The Third Girl Detective

by Margaret Sutton

  Blue eyes and brown eyes exchanged an amused look, though Jean grew rather sober, while Nan spoke up. “I haven’t a thing to do with this one, except to stand by Jean. She’ll explain.”

  “All right. Explain and satisfy our curiosity, Jean, or else forever after hold your peace!”

  “There must have been a wedding at the parsonage, girls,” suggested Fran. “Were you a witness, Molly?”

  “Not this time. Go on, Jean, and tell. I have to get home early and help get supper.”

  “All right, Molly. I’m just thinking it out. This is a ‘S. O. S.’ call girls, and if you don’t help me out, I’m disgraced for life, I guess.”

  “It is very serious,” remarked Nan, with mock soberness and an air as important as she could manage while still holding the fudge plate, sadly depleted.

  CHAPTER II

  SEVEN S. P.’S

  Jean now drew up a straight chair and sat down, facing the others from the other corner of the mantel. Then she began, soberly at first, but frequently displaying her pretty dimple in smiles, chuckles and even grins as her story proceeded.

  “It’s this way, girls. We just—simply—have to have a club, and I don’t mean an ordinary club or society, but something different, a secret club!”

  “Sakes!” exclaimed Molly, “something like Grace’s sorority at college?”

  “No. That wouldn’t be any fun for us. Well, perhaps. But have you noticed how mysterious some of the boys have been lately?”

  Several girls said that they had not seen anything unusual. Leigh remarked that she never paid any attention to what they did, except at parties. But Molly remembered that when they were skating recently “a knot of the boys” drew together, talking about something and that when she and Bess happened to skate near them, to avoid a rough place in the ice, “the bunch” broke up and skated apart.

  “How about Jimmy, Nan?” asked Molly.

  “He’s in it, but the first I noticed was his new pin, this morning, though he may have been wearing it before, out of sight. When I asked him about it, he said, ‘Oh nothing. Bottle up your curiosity, Nan’!”

  This called forth various comments on brothers and whether the boys’ club was a senior fraternity or not. Jean waited till the opportunity came.

  “No, it can’t be a real fraternity,” said she, “for they aren’t allowed. Besides Billy Baxter belongs and he’s only a sophomore, like us. Nobody wants to know, of course, just what boys do; but this time they have gotten up some sort of a secret society and feel so snippy about it that we just ought to do something, too.”

  “And be called ‘copy-cats’,” Nan suggested.

  “Yes, that’s so,” acknowledged Jean. “But just wait a minute. Perhaps you won’t think that what I did was so terrible, then; for I thought of that, too. Billy, you know, comes home my way from school, and tonight he whistled and called ‘Je-an,’ and caught up with me. Well, in a minute I knew it wasn’t for anything else than to show me his new pin and crow over us girls a little. I didn’t know about Jimmy, of course, and there must be several sophomores in it, I’m sure. We’ll have to find out how big a crowd belongs.” A wide grin now almost obscured the dimple in Jean’s cheek.

  “Girls, they call themselves ‘The Black Wizards’ and their pin is a most terrible lookin’ snake in a queer W! Billy was full of it, and by a few little innocent questions I got a lot of news! I wasn’t pretending either, when I told him that I was awfully interested, and that it must be fine and lots of fun. I imagine that they must have made it up to wear their pins—they’d just come—and not keep everything to themselves any longer.

  “So I said, ‘Why isn’t that grand—just like us girls, only, only we haven’t such a scary sign as a snake, and our pins haven’t come yet!’” With this Jean looked around with an expression like that of the cat after it had eaten the canary.

  “Oh, you whopper-teller!” cried Molly. “And did you say it after he told you they wouldn’t keep the fact of their having a club secret any longer?”

  “Oh, no! I put that in just now. He just said that the boys had a new club, and told me the name and how they had lots of great plans and things like that. What I said wasn’t exactly untrue, for I formed a club of one member then and there, and I felt pretty sure that Nan would help me out, so I could say ‘girls,’—and Billy was gloating so!

