The Yellow House Mystery (7 page)

“They lived in the little yellow house,” said Benny.

“That’s right,” said Henry. “He built it, Grandfather said, with the help of his brother.”

“Oh, that brother, Sam!” cried Joe. “He was not much good. I think Sam is the clue to this mystery.”

“So do I,” said Henry. “Remember Bill sold two race horses and went away without giving Mr. Alden the money.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Joe. “That’s why Bill disappeared.”

“But why didn’t he let his wife know where he was all those years?” asked Violet gently. “He loved Margaret.”

“I don’t know,” said Henry. “That’s the mystery. Maybe his brother wouldn’t give the money back, and Bill wouldn’t go home without it.”

Then Violet said softly, “Joe!”

“What is it?” asked Joe quickly.

“Do you suppose Bill’s brother hid the money in this house?”

“Maybe,” said Joe, thinking. “But it’s not a yellow house.”

“Of course he did!” said Benny. “That’s why Bill took the rowboat that night and came up here. I bet those mean-looking men were the friends, and they were looking for the money, too. Remember Rita said they had a fight?”

“Good, Benny,” said Joe. “I guess they tried to make Bill give them the money, and Bill couldn’t find it himself.”

“And there’s the mystery all solved,” said Alice laughing.

“Well,” said Henry, “I’m sure now that Dave Hunter is Bill. But where’s the money, and where’s the tin box?”

“Let’s hunt,” said Benny. “How about the chimney?”

“Not the chimney,” said Henry. “Bill would have found the money if it were in the chimney.”

“That’s right,” Benny answered.

“Not much to see,” said Jessie. “A chest and a few chairs. And our cots.”

“Do you think we ought to talk with the hermit, Joe?” asked Henry.

“No, not yet,” answered Joe. “I don’t think he would talk.”

“Well, I’m not going to sit here,” said Benny. “Let’s do
something.”

“O.K.” said Henry, getting up. “We can hunt for clues in the chest. There might be a secret drawer in it.”

“Let me see,” began Jessie. “The chest has three drawers. Joe and Alice can look in one drawer, Henry and Benny in another, and Violet and I in the third.”

Soon the whole family was busy. First they took the old dusty papers out of the drawers. They tapped each drawer, hunting for a secret drawer. They found nothing but dust.

“Ho-hum,” said Benny. “What shall we do now, Jessie?”

“Oh, I’m sure I don’t
know,”
cried Jessie. Everyone looked at her.

“You’re not cross, are you, Jessie?” asked Benny.

Jessie laughed a little. “Maybe I am,” she said. “I did hope we would find the money in that chest. But we tapped every drawer. There is no secret drawer there. Let’s go outdoors and sit on the steps.”

The family went outdoors slowly and sat down on the steps. Nobody said a word. Jessie was not often cross.

Pretty soon Benny said, “I wonder where the toad is? I suppose he stays under the steps.”

Alice smiled at Benny, but nobody felt like answering him.

Benny went on. “Does a toad have a house? What kind of a house does he live in, Jessie?”

“Oh, Benny! I don’t
know!
I’m so tired! You want to know everything! Why do you want to ask about toads now, when we want to find a tin box!” She almost laughed.

“Never mind, Jessie,” said Benny quickly. “I’ll look for myself.”

The little boy got down on his hands and knees. Soon he was lying on the ground looking under the steps with one eye.

“I can see him. He’s just sitting there. He winked at me.”

Benny picked up a long stick.

“Don’t hurt the toad, Benny,” said Joe.

“Oh, no. I’m just going to see how big his room is.” Benny began to move the stick from one side to the other. Then he crawled quietly to the back of the steps where there was a big hole under the house. The toad jumped through the hole, and Benny followed him. Everyone had to smile. They knew that Benny was crawling under the house.

Soon they heard him talking to himself. “Here’s a pretty white stone,” he was saying, “and here’s an old tin can. Here’s a screwdriver. Not a bad screwdriver.”

Then he was silent.

But the others could hear him crawling around under the house.

“Never mind, Jessie,” said Joe with a smile. “He’s having fun. Children forget things very soon, you know.”

Then they heard Benny say, “Well, here’s the toad! Hello, Toad! Where do you live?”

“He seems to be having quite a talk with a toad,” said Henry, laughing.

Benny went on, “Do you live in that old wooden box under the house? That’s funny. It’s open in the back instead of the front. Do you go in the back door? Why do you do that? Well, well. Ho-hum-HENRY! There’s a tin box here!”

“What?” shouted Henry, almost falling down the steps.

“I’ve found it!” yelled Benny. “A tin box sitting right in a wooden box!”

The whole family was down on the grass looking under the steps.

“You come out, Benny!” shouted Joe. “Bring the box. We can see better out here.”

“I was coming, anyway,” said Benny. He came crawling as fast as he could through the hole. He pushed the tin box ahead of him, and came out from under the steps.

“Sure enough!” cried Jessie. “It
is
a tin box. I can hardly believe it. Now I only hope there is something in it.”

“There is,” said Benny. “I shook it.”

The excited children sat back and looked at the box. “You open it, Henry,” said Benny. “It’s too hard for me.”

Henry’s hands shook as he pulled the box open. There before their eyes were piles of green bills.

“Dollar bills!” Benny whispered.

“No, Benny, they are one-hundred dollar bills!” said Henry. “I never saw one before.”

“Let’s count them,” cried Benny.

“You count, Benny. You found them,” said Jessie in a kind voice.

Benny was so excited he could hardly count straight. At last he said, “That’s forty, and that’s all. How much is forty one-hundred dollar bills, Henry?”

