by Kin Platt
TWO BEATS FOUR
THE LAST IS THREE
Why would two beat four? And how did it relate to THREE, which was the last? The last of what? I looked at Sinbad and Minerva. We were three!
I kind of hoped we weren’t the last.
The sky was turning leaden looking. A wind was coming up from the west. We left the graveyard and nobody argued about staying. We circled through the woods along the northeast part of town.
The Minerva had a bright idea.
“Maybe Captain Billy’s castle will tell is something.”
I didn’t even know she knew about Captain Billy’s castle. I didn’t know too much about it myself, except what I’d heard about it being old, and about the ghost. I’d never been anywhere near it.
As it turned out, neither had Minerva.
But we both had a general idea of where it was and then it was just a question of sweating out the hill for the hour it took to get there.
It was high up on a secluded dead-end street. There wasn’t any sign there that said Captain Billy’s Castle. But this house had to be it, by process of elimination.
It had sounded like a great idea, finding Captain Billy’s house, but when we got there, we couldn’t even see it. There was a big gray stone wall around it, twenty feet high. Across the street were woods. Sinbad finally found the big iron gate padlocked. The iron bars were set too closely together for even slim Minerva to slip through.
All we could do was stand close, faces pressed against the bars, and try to see the castle. All we really could see was the driveway curving up to a dark recess where a lot of pine trees and firs kept everything else hidden.
I stepped back a little. I figured if it was a castle, or anyway called one, it would be some kind of Gothic or Gothic Revival, like the manor houses in England, with pointed arches and octagonal towers having crenelated tops and clustered chimneys.
I didn’t even see a stone buttress!
Some castle, I thought. It taught me sometimes people don’t know what they’re talking about.
Minerva listened to my beefing.
“Well, what do you expect?” she said, good humoredly. “Anybody who would leave a crazy riddle like that on his own tombstone certainly isn’t going to have anything normal or what you might expect.”
I had to agree that made sense.
Then she had another brilliant idea.
“Maybe we can get to it from the bay side.”
I could see the water far below us. It looked smooth and glassy. We left the narrow cobbled brick street and climbed down, sliding over rocks and shale that broke under our feet in a series of small landslides. Sinbad just leaned back, most of the way, and took it like a ride. There were a few straggly bushes to catch on to, here and there, otherwise our trip down might have been our last. There were a lot of jagged rocks at the bottom and the surf licking around the smooth slimy green sides.
Near the bottom we came upon some old stone steps that led to a stone quay. Those iron mooring posts with rings called bitts, were set into it at intervals, like the ones on some of our old streets, near the curbs, where the coachmen used to tether their horses.
Alongside the quay but jutting out toward the bay was an old broken-down wooden jetty. It could have been a pier or a breakwater at one time. Most of the walk was still up, although loose, and you’d have to be a mountain goat to walk it safely now. The big vertical pilings were still in, sunk into the basin of the bay, and lashed securely to the girders underneath.
The jetty didn’t lead any place and the stone quay ran into the stiff slope of the cliffside. The cove was around the other side and an open stretch of sucking and splashing water churning there between us.
“What we need is a boat,” Minerva said
“That’s right,” I said. “Only we don’t have one.”
She ducked down behind the quay and then I heard her yell: “I got one.”
And sure enough she did.
It was a small dinghy with a lot of the paint chipped away, but it looked seaworthy and it had oarlocks and oars, a coil of rope and a bailing can. We just dumped the water out of it. I didn’t know how she found it, or who owned it. But Minerva was the Police Chief’s daughter. And if she wanted to appropriate somebody else’s private property, so we could explore better, that was okay with me.
“Come on, Sinbad. Hop aboard. We’re going on a cruise.”
He’d been very patient so far, even interested. Now, he was practically delirious. If there’s one thing that Sinbad likes, even more than not minding, it’s water. And, better than that, riding on it in a boat! I guess this goes back to the olden days when the English bulls rode the quarter decks of the old brigs and frigates and sails of that day. They were famous sea dogs.
That’s why he’s called Sinbad, after another famous sailor.
I took another look at the sky before we shoved off. Not only were dark clouds piling out of the west, but the wind was picking up. You didn’t have to be Christopher Columbus to know a good squall might be coming.
But then I figured we were just shipping about fifty to a hundred yards, around the cove, so I pushed off, and grabbed the oars from Minerva. We had those jagged rocks to go around and for something like that you need more beef and muscle than a girl has.
I got past the main trouble spots, the current taking our light boat easily, so it was just a case of steering and feathering at the right time. And having the oar ready to push off a rock if necessary. When we were clear I took a good quick look up to see if I could see the castle. But the steep scarp of the cliff wall slopes back, and from our angle there was nothing to see but the stone tilt of the overhanging rock.
The current swung us around and I dipped my oars and nodded to Minerva. “Welcome to Dead Man’s Cove,” I said.
She didn’t look frightened one bit. “What’s that?” she said, pointing. “It looks like a cave.”
“I guess it’s the cave in the cove,” I said brightly, not knowing what I was talking about, of course.
