“That is good. I suppose,” and his voice faltered, “that my precious box is not left. They must have taken that.”
“I’m afraid they did,” said Arden.
“Well, it is fate! I am glad at least to be alive,” and Dimitri shrugged his shoulders with resignation.
“You all better get in my boat and leave yours here until later,” said the chief when it was found that Dimitri, after a long drink of water, was able to walk with more ease. “We’ll make better time that way. More haste the quicker you get over it.”
Sim shook her fist at him behind his back.
They all piled into the motorboat, Tania never leaving her master’s side, and in a short time they were at the Merry Jane. After it was seen that Dimitri, though obviously suffering from neglect, was not seriously harmed, it came to Arden’s mind that she and her chums must make a confession.
They had looked at the forbidden picture. It was very likely that Dimitri’s trained vision would detect that the cloth had been removed and put back. Of course, he might think Clayton had done it, but it was better to tell. So Arden said:
“We discovered your secret.”
“My secret?” He appeared not to understand.
“That picture,” she added. “We looked at it.”
The whiteness of Dimitri’s face, blanched by many days of confinement in a dark cellar, was changed to a deep red as he murmured:
“I hope you do not think me too presumptuous.”
“It is lovely!” declared Sim.
“A beautiful picture,” said Terry.
“And you—have you nothing to say in forgiveness?” He was looking straight at Arden.
“Oh, I think it is wonderful,” she said. “There is no need of pardon. But it is too beautiful! I never—”
“It is not half good enough!” he interrupted. “It was only from memory. Perhaps you will do me the honor to sit for me that I may properly complete it.”
“If Daddy and Mother consent,” she said.
“As if they wouldn’t!” said Sim.
They were at the houseboat now. It seemed silent and deserted, but the chief said:
“Might as well take precautions. Nobody ever yet died of a broken neck by drinking milk. I’ll go aboard first.”
“And if he utters another of his famous sayings I’ll choke him with my handkerchief!” hissed Sim.
The silence of Tania as they approached close to the Merry Jane was fairly conclusive evidence that no strangers were aboard. They walked confidently up the little gangplank and, allowing Dimitri to take the lead, followed him into the living room.
He went through the curtains to the broken cupboard, and as they all stood grouped behind him they saw him, after a moment of hesitation, put his hand in and take out an object. Then they heard his delighted cry:
“Here it is! My box! And not harmed in the least. Wait!”
Quickly he pressed the spring, took out the key, and wound up the mechanism. Suddenly the jeweled bird began to sing. A fairy hymn of victory.
“But how did it get here?” asked Arden.
“The mystery is solved—but how?” questioned Terry.
“This has got my goat,” admitted the chief. “There’s no fool like a spring chicken,” he added, showing his gold tooth in a wide grin.
“I think this may explain matters,” remarked Dimitri as he again put his hand into the shattered cupboard and brought out several sheets of paper. He glanced over them and said: “It is a confession from this George Clayton—he who caught me and held me prisoner. It perhaps tells everything, my friends.”
It did. George Clayton, crabber, lobsterman, and fisher, proved to be more of a scholar than anyone had ever suspected. He wrote a good hand, though some of the words were rather shaky.
“‘First of all,’” the written sheets revealed, “‘I want to let the girls, who were kind to my Melissa, know that she is in good hands. Melissa had nothing to do with me catching Mr. Uzlov. After I got him she wanted me to let him go, but I wouldn’t. Melissa is a good girl. I’m going to let her aunt have her and bring her up right. A woman named Emma Tash came to my place the other day, though I told her to get out, but she didn’t.’”
“Emma Tash just wouldn’t do that a second time,” said Terry, recalling the crabbing party.
“‘So I had a talk with her,’” Dimitri read on from the letter, “‘and I decided it wasn’t right to Melissa to keep her here with me. Not that I’m going to be here any more. I’m leaving. But before I left I told this Emma Tash she could take Melissa and bring her up the way her aunt wants her brought up. So that woman took her off.’”
