The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn (12 page)

Sincerely yours,

HUGO C. PHELPOTTS

First Vice-President,

The First National Bank

of Hoosac, Minnesota

P.S.: It is not necessary for either of your parents to accompany you. The papers requiring your signature may be countersigned later, at your parents’ convenience.

As Anthony read this note, he felt a vague, formless fear growing in his mind. He didn’t know much about the world of high finance, but he didn’t think that a big shot like Mr. Philpotts would be likely to be sending him notes about his savings account. That was the sort of thing that his employees would take care of. Anthony folded up the note and stuck it back in his pocket. There was a troubled look on his face. He decided that before he went to see Mr. Philpotts, he would have to show this note to Miss Eells.

After school, Anthony marched straight over to the library to Miss Eells’s office. He pulled the note out of his pocket and shoved it across the desk to Miss Eells. She opened it and read it, and as she read, her eyebrows rose, and a little surprised smile appeared on her face. Then she frowned.

“Well!” she said as she folded the note back up. “If that isn’t the darndest!”

“Do you—do you think it’s anything bad, Miss Eells?” asked Anthony anxiously.

Miss Eells took her glasses off and stared at the wall. “I don’t know. I’m sure that if you were to show up at the bank with your mother, he’d produce some sort of falderal for you to sign, and that would be the end of it —for the time being. By the way, did you tell your mother that you got this note?”

Anthony shook his head. “Nope. I was scared to.”

Miss Eells put her glasses back on. “You know, there may be reason for you to be scared. I don’t want to alarm you, but it seems to me that there is more in this note than meets the eye. I think it was good that you didn’t tell your mother. It says here that he wants to see you today at three-thirty. That’s fifteen minutes from now. Are you going to see him?”

“Yeah. I guess I have to, unless you think I shouldn’t go.”

Miss Eells drummed her fingers on the desk. “Oh, I think you ought to go,” she said at last. “There’s no doubt in my mind about that. And as soon as you find out what he’s got up his sleeve, come back and tell me, will you?”

Anthony grinned. “Sure,” he said. He was glad at times like this that he had Miss Eells on his side. Very glad.

A few minutes later, Anthony found himself standing outside the front door of the First National Bank of Hoosac. The door was made of glass, and through it Anthony could see people working inside the bank, even though the door was locked and the regular business day was over. A guard in a blue uniform stood just inside. Anthony rapped on the glass, and the man let him in.

“Are you Anthony Monday?” he asked.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“Well, you’re to go to Mr. Philpotts’s office. It’s down at the end of that corridor. The third door on your left. His name is on the glass. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks.”

Anthony walked down the corridor and stopped outside a door with a frosted glass pane set in it. The gold letters on the pane said HUGO C. PHILPOTTS,
Vice-President.
Anthony knocked and waited for a response. After a few minutes, he heard footsteps and saw a shadow moving behind the glass. The door opened.

“Hello, young man. How are you today?” Hugo Philpotts smiled stiffly and bowed. He stepped aside and waved Anthony in.

“Okay, I guess.”

Anthony walked in, and Mr. Philpotts closed the door. “This way, young man.” Anthony followed Mr. Philpotts across a little bare room that had a filing cabinet, a desk, and two chairs in it. There was no one sitting at the desk. As they passed the desk, Mr. Philpotts tapped it and said, “This is my secretary’s desk. I sent her home early because I want our conversation to be private. She has a bad habit of listening in on the intercom.” He laughed a small, cold, mirthless laugh. Then he pushed open another door, a big, stout oak-paneled door, marked “Private.” Inside was a comfortable-looking office. There was a large walnut desk with a green marble inkstand on it. The carpet was wine-colored and very thick, and all the walls were covered with panels of dark, polished wood. Heavy red draperies hung over all the windows, shutting out the sunlight. A floor lamp burned next to the desk. It cast a pool of quiet light over the desk and the carpet.

