The Second Girl Detective Megapack: 23 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls

by Julia K. Duncan

  “Oh, how funny the ground looks,” shouted Kitty. “It’s all tilted up.”

  Mrs. Mallow looked down, and fascinated by the sight, stared at the tricks the solid earth appeared to be playing. The plane was banking on the left wing as it described a huge arc. The passengers felt as if the ship was still on even keel, and not tilting, giving them the optical illusion familiar to all who have journeyed in the air that it was the ground tilting beneath them.

  Now the airplane was flying at right angles to the storm’s progress, and in ten minutes left it far astern.

  “Now we are picking up our course again,” Doris explained to Mrs. Mallow. “See, we are turning toward the right, and there is the Delaware River under us.”

  “That little thing the Delaware?” Mrs. Mallow marveled. “Oh! What’s that? Doris!”

  The plane began to buck, like a boat breasting a heavy surf.

  Doris had all she could do to hold on.

  In a moment the pitching ceased and again the airplane darted ahead.

  “We are over the Alleghenies,” Doris told Mrs. Mallow, pointing down to the mountains below. “The air is always bumpy over the mountains.”

  It was beyond Mrs. Mallow’s comprehension, and she shook her head in resignation.

  From time to time the airplane seemed to drop five or six feet like an elevator starting down from a skyscraper. Again it was tossed aloft, as the eccentric air currents caught it.

  “Dave and Pete seem worried,” Doris said to herself, as she watched the two pilots exchange control of the ship and then compare notes.

  “Oh, dear, why don’t they land somewhere if they are not sure the ship is acting right?” the girl asked herself. A glance showed her that Kitty and Marshmallow were also aware that something was wrong.

  The pilots seemed to come to some decision, for Speary poked the nose of the ship upward and the plane began to climb.

  “To think I should ever see the top side of a cloud!” Mrs. Mallow exclaimed.

  The thunderstorm had long since passed out of sight, but thousands of fleecy clouds were scattered below, which looked like sheep grazing on a lawn, yet in reality were the ranges of the Alleghenies.

  Doris looked at her wrist watch.

  “At last, something to take our minds off our troubles,” she thought, reaching for the wicker lunch basket beside her seat.

  “Twelve o’clock! We eat!” she called out.

  Marshmallow looked vastly happier.

  Everyone followed his example of raising the drop-leaf table at each seat. Doris distributed paper cups and tissue napkins, waxed cardboard plates and spoons.

  Thermos bottles of hot cocoa and iced tea circulated, while Doris handed around dainty lettuce, chicken salad and olive sandwiches, as well as more substantial ones of tongue or ham.

  “It gives me the creeps to think there is about a mile of air under my feet,” Kitty said to her as she passed her chum.

  “But the walking is as easy as in my own bedroom,” replied Doris.

  She took sandwiches to the pilots, together with a vacuum bottle of tea.

  The roar of the great motors was infinitely louder in the pilots’ compartment. Dave grinned at Doris and his lips moved in speech, but the girl could hear no words.

  He pointed to a dial on the instrument board and Doris saw the figures indicated. She shrugged her shoulders to indicate that she did not understand.

  Dave pulled out a pad and pencil and wrote: “Four thousand four hundred feet up.”

  Bracing herself against the pilot’s seat, Doris took the pencil and paper and wrote a question: “Isn’t the plane working all right? You and Mr. Speary seemed worried.”

  Dave read the question while chewing on a sandwich, and took the pencil to reply.

  “Excuse me for talking with mouth full,” he wrote. “The ship seems a little heavy by the tail but no worry.”

  Nodding her thanks and demonstrating her full confidence in Dave by a smile that made the young airman choke on his rye bread, Doris turned back to her seat and her own lunch.

  She saw that Mrs. Mallow had only nibbled at one sandwich.

  “Are you sick?” she asked.

  “I’m surprised I’m not, I always get so seasick on a boat,” Mrs. Mallow replied. “But I certainly have no appetite. The ground has disappeared.”

  Doris glanced below and saw that the plane was traveling over a sea of milk-white clouds.

