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

CHAPTER VII
THE KEY EXPERIMENT

Bob Dexter, when he had caught sight of the carious marks, to which attention was called by his chum Ned, found himself wishing that he was a little more alone on this mystery case.

“There are altogether too many cooks here – they’ll spoil the broth,” mused Bob, as he saw the ever-growing crowd following him and his companions around to the side of the cabin where the chimney of the fireplace was erected.

True though the “murder” had turned out to be only a mysterious robbery, coupled with an assault on the old hermit, and in this way spoiling a sensation, there was still much curiosity regarding everything connected with the matter. Even though Hiram had been taken away in the physician’s automobile.

“Where they going?” asked more than one in the throng, as he followed the milling crowd, when the police chiefs, Bob and his two chums and Jolly Bill Hickey had started away from the front door of the cabin. “What are they after?”

“I guess they think the murderer is hiding around here,” was one of the answers.

“Shucks! There ain’t been no murder!” declared a teamster who had left his load of sand near the home of Hiram Beegle. “It’s only a robbery, and not much of one at that I’m going to quit!”

Then, unexpectedly, there came a burst of hand organ music out in front, and Storm Mountain was such an isolated place that even the wheezy tones of an ancient hand organ was sufficient to create diversion. Coupled with this was a cry from some one:

“He’s got a monkey!”

This was enough to attract away most of the crowd that was following Bob and his friends (much to the annoyance of the young detective) so that by the time he reached the place of the queer marks, to which Ned had referred, the most interested investigators had that side of the cabin comparatively to themselves. And by the term “most interested investigators,” I mean Bob and the police chiefs. Of course, Jolly Bill Hickey, a lifelong messmate of the stricken man, must be included. And, of course, Ned and Harry were always anxious to help Bob.

The wheezy organ continued to grind out its “music,” if such it could be called, and accompanying it was the shrill chatter of a monkey. The crowd of men and youths laughed in delight. It did not take much to make a Storm Mountain crowd laugh.

“Well, I’m glad that dago happened along,” remarked Bob to Ned, as he bent over the marks in the soft ground.

“Do you mean you think he can help you solve this mystery?” asked Harry.

“No, but he’ll keep the crowd back while we experiment with the key by dropping it down the chimney, though I know now what the result will be.”

“Yes, he’ll keep the crowd busy,” agreed Ned. “But what do you suppose these marks are, Bob?”

Well might he ask that, for the impressions were curious. They were about a foot in diameter, and roughly circular in shape. As much as anything they resembled the marks left by an elephant’s foot.

And yet it needed but an instant’s thought to shatter that theory. There had been no small circus in the vicinity of Cliffside in many months. The place was not large enough to attract the large traveling shows. And even if it had been no show would go so far off the beaten path as to ascend Storm Mountain with a herd of elephants.

Granting that a circus had been there, and that a lone elephant had wandered off to tramp around the lonely cabin of Hiram Beegle, the marks were too few in number to have been made by any normal elephant.

“What are they, Bob?” asked Ned again. “How could they be made by an elephant?”

The young detective did not answer for a moment, but he was rapidly thinking. The elephant idea was absurd, of course. An elephant has four feet. Taking ten steps would result in forty marks having been made, and there were not half this number visible. Granting that an elephant could jump from one stand to another, and so leaving a place without any marks for a considerable distance, did not fit in with the theory.

“I can tell you what made these marks,” broke out Jolly Bill with his characteristic laugh, while Bob was on the verge of saying something.

“What did?” asked Harry. “A bird?”

“No,” replied the bald-headed, and wooden-legged man who had appeared so unexpectedly on the scene, claiming to be a friend of Hiram Beegle. “No! They were made by some one carrying a sack of potatoes, and setting it down every now and then to rest. Isn’t that it, my young detective friend?” he asked, appealing to Bob. If the latter wondered how Jolly Bill knew his claims to being a sleuth, the lad said nothing. He only remarked:

“Yes, a heavy bag of potatoes, set here and there to ease the arms of whoever was carrying it, would make just such marks as these.”

“That’s right!” cried Chief Drayton. “I’d never have thought of that – a potato sack sure enough! What do you know about that? I s’pose, Chief,” he went on, addressing the head of the Cliffside police, “that it wasn’t a sack of potatoes though, at all.”

“What do you mean – not a sack of potatoes?” asked Mr. Duncan.

