The Haunted Cabin Mystery

by Gertrude Chandler Warner

  Again the sky was dark and overcast. As they sat down for breakfast, Cap said, “Not much of a night for sleeping, was it?”

  Henry was flipping golden brown pancakes in an iron skillet. Violet carried them to the table on warmed plates.

  “Did you have trouble sleeping?” Benny asked Cap.

  “Some,” he said. “How about you?”

  “When I did sleep, I did it good,” Benny told him.

  “Then nobody heard any animals crashing around or strange cries or anything?” Cap asked.

  Violet put her fork down and looked up at him. “Well … ” she began.

  Jessie interrupted her quietly. “Come on, Violet, let’s do the dishes since Henry cooked.”

  “I felt terrible at breakfast,” Violet told Jessie. “Ever since we’ve been here, we’ve done nothing but keep secrets from Cap. It makes me feel dishonest.”

  Jessie nodded. “I feel the same way, but it’s almost over. If we can catch the people who are making him so nervous, keeping secrets from him will be worth it.”

  When the sun still hadn’t come out by afternoon, Cap shook his head. “At this rate, you won’t be able to get to town on Pilot tomorrow, either. I don’t know what we’re going to feed your grandfather on Saturday.”

  “We’ll do fine if we can get into the garden tomorrow,” Violet said. “But it’s probably pure mud out there now.”

  “Worse comes to worse, I can tell you how to build bridges into the garden,” Cap told her.

  “Grandfather will be able to get here without building bridges, won’t he?” Benny asked Cap with a worried look.

  The old man nodded. “He’ll have no problem in one of those big cars he always rents. It’s not like having a horse loaded with four kids and a bunch of groceries.” He glanced around. “Is that Henry back out at the barn again? Pilot’s going to be lonesome when that boy leaves.”

  Jessie knew what Henry was doing out there with Pilot. He was fixing the barn lights so that all of them could be turned on with a single switch just inside Pilot’s stall. She was really proud of the plan they had worked out. And they had all gone over it so many times the night before that she was positive it would work.

  Every single one of them had a different job. Jessie herself would be the lookout in the hayloft. She would have the flashlight. The minute she saw anyone creeping into the barn, she would wink the flashlight three times out of the window of the loft.

  Benny was to stay on the back porch and keep watching to see her signal from the hayloft window. The minute he saw Jessie flash the light three times, he would switch on the floodlight and make the whole barnyard as bright as day.

  Violet would be standing inside the barn, just inside Pilot’s stall where she could reach the switch Henry had fixed. When she saw the lights go on outside, she would turn on all the lights inside the barn. Whoever tried to come in there would be covered with light from both inside and out of the barn.

  Henry was to stand just inside the chicken yard fence. He got that job because he was the biggest and the fastest runner. He would leave the gate open a little bit so that he could get out and start running fast. He would race across the yard and slam the barn door and lock the prowler inside. That way he couldn’t run away before they caught him. Everything had to work perfectly.

  That was the longest day ever. When dinnertime finally came, nobody was even hungry. “You kids must be excited to see your grandfather,” Cap said when Benny turned down a second helping of spaghetti.

  Finally, it felt strange to be in bed fully dressed except for their shoes. They hardly breathed waiting for Henry to decide it was time to go out and take their places.

  “It’s so noisy tonight,” Benny whispered.

  “It sounds that way because we’re being so quiet,” Jessie told him. But it was noisy. The frogs croaked. Off in the woods, the screech owl gave its trembling eerie call, sending a shiver up everyone’s spine.

  Henry watched the moon climb up the overcast sky. Mostly it was only behind the clouds. Once in a while, it broke free and flooded the wet barn and the yard around it with a silvery light.

  Jessie was watching, too. “Look how plainly you can see everything in that light.”

  Henry nodded. “We should go as soon as the moon gets hidden behind that big bank of clouds.”

  The minute the moon slid under the clouds, Violet and Jessie went outside. They stood in the shadows of the cabin only a minute before making a dash for the barn door which Henry had left open for them.

