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Hitler at Home 1st Edition Despina Stratigakos Digital
Instant Download
Author(s): Despina Stratigakos
ISBN(s): 9780300183818, 030018381X
Edition: 1st
File Details: PDF, 8.00 MB
Year: 2015
Language: english
HITLER AT HOME
This page intentionally left blank
 HITLER AT HOME

Despina Stratigakos

Yale University Press New Haven and London


Published with assistance from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Copyright © 2015 by Despina Stratigakos. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced,
in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by
Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press),
without written permission from the publishers.

yalebooks.com/art

Designed and set in Adobe Garamond type by Lindsey Voskowsky.

Printed in the United States of America by Thomson-Shore, Inc., Dexter, Michigan.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014953548

isbn 978-0-300-18381-8
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z 39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Jacket illustrations: (front) Eva Braun’s room in the Berghof with framed Hitler portrait (detail
of fig. 31); (back) detail from cover of Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler Away from It All (Hitler abseits
vom Alltag) (fig. 42).


 To my mother,
who lived it


This page intentionally left blank
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: The Power of Home 1

Part I
1 Hitler Sets Up House: A Bachelor’s Domestic Turn after 1928 11
2 How the Chancellor Lives: A New Regime for an Old Palace 24
3 Cultivated Interiors: The 1935 Renovation of the Prince Regent
Square Apartment 47
4 From Haus Wachenfeld to the Berghof: The Domestic Face
of Empire 68
5 Gerdy Troost: Hitler’s Other Chosen Architect 107

Part Ii
6 Campaign Politics and the Invention of the Private Hitler 149
7 An Alpine Seduction: Propaganda and the Man on
the Mountain 161
8 The Squire of Berchtesgaden: The Making of a Myth in
the Foreign Press 194
9 War and the English-Language Media’s Reappraisal of
the Domestic Hitler 221
10 Secrets in the Cellar: Bombing, Looting, and the
Reinvention of Hitler’s Domesticity 258
11 “Adolf Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”: The Troublesome
Afterlife of Hitler’s Homes 284

Notes 318
Works Cited 343
Index 359
Illustration Credits 372

Plates Follow Page 244


This page intentionally left blank
 Acknowledgments

Chasing the remnants of Adolf Hitler’s domesticity has taken me

from Tucson, Arizona, to the Austrian Alps, and along the way I have been
met with hospitality and gracious help. Dieter and Margit Umlauf wel-
comed me into their home and shared their family’s history. Charles Turner
repeatedly passed along valuable sources. Franz Andrelang gave me access
to the sealed personal papers of Gerdy Troost, and Nino Nodia helped
me to navigate the immense uncatalogued collection. Richard Reiter of-
fered memories and answered questions about the Obersalzberg. Harald
Freundorfer took me through Hitler’s Munich apartment building. I thank
them all for enabling and enriching my research.
My travels have been generously funded by the Gerda Henkel
Foundation, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine
Arts, the German Academic Exchange Service (daad), and the Baldy
Center for Law and Social Policy of the University at Buffalo. As a fellow at
Rice University’s Humanities Research Center, I found a home-away-from-
home where I could engage with other scholars and undertake research
with the thoughtful assistance of the center’s staff. The Wolfsonian–fiu
Museum in Miami Beach awarded me a fellowship to study its Third Reich
collections, aided by its ever-helpful staff. I am deeply grateful to all these
institutions for supporting my research. The University at Buffalo has been
equally generous in granting me an extended leave that made the research
and writing of this book possible, and I am thankful in particular to Robert
Shibley, Omar Khan, and William McDonnell for making it happen. I
am also indebted to Burcu Dogramaci of the Institute for Art History at
the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich for being the ideal academic
host and partner in Germany.
In progressing from the initial idea to the finished manuscript, I have
benefited from the sagacity and knowledge of many colleagues, who provid-
ed encouragement and feedback at critical junctures. I would like to thank
Leora Auslander, Richard Bessel, Joy Calico, James van Dyke, Sean Franzel,
Dianne Harris, Hilde Heynen, Keith Holz, Edina Meyer-Maril, Barbara

ix
Miller Lane, Barbara Penner, Leslie Topp, and Rebecca Zorach. David
Wellbery’s daad Interdisciplinary Summer Seminar in German Studies at
the University of Chicago inspired me to rethink the role of narrative in my
project. At Rice University, I thank in particular Peter Caldwell, Christian
Emden, Caroline Levander (then-director of the Humanities Research
Center), Uwe Steiner, Sarah Whiting, and Lora Wildenthal. In Munich,
Christian Fuhrmeister and Iris Lauterbach of the Central Institute for Art
History and Michaela Rammert-Götz of the United Workshops Archive
kindly shared their expertise and steered me toward new sources.
On the final leg of revisions and consolidation, help came in doubles.
Two expert readers strengthened the manuscript with their insights and
immense learning: Karen Fiss of the California College of the Arts and Paul
Jaskot of DePaul University. I have been fortunate to work with two won-
derful editors: Michelle Komie, whose faith and enthusiasm brought the
project to Yale University Press, and Katherine Boller, whose skill and un-
derstanding made for smooth sailing to the end. I am also grateful for the
keen eyes of Martina Kammer and Laura Hensley, who, from their respec-
tive German- and English-language standpoints, identified and subdued
the occasional rogue word. Heidi Downey and Mary Mayer deftly guided
this book through the production process, and the Graham Foundation
once again lent its support with a publication grant.
And, finally, what would a journey be without postcards and shared
memories? To my family and friends for keeping the mail, love, and laughter
flowing—many times, over and over, thank you.

x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
 INTRODUCTION

The Power of Home

As Allied troops moved into Bavaria at the end of World War II in

Europe, soldiers and journalists sought out the places where Adolf Hitler
had lived in an attempt to understand the man who had plagued and ter-
rorized humanity. U.S. Sergeant Harry Sions, writing for Yank magazine,
peered into Hitler’s bathroom cabinet at the Berghof, the dictator’s moun-
tain home, and pondered the bottles of castor oil and mouthwash he found
there. Vogue correspondent Lee Miller, staying at Hitler’s Munich apart-
ment, rummaged through his closets and noted the monogrammed linen
and silver.1
Our domestic spaces and possessions, we believe, reveal our inner
selves, and the deeper the closet or cabinet, the greater the secrets. Hitler’s
homes had not only the conventional nooks and crannies but also whole
underground bunkers and passageways, and reporters (and subsequently
tourists) searched them thoroughly for clues. There were rumors of torture
chambers as well as overflowing treasuries, and some went in search more
for buried riches than for hidden truths. But journalists and sightseers were
also drawn to those spaces precisely because Hitler’s domesticity had been
so highly visible during the Third Reich. Especially in his mountain home,
where he had often been photographed, Hitler’s “private” life had been

1
carefully orchestrated for public consumption, with the images and sto-
ries broadly distributed at home and abroad. Millions of readers felt that
they knew “Hitler the man” through this domestic performance, and when
Allied soldiers and reporters arrived in Germany, they were drawn to the
places where his ghost seemed to linger.
This book follows in the footsteps of these domestic explorers but seeks
a different sort of understanding. The first major postwar biography of
Hitler, published by Alan Bullock in 1952, dismissed the meaningfulness of
the Führer’s private life as “meager and uninteresting at the best of times.”2 A
wholly different attitude characterized the tell-all books that emerged in sub-
sequent decades, which scoured Hitler’s body, family past, and relationships
to men and women for anomalies on a personal scale that could somehow
explain a cosmic catastrophe. Hitler at Home acknowledges the importance
of the private realm without seeking to be a biography told through archi-
tecture. Instead, I am interested in how Hitler chose to present his domestic
self to the public, and in the designers, photographers, and journalists who
constructed and conveyed the image to German- and English-language
audiences, who were all too eager to consume it.
By the mid-1930s, it was all but impossible to avoid images and stories
about the domestic Hitler. The topic was not only covered by the German
media with great—indeed, almost obsessive—zeal, but it was also embraced
by an English-language press serving a global audience, from London to
Sydney, Toronto to Phoenix, and Bombay to Shanghai. In Germany, a mar-
ket quickly emerged for popular consumer goods bearing images of the
Führer’s home or of its owner at leisure on the Obersalzberg. One could
decorate with a Hitler house–themed porcelain plate or embroidered throw
pillow, save pennies in a replica coin bank, play with a toy model, send a
postcard showing Hitler feeding deer on his terrace, or buy one of the many
photographic albums that documented his life at home, from the dictator
entertaining children to hiking with his dog. For a time, Hitler’s mountain
retreat was arguably the most famous house in the world.
This vast production of images of Hitler at home proved to be enor-
mously seductive and continues to exert its power even today. Its appeal
has largely gone unchecked by historians, who have insufficiently exposed
and deconstructed the propaganda surrounding Hitler’s domesticity. Apart
from a small body of articles, books, and catalogues, literature about Hitler’s
homes tends to be uncritical and, in some cases, reproduces the ideological
“charm” of Third Reich publications. Remarkably, given how much has

