Auto Boys' Mystery Page 7

  CHAPTER VII

  THE LONG-HIDDEN TREASURE IS UNCOVERED

  And now, while the weary young searchers were hastening resolutely intothe woods to the north of the lake, they were leaving in the forest to thesouth one who would well bear watching. I do not mean Chip Slider sittingalone, tired and melancholy, beside the shelter of poles, wondering ifthere could possibly be any place where trouble did not come. No--notChip, but a man who at this moment stood looking into the little valleywhere the last camp of the road builders had been.

  A somewhat portly, somewhat pompous and self-important appearingindividual was this man. His bristly hair, cut very short, was tingedwith gray under the large, loose-fitting cap such as golfers and motoristswear. His face was smooth, puffy and red. His very eyes, more touchedwith red, also, than they should have been, as well as his pudgy handsindicated self-indulgence and love of ease.

  Presently the cap and the person under it moved from the rise of ground,above the road builders' last camp, down into the valley. With a smilethat had too much of a sneer about it to be pleasant, the man ground hisheel into the gravel where the Longknives' road had come to its troubledending. With the same disagreeable sneer in his manner that accompaniedhis unpleasant smile, he turned here and there, noting how the brushand stunted stalks of mullen were springing up all about the unfinishedtask the workmen had left.

  Startled suddenly out of his reverie by a bluejay's scream, or someother noise--he may have fancied it, he thought--the man looked hastily,searchingly about him; but satisfied, apparently, that he was alone,he moved leisurely into a shaded place and sat himself down on astump--another token of the great road that had been begun but nevercompleted. Quite carefully he drew up his trousers at the knees, thenpicked from his hosiery, whose bright color showed in considerableexpanse above his oxfords, some bits of dry grass and pine needlesgathered in his walk. Mr. Lewis Grandall had come, apparently, to viewthe work his perfidy had caused to be abandoned.

  For a long time the unfaithful treasurer of the ambitious Longknives satin silent meditation. He had noted with some satisfaction that a growthof brush screened his position from easy discovery should anyone chanceto pass that way; and now his thoughts ran back over the circumstancesleading up to his present personal situation. Quite steadily his eyeswere fixed upon the unleveled bank of gravel, the half-hewn logs and allthe unfinished work in the general picture of desolation and abandonmentbefore him.

  It is doubtful, perhaps, if Grandall realized his own responsibility forthe waste and ruin on which he looked. At least his face bore no traceof sorrow, no expression of sincere regret. The same dull sneer was inhis eyes, the same defiant air was in even the poise of his body and theheel that, with a certain viciousness, he dug into the dry earth.

  Lewis Grandall's start in life had been attended by bright prospects.If only he had been found out the first time he yielded to temptationin scheming to get money by dishonest means, he might still have madehis life a success by turning at once to the right road; but not beingdetected, he became bolder. From mere trickery and deceit it is but astep to out-and-out thievery. Grandall took that step and more. Yet hemanaged for long to cover his tracks sufficiently that few suspected andno one publicly accused.

  One would have supposed that, being accustomed to the handling of otherpeople's money in his banking work, he would not easily have been temptedwhen he found himself with a large sum of the Longknives' funds in hispossession. Neither had he any pressing need of this money at the time helaid his plan to appropriate to his own use the cash intended for NelsAnderson's army of road builders. He merely thought he might some day beglad to have at his command a secret reserve large enough to maintain himindefinitely.

  So did he plan the pretended robbery by which a former woodsman he hadlong known made off with the suit-case wherein he carried the money forAnderson's long overdue payroll. His original purpose had been to makesome sort of division of the cash with Murky; but there was not anywherein the Grandall code either honor or honesty. It was a particularlybright idea, indeed, so Grandall himself considered when the thought cameto him that he might have the unsuspecting Murky relieved of the suit-casebefore the fellow had so much as seen what was in it.

