Jupiter dressed and called Bob and Pete. He told them to meet him at the salvage yard in fifteen minutes. He had the answer!
“I’ve been dumb,” the stout leader of the trio moaned. “I should have seen it long ago. Hurry!”
He called Cluny at Phantom Lake.
“I think I know where the treasure is, Cluny,” Jupiter declared to the sleepy boy on the other end of the phone. “Get a pick and shovel and your raincoat, and wait for us. Hans will drive us out,”
He hurried downstairs to have a quick bowl of cereal. As he gulped his milk, the telephone rang. It was Professor Shay.
“Jupiter?” the professor said. “I’ve been lying awake in bed thinking about our hidden room, and I’ve had an idea of how old Angus could have marked it! The phantom — ”
“There isn’t any hidden room. Professor,” Jupiter told him. “I’m certain I know the answer now!”
“What?” Professor Shay cried over the telephone. “Not a hidden room? Then…? Tell me, Jupiter!”
“I’ll tell you at the lake. Meet us there.”
“I’ll get dressed at once!” the professor said.
Ten minutes later, The Three Investigators huddled in the rain in the salvage yard. Pete and Bob could barely contain themselves. When Hans arrived with the truck, they clambered into the covered back and faced Jupiter.
“What is the answer. First!” Bob demanded.
“Tell us!” Pete echoed.
“All right,” Jupiter said, with a maddening grin. “I was asleep, and the hidden room theory was bothering me, and something Bob said when we rode home must have popped into my head. Then I saw the whole thing!”
Pete groaned in the bumping truck. “What did Bob say?”
“He said,” Jupiter intoned solemnly with his love of drama, “that maybe old Angus planted a special tree at Phantom Lake. And that’s exactly what Angus did!”
“A tree?” Pete gaped.
“Not a tree that he knew from Scotland, as Bob thought,” Jupe went on, “but a tree that would make Laura think of home. He went to Cabrillo Island and bought one of those twisted cypress trees that look like phantoms! He planted a phantom at Phantom Lake!”
“Wow!” cried Bob. “All we have to do is find an old cypress out at Phantom Lake!”
“But,” Pete objected, “where do we look? There’s acres and acres of trees out there.”
“The rest of the riddle tells us.” Jupiter beamed. “Think of the steps to the puzzle again. First, the miners and the sluice timber from Powder Gulch. Pete was absolutely correct — miners dig best, and they did dig a big hole. And there is one vital fact about sluice timber we completely overlooked. Why did old Angus have to have sluice timber? Not just planks, or mining timbers, but sluice timber?”
“Why, Jupe?” Pete sighed.
“Because sluice timber is specially cut and fitted to hold water!” Jupiter declared. “A sluice holds water in, but old Angus used it to hold water out!”
Bob stared. “Out of where, Jupe?”
“Out of the big, long hole he had the miners dig for him,” Jupiter said. “He had to keep water out of the hole while it was being dug. Then he bought ten large stones to use as stepping stones. He got a cypress from Cabrillo Island. And what he bought at Wright and Sons was a ship’s lantern!”
“The island in the pond!” Bob and Pete cried together.
“Exactly,” Jupiter crowed. “Old Angus built that small island in Phantom Lake! That was Laura’s surprise. Everyone thought old Angus found the pond with the island in it, just like home, but he didn’t. He built the island!
“Originally there must have been a narrow peninsula jutting out into the pond. Angus built a barrier of sluice timber on each side, cut a channel across the peninsula, put the big stones in to be the Phantom’s Steps, and let the water back in. He had an island then. He put a ship’s lantern from Wright and Sons on a pole for a beacon, and planted a twisted cypress to recreate the legend of the phantom!
“He built a miniature replica of what he had loved at home — the view down the loch. That was his surprise present for Laura.” Jupiter paused for breath. “Then, when the Captain of the Argyll Queen and his men appeared, Angus used his island as a hiding place for the treasure. He left the letter and the second journal as clues!”
Bob and Pete were silent in admiration of old Angus’s clever riddle and Jupiter’s solution of it.
“No one ever knew the island was man-made?” Bob said finally.
“No one besides Angus, except the miners who dug it,” Jupiter said. “Miners in those days were mostly drifters, and even fugitives. By the time anyone started looking for the treasure, most of the diggers had probably gone away. Angus’s family assumed that the island was natural, and never knew about the miners because they never read the second journal!”
“But we found it, and now we’ll find the treasure!” Pete exclaimed.
“I’m certain of it,” Jupiter declared.
Bob said, “One thing still confuses me, First. What did old Angus mean when he wrote about seeing the secret in a mirror?”
“Maybe the pond is like a mirror?” Pete suggested.
Jupiter said, “I think I can explain that, too. But first I want to go to the pond and — ”
The truck had turned on to the side road to Phantom Lake some minutes earlier. Now Hans slammed on the brakes, throwing the boys backwards. They recovered, and jumped out. Hans was already out of the cab, hurrying forward.
They were at the last curve before the lodge, just out of sight of the house. Professor Shay’s station wagon was parked on the gravel shoulder behind a grove of pines. The car’s front door was open, and the professor himself sat on the edge of the front seat with Cluny bending over him!
“You are all right, Herr Professor?” Hans asked.
“I… I think so,” Professor Shay said, feeling his jaw. He looked at the boys as they ran up. “It was Java Jim! I drove up just a few minutes ago and saw him on the road! I tried to apprehend him, but he attacked me and ran off into the trees!”
“Java Jim?” Jupiter cried. “Then we haven’t a second to lose! Cluny, get the tools, quickly!”
Mrs. Gunn watched them go off through the rain towards the small pond, with Hans and Professor Shay carrying the tools.
“Be careful now,” Cluny’s mother called. “Try to keep dry.”
The boys nodded, and hurried through the undergrowth to the edge of the pond. The Phantom’s Steps gleamed wetly in the narrow channel. They jumped across the stones in single file and stood on the tiny pine-covered island. It was less than one hundred feet wide, with two small hills that reached up thirty or forty feet.
“The legend says that the phantom stands on a crag and watches down the loch for the Vikings,” Jupiter said. “So we’ll look for a twisted tree on the far side of the island on some high point!”
They circled the island to the far side, the rain dripping off their hats and coats and down their necks. They climbed up the slope that formed the tiny hill facing down the pond. The beacon was on the top, its lantern hanging against the pole. Pete inspected the lantern.
“Jupe was right!” the Second Investigator exclaimed. “The brass plate’s on the lantern?
“’Wright and Sons’!”