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

“Didn’t he hear any noise?”

“Did anybody make him drink anything that might have had poison or knock-out drops in it?”

These were some of the questions from Ned, Harry, Jolly Bill and the two police chiefs when Bob finished reading the document.

“Wait!” begged the young detective. “One at a time. I’ll ask him the questions and let him write the answer. We’ll get along faster that way.”

“Let’s see, first, how he got doped, if he was,” suggested Chief Duncan. So Bob wrote that question.

“No one gave me anything that I know of,” was the written reply. “And the only thing I drank was some buttermilk.”

“I had some of that and I know there was nothing wrong with it,” testified Bob. “But did you see any one around your cabin just before you fainted and were robbed?”

“I saw no one,” wrote Hiram, “It was very strange.”

“I’ll say it was!” exclaimed Harry.

“What did you do after you came to?” was the next question.

“I sat up and looked around. I couldn’t understand it at all. I felt sick – I couldn’t talk – something seemed to have hold of my tongue. It’s that way yet but I can feel it wearing off. I saw that I had been robbed.

“But the queer part of it was that whoever had robbed me had gone out, locked the door from the outside and then, in some way, they got the key back in here, so that it lay on the floor close to my right hand, as if it had dropped from my fingers.”

“Why, that’s easy!” chuckled Jolly Bill. “They locked the door – that is the robber did, and threw the key in over the transom. I’ve heard of cases like that.”

“There isn’t any transom over this door,” said Bob, pointing. “There isn’t a single opening to this room, either from inside the cabin or out of doors. The keyhole is the only opening, and it Is impossible to push a big key, like this, in through the keyhole.”

“I have it!” cried Ned. “They climbed up on the roof and dropped the key down the chimney. You said the chimney was barred inside, and too small for a man to climb down, Bob, but a key could fall down.”

“Yes,” admitted the young detective dryly, “a key would fall down all right, but it would drop in the fireplace, or in the ashes of the fire if one had been built Mr. Beegle says the key was lying close to his hand, and he was on the floor, ten feet away from the hearth. That won’t do, Ned.”

“Couldn’t the key bounce from the brick hearth, over to where Mr. Beegle lay?” asked the lad, who hated to see his theory riddled like this.

In answer Bob pointed to the hearth. There was a thick layer of wood ashes on it, for a fire had been burning in the place recently.

“Any key dropping in those ashes would fall as dead as a golf ball in a mud bank,” stated the young sleuth. “It wouldn’t bounce a foot, let alone ten feet, and land close beside Mr. Beegle’s hand.”

“Then there must be two keys, or else the door was locked with a skeleton key,” said Harry.

“No! No!” suddenly exclaimed the stricken man. He wrote rapidly.

“There is only one key, and no skeleton key would fit this lock,” which was easy to believe when its ponderous nature was taken into consideration.

“Um!” mused Harry, when this had been read to those in the room. “Then it’s simmering down to a question of who it was knocked him out, and how they managed to lock the door after they had left with the treasure, and how they got the key back inside.”

“That’s the question,” assented Bob.

“But why should the thief go to such trouble to get the key back in the room, after he had left Mr. Beegle unconscious?” asked Ned. “That’s what I can’t understand.”

“He probably did it to throw suspicion off,” suggested Bob. “By leaving the key close to Mr. Beegle’s hand he might have thought his victim would come to the conclusion that he hadn’t been robbed at all – or else that in a sort of dream or sleep-walking act he had taken away his own valuables and hidden them.”

“Of course that’s possible,” said Chief Duncan.

“No! No!” cried Hiram, with more power than he had yet spoken since he was stricken. Once more he quickly wrote:

“I did not hide that box. Why should I? It was mine and is yet, no matter who has it. Someone sneaked in here while I was looking at my treasure and overpowered me with some powerful drug, I believe – some sort of gas, maybe the kind they used in the Great War. When I toppled over they came in, got the box, went out and locked me in.”

“But how could they get out and lock you in?” asked Chief Duncan. “The key was here with you all the while.”

Hiram Beegle shook his head. It was beyond his comprehension, and, for that matter, beyond the comprehension of all present. Even Bob Dexter, skillful and clever as he was, shook his head.

“I don’t see how the key got back here,” he mused. “But there are some other things to find out yet. How did this robbery become known? Did any one find Mr. Beegle in the strong room? They couldn’t see him lying there, for there aren’t any windows. There aren’t any panes of glass in the door. Did he call for help? And if he did, how did he get the key out to some one to come in and pick him up?”

“He didn’t have to do that,” said Chief Drayton. “He managed to crawl to the door and unlock it himself. Then he staggered out doors and hailed Tom Shan, a neighboring farmer, who was driving past. Shan did what he could and then came and told me.”

“I see,” murmured Bob Dexter. “Then the two important points in this mystery are to discover who robbed Mr. Beegle and how it was they got the key back in the room after they went out and locked the door. And that’s the hardest nut to crack, for there isn’t any opening in this room through which a key could be put back.”

“Except the chimney,” commented Jolly Bill.

“We’ve eliminated that,” declared Bob. “But, just to be on the safe side, I’ll climb up on the roof and drop the key down. We’ll see where it lands.”

“Better first find out where the key really was,” suggested Ned. “I mean where Mr. Beegle was lying on the floor with the key near his hand.”

“A good idea,” declared Bob. “Can you show us how it was?” he asked.

The old man seemed rapidly to be getting better, for he arose from his chair and tottered into his strong room. There he stretched out on the floor in the position he had found himself in when he became conscious. He laid the key in the position where he had first noted it on opening his eyes.

“Well, we have that to start with,” remarked Bob, as the old man arose and went back to his chair. “Ill just mark the spot on the floor with a pencil.” As he stooped over to do this he seemed to take notice of something, for Ned saw his chum give a little start.

“Did you get a clew then, Bob?” he asked.

“A clew? No – no clews here, I’m afraid.”

“I thought you saw something.”

“No – nothing to amount to anything. Now I’ll get up on the roof and drop the key down. You fellows stay here and tell me where it lands. I’ll try it half a dozen times.”

They helped Hiram Beegle back to his blanketed chair, and by this time the doctor had come back. He said his patient was much better and that gradually all the effects of the attack would wear off.

“But you had better not stay here all alone,” the physician suggested. “I stopped at Tom Shan’s on my way here and he and his wife want you to come and stay with them a few days. You’ll be well taken care of there.”

“Yes – yes,” slowly assented Hiram. “I’ll – go. There’s nothing here, now, to be taken. They have my treasure.”

He spoke sadly, as one who has lost hope.

“We’ll get it back for you,” said Chief Duncan cheerfully.

“Sure we will!” cried Jolly Bill. “I’ll get in the wake of that scoundrel Rod Marbury and take it away from him. Trust an old messmate for that!”