“Well, I mean the scoundrel that robbed old Hiram Beegle piled his booty in a potato sack and carried it off this way. He left us a good clew, I’ll say. We can see jist which way he went with his potato sack full of booty!”

The chief seemed to relish this word “booty,” rolling it around on his tongue as if it were a choice tidbit.

“We’ve got him now!” he declared. “Come on over this way!”

“Just a moment!” spoke Chief Duncan. “We came out here to let Bob experiment with a key dropped down the chimney. We want to see if it was possible for the thief to have assaulted Hiram, gone out, locked the door after him and then have gotten the key back inside.”

“Sure we want to find that out,” agreed the Storm Mountain police force.

“Well, let’s stick to business,” proposed Mr. Duncan.

“What, and let this feller get away with his potato sack of booty?”

“There wasn’t any potato sack or any other kind of a sack of booty!” somewhat testily declared Mr. Duncan. “The only thing stolen was a small box belonging to Hiram. The thief could have tucked it under his arm. He didn’t need to carry it in a sack.”

“Oh,” murmured Mr. Drayton, somewhat crestfallen, “that’s so. I forgot about the booty being in a small box. But who was here with a sack of potatoes?” he demanded, as if no one could answer.

“Might have been Hiram himself,” suggested Jolly Bill. “He always was a great hand for potatoes when he and I were shipmates together. Like as not he lugged some spuds in for the winter.”

“Or some farmer may have brought him a bag,” added Harry. “I guess, Ned, this clew isn’t going to amount to anything.”

“Just my luck!” said Ned with a quizzical smile. “We’ll have to let Bob work this out. What say, Bob?”

“It looks as if it was a sack of potatoes that had been set down and picked up again, several times,” answered the young detective. “I guess it doesn’t mean anything in connection with this robbery. Though, of course, it won’t do any harm to ask Mr. Beegle if he carried the sack around or if some one brought him potatoes. But I’d like to try this key experiment now.”

“Yes, let’s clear up one thing at a time,” suggested Mr. Duncan. “I can’t spend all my time over in Storm Mountain. It’s the folks in Cliffside who pay my salary, and I’ve got to do my work there.”

“But I’d like to have you help me out a bit,” complained Chief Drayton. “Course Storm Mountain isn’t any such place as Cliffside, but we police chiefs ought to stick together.”

“Oh, I’ll help you all I can,” readily agreed Mr. Duncan. “But Bob here can do more than I can.”

“Shucks! a youngster like him!” sniffed Mr. Drayton.

“That’s all right – he’s got an old head on young shoulders,” declared Mr. Duncan in a low voice.

Fortunately Bob was engaged just then in climbing up a tree by which easy access could be had to the sloping roof of the log cabin. The lad carried with him the brass key, which he had first carefully examined for any marks that might lead to the discovery of anything. So Bob heard nothing of this alternating talk against him and in his favor.

His examination of the key had disclosed nothing. It was a heavy, ponderous affair, almost as if it had been made by a local locksmith who might have forged it by hand, as he might also have done in respect to the lock on the strong room where Hiram Beegle had been overpowered and robbed.

And aside from numerous scratches on the key Bob could see nothing. The scratches, he knew, must have come there naturally, for they would have resulted from the many times Hiram must have taken the lock-opener from his secret niche and put it back. Also, the key would have been scratched by being put in and taken out of the lock.

“And as for looking for fingerprints on it, I believe it would be worth while to have this photographed with that end in view,” thought Bob. He knew the value of fingerprint comparisons as a means of tracing criminals.

But Bob knew the brass key had passed through many hands that very morning, since the discovery of the crime. And Hiram’s own fingers and thumbs would have left on the surface marks that would have obliterated any of the whorls, curves and twists of the criminal.

As you doubtless know if you take up a shiny piece of metal in your fingers you will leave on it the impression of the tips, or balls, of your fingers or thumbs, as is also the case if you thus handle a piece of looking-glass. And it is possible, by taking a photograph of these marks, to get a picture of the fingerprints of the person handling the metal or glass. Sometimes prints invisible to the unaided eye are brought out in the photograph.

And by comparing these reproduced prints with the finger marks of criminals on file in all large police headquarters, it is sometimes possible to trace the guilty ones.

But Bob Dexter knew that it would be worse than useless in a case like this, for the reasons I have mentioned. So he resolved to do the next best thing, use the key to learn whether or not it was possible to have gotten it where it was found – near the hand of the prostrate Hiram Beegle on the floor of his strong room – by dropping the lock-opener down the fireplace.

