The Phantom Yacht

“We didn’t start coming here until after it had all happened,” Dick put in.

“I’m so excited.” Nann gave a little eager skip. “I almost hope the pilot of the seaplane has not found the deed and that we may find it and give it to him.”

“So do I!” Dick seconded. Over the rugged point they went, each time becoming more agile, and into the punt they climbed when Gib, barefooted as usual, had waded out and rowed close to a flat-rock platform. The tide was in and with its aid they floated rapidly up the channel in the marsh. “Shall we enter by the front or the back?” Nann asked of Dick.

“The front is nearer our landing place,” was the reply. “Let’s give the old salon a thorough ransacking. I feel in my bones that we are going to make some interesting discovery today, don’t you, Gib?”

“Dunno,” was that lad’s laconic reply. “Mabbe so.”

A few moments later they were standing under the twisted chandelier listening to the faint rattle of its many crystal pendants. Nann made a suggestion: “Let’s each take a turn in selecting some place to look for the deed, shall we?”

“Oh, yes, let’s,” Dories seconded. “That will make sort of a game of it all.”

Dick held the flashlight out to the older girl. “You make the first selection,” he said.

Nann took the light and, standing still with the others under the chandelier, she flashed the bright beam around the room. “There’s a broken door almost crushed under the sagging roof.” She indicated the front corner opposite the one by which they had entered. “There must have been a room beyond that. I suggest that we try to get through there.”

But Dick demurred. “I’m not sure that it would be wise,” he told her. “The roof might sag more if that door were pulled away.” They heard a noise back of them and turned to see Gib making for the entrance. “I’ll be back,” was all that he told them. When, a moment later, he did return, he beckoned. “Come along out,” he said. “There’s a way into that thar room from the outside.”

He led them to a window, the pane of which had been broken, leaving only the frame. They peered in and beheld what had been a large bedroom. A heavy oak bed and other pieces of furniture to match were pitched at all angles as the rotting floor had given way. Dick stepped back and looked critically at the sagging roof, then he beckoned Gib and together they talked in low tones. Seeming satisfied with their decision, they returned to the spot where the girls were waiting. “We don’t want you to run any risk of being hurt while you are with us,” Dick explained. “We want to take just as good care of you as if you were our sisters.” Then he assured them: “We think it is safe. Gib showed me how stout the cross-beam is which has kept the roof from sagging farther.”

And so they entered the room through the window. For an hour they ransacked. There was no evidence that anyone had been in that room since the storm so long ago. “Queer, sort of, ain’t it?” Gib speculated, scratching his ear. “Yo’d think that pilot fellar’d a been all over the place, wouldn’t yo’ now?”

“Let’s go back to the front room again and let Dori choose next for a place to search,” the ever chivalrous Dick suggested.

A few seconds later they again were under the chandelier. Dories, as interested and excited now as any of them, took the light and flashed it about the room, letting the round glow rest at last on the huge fireplace. “That’s where I’ll look,” she told the others. “Let’s see if there is a loose rock that will come out and behind which we may find a box with the deed in it.”

Nann laughed. “Like the story we read when we were twelve or thirteen years old,” she told the boys. But though they all rapped on the stones and even tried to pry them out, so well had the masonry been made, each rock remained firmly in place and not one of them was movable.

“Now, Dick, you have a turn.” Dories held the flashlight toward him, but he shook his head. “No, Gib first.”

The red-headed boy grinned gleefully. “I’ll choose a hard place. I reckon ol’ Colonel Wadbury hid that thar deed somewhar’s up in the attic under the roof.” Dories looked dismayed. “O, Gib, don’t choose there, for we girls couldn’t climb up among the rafters.” But Nann put in: “Of course, dear, Gib may choose the loft if he wishes. But how would you get there?”

Gib had been flashing the light along the cracked, tipped ceiling of the room. Suddenly his freckled face brightened. “Come on out agin.” He sprang for the low opening as he spoke. Then, when they were outside, he pointed to the spot where the roof was lowest. “Yo’ gals stay here whar the punt is,” he advised, “while me ’n’ Dick shinny up to whar the chimney’s broke off. Bet yo’ we kin git into the garrit from thar. Bet yo’ we kin.”

