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

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.

“I come see mebby Senor Beegle let me try plant monkey nuts on his land,” explained Pietro.

“Mebby so they no grow where I put ’em,” and he waved his hand in the direction of Cliffside.

“I don’t believe anything would grow, the way you planted it,” chuckled Bob, remembering the deep holes the Italian had dug.

Pietro looked across the deserted garden. He saw where Jolly Bill had been trying for worms.

“Senor Beegle – he dig holes, too!” exclaimed the caller. He seemed strangely excited. “Mebby so he plant monkey nuts!”

“I don’t believe so,” stated Bob. “Hiram hasn’t any monkey. They have been digging worms,” he explained.

“Worms – what for worms?” asked the Italian with a vacant look.

“For fishing. That’s where they are, you know – after fish.”

“Oh, sure – feesh. Well, mebby so I leave these nuts for Senor Beegle – he plant them and try them – you t’ink?” He held the odd things out to Bob.

“You better come back and explain about them yourself,” said Bob. “I’m going after them now. Come back to-morrow.”

“Aw-right. I come back!”

The Italian did not seem disappointed. With a patience characteristic of his kind, he smiled and turned away. Bob watched until he saw the organ grinder tramping down the Storm Mountain trail.

Then Bob locked up the log cabin, hid the key where he had found it and took another road back to Cliffside in order to pick up Hiram and Jolly Bill.

They had had good luck fishing, contrary to what Bob had expected and he brought home to his aunt some welcome specimens of the lake. Hiram was left at his cabin and Jolly Bill at the Mansion House.

“Well, I know one thing I’m going to do,” said Bob to himself that night in his room. “I’m going to give a party!”

Rather a queer decision you might think, until you knew the reason for it.

There was a room in the headquarters of the Boys’ Athletic Club available for gatherings of various sorts. It could be hired for dances and parties by the members or friends of the latter, and often the boys and girls would give little affairs there.

So it did not surprise the chums of Bob Dexter to receive, in the next few days, invitations to a little affair of this sort at the club. On the bottom of some invitations was a line:

“Please bring peanuts.”

“What’s the idea, Bob?” asked Ned, reading this command. “Aren’t you going to feed us?”

“Oh, yes, but the peanuts are for the monkey.”

“What monkey?”

“The organ grinder’s.”

“Is he coming to the party – I mean the dago?”

“Yes, and he’s going to bring his organ and monkey.”

For a moment Ned stared at his chum, and then, seeing that Bob was serious, Ned broke out into a laugh.

“Oh, ho! I get you!” he chuckled. “It’s a dandy idea! Organ music and monkey tricks at your party! Quite a stunt! Good idea!”

“Yes, I think it’s quite an idea,” said Bob quietly.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE MAN WITH THE HOOK

Many of Bob Dexter’s friends came to his party – in fact nearly all of them were present. Whether it was the admonition to “bring peanuts,” or whether Ned Fuller had spread the news that there would be “something doing” at the affair, is not clear. At any rate there was a goodly attendance in the club, where Bob had arranged to entertain his guests.

At first even Ned had been somewhat skeptical about Bob’s expressed intention of having “the dago,” as they jokingly called the Italian, at the party, with his organ and monkey. And many another lad, to whom Ned imparted the news, smiled knowingly and said:

“Aw, quit your kidding!”

“No, it’s a fact – honest!” Ned declared.

And so it proved.

For when the lads and lassies (for the girls were invited) filed into the hall, there, in a place of honor on a platform, was the Italian organist and his pet simian.

“Oh, but we can’t dance to that doleful music!” objected Nina Farnsworth as she saw what some of the girls called the “orchestra.”

“Don’t worry!” laughed Blanche Richmond, “Bob has the jazz band from Cardiff over – talk about music – my feet are aching to begin!”

Bob had his own special object in hiring Pietro to come to the party with Jacko, and making dance music wasn’t it. In due time it shall be made known to you.