2 INTRODUCTION
been written about Hitler, the significance of his domestic spaces in the visual
imagination of National Socialism has remained underexplored terrain.3
Compared to their high visibility during the Third Reich, Hitler’s
domestic spaces rarely appear in political or architectural histories of the
period. Those who have written about the many diplomatic meetings that
occurred in these homes have had little to say about the settings, despite
Hitler’s desire to use them as stage sets to perform his identity as a states-
man and man of culture. Studies of the Obersalzberg as an ideological
and political center of National Socialism have been more attentive to its
structures, but architectural historians themselves have contributed little to
this literature. In general, scholars of architecture and fascist aesthetics have
focused on monumental building projects and mass spectacle, overlooking
the domestic and minute. And yet one could argue that the aesthetics of the
mass spectacle at the Nuremberg Rally Grounds or of the gigantic in the
New Chancellery, both designed by Albert Speer and associated with the
public Führer, correlate with the singular and detailed assemblage of Hitler’s
private domestic spaces, a choreography of objects and space that enacts the
private man. The Hitler who commanded thousands and moved mountains
of stone induced awe; the Hitler at home with his dogs and tea inspired em-
pathy. Both images were integral to the Führer’s seductive power, and each
had its architectural manifestation. Reading the official and monumental
together with the domestic and minute allows us to grasp their intended
and productive interplay in the representation of the Führer as both beyond
and yet of the people.
Hitler himself cared deeply about the production of his domestic spaces,
discussing them at length with his interior designer, Gerdy Troost. After
the war, she recalled the enthusiastic interest he had shown in even the
smallest detail. In his memoirs, Speer admitted that Hitler had devoted a
level of personal attention to the design of the Berghof that was unequaled
by any of his other building projects.4 It was Hitler’s favorite place to be—
about a third of his time in office was spent on the Obersalzberg. In July
1944, Joseph Goebbels confided to his diary that he was relieved that the
Führer had decided to transfer his military headquarters from his moun-
tain home to the Wolf ’s Lair on the eastern front. While Hitler had spent
months planning battle strategies from his living room, the Allied armies
had pushed ever closer to Germany’s borders.5
Perhaps if Speer had been involved, historians might have paid more
attention to Hitler’s domestic spaces. Women architects and designers have

INTRODUCTION 3
only recently begun to receive their due in architectural history books, and
little is known about their involvement in the Third Reich. Gerdy Troost
has likewise slipped beneath the historian’s radar, despite the fact that she
was once the tastemaker of choice for Hitler and other prominent National
Socialists. This book hopes to raise awareness of a neglected but powerful
female figure in the Third Reich, who deserves far greater scholarly attention
than she has received. Her work also suggests that we need to consider more
generally the role of interior design in the self-representation of the Nazi re-
gime, to which many of its architects, including Speer, eagerly contributed.
Ultimately, the reasons for the neglect of the dictator’s homes and their
creators may have more to do with scholars having all too readily accepted
the propaganda of the Third Reich: namely, that Hitler’s domestic spaces
existed outside the world of politics and ideology. I believe, to the contrary,
that they were profoundly ideological spaces, which demonstrably lay at
the heart of some of the most successful propaganda about Hitler produced
by his regime. Representations of Hitler’s home life played a critical role
in the early 1930s, when his public image as a screaming reactionary need-
ed to be softened. The attention and care lavished on Hitler’s domesticity
by his propagandists also transformed a potential liability—the perceived
oddity of a stateless man living without deep connections to family, place,
or lovers—into an asset by creating a domestic milieu that grounded and
normalized him. Hitler’s domestic spaces struck just the right balance with
the public of heterosexual masculinity, refined but not ostentatious taste,
and German roots. Thus, his publicists and designers killed two birds with
one stone, making Hitler seem both warmer and less queer. And all of this
was carefully crafted and communicated to German and foreign audiences
through a media eager to sell the story and images of the domestic bachelor.
The book is divided into two sections. The first half addresses the physi-
cal design and construction of Hitler’s three residences: the Old Chancellery
in Berlin, his Munich apartment at 16 Prince Regent Square, and his moun-
tain home on the Obersalzberg. Hitler occupied all three places through-
out the period of the Third Reich, although he owned only the latter two.
Chapter 1 examines Hitler’s transition from a prolonged period of marginal
domesticity to the setting up of his first independent households in the late
1920s, as he approached his fortieth birthday, and the reasons for his lifestyle
change. When Hitler became chancellor in 1933, he insisted on remodeling
the official residence before he moved in, and Chapter 2 investigates how

4 INTRODUCTION
this was used to frame a new narrative about a leader with the ability to
put his house in order. Having been bitten by the home renovation bug,
Hitler then turned to reinventing his private residences. Chapters 3 and 4
chronicle the wholesale renovations of his Munich apartment in 1935 and,
as soon as it was completed, the massive expansion of Haus Wachenfeld
into the Berghof in 1935–36 by the architect Alois Degano. These projects
demonstrate how Hitler used domestic architectural makeovers in the mid-
1930s to shed any vestiges of his image as rabble-rouser in order to emphasize
his new status as statesman and diplomat. The associated high costs reveal
how much Hitler was willing to invest to get it right and also contradict
his regime’s propaganda, which continued to present the German leader
as a simple man unspoiled by fame and power. While Hitler’s new domes-
tic facades outwardly proclaimed the leader’s maturation and confidence,
a cache of unbuilt drawings of the Berghof exposes Hitler’s struggle with
how to position his domestic self in relation to his public identity. Chapter
4 also briefly considers Eva Braun’s photographs of the Berghof and what
they suggest about her role as both mistress of the house and its privileged
prisoner. Gerdy Troost was central to all three design projects, and Chapter
5 is devoted to her life and work, drawing on her personal papers at the
Bavarian State Library in Munich, an astonishingly rich collection that
opens officially to scholars in 2019.
The second half of the book explores propaganda about Hitler’s homes
and their reception, focusing on his Munich and Obersalzberg residences.
Chapter 6 begins with the “discovery” of the “private Hitler” by Nazi pub-
licists in 1932 in the midst of a crucial election battle. Chapters 7 and 8,
respectively, survey the media’s coverage in Germany and abroad of Hitler’s
homes. In Germany, Hitler’s mountain retreat became a site of pilgrim-
age, and Chapter 7 looks at the hold it exerted on the National Socialist
imagination through written accounts and the photography of Heinrich
Hoffmann. While one can understand the appeal of journalistic accounts
of Hitler at home for German audiences in the 1930s, it is surprising to dis-
cover a similar fascination reflected in the pages of foreign newspapers and
magazines. Chapter 8 investigates the whitewashing of Hitler’s reputation
for violence in the English-language press through its depictions of the do-
mestic bachelor as the kind of gentle, cultured man one would be blessed to
have as a neighbor. Views of the house-proud Hitler changed from admira-
tion to ridicule when England, and later the United States, entered the war,

