It occurred to Jannet that she had not had anything to eat, and she felt a little faint, to her own surprise. “What’s the matter, Jannet?” asked Jan, suddenly noticing how she looked.
“Why, I’m hungry, I believe. We had some cookies and fudge and lemonade last night but that isn’t very staying.”
“Haven’t you had any breakfast? Believe me, I never forget my meals. Come with me, child. If Daphne doesn’t fill you up with griddle-cakes, then my name is Mike!”
Laughing, but not so sorry for the stout young arm that led her along, Jannet willingly made the descent to the kitchen, where kind old Daphne fussed over her and stirred up a fresh supply of batter for her cakes. Jan, quite at home with the cook, made some cocoa, which might have been better had he followed Daphne’s directions; but the result was hot and stimulating at least. “Now you go and lie down somewhere, honey, and git some sleep,” said Daphne, who had heard what she was not supposed to hear from Hepsy, who at last understood the visit to her room in the “dead of night.”
Jannet needed no coaxing to take the advice thus offered. Well fortified and comfortable after her hot cakes, cocoa and real maple syrup, she was escorted to the library by Jan and tucked on the davenport there with a light cover suitable to the warm day. Jan thought that she would sleep better there than in her own room, all things considered, but Jannet knew that she could sleep anywhere. Jan drew the curtain with its fringes before the alcove in which the davenport stood. From little windows the soft breeze came in gently. Jannet never knew when Jan went away, so quickly did she sink into slumber.
It must have been in the late afternoon when she wakened. She had not known when Cousin Di and Jan came and looked at her, and debated whether to waken her for dinner or not, nor when Uncle Pieter came and looked down upon her with a smile. “Poor little Jannetje Jan,” he said, pulling the curtains together and going back to his desk to wait for some one.
It was when conversation was going on between her uncle and some one else that she wakened. “You can wait outside, Herman,” she heard her uncle say. “It will be better for Vittoria to talk to me alone, and I can assure you that she will receive every courtesy.”
Jannet felt very uncomfortable, though at first still drowsy. But after all, she was the one who made the first discovery. It was not eavesdropping, she hoped, and she could not help it, anyway. She almost drowsed off to sleep again in the first few minutes, while Vittoria was answering Mr. Van Meter’s questions about where she had been. Vittoria was decidedly sulky and did not want to answer any questions. Finally Mr. Van Meter told her that perfect frankness was her only course. “So far as I know, you have done no real harm in playing the ghost, but we want to know why you did it, and of course we want no more of it. It was most dangerous for the girls to be locked in and frightened.”
“You don’t intend to send me away, then, till I get married?”
“Not as long as you make no trouble for us. And we want no gossip about this, either, for our own sakes and that of you and Herman.”
This seemed to relieve Vittoria, who began to talk. “I did it first to get even with Paulina who scared me once. I told her that I did not believe in the family ghosts. She did, but since nothing happened, she made something happen and I caught her at it, hiding in the attic where I had my box with my savings in it. She was more scared than I was, for she really believes in ghosts.
“Then—well, Mrs. Van Meter told me to make all the trouble I could for you, and she was the one that found that secret room and played ghost sometimes. She sent me back here.”
Vittoria paused, perhaps half afraid to go on, but her listener made no comment. “I did it once in a while, half for fun, too, to scare Hepsy and Paulina, but you never heard any of it, so why would your wife want me to do it? Then, when the girls were here, I didn’t want them snooping around where I had my box, so I concluded that I’d give them a good scare. I did, too, but Jannet almost caught me last night. And when Hepsy told me that she asked about what perfume I used, I knew that she knew. I went to a show with Herman first and I had some of Hepsy’s new perfume on my handkerchief and on my dress. I did not think of it when I slipped on the things I wore to scare them.
“I whipped around, ahead of Jannet, and went around through the attic again to get my things; and then I was going to stay all night in Jan’s room, but I heard them coming and went the other way, sticking the things under Jan’s bed. They found them, Paulina said. I went to stay all night with a girl I knew, not where I usually stay. That was all.”