And, knowing that his young friends liked to dance as much as he did himself, Bob had provided the wherewithal, so to speak. Cardiff – the city where the “elephant man” had engaged the attention of the chief and the young detective that rainy night – Cardiff had an orchestra of young men, noted for their jazz ability – that is if you grant it takes any ability to play jazz music. And this Bob had engaged.

It was the custom for members of the Boys’ Athletic Club to take turns giving little affairs, such as dances and parties, so it was not unusual that Bob should do so.

He had been a little diffident about approaching Pietro on the matter, but he had put it in such a way that the Italian had consented after a little thought, and a quick, shrewd look into Bob’s face.

“You no maka bad tricks with Jacko?” he asked.

“Of course not!” cried Bob. “You and the monkey will be treated perfectly fair. It’s just that I want a little something different at my party – something to make the boys and girls laugh. The monkey will do that.”

“Oh, sure! Jacko – he do many tricks. I show you!”

Bob had called on the queer Italian at the latter’s room in the Railroad House. It was a poor enough place to live, but it suited Pietro and others of his kind.

“Sure, the dago’s up in his room,” Mike Brennan, proprietor of the hotel had said in response to Bob’s inquiry. “Go on up – we don’t keep elevators or bell boys here!”

So Bob had found the man in his dirty, dingy room, with a heap of rags in the corner for the monkey to sleep on.

“He do many fine tricks,” said the Italian, once he understood the object of Bob’s call. And he put Jacko through his stunts.

The compensation was agreed upon, Bob giving the man a few dollars more than he had asked, and now it was the night of the party, and Pietro, his organ and Jacko were on hand.

“Oh, isn’t he a dear!”

“So cute!”

“Will he bite?”

“I’d love to hold him! May I?”

Thus the girls in raptures over the monkey which sat perched on his master’s organ, his wizened face looking pathetically at the gay throng about him.

“Jacko no bite!” murmured Pietro, and he seemed proud of the attention his simian was attracting. “You take him!”

He held the little creature out to Nina, but she drew back with a scream of real or pretended fright.

“I’d love to hold him!” exclaimed Mary Wilson. “Do let me! Come on, you queer little imp!” she murmured.

The monkey whimpered but went to her and put his little hairy paw about the girl’s neck.

“Oh, I wouldn’t do it for the world!” cried Nina.

“He’s a dear!” murmured Mary. “His hands are as soft as a baby’s.”

The monkey readily made friends, and he had a feast of peanuts, for all the boys had done as Bob requested, and there were enough of the goobers to last Jacko a year, it seemed.

“Go on – play something!” cried Bob to his organ orchestra, and the wheezy instrument was set in operation. The boys and girls laughed, particularly when Jacko did some of his tricks, which he performed better to the strains of the organ, it seemed.

Then the jazz took its turn and the party was on.

This isn’t a story of Bob Dexter’s party, and I don’t propose to tell you of the jolly times that went on there – for it was a jolly affair – no doubting that. The jazz was of the jazziest, the monkey and organ made a great hit, and the refreshments were all that could be desired.

But there was something more than this.

It would not have been exactly correct to say that Bob Dexter gave this party solely for the purpose of advancing him toward a solution of the Storm Mountain mystery – to help him discover the secret of the log cabin. For he had been planning to give a party for six months back – before he ever even dreamed that Hiram Beegle would be robbed of the treasure map.

However, the party now fitted well into Bob’s plans, and he took advantage of it to carry out a scheme he wanted to try.

The party was at its merriest, and the boys and girls were gathered in a ring about the organ grinder and his monkey, when Bob touched Ned Fuller on the arm.

Ned, who had been tossing nuts to the monkey, turned about and, in answer to Bob’s nod of the head, followed his chum to a quiet corner.

“What’s up?” asked Ned. “Want me to help you dish out the ice cream, Bob?”

“No, the steward will do that.”

“But something’s up – you look serious. Those fellows haven’t got old Hiram for good this time; have they?”

“Not that I know of. But I want you to take charge of things here for a little while.”

“Take charge of things?”

“Yes. Take my place – act as a sort of deputy host”

“What’s the idea?”