INTRODUCTION 5
and Chapter 9 traces the turn in the English-language press’s representation
of the domestic Hitler from a gentleman-artist to a megalomaniacal house-
painter and effeminate dilettante. The close of World War II marked both
an ending and a new beginning for Hitler’s homes. Chapter 10 chronicles
the bombing of the Obersalzberg, the arrival in Bavaria of Allied troops and
journalists and their inspections of the Führer’s apartment and mountain
retreat, and the extensive looting that took place by neighbors and soldiers.
Chapter 11 brings the histories of these two residences into the present and
explores the headaches that they have created for Bavarian authorities. On
the Obersalzberg and in Munich, different strategies have been employed
to compel people to stay away from these sites and to encourage forgetting.
Yet decades after their owner died in an underground Berlin bunker, these
homes continue to exert an unsettling magnetism. Moreover, fragments
of Hitler’s domestic surroundings—ranging from silverware to bathroom
tiles—continue to circulate and fetch astonishingly high prices among col-
lectors of Third Reich memorabilia. Today, bits and pieces of the Führer’s
domesticity are scattered on bookshelves and coffee tables across the globe,
further contributing to the curiously long half-life of this history. The book
ends by considering the problem such “relics” create for museum curators,
who find them among their own collections, as well as the reluctance of the
press in the United States and England to confront its own role in having
disarmed its readers in the 1930s with depictions of Hitler at home.
Even as I have set out to analyze and deconstruct the production and
power of Hitler’s domestic spaces, I remain ever aware of their seductive
danger. Today, the vast industry of house decorating magazines and home
renovation television shows thrives on the same human attraction to images
of handsome interiors, happy children, well-groomed dogs, and stunning
landscapes that Hitler’s publicists cannily employed to make the Führer
seem likable and approachable. When these homes belong to mass-media
celebrities—a phenomenon that Hitler’s regime helped to forge using new
mass communication technologies and marketing techniques—the appeal
is even greater. The Nazis knowingly manipulated the interest in Hitler’s
private life to create a disconnect between the man on the patio feeding
deer and the force behind the gas chambers. As Susan Sontag and others
have argued, seduction and terror went hand in hand during the Nazi
regime.6 By remaining attentive to broader contexts, both within Germany
and abroad, I hope to make clear the political intentions behind the making

6 INTRODUCTION
of Hitler’s domestic image and reveal the horrors clinging to the underside
of its coziness.
Victims of Hitler’s violence still feel keenly the danger of such allures.
Over the years, I have spoken about my project with those who bear these
personal scars, and I am grateful to all of them for their advice and wisdom.
I owe the greatest debt, however, to my mother, who experienced Nazi
brutality as a child in occupied Kefalonia and who will never be free of it.
When I told her about my plans for this book, she remained silent for a
while and then asked me for one thing: “Please do not make Hitler look
good.” I have kept those words in mind throughout.

INTRODUCTION 7
This page intentionally left blank
PART I
Other documents randomly have
different content
 “’Twould be a marcy were the puir mon able to see a little of the
brightness he’s brought about,” agreed the Scotch housekeeper. “But
it’s nae gi’en ta any mon to see what gaes on when he’s depart!”
“’Ceptin’ he turns into a ghost,” Uncle Rufus observed.
“Hech! Hech! Dinna ye start any o’ that talk with the nicht comin’
on!” warned Mrs. MacCall, with a glance over her shoulder.
Ruth could scarcely wait for a chance to get Luke off in a corner
by himself to put to him some questions that were troubling her. But
when she did she derived little satisfaction.
“About those men—” she began. “Were you able to find out
anything, Luke?”
“Nothing worth mentioning,” he replied. “I talked with the
conductor of the train I was on when I heard the strange talk, and
he didn’t even remember the fellows. Small wonder, when you stop
to think how many tickets he has to take up in the course of the day.
Then I tackled the brakeman, and had a little better luck.”
“Did he know the men?”
“He didn’t exactly know them,” Luke replied. “But he remembered
them when I called them to his mind. Luckily, I had noticed them
pretty closely and could give a good description. Perhaps I may turn
out to be a detective—who knows?”
“You’ll have to work up a few more details on this case before I’ll
give you a certificate and a badge,” said Ruth, with a smile. “But
what did the brakeman say?”
“That’s right—stick to the main point,” returned Luke. “Well, he
said the men had ridden on the same train a couple of times before,
but what their business was or what they talked about, he didn’t
know.”
“Were they in the moving picture business?”
“That he couldn’t say. In fact, I didn’t mention it,” was the
collegian’s answer. “The more I stop to think of it the less I like that
moving picture theory.”
“But there must be some explanation of their remark about ten
thousand dollars,” insisted Ruth. “Ten thousand dollars don’t grow on
every bush, you know.”
 “More’s the pity,” remarked Luke. “If it did I’d be out picking some
now. College is frightfully expensive!” he added, with a sigh.
“I’m sure it must be. But you haven’t much longer.”
“I don’t know. When I look ahead to the time when I’ll graduate—
if I don’t flunk out—it seems——”
There came an interruption. Sammy Pinkney, who had been
playing in the yard in the bright moonlight with Tess and Dot, came
up to the corner of the porch where Ruth and Luke were having this
conversation.
“Excuse me,” said Sammy, with startling politeness for him, “but
some one wants to see you, Ruth.”
“Some one to see me, Sammy?”
“Yes’m.”
“Who is it, and where is he—or she?”
“It’s a he.”
“Well, Sammy, why all this mysteriousness?” asked Luke, with a
laugh, for there was a queer air not only about Sammy, but about
the two little girls who stood just behind him.
“Who wants to see me, Sammy?” asked Ruth, encouragingly.
“It’s Hop Wong, the Chinaman!” blurted out the boy. “And he
wants you to come down to the end of the garden!”
CHAPTER XII
A QUEER NOTE
Ruth started up from the porch where she had been sitting in
some seclusion with Luke. In other secluded places Agnes and Neale
were talking over matters that concerned them, and Hal and Nalbro
were similarly engaged.
“Hold on! Where are you going?” asked Luke, as he put a
detaining hand on Ruth’s arm.
“I’m going to see Hop Wong. Poor man, probably he’s in trouble.
He does work for us sometimes, and at Christmas he brought me
the loveliest, cutest little chest of tea—the best I ever drank. He has
a quaint little laundry at the end of our street, and——”
“You don’t take this message seriously, do you?” asked Luke, and
Ruth could see by the moonlight that he was smiling.
“Take it seriously? Of course I do, Luke. Hop Wong isn’t the kind
of Chinese to play jokes; though when he first came here the boys
played enough mean jokes on him. But he was patient. Of course, I
take it seriously. Maybe some new boys have been annoying him—
none of those who know him would bother him,” and Ruth started
down the steps.
“Wait a minute!” counseled Luke, with a laugh. “I think this is one
of Sammy’s tricks,” he whispered to the Corner House girl. “We’ll see
if we can’t turn it on Sammy himself.”
But Ruth did not take this view of it, and instead of pretending to
believe what Sammy had said, which was Luke’s intention, she at
once “spilled the beans,” as Luke said afterward, by blurting out:
“Sammy, you’re not joking, are you?”
“Sure not, Ruth!”
“Does Hop Wong really want to see me?”
 “Cross my heart he does!” and Sammy quickly performed this
childish rite, than which there is no stronger confirmation.
“Did he say what he wanted?” demanded Luke. “And how did he
come to send word by you, Sammy? Why didn’t he come to the front
door, or even the back door, himself?”
“’Cause he was skairt, I guess,” was all Sammy could think of.
“Frightened by what?” demanded Luke.
“I dunno. All I know is that Dot and Tess and me was playin’ hide
and coop at the end of the garden an’ Hop Wong comes slidin’ along
—you know how funny he walks.”
“What did he say?” asked Ruth.
“Oh, he talked so funnily Dot and I had to laugh!” put in Tess.
“You shouldn’t laugh at the poor man. Think how silly you would
sound trying to talk Chinese,” chided Ruth.
“I can almost talk it. Anyhow, I can say words that sound like it,”
declared Sammy. “Want to hear me?” he asked hopefully.
“Tell us what Hop Wong said,” suggested Luke.
“Oh, he just gibbered away,” reported Sammy. “And all I could
make out was that he wants to talk to Ruth. He said for me to come
and tell her to come down where he was at the end of the garden.”
“He said,” giggled Tess, “‘Tell Missie Luth I wanna spleak her
muchy qulick!’” And Tess gave such a good imitation of the funny
talk of Hop Wong that even Luke laughed.
“Well, I’ll go see what he wants,” said Ruth. “I imagine it must be
something about his laundry business. Once before he came to me.
It was when the man who owns his shop was going to raise the rent
to a prohibitive figure. I went to see Mr. Howbridge about it, and he
was able to arrange matters so poor Hop Wong didn’t have to pay so
much. Ever since then Hop thinks I regulate the universe, I guess.”
“You do—for some of us,” said Luke, as he reached forward and
pressed Ruth’s hand.
“Silly!” she whispered.
“I hope he gives her some lichi nuts,” said Sammy to the two little
girls, as they followed Ruth and Luke to the path that led to the end
of the yard. Nothing was said to the other two young couples.
The moon shone brightly on the old-fashioned garden of the
Corner House, casting fantastic shadows where the old pavilion
stood—the pavilion, vine-covered, where Uncle Peter had spent his
last lonely days.
“Where is Hop Wong?” asked Ruth, as they neared the place
where Sammy had said the Celestial Kingdom’s citizen was waiting.
“Oh, I guess he’s around here. He was right under the apple tree
when I saw him first,” the boy reported.
Then, as they all looked about and saw no slant-eyed figure
waiting for them, Sammy raised his voice and called:
“Hop! Oh, Hop Wong! Where are you? Here’s Ruthie!”
There was no answer—just the white, silent moonlight over
everything.
“Hop Wong!” called Sammy again. “Ruth Kenway is here.”
“Maybe you’d better say ‘Missie Luth’ like he does,” suggested
Tess.
“Hush!” came from her oldest sister.
They waited in silence.
“I guess he’s gone,” said Sammy at length. “Got tired of waitin’,
maybe.”
Luke walked about, peering amid the bushes. Then Dot called:
“What’s that white thing?”
“Where?” demanded Tess. “Don’t you go seeing white things
now!”
“It’s on the apple tree,” went on Dot.
They all looked toward the nearest apple tree. Gently fluttering in
the night breeze was a piece of paper, caught in the crevice of the
apple tree bark. Luke reached for it.
“Guess Hop Wong left your laundry check here,” he said, as he
opened a bit of folded paper of the typical Chinese kind and saw on
it some marks in very dull black India ink. “It must have been
forgotten when the laundry was left at his shop,” Luke went on.
 “We haven’t sent him any laundry this week,” declared Ruth. “Are
you sure it’s a laundry check?”
Luke looked at it again. Then he started in surprise.
“Why, no!” he exclaimed. “It isn’t a laundry check, and it isn’t
written in Chinese characters, as I thought at first! It’s a note to you,
Ruth!”
“A note to me, Luke?”
“Well, perhaps not to you exactly. It’s to all of you. Wait, I guess I
can read it.”
He stepped from beneath the shadowy apple tree into the
stronger moonlight and held up the paper with its black characters.
Then he read, and afterward Ruth perused the queer note which
said:

“Korner Hous gals pay Hop Wong 100 dols

Hop Wong mak grat much money gals.”

For a moment neither Ruth nor Luke spoke. With heads close
together they again read the queer note, while Sammy, Tess and Dot
stood idly there, rather awed by the strangeness of it all.
“Hum,” murmured Luke, “I wonder if he wrote this himself or got
some one to do it for him.”
“Hop Wong can write a little English,” said Ruth. “A very little, as
perhaps you have noticed,” she went on to Luke. “He told me once
he had gone to a Mission School.”
“Then he should have been taught not to play tricks,” and Luke’s
tone was a bit severe.
“Do you think this is a trick, Luke?”
“I’m sure of it! Aren’t you?”
Ruth paused a moment before replying. She again read the note.
“No,” she answered, “I think it is genuine.”
“You mean he isn’t trying to play a joke, perhaps put up to it by
some one else?” demanded Luke.
“I think Hop Wong is in earnest,” said Ruth, simply.
 “Well,” began Luke, “I——Let’s take this up and see what the
others think,” he said, with a change of thought.
“Perhaps we’d better look about and see if Hop Wong has really
gone,” suggested Ruth. “His courage may have failed him at the last
moment. See if he’s hiding in the bushes. Sammy, please call him
again. He seemed to trust you.”
But neither hails nor search revealed the Chinese, and after a
short period the party returned to the piazza.
“We were just coming to look for you!” exclaimed Nalbro. “Where
in the world have you been?” and she and Hal halted on the side
path up which came Luke and Ruth.
“We have been—picking cherry blossoms,” answered Ruth.
“Cherry blossoms!” echoed Hal.
“I think she has confused Japan and China,” remarked Luke, with
a laugh.
“This is worse and more of it!” chimed in Agnes, who had come
along with Neale. “What’s the big idea?” she asked slangily. Ruth
disapproved of slang, but Agnes, backed by Neale, liked to use it.
“Hop Wong has been trying to stage a mystery,” explained Luke.
“Here is the concrete evidence of it. I claim it’s a joke, but Ruth
takes it seriously.”
“Let’s see!” demanded Neale, reaching for what Luke had taken
for a laundry check.
“Suppose we go into the house where the light is better,”
suggested Ruth. “And, Sammy, I don’t want to be impolite, but
perhaps your mother wants you to go to bed.”
“Oh, no’m, she doesn’t!” quickly declared the boy. “I asked her an’
she said I could stay up late to-night on account of your party.”
“Well——” went on Ruth.
“Suppose we keep Sammy here a little while,” suggested Luke in a
low voice. “It isn’t very late and we might need him. I have an idea,”
he added.
“All right,” agreed Ruth, after a quick look at her friend. “You may
stay a little longer, Sammy.”
 “Goodie!” cried Tess and Dot.
The children were not much interested in the odd note—
particularly when they saw Linda come in with cake and ice cream.
And while Sammy and the small girls were enjoying this feast in one
corner of the room, the others gathered under the light to read
again the strange message.
What did it mean?
CHAPTER XIII
A MIDNIGHT TRYST
There could be no question but what the message was from a
Chinese. Everything about it indicated that—the paper, the ink, and
the peculiar manner in which even the English letters were formed
with a brush in its bamboo holder, worked in an upright manner,
after the style of Chinese from time immemorial.
“Yes, I guess Hop Wong wrote it all right,” agreed Neale. “But wait
a minute. I have one of his laundry checks in my pocket now, and I
mustn’t forget to call for my clean shirts. You’re going to have some
more parties, aren’t you?” he appealed beseechingly to Ruth and
Agnes.
“Oh, I suppose so, silly boy!” laughed Agnes. “But what has that
to do with this?”
“A lot, maybe,” declared Neale. “I’ll compare a laundry check that
Hop Wong positively gave me with this paper and we’ll see if they
are alike.”
“I’m pretty sure they will be,” remarked Luke. “Though, after all, it
isn’t much of a test.”
“Why not?” demanded Neale.
“Because these Chinese laundrymen get all their paper and other
supplies from the same wholesale house, and the stuff seldom
varies. However, it will do no harm to make the comparison.”
When the two pieces of paper were placed in conjunction, Neale’s
laundry check and the strange message left in the apple tree, they
were identical, and so was the hue of the ink.
Again Ruth read the message which seemed particularly hers,
since the Chinese had sent word to her first that he wanted to see
her.
 “Korner Hous gals pay Hop Wong 100 dols
Hop Wong mak grat much money gals.”

