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

by Julia K. Duncan

  “Maybe I had better lure the rest of them down here and settle for them all at once,” he pondered.

  A muffled cry that echoed and re-echoed “Doris!” brought him to his feet. It was the cry that Dave had seht up in desperation as he rode with Ben.

  While Moon plotted his schemes over her head and Dave called frantically, Doris was engaged in trying to reason some way out of her predicament. As she sat in pitch blackness, a sudden thought struck her. What if she fell asleep, and was surprised by the wicked Moon? She must keep awake!

  Groping around in the darkness, she came upon the pile of steel drill rods. She lifted one. It was so heavy it was all she could do to hold it, and she could not swing it very well.

  “I couldn’t do much damage with one of these,” she told herself.

  More to keep busy than with any thought of using the steel rod, she practised swinging the iron bar, as time passed on.

  Suddenly she heard the rock that sealed the opening being moved. Guided by her ears alone, for the inky darkness made her eyes useless, Doris, still holding the heavy rod, took up what she guessed was the most advantageous position to ward off an attack.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  Moon’s Problem Solved

  “Supposing it is Dave who has come to rescue me!” flashed through Doris’s mind as she braced herself to meet an unseen enemy. Over her head the stone had moved far enough to admit light.

  “Dave!” Doris called. “Is that you?”

  The rock, half rolled away from the entrance to the cave, was stayed by invisible hands.

  “Dave!” Doris cried, raising her voice. “Dave! Help—help!”

  With a sinister crunch the rock rolled back into place, plunging the captive once more into inky darkness.

  Who could have moved it?

  The mysterious movement of the rock unnerved Doris, and she sank to the floor, the steel bar clanging from her hands.

  “I must not cry,” she told herself, clenching her fists. “Buck up, Doris Force! Don’t you dare give up!”

  She bit her trembling lips, and by sheer willpower conquered the purely physical fear that had overcome her.

  It was desperately hard to be imprisoned in total darkness, underground, surrounded by explosives, and realizing that her friends must be searching for her or else were in dire trouble from an attempt to rescue her.

  Just then the rock overhead grated in its concrete setting again, and before Doris could rise to her feet or grasp her improvised weapon, a man had dropped into the cave.

  In the dim light Doris recognized Henry Moon!

  To her amazement the first move he made was to pull the rock seal back over the opening. The two were instantly invisible to each other in the inky darkness.

  Then the dazzling beam of, an electric torch flared into Doris’s face.

  “So kind of you to wait for me,” Moon mocked. “Now we shall have a pleasant evening, I am sure.”

  He set the electric lantern on a keg, and as his back was momentarily turned, Doris snatched up the steel bar and concealed it behind her, rising to her feet at the same time.

  “Has the cat got your tongue, little girl?” Moon asked with a leer.

  Doris did not deign to reply, but stared at the evil countenance of the crook with level, unwavering gaze. Moon was far from feeling the self-confidence he exhibited.

  He had heard Dave’s call to Doris, and, sure that a searching party was approaching, had rolled the rock aside to leap into the cave when Doris, in her doubt, had cried out Dave’s name.

  Torn by uncertainty, the crook had rolled the stone back into place, and then, convinced that there was more safety in concealment, had carried out his original plans of settling with Doris.

  “Don’t be afraid to speak,” he jeered. “No one can overhear us. You could scream until Christmas, and no one could hear you if he were sitting on the rock over my head.”

  Still Doris gave no reply. Her silence nettled Moon.

  To hide his uncertainty the evil-doer lit a cigarette, and Doris saw that the hand that held the match trembled so he could scarcely make flame and tobacco meet.

  “So Mr. Moon is nervous, too,” she thought, new courage surging through her.

  Her hands gripped more firmly the steel bar behind her.

  Moon perched himself on a barrel, crossed his legs jauntily, and spoke again:

  “Did anybody ever tell you you were a remarkably beautiful young woman?”

  Doris did not show by the quiver of an eyejid that she had heard him.

  “Beautiful or not,” Moon went on, a mirthless smile twisting his lips, “you are not a help to me in my business.