“Paulina said that you went into the trunks to get your costume.”
“Perhaps she thought so; but I never opened a trunk. These things I found in a box that was tied up in paper and in the back part of the attic.”
“Very well, Vittoria. Have your box taken out of the attic and do not go there again, please. I would put my savings in the bank, or if you care to give them to me, I will put them in my safe. Now I want to ask you if you remember some incidents connected with my sister, Jannet’s mother.”
Jannet, behind the curtains, was thoroughly awake by this time and with half a mind to go out now, for perhaps she should not hear what was to follow. She sat up, but decided not to go out. Vittoria was in the mood to tell now. Her uncle’s voice was not unkind and she knew that Vittoria must be relieved to think that she need not lose her place and the money which she wanted to make.
“I have kept it in mind,” her uncle continued, “that you served my former wife very faithfully, even if mistakenly at times. She had trained you and had given you some education. It was to be expected that you should have a regard for her.” Then Jannet heard her uncle tell Vittoria the incident of the telegram and what Paulina had said.
Vittoria remembered the occasion. “Yes, I’ll tell you more, Mr. Van Meter,” she said excitedly. “I did not care very much for your wife when she stood over me and threatened me with all sorts of things if I did not tear up a letter that had come to you. ‘It is from his precious sister,’ she said, ‘and I shall say to my husband, if he asks, that I have not destroyed any of his mail.’ And the telegram was from her, too, and she begged you to help her find her husband and baby.”
There was silence for a little. Jannet heard her uncle’s slow tapping on his desk. Finally he said, “Do you remember anything else, Vittoria? Were there any other letters?”
“One little letter that I had to tear up for her. There may have been other telegrams, but I did not know about them if there were. She was watching for the mail in those days, or had me do it.”
“I see. Well, Vittoria, this is very valuable information to me. I can not feel very happy over what you did, Vittoria, but it would do no good now to punish you in any way, even if I could. You had part in what was a very dreadful thing.”
“Oh, yes, sir!” To Jannet’s surprise, she heard Vittoria sobbing a little. “I was only sixteen, but I knew better; but I thought since they all died, it did not make so much difference—until she came.”
“It may have made the difference that we could have saved my sister, Vittoria, and that Jannet need not have been in a boarding school for years. But you are not so much to blame as the one who ordered you to do it. It must have been a shock to you when we discovered Jannet. Well, Vittoria, we can not help the past. We have all made mistakes. Try to be a good girl and a good wife to Herman. I will have some work for him when I build the new barn.”
“Oh, thank you, sir, I’ll—,” but Vittoria’s voice was tearful, and Jannet heard her uncle open and close the door. Vittoria had gone, too upset to say another word. She had come in sullen and hard, and left all touched and softened by Mr. Van Meter’s treatment of her.
Jannet was proud of her uncle, and when he immediately crossed the room and parted the curtains to see if she were awake, she looked lovingly up into his rather troubled eyes to tell him so. “O uncle, you were so good to Vittoria! I was a
fraid that I ought not to be here, but I was more afraid to come out.”
“I knew that you were there, my child, but I’d like to be alone now for a little while.”
Jannet clung to his arm a minute, then ran out and to her room to get some more of the attic dust off in her tub and make herself quite fresh for supper. Her previous toilet had been made quite hastily and superficially, she knew.
Hepsy waited upon them at supper, but Jannet knew that a chastened and more considerate Vittoria would be helping to-morrow. Cousin Diana and Jan had their turn at the portfolio and its messages after supper, when they all gathered for a while in the living room. Then a sober Uncle Pieter took them, to put them away in his desk, and they saw no more of him that evening.
CHAPTER XIX
RECOVERED TREASURE
Jan’s secret must be shared with his chum, but both he and Nell promised to keep it to themselves. For several days there were frequent reunions either at the Van Meter farm or that of the Clydes. The summer promised to be a happy one.
