who ever really cared for him. In due time he arrived at the farm with quite a retinue of friendly Indians and carriers.
“He was warmly welcomed. Possibly his money and wealth had something to do with it. I don’t know anything about that, however. At any rate, for some years, he lived there, till one day he fell ill. His constitution was undermined by the reckless, wild life he had led, and he died not long after. He left all his gold and jewels to his brother.
“Indians were many and hostile in those days, so in order to be secure in case of an attack, the elder brother had no sooner buried his kin with due reverence, and received his legacy, than he decided to secrete the entire amount of the old pirate’s treasure in a cave in a remote part of the Adirondacks.”
“Gee!” exclaimed Tubby, who was hugging his knees, while his eyes showed round as saucers in his fat cheeks.
“Did the Indians get it?” asked Hiram.
“Wait a minute, and you shall hear,” continued the major. “Well, as I said, the treasure was buried in a cave so securely hidden that nobody would be able to find it again, except by a miracle, or by aid of the chart of the spot, which Chisholm Dangerfield carefully made. A few nights after that, a tribe went on the warpath, landed in canoes near to the Dangerfield farm, and massacred every soul on the place but one – a young boy named Roger Dangerfield, who escaped.
“This Roger Dangerfield was my great-great-grandfather. With him, when he fled from the burning ruins, he took a paper his father had thrust into his hands just before the Indian attack came. All this he wrote in his diary, which did not come into my hands till recently. Well, Roger Dangerfield, left to his own resources, proved so able a youth that he was, before very long, a prosperous merchant in Albany. But in the meantime he made several expeditions to the mountains to try to find the hidden wealth.
“I should have told you that the paper was in cipher, and a very elaborate one, so that it had never been completely worked out. This, no doubt, accounts for Roger Dangerfield’s failure.
“Well, in course of time, the cipher became a family relic along with Roger Dangerfield’s diary. His descendants moved to Virginia, where I was born. I recollect, as a youngster, being enthralled by the story of the old piratical Dangerfield’s hidden gold, and resolving that when I grew up I would find it. We had, in our employ at that time, a butler named Jarley. I was an only child, and he was my confidant. I naturally told him about the cipher and what its unraveling would mean.
“This happened when I was about eighteen and home on a vacation. Jarley seemed much interested, but after both he and I had puzzled in vain over the cipher, we gave it up. When I came home on my next vacation, I learned that Jarley had left. His mother and father had died, he declared, and he was required at his home in Maine. Well, I thought no more of the matter, and forming new acquaintances in our neighborhood, which was rapidly settling, I soon forgot Jarley. But one day a notion seized me to look at the cipher and the diary again.
“But when I came to look for them, they had gone. Nor did any search result in my finding them. It at once flashed across my mind that Jarley might have taken them. So fixed an idea did this become, that I visited the place in Maine to which he said he had gone, only to find that he had removed soon after his return from Virginia. However, pursuing the trail, I found that he – or a man resembling him – had visited the spot on the lake where the old-time house had stood, and had made a mysterious expedition into the mountains. The spot was at that time known as Dangerfield, and was quite a flourishing little town, with a pulp mill and a few other local industries. In that quiet community they recollected the mysterious visitor well.
“However, as I learned, Jarley had left the town without paying his guides or the man from whom he had hired the horses, I concluded that the expedition had not been successful. Then I advertised for the man, but without success. Then I was appointed to West Point, and for a long time I thought no more of the matter. In fact, for years it lay dormant in my mind, with occasional flashes of memory; then I would advertise for Jarley or his heirs, but without success.
“The last time I advertised was about a year ago. After six months’ silence I received a letter, asking me to call at an address near the Erie Basin in Brooklyn, if I was interested in the long-lost Jarley. All my enthusiasm once more at fever heat, I set out for the place. The address at which I was to call I found to be a squalid sailors’ boarding-house. On inquiring there for James Jarley, the name signed to the letter, I was conducted into a dirty room, where lay a rough-looking sailor, evidently just recovering from the effects of a debauch.
“So dulled was his mind, that it was some time before I could explain my errand, but finally he understood. He frankly told me he was out for money, and wanted to know how much I would give him for some papers he had which his father – our old butler, it transpired – had left him. His father, he said, had told him that if ever he wanted to make money with them he was to seek out a Major Dangerfield, who would be likely to pay him well for them.
“But it appeared that his father had also told him that he stood a chance of arrest if he did so, and that it might be a dangerous step. However, he told me that he had at length decided to take that chance, and on a return from a long voyage, during which he had encountered my advertisement in an old newspaper in a foreign port, he had made up his mind to find me on his return.
“His father, it appeared, had always kept track of me, but fear and shame had kept him from trying to arrange a meeting. The son, I gathered, both from his conversation and the situation in which I found him, had always been a ne’er-do-well. Well, the matter ended with my paying him a sum of money for the papers, which as I suspected, proved to be the yellow-paged old diary and the well-thumbed, tattered cipher. Then I had him removed to a hospital, where a few days later he died in an attack of delirium.”
CHAPTER IV
THE NARRATIVE CONTINUED
“But it appeared that even while on his deathbed the man had been playing a dishonest game. Before he had made his bargain with me, he had revealed the secret and tried to sell it to a certain money-lender at a seaport in Maine. This man had refused to have anything to do with what he thought was a chimerical scheme, but later confided the whole thing to a friend of his by name Stonington Hunt – a former Wall Street man, who had been compelled to quit in disgrace the scene of his financial operations.”
“Stonington Hunt!” gasped Rob, leaning forward in his chair, while the others looked equally amazed.
“Yes, that was the name. Why, do you know him?”
“Know him, Major!” echoed Mr. Blake. “He was concerned in some rascally operations in this village not so long ago. That he left here under a cloud, was mainly due to activities of the Boy Scouts, whose enemy he was. We heard he had gone to Maine. Is he engaged in new rascality?”
“You shall hear,” pursued the major. “Well, as I said, this seaport money-lender told Stonington Hunt of the chart and cipher and the old diary recording the burial of the treasure. Hunt, it would seem, placed more importance on the information than had the money-lender, for he agreed, provided the latter would help to finance an expedition, to try to solve the cipher, or else have some expert translate it. He set out at once for Brooklyn, arriving there, as I subsequently learned, just after I had departed with the diary and the papers which young Jarley had carried in his sea-chest for some years.
“He lost no time in tracing me, and offered me a large sum for the papers. But my interest had been aroused. For the sake of the adventure of the thing, and also to clear up the mystery, I had resolved to go treasure hunting myself. With this object in view, I rented a bungalow on a lake not far from the range in which I suspected the treasure cave lay, and devoted days and nights trying to solve the cipher. At this time a college professor, an old chum of mine, wrote me that his health was broken down, and that he needed a rest. I invited him to come and visit me in Essex County, at the same time suggesting that I had a hard nut for him to crack. Professor Jeremiah Jorum arrived soon after, and his health picked up amazingly in the mountain air. One day he asked about ‘the hard nut.’ I produced the cipher, and told him something of its history. Perhaps I should have told you that Professor Jorum has devoted a good deal of his life to what is known as cryptology