  “It’s raining down there,” she told Mrs. Mallow. “Aren’t we lucky to be up here in the sun?”

  Mrs. Mallow’s reply was a meaning look and an emphatic shake of the head.

  She was not yet an aviation enthusiast.

  Doris thought it best under the circumstances to keep silent about the pilots’ concern over the sluggish response the ship paid to the controls, and philosophically ate her food.

  “If we should have to land—good night!” she thought. “The ground is out of sight.”

  As if to add to her worries the airplane suddenly yawed to the left, bringing a howl from Marshmallow. He had just lifted a cupful of iced tea to his lips and the unexpected motion sent the icy fluid cascading over his chest.

  Mrs. Mallow and Kitty were so overcome with the ludicrous accident they did not see the pilots’ evident alarm.

  Doris saw Speary turn the controls over to Dave and rise from his seat.

  He was smiling his sideways grin as he entered the passenger compartment, holding to the backs of the seats to steady himself, because the ship was again swaying and dipping in the air.

  “Going to get something from the baggage box I forgot,” he called out cheerfully, but Doris saw that his troubled eyes belied thfe look on his face.

  “He’s not going to get anything from the baggage compartment at all,” she told herself. “He isn’t the kind to forget anything.”

  Both Pete and Doris were destined shortly to be very much surprised at the unconscious truth of his excuse.

  Pete pulled the small door of the luggage compartment open, and crouching, crawled into the opening which led into the cramped quarters of the airplane’s tail.

  A moment later Doris thought she heard voices coming from the tail.

  “My ears must be deceiving me. It’s the noise of the motors,” she thought.

  She listened more sharply, however, and ‘was convinced that Pete was shouting behind the closed little door.

  “He must be in trouble,” Doris said to herself, her heart skipping a beat. She arose and reached for the knob of the door.

  Before she could open it, the door was kicked ajar from within and Pete’s feet appeared in the opening. He crawled out backwards, slowly and with many halts, as if he were hurt.

  At last he emerged, all but one arm, and when he yanked that back Doris gasped in amazement. Pete’s hand gripped the tangled black locks of a sullen-faced youth who was kicking and struggling.

  “A stowaway!” Pete yelled. “Can you beat that? No wonder this ship handled as if it were waterlogged. Who are you?”

  He jerked the stowaway upright, and waved a clenched fist under the youth’s nose.

  “You don’t dare touch me!” the black-eyed young man shouted. “You don’t know who I am!”

  “Don’t dare? Say, do you know what we do with hitchhikers? We tie a parachute to ’em and toss ’em overboard!” Pete raged.

  The youth did not even look frightened, but jeered at his captor, knocking Pete’s hand aside and tossing the hair out of his eyes. “If I go overboard, you go with me!”

  Temper flared in Pete’s eyes like a flame, and he drew back his fist to strike the impudent stowaway. He was not able to do this, however, for just then the plane lurched and all its passengers had to catch their balance.

  At the unexpected lurching, Pete’s face betrayed a look of great anxiety.

  “Oh!” exclaimed Doris. “You’d better go back to your seat. Everything will be all right here.”

  “I’ll go take a look,” said Pete hastil
y, “if you’re sure you can manage all right.”

  “I’ll call you if he gets troublesome,” called Doris after him.

  Directly after Pete had departed the stowaway, his fists clenched, made a step toward Doris. Instantly Wags, who had taken a brave stand at his mistress’s side barked violently, dashed toward the fellow, plunged his teeth into one of his legs, and the intruder was forced back.

  “Good old Wags,” said Doris in relief, “you’re a better protection than a pistol ever would be!”

  CHAPTER VII

  An Unscheduled Landing

  There were now gaps in the clouds below. Pete, again piloting the airplane, pushed its nose down into one of the ragged holes in the vapory sea.

  Dave left the compartment and came to star’d beside Doris, silently contemplating the sullen captive.

  Turning to the stowaway, he saw his torn trouser leg. Doris explained how Wags had come to her assistance when she was on guard. Then, stooping to the dog, Dave patted him on the head and said:

  “Good old Wags, you did your part handsomely,” at which words the little dog wagged its tail so hard and fast it seemed as if it would fall off.

