“Do you realize, Sally,” she exclaimed, “that I’ve never yet explored a bit of this region above ground with you? I’ve never seen a thing except this bit right about the cave. Why not take me all round here for a way. It might be quite interesting.”
Sally looked both surprised and scornful. “There’s nothing at all to see around here that’s a bit interesting,” she declared. “There’s just this pine grove and the underbrush, and back there—quite a way back, is an old country road. It isn’t even worth getting all hot and tired going to see.”
“Well, I don’t care, I want to see it!” insisted Doris. “I somehow have a feeling that it would be worth while. And if you are too tired to come with me, I’ll go by myself. You and Genevieve can rest here.”
“No, I want to go wis Dowis!” declared Genevieve, scrambling to her feet as she scented a new diversion.
“Well, I’ll go too,” laughed Sally. “I’m not as lazy as all that, but I warn you, you won’t find anything worth the trouble.”
They set off together, scrambling through the scrub-oak and bay-bushes, stopping now and then to pick and devour wild strawberries, or gather a great handful of sassafras to chew. All the while Doris gazed about her curiously, asking every now and then a seemingly irrelevant question of Sally.
Presently they emerged from the pine woods and crossed a field covered only with wild blackberry vines still bearing their white blossoms. At the farther edge of this field they came upon a sandy road. It wound away in a hot ribbon till a turn hid it from sight, and the heat of the morning tempted them no further to explore it.
“This is the road I told you of,” explained Sally with an “I-told-you-so” expression. “You see it isn’t anything at all, only an old back road leading to Manituck. Nobody much comes this way if they can help it—it’s so sandy.”
“But what’s that old house there?” demanded Doris, pointing to an ancient, tumbledown structure not far away. “And isn’t it the queerest-looking place, one part so gone to pieces and unkempt, and that other little wing all nicely fixed up and neat and comfortable!”
It was indeed an odd combination. The structure was a large old-fashioned farmhouse, evidently of a period dating well back in the nineteenth century. The main part had fallen into disuse, as was quite evident from the closed and shuttered windows, the peeling, blistered paint, the unkempt air of being not inhabited. But a tiny “L” at one side bore an aspect as different from the main building as could well be imagined. It had lately received a coat of fresh white paint. Its windows were wide open and daintily curtained with some pretty but inexpensive material. The little patch of flower-garden in front was as trim and orderly.
“I don’t understand it,” went on Doris. “What place is it?”
“Oh, that’s only Roundtree’s,” answered Sally indifferently. “That’s old Miss Roundtree now, coming from the back. She lives there all alone.”
As she was speaking, the person in question came into view from around the back of the house, a basket of vegetables in her hand. Plainly she had just been picking them in the vegetable-garden, a portion of which was visible at the side of the house. She sat down presently on her tiny front porch, removed her large sun-bonnet and began to sort them over. From their vantage-point behind some tall bushes at the roadside, the girls could watch her unobserved.
“I like her looks,” whispered Doris after a moment. “Who is she and why does she live in this queer little place?”
“I told you her name was Roundtree—Miss Camilla Roundtree,” replied Sally. “Most folks call her ‘old Miss Camilla’ around here. She’s awfully poor, though they say her folks were quite rich at one time, and she’s quite deaf too. That big old place was her father’s, and I s’pose is hers now, but she can’t afford to keep it up, she has so little money. So she just lives in that small part, and she knits for a living—caps and sweaters and things like that. She does knit beautifully and gets quite a good many orders, especially in summer, but even so it hardly brings her in enough to live on. She’s kind of queer too, folks think. But I don’t see why you’re so interested in her.”
“I like her looks,” answered Doris. “She has a fine face. Somehow she seems to me like a lady—a real lady!”
“Well, she sort of puts on airs, folks think, and she doesn’t care to associate with everybody,” admitted Sally. “But she’s awfully good and kind, too. Goes and nurses people when they’re sick or have any trouble, and never charges for it, and all that sort of thing. But, same time, she always seems to want to be by herself. She reads lots, too, and has no end of old books. They say they were her father’s. Once she lent me one or two when I went to get her to make a sweater for Genevieve.”
“Oh, do you know her?” cried Doris. “How interesting!”
“Why, yes, of course I know her. Everyone does around here. But I don’t see anything very interesting about it.” To tell the truth, Sally was quite puzzled by Doris’s absorption in the subject. It was Genevieve who broke the spell.
“I’s sirsty!” she moaned. “I want a djink. I want Mis Camilla to gi’ me a djink!”
“Come on!” cried Doris to Sally. “If you know her, we can easily go over and ask her for a drink. I’m crazy to meet her.”
Still wondering, Sally led the way over to the tiny garden and the three proceeded up the path toward Miss Roundtree.
“Why, good morning!” exclaimed that lady, looking up. Her voice was very soft, and a little toneless, as is often the case with the deaf.
“Good morning!” answered Sally in a rather loud tone, and a trifle awkwardly presented Doris. But there was no awkwardness in the manner with which Miss Camilla acknowledged the new acquaintance. Indeed it was suggestive of an old-time courtesy, now growing somewhat obsolete. And Doris had a chance to gaze, at closer range, on the fine, high-bred face framed in its neatly parted gray hair.
