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

CHAPTER V
A MYSTERIOUS ROBBERY

Jolly Bill Hickey – for so he called himself – stood staring in the middle of the room – staring at the huddled figure of the old man in the chair covered with bed clothes.

“Why, Hiram – why – what has happened?” cried the man with the wooden leg – an old-fashioned wooden peg, his stump strapped fast to it – and the wooden leg showed signs of wear. “What has happened to my old shipmate Hiram?” demanded Jolly Bill Hickey.

Again that pitiful effort to talk, but only a meaningless jumble of sounds came forth.

“Hiram, did they ram you?” demanded he of the wooden leg. “Did they let go a broadside at you? Did they try to sink you?”

Hiram Beegle nodded his head.

“Look here!” spluttered Chief Drayton. “You’re not supposed to come in here, you know.”

“But I am in, you see!” chuckled the wooden-legged man. “I am in and I’m going to stay with my old messmate Hiram. You can’t keep Jolly Bill Hickey out when he wants to come in.”

That was very evident.

“Are you a friend of his?” asked Chief Duncan.

“Am I? I should say I was! Ask him – ask Hiram I But no, what’s the use. He’s been rammed – the enemy has broadsided him and he’s out of action. But I’ll tell you I’m a friend of his, and he’ll tell you so, too, when he gets going again. But what happened here? Tell me – tell Jolly Bill Hickey!” demanded he of the wooden leg.

“Hiram Beegle has been nearly killed and completely robbed,” said Chief Duncan.

“No! You don’t mean it! Almost killed – and robbed! Who did it? Where are the scoundrels?” Jolly Bill Hickey did not seem very jolly now. He looked around with a vindictive air and fanned his bald head with his cap.

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” spoke Chief Drayton. “Do you know anything about this crime?”

“Do I know anything about it? Say, I just got here!” exclaimed Jolly Bill. “I came in on the morning train to see my old messmate Hiram Beegle, and I find this crowd around his bunk and him knocked out like a broadside had been delivered right in his teeth! How should I know anything about it?”

“Well, I just asked,” said Chief Drayton rather mildly for a police official. Truth to tell the manner of Jolly Bill Hickey was a bit overpowering.

“If you’re a friend of Hiram’s you might as well stay in and see if you can help us,” suggested Chief Duncan.

“Sure I’ll help!” said Jolly Bill. “But we don’t want too much help. Who are these lads?” and he glanced sharply at Bob and his chums.

“Friends of mine,” said the Cliffside chief, shortly.

“Oh, well, then that’s all right – friends of yours – friends of Jolly Bill Hickey. Shake!” He extended a hard palm and gave the lads grips they long remembered. “Shake, Hiram!” and he clasped hands with the stricken man, though more gently, it seemed.

“No use letting all outdoors in,” went on Jolly Bill as he stumped over and closed the outer portal, bringing thereby a chorus of protests from the curious ones assembled outside. “Now let’s spin the yarn,” he suggested. “But first has anything been done for my old messmate Hiram Beegle?”

“A doctor has been here – yes,” said Chief Drayton. “He says Hiram has had a shock. There’s a lump on his head – ”

“He got that yesterday!” broke in Bob. “I picked him up right after it happened. He thinks a man named Rod Marbury did it.”

“And he did!” burst forth Jolly Bill. “A scoundrel if ever there was one – Rod Marbury! So he whanged Hiram, did he?”

“There are two lumps on Hiram’s head,” went on Chief Drayton. “We know about the first one – the one you spoke of,” he said to Bob. “But he was hit again last night. He was also either given some sort of poison that knocked him out – some sort of dope, the doctor thinks, or else it was some sort of vapor that made him unconscious. And while he was that way he was robbed.”

“But how did it all happen?” asked Bob Dexter. “How could a thief get in the strong room when he didn’t know the secret of the big brass key?”

“Whoever it was must have known some of the secrets,” said the Cliffside chief, “for he got in the strong room when it was locked, and when Hiram was inside, and the thief got out again, leaving Hiram and the key inside.”

“He got out leaving Mr. Beegle and the key inside?” asked Bob. “Why, it couldn’t be done! There’s no way out of that room except by the door, and if the key was inside, and the door locked – why, it’s impossible! Mr. Beegle showed me that yesterday afternoon. The only opening to the outer air is the chimney – no man could get in or out that way.”

“But somebody did!” said Chief Drayton. “And that’s where the mystery comes in.”

“Let’s hear how it happened – from the beginning,” suggested Harry. “Suppose you tell your story first, Bob, so we’ll know just how much of it you saw.”

“Do you want me to tell, Mr. Beegle?” asked Bob, for he remembered his promise to the old man.

