“But come into the sitting-room,” at length commanded Miss Camilla, “and let us talk this strange thing over. You must be tired and hungry, too, after this awful adventure of coming through that dreadful tunnel. You must have some of this hot gingerbread and a glass of lemonade.” And while she bustled about, on hospitable thoughts intent, they heard her muttering to herself:
“A cave—and a tunnel—and connected with this house!—What can it all mean?”
They sat in restful silence for a time, munching the delicious hot gingerbread and sipping cool lemonade. Never did a repast taste more welcome, coming as it did after the adventures and uncertainties of that eventful day. And while they ate, Miss Camilla sat wiping her glasses and putting them on and taking them off again and shaking her head over the perplexing news that had been so unexpectedly thrust upon her.
“I simply cannot understand it all,” she began at last. “As I told you, I’ve never had the slightest idea of such a strange affair, nor can I imagine how it came there. When did you say that Anne Arundel vessel was wrecked?”
“Grandfather said in 1850,” answered Sally.
“Eighteen hundred and fifty,” mused Miss Camilla. “Well, I couldn’t have been more than four or five years old, so of course I would scarcely remember it. Besides, I was not at home here a great deal. I used to spend most of my time with my aunt who lived in New York. She used to take me there for long visits, months on a stretch. If this cave and tunnel were made at that time, it was probably done while I was away, or else I would have known of it. My father and brother and one or two colored servants were the only ones in the house, most of the time. I had a nurse, an old Southern colored ‘mammy’ who always went about with me. She died about the time the Civil War broke out.”
There was no light on the matter here. Miss Camilla relapsed again into puzzled silence, which the girls hesitated to intrude upon by so much as a single word, lest Miss Camilla should consider that they were prying into her past history.
“Wait a moment!” she suddenly exclaimed, sitting up very straight and wiping her glasses again in great excitement. “I believe I have the explanation.” She looked about at her audience a minute, hesitantly. “I shall have to ask you girls please to keep what I am going to tell you entirely to yourselves. Few if any have ever known of it, and, though it would do no harm now, I have other reasons for not wishing it discussed publicly. Since you have discovered what you have, however, I feel it only right that you should know.”
“You may rely on us, Miss Camilla,” said Doris, speaking for them both, “to keep anything you may tell us a strict secret.”
“Thank you,” replied their hostess. “I feel sure of it. Well, I learned the fact, very early in my girlhood, that my father and also my brother, who was several years older than I, were both very strict and enthusiastic abolitionists. While slavery was still a national institution in this country, they were firm advocates of the freedom of the colored people. And, so earnest were they in the cause, that they became members of the great ‘Underground Railway’ system.”
“What was that?” interrupted both girls at a breath.
“Did you never hear of it?” exclaimed Miss Camilla in surprise. “Why, it was a great secret system of assisting runaway slaves from the Southern States to escape from their bondage and get to Canada where they could no longer be considered any one’s property. There were many people in all the Northern States, who, believing in freedom for the slaves, joined this secret league, and in their houses runaways would be sheltered, hidden and quietly passed on to the next house of refuge, or ‘station,’ as they were called, till at length the fugitives had passed the boundary of the country. It was, however, a severe legal offense to be caught assisting these fugitives, and the penalty was heavy fines and often imprisonment. But that did not daunt those whose hearts were in the cause. And so very secret was the whole organization that few were ever detected in it.
“It was in a rather singular way that I discovered my father to be concerned in this matter. I happened to be at home here, and came downstairs one morning, rather earlier than usual, to find our kitchen filled with a number of strange colored folk, in various stages of rags and hunger and evident excitement. I was a girl of ten or eleven at the time. Rushing to my father’s study, I demanded an explanation of the strange spectacle. He took me aside and explained the situation to me, acknowledging that he was concerned in the ‘Underground Railway’ and warning me to maintain the utmost secrecy in the matter or it would imperil his safety.
“When I returned to the kitchen, to my astonishment, the whole crowd had mysteriously disappeared, though I had not been gone fifteen minutes. And I could not learn from any one a satisfactory explanation of their lightning disappearance. I should certainly have seen them, had they gone away above ground. I believe now that the cave and tunnel must have been the means of secreting them, and I haven’t a doubt that my father and brother had had it constructed for that very purpose. A runaway, or even a number of them, could evidently be kept in the cave several days and then spirited away at night, probably by way of the river and some vessel out at sea that could take them straight to New York or even to Canada itself. Yes, it is all as clear as daylight to me now.”
“But how do you suppose they were able to build the cave and tunnel and bring all the wood from the wreck on the beach without being discovered?” questioned Sally.
“That probably was not so difficult then as it would seem now,” answered Miss Camilla. “To begin with, there were not so many people living about here then, and so there was less danger of being discovered. If my father and brother could manage to get men enough to help and a number of teams of oxen or horses such as he had, they could have brought the wreckage from the beach here, over what must then have been a very lonely and deserted road, without much danger of discovery. If it happened that at the time they were sheltering a number of escaped slaves, it would have been no difficult matter to press them into assisting on dark nights when they could be so well concealed. Yes, I think that was undoubtedly the situation.”