“Might Genevieve have a drink?” asked Doris at length. “She seems to be very thirsty.”
“Why, assuredly!” exclaimed Miss Camilla. “Come inside, all of you, and rest in the shade.” So they trooped indoors, into Miss Camilla’s tiny sitting-room, while she herself disappeared into the still tinier kitchen at the back. While she was gone, Doris gazed about with a new wonder and admiration in her eyes.
The room was speckless in its cleanliness, and full of many obviously home-made contrivances and makeshifts. Yet there were two or three beautiful pieces of old mahogany furniture, of a satiny finish and ancient date. And on the mantel stood one marvelous little piece of pottery that, even to Doris’s untrained eye, gave evidence of being a rare and costly bit. But Miss Camilla was now coming back, bearing a tray on which stood three glasses of water and a plate of cookies and three little dishes of delicious strawberries.
“You children must be hungry after your long morning’s excursion,” she said. “Try these strawberries of mine. They have just come from the garden.”
Doris thought she had never tasted anything more delightful than that impromptu little repast. And when it was over, she asked Miss Camilla a question, for she had been chatting with her all along, in decided contrast to the rather embarrassed silence of Sally.
“What is that beautiful little vase you have there, Miss Roundtree, may I ask? I’ve been admiring it a lot.” A wonderful light shone suddenly in Miss Camilla’s eyes. Here, it was plain, was her hobby.
“That’s a Louis XV Sèvres,” she explained, patting it lovingly. “It is marvelous, isn’t it, and all I have left of a very pretty collection. It was my passion once, this pottery, and I had the means to indulge it. But they are all gone now, all but this one. I shall never part with this.” The light died out of her eyes as she placed the precious piece back on the mantel.
“Good-bye. Come again!” she called after them, as they took their departure. “I always enjoy talking to you children.”
When they
had retraced their way to the boat and pushed off and were making all speed for the hotel, Sally suddenly turned to Doris and demanded:
“Why in the world are you so interested in Miss Camilla? I’ve known her all my life, and I never talked so much to her in all that time as you did this morning.”
“Well, to begin with,” replied Doris, shipping her oars and facing her friend for a moment, “I think she’s a lovely and interesting person. But there’s something else besides.” She stopped abruptly, and Sally, filled with curiosity, demanded impatiently,
“Well?”
Doris’s reply almost caused her to lose her oars in her astonishment.
“I think she knows all about that cave!”
CHAPTER IX
DORIS HAS A NEW THEORY
“Well, for gracious sake!” was all Sally could reply to this astonishing remark. And a moment later, “How on earth do you know?”
“I don’t know. I’m only guessing at it,” replied Doris. “But I have one or two good reasons for thinking we’ve been on the wrong track right along. And if I’d known about her before, I’d have thought so long ago.”
“But what is it?” cried Sally again, bursting with impatience and curiosity.
“Sally,” said Doris soberly, “I’m going to ask you not to make me explain it all just yet. I would if I had it all clear in my mind, but the whole idea is just as hazy as can be at present. And you know a thing is very hard to explain when it’s hazy like that. It sounds silly if you put it into words. So won’t you just let it be till I get it better thought out?”
“Why, yes, of course,” replied Sally with an assumed heartiness that she was far from feeling. Truth to tell, she was not only badly disappointed but filled with an almost uncontrollable curiosity to know what Doris had discovered about her secret that she herself did not know.
“And I’m going to ask you another thing,” went on Doris. “Do you suppose any one around here knows much about the history of Miss Camilla and her family? Would your grandfather be likely to know?”
“Why, yes, I guess so,” replied Sally. “If anybody knows I’m sure it would be he, because he’s the oldest person around here.”
“Then,” said Doris, “I want you to let me talk to your grandfather about it. We’ll both seem to be talking to him together, but I want to ask him some questions very specially myself. But I don’t want him to suspect that we have any special interest in the thing, so you try and make him talk the way you did that night when he told you all about the wrecks, and the Anne Arundel. Will you?”
“Oh, yes,” agreed Sally. “That’s easy. When shall we do it? This afternoon? I think he’ll be down at the Landing, and we won’t have any trouble getting him to talk to us. There aren’t many around the Landing yet, ’cause the season is so early, and I’ll steer him over into a corner where we can be by ourselves.”
“That’s fine!” cried Doris. “I knew you could manage it.”
“But tell me—just one thing,” begged Sally, “What made you first think that Miss Camilla had anything to do with this? You can tell me just that, can’t you?”
“It was the little Sèvres vase on the mantel,” explained Doris, “and the way she spoke of it, I know a little—just a tiny bit about old china and porcelains, because my grandfather is awfully interested in them and has collected quite a lot. But it was the way she spoke of it that made me think.”
Not another word would she say on the subject. And though Sally racked her brains over the matter for the rest of the day, she could find no point where Miss Camilla and her remarks had the slightest bearing on that secret of theirs.