  “There isn’t a thing in this little town like Girl Scouts or Camp Fire Girls or anything, and nobody to start them. Don’t you think that we ought to have something besides the school societies and the church things, Molly?”

  Molly gave Jean a look of amusement. “It would be fun,” she answered.

  “It’s a jolly idea,” said Fran decisively. “Go on, Jean. What else did you and Billy say?”

  “Of course Billy wouldn’t believe me. ‘You’re just kidding,’ he said. ‘But if we get up a secret club, of course you girls would have to have one, too! What’s the name of yours, if you have one?’ I could see that he was real suspicious, and I didn’t blame him. It did look suspicious!”

  Nan almost fell off the arm of Leigh’s chair at this, and the fudge plate tilted precariously. “I should think it did!” she cried.

  While the girls laughed, Jean dimpled and rose to take the fudge plate from Nan, passing it around once more. Placing the plate upon the mantel, she continued:

  “‘It isn’t best to tell our name yet,’ I said to Billy. ‘It’s sort of secret, too’.”

  “I should say so!” gasped Leigh.

  “Sh-sh,” said Phoebe. “Let Jean tell it.”

  “Billy said much the same thing, Leigh,” laughed Jean. “He said, ‘Yes it is!—’cause you haven’t any!’

  “‘I’ll tell you the initials,’ I said—thinking awfully fast, girls! But I couldn’t seem to think of a thing but ‘Busy Bees’ or ‘Happy Hearts’ or something like that. Just then we passed a sign that said ‘S. P. Smith,’ so I tossed my head a little and said, ‘They’re S. P. What do you think of that, now?’ I was getting in deeper and deeper, you see.”

  “‘H’m,’ he said, ‘what are you going to do?’

  “‘That,’ I said, ‘is sort of a secret, too. You never heard of a secret society that told everything, did you? We may tell our name later, though.’

  “‘It won’t be long,’ Billy said.

  “‘Now isn’t that mean of you?’ I asked.” Jean lifted her chin and looked sidewise at Leigh as she had doubtless scanned Billy.

  “He asked me where our club met and I said, ‘Most anywhere yet, but headquarters is at our house.’ Billy didn’t say anything for a minute. Billy is terribly smart, you know, and it looked fishy to him—naturally! Still, some of us have been meeting occasionally, you know.

  “Then he said, ‘Well, all I have to say is that it’s awfully funny we never heard anything of it before this. Girls can’t keep a secret!’”

  “‘Oh, can’t we?’ I asked. Then Billy looked at me and laughed, and I laughed, and he broke a peanut chocolate bar into two pieces and gave me the biggest—bigger, I mean; so he wasn’t mad, of course. But by this time Danny Pierce was coming along on the other side of the street, and looked over with a grin—and that finished Billy. You know how he feels about being seen with a girl! So he never said goodbye or anything but bolted across to Danny. I’m sure he’ll tell Danny about our club, so you see what I’ve gotten us into. But there’s one thing that will save you, if you don’t want to come to my rescue—Billy didn’t ask me who belonged.

  “I rushed home and asked Mother if I could have the finished room in the attic for a club room and that is all right. Now will any of you stand by me, or do I have to be a club all by myself?”

  “You forget me, Jean,” Nan reminded her. “I promised to be a S. P. S. P. forever!”

  Molly jumped to her feet. “All in favor of being an S. P. stand up!”

/>   Every girl responded and Leigh, of whom Jean had been most in doubt, laughingly announced that she wouldn’t miss it for anything. “Let’s have sweet pins,” she added. “A snake would be dreadful—Ugh!”

  “No, really, Leigh, their pins are pretty,” said Nan, “gold with a little black enamel, and Jim said that when they could afford it they might have rubies for the snakes’ eyes. That was when I looked at his pin.”

  “The ‘Black Wizards!’ Wow!” exclaimed Bess. “Let’s elect Jean president, and Nan secretary, and Leigh would make a good treasurer, as her father’s president of the bank now. I’m a nominating committee!”