Anthony followed Hugo Philpotts across the carpet At one corner of the desk was an easy chair for visitors to sit in, and next to the easy chair was a bronze ash tray on a fluted stand. Behind the desk was Hugo Philpotts’s own chair. It had red damask upholstery and tall, twisty wooden pillars running up the sides. The back of the chair was very high, and at the top was a wooden coat of arms. Anthony thought the chair looked like a throne. And behind the chair, up on the wall, was a portrait. It was lit by a green-shaded lamp that hung out over the top of the frame. It was a portrait of Alpheus Winterborn.

“Do sit down,” said Hugo Philpotts, patting the back of the easy chair.

Anthony sat down, and as he sank into the seat, the green leather cushion under him hissed like an inner tube. Hugo Philpotts went around behind the desk and sat down on the throne chair. He folded his hands on the desk and stared hard at Anthony. There was a cold smirk on his thin, whitish lips. One corner of his moustache twitched nervously. His manner so far had been courteous—in a greasy, oily way—but it was plain to Anthony that Mr. Philpotts had something besides savings accounts on his mind.

“Now then, young man,” said Hugo Philpotts, as he rubbed his hands together, “you have probably guessed that I didn’t ask you here so that we could talk about your savings account. I suppose that by rights I ought to have asked Miss Eells to come here, but I decided that I’d approach her through you. I’m sure that by the time I’m finished talking with you, you’ll want very much to help me. You’ll want to beg her and plead with her to give me what I want. And as soon as she finds out how things stand, I’m sure she will be cooperative. She likes you very much. Everyone knows that.” Hugo coughed, and Anthony stared at him.

“But why be mysterious?” Hugo Philpotts went on as he stroked his moustache with his forefinger. “I’m sure you hate beating around the bush as much as I do, so I’ll come right to the point. That Eells woman has something that is rightfully mine, and I want you to make her give it to me. What I mean is, I want what was in the envelope, or bag, or box, or whatever it was that was glued to the back of the mirror that Miss Eells bought at that auction out in Rolling Stone. I want it, and I want it now.” He rapped his knuckles on the desk.

Anthony was stunned. He couldn’t have been more surprised if Hugo had asked him for the moon. All along, Anthony had wondered if this mysterious meeting had something to do with Alpheus Winterborn’s treasure. Miss Eells hadn’t said so in so many words, but it was obvious that she thought the treasure was at the bottom of the mystery, too. Both Anthony and Miss Eells felt sure that Hugo had stolen the mirror, but Anthony had never, in his wildest dreams, expected to hear Hugo himself own up to the theft. That, however, was what he had just done.

Hugo saw how surprised Anthony was, and this seemed to amuse him. He laughed harshly. “Surprised, aren’t you? Here I am, telling you right out in the open that I stole that ridiculous mirror. Naughty of me, wasn’t it? Would you like to call up the police and tell them all about it?” He shoved the telephone across the desk toward Anthony.

Anthony sat there with his mouth open. Then suddenly anger flared up inside him. “You’re darn right I will!” he said, and he jumped to his feet. But as he reached for the phone, Hugo clamped his hand down over the receiver.

“Not so fast, young man. Not so fast. You don’t know what you’re doing. In the first place, I merely took back what was rightfully mine. I won that mirror, fair and square, at the auction. If that old crook of an auctioneer hadn’t cheated me, I wouldn’t have had to steal it to get it. And in the second place, if you say one word to anyone about what I did, you’ll be getting your father into a very great deal of trouble.”

Anthony froze. “My father?” He slowly sank back into his seat.

“That’s better,” said Hugo, smiling maliciously. He took his hand off the phone, but he continued to stare hard at Anthony. “I’m sure you don’t want any trouble. Nobody likes trouble. And you’ll be saving yourself and Miss Eells and your father a great deal of trouble if you’ll just go along like a good boy and help me get what I want.”

Anthony felt very confused. The threat against his father had come totally out of the blue. And why on earth did Mr. Philpotts want the envelope with the clue in it? It was a clue to a treasure that didn’t exist. It was like asking for the key to a house that had been torn down. It didn’t make any sense.