“Is any one in the room to notice where the key falls when I drop it?” asked Bob, when he was up on the roof.

“I’ll go in,” offered Chief Drayton. “I’d like to see just how it does fall.”

“I’ll wait until you call up the chimney that you’re ready,” said Bob. “You can call to me up the flue.”

“All right, but don’t drop the key down on me while I’m hollering at you,” begged the Storm Mountain chief. “It’s heavy and it might bang me in the eye.”

“I’ll be careful,” promised Bob, with a smile, in which his chums joined.

The hand organ music was still wailing away out in the road, and the antics of the monkey must have been amusing, for the crowd was kept interested, and thus held away from the cabin for a time, for which Bob was glad.

The lad, up on the roof, was looking at the edges of the brick chimney, but they told him nothing. They were covered with soot from the wood smoke, and this did not appear to have been disturbed.

“Though,” mused Bob to himself as he waited for word from inside, and looked at the black stuff on the chimney, “there might be all sorts of marks and evidence here and I couldn’t see it without a magnifying glass. Guess maybe I’d better get one of those things. I’d look like a regular Sherlock Holmes with one, I reckon. But a photograph camera is better. I wonder how they could take any pictures of this black stuff?” and idly he lingered the soot on the edge of the chimney. “Guess it won’t pay to bother with that on this case,” he went on with his thoughts. “But if I’m going to continue in this line of work I’m going in for all that sort of thing.”

He heard a slight noise down below him and stood at attention.

“All ready – drop the key!” called up Chief Drayton from within the cabin. The voice came to Bob as through a speaking tube, carried up the fireplace flue.

“Here it comes!” answered the lad.

The next instant he had dropped the brass key down the black opening.

CHAPTER VIII
JOLLY BILL’S TALE

Tense was the silence that had fallen over the little group of experimenters – Bob on the roof of the log cabin, Ned, Harry, Chief Duncan and Jolly Bill Hickey on the ground below – Chief Drayton inside the cabin, squatting down near the embers of a dead fire on the hearth.

The key had fallen.

What was the result?

They were not long left in doubt. Up the flue came the voice of Chief Drayton reporting on the first test. “No good!” he called to Bob.

“What do you mean?” asked the young detective, and his words, as well as those of the chief inside the cabin came plainly to his listeners.

“I mean the key just plopped into the ashes and stayed there.”

“Didn’t it bounce out at all?”

“Nary a bounce.”

“Well, then we’ll try it again.”

Which they did – a dozen times or more – but always with the same result. The key fell down the flue with many a tinkle as it struck the cross pieces of iron bars which Hiram had set in to prevent night-prowling animals from entering his strong room. Then the brass implement fell into the soft ashes where it remained.

“Well, that settles one point,” declared Ned, as they all went inside the cabin after the test. “The man who robbed Mr. Beegle and locked him inside the room, putting the key back in after he went out, didn’t use the chimney.”

“That’s right!” chimed in Harry.

“And yet what other opening is there by which the key could have been gotten back in this room, and placed close to the hand of Mr. Beegle, so it would look as if he had locked himself in, robbed himself and made himself unconscious with chloroform or something?” asked Ned. “What other opening is there?”

“None!” declared Chief Drayton. “I went all over that Hiram made his room as tight as a bank vault. The fireplace is the only opening in or out, and the key didn’t come down there!”

“There must be some other opening!” insisted Ned.

“Well, the best way is to have a look,” suggested Bob. “Now the crowd seems to be gone for good, let’s have a look.” For the throng of curious ones had followed the organ grinder down the mountain trail, it seemed. Not often did one of these traveling musicians, if such they may be called, invade Storm Mountain, and the simple inhabitants of that isolated and rural community welcomed their visits.

Such careful examination as Bob and his chums, with the aid of the police chiefs and Jolly Bill Hickey, gave to the strong room, or vault in the log cabin, revealed no visible means by which a large brass key could have been passed inside after the door was locked.

The keyhole theory was, obviously, not to be mentioned again. A moment’s test proved the utter impossibility of forcing the key through the opening by which the lock was operated. And, granting that the key could have been pushed through the hole into which it was intended to be inserted, it would merely have dropped on the floor inside, and would not have fallen near the hand of the stricken man.

The walls of the room appeared very solid, nor was any hollow sound developed when they were tapped.

“How about a trap door in the floor?” asked Ned, when it had been fairly well established that there was no opening through the walls.