  “You take up too much space down here, so I will have to move you to other quarters. I am going to give you your chance to be reasonable. Will you give me a promise?”

  Doris stared stonily.

  “As a matter of necessity I will have to blindfold and gag you,” Moon went on. “You can take your choice of submitting gracefully or submitting by force, in which case some of that beauty may be marred.”

  The man left his seat, and without turning his back upon the girl, retreated in the cave to a packing box, in which he groped.

  His hand emerged with a coil of fibrous rope, of the sort woven by the natives of the Southwest from the leaf-fiber of yucca palm. Pliable yet tremendously strong, this kind of rope has the texture of hemp dipped in glue and ground glass and will cut through horse-hide.

  “I have a handkerchief which will serve as a blindfold,” Moon said, “thus enabling me to use your own for the gag. I am sorry I cannot trust you to come with me minus these precautions.”

  Doris still appeared as if stricken deaf and dumb. Her immobility seemed to enrage the crook.

  “I’ll fix you so you’ll want to open that mouth of yours but won’t be able to,” he snarled, as rage crimsoned his face and made the veins stand out on his forehead.

  Knotting a noose in one end of the rope, Moon, desperately angry, advanced slowly upon Doris who still stood, erect and calm now, her hands behind her.

  The girl, however, was measuring the decreasing distance between the desperado and herself.

  “Now, then, you lit—”

  Moon did not finish his sentence, uttered as he made a leap for Doris. In that instant Doris quickly brought the sharp steel bar from behind her, and unsuspectingly the ugly man dashed into it with full force.

  With a choking cry, half gasp, half gurgle, he toppled to the floor and rolled over on his back, the breath knocked from his body.

  Doris, now empty-handed, leaped for the mouth of the cave. With the strength born of desperation she shoved against the boulder that barred her way. It was immovable. Undoubtedly some secret had to be known to swing the stone on its balance.

  Frantically Doris pushed, first at one corner, then at another. Over her shoulder she saw Moon roll over, drag himself to hands and knees and then, clutching at the wall for support, draw himself shakily to his feet.

  At that self-same instant Doris felt the rock move above her hands. She threw her last ounce of strength into one desperate lunge, and lost her balance as the stone miraculously seemed to rise of its own accord.

  “Hoorah!”

  Doris, dazed, could not believe that she had actually heard the cheer from above.

  Then, one after the other, three stalwart figures dropped into the cave.

  “Doris! Where are you?”

  “Dave! Here I am!”

  Impulsively the youth turned and threw a protecting arm around Doris, who slumped for an instant against the friendly security of his shoulder. Yet their eyes were upon Henry Moon, who had staggered back into the darkest recess of the cave.

  “Up with your hands!”

  The sharp command came from Ben Corlies, whose gun was leveled at the unscrupulous thief.

  The third figure was a stranger to Doris. A wizened face set above broad but bowed shoulders.

  “Ye will throw dust in my hoss’s face,
eh?” the new ally taunted the cornered Moon.

  “I guess the game is up,” Moon spoke from the shadows. “I’ll come along peaceably, but let me light a cigarette first.”

  “I guess there’s no harm in that,” Ben admitted, advancing toward Moon with leveled gun.

  Doris saw the desperation of a cornered rat in Moon’s eyes, and instinct made her cry out:

  “Don’t let him do it, Ben! It may be a trick!”

  Snarling, Moon jerked out a box of matches and broke the container in his eagerness to strike a light.

  “Hey, where’s your smoke?” Ben demanded.

  Doris leaped forward, brushing the dumbfounded Ben aside, and dashed matches and box from Moon’s grasp.

  With a cry of mad fury the man flew at her throat, but Dave’s fist shot over Doris’s shoulder and sent Moon’s head backward with a blow on the chin.

  “Good, here’s some rope,” Dave panted, as he snatched up the coil with which Moon had planned to bind Doris and looped coil after coil around the crook’s wrists.

  “Hey, let me at ’im,” piped the old man. “I got a score to settle with that horn-toad.”

  “You’ve settled yours, Danny,” Ben said. “Keep him covered while I help Dave.”

  A minute later a dazed Moon was lifted to his feet, hands and arms bound.