I still had to do some delicate maneuvering so the current wouldn’t dash us leeward against the rocks. There were five of them, and I had the boat almost threaded through before I noticed they were shaped like the outline of a star. They guarded the entrance of the cave and hid it, too, until the boat passed the last jagged rock and I shipped my oars.
There was a narrow crescent of sand near the base of the cliff, with a lot of smooth rounded stones and boulders. It didn’t look like much of a beach but it made a landing possible. Sinbad and Minerva hopped out and helped me pull the skiff up over the rocks. Sinbad helped by barking. I didn’t have an anchor but I clove-hitched the painter to a sharp splintered rock outside the cave. I looked at the sky and water again. The wind was ruffling the white caps shoreward and the sky was darkening. I couldn’t fix the time by the sun but it felt like about two-thirty. I could smell a storm coming.
By the time I had finished all this calculating, I was alone on that little strip of beach. Then I heard the echo of Sinbad’s deep bark and knew they couldn’t wait to explore the cave.
I followed them into the high vaulted opening that swept back, curving like a horn. It was less than five feet wide at the mouth. I looked up to check the height, gasped, and yelled to Minerva.
“What do you want to stop here for?” Minerva said, splashing up with Sinbad. “The back part’s best. This is great cave.”
I pointed to the roof. “Did you see this?” I asked. Her blue eyes opened a little wider but she shook her head.
The cave was about fifteen feet high at this point. Above, in the dome and extending as far back into the cave as I could see, were faded white markings. They looked as if they had been painted.
The markings were familiar but they didn’t make sense here. II could only think that a couple of giants had been in and played the biggest game of ticktacktoe in the history of the world!
The white markings used the same symbols as in the game, X’s and circles and each X and each
circle was about a foot high, in lines about five feet wide.
They were grouped exactly like this:
X X O X O
X O O O O
O X O O O
X O O O O
X O O O O
O O X O O
O X O O X
O O O O O
O X O O X
X X O O X
X O X X O
“You’re sure going to a lot of trouble over nothing.” Minerva said, watching me copy it all down in the notebook I carry.
“You never can tell,” I said, like some mad scientist or something. “It might be important.”
“Important,” she scoffed. “Didn’t you ever get any letters from girls?”
I’d finished and put the book and pencil back in my pocket.
“Letters from girls?” I repeated dumbly. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“That’s the way we write hugs and kisses,” she said.
I had to admit I’d never got one of those letters. From any girl. But I did remember once getting a birthday card from my aunt up in Maine with some of those X’s below her signature. And maybe some of the circles too.
“I don’t think any girls were ever in this cave. Writing that message. And if they were, how did they get up that high?” I pointed straight up to the height of the vaulted dome of the cave.
Minerva shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “Well, if it isn’t that, what is it?”
“I don’t know either,” I said, “I said, wishing that I did.
Then her eyes suddenly brightened again and she tossed her head, sending that long hair all over her face.
“I know,” she said sharply. “This is Captain Billy’s Cave, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “I think it is.”
“Then it is simple,” she said. “He was a nice friendly man. That was just his nice way of greeting people that came into his cave. You know, like giving them his regards.”
“Sure,” I said. “That’s why he was murdered here.”
CHAPTER 14
The Ghost Of The Castle
Minerva looked down at Sinbad. Sinbad looked up at me. I tried to look nonchalant. “Right here?” she demanded.
I shrugged. “I don’t know if it was exactly right here. All I heard is that he was murdered. I looked around the damp dark walls of the cave. “This is as good a place as any. Besides why do you think they call it Dead Man’s Cove?”
Her eyes suddenly weren’t so merry any more and she didn’t make any cracks. I looked back up at the big scrawled marks and my skin began to crawl. Then I felt something tugging at my hand. I jumped. It was Minerva’s hand. It felt cold and wet. Like a ghost’s hand.
“Let’s investigate,” she said. “Maybe we can find out who did it.”
I said. “According to the tombstone, he died in 1800.”
That kind of logic didn’t bother Minerva Landry at all. “So what? He might have left a clue.”
“That’s a good trick,” I said, “to be able to do that after they’ve done you in.”
“Well, maybe Captain Billy guessed who it was.”
“Then it’ll be easy to find the murderer,” I said.
“How?”
“All we have to do is look for a man who’s over a hundred and sixty years old. If the murderer was forty when he did it, then he’d only be about two hundred.”
“Boy, you’re funny,” she said. “Come on. I’m gonna look anyway.”
Sinbad agreed with Minerva so I went along. The bed of the cave was rocky and wet and slippery. In addition it slanted downhill. The writing overhead on the huge vault ended about halfway in. A little farther ahead the roof curved down, too, running into the cliff wall at the end. There was water there, glittering black and still.
I looked back. Our path had curved and the mouth of the cave couldn’t be seen anymore.
Minerva was looking up at a ledge. “Do you think Captain Billy was a pirate?” she asked.
“What gave you that idea?”
“Why else would he need a cave?”
