The Whisper on the Stair/Chapter 36
The street car was crowded, but long before they got to Hampton Val had been able to catalog every person in it; there was no one he knew; no one, so far as he could determine, connected with Teck. So far, so good. He promised himself a little fun this morning, if they managed to elude Teck.
It was the last act of the play, he told himself. The girl was sitting beside him—he was thrillingly conscious of that—and they were on their way to uncover the treasure; it made little difference to him, actually, whether or not there was a treasure. He had had his thrill out of the chase. That had become his philosophy—that the joy of Life was not in the capture but in the chase—the chase was the important thing. He was not able to relinquish himself absolutely to this philosophy, however, for the simple reason that there was the slight matter of the capture of Jessica to be still attended to—surely his joy in that would not be ended with the chase.
There are those who would say that, did he but know it, his great moment of fulfillment, as regards to Jessica, was in the chase, and he would come to realize that in the end; Val, however, cast that thought aside negligently, scornfully. To possess Jessica. . . . He knew of no simple chase that could compare to that. No . . . perhaps his philosophy was not exactly all that it should be, either, he considered. Perhaps there was something wrong with a conduct of life, a method of thought, that could be summed up in a sentence. Life—he capitalized it—was bigger than that. They would see. . . .
Jessica broke into his thoughts. “I’m all excited, all atingle,” she confessed, turning to him. He was recalled to mundane things with a start—he had forgotten where he was, where he was going, in the last minute. He came back to life to find himself sitting next to the most adorable creature in all this world—in fact, in all—possible worlds, he decided, taking in rather a great deal of territory.
“In a few minutes we’ll know whether it’s true or not,” she said. “Whether there really is any money⸺”
“Certainly there is, Jessica,” answered Morley. “D’you see that spot of coast?” He pointed far off to the sea line. “That’s the exact point where a Spanish galleon, loaded with gold, was sunk in the sixteenth century. The ship sank, but they managed to get the gold off. From ancient manuscripts, I have learned that the doubloons, the gold ornaments, the rubies and diamonds, hundreds of pounds of fine ivory, spices from Araby and scents from Cathay—all, all are buried on Mount Monroe. Your father had some queer idea that it was his own money he was burying, but he was mistaken. He was burying Spanish gold, romance, adventure, love—everything!”
She broke in with a gay laugh, fully restored to herself now.
“Oh, I’m sure you’re right,—Val,” she tinkled. Val felt happy, supremely happy. The sound of his name in her voice, the way it came off her lips, slowly, as though she were loath to let it go, caressingly, hesitatingly!
“What are you going to do with all that money?” Val asked.
“Me? Oh, I don’t know; just he happy, I guess. Poor old dad,” she murmured, recalling him to her mind by some chain of thought that Val could only guess at.
“Happy . . .” murmured Val. “If money could bring happiness, I guess I’d have much more than my share.”
“Haven’t you?” she asked.
He stared at her. “Not yet,” he said slowly. “I’m waiting for . . . something . . .”
She had no answer to this, but the tip of a little ear turned rosy, and he knew that she understood. He was satisfied. Really, you know⸺
“Hampton!” shouted the conductor.
The party got off there. Val and Eddie looked around them sharply, but could discern no glimpse of their enemy.
“Thrown him off,” remarked Val.
“Maybe, sir,” disagreed Eddie. He was a pessimist; he always hoped for the worst, so that the best could surprise him.
Val looked at him quickly. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Did you see anything, old crêpe-hanger?”
Eddie shook his head. “Nothing, sir. But we haven’t seen the last of that bird yet.”
As a matter of fact, they hadn’t. Far back in the recesses of a store that looked out upon the car line, Teck was stationed, his bright eyes observing everything without himself being seen. Back of the store stood the high-powered car that he had picked up, somewhere.
At the suggestion of Jessica, the party stopped at a hardware dealer’s to get a new battery for Val’s flashlight. He would need it in the cave, which, while not very deep, was low and dark.
In a few minutes they had left Hampton behind and were in the open country. Val and Jessica, like two children, chattered all the way in their excitement. Jessica was now her light-hearted self, with the glow of happiness in her eyes, the lithe swing of youth in her walk; the fresh air whipped the roses into her cheeks as they went along, her hand in the crook of Val’s arm. Val did his best to keep his feet on the ground, but it was tough work. He felt that, given just a little more, he would tear his moorings asunder and float high over the world, like a great balloon that spurned such common things as good red Virginia soil.
They gave the little cottage where Jessica had been living a wide berth and approached Mount Monroe by a road Val had not yet trodden. He could see the hill from where they were, a knobby, brush and vegetation-covered eminence rising to a height of perhaps two hundred feet.
The road they walked was very narrow, so that they had to go along in single file. On each side the underbrush hemmed them in completely. Beyond the brush was the forest, one of the few forests left in that part of the country. Once Val thought he heard something moving in the bushes opposite them.
He leaped for the bushes and tore them aside, but could find nothing.
He laughed. “Nerves getting jumpy again,” he remarked. “But I guess we’ve left him behind this time for fair.”
