CHAPTER VI
WORKING AT THE RIDDLE
But Doris did not have an opportunity to communicate her idea on thefollowing morning, nor for several days after that. A violent three orfour days' northeaster had set in, and for forty-eight hours after theirexpedition to Slipper Point, the river was swept by terrific gales anddownpouring sheets of rain. Doris called up Sally by telephone from thehotel, on the second day, for she knew that Sally would very likely beat the Landing, where there was a telephone connection.
"Can't you get well wrapped up and come up here to see me a while?" shebegged. "I'd go to you, but Mother won't let me stir out in this awfuldownpour."
"I could, I s'pose, but, honestly, I'd rather not," replied Sally,doubtfully. "I don't much like to come up to the hotel. I guess youknow why." Doris did know.
"But you can come up to my room, and we'll be alone there," shesuggested. "I've so much I want to talk to you about. I've thought ofsomething else,--a dandy scheme." The plan sorely tempted Sally, but anew thought caused her to refuse once more.
"I'd have to bring Genevieve," she reminded Doris, "and she mightn'tbehave, and--well, I really guess I'd better not."
"Perhaps tomorrow will be nice again," ended Doris, hopefully, as shehung up the receiver.
But the morrow was not at all "nice." On the contrary, it was, ifanything, worse than ever. After the morning mail had come, however,Doris excitedly called up Sally again.
"You simply must come up here, if it's only for a few minutes!" she toldher. "I've something awfully important that I just must talk to youabout and show you." The "show you" was what convinced Sally.
"All right," she replied. "I'll come up for half an hour. I'll leaveGenevieve with Mother. But I can't stay any longer."
She came, not very long after, and Doris rushed to meet her from theback porch, for she had walked up the road. Removing her drippingumbrella and mackintosh, Doris led her up to her room, whisperingexcitedly:
"I don't know what you'll think of what I've done, Sally, but one thingI'm certain of. It can't do any harm and it may do some good."
"What in the world is it?" questioned Sally, wonderingly.
Doris drew her into her own room and shut the door. The communicatingdoor to her mother's room was also shut, so they were quite alone. WhenSally was seated, Doris laid a bulky bundle in her lap.
"What is it?" queried Sally, wide-eyed, wondering what all this couldhave to do with their mystery.
"I'll tell you," said Doris. "If it hadn't been for this awful storm,I'd have told you and asked you about it next morning, but I didn't wantto over the 'phone. So I just took things in my own hands, and here'sthe result." Sally was more bewildered than ever.
"What's the result?"
"Why, just this," went on Doris. "That night, after we'd been to SlipperPoint, I lay awake again the longest time, thinking and thinking. Andsuddenly a bright idea occurred to me. You know, whenever I'm worried ortroubled or puzzled, I always go to Father and ask his advice. I can goto Mother too, but she's so often ill and miserable, and I've got intothe habit of not bothering her with things. But Father's always ready,and he's never failed me yet. So I got to wondering how I could get somehelp from him in this affair without, of course, his suspecting anythingabout the secret part of it. And then, all of a sudden, I thoughtof--_books_! There must be _some_ books that would help us,--books thatwould give us some kind of information that might lead to a clue.
"So next morning, very first thing, I sent a special delivery letter toFather asking him to send me down _at once_ any books he could findabout _pirates_ and such things. And, bless his heart, he sent me down awhole bundle of them that just got here this morning!"
Sally eyed them in a sort of daze. "But--but won't your father guessjust what we're up to?" she ventured, dubiously. "He will ask you whatyou want them for, won't he?"
"No, indeed," cried Doris. "That's just the beauty of Father. He'd neverask me _why_ I want them in a hundred years. If I choose to explain tohim, all right, and if I don't he knows that's all right too, for hetrusts me absolutely, not to do anything wrong. So, when he comes down,as I expect he will in a week or so, he'll probably say, 'Pirates allright, daughter?' and that's all there'll be to it." Sally was at lastconvinced, though she marvelled inwardly at this quite wonderful speciesof father.
"But now, let's look at the books," went on Doris. "I'm perfectlycertain we'll find something in them that's going to give us a lift."She unwrapped the bundle and produced three volumes. One, a very largeone, was called "The Book of Buried Treasure." Another, "Pirates andBuccaneers of Our Own Coasts," and, last but not least, "The Life ofCaptain Kidd." Sally's eyes fairly sparkled, especially at the last, andthey hurriedly consulted together as to who should take which booksfirst. At length it was decided that Sally take the "Buried TreasureBook," as it was very bulky, and Doris would go over the other two. Thenthey would exchange. This ought to keep them fully occupied till fairweather set in again, after which, armed with so much valuableinformation, they would again tackle their problem on its own ground--atSlipper Point.