  The girls agreed that Bess’s suggestions were good. Bess, Fran and Phoebe were appointed a committee on what the club should do, and every one was to consider herself a committee to determine what S. P. should represent. “S. could stand for Sophomore,” Molly suggested. Molly had begged off from any office, as she had so many church organizations to help.

  “Sophomore is too common, Molly,” said Phoebe. “There are exactly seven of us, too, and seven is a lucky number. But I think that we can tell better after we think up what would be fun to do. Could we see the attic, Jean?”

  “Yes. I’ll ask Mother, though, first. And don’t you think that we are enough right now, or would you rather ask more girls at once?”

  For several minutes the girls talked that matter over, finally concluding that for the present, though they had many other friends, it would be better to keep the number as it stood. The sophomore class was not large. If they wanted to mix the group, as the boys were doing, there would be time enough. As Jean well knew, these were the leading girls of her class.

  She slipped out to consult her mother, who gave permission at once for the girls to visit the attic and “view the landscape o’er,” as Molly said. Mrs. Gordon came into the living room to meet the girls and advised them to wear their coats into the cold regions and to look out for dust. “We do not dust the attic every day,” she added, with a smile like Jean’s.

  The seven S. P.’s accordingly trooped up the two flights of stairs to the attic, or third floor. As they rounded the post at the top of an enclosed stairway, they found themselves in a large space dimly lighted by one window at the head of the stairs. The whole attic, to the farthermost corners, stretched before them. Dusty, shrouded shapes stood here and there. A great chimney went up through the middle, showing some of the sooty dust that had also sprinkled down from somewhere upon draped furniture or old trunks. Jean warned the girls again about dust, but no one cared.

  At the front of this third floor a gable and a room of good height had been finished, separated by partitions and a door from the rest of the “attic.” The door was not far from the stairs and Jean explained that her father intended to make a hall there some day, shutting off the unfinished part by another partition and door. “But there’s no use in doing it, Mother says, for we’ll never need to use this room, and that’s why it will be just the thing for us. I suppose we can use the whole attic if we want to. We could have a lovely party up here some day. And I never even thought of it before!”

  “Before your necessity became the ‘mother of invention,’ Jean.”

  “That’s so, and ‘one thing leads to another’!”

  Keen young eyes surveyed the proposed club room and found possibilities. A covered couch ran along one wall. Several good pieces of furniture stood about. The room was about fifteen feet in one direction, though it would have been hard to give its actual dimensions, so broken up was it into nooks and corners. Jean threw open the door of an immense closet and explained that the house had once been a big country house and that this room had been occupied by two maids.

  “It is the very place, Jean!” cried cheery Fran. “How soon can we fix it up? I have a lot of ideas already!”

  “Mother will have to see if the heat will turn on, though there is a place for a little stove, you see, if the furnace won’t heat us. I’ll let you know; but we ought to have another meeting soon.”

  “Come to our house Saturday, girls,” Leigh invited. “We haven’t a lovely attic like this, but we can meet in my big room all to ourselves.”

  This was a good suggestion. Leigh was warming up, the girls thought, and Phoebe knew that it was the opportunity Leigh wanted to do something for them without appearing to thrust herself into their affairs, a thing about which she was sensitive. A club would be just the thing for Leigh.

  Nan suggested that it would be a good thing to make no reference to S. P. affairs, or appear to be concerned about anything private, to “show Billy that girls could have something going on without their making a great fuss about it.”

  Fran took a little exception to this. “Don’t you think that once or twice we ought to be saying something and then stop suddenly till we get past some of the boys?” she asked.

  “Fran, if you will do that, I’ll be—a—vindicated, and your friend forever! Thanks muchly, girls, for going into this! Now do rack your brains to think of a good S. P. name, even if we should want to change it after a while.”

  “Don’t worry, Jean. S. P. can mean something, I’m sure. We’ll put on our thinking caps till Saturday and longer if necessary. Still, Jean, if we can’t think of anything, nobody will know the difference!” And this was Leigh Dudley, over inviting whom Jean had hesitated, not sure that Leigh would be at all interested!