Anthony shifted nervously in his seat. “M-Mr. Philpotts,” he stammered, “all this kind of... well, it sounds kind of nutty to me. I don’t see why you want—”

Hugo cut him off. “So it sounds nutty, does it? Well, it will all seem very clear and sane in a couple of minutes. But first I want to tell you that I’ve had my eye on you for some time. I’ve been watching you ever since you slid Alpheus Winterborn’s lucky piece across the counter to me.”

Anthony’s mouth dropped open.

“Oh, yes. My Uncle Alpheus used to carry a ten-dollar gold piece around with him. When I was a child, he would let me play with it now and then, and I have always remembered that there were two notches on the nose of the Liberty head on one side. He made them with his jackknife. When I saw those notches, I was suspicious, and then, just to be absolutely certain, I took the coin into the back room and examined it with a magnifying glass. Sure enough, there under the eagle on the other side were Uncle Alpheus’s initials. The letters were very small—I think he had them engraved by a jeweler—but they were there, and that proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that the coin was his. And then I thought to myself, what is this boy doing with Alpheus Winterborn’s lucky piece? Where did he get it? Of course, I said to myself, this boy works at the library, doesn’t he? He said he did and that Miss Eells had sent him down with the coin. Maybe Alpheus dropped it in some dusty corner of the library when he was living there in the months just before his death, and then this boy found it. That seemed reasonable.

“But I still felt there might be more to all this. So I kept my eye on you, until we met at that auction out in Rolling Stone—when your friend Miss Eells and I both wanted the same thing, and by cheating she managed to get it. I said to myself, something is up. First the coin, and now this mirror. Both of them belonged to Alpheus Winterborn. Now suppose, I said to myself, just suppose that boy found a message of some kind with that coin.”

Anthony squirmed. Hugo Philpotts’s guess was uncomfortably close to the truth.

“You see,” Hugo continued, leaning back in his chair and lighting a cigarette, “my Uncle Alpheus was a strange man. He liked to hide things, and he liked to drop hints. Sly little hints. He used to have dinner over at our house during the years when the library was being built, and he dropped hints now and then about a valuable object, or collection of objects, that he had hidden somewhere. He wouldn’t say what this little treasure was, but my mother and I gathered that it was something really wonderful, something worth maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars. Well, naturally, I wondered what the treasure could be, and—more important—I wondered
where
it could be. I tried on more than one occasion to worm the truth out of my dear old uncle, but he was a close-mouthed old—uh, gentleman, and whenever I brought the treasure up, he would shut his mouth tighter than a clam.”

Hugo Philpotts paused to flick the ash off his cigarette. Then he went on. “In all the years that have passed since my Uncle Alpheus died, I’ve thought a great deal about this real or imaginary treasure. Naturally, I tried at first to convince myself that Uncle Alpheus had been putting me on. He was well known as a practical joker in his time, after all. But over the years I became thoroughly convinced that there really was a Winterborn treasure of some sort hidden away in or near the town of Hoosac. Jewels, maybe. A diamond necklace, or rubies or emeralds. Rare coins, or stamps perhaps.” He suddenly looked up at Anthony. “Which was it, by the way? Which of my guesses was correct?”

Anthony blinked. “Huh?”

Hugo Philpotts ground out his cigarette with an abrupt, angry motion and leaned forward in his chair. “Oh, don’t play games with me, child! There was a treasure hidden in the back of that minor, wasn’t there? Well, wasn’t there?”

So that was it. Hugo thought that the treasure had been in the mirror!

“Mr. Philpotts, I think you got the wrong idea. There wasn’t any—”

“So you’re going to play dumb, are you? Do you have any idea how stupid and idiotic your lying is? I can see through you, I can read you like a book! And anyway, do you take me for a fool? I saw the glue spot—I could tell there was something there once! Well, what was it? Are you going to tell me?” Hugo’s face was getting red. His shoulders were hunched, his hands tightly clenched. He was waiting for an answer.

Anthony felt as if he were losing his mind. “Mr. Philpotts,” he began, “y-you got it all wrong. There— there wasn’t anything inside that old mirror except just a note that said that there was a treasure inside Mr. Winterborn’s house. But there wasn’t anything there, just that old tin box with a four-leaf clover inside of it, like it said in the papers. Didn’t you read about it when they found that box?”