“That’s so!” cried Chief Drayton. “I never thought of that! There must be a trap door!”

There wasn’t much he really thought of until some one else suggested it, be it noticed.

But hopeful and feasible as this plan seemed when Ned had mentioned it, nothing developed. The floor was smooth and without any secret flap or trap door, as far as they could see.

“Well, I guess well just have to give it up,” said the Storm Mountain officer with a gesture of despair. “I’ll have to work along the line of catching the criminal. If I do that and get back Hiram’s box of valuable papers I guess that will be all I’m expected to do.”

“Yes, if you do that you’ll be doing well,” said Chief Duncan with a laugh.

“Oh, I’ll do it!” declared the other. “After all, the key mystery doesn’t amount to much. I’ll drop that.”

But there was one present who had made up his mind not to drop the mystery of the brass key, and that individual was Bob Dexter. For here was a mystery just to his liking – no sordid crime was involved, nothing like a sensational murder, such as rumor first had it – only a mysterious robbery, and that of papers which perhaps were of value only to the recent inheritor of them.

“I’ll have a go at it!” Bob Dexter told himself. “But I want to look around when there aren’t so many present. I’m not altogether satisfied that it isn’t possible to get a key in through the walls of this strong room. And I’d like to know why Hiram Beegle built such a strong room. What did he have to guard? What was he afraid of, or, rather, of whom was he afraid? I’d like to find out about these things, and I’m going to.”

He was enlightened on some of these points sooner than he expected.

With the taking away of Hiram by the physician, to the home of Tom Shan, where the old man would be nursed back to health, there was little more that could be done at the lonely log cabin.

“I’ll just lock it up and keep the key,” said Chief Drayton who, in the absence of any relatives of the old man, would seem to have this right under the law. “I’ll keep the brass key, too, though I reckon there isn’t much left in here to steal.”

They were in the strong room at the time, taking a final look around, and the empty chest in the corner bore mute evidence of the futility of keeping guard over the place. Other things of Hiram’s than the brass-bound box might have been taken, but he said nothing about them. His most valuable treasure seemed to be that which Judge Weston had given him the day before, and now that was gone.

“Yes, lock up and we’ll get out,” suggested Chief Duncan. “I’ve got to be getting back to Cliffside. You boys coming with me?” he looked at Ned and Harry.

“We’ll ride back with Bob in his Rolls Royce,” chuckled Harry.

“All right, but don’t speed in my territory or I’ll have to lock you up,” laughed the police head.

“And I think I’ll be pulling up my mud hook and making for some port myself,” said Jolly Bill Hickey with a laugh. “There isn’t any hotel around here,” he added as he stumped around on his wooden leg. “How about it over in your port, my lads?” and he looked at Bob and his chums.

“There’s the Mansion House,” Harry informed him.

“Suits me!” cried Jolly Bill. “I came here to spend a few days with my old shipmate Hiram Beegle, but since he’s in the sick bay I’ll have to make other plans. So I’ll stay at the Mansion House for a while. I’ve got the shot in my locker to pay my passage, too!” he cried, pulling out a plump wallet, and showing it with a flourish. “Don’t be afraid that the Mansion House will see me skipping my board bill, even if I have a wooden leg,” and he tapped against his tree-like ember a heavy knurled and knobbed stick that assisted him in his hobbling walk.

“That’s between you and the Mansion House,” observed Ned.

“If you like I’ll drive you down,” offered Bob. “You know you said you could tell us something about Mr. Beegle,” he added as he and his chums were left alone with this odd bald-headed character, while the two police chiefs saw to securing the cabin. The crowd of curious ones seemed to have followed the organ grinder away, as did the children after the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

“That’s what I said, and that’s what I’ll do!” cried Jolly Bill. “I can tell you almost as much about old Hiram Beegle as he can himself. Man and boy we sailed together!”

“Come on then,” urged Bob.

Jolly Bill, chuckling to himself as if at some joke he had not shared with the others, stumped in the wake of Ned and Harry as Bob led the way to where he had parked his flivver.

“I can talk while we breeze along,” said the odd character as he took his place beside Bob, Ned and Harry occupying the rear seat. “For when I get to the Mansion House I’m going to take a rest. I’ve traveled a long way to get here. Thought I’d be in time for old Hank Denby’s funeral, but I missed him.”

“Do you know him?” asked Bob.

“I did, son,” replied Jolly Bill with the trace of an accent on the second word. “I knew him well. Had a letter from him just before he went on his last long voyage. Pals we were – Hank and I and Hiram.”