They all sat quietly for a moment, thinking it over. Miss Camilla’s solution of the cave and tunnel mystery was clear beyond all doubting, and it seemed as if there was nothing further for them to wonder about. Suddenly, however, Sally leaned forward eagerly.
“But did we tell you about the strange piece of paper we found under the old mattress, Miss Camilla? I’ve really forgotten what we did say.”
Miss Camilla looked perplexed. “Why, no. I don’t remember your mentioning it. Everything was so confused, at first, that I’ve forgotten it if you did. What about a piece of paper?”
“Here is a copy of what was on it,” said Sally. “We never take the real piece away from where we first found it, but we made this copy. Perhaps you can tell what it all means.” She handed the paper to Miss Camilla, who stared at it for several moments in blank bewilderment. Then she shook her head.
“I can’t make anything of it at all,” she acknowledged. “It must have been something left there by one of the fugitives. I don’t believe it concerns me at all.” She handed the paper back, but as she did so, a sudden idea occurred to Doris.
“Mightn’t it have been some secret directions to the slaves left there for them by your father or brother?” she suggested. “Maybe it was to tell them where to go next, or something like that.”
“I think it very unlikely,” said Miss Camilla. “Most of them could neither read nor write, and they would hardly have understood an explanation so complex. No, it must be something else. I wonder—” She stopped short and stood thinking intently a moment while her visitors watched her anxiously. A pained and troubled expression had crept into her usually peaceful face, and she seemed to be reviewing memories that caused her sorrow.
“Can you get the original paper for me?” she suddenly exclaimed in great excitement. “Now—at once? I have
just thought of something.”
“I’ll get it!” cried Sally, and she was out of the house in an instant, flying swift-footed over the ground that separated them from the entrance of the cave by the river. While she was gone Miss Camilla sat silent, inwardly reviewing her painful memories.
In ten minutes Sally was back, breathless, with the precious, rusty tin box clasped in her hand. Opening it, she gave the contents to Miss Camilla, who stared at it for three long minutes in silence.
When she looked up her eyes were tragic. But she only said very quietly:
“It is my brother’s writing!”
CHAPTER XII
LIGHT DAWNS ON MISS CAMILLA
“What do you make of it all, Sally?”
The two girls were sitting in the pine grove on the heights of Slipper Point. They sat each with her back against a tree and with the enchanting view of the upper river spread out panoramically before them. Each of them was knitting—an accomplishment they had both recently acquired.
“I can’t make anything of it at all, and I’ve thought of it day and night ever since,” was Sally’s reply. “It’s three weeks now since the day we came through that tunnel and discovered where it ended. And except what Miss Camilla told us that day, she’s never mentioned a thing about it since.”
“It’s strange, how she stopped short, just after she’d said the writing was her brother’s,” mused Doris. “And then asked us in the next breath not to question her about it any more, and to forgive her silence in the matter because it probably concerned something that was painful to her.”
“Yes, and kept the paper we found in the cave,” went on Sally. “I believe she wanted to study it out and see what she could make of it. If she’s sure it was written by her brother, she will probably be able to puzzle it out better than we would. One thing, I guess, is certain, though. It isn’t any secret directions where to find treasure. All our little hopes about that turned out very differently, didn’t they?”
“Sally, are you glad or sorry we’ve discovered what we did about that cave?” demanded Doris suddenly.
“Oh, glad, of course,” was Sally’s reply. “At first, I was awfully disgusted to think all my plans and hopes about it and finding buried treasure and all that had come to nothing. But, do you know what has made me feel differently about it?” She looked up quickly at Doris.
“No, what?” asked her companion curiously.
“It’s Miss Camilla herself,” answered Sally. “I used to think you were rather silly to be so crazy about her and admire her so much. I’d never thought anything about her and I’d known her ‘most all my life. But since she asked us that day to come and see her as often as we liked and stop at her house whenever we were up this way, and consider her as our friend, I’ve somehow come to feel differently. I’m glad we took her at her word and did it. I don’t think I would have, if it hadn’t been for you. But you’ve insisted on our stopping at her house so frequently, and we’ve become so well acquainted with her that I really think I—I almost—love her.”
It pleased Doris beyond words to hear Sally make this admission. She wanted Sally to appreciate all that was fine and admirable and lovely in Miss Camilla, even if she were poor and lonely and deaf. She felt that the friendship would be good for Sally, and she knew that she herself was profiting by the increased acquaintance with this friend they had so strangely made.
“Wasn’t it nice of her to teach us to knit?” went on Sally. “She said we all ought to be doing it now to help out our soldiers, since the country is at war.”
“She’s taught me lots beside that,” said Doris. “I just love to hear her talk about old potteries and porcelains and that sort of thing. I do believe she knows more about them than even grandfather does. She’s making me crazy to begin a collection myself some day when I’m old enough. She must have had a fine collection once. I do wonder what became of it.”
“Well, I don’t understand much about all that talk,” admitted Sally. “I never saw any porcelains worth while in all my life, except that little thing she has on her mantel. And I don’t see anything to get so crazy about in that. It’s kind of pretty, of course, but why get excited about it? What puzzles me more is why she never has said what became of all her other things.”