Hiram Beegle tried to talk, but about the only words Bob could distinguish were “cupboard” and “key.” He judged from this that the old sailor, for so he seemed to be, did not want disclosed the information as to where he kept the big brass key of his strange strong room. The key was not now in sight, but Bob understood. He resolved to keep quiet on this point, but to tell the rest.

Thereupon he related how he had found the old man stricken beside the road the afternoon before. How he had gone with him to the office of Judge Weston, who told of the brass-bound box coming as an inheritance to Hiram Beegle from Hank Denby.

“That’s right!” chimed in Jolly Bill. “I can testify to that. We were all shipmates together – Hiram, Hank, that scoundrel Rod Marbury and me. Hank Denby was the richest of the lot. He left the box to Hiram – I know he promised to, and what Hank promised he carried out. He gave you the box, didn’t he, Hiram?”

The stricken man nodded.

“Well, I brought him home here with the box,” went on Bob, “and he brought me into this room. He explained how it could only be entered from the door which he unlocked with a big brass key. He said he was going to put his treasure in that chest,” and the lad pointed to the open one in the strong room.

“He did put it there, it seems,” said Chief Duncan, “but it didn’t stay there long. In the night somebody got in and took the little treasure chest away, nearly killing Hiram before doing so. Then they left him locked up in the room, with the brass key near him, and came out.”

“But how could they?” cried Bob. “They couldn’t get out of the room if it was locked. They couldn’t leave the key inside. There’s no other way of getting out except by the door. And if that was locked, and the key was inside – ”

“That’s where the mystery comes in,” interrupted Chief Duncan.

“And it sure Is a mystery,” added Chief Drayton. “If Hiram could talk he might explain, but, as it is, we can only guess at it. I needed help on this – that’s why I sent for you, Miles,” he said to his fellow officer.

“Hum! I don’t know as I can do much more than you,” ruefully replied the Cliffside chief. “What do you think of it, Bob?”

“Huh! A lot he can tell!” sniffed Mr. Drayton.

“You don’t know Bob Dexter as well as I do,” stated Mr. Duncan quietly. “I should like to have his opinion on this.”

For the Cliffside chief remembered the case of Jennie Thorp, in which he and his men had not shone very brilliantly.

“Let me see if I understand this,” said Bob, looking at Hiram Beegle. “Will you nod your head if I’m right?” he asked. “Don’t try to talk – just nod your head, will you?”

Hiram gave a sign of assent and understanding. Then Bob began to make a statement of the mysterious robbery as he understood it, while those in the room listened eagerly.

CHAPTER VI
STRANGE MARKS

“When I left you yesterday afternoon, after we drank the buttermilk together,” said Bob, speaking slowly, “you were going to put the brass-bound box in your chest and lock it up, weren’t you?”

Hiram Beegle nodded vigorously an assent to this.

“You did this, we’ll say,” resumed Bob, “but after I had gone, or after you had locked up your treasure, you took it out to look at it again, and count it perhaps – and you sat here in your strong room to do that – with the door open – is that it?”

Again Hiram nodded to show that this was the truth.

“While you were doing that,” continued the young detective, “some one – an enemy or a robber – slipped in and overpowered you, taking away the treasure box and locking you in the strong room. Is that how It happened? And can you tell us who it was that struck you the second time and who robbed you?”

Hiram Beegle nodded vigorously, but in both directions. Now his head indicated an affirmative and again a negative.

“What does he mean?” questioned Harry.

“He’s making queer motions,” said Ned.

The stricken man was moving in an odd way the fingers of his right hand on the arm of his chair. And then Bob Dexter guessed what it was he wanted.

“He will write it out!” exclaimed the lad. “Give him pencil and paper and he can write out what happened since he can’t talk straight. Why didn’t we think of that before?”

“I said it would be a good thing to have Bob here,” remarked Chief Duncan while Chief Drayton looked for pencil and paper. And when these were given to Hiram Beegle a look of satisfaction came over his face. He began writing more rapidly than one would have supposed an old sailor could have done, and he handed the finished sheet to Bob.

“Read it,” suggested Harry.

Bob read:

“The young man has partly the right of it. After he left me I locked up the box Judge Weston gave me. It was mine by right but I knew some who might try to take it from me. Never mind about them now.

“After supper I sat here thinking of many things, and then I wanted to look in my box again. I opened my strong room, left the door ajar, took the brass-bound box out of my chest and sat looking over the contents when, all of a sudden, I felt faint. Then I fell out of my chair – I remember falling – and that’s all I remember until I woke up early this morning.