  “Is your heart beating like everything?” Violet asked Jessie when they were safe inside the barn and Jessie was starting up into the loft.

  Jessie nodded. “I don’t like to think I’m afraid, but my skin feels creepy, too.”

  “I’m scared and I know it,” Violet told her.

  Jessie felt her way carefully up the wooden ladder into the loft. With the flashlight in her hand, she crept through the dark to the high window.

  When Violet let herself inside the stall where Pilot stood, the big horse stamped his foot, then whinnied softly. After she had located the light switch, Violet stroked Pilot’s long warm head.

  Back on the porch, Henry and Benny watched the girls make their shadowy run across the open yard. “Now it’s my turn,” Henry told Benny. “Whatever you do, don’t get sleepy.”

  “I’m already sleepy,” Benny told him, “but that doesn’t mean I’ll go to sleep. I’ve even practiced pinching myself to stay awake.”

  When the moon disappeared again, Henry made his way to the chicken yard and stood by the tall post just inside the gate.

  The moon continued to rise in the sky as the time passed. Henry worried about Benny, back on the porch, pinching himself to stay awake. He even worried that the prowlers might not come at all.

  He leaned against the fence post and sighed. This wasn’t the first mystery they had been involved in, but it was the most puzzling. Even if he hadn’t liked Cap Lambert as much as he did, it was terrible for someone to be scaring an old man. The plan had to work.

  Suddenly something caught his eye. Something or someone smaller than a man, all dressed in dark clothing, was creeping around the side of the barn, moving awkwardly.

  He drew in his breath and held it. How strangely the creature walked, unevenly, as if it were dragging something heavy at its side. Then the dark creature melted into the shadow of the barn, and Henry let his breath out slowly.

  In a minute it would be inside the barn. In a minute he would see Jessie’s signal from the barn loft. He had to be ready to run faster then he had ever run in his whole life.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Hayloft

  Henry watched the barn loft for Jessie’s signal. He pushed the chicken yard gate open a little wider so he could make a faster getaway.

  Just as he saw the three quick blinks of light at the loft window, something shot past him through the open gate to the hen yard, almost throwing him off balance.

  At least Benny had not gone to sleep. As Henry got his balance and raced madly toward the barn door, lights seemed to come from everywhere. The barnyard was as brightly lit as daytime, and the barn itself looked lit up for a party.

  But the small dark figure Henry had seen creeping into the barn only moments before was getting away. It had stepped into the barn and right back out through the barn door that he was supposed to have slammed shut. Now it raced toward the orchard.

  He had failed.

  He hadn’t managed to get to the barn door in time. As he bolted after the escaping figure, paying no attention to where he was going, he tripped on something that made a loud metallic noise. He fell to the ground with a yell of pain. As he tried to get up, he found himself tangled in a heavy woven bag.

  A shovel. The thief had been dragging a heavy shovel and that bag along behind him. No wonder he had walked that strange way. But of course he had to have some heavy tool to dig all those holes. The shovel scraping against the rocks in the ground must have c
aused “that scraping sound” Benny had heard.

  As Henry leaped to his feet, Violet sped past him, rapidly gaining on the running figure. The whistling warning signal came from somewhere in the orchard, but too late. Henry and Violet caught up with the runner at about the same moment. All three of them went down together in a pile, rolling over and over on the muddy ground. Henry got to his feet first and grabbed the thief with both arms. He still didn’t know what he had caught. It was wearing a dark mask and a black hood over its head. It kicked and beat at Henry with its fists as he took it back toward the barnyard.

  Once there, he shoved it against the side of the barn, and tried to pin back its arms.

  He was hearing all sorts of astonishing things at once. Benny was yelling and crying out, “Take that! Get going!” at the top of his lungs while Jessie and Violet danced around Henry, trying to help but not knowing how to.

  Even Cap, in his white nightshirt, was coming, with a crutch in one hand and his cane in the other.

  “Pull his mask off,” Henry shouted at Jessie. “I don’t dare let him go a minute.”

