by Helen Wells
She was not too familiar with the handling of boats, but it struck her as odd to see the oarlocks wrapped with cloth.
Whoever had used the boat evidently had not wanted to make any noise, she concluded, so he had muffled the sound of the oars sliding in the locks.
“Hello, down there!” Cherry heard above her somewhere. Looking up to her left, she saw Meg poised like a pretty water sprite, on the rocky ledge. “Come on up,” Meg invited. “Use the steps down there at the end.”
Cherry found the steps, climbed up, and she and Meg walked along the ledge toward the rear of the cavern where there was an opening in the rocks and more steps going up. These vanished in complete darkness.
“Now I’ll show you my special treat, if you don’t mind a little dirt,” Meg said, beginning to mount the stairs.
“We’ll have to turn into night owls to see anything, I should think,” Cherry told her with a laugh. “It’s pitch black up there.”
“Meg of the Mounties is never unprepared,” declared the other. “I have brought with me my faithful flashlight, as you Americans call it.” She snapped it on.
“And what do you Canadians call it?” asked Cherry as she started to follow Meg and the yellow circle of light.
“Flashlight,” replied Meg gaily. “Every time Aunt Phyllis used the English term torch for flashlight I had visions of a medieval character bearing aloft a burning torch.”
The steps led up to a sort of tunnel or corridor, which they walked along for several yards.
Then Meg stopped. “Here we are,” she said, stooping over to examine the rocks in the wall to her right. She played the light over the wall for a minute or so. “Now, where is the thing, anyway?” She felt along the wall with her hand. “Oh, I’ve got it! See, Cherry, it’s this little flat knob of stone.”
“I see it,” Cherry told her.
“Now, watch,” ordered Meg. She pulled on it and a thin slab of rock grated noisily and swung outward, revealing an opening large enough for a person to enter. Meg promptly bent over and went inside. Cherry followed.
They found themselves in a narrow niche about six feet long and high enough for a not-too-tall man to stand upright without bumping his head.
“It’s the smugglers’ old hidey-hole,” explained Meg. “Isn’t it wonderfully eerie? Lloyd and I discovered it one summer ever so long ago. We never told a soul. We kept it a deep, dark secret.”
“My, it certainly is eerie,” agreed Cherry, eying the ancient stones, gray and cold. She could easily picture a smuggler armed with pistols and cutlass hiding from his pursuers.
“Gives me the same delicious shivers that reading a ghost story does,” she said.
“Doesn’t it,” said Meg. She paused, cocking her head. “Listen!” She put a restraining hand on Cherry’s arm. “I thought I heard something.”
They both listened. A harsh sound as though of something scraping over stone or sand came to them from close by. Cherry, who was standing near the wall, smelled an overpowering odor of fish. The sound seemed to come closer. It was just outside. Just then, to the girls’ astonishment, they saw the slab door of the niche closing. For a moment, they stood stock-still, watching with horrified eyes, the door moving inch by inch.
Cherry was first to act. Pushing Meg aside, she gave the door a tremendous kick. It swung open with a sort of shrieking scrape across the stones.
Meg leaned against Cherry and laughed weakly.
“Aren’t we silly?” she asked. “We almost frightened ourselves out of our wits. You see there’s a vent hole up above somewhere. When the wind blows in a certain direction, there’s a great rush of air along this tunnel. The wind has veered since we came in the cave and the draft pushed the door shut. You see, Cherry, it was only the wind!” she said, flinging out her arm dramatically.
Cherry let out her breath with a puff. “Whee! I thought we were about to be held captive by pirates or no telling what,” she said.
“Well, I promised you a special treat and you can’t say I didn’t give you one,” Meg pointed out.
“At least I’ll be prepared the next time you use the phrase,” observed Cherry ruefully. “Incidentally, I think I’d better be getting back.”
“You’re the doctor—I mean the nurse,” Meg replied. “I’d better be getting back myself. It’s probably almost time for my story hour at the library.” She bent down. “I suppose I’d better lead the way,” she said and went with stooped back out the door. “Oh, dear!” she cried at once. “I’ve lost an earring. Will you see if I dropped it in there?” She handed Cherry the flashlight.