Uncle Pieter said that he would have a new lock put on the attic door, but so far he had been too busy to attend to it. Vittoria had handed back the key which she had had from her mistress, the second Mrs. Van Meter. She had handed her savings to Mr. Van Meter, who took them to a bank for her. Paulina, Jannet knew, from various remarks by that worthy lady, still kept her savings at home, but no one knew just where, which was just as well. Then no one felt any responsibility. So Cousin Diana said. But it would be a shame if anything happened to that for which Paulina had worked so long, and Jannet meant to speak to her uncle about it—some day.
The ghost had been discovered, but what had become of the pearls was still a mystery to Jannet. She felt that she knew Hepsy and Vittoria, Daphne, too, and others about the place who seldom came to the house, but of no one could she suspect the theft. Her lovely pearls! She wondered that Uncle Pieter did not do something; but Uncle Pieter was very busy. Once when she was coming back from a ride, Uncle Pieter, also on his horse, rode up to her and asked, “Any sign of the pearls?”
“No sir,” she replied.
“I will come to your room some day,” said he, “and you shall show me where you found them.”
That was all, and Jannet would have been impatient had she had any time to become so, but there were too many pleasant plans afoot. She loved the place now and even without a horse to ride would have been perfectly content. Early apples were ripe in the orchard and the young lambs on the hills were the prettiest things Jannet had ever seen, she thought. May was hurrying by very fast, and Jannet was several pounds heavier, especially since she had joined Jan in his more or less frequent visits to the kitchen. Jan pointed to fat Daphne in warning, but Uncle Pieter pinched her cheek lightly once in a while and remarked that a farm was better than a school for growing lasses.
The opening from the tool house to the ladder in the secret way had been made into a stout door, secured on the inside by a bolt; but as burglars were almost unknown in these parts, Jannet began to feel about it as the rest of them did and never bothered to bolt her door at night. She turned her key and looked to see that the panel was closed tightly and that was all. Bottle and wires had been taken from the attic and no sounds other than those made by an occasional squirrel disturbed the night.
One evening Jannet wrote somewhat later than she had intended, for she was telling Miss Hilliard all about the mystery and the excitement. Could it be, Jannet thought, so short a time since she left the school and came to Uncle Pieter’s? But so much had happened! And she had made herself such a part of the family, in these last days especially. Jannet felt very happy and told Miss Hilliard so, though she took care to say that not even her own family could ever take Miss Hilliard’s place in her heart.
“Perhaps I’ll even find my pearls,” she thought, as she slipped between her sheets and drew only a light blanket over her. She fell asleep thinking of school affairs, for Lina had just written that school closed a little later than usual and would not be over till the second week in June. Uncle Pieter had said that she might have Lina to visit her and she “would write to L”—, and her purpose drifted off into a dream.
But a more gentle ghost was drifting toward Jannet, one as ignorant of Jannet as Jannet was of the ghost.
It was about the hour for ghosts, midnight, when an automobile turned into the drive from the main road and rolled rapidly up and around the house and even into the back part not far from the barns.
“I can’t see a light anywhere,” said the lady who sat with the driver and who was peering out with the greatest interest. “If it were not for the trees and certain landmarks, I would think that we had driven into the wrong place.”
“Perhaps we have,” suggested the other lady who sat behind.
“No, indeed. I am not mistaken, but I scarcely know what to do. If we had not been so delayed—I just meant to call, since I was so near—and I wanted to see—one or two things.”
“If this were my old home, I certainly would see what I wanted to, even if I waked somebody up. You are hopeless sometimes, my dear!”
The first lady laughed. “So I am. Well, I see that they have left the old house intact anyhow. Pieter said that he intended to do so. But you can scarcely understand how I want to see it and how I do not want to see it. Come on, then, Francis, see me to the door, please, and Lydia, it is goodnight if I can get inside, though I may sit up until morning, thinking. I hope that you may be able to sleep in the village hotel. I appreciate your sacrifice. But call for me after breakfast, unless I telephone for you earlier.”
