revealing the crawling worms.

“Then you won’t come, Bob?” asked Hiram as he got down his pole from inside the cabin.

“No, thank you – not this time.”

“If you’re passing back this way, later in the day, stop and well give you some fish for your uncle,” promised Hiram. “That is if we catch any.”

“Oh, well catch plenty!” predicted Jolly Bill.

“Thanks,” replied Bob. “I’ll stop if I pass this way. And now, if you like, I’ll run you down to the lake, or river – which are you going to try first?”

“The lake,” decided Hiram, as Bill looked to him to answer this question. “And it’s right kind of you, Bob, to do this. I was going to ask Tom Shan to hitch up and ride us down, but your machine’ll be a lot quicker.”

It was, and when Bob had left the fishermen at the lake, promising, if he had time, to call and take them home, he went on to his uncle’s store.

Contrary to expectation, Bob did not find anything to do. Mr. Dexter had wanted him to deliver a special order over in Cardiff, but the man called for it himself, and this gave the lad some free time.

“I think I’ll just take a run back to Storm Mountain,” mused the young detective. “Hiram won’t be back for some time, and I’d like to take a look around the place all by myself. He wouldn’t mind if he knew of it, especially when I’m trying to help him. But I’d rather not have to ask him. This gives me a chance to get in alone.”

Bob told himself that he would go in the cabin, and he knew he could do this, for he knew the old man never carried with him the key of the outer door, hiding it in a secret place near the doorstep. No one had ever yet found it, and probably Bob was the only one the old man had taken into the secret – and this only after Bob’s attention to Hiram after the latter was attacked when carrying home his treasure box.

“I’ll just slip in and have a look around,” decided the lad. “Maybe I might discover something, though what it can be I don’t know. If I could only figure out a way by which that key was put back in the room, after the door was locked on the outside, I might begin to unravel this mystery.”

Bob flivvered up to the log cabin, but he did not alight at once from his little car. He wanted to make sure he wasn’t observed. Not that he was doing anything wrong, for it was all along the line of helping Hiram Beegle. But he felt it would be just as well to work unobserved.

Satisfied, after having sat in his auto for five minutes, that no one was in hiding around the log cabin, and making sure that no one was ascending or descending the Storm Mountain road, Bob ran his car in the weed-grown drive and parked it out of casual sight behind what had once been a hen house. But Hiram had given up his chickens as he had his horse. They required too much care, he said.

Bob found the key where Hiram had told him it would be hidden. Then, with a last look up and down the lonely road in front of the log cabin, the lad entered.

Ghostly silent and still it was, his footfalls echoing through the rooms. But Bob was not overly sentimental and he was soon pressing the hidden spring that opened the niche where the key to the strong room was concealed.

It was this room that held the secret, or, rather that had held it, and it was in this room that the young detective was most interested.

“But it seems to hold its secret pretty well,” mused the lad as he walked about it, gazing intently on the wooden walls. “There must be some secret opening in them,” thought the boy. “Though if there was why doesn’t Hiram know it? Or, if he knows it, why does he not admit it? Of course he might have his own reasons for keeping quiet. I wish I could find out!”

Bob looked, he tapped, he hammered he pounded. But all to no purpose. The walls would not give up their secret. He even stuck his head up the chimney flue as far as he could, thereby getting smudges of black on his face, but this effort was no more fruitful than the others.

“The key could come down the chimney, of course,” mused Bob, “but it couldn’t jump itself out of the ashes into the middle of the room. That’s the puzzle.”

He had spent more time than he reckoned on in seeking the secret and he was surprised, on looking at his watch, to find how late it was.

“I’d better be going after those two,” thought the lad. “They’ll have fish enough by this time, if they get any at all.”

As Bob was locking the strong room, and preparing to put the key back in its hiding place, he heard something that gave him a start. This was a knock on the front door of the log cabin.

“Gosh! Are they back so soon?” thought the lad.

He did not realize, for the moment, that Hiram would not have knocked at his own door. It must be some one else.

Quickly the lad closed the niche and then, going to the door opened it.

Standing on the threshold was – Pietro Margolis – the Italian music grinder. He had with him neither his monkey nor organ, but on his face there was a look of surprise, and he started back at the sight of Bob Dexter.

“Oh – excuse – please!” he murmured. “I t’ink to find the old man but – you have been cleaning his chimney – maybe?”

At first Bob did not understand. Then as he looked at a daub of soot on his hand, and remembered that there must be some on his face, he realized how natural was the visitor’s mistake.

“Hello, Pietro!” greeted the youth. “Mr. Beegle isn’t home. I – I’ve been doing some work for him while he’s gone fishing.”

“Yes – I see him go – with other man.”

“Hum! Maybe that’s the reason you came here – because you saw Hiram go away,” thought Bob. But he did not say this to the Italian. The latter carried something in a bundle, and, noting that Bob’s eyes were directed toward it, the caller, with a white-tooth smile, opened it, revealing some of those same strange nuts, or dried fruits he had been planting in the bramble patch.