As Cherry stood with her back against the wall, she got another strong whiff of fish. She sniffed. It was definitely coming from the wall behind her. Turning around, she saw some kind of cloth tucked in a crevice between the stones. A corner stuck out and, on impulse, she gave it a tug. It had been stuffed in loosely and it came out at her first tug. She held in her hand a tote bag of canvas—a creel by the smell of it. Stamped in black ink on one side were the initials J. C.
“Jock Cameron’s creel,” thought Cherry, suppressing a gasp. “The day I saw him on the hill, he had one just like this. That night I saw him on the lawn he must have been on his way here. Had he hidden here? Why?” With these questions buzzing in her head, Cherry had not heard Meg calling her. Now she heard Meg almost shouting her name.
“Can’t you find the earring?” cried Meg.
Cherry thrust the tote bag under her arm.
“I’m hunting,” she sang out to Meg, and played the flashlight into the corners of the hidey-hole. There was a glint and Cherry pounced. “Here it is!” she exclaimed. She crouched over and made her way through the door.
“Thank you, Cherry, I’m awfully glad you found it,” Meg said when they were outside the hidey-hole. “I just couldn’t bear losing another. I have more unmatched earrings than anyone I know.”
She paused, sniffing, then exclaimed, “Goodness! Where is that strong fishy odor coming from?”
“From this,” Cherry said, holding the tote bag up to the beam of the flashlight. “You see, I found something besides your earring in the hidey-hole.”
Meg examined it, looking closely at the initials J. C. “Now, what do you suppose Old Jock Cameron was doing in that hidey-hole?” she said, puzzled.
“You recognize this tote bag?” Cherry cried.
Meg shook her head. “No, that was only a calculated guess,” she admitted. “But that’s the kind of a creel some fishermen use. And Lloyd was telling me about Old Jock going fishing on his days off. The tote bag has J. C. on it. Taken altogether, it seemed to add up to Jock Cameron.” She sighed. “And I practically just got through telling you, Cherry, that Lloyd and I had kept that place a deep, dark secret. But here’s evidence that our cherished childhood secret has been discovered by someone. And that someone probably is Old Jock.” Meg ended on a mock-tragic note, and sighed deeply.
“Why do you suppose he, if it were Mr. Cameron, left the creel in there?” asked Cherry.
“Oh, he leaves it here, so he’ll have it when he goes fishing, I suppose,” replied Meg.
“I suppose I’d better put it back where I found it, in any case,” Cherry said.
Meg giggled and held her nose delicately. “Yes, put it back quickly.”
Cherry ducked into the hidey-hole and stuffed the creel again into the crevice. Outside once more, with the door to the hidey-hole closed, Cherry said, “If that was Mr. Cameron’s creel, do you suppose that is his boat we saw tied up when we came into the cave?”
“With muffled oarlocks?” said Meg, starting back toward the cave entrance, with Cherry following after her. “Oh, no, I don’t think so, unless …”
Before she could finish, Cherry interrupted. “So you noticed the muffled oarlocks, too.”
“I noticed them right away,” answered Meg. “And, as I started to say, before I was interrupted,” she said teasingly, “Jock Cameron wouldn’t use a boat with muffled oarlocks, unless he a
nd some of the men have been going night fishing in the quiet water of the bay outside this cave. It’s an old fisherman’s trick to muffle the oarlocks, especially for night fishing, so as not to make any noise and frighten the fish away.”
“But isn’t it unusual for fishermen to be using your private bay and beach, Meg?” Cherry asked. “You said they did sometimes, but …”
Meg now interrupted Cherry with, “It seems they must be using it pretty regularly. Yes, it is unusual. But if Old Jock and some of his friends are concerned, I don’t want to say anything. I just wouldn’t feel right about it. All the same, it might be a good idea to find out just what is going on around here.”
As they talked, the girls had been picking their way through the passage and down the steps to the ledge along the side of the cave. They now stood at the end of the ledge in the daylight.
“We could ask Lloyd,” suggested Cherry. “He might know.”