  “Well, that’s that,” Dave said, wiping his brow. “Now to get Doris to the ranch and nab the other crooks.”

  “How did you ever find this place, Dave?” Doris asked, as Ben climbed out of the cave.

  “Why, Doris, meet Danny Sumpter! If it had not been for him we wouldn’t have found you,” Dave exclaimed.

  As gravely as if the introduction were being made under the most formal conditions Danny, still holding the rope that bound Moon, lifted his sombrero.

  “Pleased to meet you, Madam,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Doris laughed at the absurdity of introductions and polite phrases under the circumstances.

  “Thank you a million times, Danny Sumpter,” she responded. “I’ll never forget your kindness.”

  “No trouble, I’m sure,” gravely replied the old man. “I was jest waitin’ my chance to get even with Henry Moon here, an’ if it be so it helped you out at the same time, why, no extra charge.”

  “Hey!” bellowed Ben frorh above. “Do you like it so well down there you ain’t a-comin’ up?” Dave assisted Doris through the opening. “Why, it isn’t so dark up here,” she exclaimed. “Is it still today or is it tomorrow?”

  “Still Monday,” Ben observed, hauling on the rope which presently fetched the dazed and unresisting Moon to the surface. “Stand up, you snake!”

  Doris gulped in great lungsful of the bracing air, and flung her arms wide.

  “Oh, I’m so happy I could sing for joy!” she cried, her face lifted to the crimson afterglow on the eastern peaks.

  “Speaking of singing,” Dave said, “Miss Bedelle is up on the road, and I guess Kitty and Marshmallow are there by now, too.”

  The four and their captive climbed up the face of the slope down which Doris had crept so cautiously hours before, and as they went Dave told Doris how her rescue had been effected.

  “I didn’t know what had become of you at all,” he said. “I even thought you must have slipped into some gully invisible from where we were watching, and had escaped by following it on hands and knees.

  “Ben and I were coming down the arroyo, with no idea how to start looking for you, when Danny suddenly dropped down on us from the road. He was with Miss Bedelle, who was looking for her brother, and had met Kitty and Marshmallow. So they followed us and Danny said he bet he knew where you were—in the cave.”

  “You see,” Danny wheezed, “I been a-spyin’ on this human cactus, bidin’ my good time to git even with him fer stampedin’ my horses an’ blindin’ my pet cayuse. I watched him dodgin’ in and out of this holler, a-buildin’ of his cave, and once I went down in it after he left to see what mischief was a-doin’. That was before he stocked it with them barrels an’ boxes, an’ started drillin’.”

  “What is in the barrels?” Dave asked Moon, who shuffled mutely along at the end of the rope. “Blasting powder,” Doris replied for him.

  “Powder and dynamite and stuff like that. That’s why I knocked the matches out of his hand. I thought he might be so crazed with rage that he would have willingly blown himself to pieces if he knew we were being killed at the same time.”

  Dave contemplated the captive crook with Horror.

  Moon, lifting his bowed head, flashed a look of hatred at Doris that proved him capable of the mad scheme of which she had suspected him.

  “Here are the ponies,” Dave sighed with relief. “It won’t be long before our troubles are over.”

  CHAPTER XXV

  Farewell to Raven Rock

  “An’ this is Miss Doris Force.”

  Miss Bedelle thrust out a muscular little hand and grasped Doris’s extended one.

  Ben, having completed his introductions, busied himself with lashing Moon more securely on the back of the pony.

  “Miss Force, you must think this a barbarous corner of the world,” the famous opera singer said. “Until this man and his villainous accomplices came here it was ideal. But thanks to you we shall soon be rid of him and his schemes.”

  “Thanks to me!” Doris repeated. “Thanks to you and your able men, Miss Bedelle. If it had not been for Mr. Sumpter and Mr. Corlies—”

  Ben interrupted with a hoot of derision.

  “At any rate, this is not an ideal spot for a visit,” Lolita Bedelle laughed, putting an arm around Doris’s waist. “You must be exhausted and unstrung, you poor thing. I shall drive you to the Saylor’s ranch at once. They must be worried.