“I was lying on the floor, and beside me, close to my right hand, was the big brass key to my strong room. But the door was locked, and my box was gone. I couldn’t understand it. First I thought I had just fainted from the blow I got in the afternoon. I thought maybe I had put my box back in the chest, but it wasn’t there. I had been robbed, and there was another lump on my head. Whether I was hit again, or whether I hit myself when I fell out of my chair I don’t know.

“But there I was, locked in my own strong room, the key was beside me and my treasure was gone. That’s all I know about it.”

“But didn’t he see anybody?”

“How did he feel just before he keeled over?”

“Didn’t he hear any noise?”

“Did anybody make him drink anything that might have had poison or knock-out drops in it?”

These were some of the questions from Ned, Harry, Jolly Bill and the two police chiefs when Bob finished reading the document.

“Wait!” begged the young detective. “One at a time. I’ll ask him the questions and let him write the answer. We’ll get along faster that way.”

“Let’s see, first, how he got doped, if he was,” suggested Chief Duncan. So Bob wrote that question.

“No one gave me anything that I know of,” was the written reply. “And the only thing I drank was some buttermilk.”

“I had some of that and I know there was nothing wrong with it,” testified Bob. “But did you see any one around your cabin just before you fainted and were robbed?”

“I saw no one,” wrote Hiram, “It was very strange.”

“I’ll say it was!” exclaimed Harry.

“What did you do after you came to?” was the next question.

“I sat up and looked around. I couldn’t understand it at all. I felt sick – I couldn’t talk – something seemed to have hold of my tongue. It’s that way yet but I can feel it wearing off. I saw that I had been robbed.

“But the queer part of it was that whoever had robbed me had gone out, locked the door from the outside and then, in some way, they got the key back in here, so that it lay on the floor close to my right hand, as if it had dropped from my fingers.”

“Why, that’s easy!” chuckled Jolly Bill. “They locked the door – that is the robber did, and threw the key in over the transom. I’ve heard of cases like that.”

“There isn’t any transom over this door,” said Bob, pointing. “There isn’t a single opening to this room, either from inside the cabin or out of doors. The keyhole is the only opening, and it Is impossible to push a big key, like this, in through the keyhole.”

“I have it!” cried Ned. “They climbed up on the roof and dropped the key down the chimney. You said the chimney was barred inside, and too small for a man to climb down, Bob, but a key could fall down.”

“Yes,” admitted the young detective dryly, “a key would fall down all right, but it would drop in the fireplace, or in the ashes of the fire if one had been built Mr. Beegle says the key was lying close to his hand, and he was on the floor, ten feet away from the hearth. That won’t do, Ned.”

“Couldn’t the key bounce from the brick hearth, over to where Mr. Beegle lay?” asked the lad, who hated to see his theory riddled like this.

In answer Bob pointed to the hearth. There was a thick layer of wood ashes on it, for a fire had been burning in the place recently.

“Any key dropping in those ashes would fall as dead as a golf ball in a mud bank,” stated the young sleuth. “It wouldn’t bounce a foot, let alone ten feet, and land close beside Mr. Beegle’s hand.”

“Then there must be two keys, or else the door was locked with a skeleton key,” said Harry.

“No! No!” suddenly exclaimed the stricken man. He wrote rapidly.

“There is only one key, and no skeleton key would fit this lock,” which was easy to believe when its ponderous nature was taken into consideration.

“Um!” mused Harry, when this had been read to those in the room. “Then it’s simmering down to a question of who it was knocked him out, and how they managed to lock the door after they had left with the treasure, and how they got the key back inside.”

“That’s the question,” assented Bob.

“But why should the thief go to such trouble to get the key back in the room, after he had left Mr. Beegle unconscious?” asked Ned. “That’s what I can’t understand.”

“He probably did it to throw suspicion off,” suggested Bob. “By leaving the key close to Mr. Beegle’s hand he might have thought his victim would come to the conclusion that he hadn’t been robbed at all – or else that in a sort of dream or sleep-walking act he had taken away his own valuables and hidden them.”

“Of course that’s possible,” said Chief Duncan.

“No! No!” cried Hiram, with more power than he had yet spoken since he was stricken. Once more he quickly wrote:

“I did not hide that box. Why should I? It was mine and is yet, no matter who has it. Someone sneaked in here while I was looking at my treasure and overpowered me with some powerful drug, I believe – some sort of gas, maybe the kind they used in the Great War. When I toppled over they came in, got the box, went out and locked me in.”

“But how could they get out and lock you in?” asked Chief Duncan. “The key was here with you all the while.”

Hiram Beegle shook his head. It was beyond his comprehension, and, for that matter, beyond the comprehension of all present. Even Bob Dexter, skillful and clever as he was, shook his head.