“What about Rod Marbury?” asked Bob.

“Bah! That pest and scoundrel! He sailed with us, of course, but he wasn’t a true messmate in the real meaning of the name. You never could trust Rod Marbury – that’s why Hiram built his strong room.”

“I was wondering why he had the place so much like a bank vault, with the key hid in a secret place,” spoke Bob.

“Secret place – for the key – say, boy, what do you know about that?” cried Jolly Bill, all the jollity gone from him now. “What do you know?” and he gripped Bob’s arm, so that the latter had to shake loose the grip in order to steer down the trail.

“Don’t do that again,” he said, somewhat sharply. “This is a bad hill.”

“Excuse me,” murmured Bill, obviously ashamed of his show of feeling. “But I was wondering if Hiram had showed you any of his secrets.”

Conscious that he had made a mistake in betraying any knowledge of the place where the old man hid the key to his strong room, Bob tried to shift it off with a laugh as he said:

“Oh, well, it stands to reason that careful as Mr. Beegle was of that room, he’d keep the key to it in a secret place, wouldn’t he?”

“Oh, yes, I reckon he would,” admitted Jolly Bill. “I see what you mean. I beg your pardon.” Bob was glad it had passed off this way, for, truth to tell, he had not meant to say what he did.

“Well, Mr. Hickey, we’re ready to hear your story,” said Harry, when they had reached a place in the road from Storm Mountain where the going was safer and easier. “It seems like a sort of pirate yarn to me.”

“Pirate yarn!” cried Jolly Bill. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you three – or four if you like to count in Rod Marbury – ”

“I don’t like to count Rod in and I’m not going to!” cried Bill.

“Well, then, you three, yourself, Mr. Beegle and Mr. Denby – seem to have been associated in some voyages where you got wealth – not to say a fortune,” went on Harry.

“No, not a fortune – considerable money, but far from a fortune,” said Jolly Bill. “Enough for us to live on without risking our lives going aloft in a storm, but not much more. I’ll spin you the yarn.”

He settled himself comfortably in the auto and began:

“Originally there were four of us, Hiram, Hank, myself and that rat Rodney Marbury. We sailed together many a year, putting up with hard work and worse food in good ships and bad ships. We were wrecked together and saved together more than once.

“Then, one day, Hank struck it rich – that is he got hold of an old sailor who was dying. This sailor had been what I reckon you might call a pirate if there are such critters nowadays – or were then. And this fellow had gotten possession of a store of gold. It was where it couldn’t be come at easy – hidden on an island in the South Seas, to be exact, but he had papers and a map to show just where it was, and these papers and map he gave to Hank Denby.

“Now we four – that is before we knew what a rat and skunk Rod Marbury was, had made a vow to share and share alike if ever one of us got rich. So when Hank got possession of these papers showing where some gold – and a good store there was of it – was buried on an island in the South Seas, of course he told us. And we set out to get it.

“I won’t bother to tell you what trouble and hardships we went through to get this hidden gold – maybe it was pirate gold – I don’t know. We had to work and save and scrimp – live as low as we could – until we could make a trip together to this island.”

“And did you?” cried Ned, whose eyes, like those of Harry and Bob, were shining with excitement over this romantic tale.

“We did, lad, yes. We finally got to the island with the map and papers which Hank Denby always carried, as was his right.”

“And when you got there – ” began Bob.

“The cupboard was bare!” finished Harry, laughing as he completed the old nursery rhyme. “I mean there wasn’t any gold there.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” said Jolly Bill with a smile, “for we found the gold buried just where the old map said it would be, and, what’s more, we took it out – that is some of it.”

“Did the natives attack you – did you have a fight or anything like that?” Harry wanted to know.

“Nope – nothing as exciting as that,” replied Jolly Bill.

“Crickety! I wish I could have been there!” sighed Ned. “I’ve always wanted to go to the South Seas. It’s nice and warm there, isn’t it?” he asked. “You don’t have to wear many clothes and dress up do you?”

“Not a great deal,” chuckled the sailor. “Well, as I was saying, we took some of the gold.”

“Why did you leave any of it?” asked Bob, curiously.

“Because – I’ll tell you why – because – ”

“Hark!” cautioned Ned. “Listen!”

They listened and heard, just ahead of them the strains of a hand organ.

A worried look came over the face of Jolly Bill Hickey as he stopped the telling of his curious tale.