  The plan was put into effect. Slider, weak of morals, but strong of arm,was chosen for the work. To him Grandall told as much of his whole schemeas he thought necessary, but told him nothing whatever that was whollytrue, with the possible exception of the statement that Murky was not tobe trusted because he talked too much.

  Having been a beneficiary in a small but largely crooked lumber dealGrandall had once managed, Slider entered into the robbery scheme mostwillingly. With the general result the reader is familiar; but in detailit may be added that, in keeping with the promoter's plan, he who relievedMurky of the suit-case hid it later just where few would suspect it mightbe hidden.

  That place was almost within gunshot of the very spot where the moneywould have been distributed had it reached those for whom it was intended.This not only suited Mr. Grandall's convenience, but kept Slider in acomparatively safe locality, as well. So many men had been engaged onthe work near Opal Lake that the presence of any kind of person in workingclothes, in that vicinity, would occasion no remark.

  Thus had Slider secreted the suit-case in a decaying heap of drift alongthe identical little stream beside which the great gravel road had ended.There had Grandall found and quietly removed the riches the very nextday. Then the dishonest treasurer limped back to his hotel, for he wassupposed to be scarcely able to move, owing to his "injuries," as a resultof the robbery.

  Nearly three years passed. The suit-case lay undisturbed where Grandallhid it and its valuable contents were intact. If the Longknives' treasurerhad had occasion to make use of this money, meanwhile, he had beeneither afraid or unwilling to do so. But he knew where it was. He knewthat in an emergency he could lay hands on a moderate fortune whoseexistence he believed none suspected. The thought bolstered his couragein scheming the method of more than one piece of trickery and dishonesty.

  Then came the end, as sooner or later in crooked plans it mustcome--Failure! They all fail,--it is inevitable,--at last. Thewrong-doer faced the necessity of flight.

  Grandall's defalcations in the bank did not appear at once. A smallmatter--the "padding" or falsely increasing of some petty bills formaterial furnished the city--had started an investigation. It was tothe amazement of everyone who knew the man that a long, long chain ofshady operations and even petty stealing, even the robbery of his ownfriends, was by slow degrees uncovered.

  Toward the last, it was apparent, Grandall had been driven to the mostpainful desperation. Night and day he must be on guard to keep hisdeceptions covered up. Constantly he must devise new practices in deceitto conceal others that once had served, but now, daily and hourly, wereopening at most unexpected points revealing the treachery, falsehood,hypocrisy and rottenness they erstwhile had secreted.

  Like a common thief, the guilty Grandall stole away in the night. Behindhim he left all that might have made life useful and pleasant--home,friends, hope and ambition. Lying for some time hidden in a distant city,he at last felt it safe to travel by a circuitous route to Opal Lake.

  At a country railroad station he stepped quietly off the train. With noluggage but a small handbag he slipped into the woods. A long trampbrought him the following day to the abandoned clubhouse. The veryatmosphere of oppressive loneliness there pleased him because of itsassurance of his safety from discovery.

  How little Grandall guessed, or even suspected, that at just this timehe could not have come to a place more fraught with danger to himselfwill never be known. No knowledge had he of the eyes that stealthilywatched him. No thought had he that the moment he appeared with the stolensuit-case in hand, ready to slip away to hoped-for safety in a distantcountry, a lurking enemy would leap upon him.

  The thief sat for a long time contemplating the ruins where so abruptlythe road building had ended. It was not un
til near evening that hestrolled slowly toward the clubhouse. The general course of the graveldrive he followed, but in the main kept a few feet to one side, thatthe trees and brush might screen him.

  He had no fear here, yet he knew some boys were in camp not far away andnot even by them did he wish to be observed. For he would spend one nightof rest in the clubhouse room that once had been his own; and then hewould be away--gone for all time from these and all the scenes of hisyounger life.

  Yet a pair of heavy, scowling eyes watched Grandall's every footstep--sawhim enter the clubhouse--saw him seat himself restfully in the emptyliving-room beside the great fireplace and proceed to make a supper ofsandwiches and fruit from his small satchel.

