Jupiter came alert. “The man in the Volkswagen broke in here, sir? What did he take?”
The man laughed. “Ay, as if you’re not knowing!”
“We don’t know!” Pete protested. “We never saw that man! We saw the car, though, because it’s been following us!”
Jupiter said quietly, “We were coming here to talk to you, Mrs. Gunn, when the man passed us on the road. He stopped and chased us. I’m Jupiter Jones from The Jones Salvage Yard in Rocky Beach, and these are my friends Bob Andrews and Pete Crenshaw. Our bikes are back on the road. They should prove that we didn’t come with the man in the Volkswagen.”
“Flora!” the horseman said. “It’s the police you should —”
“Be quiet, Rory,” Mrs. Gunn said, and nodded to the boys. “I’m Flora Gunn, boys, this is my son, Cluny, and that is our cousin, Mr. Rory McNab. May I ask why you were coming to see me?”
Bob blurted out, “Because of the chest, ma’am!”
“Our salvage yard bought an old Oriental sea chest, ma’am,” Jupiter explained. “It has the name Argyll Queen in it, and we think it belonged to your ancestor, Angus Gunn. Since we got the chest, some mysterious things have been happening. If you could tell me what the man in the Volkswagen took from your house, it might help explain what’s happened.”
Mrs. Gunn hesitated. “Well, he took nothing, boys. It’s the same every time. Someone breaks in, rummages all through what we have left of Great-grandfather Angus’s things, and never takes anything at all.”
“Nothing?” Pete said, disappointed.
But Jupiter said, “Every time, Mrs. Gunn? How many times has your house been broken into recently?”
“Five times in the last six months, I’m afraid.”
The red-headed boy, Cluny, burst out, “It’s always old Angus’s things they search! I think they’re trying to find —”
“The treasure!” Bob exclaimed.
“Mother,” Cluny cried eagerly, “they think it’s the treasure the burglar is after, too!”
Mrs. Gunn smiled. “That old legend of a treasure was proved groundless a long time ago, boys. Cluny has too much imagination.”
“Maybe not, Mrs. Gunn,” Jupiter said, and told them about Java Jim and his interest in the Oriental chest. He showed the ring they had found in the chest.
Mrs. Gunn examined the ring. “You found this?”
“Let me see,” Rory McNab said, taking the ring. “Bah, it’s red glass and brass! Old Angus had a box full of such trinkets for trading. You’re fools! People read old Angus’s journal and searched for a hundred years and nary a hint of a treasure!”
Mrs. Gunn sighed. “Rory is right, boys. Old Angus’s journal was the only possible source for a clue to any treasure, and no one ever found such a clue. I’m afraid it was all nonsense.”
“Unless,” Jupiter said, “everyone read the wrong journal!”
He took the thin second journal from his jacket and held it up in the silent room.
“Another journal?” Cluny cried.
“What kind o’ trick is this?” Rory growled.
Mrs. Gunn took the thin journal. She turned some pages slowly, and looked in the front. “It’s no trick, Rory. This is old Angus’s handwriting, sure enough, and the signature is his.” She looked at the boys. “Where did you get it?”
Jupiter told her how he had found the new journal between the walls of the chest. “Whoever repaired the inner wall of the chest didn’t notice the journal in the narrow space or know about the secret compartment. If the compartment had ever been opened, the pirate booby trap would have been sprung, and it hadn’t been.”
Mrs. Gunn nodded. “Yes, I remember that old Oriental chest now. I sold it years ago, after my husband passed away. I’ve had to sell many of old Angus’s things to make ends meet. We’re not well off, I’m afraid, and this house is expensive to keep up. Without Rory’s help and hard work we’d have lost the house long ago.”
“Ye’ll nae lose the house, Flora,” Rory grumbled, “nor need fairy tales o’ treasures to keep it.”
“The new journal’s no fairy tale, Mr. McNab,” Jupiter said.
“Call me Rory, boy, and I’ll admit the journal’s real if Flora says so,” Rory said grudgingly. “But it no proves the treasure’s more than the nonsense of fools.”
“But the letter, Rory!” young Cluny cried.
“Letter?” Jupiter repeated.
Rory ignored the leader of the trio. His eyes narrowed. “We’d best have a read o’ that journal. Hand it to me.”
Cluny took the journal from his mother, and gave it to Rory. The two of them sat on a long bench in front of the smouldering fire and began to read the journal. Mrs. Gunn nodded thoughtfully.
“Yes,” she said, “if there was a second journal, it would have been in that chest. My husband told me that his grandfather, Angus’s son, found the original journal in the chest. Grandfather Gunn always believed there was a treasure, and that the clue to it was in old Angus’s journal. But his son — my husband’s father — said that the journal told nothing, and the treasure was just a legend.”
“Why was Angus’s son so sure, Mrs. Gunn?” Bob asked.
“Well, there’s a letter, you see? Great-grandfather Angus —” She stopped and smiled. “Perhaps I should begin at the beginning, boys. How much do you know about old Angus?”
They told her what they had found out about the wreck of the Argyll Queen and the murder of Angus Gunn back in 1872.
“You’ve read the manuscript the Historical Society is preparing? Then you know most of the story. I told the Society as much as I could — everything that I’d learned from my husband,” Mrs. Gunn said. “After the wreck, and his wanderings round California, old Angus found this valley. It reminded him of his old home in the Highlands of Scotland — especially because of the pond and its island. In Scotland, Gunn Lodge is on the shores of a long inlet of the sea — Phantom Loch. There’s an island in the loch connected to the shore by a series of great boulders, called the Phantom’s Steps — very like the little island in our pond.”
Jupiter exclaimed, “So old Angus built this house exactly like Gunn Lodge in Scotland! That’s why it looks so odd for California.”
“That’s right, Jupiter,” Mrs. Gunn acknowledged. “The real Gunn Lodge was originally built in 1352. It was called Gunn Castle then, because it was no more than a fortified tower. You needed a stronghold to protect yourself in those days.
“Over the years,” Mrs. Gunn went on, “the original tower-house was added on to and remodelled to make the house you see here. The lodge still has details that remind you of a castle, though it couldn’t be defended easily any more.
The old tower came in handy after the Gunns took to the sea in the seventeenth century. Their wives used to stand on it watching for the ships to return up the loch.”
“Same idea as a New England widow’s walk,” commented Bob.
Pete burst out, “But what about the letter, ma’am?”
“After Angus found the valley and the pond that looked so much like home, he built the house. It took him almost two years. Then he sent for his wife and son. But when they got here from Scotland months later, old Angus was dead and so were his murderers. His wife, Laura, found a letter addressed to her and hidden in an old bed-warmer.”
“Something almost no one would use except his wife!” Jupiter said with satisfaction.
“His son thought that, too, when all the rumours of treasure started,” Mrs. Gunn said. “He was sure the letter was intended to disclose the treasure, and it seemed to refer to old Angus’s journal. But Grandfather Gunn never did find a clue in Angus’s journal or anywhere else.”
“Can we see the letter, ma’am?” Pete urged.