“That’s a part of the mystery,” said Doris. “And her brother’s mixed up in it somehow, and perhaps her father. That much I’m sure of. She talks freely enough about everything else except those things, so that must be it. Do you know what I’m almost tempted to think? That her brother did commit some crime, and her father hid him away in the cave to escape from justice, but she couldn’t have known about it, that’s plain. Because she did not know about the cave and tunnel at all till just lately. Perhaps she wondered what became of him. And maybe they sold all her lovely porcelains to make up for what he’d done somehow.”
“Yes,” cried Sally in sudden excitement. “And another idea has just come to me. Maybe that queer paper was a note her brother left for her and she can’t make out how to read it. Did you ever think of that?”
“Why, no!” exclaimed Doris, struck with the new idea. “I never thought of it as anything he might have left for her. Do you remember, she said once they were awfully fond of each other, more even than most brothers and sisters? It would be perfectly natural if he did want to leave her a note, if he had to go away and perhaps never come back. And of course he wouldn’t want any one else to understand what it said. Oh, wait!—I have an idea we’ve never thought of before. Why on earth have we been so stupid!—”
She sprang up and began to walk about excitedly, while Sally watched her, consumed with curiosity. At length she could bear the suspense no longer.
“Well, for pity’s sake tell me what you’ve thought of!” she demanded. “I’ll go wild if you keep it to yourself much longer.”
“Where’s that copy?” was all Doris would reply. “I want to study it a moment.” Sally drew it from her pocket and handed it to her, and Doris spent another five minutes regarding it absorbedly.
“It is. It surely is!” she muttered, half to herself. “But how are we ever going to think out how to work it?” At last she turned to the impatient Sally.
“I’m a fool not to have thought of this before, Sally. I read a book once—I can’t think what it was now, but it was some detective story—where there was something just a little like this. Not that it looked like this, but the idea was the same. If it is what I think, it isn’t the note itself at all. The note, if there is one, must be somewhere else. This is only a secret code, or arrangement of the letters, so that one can read the note by it. Probably the real note is written in such a way that it could never be understood at all without this. Do you understand?”
Sally had indeed grasped the idea and was wildly excited by it.
“Oh, Doris,” she cried admiringly. “You certainly are a wonder to have thought all this out! It’s ten times as interesting as what we first thought it was. But how do you work this code? I can’t make anything out of it at all.”
“Well, neither can I, I’ll have to admit. But here’s what I think. If we could see what that note itself looks like, we could perhaps manage to puzzle out just how this code works.”
“But how are we going to do that?” demanded Doris. “Only Miss Camilla has the note, if there is a note; and certainly we couldn’t very well ask her to let us see it, especially after what she said to us that day.”
“No, we couldn’t, I suppose,” said Doris, thoughtfully. “And yet—” she hesitated. “I somehow feel perfectly certain that Miss Camilla doesn’t know the meaning of all this yet, hasn’t even guessed what we have, about this paper. She doesn’t act so. Maybe she doesn’t even know there is a note—you can’t tell. If she hasn’t guessed, it would be a mercy to tell her, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” admitted Sally dubiously. “But I wouldn’t kno
w how to go about it. Would you?”
“I could only try and do my best, and beg her to forgive me if I were intruding,” said Doris. “Yes, I believe she ought to be told. You can’t tell how she may be worrying about all this. She acts awfully worried, seems to me. Not at all like she did when we first knew her. I believe we ought to tell her right now. Call Genevieve and we’ll go over.”
Sally called to Genevieve, who was playing in the boat on the beach below, and that young lady soon came scrambling up the bank. Hand in hand, all three started to the home of Miss Camilla and when they had reached it, found her sitting on her tiny porch knitting in apparently placid content. But, true to Doris’s observation, there were anxious lines in her face that had not been seen a month ago. She greeted them, however, with real pleasure, and with her usual hospitality proffered refreshments, this time in the shape of some early peaches she had gathered only that morning.
But Doris who, with Sally’s consent, had constituted herself spokesman, before accepting the refreshment, began:
“Miss Camilla, I wonder if you’ll forgive us for speaking of something to you? It may seem as if we were intruding, but we really don’t intend to.”
“Why, speak right on,” exclaimed that lady in surprise. “You are too well-bred to be intrusive, that I know. If you feel you must speak of something to me, I know it is because you think it wise or necessary.”
Much relieved by this assurance, Doris went on, explaining how she had suddenly had a new idea concerning the mysterious paper and detailing what she thought it might be. As she proceeded, a new light of comprehension seemed to creep into the face of Miss Camilla, who had been listening intently.
“So we think it must be a code—a secret code—Miss Camilla. And if you happen to have any queer sort of note or communication that you’ve never been able to make out, why this may explain it,” she added.
When she had finished, Miss Camilla sat perfectly still—thinking. She thought so long and so intently that it seemed as if she must have forgotten completely the presence of the three on the porch with her. And after what seemed an interminable period, she did a strange thing. Instead of replying with so much as a word, she got up and went into the house, leaving them open-mouthed and wondering.
The Third Girl Detective Page 83