“Well, We still don’t know that this is his cave,” I pointed out.
“You don’t believe anything,” she said.
She had scrambled up on the ledge now and was poking around with her arm. Then she let out a little yip.
“I know why they call this Dead Man’s Cove,” she said, her voice not too steady. “There’s a skeleton up here!”
The walls were wet and slippery, and even with sneakers on I almost fell. But finally I got close enough to tap her shoulder. “Where?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. Her small pointed face was white and you couldn’t blame her, considering what she was staring at. The skull was a bleached white and appeared to be grinning. There were a few small bones near it.
“Where’s the rest of it?” she asked.
“How do I know?” I said, my favorite reply lately. Then, all at once, I knew. “It’s the sign of Jolly Roger.”
“Jolly who?”
“Roger. You know. Pirates. The famous skull and crossbones they used on their black flag.
She swallowed hard. “So I was right,” she said, “He was a pirate.”
Well, the bones weren’t crossed, the way I’d always seen them in pictures, but it was certainly possible. It was hard, looking at the grinning yellowish white skull, not believing it. “What do you suppose it’s doing way up here?’ she asked.
“Maybe it’s a warning. Like maybe those white marks we saw coming in.”
“Well, you can see those,” she said. “But you’ve got to climb up and find this. If it’s a warning, why is it hidden?”
I didn’t know the answer to that one, either.
Then she looked down and smiled.
“Boy, Sinbad’s a good swimmer.”
At first it didn’t register. Because I know he’s a good swimmer. But when I jerked my head around I got rattled. He was swimming all right. Paddling around, splashing and puffing. Very happy.
“Come on,” I yelled and grabbed her arm. When we hit the floor of the cave the water was up to our knees. I grabbed Sinbad’s collar and found his leash. “Nobody said anything about going swimming today,” I told him. “Come on!”
I have to admit I was real nervous now. Minerva got the idea right away, too, and she didn’t argue or try to act brave. As we rounded the turn, running and splashing water all over us, I looked back at the ledge that hid the grinning skull. If the water rose any higher old Mr. Bones wouldn’t be such a hidden surprise to anybody. I’d forgotten completely about the tide.
Water now covered half the mouth of the cave. We got out, Sinbad swimming, Minerva and me wading. There wasn’t any more beach, or round rocks.
There wasn’t even any boat!
“I moored it,” I yelled frantically. “I know I tied it to that rock.”
Minerva kept her wits and kept looking. Then she laughed and pointed up over my head! “There it is,” she said.
The wind and incoming swells had simply lifted and knocked it over on its side against the cliff wall. I got to admit I wasn’t too calm when I checked to make sure it was still seaworthy. It was.
The storm had shifted southeast, and the sky lightened. But now the wind hauled stiff in our faces. We got the little light boat into the water, Sinbad barking his head off at the waves, and Minerva on the bow thwart holding on to him. When I pushed off I fell in and had to make a wild grab for the oars.
Going back, it was no cinch bucking the current and clearing those five big jagged rocks that guarded the entrance. I headed out to make sure I cleared them. I was facing the cave now. If you didn’t know where to look, you’d never find it. The entrance was almost completely covered.
We were about fifty yards out, heading windward into the open bay, when I started to bring her around. The boat was shipping water and hard to handle. The stiff gusts of wind didn’t help. Minerva got busy with the old tomato can and soon there was less water sloshing aroun
d. I was intent upon her face because she was guiding me in.
Suddenly she screamed happily.
“I can see the castle!”
I looked quickly. The angle was better out here. The cliff sloped back but you could see a slightly hipped roof and, going around it, that familiar white slatted captain’s walk.
A wave at that moment flung the boat athwart a dull green trough, nearly swamping us. I dipped oars and pulled hard, then breathed a sigh of relief. We were over the worst now and hadn’t much farther to go.
That’s when Minerva screamed again.
“There’s a ghost on the roof! A ghost on the roof!”
Sinbad absolutely went out of his loving mind barking, and she had to hold him back from the gunwale with all her might. But she wasn’t lying.
It was a tall figure. Standing straight against the yellow green sky, one hand on the white rail, and staring out to sea. You might say staring straight to us.
The current whipped me around again and I had to take my gaping eyes off what was up there. When I got things under control the mystery figure was gone.
“Did you see it? Did you see it?” Minerva chanted. I told her it was the first real ghost I’d ever seen.
Only I could have sworn it had blond hair.
CHAPTER 15
A Low Down Snake In The Grass
An hour later, Sinbad and me came within sight of our house. We’ve got the slightly hipped roof, like Captain Billy’s castle, and I could see our giant oak tree towering high. Maybe Pop and Mom would surprise me by being there waiting.
We had left the boat where Minerva found it, all of us soaking wet and anxious to get home. The colors of Minerva’s red-checked cotton shirt were blurring into pink streaks and her hair was straggly. But her natural color was back and a lot of her carefree spirit.
“Want to come to our place and take a swim?” she asked. “Not you Sinbad. You already had yours.”
I said, “I’m wet enough already without it.”