“Then the poor child will have something in life after all,” murmured Arden. “I’m so glad!”
“She may even become a champion swimmer,” suggested Sim.
“Oh, you and your swimming,” laughed Terry. “Let’s find out about the snuffbox.”
“That’s right here,” said Mr. Uzlov. He read on:
“‘Melissa has always been different from other girls. Mrs. Landry and the three young ladies know that. One day Melissa came home to me with this gold box that I’m leaving back in your cupboard. She told me she had broken open your cupboard and taken it from your houseboat, Mr. Uzlov. Melissa always loved bright things. Well, I was struck all of a heap when I saw she had it. I didn’t know what to do. In a way it was stealing, but not for Melissa. She didn’t mean to steal it. She just couldn’t help taking it once she saw it. I love my daughter. Nobody shall ever say I don’t. Anyhow, here’s your gold box back and I’m going to clear out and Melissa has gone with that good detective woman. That’s all. From George Clayton.’”
There was a little silence following the reading of the strange letter.
“But it isn’t all,” said Arden, looking at Dimitri. “How did he get you and hold you a prisoner?”
“I suppose that is my part to explain,” said Dimitri. “Well, it shall not take me long. First we shall begin with Olga.”
“Who is she?” burst out Sim impulsively.
“She is my talented but spendthrift sister,” said Dimitri with a little embarrassed laugh. “She always claimed to have an interest, and right, in the snuffbox, which once belonged to the late lamented Czar, but that was not so. I mean she had no interest in it. That box was mine alone. That is what we often quarreled about. My brother Serge, with whom you say you got in touch, can bear me out in this. I sent for him when Olga became—well, rather troublesome,” he said with a smile.
“So,” he resumed, “one day I came back here, after having been out in the marsh sketching, to find my cupboard broken open and my box gone. I was thunderstruck. Of course I suspected my sister. But before I had time to do anything, this Clayton man came on board with the box. He said his daughter had taken my treasure, as she often did with bright things, not knowing their value, and he had come to restore it. He asked me not to have her arrested or to prosecute her as he would give me the box back.
“But there I made a mistake.” Again Dimitri shrugged his expressive shoulders. “I was naturally resentful at being robbed, even by poor Melissa, who, I understand, is not wholly responsible. So I flared up and said the guilty must be punished; that the law must take its course. Yes, we Russians are too temperamental—I admit that. I said I would see that no real harm came to the girl but that she must be sent away and taught to do the right.”
“He didn’t like that, not for a cent, and it takes ten shillings to make a pound,” interpolated Mr. Reilly.
“You are right,” agreed Dimitri, evidently not bored by this cross quotation. “At once Mr. Clayton, what you call, flared up. Before I could avoid him, he had attacked me. He is a big man. He had me at a disadvantage, and before I could do anything he had put part of a fish net over my head, for all the world like the old Roman gladiators.” He laughed a little, for he had brewed some tea in his samovar, and the sipping of it appeared to revive him more than anything else. “So he had me helpless.�
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“But Tania,” interrupted Sim. “Where was she?”
“He must have suddenly planned his attack,” resumed Dimitri, “for when he carried me away, half unconscious as I was, I dimly saw Tania tied and lying on the deck. He must, a little while before, have given her some drugged meat. He didn’t take time to make friends with her and entice her away.”
“But just what did Clayton do to you?” asked Terry.
“He threatened after the net was over me, to take me away and keep me away if I did not promise to let Melissa go unharmed. I would not promise. I felt it was for the girl’s own good that I be instrumental in sending her to some institution. I was stubborn. He grew very angry. I tried to hit him. He hit me. It all went black before my eyes, and when I awoke, I was bound and my mouth was tied, in the place where you found me.”
“Oh, how terrible,” said Arden.
“Such a brute!” declared Terry.
“You should have shouted for help,” argued Sim.