  CHAPTER III

  SHAMROCKS

  The party that night was given by one of the senior girls and was quite general. Nearly all of the girls in the small high school were there and many of the boys, with some who had been graduated or stopped to go to work in some store or business.

  The town was small. Originally a community formed in a farming district not far from Lake Michigan, it was populated by people who were intelligent and of good standing. But a big railroad had diverted its main line from the town and a larger town, with manufacturing interests had absorbed such growth as this village might have had. The school was good, but small.

  As Jean had said, there was no organization for girls outside of the school literary clubs and the church societies. These were excellent in their lines, but girls bubbling over with activity wanted something else. So did the boys and the “Black Wizards” were created.

  The party proved to be an advance St. Patrick’s Day celebration. The house was appropriately decorated and one of the senior girls stood at the foot of the stairs to pin on each girl and boy, as they came from leaving wraps in the respective rooms, a bright green shamrock. A March wind blustered outside, but it was bright and warm within.

  “I’d forgotten that tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day,” said Jean to Nan, with whom she had come. Jimmy had gotten to the stage when he escorted one of the girls to the party. Most of the younger ones let the girls come by themselves, yet took them home. But Jimmy Standish was more or less devoted now to a very pretty senior, Clare Miller, and permitted Nan to make any arrangements she liked about being escorted to this or any other party. Sisters were of secondary importance, as Nan told Jean.

  “I’d have worn my green frock, if I’d known,” replied Nan, “but this blue one is more becoming. I love your orchid, Jean.”

  Jean adjusted her bracelet and repinned her shamrock a little self-consciously, for Billy Baxter was making straight for her and some one of the girls drew Nan away at that moment. “Hello, S. P.,” said Billy.

  “Oh, Billy, please,” said Jean, putting her finger to her lips. “I told you that in confidence. We’re not a bit ready to have that get around!”

  Billy grinned, and Jean was surprised to see that he was really pleased, probably over knowing something that the other boys had not been told. “I hope you didn’t tell Danny Pierce what I said,” Jean continued.

  “No, I didn’t,” returned Billy, glad that an accident had saved him from imparting the news which he would have had no hesitation
in passing on. Jean hadn’t told him not to tell. But Danny had had something to tell Billy; then they had met some other Black Wizards with great schemes afoot. “I told you things I oughtn’t to’ve,” said Billy, “so we’re even. But we’re all wearing our pins right out to-night, you see. And say, Jean, may I see you home tonight after it’s over?”

  “Yes, Billy, of course. But please don’t say S. P. till I give you leave.”

  “All right. But who belong, Jean?”

  “Sh-sh! I’ll tell you tomorrow if I see you when no one’s around.”

  “All right,” said Billy again. “Don’t you kind of like our pins, Jean?”

  “They’re stunning, Billy—even if I am scared of snakes; and I think that ‘Black Wizards’ is an awfully cute name. I suppose you have some terrible initiation, don’t you?”

  “Yes. We have some doings at our meetings, believe me, Jean.”

  At that point Jean and Billy were summoned to take part in a game that was being started and Jean did not have any conversation with him for some time. Yet Nan told her that he “hovered” around, and one of the senior boys tried to tease her by remarking that Billy Baxter had gotten over his dislike for girls. “Is that so?” she answered without confusion, recalling that the senior had passed her and Billy as they had been walking along together that afternoon.

  But Jean was wondering how, now that Billy was pledged to silence, some knowledge of the S. P.’s could “leak out”; for there would be no fun unless the boys did know. She had not thought of that when she was talking to Billy this time. But perhaps some of the other girls were managing better than she had done.

  She threw herself into the games, however, enjoying everything, as Jean always did, and temporarily forgetting both Black Wizards and S. P.’s. The scene was gay with the decorations, the light dresses of the girls and the movement of the games. Once, when Jean was waiting with others for a charade to be begun, she stood by Fran and whispered the state of things to her.