At first Paul and Sybil had a difficult time convincing the inhabitants of the Ocean-Born Mary house in Henniker to let them visit. Of course they didn’t tell them who they were or why they came; Paul thought it best to inform them that they were history buffs who had heard a great deal about the old house and were interested in New England architecture of past centuries. He also offered to pay twenty dollars for a specially arranged guided tour. All of this got them into the house.
But what about the treasure? Paul wondered. How was he going to have a chance to look for what? He felt that it was not an easy thing to discover without proper instruments, such as a metal detector. But on the other hand, if he could only get into the house for a few hours alone without the owners being present, perhaps his instinct might tell them where to look.
But all attempts to lure the owners, an elderly couple named Smythe, away from the house for even an hour, failed. They were suspicious of all strangers, especially those who came from New York City, and it was clear that Paul and Sybil were not exactly welcome once the tour had ended. Even his mentioning that they, too, were New Hampshire people now didn’t help. Dejected, Paul and Sybil returned to their New England weekend house and not much was said about the matter for several days. Then, just as suddenly, the sober mood vanished and an air of expectancy returned to Paul’s demeanor.
“I’ve got it,” he said. “I know exactly what we must do.”
Sybil shook her head. “Are you still trying to dig in that house in Henniker?”
“Yes,” he replied, “and so will you.”
As soon as he returned to New York City at the beginning of the week, he spent several hours on the telephone, without telling Sybil what he was doing. He was arranging an elaborate scheme for a special lottery, the winners of which would be the couple who owned the house. It might cost him as much as five or six thousand dollars but he was willing to risk that. The prize was much greater. Two weeks later the lottery tickets had been printed and he managed to get them into the hands of the Smythes. His hunch paid off. He had suspected them to be greedy enough to fall for the scheme, and so they did. They did not realize that this was a sting operation and that they were, in fact, the only ones who held tickets.
Another week passed. Then the lottery-organizer informed the Smythes that they had won first prize. The prize consisted of $500 and a free weekend in New York City. While this was going on, Paul visibly nervous, told Sybil what he had done. She thought it was very clever and hoped it would succeed. Sure enough, the Smythes accepted the challenge and the following week they packed up and left the house and went to New York for their lottery weekend, giving Paul two and a half full days to look for the treasure up in New Hampshire.
It was a lucky thing that Paul and Sybil’s car did not encounter the Smythes’ ancient jalopy on the road, so closely had he timed their arrival and the Smythes’ departure for New York City. But he didn’t want to wait a single minute. He knew, of course, that the Smythes had probably tipped off the local police department about watching the house in their absence. But that didn’t bother him. If the author of Yankee Ghosts was right, there was no treasure inside the house, only the body of the pirate underneath the fireplace. The treasure was outside the house, underneath or near those big white stones, now almost invisible among the bushes. Paul had the latest electronic equipment with him, enabling him to discover anything metallic in the soil.
When they arrived at the house, it was midafternoon and the light was still good. Should there be an encounter with a police officer, Paul was prepared to present himself as a visiting member of an historical society who had heard about the house and regretfully found the owners absent. To make sure his visit was not a total loss he and his wife wanted to look around the outside to get a feeling for the place. He was sure that no policeman could object to that. But he hoped that the surveillance of the house, if any, would only start at night and concern itself primarily with anyone trying to break into the house, which was not his intention.
Fortunately, he remembered where to look from his first visit. Quickly unpacking his equipment he went to work, with Sybil assisting him to the best of her ability. There was nothing, absolutely nothing. Not the slightest sign of anything metallic. Getting more and more upset, Paul took the equipment to other areas all around the house. The result was negative.
In desperation, because it was getting darker and darker, he took out two shovels and, together with Sybil, began to dig near the gravestones where Sybil Leek had indicated the treasure might be. This time there was something. His shovel hit on something hard. Feverishly, following through with his bare hands, he managed to pull out a little box, which almost fell apart in his hands.
The box was made of metal, but the metal had rusted. Inside there was something white or yellowish. He brushed aside the earth which had penetrated the box and cautiously, slowly, unfolded the piece of parchment inside.
“Not here,” Sybil said, somehow fearing that they might be discovered. “Let’s take this away from the house first.”
“You’re right,” Paul agreed. He put the piece of parchment into his pocket, quickly covered the hole in the ground and, almost as if they were being pursued, the couple went back to their car and departed.
As soon as they had reached a quiet spot where they could pull off the road, he stopped the car and together they looked at his find. What they had in their hands was a yellowish piece of parchment, not very large, but in relatively good condition. The ink on it, brownish and spotted, had long faded but enough could be made out for them to read what had been written on it.
“Fool! You who disturb my rest shall find nothing. I killed him for nothing and you shall have nothing. John Howell has the last laugh after all, you fool. Yet I am glad I killed him for he wasn’t one of us truly. Let there be no memory of Don Pedro and let there be warning to those who would assume his name: John Howell abused the honorable profession of the high seas and he lost his life over it. So be it. I have nothing to regret when I meet my maker. John Howell deserved what he received. Thomas Masterson, written in the year of our Lord 1769.”
With an exclamation of disappointment, Paul dropped the piece of parchment. He looked at Sybil and smiled a wry smile. “We’ve come here for nothing,” he said and started the engine.
“No,” she replied. “We’ve come here to discover the truth.”
“What do you mean?” Paul said as he slowly drove toward New York City.
“The truth,” Sybil replied. “The truth is that the treasure is not at Henniker, but perhaps it is somewhere else.”
“Of course!” Paul exclaimed. “It has been moved. It must have been moved!”
They almost flew back to New York City. Paul’s enthusiasm was ten-fold now. He realized he had been barking up the wrong tree, so to speak, and had gone to the wrong house. But where to look? Where would he find the next lead? By now he was determined to unravel the secret of the treasure assembled by the late pirate Don Pedro. Nothing would stop him until he was successful.
As soon as he had some free time Paul went to the New York Public Library and asked to be shown the material they had on pirates of the late eighteenth century. There was quite a bit of it and the librarian warned him that it would take several weeks to work his way through it all, but Paul didn’t mind. He was determined to succeed with his search. Aided and abetted by his fiancée he spent evenings and weekends at the library, going through every scrap of information about the pirates who roamed the seas off the American coast between 1700 and 1800.
In the end his search was crowned by success. After four weeks of grueling research, he came across a mention of a book entitled Pirate Lore by one W.H. Carson, printed in London in 1964. This long forgotten work was said to contain the life histories of several famous pirates, among them Don Pedro, supposedly an English nobleman in disguise.
That was all Paul needed. The book, fortunately, was in the library, rare though it was, and within two or three hours after his discovery he held it in his trembling hands. His disappointment was profound when he found that the part dealing with Don Pedro was no more than a page and a half. But his eyes widened when he started to read. There were two paragraphs that caught his eye immediately.
“Don Pedro, alias Philip Babb, alias John Howell, was murdered by one of his own mates and presumably lies buried in New Hampshire at the Ocean-Born Mary house. As for his fabulous treasure, if it exists, legend has it that it lies buried in the sands of Long Island in the midst of an Indian burial ground near the little village of Amityville. Whether this is true or not we cannot say.
“One source mentions the rumor that the treasure includes a fabulous precious stone, known as Queen Anne’s Opal. It is said that the opal was stolen from a Tibetan monastery and brings a curse on those who possess it. Perhaps, at the moment of his violent death, Don Pedro found time to regret that the ill-fated opal formed part of his treasure.”
Paul looked up from the book and, almost as if he were in a trance, returned it to the librarian. He signed out of the library and went home. At last he knew what to do next.