  “Danny, you ride with Ben and take that man to the ranch. Have a guard set over him and in the morning we’ll have him jailed properly,” the singer continued. “I’ll take Miss Force and Mr. Chamberlin to the Saylor’s.”

  “But Marshmallow and Kitty—” Doris began anxiously, as she seated herself in the roadster.

  As if in answer to a summons, the two riders came slowly into the light of the automobile lamps, for it was quite dark by now.

  “Ahoy!” Marshmallow called. “Doris there?”

  “Here I am, Marshmallow!” Doris cried, jumping out of the car again, and running toward her friends.

  “I’d get off, but I could never climb back on this horse again,” Marshmallow grinned apologetically.

  Kitty, however, was on the ground and had her arms around her chum.

  “Dud-dud-d-d—” was all she could say, and burst into tears. “Oh, Dud-dud-Doris!”

  Doris embraced her.

  “I’m all right, Kitty! Don’t cry! I’m the happiest girl in America, for we have Henry Moon a prisoner with enough evidence against him to keep him that way for ages,” she laughed.

  Dave, at great self-sacrifice, insisted upon letting Doris and Kitty ride together in Miss Bedelle’s car, and swung into the saddle of Kitty’s horse to clinch the argument.

  “Then let us get started,” Miss Bedelle suggested.

  “Tell Mrs. Saylor to kill a couple of fatted calves,” Marshmallow called out as the car moved past. “Both for me, with lots of gravy.”

  “You’ve earned them,” Kitty waved back. Skillfully, Miss Bedelle avoided rocks and holes in the rough trail as she drove swiftly toward the Crazy Bear ranch-house.

  “Mr. Speary told me all about you and your quest, Miss Force,” she said. “I think I shall call you Doris. May I? I had hoped to ask you to visit my ranch, or to drop in and see you, but I have been very busy, and worried, too.”

  “I had been hoping to meet you,” Doris said shyly.

  “You have a charming voice,” Miss Bedelle remarked. “Pardon me for being so personal, but I am a singer and I notice such things.”

  “I hope some day to be a singer,” Doris replied. “Hope!” Kitty exclaimed loyally. “S
he is a wonderful singer already, Miss Bedelle. She has sung in concerts, and takes lessons all the time.”

  “Then you must sing for me,” Miss Bedelle insisted. “And I shall sing with you. How will that be for a pleasant evening, to make up for the awful one you had tonight?”

  “It will make up for everything,” Doris breathed. “And for lots more that didn’t happen.”

  “Then suppose we agree that you come to G Clef ranch tomorrow for dinner, all of you,” the singer suggested. “We shall sing and talk over many things. You are such brave and understanding people I wish to discuss something with you that lies very close to my heart. My brother, my poor brother,” she added in a low voice. “But here we are! I can’t stop for a minute. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

  As soon as the girls had dismounted in front of the ranch door she whirled her car about and drove off over the road by which she had come.

  The door burst open, and Mrs. Mallow ran out.

  “Doris? Kitty?” she cried. “Where are the others?”

  “The boys are coming along behind,” Doris said. “We drove in with Miss Bedelle—and oh, Mrs. Mallow, I have so much to tell you!”

  “I have something to tell you, too,” Mrs. Mallow said, as she ushered the girls through the door. “There is your uncle, Mr. Trent.”

  “Uncle John!” Doris cried, as the elderly man, his appearance in no way suggesting the hermit of Cloudy Cove, rose to greet her.

  Mrs. Saylor entered the room to announce dinner, but remained to listen breathlessly as Doris and Kitty told the story of the afternoon’s adventures.

  Dave and Marshmallow arrived before the conclusion of the recital, and added their contributions to it.

  Mrs. Mallow and Uncle John were speechless.

  They could only look at each other and shake their heads as the story unfolded.

  “So now Moon is roped and tied,” Marshmallow concluded gleefully.

  “Moon said his two accomplices were waiting for him at the well, I remember,” Doris said. “Were they there when you came to the cave, Dave?”

  “If they were they must have sneaked off when we arrived,” Dave said. “I think the town authorities ought to be warned at once.”