  Just as Jessie got a firm grip on the mask, Cap came up behind her, breathing heavily. With a final jerk, Jessie managed to get the dark fabric loose. Jessie gasped. A tumble of bright curls fell on the shoulder of the robe, and a young girl’s terrified face looked back into hers.

  “Susie,” Cap cried out in shock.

  Susie Hodges looked up at Cap, covered her face with her hands, and began to sob bitterly. Violet went past Jessie to put her arms around the girl. “There,” she said. “Don’t cry. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

  Cap reached for the girl’s hand. “Violet’s right, Susie. We’re not going to hurt you. But I don’t understand what’s going on.”

  When his words only started a fresh flood of tears, Violet took the girl’s hand and turned to Cap. “Maybe if we all went inside out of the damp air, then she’d feel better.”

  Susie shook her head fiercely. “No, I can’t. Ned.”

  “Where is your little brother?” Jessie asked gently.

  “Out there,” Susie said, nodding toward the orchard.

  “Did he make that warning whistle?” Henry asked.

  When she nodded, Cap’s voice turned gruff. “That’s enough. I want explanations, not this nonsense. Susie, call Ned, and both of you come inside my cabin this very minute.”

  Susie looked at him, her damp face tearful, then called her brother’s name. He walked forward slowly, a small fair-haired boy with blue eyes and freckles. When Susie put out her hand, he seized it gratefully.

  Cap hobbled along ahead. He led all the children into the house and glanced at the clock. “Two o’clock in the morning,” he snorted. “I don’t know what this world is coming to.”

  Benny stared at Susie. “Boy, you sure aren’t any ghost. I was afraid this place was haunted.”

  Susie, her head in her hands, sat trembling on a chair by the fireplace with Ned on the floor by her feet. When Jessie started off into the kitchen, Cap crossly asked her where she thought she was going.

  “To make some hot cocoa,” she said, ignoring his gruff tone.

  He hesitated, then nodded as he turned back to the rest of the children. “Where should we begin?”

  “With the holes in the barn,” Benny suggested. “I fell on a board that had been pulled up from the floor of the barn, and there was a hole dug under it.”

  At Cap’s startled look, Henry took over. He told about the whistling noise and Benny hearing scraping.

  “And the strange light we saw from the porch that first night,” Violet added. “You told us how you hadn’t been able to do your work,” she reminded him. “But there weren’t as many eggs as there should have been, and the garden had been picked. No rotten vegetables or fruit anywhere.”

  “We were hungry,” Susie wailed. “It was going to waste.”

  “My prize Rhode Island red chicken, too?” Cap asked, suddenly sounding angry again.

  “We never took a chicken, not ever,” Ned said. “Just some eggs that weren’t being gathered. And we fed the chickens, too, didn’t we, Susie?”

  “You see, Cap,” Jessie broke in. “It was all too mysterious. Finally we set a trap for the thieves.”

  “We’re not thieves,” Susie said, glaring at her. “We were only trying to help Mother.”

  “Did you make those awful whistling noises in the woods, Ned?” Cap asked. When the little boy nodded, he turned to Susie. “What about the strange lights?”

  “We carried a kerosene lantern to see by and we dressed all in black so no one could see us.”

  “And the scraping sound?” Benny asked.

  “I could only find a really heavy shovel. I had to drag it along with the bag I carried.”

  “You’ve already explained the vegetables and the eggs, but why in the world would you tear up my barn floor and dig holes all over my place?”

  Susie looked down so that her words came out muffled. “That’s what the bag was for. We were looking for buried pirate treasure. I read about it being hidden here, and we needed the money so very badly.”

  Jessie came in with cups of cocoa. She stopped in front of Susie and frowned. “Did you read this article about buried pirate gold in your newspaper?”

  Susie nodded. “This man wrote that a lot of pirate treasure was supposed to be hidden right here in Owl’s Glen around an old cabin that had been here for a hundred years. Cap’s cabin was the only one like that.”