“I tried to, dear young lady, but one cannot shout with one’s mouth bundled up like a muff. So I remained a prisoner. At times the man came down to me and opened my mouth that I might eat, but he stood over me with a gun so I dared not shout. But his place is so isolated that it would have done no good if I had. Each time he said he would let me go if I would promise. But I would not promise. I assure you we Russians are very stubborn.” Even now he seemed proud of it, and the girls rather liked him for it.
“You couldn’t trick him out of it?” asked Mr. Reilly.
“Trick?” Dimitri questioned.
“I mean promise and then get out and later do as you pleased.”
“The Uzlovs never do that, sir! I beg of you! Yes!”
“Oh, well, all right. You can’t go two ways at the same time,” said the chief, grinning. “What else happened?”
“Nothing. I stayed in the cellar closet. Clayton maintained me bound and gagged as you saw. Once he came to me to say he had gone back to my boat to restore my beautiful box. But, as he was about to put it in the broken cupboard, he was surprised by you girls and my brother Serge coming on board. So Clayton leaped over the rail in great haste. I suppose you did not then see him or my box?”
“We heard a noise,” said Terry, “and saw a man jump off your boat, but we didn’t even guess who was leaving the Merry Jane in such a rush. And to think at that time the snuffbox was on the point of being given back. If we only had known!”
“Perhaps it is as well,” said Dimitri with rather a wan smile. “If the box had been put back then, and my sister Olga, she of the so spendthrift habits, had paid another visit, she might have then taken it. And if she knew this Clayton had it, without doubt she would have so raged at him that she would have secured it. So it is all well as it is. Also Mr. Clayton told me something else. It seems my beautiful but desperate sister tried to bribe poor Melissa, with auto rides and some money and trinkets, to get the box for her. But that plot did not quite come off. It may have been Olga’s talk, speaking of my box in the cupboard, that caused Melissa to take it for herself.”
“And she got your tie pin, also,” said Arden.
“Oh, yes, but I have that back.” He showed it to them. “Mr. Clayton gave it to me. He said his daughter had picked it up off the floor in my paint room. It is very possible. Poor Melissa!”
“But how did Clayton and his daughter come to go away and leave you tied in the cellar?” asked the chief. “If it hadn’t been for the way your dog barked, we might never have found you.”
“Oh, yes. That I can explain. Good Tania!” He pulled her silky ears. “Only last night,” Dimitri went on, “Mr. Clayton came to my prison cell and told me he was then leaving to go to the Merry Jane and, under the cover of darkness, restore my box.”
“And he did!” exclaimed Sim. “Some virtue in him, anyhow.”
“Yes,” agreed the artist. “Also he told me that matters were all now settled. He did not require any promise from me, for he told me his daughter was going away with her aunt and he would separate from her. Perhaps that is not so?” He looked questioningly at the girls.
“Oh, yes, that part is true,” said Arden.
“I am so glad. The poor child! Well, Mr. Clayton went on to say that he was shuffling off, as he expressed it, though why shuffle, I do not know. Nevertheless, he said he and his daughter were going away. But he felt he had to protect himself. So he said he would not release me then. But when he was safely far enough away, he would telephone to you, sir, the head of the Metropolitan Police here, and tell you to come and unbind me.” Dimitri bowed to Mr. Reilly.
“First I heard about that,” said the chief. “I didn’t get no telephone call. Out of sight sours no cream.”
“Maybe a message has come since you started out with us,” suggested Sim.
“Maybe it has; better late than never get to the fair.”
“Oh—” Sim began, but she repressed herself.
“So you see how it all happened,” concluded Dimitri. “I was taken unawares, kept prisoner even when my lovely box was restored, and all because I was such a stickler for a principle. Yes, we Russians are very stubborn. But, to say the truth, I was on the point of agreeing to what Mr. Clayton wanted me to, about not being instrumental in having his daughter sent away, when he told me he had arranged for my release, so it is just as well. I have my pride left.”
“But you must have suffered,” said Terry.
“One must always suffer for one’s pride. Yes?”