Dick was gazing at the roof appraisingly. “O, I guess it’s safe enough,” he answered the anxious expression he saw in the face of the older girl. “If our weight is too much, the roof will sag more and close up our entrance perhaps, but we can slide down without being hurt, I am sure of that.”

The girls sat in the punt to await the return of the boys, who, after a few moments’ scrambling up the sloping roof, actually disappeared into what must have once been an attic.

“I never was so interested or excited in all my life,” Nann told her friend. “I do hope we will find that deed today, for tomorrow will be Sunday, and I feel that we ought to remain with your Aunt Jane and put things in readiness for our departure on Monday.”

“Yes, so do I.” Dories glanced up at the roof, but as the boys were not to be seen, she continued: “I am interested in finding the deed, of course, but I just can’t keep my thoughts from wandering. I am so glad that Mother will not have to keep on sewing. She has been so wonderful taking care of Peter and me the way she has ever since that long ago day when father died.” Then she sighed. “Of course I wish she hadn’t been too proud to accept help from Aunt Jane.” But almost at once she contradicted with, “In one way, though, I don’t, for if I had lived in Boston all these years, I would never have known you. But now that you are going to live in Boston, how I do wish that Mother and Peter and I were to live there also.”

“Maybe you will,” Nann began, but Dories shook her head. “I don’t believe Mother would want to leave her old home. It isn’t much of a place, but she and Father went there when they were married, and we children were born there.” Then, excitedly pointing to the roof, Dories exclaimed: “Here come the boys, and they have a packet of papers, haven’t they?”

Nann stepped out of the punt to the mound as she called, “O, boys, have you found the deed?”

“We don’t know yet,” Dick replied, but the girls could see by his glowing expression that he believed that they had.

They all sat in the punt, which had been drawn partly up on the mound and which afforded the only available seats. Dick and Nann occupied the wide stern seat, while Dories and Gib in the middle faced them. Dick unfastened the leather thong which bound the papers and, closing his eyes, just for the lark of it, he passed a folded document to each of his companions. Then he opened them as he said laughingly:

“Just four. How kind of old Colonel Wadbury to help us with our game! Now, Nann, report about yours first. Is it the Wetherby deed?”

After a moment’s eager scrutiny, Nann shook her head. “Alas, no! It’s something telling about shares in some corporation,” she told them.

“Well, we’ll keep it anyway to give to our pilot friend,” Dick commented.

“Mine,” Dories said, “is a deed, but it seems to be for this Siquaw Point property.”

Dick reported that his was a marriage license, and Gib dolefully added that his was some government paper, the meaning of which he could not understand. He handed it to Dick, who, after scrutinizing it, said: “Well, at least one thing is certain, it isn’t the deed for which we are searching.” Then, rising, he exclaimed: “Now it’s my turn. I want to go back to the salon. I had a sort of inspiration awhile ago. I thought I wouldn’t mention it until my turn came.”

They left the punt and followed the speaker to their low entrance in the wall. Although they were curious to know Dick’s plan, no one spoke until again they stood beneath the rattling chandelier. At once the boy flashed the round light toward the corner where the piercing eyes under shaggy brows seemed to be watching them. Then he went in that direction. Dories shuddered as she always did when she saw that stern, unrelenting old face. “Why, Dick,” Nann exclaimed, “do you suspect that the picture of the old Colonel can reveal the deed’s hiding-place?”

The boy was on his knees in front of the painting. “Yes, I do,” he said. “At least I happened all of a sudden to remember of having heard of valuable papers that were hidden in a frame back of a painting. That is why I wanted to look here.” He had actually lifted the large painting in the broken frame. Dories cried out in terror: “O, Dick, how dare you touch that terrible thing? He looks so real and so scarey.” The boy addressed evidently did not hear her. Handing the flashlight to Nann, he asked her to hold it close while he tore off the boards at the back.

