CHAPTER XVIII
A HIDDEN LETTER
The very next day Bab Winters made a discovery that went a long way toward solving some of the questions that perplexed her.
The girls and boys had looked the old house over in search of the lucky ring. They had searched the whole day, all of them, even, in some instances, prying up boards in the flooring when they were loose and there was a chance that some small object might have slipped beneath them.
“No use!” said Gerry at last. “Guess we might as well give the ring up as lost, Bab.”
They gathered in the library, tired and a little irritable. This looking for a fortune was all very well, but they felt it was time that some signs of the fortune should show up. Their patience was becoming a trifle frayed.
“I suppose so,” said Bab wearily. She had been wandering about the room and now paused before the full length portrait of Uncle Jeremiah in his younger days. Curtains of a dark brown, dull material hung on either side of this portrait and could be drawn completely across it by means of a silk cord with a tassel at its termination.
Thoughtlessly, her mind on the lucky ring, Bab pulled the cord. The curtains did not spread over the picture as she had expected. Instead, there was a sharp, clicking noise, as though a latch had been released. The sound seemed to come from behind the picture.
Bab called breathlessly.
“Some one,” she said, “please look behind this picture!”
Gordon was the first to reach it. His exclamation was soft, but of a quality to bring Gerry and Charlie running to him.
“An opening!” he cried. “An opening not much bigger than your arm! Let go the cord, Bab. I’ll hold open the door. Come around here, quick!”
Bab released the cord gently, then ran to where the others were crowding close to get a look behind the picture.
“When you pulled the cord, you released a spring of some sort, do you see?” Gordon cried. “There’s the hole, Bab, and it looks as if it reached clear through to some enclosure beyond the wall!”
“Put in your hand, Bab Winters, and draw out your fortune!” cried Gerry dramatically. “Ah, that I have lived to see this moment!”
“Don’t be silly!” cried Bab, peering into the hole. “All I see at present is a large amount of nothing at all---- Oh!”
“What is it?” the others cried in an agony of excitement.
“If you don’t speak at once, Bab Winters, I’ll drop dead at your feet--and then just see how you’ll like that!” came from Gerry.
“We’d have a real ghost, then,” suggested Charlie.
“Oh, Bab, don’t mind him!” Gerry almost groaned. “What--have--you--got?”
For Bab held in her hand a paper, a paper that her fingers had closed upon as they explored the side of that mysterious hole.
“It was in a little cupboard of some sort,” she explained, in response to the serious look on Gordon’s face. “Gordon, I don’t _think_ I’m dreaming! There seemed to be shelves, and on one of them I found this!”
“Wait a minute!” Gordon put his hand in the hole and groped about for a moment. “There are shelves, Bab! And, oh, say! Look what I’ve found!”
He drew forth his hand and extended it palm outward to Bab.
The lucky ring!
Bab gasped and pounced upon it.
“Ye gods!” cried Gerry. “What next?”
“The fortune, of course,” said Charlie, trying to seem bored and not succeeding. “Bab will find at least a million now she’s got the lucky ring.”
Gordon slipped the little grinning Buddha on Bab’s finger. Gerry giggled.
“Looks like a wedding!”
“Don’t be silly!” Bab retorted. “Gordon,” she added, “where did it come from? Who put it there?”
The boy shook his head.
“We can’t tell that, Bab. But we will before long! I’ve a feeling that the mysteries are going to clear up.”
“Oh, I have, too,” whispered Bab. “I have, too--now that I have the lucky ring!”
“You are going to read the letter, aren’t you, Bab? Ye gods! why this delay?” broke in Gerry wildly.
“Help! She’s running amuck!” cried Bab, for Gerry, quite without reason, had turned and glared fiercely at her. “Oh, _do_ be quiet, Gerry!” Bab added pleadingly, as Gerry started to speak again.
She blew the dust from the letter--it seemed to have lain in its queer hiding place for a considerable time--and opened it while the boys and Gerry gathered about her with flattering attention.
“It’s for me,” she said in a subdued tone, though her eyes shone and she fingered the lucky ring lovingly. “A shaky handwriting--some one old. It must have been Uncle Jerry!”
“Bab,” said Gerry, in a tone of long and patient suffering, “would you like _me_ to read it for you?”
“I’d like to see you try!” cried Bab.
Nevertheless she opened the letter, ran her eyes down the first page of straggling, uneven writing, then began to read aloud.
“My Dear Niece, Barbara:
“They say I am a peculiar old man. Undoubtedly I am, since all these years I have led a lonely life. But this bequest is not so much the whim of an eccentric old man, as you have probably thought it----”
At this point Bab paused to glance uneasily about the room. She had for a moment experienced the sensation that Uncle Jeremiah himself was in the room, standing quite close to her, peering, perhaps, over her shoulder.
The intent faces of her companions begged Bab to go on.
“My favorite sister had your name. She was a wonderful woman, and, if she had not died in her youth, everything I own would have gone to her----”
“Sounds like ready money, Bab!” cried Gerry, the irrepressible.
“----would have gone to her.” (Bab read on) “As it is, you, who bear her name, and, as I have learned, also bear a strong resemblance to her----”
“She must have been a peach,” Gerry interjected.
“----will be my heir.” (Bab, bending her fair head over the document was entirely absorbed in its contents.) “If you are like my sister Barbara, brave, resourceful, persistent of purpose----”
“And so you are, Bab!” cried the loyal Gerry.
“----your inheritance will not be inconsiderable.”
There was a gasp from them all, but Bab apparently did not hear it. More absorbed than ever, she bent over the paper.
“One who cannot work for a benefit” (she read) “is not worthy of it. I will not help you, except to say this much. When you have found this letter you will be a step nearer to the realization of your hopes.”
The others cried out at that in huge excitement. Bab paused and looked steadily for a moment at that mysterious opening in the wall behind the picture of Uncle Jeremiah. The young folks followed her gaze, stared in awed silence. It was almost as if they expected the solution of the mystery to pop out at them from that small orifice.
In a moment Bab continued:
“Good-by, niece Barbara. They say I may not live the night through, and I must hide this while I have the strength. Good luck.
“JEREMIAH DARE.”
As Bab came to the signature there was an outbreak of excited exclamations, questions, comments; but an exclamation from Bab brought an abrupt silence.
“That isn’t all! Listen!”
Bab continued with the letter.
“Before I go” (she read) “there is one person I feel I must warn you against. He is not one of our race and so not easily understood by us. He is a Hindu, an old servant that I brought home with me when I returned from my travels and settled down in this old house to spend my declining years. This man I have been obliged to discharge because he became insolent to me, even threatening. He wishes me no good, and this enmity will, in all probability, pass on to my heir. Beware of him! Once more, good-by!”
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