Mr. Bangs honored me with a glance. Then turning to the spot from which he had so recently emerged, he lifted up the false bottom again and began fumbling about below. At last he drew out a long dusty brown envelope, tied with red cord. "Reckon that's the answer," he said tossing it across to Aunt Cal. "Guess Carter didn't want that will to be found till he was good and ready. He figured on comin' back a rich man!" He laughed hoarsely.
"If that wasn't just like him!" Miss Blossom exclaimed. "I always said he never destroyed that will!"
Aunt Cal was untying the envelope with unsteady fingers. Inside was a sealed one. "Yes," she said, "it is Uncle Judd's will!"
"And Craven House is yours at last," Miss Blossom gave a vast sigh of satisfaction. "I always knew you'd get it some day but I was afraid it might come too late for you to enjoy it. Dear me, if these children hadn't found that key and all----"
Hattie May, too excited to remember her manners, burst in here. "But I don't understand yet! I mean how Mr. Bangs--or whatever his name is--how he happened to come popping out just at the moment Hamish opened the door? Why, it was exactly like a jack-in-the-box!"
This characterization of his appearance in our midst seemed to tickle Mr. Bangs for he grinned for the first time. "Yeah," he agreed, "reckon it did give you kind of a surprise. I'd been a-poundin' on that trap door for quite a spell after this smart detective guy locked the cellar door on me."
"Hamish dotes on locking doors on people," his sister remarked. "It's one of his pet tricks!"
"The cupboard must open into that underground passage that Uncle Judd had walled up years ago," Aunt Cal remarked thoughtfully.
The man nodded. "Yeah, I remembered hearin' talk of it. I poked around and found the entrance to it under the cellar stairs, and this here ladder between the floors. But it was dark as a ship's hold down there and I couldn't get the trap door open. Then you opened the cupboard and let in some light through the crack and I see where she was hooked down. I reckoned I could manage this smart guy here without much trouble--I didn't figure on runnin' into a whole tea party!" he finished with a cackle.
"I suppose that was the passage you were hiding in the night the cops searched the house for you?" Michael remarked.