Professor Nichols sat down at the dining room table and began to look at the coins. From an inside pocket he took a magnifying glass like one Benny had seen a watchmaker use. He fitted it into his eye.
Rory and the Aldens leaned excitedly on the table, watching the professor.
“What a sight! What a sight,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Oh, my, oh, my!”
Suddenly Professor Nichols put his finger on a gold coin.
“Look here!” he exclaimed, speaking to Benny who was nearest. “There are only ten coins like this in the whole wide world! You can see it is a four dollar gold piece. And here is one of the ten!”
“That makes the collection valuable, doesn’t it?” Benny asked.
“Valuable? Valuable? Oh, yes. It is priceless! Now look. Here is a twenty-cent piece. Did any of you ever hear of a twenty-cent piece?”
“No,” they all answered. They were fascinated by the professor and all he knew about the coins.
“Well, no wonder. These twenty-cent pieces didn’t last long. You can see that they would get mixed up with quarters. That made a lot of trouble. Nobody liked the coins. Very soon they weren’t made anymore. I haven’t seen one of them for years, and I don’t own one myself.”
“How can you tell if it is a real twenty-cent piece?” asked Benny. “We don’t know a thing about coins.”
Professor Nichols took the magnifying glass from his eye and smiled at Benny. “Of course you don’t. I’m glad to tell you. Look here. Feel the edge of this coin. It has a smooth edge for one thing. I’ll take a quarter out of my pocket. You see, the edge is milled. That means it has little ridges.”
“I see,” Rory said. “The edge of the twenty-cent piece is smooth.”
“That’s right,” the professor said. “Now look at the figure of the woman on the coin. She’s the goddess Liberty and she is often on older U. S. coins. But here on the twenty-cent piece she is sitting down. A coin collector calls this ‘Liberty Seated.’ If there were only Liberty’s head shown, it would be a different coin altogether.”
“Are all these coins valuable?” asked Mr. Alden.
“Oh, yes. Even the pennies are valuable. Somebody knew what he was doing when he collected these. However, the gold piece and the twenty-cent piece are the best of all.”
“What about that Indian-head penny?” Jessie asked.
Professor Nichols smiled. “A lot of people like to collect pennies. Some pennies are very hard to find and that makes them worth a lot. But most of the pennies here are worn. That makes them of less value. They’re interesting to people just beginning to collect coins.”
Henry said, “All of these coins are forty years old at least.”
The professor said, “This may surprise you. Sometimes the oldest coin is not worth the most. I have coins from Roman times that are not worth as much as some of these U. S. coins. That’s because the fewer there are, the more each one is worth.”
“I see,” Benny said. “That’s interesting.”
Rory nodded. “Aye,” he said softly.
Professor Nichols turned to Mr. Alden. “James,” he said, “this is an unusual collection. And it is put together in an unusual way. There must be a story behind it. Who owns it?”
“I really don’t know,” said Grandfather. “But we know who used to own it. The children found the coins after a great hunt. They followed a lot of false clues. One clue said ‘Look on the back of the house.’ You look, Andrew, on the back of that coin card.”
Professor Nichols carefully turned the cardboard over and saw the photograph.
“This very house!” he said. “I’m beginning to get some ideas.”
Grandfather looked at Violet and asked, “You still have the coin case, don’t you? Will you get it for the professor?”
Violet went to the hall stairs and ran up to her room.
The professor could not sit still. He pushed back his chair and walked back and forth, waiting for Violet. He did not wait long. She was soon back and put the blue case into his hand.
The professor could not speak for a minute. He said, “Of course I know this! A little girl—Stephanie Shaw—made this. I knew her father. I helped her a little on this collection myself.”
Mr. Alden said, “Then we are right. This is the Blue Collection.”
“It certainly is. I never knew what became of it after the Shaws went to France. Has it been hidden here all this time? I can’t understand why no one ever claimed it.”
“The children learned that the Shaw family died in France many years ago,” Mr. Alden said. “Benny found Stephanie’s journal hidden behind a loose board in a closet wall.”
“Rory helped, too,” Benny said.
Rory added, “The empty coin case was there, Granda.”
“We’ll show you all the clues,” Benny offered.
Professor Nichols said, “What a story! It is a wonderful collection that might easily have been lost forever. Oh, I don’t like to think that I might have missed this collection entirely!” He shuddered. “I would indeed like to see all of the things you found.”
“Here is Stephanie’s journal,” said Violet. “I brought that down, too.”
“It is her writing,” said Professor Nichols. “And you children worked out the mystery? I never could have done it.”
“What do you think we should do with this collection?” asked Henry. “Should we keep it or sell it? Would anybody buy it?”
“I would!” said Professor Nichols. “There are valuable coins in this collection. It would give me great happiness to own it. However, I don’t want to take the famous Blue Collection away from you children.”
Benny said, “You knew Stephanie. I think you should have it.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” the professor said. “I’ll pay you for the Blue Collection. Then I’ll select some special coins for each one of you.”
He quickly pulled five coins off the blue cloth from different places on the card. He gave one to each of the Aldens and Rory.
“There!” he said. “You Aldens can start your own collection. I think you’ll enjoy it.”
“Start a collection with four coins?” exclaimed Benny.
The professor nodded. “You’ll be surprised how quickly you’ll add more coins. The minute people know that you are making a collection, they will help you.”
“I think I’ll collect Canadian coins,” Rory said. “I’m visiting the Aldens. I’m from Canada.”
“You are?” said Professor Nichols with a sharp look at the boy. “Maybe you have a Canadian five-cent piece with a beaver on it. And there’s a famous silver dollar from 1947 with men paddling a canoe. Some of the early fur traders, I guess. Yes, you can have an exciting collection.”
That evening at dinner, Professor Nichols looked at Benny and Rory. He said, “You boys are hiding part of the mystery about the Blue Collection from me.“
“We’re not!” Benny exclaimed. “We showed the journal and the clues and told you about the Jenny Wren Shop. That’s all there is.”
The professor shook his head. “I’ll tell what I’m wondering about. How did you boys happen to find the empty coin case and the papers in the closet wall?”
Benny said, “That’s easy. Vacation came and I was lonesome.”
“You were?” asked the professor and laughed. “I can’t believe that! But I still don’t understand.”
“Well, you see,” Benny explained, “all my friends were away and I was lonely. So Grandfather invited Rory to come.”
“That’s right,” Rory said. “Mrs. McGregor knows my family. That’s how it happened.”
“Of course Rory had to have the room next to mine,” Benny went on. “We didn’t know anything about Stephanie then or that it had been her room.”
Professor Nichols smiled. He could see that the only way to get the whole story was to let Benny tell it his way.
Benny went on, “We had rooms next to each other. That made us think of a telegraph between them. We thought we’d run a cord through holes in our closet walls.”
“It was a good idea,” Rory said. “But then we found all this stuff in the hole. Say, Benny, we never did finish our telegraph!”
“That’s right,” Benny exclaimed. “I guess our next mystery is how to make it work.”
The other Aldens and Professor Nichols all laughed.
“If you can’t find a mystery, make one,” the professor said.
Benny added, “And I’ll tell you something else, I’m not lonesome anymore.”
“Good!” said Grandfather. “That’s all I want.” |