“What in the world does it mean?” demanded Nalbro, clinging to

Hal with a pretty air of proprietorship. “It sounds like a comic opera.
What’s that one we went to see in Boston, Hal?”
“You mean the Mikado?”
“That was it. Wasn’t it lovely? Dear Little Buttercup—” and she
hummed the air.
“Only that happened to be Japanese instead of Chinese, and ‘Dear
Little Buttercup’ wasn’t in the Mikado at all! That’s the only
difference,” observed Luke, with a grim chuckle.
“Oh, well, the idea is the same,” Nalbro asserted. “But what does
it mean, anyhow?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” said Ruth.
“Isn’t it plain?” asked Agnes. “Hop Wong, for all his meekness,
wants us to pay him a hundred dollars so he’ll make a great lot of
money.”
“That isn’t the way I read it,” declared Neale.
“What do you make of it?” asked Luke.
“It seems to be a sort of promise,” went on Neale as he again
studied the note. “Translating—ahem—I’ll pretend I’m in high school
now, giving a recitation in Latin. Translating, I should say it ought to
read like this:
“‘If the Corner House girls will pay Hop Wong one hundred
dollars, Hop Wong, in return, will make a greater amount of money
for the Corner House girls.’ That’s what it means.”
“Well, perhaps,” admitted Luke. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“But how does he propose to make money for us?” asked Ruth.
“Perhaps by enlarging his laundry,” suggested Agnes. “That’s it, I’ll
wager a cookie!”
Neale, who had started toward her, turned aside with a
disappointed air.
 “I thought you were going to say—kiss!” he sighed.
“There is a time and place for everything!” Agnes told him.
“Go on with your theory, Agnes,” begged Luke. “It sounds
interesting, to say the least.”
“Well, couldn’t it be that Hop Wong wants to do more business?”
asked the girl. “You know how those Chinese are. They come over
here, start a little place, and then get in a partner who does most of
the work. I think Hop Wong wants to expand—to get in a partner—
and he needs a hundred dollars to finance it. If we advance it he’ll
give us a share in his laundry—make us stockholders, perhaps.
Fancy being in the Chinese laundry business, Ruth! Wouldn’t it be
grand?”
“I don’t know,” and Ruth spoke doubtfully. “If I thought he meant
that I’d try to help him get a partner.”
“It would be just like your unusual kind spirit,” said Luke. “But I
am not sure it does mean that. Read it again, Neale, just as it
sounds.”
Neale read:
“‘Korner House gals pay Hop Wong 100 dols——’”
He was stopped by a cry from Dot.
“Oh, don’t give him my Alice-doll!” she begged.
“Silly child, what do you mean?” asked Agnes.
“Well, doesn’t that Chinaman want a hundred dolls?” asked Dot,
tears coming into her eyes. “We haven’t got that many—not even
Tess and me together. And, anyhow, I won’t give that Chinaman my
Alice-doll and I don’t see why they call ’em Chinamen anyhow,
’cause they aren’t made of china. But he can’t have my Alice-doll!”
“He doesn’t want her, Dottie!” explained Ruth. “That’s just his way
of saying dollars.”
“Oh! Are you sure?”
“Certainly she is,” put in Agnes. “And, Ruth, if you let these
children stay up any later, eating ice cream and cake, they’ll be sick
to-morrow and you’ll have to look after them alone, for Neale and I
are going away.”
 “Oh, are you, indeed?”
“Yes. But, seriously, Tess and Dot ought to go to bed.”
Instantly the little ones began begging for a half hour more, but
Ruth decided that Agnes, for once, was right, and off to bed they
were sent.
“I s’pose that means I’ve got to go,” sighed Sammy.
“Well—” began Ruth, with a look at Luke.
“Wait a minute, Sammy,” suggested the collegian. “We must get
to the bottom of this,” he went on. “And to do so we must have a
talk with this Chinese laundryman. Now it would seem that he trusts
Sammy, though he may be very fond of you and Agnes, Ruth, for
what you have done for him. Are you and Hop Wong good friends,
Sammy?”
“Sure we are! I always take my pa’s collars there and he gives me
those funny lichi nuts—I mean Hop Wong does.”
“Then Sammy is the boy to proceed with this,” went on Luke.
“What do you mean to do?” Ruth wanted to know.
“I want to send word to Hop Wong to come and explain this note,
and I think if Sammy goes to the laundry alone and asks Hop Wong
to come here, it will do the trick. If one of us goes, or if all of us go,
it will look as though we suspected something. But we can safely
send Sammy.”
“Will he go?” asked Ruth, half doubtfully.
“Sure I’ll go!” declared Sammy. “I’d like to. Maybe he’ll give me
lichi nuts.”
“Oh, forget the nuts!” advised Luke. “This may mean business!
Skip along, Sammy, and go in casually. Wait a minute!”
“What’s cas-casally?” inquired Sammy.
“I mean as if you just happened in,” explained Luke. “But I have a
better plan. Can’t you send some laundry to be done up?” he
appealed to Ruth.
“Yes, I could make up a bundle.”
“Please do so. We’ll make this seem as natural as possible.”
“Will he be open as late as this?” asked Hal.
 “Oh, sure!” asserted Sammy. “He’s workin’ all night, Hop Wong is.”
A little later Sammy was dispatched with a bundle of things which
needed the peculiar attention of the Chinese, and then the party of
young folks at the Corner House waited.
Sammy came back much more quickly than they expected him.
He gave the peculiar check to Ruth and said:
“He wasn’t there.”
“How did you leave the laundry then?” asked Luke.
“Oh, there was another Chink in the place—his partner, I guess. I
asked him when Hop Wong would be back, but I couldn’t make out
anything he said except ‘Tlhusdlay.’ I guess he meant Thursday.”
“But surely Hop Wong wouldn’t remain away that long!” said
Agnes.
“No, he meant the laundry would be ready then,” suggested
Neale. “That’s the first thing a new Chinese learns to say—the days
of the week. So you didn’t see any sign of Hop Wong, Sammy?”
“Nope.”
“Maybe one of us had better go,” suggested Hal.
“Guess we had,” agreed Luke. “Come on, we three will stroll down
there. Maybe Hop Wong will be back soon.”
But when the three young men reached the steaming laundry,
with its peculiar acrid smell, Hop Wong was not in sight. A shuffling,
slant-eyed and smiling representative came out from behind the
calico curtains, however, and stretched forth a very clean hand with
long nails.
“You got chleck?” he clicked.
“No check,” said Luke.
“No lauldly,” was the sententious reply.
“We haven’t any laundry,” went on Luke. “But listen here, friend,
where is Hop Wong?”
“Hop Wong gone.”
“When Hop Wong come back?” and Luke tried not to listen to the
chuckles of his friends at his vernacular talk.
“Hop Wong clum black mebby t’mollo.”
 “Not until to-morrow? But maybe he come back to-night?”
“Maybe. You no glot lauldly?”
It seemed to worry Hop Wong’s partner (if such he was) that the
visitors had neither laundry to leave nor a check with which to claim
shirts and collars.
“No laundry,” said Luke again. “I think I’ll leave a note for the jolly
beggar to call at the Corner House,” he said to Neale and Hal. “What
do you say?”
“Can he read it after you write it?” asked Neale.
“Oh, I guess so. ‘Friend,’” and he turned to the other laundryman,
“Hop Wong read let-letter—English letter—not Chinese?” His tone
was questioning.
“Oh, shlure! Hop, he lead Englis’!”
“All right—here goes,” and Luke printed with the bamboo brush on
a piece of laundry wrapping paper a request in as simple words as
he could for Hop Wong to call at the Corner House as soon as he
returned.
“There! Give it to Hop Wong as soon as he comes in,” said Luke.
“Pronto! Quick, you know!”
“Pronto is Spanish—not Chinese,” chuckled Neale.
“Oh, well, what is it you say when you want a Chinese to hurry?”
“Chop-chop!” declared Hal.
“All right—chop-chop it is,” said Luke. “You give Hop Wong this
chop-chop,” and he handed the other the message.
“All lite,” was the bored answer, and they filed out, leaving Hop
Wong’s partner gravely trying to read the note which he held upside
down.
“I only hope he doesn’t think ‘chop-chop’ means that he’s to bring
up a bowl of rice and chop sticks,” said Neale, as they were on their
way back.
“We’ll have to trust to luck,” replied Luke.
They found the girls eagerly and anxiously awaiting their return.
“Well?” asked Ruth.
They told her what had taken place.
 “Then the only thing to do is to wait,” observed Agnes.
It seemed a long time, but really it was not more than an hour.
Sammy had been sent home and Luke was about to propose that he
and Neale and Hal should pay another visit to the laundry, when
there came a tapping on the window of the room where they were
all sitting. It happened to be the only window that was not raised,
for the night was warm.
“What’s that?” exclaimed Nalbro, as the tapping on the glass
sounded very loud, coming, as it did, after a period of silence.
“Look!” exclaimed Ruth.
She pointed to the casement, and in the light from the room they
all saw the face of a Chinese peering at them.
“Hop Wong!” exclaimed Neale. “Hey, you!” he shouted, “come in
here and stop playing your tricks!”
But, even as he spoke, the face of Hop Wong faded away and
disappeared from sight.
“Well, what do you know about that!” cried Hal.
“After him!” cried Luke.
The three young men dashed from the house, scattering to search
for the Chinaman. But he was not to be found anywhere around the
house nor in the adjacent garden.
“Well, if he isn’t the limit!” exclaimed Luke, in exasperation. “What
do you suppose his game is?”
“Give it up,” remarked Neale. “Maybe he’s hiding in the bushes
under the window. We didn’t look there.”
An investigation of the shrubbery, however, failed to disclose any
Chinese. But they did see, on the window sill, another note. It was
written like the first, on laundry paper.
“Hang the fellow!” chuckled Luke. “He’s as bad at writing notes as
Wilkins Micawber. Let’s see what this one says.”
They carried it into the house. There they read this:
 “Hop Wong met Korner House gals midlight
under boy-pain tree in glarden.”