It was about two o’clock that afternoon, and the pavilion at the Landing was almost deserted. Later it would be peopled by a throng, young and old, hiring boats, crabbing from the long dock, drinking soda-water or merely watching the river life, idly. But, during the two or three hot hours directly after noon, it was deserted. On this occasion, however, not for long. Old Captain Carter, corn-cob pipe in mouth, and stumping loudly on his wooden leg, was approaching down the road from the village. At this hour he seldom failed to take his seat in a corner of the pavilion and wait patiently for the afternoon crowd to appear. His main diversion for the day consisted in his chats with the throngs who haunted the Landing.
He had not been settled in his corner three minutes, his wooden leg propped on another chair, when up the wide stairs from the beach appeared his two granddaughters, accompanied by another girl. Truth to tell, they had been waiting below exactly half an hour for this very event. Doris, who had met him before, went over and exchanged the greetings of the day, then casually settled herself in an adjacent chair, fanning herself frantically and exclaiming over the heat. Sally and Genevieve next strolled up and perched on a bench close by. For several minutes the two girls exchanged some rather desultory conversation. Then, what appeared to be a chance remark of Doris’s but was in reality carefully planned, drew the old sea-captain into their talk.
“I wonder why some people around here keep a part of their houses nicely fixed and live in that part and let the rest get all run down and go to waste?” she inquired with elaborate indifference. Captain Carter pricked up his ears.
“Who do that, I’d like to know?” he snorted. “I hain’t seen many of ’em!”
“Well, I passed a place this morning and it looked that way,” Doris went on. “I thought maybe it was customary in these parts.”
“Where was it?” demanded the Captain, on the defensive for his native region.
“Way up the river,” she answered, indicating the direction of Slipper Point.
“Oh, that!” he exclaimed in patent relief. “That’s only Miss Roundtree’s, and I guess you won’t see another like it in a month of Sundays.”
“Who is she and why does she do it?” asked Doris with a great (and this time real) show of interest. And thus, finding what his soul delighted in, a willing and interested listener, Captain Carter launched into a history and description of Miss Camilla Roundtree. He had told all that Sally had already imparted, when Doris broke in with some skilfully directed questions.
“How do you suppose she lost all her money?”
“Blest if I know, or any one else!” he grunted. “And what’s more, I don’t believe she lost it all, either. I think it was her father and her brother before her that did the trick. They were great folks around here—high and mighty, we called ’em. Nobody among us down at the village was good enough for ’em. This here Miss Camilla—her mother died when she was a baby—she used to spend most of her time in New York with a wealthy aunt. Some swell, she was!—used to go with her aunt pretty nigh every year to Europe and we didn’t set eyes on her once in a blue moon. Her father and brother had a fine farm and were making money, but she didn’t care for this here life.
“Well, one time she come back from Europe and things didn’t seem to be going right down here at her place. I don’t know what it was, but there were queer things whispered about the two men folks and all the money seemed to be gone suddenly, too. I was away at the time on a three-years’ cruise, so I didn’t hear nothin’ about it till long after. But they say the brother he disappeared and never came back, and the father died suddenly of apoplexy or something, and Miss Camilla was left to shift for herself, on a farm mortgaged pretty nigh up to the hilt.
“She was a bright woman as ever was made, though, I’ll say that for her, and she kept her head in the air and took to teaching school. She taught right good, too, for a number of years and got the mortgages off the farm. And then, all of a sudden, she began to get deaf-like, and couldn’t go on teaching. Then she took to selling off a lot of their land lying round, and got through somehow on that, for a while. But times got harder and living higher priced, and finally she had to give up trying to keep the whole thing decent and just scrooged herself into those little quarters in the ‘L.’ She’s ma
de a good fight, but she never would come down off her high horse or ask for any help or let any one into what happened to her folks.”
“How long ago was all that?” asked Doris.
“Oh, about forty or fifty years, I should think,” he replied, after a moment’s thought. “Yes, fifty or more, at the least.”
“You say they owned a lot of land around their farm?” interrogated Doris, casually.
“Surest thing! One time old Caleb Roundtree owned pretty nigh the whole side of the river up that way, but he’d sold off a lot of it himself before he died. She owned a good patch for a while, though, several hundred acres, I guess. But she hain’t got nothin’ but what lies right around the house, now.”
“Didn’t you ever hear what happened to the brother?” demanded Doris.
“Never a thing. He dropped out of life here as neatly and completely as if he’d suddenly been dropped into the sea. And by the time I’d got back from my voyage the nine-days’ wonder about it all was over, and I never could find out any more on the subject. Never was particularly interested to, either. Miss Camilla hain’t nothin’ to me. She’s always kept to herself and so most folks have almost forgotten who she is.”
As the Captain had evidently reached the end of his information on the subject, Doris rose to take her leave and Sally followed her eagerly.
“Well, did you find out what you wanted?” she cried, as soon as they were once more out on the river in old “45.”
“I found out enough,” answered Doris very seriously, “to make me feel pretty sure I’m right. Of course, I can only guess at lots of it, but one thing I’m certain of: that cave had nothing to do with smugglers or pirates—or anything of that sort!”
The Third Girl Detective Page 81