It was two days later when they met again. There had not been anopportunity to exchange the books, but on the first fair morning Sallyand Genevieve rowed up in "45," and Doris leaped in exclaiming:
"Let's go right up to Slipper Point. I believe I've got on the track ofsomething--at last! What have you discovered, Sally?"
"Nothing at all,--just nothing," declared Sally rather discouragingly."It was an awfully interesting book, though. I just devoured it. But itdidn't tell a thing that would help us out. And I've made up my mind,since reading it, that we might as well give up any idea of Captain Kiddhaving buried anything around here. That book said he never buried athing, except one place on Long Island, and that was all raked up longago. All the rest about him is just silly nonsense and talk. He never_was_ much of a pirate, anyway!"
"Yes, I discovered the same thing in the book I had about him," agreedDoris. "We'll have to give up Captain Kidd, but there were some pirateswho did bury somewhere, and one I discovered about did a lot of workright around these shores."
"He _did_?" cried Sally, almost losing her oars in her excitement. "Whowas he? Tell me--quick!"
"His name was Richard Worley," answered Doris. "He was a pirate aboutthe year 1718, the same time that Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet were'pirating' too."
"Yes, I know about them," commented Sally. "I read of them in that book.But it didn't say anything about Worley."
"Well, he was only a pirate for six weeks before he was captured," wenton Doris, "but in that time he managed to do a lot, and it was all alongthe coast of New Jersey here. Now why isn't it quite possible that hesailed in here with his loot and made that nice little cave and buriedhis treasure, intending to come back some time. He was captured finallydown off the coast of the Carolinas, but he might easily have disposedof his booty here before that."
Sally was filled with elated certainty. "It surely must have been he!"she cried. "For there was some one,--that's certain, or there wouldn'thave been so much talk about buried treasure. And he's the likeliestperson to have made that cave."
"There's just one drawback that I can see," Doris reminded her. "It wasan awfully long time ago,--1718, nearly two hundred years. Do you thinkit would all have lasted so long? The wood and all, I mean?"
"That cedar wood lasts forever," declared Sally. "He probably wreckedsome vessel and then took the wood and built this cave with it. Probablyhe built it because he thought it would be a good place to hide in sometime, if they got to chasing him. No one in all the world would everfind him there."
"That's a good idea!" commented Doris. "I'd been wondering why a pirateshould take such trouble to fix up a place like that. They usually justdug a hole and put in the treasure and then killed one of their ownnumber and buried his body on top of it. I hope to goodness that Mr.Richard Worley didn't do that pleasant little trick! When we find thetreasure, we don't want any skeletons mixed up with it."
They both laughed heartily over the conceit, and rowed with increasedvigor as Slipper Point came in sight.
"You said you had an idea about that queer paper we found, too," Sallyreminded her. "What was it?"
"Oh, I don't know whether it amounts to much, and I'll try to explain itlater. The first thing to do is to try to discover, if we can, some ideaof a date, or something connected with this cave, so that we can see ifwe are on the right track. I've been thinking that if that wood was froman old, wrecked vessel, we might perhaps find something on it somewherethat would give us a clue."
"That's so," said Sally. "I hadn't thought of that before."
With this in mind, they entered the cave, lit the candle, seatedGenevieve on the chair with a bag of candy in her lap for solace, andproceeded to their task.
"The only way to find anything is just to scrape off all we can of thismold," announced Sally. "You take one side, and I'll take the other andwe'll use these sticks. It won't be an easy job."
It was not. For over an hour they both dug away, scraping off what theycould of the moss and fungus that covered the cedar planks. Doris madeso little progress that she finally procured the ancient knife from thetable and worked more easily with that implement. Not a vestige nor atrace of any writing was visible anywhere.
When the arms of both girls had begun to ache cruelly, and Genevieve hadgrown restless and was demanding to "go out," Sally suggested that theygive it up for the day. But just at that moment, working in a farcorner, Doris had stumbled upon a clue. The rusty knife had struck acurious knobby break in the wood, which, on further scraping, developedthe shape of a raised letter "T." At her exultant cry, Sally rushed overand frantically assisted in the quest. Scraping and digging for anotherfifteen minutes revealed at last a name, raised on the thick planking,which had evidently been the stern name-plate of the vessel. When it allstood revealed, the writing ran:
_The Anne Arundel_ _England 1843._
The two stood gazing at it a moment in puzzled silence. Then Doris threwdown her knife.
"It's all off with the pirate theory, Sally!" she exclaimed.
"Why so?" demanded her companion, mystified for the moment.
"Just because," answered Doris, "if Richard Worley lived in 1718, hecouldn't possibly have built a cave with the remains of a vessel dated1843, and neither could any other pirate, for there weren't any morepirates as late as 1843. Don't you see?"
Sally did see and her countenance fell.
"Then what in the world _is_ the mystery?" she cried.
"That we've got to find the answer to in some other way," replied Doris,"for we're as much in the dark as ever!"