  Doris resumed her seat and watched from the window at the uprushing ground. Frequently great blobs of gray vapor swirled against the window as a fragment of cloud swept by.

  The airplane was cutting across rolling ranges of hills, between which broad valleys were checkered with farms. Pete swung his craft into one of the valleys and his passengers could now distinguish the ducks and chickens that fled before the shadow of this gigantic hawk-like plane.

  A great hay-field, with four or five large stacks standing for winter fodder in the middle, seemed Pete’s choice for a landing spot.

  The roar of the motors halted. The ground rushed up nearer and nearer. Pete nosed his craft up a little, and the great metal bird touched the ground, bumped along for a few hundred feet, and came to a halt.

  “I’m still deaf,” Doris exclaimed. “My ears are ringing.”

  Dave flashed her a smile, and as Pete strode up and grasped the stowaway by the collar the young copilot unfastened the door in’the side of the plane and leaped to the ground.

  Pete pushed his struggling captive into Dave’s muscular arms and jumped out himself.

  “Now, young fellow, give an account of yourself,” he ordered.

  Doris dropped from the plane to the drenched grass.

  “He may be one of the thieves,” she whispered to Dave.

  He nodded.

  “Let me talk to him, Pete,” he suggested.

  Turning the sullen youth to face him, Dave demanded his name.

  “I won’t tell you,” the boy said.

  “What did you mean by stowing away? You might have caused the death of all of us!”

  Suddenly the demeanor of the captive changed. “Please, Mister, I really didn’t mean any harm,” he whined. “I’ve been trying to get out West to see my mother, but I didn’t have any money. So I hid in the plane when nobody was looking.”

  “That’s a likely story,” Dave said. “Where is your mother?”

  “She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico,” sniveled the youth, wiping his eyes on his sleeve.

  Doris was not moved in the least by the stowaway’s apparent humbleness. She concluded that he was at least as old as Marshmallow, and she could not possibly imagine that youth cowering and weeping to get out of a scrape.

  “My poor old mother,” continued the stowaway. “She is terribly sick, and I wanted to see her before she—she—”

  He gulped back a sob.

  “Blarney!” snarled Pete, making as if to kick the cowering wretch. “I’ve heard that kind of story before. Now tell the truth!”

  “Honest, Mister, I’m telling the truth,” howled the youth.

  “Did you know where this ship was bound for?” Dave asked.

  “Ra—Hollywood, I mean,” stammered the captive. “You are all movie actors, aren’t you? The girls sure look beautiful enough. I think I saw you in the movies lots of times,” he added, pointing to Doris.

  “He can’t tell the truth,” said the disgusted Pete. “Come on, let’s go. We’re losing time.”

  “Aw, please listen,” whined the stowaway. “My name is Lone Eagle De Belle. My mother is an Indian princess and my father was a famous opera singer.”

  “Ever hear of an opera singer named De Belle?” Dave asked Doris.

  Doris shook her head.

  “The name does seem familiar—but I’m thinking of Lolita Bedelle, of course!” she exclaimed.

  The sallow youth flinched.

  “Do you know Miss Bedelle?” Doris demanded.

  “What movie was she in?” was the rejoinder.

  “Come on,” Pete insisted. “All aboard!”

  The two men assisted Doris into the plane. Then Pete leaped in and Dave followed.

  “Hey!” wailed the stowaway. “You won’t leave me here?”

  “That’s just exactly where we are leaving you,” Dave retorted.

  “I’ll get even with you for this!” howled the youth, stamping his feet in fury.

  “Don’t try to jump on this plane, either,” warned Dave. “Keep off, do you understand?”

  “You’re going to be sorry!” raved the boy.

  The roar of the motors as Pete applied the starter drowned out further threats. Dave slammed the door, bolted it, and strode toward his seat, his jaw squared.

  Doris, looking out of the window, suddenly saw the stowaway reach down and pick up something from the ground. He drew back his arm and sent a rock flying toward the nearest whirling propeller.