For a tense moment the four young people watched, almost holding their breath.

“Wall, it ain’t thar, I reckon.” Gib was the first to break the silence.

“You’re right!” Dick placed the painting from which the frame had been removed against the wall and was about to step back when the rotting boards beneath him caved in and he fell, disappearing entirely. Dories screamed and Gib, taking the light from Nann, flashed the glow from it down into the dark hole. “Dick! Dick! Are you hurt?” Nann was calling anxiously.

After what seemed like a very long time, Dick’s voice was heard: “I’m all right. Don’t worry about me. Gib, see if there isn’t a trap-door or something. I seem to have fallen into a vault of some kind.” Then after another silence, “I guess I’ve stumbled onto steps leading up.” A second later a low door in the dark corner opened and Dick, smiling gleefully, emerged, covered with dust and cobwebs. “Give me the light and let’s see what this door is.” Then, after a moment’s scrutiny, “Aha! That vault was meant to be a secret. The door looks, from this side, like part of the paneling.”

“Oh, Dick!” Nann cried exultingly. “That’s where the Wetherby deed is. Down in that old vault.”

“I bet yo’ she’s right.” Gib stooped to peer into the dark hole.

“Can’t we all go down and investigate?” Nann asked eagerly.

Dick hesitated. “I’d heaps rather you girls stayed out in the punt,” he began, but when he saw the crestfallen expression of the adventurous older girl he ended with, “Well, come, if you want to. I don’t suppose anything will hurt us.”

Although Dories was afraid to go down, she was even more fearful of remaining alone with those pictured sharp grey eyes glaring at her, and so, clinging to Nann, she descended the rather rickety short flight of steps. The flashlight revealed casks which evidently had contained liquor, and a small iron box. “That box,” Dick said with conviction, “contains the Wetherby deed.” He was about to try to lift it when Nann grasped his arm. “Hark,” she whispered. “I heard someone walking. It sounds as though it might be someone in that library or den where the desk was.”

They all listened and were convinced that Nann had been right. “It’s that pilot chap, I reckon,” Gib said. But Dick was not so sure. “Please, Nann,” he pleaded, “you and Dories go out to the punt and wait, while Gib and I discover who is prowling around. I didn’t hear an airplane pass overhead, but then, of course, he might have come in from the sea as he did before.”

The girls were glad to get out in the sunlight. They stood near the punt with hands tightly clasped while the boys went around to the back to enter the opening in the wall of the den. It seemed a very long while before Nann and Dories heard voices.

Then three boys approached them. A tall, slender lad, dressed after the fashion of aviators, with a dark handsome face lighted with interest, was listening intently to what Dick was telling him.

The girls heard him say, “Of course, I knew someone else was visiting my grandfather’s home, especially after I found the painting of my mother – ” He paused when he saw the girls, and Nann was sure that the boys had neglected to tell him that they were not alone. Dick, in his usual manly way, introduced Carl Ovieda. Dories thought the newcomer the nicest looking boy she had ever seen. At once Dick made a confession. “I know that we ought not to have done it, Mr. Ovieda. We read the note book that we found, hoping that it would throw some light on the mystery.”

“I’m glad you did!” was the frank reply. “The truth is, I was getting rather desperate. You see, Mother and Sister are to arrive tomorrow from overseas, and I did so want to have the deed of Grandma Wetherby’s old home to give to Mother. The place has been vacant for years, but the taxes have been paid. Of course no one would dispute our right to live there, but there couldn’t be a clear title without having the deed recorded.”

Gib asked a question in his usual indifferent manner, but Nann knew how eager he really was to hear the answer, “Air they comin’ in that thar Phantom Yacht, yer mother and sister?”

The newcomer looked at the questioner as though he did not understand his meaning; then turning toward Nann and Dories he asked, “What is the Phantom Yacht?”

Nann told him. Then the lad, with a friendly smile, answered Gib: “No, indeed. That yacht was sold, Mother told me, when we returned to Honolulu. That is where we have lived nearly all of our lives, but ever since my father died, Mother has longed to return to her own home country.”