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

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.”