There was little else to tell. The Merry Jane seemed like her old self again with Dimitri and Tania on board. The Russian drank more tea and offered glasses to his guests.
“What are you thinking of, Arden?” asked Sim, noticing that her chum was scarcely sipping her tea and had a dreamy far-away look in her eyes.
“I was wondering,” came the answer, and Arden addressed Dimitri, “if you were down in the cellar of the Clayton shack the time we went to it, with your brother and Melissa, to get the box she said she had. Did you hear us talking or moving around up above you?”
“No, I can’t say I did,” the Russian replied. “But that is easily accounted for. I dozed or slept much of the time. More than once I think Clayton put some quieting potion in my food or drink, for I seemed always to have a heavy, sleepy feeling. No, I didn’t know how near you were.”
“If we had only known then,” said Terry, “we could have made a thrilling rescue. But we didn’t. Or if we had taken Tania she would have discovered you. A pity we didn’t.”
“Yes,” agreed Arden.
“Please do not reproach yourselves,” said Dimitri. “I am too much in your debt to allow that. It is all over now.”
“Another thing I wonder about,” said Arden. “You know when we went to the shack with Melissa after she promised to restore the box, and it wasn’t where she said she had hidden it, she was, or appeared to be, greatly surprised. I wonder if she was acting or if she knew her father had taken the treasure?”
“I don’t believe Melissa could act that much, though she is very clever at times,” said Terry. “I don’t believe she suspected her father had taken the box from where she had concealed it. And it would be well within reason, considering her character, for her to have thought that perhaps she had forgotten where she had put the box. You know, when we first talked with her father, after he wouldn’t let her keep the bracelet, he said she often took trifling bright objects and hid them all around the house. He said she often forgot where she had hidden her simple treasures and would go looking for them day after day. Then she would suddenly recall the place and be happy again. So in this case Melissa might have thought that, after putting the box in her poor little bureau, she herself had removed it and couldn’t recall where it was.”
“Yes, that would account for it,” Sim said.
“It’s very possible,” Arden agreed. “It is all very strange. The poor girl certainly needs careful and regular training. I’m so glad this aunt of h
ers remembers her in time.”
“I wonder if Melissa knew you were down in the cellar?” asked Sim.
Dimitri shrugged his shoulders, answering: “It is difficult to say. I don’t know just when her father told her what he had done. I believe, though, it was only a short time before they both left.”
“It’s queer Melissa didn’t discover you,” spoke Arden.
“No, not when you consider what sort of a girl she is,” replied Sim. “She was always coming and going, wandering like a wild spirit. I don’t believe she saw much of her father. He could easily keep his secret from her.”
“I believe he did,” said the Russian. “It is strange to think that once you were all so close to me, and again so near to getting the box when Clayton brought it back but was frightened away. Very strange. But, Mr. Reilly, I am neglecting you. Let me give you some more tea, if you please.”
“Not for me,” said the chief. “Coffee sets me up better. It is the cup which cheers but doesn’t give you the jitters.” He laughed. “And now, if there’s no arrests to be made, I guess we might as well call it a day, wind the clock, and put the cat out.” He laughed again.
“Your brother will be anxious about you,” said Arden. “You should let him know, Mr. Uzlov.”
“I shall. At once.”
“We are going back,” said Terry. “We could send him a telegram. In fact, we did.”
“You did?”
“I mean before we found you,” and Arden’s ruse was detailed.
“Oh, how clever of you, my dear young ladies. Yes, I must let Serge know. If you will be so good. His address—”
He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a paper with the house number in Ninth Street.
“That will save time,” said Arden. “We will wire him. You must need a rest.”
“Oh, a rest will be most delightful,” said the artist. “I must get in condition to finish—that.” He waved toward the covered canvas.
“I haven’t yet thanked you,” murmured Arden.
“It is I who must thank you, dear young lady,” and he murmured something in Russian, translating: “It is the subject, not the picture, to whom the artist is indebted.”
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