“Whew!” whistled Neale. “More of the same mystery! Wants the

girls to meet him at midnight, does he? Not much!”
CHAPTER XIV
SUSPICIONS
Ruth reached over and gently took from Neale’s hand the latest
bit of correspondence from Hop Wong. She read it slowly.
“What do you think it means?” she asked, of no one in particular.
“He wants you and Agnes to meet him at midnight! Just fancy
that!” cried Neale indignantly. “He has nerve! I’ll say that much!” He
would have said a great deal more, evidently, but Luke intervened.
“I think he must mean ‘meet’ where he says ‘met,’” was the
opinion advanced by the young collegian. “You girls have never met
him, have you—using the word in its past tense?”
“Never, except perhaps to go occasionally to his laundry,” Agnes
answered.
“But what’s this riddle about a boy-pain tree in ‘glarden,’ by which,
I suppose, he means ‘garden’?” asked Hal.
“That is a puzzler—boy-pain tree,” mused Neale. “I guess we’d
better take it for granted that Hop Wong has a gone crazy and let it
go at that.”
“No!” exclaimed Luke. “I’m beginning to understand it. You have
an apple tree in your garden, haven’t you?” he asked Ruth.
“You ought to know—you and Ruth have sat under it often
enough!” chuckled Agnes.
“That will do, Aggie. This may be serious,” said Ruth rebukingly,
but in a quiet voice. “Yes, there is an apple tree,” she went on.
“Then that’s what Hop Wong means by ‘boy-pain’ tree,” declared
Luke.
“Where’s the connection?” demanded Neale.
“I see!” exclaimed Hal. “And if you need a dictionary, Neale, to
trace the parallel between boys and pain and an apple tree——”
 “Oh, now I see!” laughed Neale. “Hop Wong didn’t know how to
spell apple tree, but he knew the effects of green apples on boys,
and he went from cause to effect. Pretty good, that!”
“Do you suppose that’s what it is?” asked Nally.
“It would seem so,” answered Luke. “Now the question is—do you
girls think it worth while to humor him, to meet him in this midnight
tryst? You needn’t be afraid, if that’s what you’re thinking of,” he
went on, as he saw Ruth about to demur. “We boys will all be within
call.”
“Brave boys!” joked Agnes, and Ruth gave her another warning
look.
“What do you think, Luke?” Ruth appealed to her friend. “Would
you if you were us?—I mean Agnes and myself. Of course we won’t
ask Nally to share the danger.”
“Oh, I like that!” cried the Boston girl. “Here you invite me to the
Corner House, and as soon as a first-class mystery—better than any
moving picture—crops up, you want to shut me out! No, indeed! Let
me help you keep the tryst. Hop Wong won’t know but what I am a
regular Corner House girl.”
“Yes, I don’t suppose three will make any difference,” replied
Luke. “Hop Wong isn’t likely to be fussy about that. Well, will you
go? You have about an hour to make up your mind,” he went on, as
he looked at his watch, noting that it was nearly eleven o’clock.
“Let’s consider it a moment,” suggested Ruth, and then they
talked it all over again from the time Sammy had first summoned
them to meet Hop Wong in the garden, through the flight of the
Chinese and his response to Luke’s note.
“If I only had an inkling of what it’s all about,” observed Ruth, “I
wouldn’t mind going. But I can’t imagine how Hop Wong can put us
in the way of making a great deal of money.”
“The big point with him, I imagine,” said Neale, “is that he wants
a hundred dollars for himself. Maybe after he gets those he thinks he
can invest it in a Chinese lottery for you and win the capital prize.”
“No, I hardly think that,” replied Ruth. “Well, we’ll take a chance,
girls,” she decided. “With the boys stationed in the bushes near at
hand there can be no danger. We’ll see what Hop Wong wants—will
you?” and she turned to Nalbro and Agnes.
“I’m game!” announced the Boston girl.
“And far be it from me to be a spoil-sport,” declared Agnes. “Come
on.”
“Don’t be in too much of a rush; you have a little time yet,”
announced Luke. “We’ll just scout around the apple tree and seek
good places for us to hide. Come on, boys.”
He went out with Neale and Hal. Ruth looked at her sister and
guest.
“Nervous?” questioned Nalbro.
“No.”
“Neither am I! Isn’t it thrilling?”
“It may be too much so,” said Ruth grimly.
They sat and talked in the now silent Corner House until the boys
came back. Mrs. MacCall, Linda, and Uncle Rufus had gone to bed,
for Ruth told them she would lock up after the boys had gone home.
“I guess we’re all set for the play,” announced Luke as he and the
other two boys returned. “It lacks a little of midnight, but I fancy
Hop Wong will be a little early. We’ll go down first and hide ourselves
away. Don’t worry if you don’t see us, for it wouldn’t do to show
ourselves to the laundryman. But we’ll be close to you.”
“All right,” said Ruth. “We’ll follow you in about five minutes.”
And at the end of that time, when the three girls went into the
garden and walked toward the apple tree, bathed as it was in
moonlight, there was not a sign of the boys, not so much as loud
breathing. Yet Ruth knew Luke would not fail her.
For several minutes the girls waited under the tree. There was no
sound but the night wind. The situation was growing tense, and
Agnes said later that it was all she could do to keep from giggling
hysterically.
Suddenly there was a hiss coming with fierce energy out of the
darkness.
“Oh—a snake!” gasped Nalbro. “I’m going to——”
 Whether she was about to announce that she would faint or run
no one knew, for a moment later the voice of Hop Wong called:
“Clorner House gals alle lite?”
“Yes, we’re here all right, Hop Wong,” answered Ruth, in steady
tones. “But what does this mean? Why have you asked us out here
to meet you? If you are playing any tricks——”
“No, Missie Luth, no tlicks. Hop Wong play no tlicks. I telle you lite
away quick.”
Out of the moonlight shadows he came, a timid and shrinking
figure of a Chinese. Ruth wondered that she had ever had a sense of
fear concerning him, he seemed so slight and boyish—not much
larger, in fact, than Sammy Pinkney.
“Well, Hop Wong, we are here and we’ll listen to what you have to
say,” remarked Ruth.
“Hop Wong glad Missie Luth come,” said the laundryman, drawing
nearer and standing fully revealed in the silvery radiance under the
outermost branches of the tree. “Other Clorner House gals here?” he
asked. Hop Wong did not speak as he wrote, exactly.
“Yes, we’re all here,” Ruth told him.
“Alle lite. Now Hop Wong tell. Listen! You give Hop Wong one
hund’ed dollals, Hop Wong show you where much money is. You
sabby?”
“What do you mean?” demanded Ruth. “Where is this much
money you will show us?”
“Ah, flist you give Hop Wong one hund’ed dollals?” he cunningly
demanded.
“And if we do give you a hundred dollars will you show us where
we can find more than that?” asked Agnes, thinking it wise to show
that Ruth was not in supreme authority.
“That what Hop Wong do.”
“But if you know where there is a lot of money, why don’t you go
and get it for yourself, and not let us take it?” asked Ruth. “Why
don’t you get this big sum yourself, Hop Wong?”
 “No can do,” was all he said. “Only Clorner House gals git much
money. Hop Wong git one hund’ed dollals. No can do.”
He seemed quite downcast about it, and to the girls he was rather
a pathetic figure.
“Why don’t you tell us first where this money is, and then let us
pay you the hundred dollars if we find it?” asked Agnes. “Don’t you
trust us, Hop Wong? You have known us long enough to know we
are honest and that we’ll pay you if we find any such large sum as
you tell about. Where is it? Tell us, and if we get it we’ll pay you—
maybe two hundred dollars.”