“I’m going away for a while.”

“You aren’t sick, are you?”

“Far from it. But I want to do something. I may as well tell you what it is, and then, if anything happens, you’ll know where I am.”

“Say, this seems like it was getting serious!” murmured Ned, looking closely at his chum. “You haven’t caught that Rod chap, have you?”

“Well, no, not exactly, but I may get on his track, if I have luck. Listen, Ned. I had that Italian come here to-night for a special purpose.”

“And a good purpose it was, I’ll say if you ask me. He’s the hit of the evening, outside of myself!” And Ned puffed out his chest.

“Stow that talk!” chuckled Bob. “But I mean I got the Italian here so he would be out of his room at the Railroad House.”

“Ah, noble youth! Providing entertainment – to say nothing of food – for the poor and downtrodden! Atta boy, Bob!”

“Cut it out! I don’t mean that way! I asked the dago here so he wouldn’t be in his room.”

“Naturally if he’s here he can’t be in his room,” bantered Ned. “Two objects can’t occupy the same place at the same time. Neither can even an Italian organ grinder be in two places at once. Q.E.D. you know, Bob!”

“Oh, will you be serious!”

“Is this serious?” asked Ned.

“It may be – yes. Listen! I’m going out – I’m going to take a run down to the Railroad House and make a search through the room of this fellow. That’s why I got him here – so as to give me a clear coast. I can run down in my flivver and be back inside of half an hour. Can you keep things moving that long – until I come back?”

“I’ll try, even if I have to stand on my head to amuse ’em!”

“Good boy! But don’t do anything rash. Don’t raise a rumpus, and if any one asks for me cover my absence. Above all don’t let the dago know I’ve gone to his dump.”

“Trust your old college chum for that, Bob. I’m Little Old On The Job for yours truly. Shoot! When you going?”

“Right away. It will soon be time to serve the ice cream and cake, and they can think I’m looking after that. Mum’s the word now!”

“Mum is right!” echoed Ned with a wink.

They had conversed rapidly and in low voices in one corner of the room, while nearly all the guests were gathered about the monkey and the Italian.

Seeing that they were likely to be thus amused for some time, Bob slipped out. Ned was on the alert to forestall possible embarrassing questions.

“I’m going up to the Italian’s room a minute,” said Bob to the Railroad House proprietor, a little later.

“Help yourself,” indifferently replied Mike Brennan. “He’s out, though.”

“Yes, I know. He’s entertaining over at the Boys’ Club.”

“Oh, sure! Now I remember ye!” cried Mike. “You’re th’ lad that come and hired him. I s’pose he forgot his music!” and he chuckled. “So ye had t’ come for it, did ye? Sure these dagos aren’t any good, though Pietro is as decent as any. Go on up wid ye!”

Bob made his way along the dimly-lighted hall until he came to the door of the room where the Italian slept. Bob had been in the Railroad House before, once when it was raided by the police. He knew that the locks on the doors were old-fashioned and that a buttonhook would open most of them. An ordinary slender key, with one ward on it, would more than do the trick, and Bob had several keys of the skeleton variety.

He was not surprised to find the door unlocked, when he tried it before using any of the keys he had brought. But if he wasn’t surprised at the ease with which he entered, he was surprised at the sight he saw when he pushed back the portal.

For the room was lighted by a dim gas jet, partly turned down. And in the sickly gleam Bob saw a man in the room – a man stooping over a chest in one corner.

At first Bob believed that Pietro had gotten there ahead of him. But the manifest impossibility of this soon made itself known to him.

The man bending over the Italian’s chest straightened up suddenly at the noise of the opening door.

He was a man of rough appearance, and his left hand was missing. In place of it was an iron hook – for all the world like Captain Cuttle.

With a sharp intaking of his breath, the man with the hook faced the young detective. Bob, on his part, could not repress a gasp of surprise.

“Well!” snarled the man at last. “What do you want?”

“Who are you?” demanded the lad.

The two glared at each other in the dim light of the turned-down gas jet.