"Okay," Jesse said, "here we are on Fisk Lookout. It's a bright summer morning, a very fine day for the excavation of Bat Cave. I'm delighted to be able to share this historical occasion with…"
"Come on, cut that out. Let's get on with it," said Bess good-humoredly. She stood leaning on the spade. Others were carrying various garden implements. Ivy was looking all around her with a worried expression.
"Will do. That must be the bare tree over there." He pointed to a tall dead tree with branches that turned almost straight up close to the trunk, giving it the appearance of a multi-tined fork. No one seemed to disagree. "I'll count off the paces according to the instructions."
This was easier read than accomplished as he had to work his way down feet first on portions of the slope that were exposed rock, and could only count paces properly where there was more of a steady incline. The instructions took him off the bald top of the ridge into an area overgrown with bushes.
"It should be right here," he shouted to the others as they followed him down. "I don't see anything though."
Nancy said, "There could be a different bare tree meant, or the paces weren't accurate."
"I don't see how you can have more accurate paces coming down a hill like that," Jesse said irritably. "I'm sure we've got this right." Nancy watched as he bent over to look at the ground and stepped over a bush. He gave a loud "Ohhh" as if he were on an amusement park roller-coaster and disappeared from sight.
"Jesse!" screamed Nancy. Ivy gave a scream too, like a fainter and shorter echo. Nancy looked over the bush where Jesse had stepped, watching her own feet carefully. There was a crack in the rock four or five feet wide. It was well concealed by the bushes, and right up to the edge of the opening small plants grew.
"I'm okay!" shouted Jesse in happy exultation. "We've found it!" He had not fallen deeply. As Nancy reached down he could easily grasp her hand. "It slopes a bit, then there's a level spot where I landed, then it continues down and into the hillside."
As they lowered themselves one by one into the darkness they were immersed in cool air. They had to move alternately crawling on their hands and knees and walking in a crouch, as the ceiling of the cave was too low to allow them to stand up straight. The cave was narrow and sinuous, like an animal's burrow. The floor of the cave had been eroded into smooth contours. It was the same sandstone that was exposed outside on the ridge and nowhere could the young people find any spot that had been dug into. The walls looked the same as the floor. It was not long before they had swept their flashlights over the entire interior of the cave.
Nancy leaned against a smooth area of wall and said, "I'm afraid this cave is empty."
After twenty minutes, Bess could say, "I wish there were bats here. At least it would be more interesting." The grand total of their discoveries was some cigarette butts, a bubble gum wrapper, and some scattered chicken bones.
"O Great Detective, what do the cigarette butts, the bubble-gum wrapper, and, of course, the enigmatic chicken bones tell you?" Jesse turned to Nancy.
"It tells me that we're not the first people here." After the snickering had ended, Nancy continued. "That bubble-gum wrapper looks like it could have been here for years, decades even. You can be sure if kids know about a secret place it doesn't stay secret very long."
"If people have forgotten about this cave," George added, "it would be because it's such a boring cave."
"What a disappointment," said Bess. "And I was going to call this case, 'The Secret of Bat Cave'."
"Oh, you and your journal," said George with a laugh.
"But why would your great-grandfather write down directions to a cave that's empty!" Jesse said in exasperation.
"Maybe he was keen on bats," offered Bess.
"But there aren't any bats here!"
"Besides," reasoned George, "he didn't need the directions for himself. Once he found it he knew where it was, I mean, close enough to find it again. He must have written the message for someone else who was keen on bats."
"There aren't any bats!" Jesse fairly shouted.
"Now, there's no need to raise your voice at us, young man," Bess quipped.
"Stop it about the bats, already," said Ivy sharply.
"Maybe the gold was here but someone beat us to it," suggested George.
"The gold may have been here at one time," Nancy reasoned, "but not recently. There were small plants growing at the edge of the opening. We trod all over them going in and out of the cave. They were fine when we got here. That means the cave has not been disturbed for some time."
"Good work, Nancy," said a supportive Bess.
"So maybe the gold was removed years ago," George argued.
"That's possible, but why write the message? Why not just hand over the gold? I'm thinking that Cyrus didn't write the directions," said Nancy.
"Now that I think about it, Podmore was the one who suggested we look for something from Cyrus Fisk," grumbled Jesse.
Something dawned on George. "Mrs. Podmore came over to the house with the strawberry-rhubarb pie. She could have slipped the book into the bookcase when no one was looking."
"You mean Podmore wrote the directions? So the Podmores manufactured this trick to play on us. And we completely fell for that mysterious message in the back of the book trick. It's like something out of a children's detective story."
"I'm sure he didn't do it as a 'trick'," Bess argued. "He just wanted to help us. He didn't want us to search all over the island, wasting our time. That would have been a whole lot more frustrating."
"Bess is right," said Ivy. "There just isn't any treasure. That's not Mr. Podmore's fault. This way we find that out sooner instead of later."
"But he could have easily told us," muttered Jesse.
"Yeah, but we wouldn't have believed him, would we?" Ivy looked around and took the absence of a response from her friends to signify agreement. "And if he had given us directions to the cave, and we found nothing, we would have figured he was deliberately leading us off the track."
"He could still be doing that, of course," observed Nancy. "I don't know about the rest of you but this cave excavation is over for me. I need to take a shower and get this dust off me." She rubbed the reddish dust that was on her hands.