“No can do,” was all Hop Wong said.
Further arguments seemed to be useless, yet Ruth made one
more attempt. But when Hop Wong stubbornly, or perhaps
uncomprehendingly, repeated:
“No can do! Give Hop Wong one hund’ed dollals.”
Ruth exclaimed:
“We’ll have to see our guardian about this. We’ll have to talk with
Mr. Howbridge, our guardian, Hop Wong, and we’ll see you later—at
your laundry. That is all for to-night.”
It was surprising to note the change that came over the Chinese.
He appeared to shrink and grow even smaller and terror was clearly
manifest on his face.
“No tell! No tell him!” he cried. “No call guard and have Hop Wong
alested. No tell! I not bad! Oh! Oh!” and in a perfect wail of fright he
turned and fled, being soon lost among the moonlighted shadows of
the garden.
“Oh!” exclaimed Nalbro, in pity.
In an instant the three boys had leaped from their hiding places
and had joined the girls, so close and ready were they.
“Shall we take after him?” cried Neale.
“No, the poor fellow is frightened to death now,” said Ruth.
“But what happened?” asked Luke. “What did you say to him that
made him yell like that and run as if a dragon were chasing him? We
couldn’t hear all that was said.”
 “I merely announced that we would have to see our guardian
about paying Hop Wong one hundred dollars,” stated Ruth. “Then off
he ran.”
There was silence for a moment and then Luke exclaimed:
“I see! He thought you said you would call the guard. Guess he
must have thought you had a squad of soldiers on hand. Your use of
the word ‘guardian’ mixed him up. There is something suspicious in
this or he wouldn’t be so ready to run when he thought you were
going to call in the authorities. That’s it—Hop Wong is afraid of the
law.”
And so it seemed. The more they thought about it and talked it
over, the more Luke’s explanation seemed to fit the conduct of the
laundryman.
“Well, no use staying out here any longer,” said Ruth, with a little
shiver, for the night dew was chilling. “Let’s go in, or Mrs. Mac will
think we’ve been carried off by some ‘lang-nebbied thing.’”
They went into the house. Neale and Luke offered to remain all
night, but it was not considered necessary with Hal and Uncle Rufus
at hand, to say nothing of the strong-armed Linda.
They talked matters over a little longer, all the while growing more
and more suspicious of Hop Wong’s conduct, and when Luke and
Neale departed it was with the intention of taking serious steps the
next day to get at the bottom of the mystery.
CHAPTER XV
TESS AND DOT INVESTIGATE
Mr. Howbridge chuckled in silent amusement when Ruth and
Agnes paid him a visit at his office the next day and told what had
happened.
“What do you think of it?” asked Ruth.
“Not much, my dear. If you want my private and unofficial
opinion, I’ll say I think very little of it.”
“But, Guardy,” broke in Agnes, “perhaps we’d better have your
official opinion.”
“Yes,” agreed Ruth, “that’s what we came for.”
“I can’t give you an official opinion until I look further into the
matter,” he said, growing a bit grave as he saw how much these two
Corner House girls were affected by what had taken place. “Let me
have the documents in the case,” he begged.
“Meaning these laundry checks, as Luke calls them?” asked Ruth.
“Yes. You know we lawyer fellows depend a great deal on
documentary evidence. Not that I think I can get much from these,
however,” he went on, as he looked over Hop Wong’s notes.
“What shall we do?” Ruth wanted to know.
“Just nothing for the present,” was the lawyer’s advice. “Leave it
to me. I’ll see the official court interpreter whom we always have
whenever there is a Chinese case in court, and I’ll get him to have a
talk with Hop Wong. It is just possible that he may be
misunderstood, both in his writings and talk.”
“Yes, that’s possible,” admitted Ruth. “I wouldn’t want to do the
poor fellow an injustice.”
“He seemed to have a guilty conscience,” remarked Agnes, with a
giggle, as she remembered how Hop Wong had run at the mention
of the word guardian.
“Perhaps he isn’t the only one,” replied Mr. Howbridge, with a
smile, looking at several documents on his desk. “We lawyers run
across some queer cases. Not to raise your hopes too high, however,
I think I wouldn’t anticipate too much from what Hop Wong said,” he
went on. “I mean about a great sum of money coming to you. I
handled all of your Uncle Peter’s affairs and, as far as I know, his
estate is all settled and you have the most of it.”
“For which we are duly grateful,” said Ruth.
“And we don’t hope for nor really want any more,” remarked
Agnes. “Though if you could see your way clear to letting us have a
new car, of course we’d——”
“There you go again!” chuckled the guardian. “Isn’t that a
perfectly good car you have now?”
“Oh, it’s good enough, if you mean it that way,” sighed Agnes.
“But if you could see the look, sometimes, on Nally Hastings’ face
when she gets in it!”
“Oh, ho! Sets the wind in that quarter?” exclaimed Mr. Howbridge,
using one of his favorite expressions. “And don’t tell me I should say
‘sit,’ either!” he hastened to remark, thus forestalling an objection on
the part of Ruth, who held that the old adage should be “sits the
wind,” and not “sets.” However, this time she was too anxious over
the matter of Hop Wong and the mystery with which he was
connected to “start anything,” as Neale would have said.
“Well, you go home and be good girls—No, I won’t say that for
you’re always good,” joked Mr. Howbridge. “But I’ll see about letting
you have a new car. I’m going over some of your accounts now, and
if I find the balance on the right side——”
“If you don’t, perhaps we can get Hop Wong’s money,” laughed
Agnes.
“Don’t count your chickens until you hear them coming over the
bridge, as Uncle Rufus would say,” remarked Ruth. “Well, Mr.
Howbridge, we’ll leave it to you,” and she and Agnes went back to
the Corner House.
“Has Hop Wong been around again?” asked Ruth of Mrs. MacCall.
 “Not a glint of him, and small pleasure do I have at a sight of the
yellow-faced heathen!” exclaimed the Scotch housekeeper.
“Oh, well, don’t be too harsh on him,” laughed Agnes. “He may be
the means of our getting a new car. We certainly need one,” and she
looked toward the old one which Neale was bringing out of the
garage, for they were to take a ride that afternoon.
After lunch there was a merry party on the cool porch of the
Corner House. Luke was there, bringing word that he had had a
telegram and that his sister and her intended would be unable to get
to Milton, as had been planned, in order to accompany them on the
little outing.
“And what is the opinion of the learned Mr. Howbridge concerning
the collar-cleansing representative of the Celestial Empire?” asked
Luke of Ruth.
“Meaning Hop Wong?” asked Neale.
“Yes, my son,” replied Luke, with a patronizing air.
“He doesn’t attach much importance to it,” Ruth answered.
“Same here,” voiced Neale.
“I think he’s a faker!” exclaimed Hal.
“Well, I don’t know but what I shall have to agree with you,” said
Luke slowly. “I’ve thought it all over, and I can’t see but what it
doesn’t amount to anything. Hop Wong must have been dreaming.”
“Call it a pipe dream,” suggested Neale, with a laugh.
“Oh, do you think he smokes opium?” asked Nalbro, shocked.
“Oh, I guess not. Don’t saddle that on him,” said Luke. “But I
didn’t mean that way. I think Hop Wong has been day-dreaming,
perhaps, and he may have heard some story about fabulous wealth
in the Corner House. You know, before you girls succeeded to Mr.
Stower’s estate,” Luke went on, “there was a rumor, so I’ve heard,
that he was a sort of miser.”
“We never heard that!” declared Ruth.