“Him,” of course, referred to Teck, and the very allusion to the man caused a slight damper to fall on the party. They pushed on in silence after that for a few minutes.
Finally they reached the foot of the hill. From where they stood it appeared to Val that the hill was much bigger than he had thought it from a distance. It was not very high, but it spread over a great deal of territory, and it was so heavily wooded that it seemed almost impenetrable. Plainly, one would have to know his way about, on this hill, to get anywhere.
“From now on I’d better lead,” said Jessica, coming to the front. “I know just how to get to it.”
They followed her in single file through a tiny footpath that she led them to unerringly, winding away up the hillside, around and through the trees, skirting great bowlders that suddenly blocked the path, and in one place hugging the side of the hill seventy-five feet above the solid earth, a little path only two feet wide.
“I say,” protested Val, “this wasn’t built for a man of my displacement. Parts of me hang over, you know.”
Jessica looked back at him, laughing. “Well, don’t lose your nerve, anyway.”
They hugged the wall until they came around the next curve, where the path broadened out again. Val and the two behind him breathed a sigh of relief. As for Jessica, the peril of the passage had not seemed to affect her in the least. She had not gone that way for years, but it had come back to her instantly, and she experienced all the old time confidence. They kept on their way, up around the sides of the hill, until it seemed as though it would not be possible to go further—as though they had covered every possible part of the hill.
“Here we are,” called Jessica from around the bend in the road.
They hurried around to where she was standing. It was steep on the side of the hill, almost at the summit. On one side rose the wall of soil and vegetation. In front was a plateau of perhaps twenty feet. Over the edge of the plateau there was a sheer drop of a hundred and fifty feet to the rocks below, broken by an occasional tree that jutted out from the side of the rocky slope.
“Where is it?” asked Val. They clustered around her.
“There,” she pointed to a mass of shrubbery at the side of the road that looked no different from the shrubbery all along the way. “You could never find it, not in a million years,” she said.
Stepping to it, she forced the shrubbery aside, disclosing a hole that was perhaps two feet high, stopped up by a large bowlder. “You’ll have to move the rock away.”
It was true. So cleverly had Nature concealed the place that one might have camped outside of the cave for weeks and never noticed it; it was a fitting hiding place—one could never in a lifetime come upon it by accident. And having come upon it, it would never occur to one that any other human had ever been there before. Old Peter Pomeroy had chosen wisely—that could be seen at a glance.
“All right, Eddie,” said Val. “Let’s go.” He motioned to the great bowlder.
The two men attempted perfunctorily to roll the rock away from the entrance, but it scarcely budged. They pushed again, with the same result. It was plain that this rock could not be moved in that perfunctory manner—they would have to go at it in earnest.
“Got that cold chisel, Eddie?” asked Val.
“Here y’are, sir,” Eddie handed him the chisel. With this Val dug away as much dirt as possible from the base of the bowlder, to give it free passage. It was imbedded in the soil to a depth of several inches. Val cleared away the soil in front.
He took off his coat, and Eddie did likewise.
“Now, Eddie,” he said. The two men advanced upon the bowlder once more.
“Let’s do it at the same moment,” said Val, taking his place on the opposite side of the stone and getting as good a grip as possible. Eddie nodded.
“One—two—three—Go!” said Val. Red in the face from the effort, their muscles bulging, the two men heaved. The rock moved a few inches away from the entrance to the cave.
“Again,” directed Val. They moved it several inches more. In a few minutes they had it far enough away from the black entrance to the hole in the side of the hill to permit them to enter.
Panting and perspiring, the men paused for a moment to dry their faces and catch their breaths.
“I’ll go in,” said Jessica, all excitement.
“Better not,” warned Val. “Not yet, anyway. You can’t tell what you’ll find there—it’s many years since you’ve been in it.”
“Nonsense,” scoffed Jessica. “Let’s both go in.”
“Righto!” said Val. “Where’s that flash?”
Eddie handed it to him, and he stooped to enter the cave.
“It gets higher when you’re about five or six feet inside,” said Jessica, who was right behind him. “High enough for you to stand up.”
Val grunted in response. All was black before him; he could see absolutely nothing. He brought the pocket flashlight to bear on the floor and side of the cave.
The floor was smooth as though it had been rolled out with a tennis court roller. The walls were jagged, dripping with moisture. He stood up. The roof just cleared his head. A moment later Jessica was standing beside him. A frightened bat, with a tremendous whirring of wings, flew round and round in circles, startling Jessica momentarily.
“Oh!” she said, grasping Val’s arm. That steadied her instantly.
“See anything?” she asked.
“Not a thing,” he replied. “How much farther does this cave run back?”
“Only a few feet, and then around a bend to the left,” she replied.
They advanced, playing the gleam of light on every side, letting it shine in all likely places.
“Turn here,” Jessica guided him.
The cave now broadened out to the proportions of a chamber. At the level of Val’s head was a small natural shelf in the living rock. He gave an exclamation of delight when his light fell upon it.
On the shelf was a tin box about a foot and a half square.