Bob Dexter and the Storm Mountain Mystery or, The Secret of the Log Cabin

They waited expectantly while Bob went outside. Presently they heard him up on the roof.

“Watch now!” he called down the flue.

A moment later there was a tinkling, metallic sound and sliding down the string came the big brass key of the strong room. It was guided down the chimney, and out from the fireplace, the ashes of which it cleared, across the room, until it fell on the floor, close to Mr. Beegle’s hand. There was a twitching of the cord that was fast to the little nail driven lightly into the floor. Out came the nail on the string. The cord was pulled up out of the chimney, leaving the key on the floor beside Mr. Beegle.

“Gosh!” gasped Ned.

“Easy as pie!” murmured Harry. “When you know how it’s done.”

“That was how the key trick was worked,” said Bob, as he joined his friends. “I got the idea after I’d seen that fellow in the circus movie slide down the inclined wire,” he added. “And I also saw a little hole in the floor near where Hiram lay the night he was made unconscious. It was a hole left by the nail Bill drove in for his string.

“If a man could slide down a wire, I said to myself,” a key could be made to slide the same way. I tried it with a string, passing it through the hole in the hand-end of the key, and it worked fine.

“This is what Jolly Bill did. He sneaked up, used his gas bomb, or whatever it was that overpowered Mr. Beegle, slipped in the open door of the strong room, and took the brass box. Then, to make the robbery seem mysterious, he came out and locked the door. To get the key inside he climbed the tree and slid the key down the cord he had previously prepared. Twitching out the cord and nail left not a trace except the tiny hole in the floor, of how the key got inside the locked room without an opening. The chimney flue did the trick. Though when we tried dropping the key down, finding that it only stayed in the ashes, I was puzzled for a time.”

“But could Jolly Bill climb up in a tree with his wooden leg?” asked Harry.

“Oh, he was pretty nimble – I watched him use a spade,” said Bob.

“And was there an elephant here?” Ned wanted to know.

“No, that, too, was Jolly Bill,” said the young detective. “He bound pieces of burlap bags on his good foot and on his wooden leg – making a wad on the latter to expand it, and so he walked around, not making any shoe prints. We thought it was sacks of potatoes set down, but it was Bill’s trick.”

“He was full of tricks,” said Ned.

“But Bob went him one better each time!” laughed Harry.

“He sure did!” murmured Hiram. “And I’m mighty thankful to you boys for what you’ve done. I’m going to pay you – I’m well off now.”

However, the boys would not listen to this. Though later, when Hiram insisted on making a contribution to the Athletic Club, his offer was accepted and he was made an honorary member.

“Well, I guess this is the end of the Storm Mountain mystery,” remarked Ned, as with Bob and some other chums, they were talking over the matter one day.

“Yes, the secret of the log cabin – how the key got in the locked room – has been solved,” added Harry.

“Did the police get any trace of those two that ran away in the night – the hook-armed man and the fellow with the monkey?” asked Fred Merton.

“No, I guess they didn’t,” Bob answered. “There really wasn’t much use chasing after them, or Jolly Bill, either. Mr. Beegle has the money and that’s all he wants.”

And that, really, was all that remained of the celebrated mystery. As summed up by Bob it ran this way:

“Jolly Bill and Rod, who were roaming around the country, living as best they could on what they first got out of the buried treasure, learned, at the same time, of Hank’s death through letters he had caused to be sent them. They also knew Hiram had succeeded to the fortune.

“They came on to Cliffside, separately, but with the same end in view, that of robbing Hiram. Rod adopted a disguise he had used before, it seems. Jolly Bill depended on sneaking tactics, and it was he who got ahead of Rod. Of course Rod must have known Bill, for the latter did not disguise himself. But it is doubtful if Bill knew Rod under all that hair and whiskers.

“Bill succeeded in his robbery after the second attempt, but, instead of fleeing he remained on the scene and tried, by pretending friendship with Hiram, to throw suspicion from himself. Rod, knowing he had been forestalled, hung around trying to find some way of coming at the treasure. He even dug for it. But after Bill had the map, or, rather, the cipher, he couldn’t do anything without the key, which Hiram had but didn’t know it. As for the hook-armed man, there must have been some secret between him and Rod which we don’t know anything about. It may have had nothing to do with this case.”

“But I suppose you want another case to work on, don’t you, Bob?” asked Ned.

“Oh, I wouldn’t mind,” was the answer.

“If you could have your choice, what sort of a case would you want to work on, Bob?” asked Harry.

“A case of soda water!” exclaimed Ned.

“No, cut it out! I’m serious,” went on Harry. “I’d just like to see what Bob’s ideas are on the matter.”

“I don’t know that I have any,” said Bob with a laugh. “In this detective business you can’t pick and choose. At least I’ve never heard of any of them doing it. Of course one man may be better working on bank robberies and another on murder cases.”

“A good murder case would be all to the cheese!” exclaimed Harry, but he was not quite as brutal as it looks in print.

“I don’t know that I’d care for a murder case,” mused Bob. “But I guess, if I ever really get into the game, I’ll have to take everything that comes along.”

“Get into the game? What do you mean?” cried Ned. “Aren’t you in the game for fair, now? Look how you solved the golden eagle mystery. Then we went to Beacon Beach and you cleaned up there. And now you found Hiram’s treasure.”

“And it was nearly a murder case at that!” remarked Bob in a low voice. “If the blow had been a little harder, Hiram would have passed out. But what’s the use speculating on what will happen next? If another case comes my way I’ll tackle it.”

And the young detective soon had another case, as you may read of in the next volume of this series to be called “Bob Dexter and the Silver Lake Mystery, or the Dweller of the Black Cavern.”

“But now I’m going to get ready to go back to school,” said Bob. “And if we’re going to have a football team it’s time we got in some practice. Come on, fellows!”

And with whoops of joy they followed their leader.

THE END