“Well, probably it wasn’t spread broadcast,” proceeded Luke. “But
I understand there was some talk of it, and I think this is what Hop
Wong has gotten hold of and he thinks maybe there is a treasure
buried somewhere.”
“Just like that treasure that was found in the album in the attic—
the fortune that went to Mrs. Eland and Miss Pepperill,” said Agnes.
“But where, Luke, could this present fortune be buried?” asked
Ruth.
“Just nowhere!” chuckled Luke. “It’s all bosh, of course, and that’s
why I think Hop Wong is a faker.”
“But what about what was said by those men on the train?” asked
Agnes. “I mean about the ten thousand dollars.”
“Oh,” murmured Luke. “You mean those men I overheard
talking?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe there’s any connection between them and Hop
Wong. It’s all just bunk, if you will excuse my use of a slang term,”
laughed Luke. “Now let’s forget all about it and go riding. It’s a
glorious day.”
Neale and Hal brought around the automobile, and as Nalbro was
getting in Agnes could not help saying:
“We were down this morning to see Mr. Howbridge, and he said
we could get a new car. I hope it comes before you go home, Nally.”
“A new car!” whooped out Neale. “Glory be! Then I won’t have to
tease this one along much more.”
“Oh, Agnes, Mr. Howbridge didn’t say for sure we could have one,”
expostulated Ruth.
“No. But he didn’t say we couldn’t,” countered Agnes. “And when
he doesn’t do that it almost always happens. Anyhow, I’m going to
look at some of the new models.”
“There’s certainly no harm in looking,” chuckled Neale. “But I do
hope Mr. Howbridge loosens up. If he doesn’t we may get stalled out
in the country some day and have to be towed in.”
“Is this machine as risky as that?” asked Nalbro.
“Nothing of the sort!” declared Luke. “It’s perfectly reliable.”
 With merry quips and laughter the party of young folks started
off, leaving Dot and Tess at home to play with Sammy Pinkney.
Now, as it happened, Tess and Dot had overheard more of the
talk of their older sisters than Ruth and Agnes were aware of. It was
distinctly a case of “little pitchers with big ears,” and when the
automobile party was well out of the way, Tess with a queer,
secretive air about her, led her sister and Sammy to a secluded place
around the corner of the house.
“Don’t you tell a soul,” whispered Tess.
“What’s a soul?” asked Sammy.
“It’s a person,” Tess informed him. “Don’t you dare tell anybody,
will you?”
“Tell ’em what?” Sammy wanted to know.
“What I’m going to tell you and Dot now.”
“All right, I won’t tell,” promised Sammy.
“Cross your heart!”
This rite was performed rapidly.
“You, too, Dot!”
“Can’t I tell even my Alice-doll?”
“Oh, her! Yes. But nobody else! Cross your heart!”
Dot did it for herself and for her doll.
“Now listen,” went on Tess, and her voice sank to a lower whisper.
“It’s in our cellar!”
She brought out the last two words with such force that Dot
dropped her Alice-doll.
“What’s in your cellar?” asked Sammy. “My alligator?”
“No. The ten thousand dollars!” went on Tess, eagerly.
“What ten thousand dollars?” Sammy questioned excitedly.
“The money those men told Luke about on the train and——”
“They didn’t tell him about any money,” objected Sammy. “It was
just that he heard them say it.”
“It’s the same thing,” declared Tess, with a fine disregard for
trifles. “The men know about ten thousand dollars in our cellar and
so does Hop Wong!”
 “He does?” cried Sammy, with wide-open eyes.
“Yes!” went on Tess, with a wise shake of her head. “Now you
listen to me, both of you, and don’t you breathe it to a soul!”
This was more exciting than any imaginary happening Sammy had
ever brought up, not excepting his dramatic one about the Russian
wolves.
“There’s ten thousand dollars in our cellar,” declared Tess. “Those
funny men who came pretending to fix a water pipe were after it,
but Uncle Rufus scared them away. Hop Wong knows where it is, but
he’s scared, too.”
“Where ’bouts you s’pose it is?” asked Sammy in a whisper.
“I don’t know exactly,” answered Tess. “But it’s in our cellar and
we’re going to find it. Come on! We’ll go get it now!”
She started toward the slanting, open cellar door. For a moment
Sammy and Dot watched her and then, fired by the spirit of what
they had heard, the other two children started down into the dark
depths, intent on making some explorations.
CHAPTER XVI
THE STORM
Rather scary it was, this venturing into the seldom-visited regions
beneath Corner House. In fact Tess and Dot never remembered
having gone there before unaccompanied by their older sisters. But
they were driven by a powerful motive—two motives, in fact.
One was curiosity, than which there is no stronger for a child or
animal. The other was the desire to “show off” before the older folks
—Ruth, Agnes and the boys.
“Won’t they be surprised when we hand them the ten thousand
dollars!” exclaimed Tess, as she led the way down the outside cellar
steps.
“Oh, won’t they, just!” agreed Dot.
“Will they give you any of the money?” Sammy asked, somewhat
enviously.
“Of course they will,” declared Tess.
“How much?” Sammy inquired.
“Oh, maybe forty dollars,” said Tess, vaguely.
“I’d rather have sixteen,” declared Dot.
“Listen to her!” exclaimed Tess. “She thinks sixteen dollars is more
than forty!”
“Ho! Ho!” chuckled the boy.
“Well, it is!” declared Dot, indignantly. “Look! When you have
sixteen dollars you have a one and a six,” and on the bottom step, in
the dust, she traced the figures. “You have a one and a six,” she
repeated. “But when you have forty dollars you have only a four and
a nothing. So there!”
“Well, forty’s more’n sixteen, I know that!” declared Sammy,
though he was a little impressed by Dot’s logic.
 “Come on, let’s find the ten thousand dollars first,” suggested
Tess, foreseeing a long argument if she did not intervene, and the
search started at that part of the cellar nearest the outside door.
“There’s a lot of places to look,” complained Sammy, when the trio
had ventured in a little way. “I wonder if it’s in a box or a barrel?”
“It’s buried—that’s where it is,” declared Tess.
“Buried?” questioned Dot and Sammy.
“Yes, buried treasure is always buried, else how could they call it
buried treasure?” Tess wanted to know, with an affectation of
superior wisdom.
“Well, I guess that’s right,” agreed Sammy. “Buried under the
cellar bottom, I s’pose.”
“Yes,” said Tess. “And we’ll have to get a shovel to dig it up.”
“Dig up the whole cellar?” cried Sammy. “That’s a heap of work!”
“Buried treasure always means a lot of digging,” Tess calmly
informed him. “We’ll all help.”
“Got to have shovels then,” decided Sammy. “Well, I’ll go get ’em.”
He started up out of the cellar.
“I—I guess—maybe we’d better come with you,” said Tess,
falteringly as she looked at the black depths stretching far, far into
the rear of the cellar and thinking of the two men who had claimed
to be from the water department. “Maybe you wouldn’t know the
right kind of shovels to get, Sammy.”
“I’ll go, too,” said Dot. “Maybe I’d better leave my Alice-doll out in
the sun,” she added, as they tramped back up the steps. “She might
catch cold in the damp cellar.”
“All right,” agreed Tess, though it could be seen she had small
sympathy, at least just now, with Dot’s doll.
Sammy found a shovel for himself in Uncle Rufus’ tool-house and
the girls got two smaller ones that they at times used to play with.
Thus equipped, they went back down cellar, not attracting the
attention of Uncle Rufus or Linda or Mrs. MacCall.
“Well, now let’s dig,” suggested Sammy.
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