“Please spare me unless you are in danger,” replied the lady addressed as Lydia. “Perhaps it will be just as well if you can not get in.”
No light appeared at any of the windows, though the visit of an automobile might well have aroused some one. The lady and gentleman walked through the pergola and into the court to the front door, and the lady drew a key from her purse. “Odd that you kept the keys all these years,” said the gentleman.
“Yes, isn’t it?” the lady replied, trying the key. It turned, but there was a bolt of some sort within. “There is another door, Francis,” she said, and they walked around to the rear door, where another key was inserted. “Honestly, my courage almost fails me, Francis.”
“Why don’t you ring, then, instead of getting in this foolish way?”
“I always was a little foolish, Francis, as you well know, and I am just a little afraid to meet my—why, this lets me in, Francis. Now I shall be safely inside till morning at least, and if I can reach my room without meeting old P’lina, I shall gain courage from the old background. Goodnight and thank you.” The door closed and the man called Francis walked back to the car, entered it and drove away.
But none of them had seen a dark figure which kept to the shadows and which stood behind a tree when the lady entered the house. Waiting a little, listening at the door, it, too, entered at the back of the old house.
The lady, with a small flashlight, hurried rather breathlessly up the back stairs and stood smiling a little, hesitating between routes, and fingering a small bunch of keys. No one could see her smiles in the dark, to be sure, but by a sudden impulse she turned to the attic stairs, opened the door there and disappeared from the ken of the man listening at the foot of the first flight. Stealthily he followed, occasionally letting the light in his hand fall before him. But he was familiar with the place, it would have been evident to any one who had seen him.
At the attic door, which stood ajar, he paused, looking within at the small light which proceeded a little slowly into the depths beyond.
“Mercy—I had forgotten how dusty attics are!” he heard her say, as she drew aside the carpet, which had been replaced, and opened the trap door. “Now, if only I don’t break my neck!”
But the neck did not seem to be broken, for there was no sound of any calamity as the
light disappeared. The man then turned on his own light and softly walked across the attic. But he sat down a few moments later in the secret room, to wait, for he did not desire to be present when first she entered the room below.
The panel opened without waking the quietly sleeping Jannet. The little flashlight searched the lower regions of the room first, for possible obstacles. It flashed on the rug, the desk, the little chair. Why, whose pretty slippers were those by the chair?
For a moment only the light flashed on the bed, with some of its covers neatly thrown back across its foot and the outline of some small person lying beneath sheet and blanket. How foolish she had been to think that her room would not be occupied!
Should she go back the way in which she had come? Once more she flashed her light upon the bed—why this could almost have been herself in days gone by! Jannet’s fair hair, her quiet, sweet young face, the slender hand under her cheek—who was this?
Tossing aside the tight hat from her own fluffy golden crown of thick hair, the lady, startled, touched, found her way to the little electric lamp upon the desk and turned on the current. The room glowed a little from the rosy shade. She tiptoed to the bed, bending over with lips parted and amazed eyes.
The light, perhaps, or the presence, woke Jannet, still half in a dream as she looked up into the face above her. Whose was it, so lovely with its surprised and tender smile? “Why, Mother,” she softly said, “did you come—at last?”
“Dear heart!” exclaimed a low, musical voice. “It can’t be true, can it? You are not my own little baby that I lost—but you have a look of Douglas! Who are you?”
Jannet, her own amazement growing as she wakened more thoroughly, raised herself on her elbow, then sat up, and the lady reached for her hand. Jannet’s other hand came to clasp more firmly the older one with its one flashing ring above a wedding ring. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I thought that you were my mother. See? You look just like her picture, and I suppose that you are too young, then.”
The Third Girl Detective Page 15