  Murky could not have been more vigilant had his own life been at stake.Not only his determination to gain again the stolen money that hadbeen taken from him, but his hatred of that person the victim of whosedouble-dealing he had been, made him watchful, and a very dangerous man.

  Quite suddenly in the afternoon had the vexed and oft-disappointed trampdiscovered Grandall. It was while the latter stood beside the ruinswhere the gravel road had reached its ending. In delighted surpriseMurky with difficulty suppressed a cry. Dropping instantly to the ground,he pressed over his mouth both his dirty hands lest some exclamation hecould scarcely resist should betray him. "Blame _me_!" Under his breathhe muttered the words with almost fiendish pleasure.

  His worst enemy then was the occasion of those sounds that had startledGrandall from his reverie. But he felt himself so entirely alone, sowholly free from any probability of being observed, that he had given theslight noise not a second thought. During all his afternoon of sinistergazing upon the ambitious enterprise his act had wrecked, he stillbelieved himself as completely alone as a man well could be in any vastwoods or wilderness.

  And even when Grandall left the little valley and walked in silentmeditation to spend one night more--but one--in the old house on the Pointhe heard no footsteps coming on behind. His thoughts were far frompleasant ones but they occupied him fully. The sullen hatred so clearlyshown in the expression of his eyes and lips was but a reflection of allthat passed within his mind. Friends or foes, men were all alike tohim, and those who had never voiced a word against him he reviled equallywith those who had been his dupes, and with the men whose accusations hadcaused his flight, as well.

  Coming to the clubhouse, Grandall lingered for a time up and down theweed-grown walk leading to the garage. Then while it was yet light hewent down to the rotting pier and looked long and earnestly across andup and down the lake. Slowly he returned and, entering the house, wentat once down cellar.

  In the pitch darkness he felt his way to the rear of the steps leadingfrom above. Striking a match or two, he examined by such flickering flamesthe rough uneven wall. With bare hands, then, he seized a projectingcorner of one of the large flat stones and pulled it easily from place.

  If this part of the wall had been laid up with cement or mortar it hadbeen broken down some time before, as would appear very probable, for themasonry that Grandall now brought tumbling to the floor concealed a deepaperture in the dry, sandy earth.

  The thief's next lighted match revealed the hole and also revealed a dampand discolored leather case.

  Still crouching in the dark cellar Grandall managed to work the rustylock and lay the suit-case open. Then he struck another match and its dimglow disclosed the carefully packed bundles of bills, and among them a bagof coin. He nodded his head in a satisfied way. He had assured himselfon first arriving at the old house that the treasure was safe; but hewould not remove it from the hiding place until he was prepared to leave,he had decided. Now he was ready.

  And where was Murky?

  As a matter of fact, from his concealment among the bushes near by, hewas trying to decipher the room upstairs that this lone visitor to the oldhouse would probably occupy. He had lost sight of Grandall when the latterhad quickly entered and gone to the cellar. But it was only for a littlewhile that the scowling eyes searched the open door and the windows invain.

  As Grandall came up to the living-room carrying the discolored suit-case,he glanced quickly all about him. Possibly some sense of his guilt came tohis mind now that the evidence of his theft was squarely in his hands,and for the first time he appeared apprehensive. Yet he paused only fora few seconds. He saw to it that all the first floor doors were boltedfrom within, and slowly climbed the stairs to the sleeping rooms above.

  As if quite at home the man entered that room whose long, low windowopened upon the little balcony toward the lake. He smoothed down themattress and brought a blanket from an adjoining chamber. Opening thewindow wide, for these upper rooms were very close and warm, he drew thesuit-case to the better light he thus admitted and proceeded to count themoney it contained.

  The night was hot, the air seemed stifling, but when he had satisfiedhimself as to the amount of the treasure, Grandall returned the packagesof bills and the bag of gold and silver pieces to their places, thenclosed and locked the window. He locked his chamber door also, beforelying down to sleep. As if that could save him now!