“I doubt it,” Meg said. “He doesn’t get to hear much about island goings-on. You see, he’s been away so long that Balfourians consider him almost an outsider, so they’re careful what they say to him. Of course they’ll get used to him in time. No, the best way to find out about this”—she pointed to the boat on the sand below the ledge—“is to keep our own eyes and ears open. Especially you, Cherry Ames.”
“Why me? I’m definitely an outsider,” Cherry pointed out.
“But I think you are more observant than any of us,” Meg declared, then added mischievously, “Also, because you have a penchant for solving mysteries, so Dr. Fortune told me.”
CHAPTER IX
The Man on the Hill
IN THE WEEKS THAT FOLLOWED THE VISIT TO ROGUES’ Cave, Cherry saw little of either Meg or Lloyd.
Meg had begun working as a volunteer in the office at the hospital. In addition, she was helping out at the library in the afternoons until someone could be found to replace the librarian’s young assistant who had left to get married. Meg spent most evenings until bedtime with her father. She was too busy to be bothered about rowboats with muffled oars or creels with initials on them.
Meg was very happy to see her father’s day-by-day improvement. Dr. Mac had taken Sir Ian off the Sippy diet, and had introduced a diet high in nutrition for him, to which Sir Ian had responded well. Although Sir Ian was still weak and any unusual effort tired him, both Dr. Mac and Cherry found his reactions to the change in diet very encouraging.
Lloyd was utterly absorbed in the mines. He practically “ate, drank, and slept” Balfour Mines. However, he always dropped in to see his uncle for a few minutes every day, then hurried back to the mine office.
Cherry, left in the great house with Sir Ian and the servants, was not kept as occupied as Meg and Lloyd. With his improving condition, her patient’s needs were less. And he made less demands upon her. In fact, he did not want to he helped.
“I often smile to myself,” Cherry wrote to the five Spencer Club girls with whom she always shared an apartment when she was in New York City, “because Sir Ian’s attitude is just like that of a small boy who is determined to be on his own. The other day he told me quite cockily that he could go downstairs by himself when I tried to guide him as he fumbled with his foot for the next step. Also, for two hours in the morning, he has been shutting himself in the library to work. The doctor has warned him that he must take it easy, not overdo. So I tap on the door and call ‘Time’s up’ when two hours have passed. Sir Ian comes out grumbling ‘One of these days, nurse lass, ye can tap a hole in the door like a woodpecker and I’ll pay ye no mind a-tall.’ ”
Since her duties were not now so consuming of time and effort, and she was quite often alone, Cherry found her attention kept turning to the boat with the muffled oarlocks and Old Jock Cameron’s tote bag—if, indeed, it were his—in the hidey-hole.
From her windows, Cherry could look down over the cliffs. Although she often watched for a rowboat entering or leaving the bay at Rogues’ Cave, she never saw one. She tried to draw out the Barclay servants by asking if they had seen a rowboat in the bay. None of them had. Ramsay, the gardener, went down to the beach one day to get sand and pebbles for the garden walks. When he returned, Cherry asked if he had noticed a rowboat in the cave.
“The day Miss Meg and I visited the cave, we saw one,” Cherry said.
“Then someone must have taken it away,” Ramsay replied. “I dinna see any boat.”
Then one morning while Cherry was having her “elevenses”—the customary tea at eleven o’clock—an interesting thing took place. She was sitting in the sun on the terrace near the kitchen, drinking her tea, when she became aware of Tess and a man talking inside.
Cherry heard the man say, “Na, na, Tess, ye canna persuade me. I’ll na go upstairs to see Sir Ian.”
“Then why do ye come here every day to pester me with questions?” Tess asked tartly. “How does he feel today? ye ask. Is he better? ye ask. What did he do today? ye ask. Did Sir Ian ask for me and did ye tell him that Old Jock was only waiting for him to get weel? ye ask. What’s the trouble with you, Jock Cameron? Ye should go talk with your old friend, Sir Ian, and find out for yourself.”