“I don’t see how the key got back here,” he mused. “But there are some other things to find out yet. How did this robbery become known? Did any one find Mr. Beegle in the strong room? They couldn’t see him lying there, for there aren’t any windows. There aren’t any panes of glass in the door. Did he call for help? And if he did, how did he get the key out to some one to come in and pick him up?”

“He didn’t have to do that,” said Chief Drayton. “He managed to crawl to the door and unlock it himself. Then he staggered out doors and hailed Tom Shan, a neighboring farmer, who was driving past. Shan did what he could and then came and told me.”

“I see,” murmured Bob Dexter. “Then the two important points in this mystery are to discover who robbed Mr. Beegle and how it was they got the key back in the room after they went out and locked the door. And that’s the hardest nut to crack, for there isn’t any opening in this room through which a key could be put back.”

“Except the chimney,” commented Jolly Bill.

“We’ve eliminated that,” declared Bob. “But, just to be on the safe side, I’ll climb up on the roof and drop the key down. We’ll see where it lands.”

“Better first find out where the key really was,” suggested Ned. “I mean where Mr. Beegle was lying on the floor with the key near his hand.”

“A good idea,” declared Bob. “Can you show us how it was?” he asked.

The old man seemed rapidly to be getting better, for he arose from his chair and tottered into his strong room. There he stretched out on the floor in the position he had found himself in when he became conscious. He laid the key in the position where he had first noted it on opening his eyes.

“Well, we have that to start with,” remarked Bob, as the old man arose and went back to his chair. “Ill just mark the spot on the floor with a pencil.” As he stooped over to do this he seemed to take notice of something, for Ned saw his chum give a little start.

“Did you get a clew then, Bob?” he asked.

“A clew? No – no clews here, I’m afraid.”

“I thought you saw something.”

“No – nothing to amount to anything. Now I’ll get up on the roof and drop the key down. You fellows stay here and tell me where it lands. I’ll try it half a dozen times.”

They helped Hiram Beegle back to his blanketed chair, and by this time the doctor had come back. He said his patient was much better and that gradually all the effects of the attack would wear off.

“But you had better not stay here all alone,” the physician suggested. “I stopped at Tom Shan’s on my way here and he and his wife want you to come and stay with them a few days. You’ll be well taken care of there.”

“Yes – yes,” slowly assented Hiram. “I’ll – go. There’s nothing here, now, to be taken. They have my treasure.”

He spoke sadly, as one who has lost hope.

“We’ll get it back for you,” said Chief Duncan cheerfully.

“Sure we will!” cried Jolly Bill. “I’ll get in the wake of that scoundrel Rod Marbury and take it away from him. Trust an old messmate for that!”

He seemed so hale and hearty that one could not help having a friendly feeling for him, and his weather-beaten face shone with the honesty of his purpose, while his shiny bald head seemed to give promise of a brighter sun rising on the affairs of Hiram Beegle.

“I’ll take you over to Shan’s place now, in my car,” offered Dr. Martin. “You need rest and quiet more than anything else. The police will look after things here.”

“Yes, we’ll look after things,” promised Chief Drayton. “I’ll lock up the cabin and bring you the key after this young man gets through dropping the key down the chimney, though I don’t see what good it’s going to do. I’ll lock up the place for you.”

“There isn’t much – to – to lock up – now,” said the old man slowly. “The treasure is gone!”

“Oh, we’ll get it back!” promised Chief Duncan. “What was in the box – diamonds or gold?”

“Neither one,” was the answer.

“Neither one? Then what was the treasure?” Chief Drayton wanted to know.

“Papers! Papers!” somewhat testily answered Mr. Beegle.

“Oh, stocks and bonds, I reckon. Well, you can stop payment on them. Better tell Judge Weston about it.”

“Yes! Yes! He must be told,” mumbled Hiram. “Now I want to sleep.”

He closed his eyes weakly, and the physician and others helped him into the auto. Bob had taken the big brass key, and as he and his chums went outside, followed by the police officers and a curious crowd, the young detective said to Jolly Bill:

“How long have you known Mr. Beegle?”

“Off and on all my life.”

“Do you know anything about this Rod Marbury and what sort of inheritance it was that Mr. Denby left?”

“I don’t know anything good about Rod Marbury,” was the answer. “As for Hiram’s treasure, well, I can tell a story about that if you want me to.”

“I wish you would,” said Bob, as he looked about for a way of getting up on the roof to drop the key down the chimney in the experiment. “It might help some in solving the mystery.”

Ned, who had gone on ahead a little way, around the side of the house where the chimney was built, suddenly uttered a cry of surprise.

“Look at these queer marks!” he called. He pointed to broad, flat impressions in the soft ground – impressions as though made by the foot of an elephant!