  Fortunately, the plane lurched forward at just the right moment and the stone bounced harmlessly from the metal shield that protected the motor.

  Abruptly Pete cut the engines, applied the brakes and flung himself from his seat.

  “I’ll teach that cub a lesson!” he yelled as he leaped from the plane. But the culprit was already dashing away with a hundred yard lead, The fuming pilot resumed his seat and the great plane took the air.

  “I’m afraid that we haven’t seen the last of ‘Lone Eagle,’” Doris mused.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Raven Rock

  The sun seemed to be the bull’s eye at which the great plane was aimed. Doris wondered how the pilots could stand the glare.

  “I wonder where we are,” she said to herself. “No more hills down below, and it’s getting pretty late. I guess I’m like Huckleberry Finn who thought each state was actually a different color, like the maps in the geography books—”

  Doris looked up and saw that Dave was signaling to her.

  She went forward and took the slip of paper that he offered.

  “We are coming to Indianapolis,” she read. “We think it safest not to stop at the big airports in case the thieves are looking for us. We will go on a little way.”

  Doris nodded her approval and returned to her seat, to watch eagerly for Indianapolis. They had passed over many big cities, but to the passengers they had been nameless.

  To Doris’s mild disappointment Indianapolis was not crossed. The plane veered to the left of the city when it was but a smudge of smoke in the distance, and roared on high above the sun-parched Indiana prairie.

  Smaller towns flitted past beneath them. Looking back, Doris could see the shadow of the airplane pursuing them over the fields.

  Then, suddenly, the tune of the motors changed. Built up streets appeared beneath, and another good-sized city was spread out like a map to the air travelers’ view. Railroad tracks and roadways converged.

  The plane lost altitude. Doris saw a river snaking along, and recognized the wind-vane and bare earth of an airport. A small blue plane was taking off in a cloud of reddish dust.

  Pete circled the field, waggled his wings in signal, and brought his craft down to an almost jar-less halt. He taxied across to the biggest hangar, the motors snorted once, and were still.

  “Terre Haute! All o
ut!” shouted Dave.

  A uniformed field official, with the words “Dresser Field” embroidered on his cap, awaited the travelers as they stepped from the plane.

  After formal greetings were exchanged Pete went off with the official to arrange for shelter for the plane, while the others rubbed their ears to drive away the singing echoes of the motors.

  “Taxi? Anywhere in the city for a dollar,” they were solicited by half a dozen men.

  Mrs. Mallow signaled to the best dressed of the taxi drivers, and Dave passed out the luggage to Marshmallow who in turn handed it over to the hackman.

  “How do you feel now, Mrs. Mallow?” Doris asked.

  “Thankful to have solid earth under my feet again,” that lady replied. “But I must admit that flying is not as terrible as I thought it would be. In fact, I might grow to like it.”

  The young folks received this admission with a cheer.

  After the plane had been wheeled into a hangar by attendants Pete rejoined the group.

  “We’ll need another cab,” he decided. “Take us to the best hotel in town,” he ordered the man, who leaped forward at his signal.

  “You folks from the East?” the taximan asked of Doris, as she and Kitty climbed into the cab of Mrs. Mallow’s choice. “Leave New York this morning? It sure is wonderful, this flying. How do you like our airport? It was named after Paul Dresser who wrote ‘On the Banks of the Wabash.’ You’ve heard it, haven’t you? This is South 7th street we’re on now—” and without waiting for answers to his numerous questions, he rattled on until the cab drew to a halt in front of a large brick hotel in the heart of the city.

  “My expenses are paid for in advance by the owner of the plane,” Pete explained. “So I’ll bunk by myself and you two boys can take a double room if you like.”

  “That sounds sensible,” Dave said. “All right with you, Marshmallow?”

  The clerk behind the marble desk stared at the stout youth who answered to so strange a name.

  “Sure thing,” Marshmallow agreed. “What time is dinner?”

  “From six to nine,” the clerk answered.

  “Half an hour to wait,” said Marshmallow mournfully.

  “That gives you time to bathe and change your clothes,” his mother said.