“I’ve my reasons,” came Old Jock’s reply. “Dinna ask me what they are, for I’ll na tell ye. When I’m ready to see my friend, I’ll come and na afore. And mark ye, Tess, ye are not to tell him or anyone else, I come here.”
“Is he and all Balfour to think, then, ye have forsaken Sir Ian in his sickness, Jock Cameron?” demanded Tess.
“Ah, ’tis something that canna he helped,” Old Jock said, and his voice sounded sad.
The back door closed. Cherry stood up to catch a glimpse of him, but shrubbery hid the kitchen entrance and she did not see him as he left.
When, a few minutes later, Tess came out to clear away the tea things, Cherry said, “I’m afraid I heard you talking with Mr. Cameron just now.”
Tess looked startled at first, then she said, “But I know ye waudna tell Sir Ian about Old Jock. Even though I get angry with Old Jock and his stubbornness, I trust him to do what he thinks is best for his friend. Ye must not think hard of him, Miss Cherry, for all he is acting so strangely.”
Cherry scarcely knew what to think of the man. She did wish that she could get a chance to talk with him herself.
Cherry had made a habit of taking a walk in the afternoon after tea. Usually she went to the top of the hill of the abandoned mine, for there was a glorious view of the sea and the island from there.
One sunshiny afternoon, about three weeks after her arrival on Balfour, Cherry started out on her usual afternoon walk.
She was at the foot of the hill when she saw the top of a man’s head appear just above the crest. He was walking up the other side and appeared bit by bit—head, shoulders, arms, body—as though he were a seed shown sprouting by delayed photography. As soon as he reached the summit of the hill, he looked about on all sides. Cherry, standing behind a scrubby black oak, escaped his attention.
Evidently satisfied that he was not observed, the man took something from his coat pocket and a second later Cherry saw a bright flash. He repeated the flash several times, turning in his hand what she decided was a mirror, to reflect the sun.
All the while he flashed his mirror, the man was gazing intently at something beyond the cliffs, not too far from shore.
For ten or more minutes, she watched him signaling with his mirror the dots and dashes of the Morse Code. It seemed to her a curious thing for the man to be doing. She wished she could have read the message he was sending with his short and long flashes. Then, even as she was watching, the man vanished. She saw him bending over among the bushes one moment, and the next, he was gone.
Cherry started running up the hill, fully expecting to see the man reappear at any instant. She reached the summit, however, without any sign of him. A quick glance down the opposite side revealed that he had not gone in that direction. The hillsides were empty of movement, except for the scurry of a rabbit or oth
er small animal among the rocks and bushes. Cherry leaned against the big rock, which was at the very peak of the hill in the stiff grass and bushes, to catch her breath.
It came to her after a while where she had seen the man before. He was the short, muscular man, in the sharply tailored dark clothes, who had jostled her the day she and the Barclays had come over on the Sandy Fergus. She had had a good look at him on the boat. With the sun shining on him up there on the hill, she had seen him clearly.
Wondering to whom the man had been signaling, she scrambled up on the rock for a better view of the sea. She felt the rock tilt as if it were loose in its socket of earth. It was an odd sort of rock—gray and peculiarly rough and pitted, rather like foam.
Getting her balance, Cherry stood up on the rock and peered eagerly beyond the cliffs. She observed a fishing schooner a little way out from shore and a large rowboat coming toward the island. It was headed, so she thought, in the direction of the Barclays’ private beach.
The boat was coming on and she saw that there were half a dozen or more men in it, four of whom were straining at the oars evidently in an effort to increase its speed. As they drew closer, Cherry perceived that they were maneuvering the boat to head it into the pass between the rocks at the entrance to the little bay at Rogues’ Cave.
“The tide!” Cherry cried aloud. “When the tide is in …” It dawned on her then what Meg had meant about sailing the ketch when she and Lloyd were kids. They had had to wait for the tide, in order to get in and out of the bay.
Now Cherry knew why the man had been signaling. He was letting the men in the fishing schooner know when it was safe to come in with the rowboat. That was it, Cherry decided.
The men guided the boat through the pass between the rocks and were lost to view under the brow of the cliff above Rogues’ Cave.