  The Alden children looked at each other. Paul Edwards would feel terrible if he knew how much trouble his words had caused. What had he said to them on the boat? “Stories of buried treasure never seem to die away, but nobody ever finds any gold, either.”

  CHAPTER 12

  The Real Treasure

  Cap’s voice was gentle again as he turned to Susie and her brother. “Does your mother know about this treasure hunt of yours?”

  “Oh, no,” Susie cried, her eyes wide with fright. “She would never let us do it. She must never find out. But we simply had to help her. After Daddy died, our money ran out right away. She tried everywhere to find work, but she only knows how to take care of people and cook wonderful food.”

  “Where is she now while you kids are out gallivanting in the middle of the night like this?” Cap asked.

  “She sits with old Granny Smothers, who can’t stay nights alone. But she’s poor, too. She can only pay Mother enough money to meet the mortgage. Ned and I thought … ”

  “Didn’t you and Ned ever think of coming to your friends?” Cap asked crossly. “Didn’t you know that we loved you and would help if we knew you needed it?”

  “Please don’t fuss at Susie,” Violet said. “When our mother and father died, we didn’t think of going to friends, either. We just found the boxcar and set out to take care of ourselves.”

  Cap grinned and put his arm around Susie. “Of course you’re right. I didn’t mean to be cross. It’s just that I feel so bad that you went hungry and worked so hard and all for nothing.”

  “I’m really sorry about the vegetables and the eggs,” Susie said.

  “And the chicken?” Cap asked again.

  “We didn’t take any chicken,” Ned repeated.

  “Forget the chicken then,” Cap said, leaning toward Susie and Ned. “Let me tell you about those stories of pirate gold. They are like fairy stories, fun to think about but dangerous to believe in. But there is treasure in this neighborhood, Susie, real genuine treasure.”

  Her blue eyes stared at him in wonder as he took her hands. “Our real treasure is the love we have for each other.” As Susie dropped her eyes, he shook his head. “I treasure you children and your mother above all the gold in this world. I can prove it.”

  The room was completely still as all the children stared at him. “Do you know what I need more than anything? It’s somebody to keep this cabin clean and fix me healthy hot food the way these children have. To listen to my stories and tel
l me theirs, and make me laugh. Susie, these children are going back home Saturday. I want you to ask your mother if she would take a job with me. I’d pay handsomely to have the rest of my days as happy and comfortable as the last week has been.”

  “Cap,” Violet cried, running to hug him. “What a wonderful idea. Would she do that, Susie? Would your mother do that?”

  “I’m sure she would,” Susie said. “She likes taking care of people more than anything in the world.”

  The tiniest tinge of light was showing over the woods when Susie and Ned left for home. As Benny stood at the door, watching them leave, he looked up at Cap. “Doesn’t anyone want to hear about me and the fox?” he asked.

  “What fox?” Cap looked down at him, confused.

  “The one that ran into the chicken yard just as I turned the floodlight on.”

  The girls sprang to their feet and would have started right out to the chicken house but Benny stopped them. “He’s gone now. I ran after him and threw rocks,” he explained. “He snapped at me but he kept on running.”

  Henry stared at Benny with his mouth open, remembering that something had brushed by him just as he saw Jessie’s signal. And Benny’s shouts while Henry was pinning Susie to the wall. “Take that,” Benny had been yelling. “Get going!”

  “Did you beat him to the chickens?” Cap asked, grinning.

  Benny nodded. “They were all flapping around on the ceiling when I went in. I drove him off before he caught any. And I locked them up safe, too. He smelled bad anyway.”

  Cap leaned on his cane as he rose from his chair. “I hope you children haven’t any more excitement up your sleeves for me. I’ve just about had my share for this year and the next one coming.”

  As Jessie undressed for bed, she thought about their mystery man, Mr. Jay. Maybe it was just as well they had never mentioned him to Cap. But she still wondered why he had been walking up and down Cap’s road, and why he always seemed to be spying on them and was so unfriendly.