“Four thousand dollars, young fellow,” said Henry. “Isn’t that what two race horses would be worth, Joe?”

“Just about,” said Joe.

“Boy, oh boy!” cried Benny. He was all tired out with excitement.

They all looked at each other. Then they looked at the tin box and the pile of green bills.

“Well, Joe,” said Henry at last, “where do we go from here?”

“I think,” answered Joe, “that when we get rested, we’d better go and see the hermit.”

“The hermit is Dave Hunter. And Dave Hunter is Bill,” said Benny.

“I think so, too,” said Joe with a smile. “But even now, maybe he won’t talk.”

Jessie put her arm around her little brother.

“I’m awfully sorry I was cross, Benny,” she said. “It’s lucky you do want to know everything. If you hadn’t looked in the toad’s house, we would never have found the tin box.”

CHAPTER
14

The Hermit

R
ight away, the children wanted to go to see Rita again. Leaving the money in the tin box in the kitchen cupboard, the whole family almost ran up the road.

“We want to go into the woods again, Rita,” Jessie called. “We want to talk with Dave Hunter. Do you think we could find our way alone?”

“Of course you can,” said Rita. “But Dave won’t talk.”

“Maybe he will talk to Benny,” said Jessie.

“Well, maybe,” said Rita. “He did before.”

The family started down the path through the woods. When they came to the cabin, they saw the hermit walking towards his house with a pail of water. He stopped when he saw the visitors. Then he went right on again.

“Dave!” called Henry kindly. But the hermit started to go up the steps to his cabin.

Then Benny called out in his loudest voice,
“Bill!”

The pail went rolling down the steps as the old man stopped. He sat down and put his head in his hands.

But Benny seemed to know just what to do, and nobody stopped him. He ran over and sat down beside the old man and put his hand on his arm. “Oh, Bill,” he said, “don’t worry. We’ve come to take you home.”

“Home?” said Bill. He lifted his head and looked at Benny. “I can never go home, little boy.” He looked at the others as they waited on the path.

“Oh, yes, you can, Bill,” cried Benny. “Grandfather wants you to come home, and so does Mrs. McGregor.”

“Mrs. McGregor!” said Bill in a whisper.

Then nobody could believe what happened next. Violet went quickly over to the steps and took the old man’s hand. “He means Margaret,” she said.

He looked down at the pretty little girl. “Margaret is dead,” said Bill.

“No, Margaret is alive,” said Violet.

“They told me she was dead,” said Bill. “They said there was a fire, and the barn burned and Margaret died trying to save the horses.”

“Oh, that isn’t true at all, Bill,” cried Benny. “We lived in that barn all last summer, and Mrs. McGregor is the housekeeper at my grandfather’s house.”

“I can’t go home,” said Bill quietly. “I can’t find the money. I took Mr. Alden’s money.”

“We found the money,” said Violet gently.

“Where?” asked the old man.

“In a tin box under the steps of the house,” answered Violet.

“In a tin box—that’s right,” Bill said. “Oh dear, oh dear!”

Then Joe came up to the steps. He said, “Mr. McGregor, everything will be all right again, believe me. Your wife is alive and wants to see you. We just found the money today.” Then he turned to the children.

“I’m afraid Bill is getting very tired,” he said to them. “He is having too much excitement after forty years. Do you think you can walk to Old Village, Mr. McGregor?”

The old man looked at Joe’s kind face. “Yes, I can, if all this story is true.”

“I promise you it is,” said Joe. Then he said to the children, “Don’t ask him anything more until we get him home. But he is Bill all right.”

Benny would not let go of Bill’s hand. He led him carefully along the path, stopping to show him every stone.

“I’ve seen every stone on this path for many years, little boy,” said Bill. But they all knew that he liked to have Benny help him.

They took him to the little house that he had built himself. Alice made him lie down on one of the cots, and Jessie put something soft under his head. Joe rushed over to Jim’s Place and soon came back with a cup of hot tea.

“Drink this,” he said. “It will make you feel better.”

Bill drank the tea, and before anyone knew it, he had fallen asleep.

“He is tired out,” said Violet in a whisper. “And so thin. He looks as if he didn’t have enough to eat. Almost starving.”

“We’ll soon fix that,” whispered Jessie with a smile. “He’ll have enough to eat if he lives with us.”

The family went into the kitchen. They shut the door softly.

“Won’t Grandfather be surprised,” said Henry.

“And Mrs. McGregor,” said Violet.

“I’m surprised myself,” said Joe. “I thought Bill was dead, for sure.”

Jessie said, “Wasn’t it queer how Benny got him to talk all of a sudden? Just because he called him Bill.”

“Bill must have felt funny to be talking after forty years,” said Benny. “I couldn’t stop talking for forty years.”

“I hope you won’t, Benny,” laughed Alice. “We love to hear you talk.”

“When Bill wakes up, we must give him something to eat,” said Jessie. “I think I’ll run over to Jim’s Place and see what he has.”

“Let me go with you,” said Alice. “We can go out the back door.”

The two girls went across the road, and found Jim in his kitchen stirring something on the back of his stove. It was soup, and it smelled delicious.

Jim turned around quickly and asked, “Wasn’t that the hermit I saw with you?”

“Yes, it was,” said Jessie. “His real name is Bill McGregor, and he used to work for our great-grandfather.”

“I thought something was queer about him,” cried Jim. “People used to say that little house was Bill McGregor’s place. Then one day Dave Hunter came to Old Village and said it was his. He said he was a cousin of Bill’s.

“But he wouldn’t live in the house. He told me to use it for campers and he built himself his cabin.”