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

by Julia K. Duncan

  “I’ve done so little in this round-up I’ll drive down right now and spread the alarm,” Marshmallow announced.

  “But the car is still in the village,” Dave reminded him.

  “Take ours,” Mrs. Saylor suggested.

  “I’ll go along,” Uncle John said.

  The three men darted out of the room, but the girls were content to let them close the drama unassisted.

  A soothing bath and change into more feminine garb than the dusty riding habits made as wonderful a difference in Kitty’s and Doris’s feelings as in their looks.

  An hour later the car returned with Dave, Marshmallow, Uncle John and Mr. Saylor, who had accompanied them, to direct them to the right authorities in the little town.

  “Success!” shouted Uncle John, as he jumped from the car with a nimbleness belying his years.

  “Dave and Marshmallow stood guard at the hotel and Mr. Saylor and I routed out the sheriff and his men,” John Trent told the three listeners. “The man they call ‘Wolf,’ who has the scarred nose, and Tracey, the other one, were in the hotel room, but now they are in a less comfortable room in the town jail. I swore out a warrant charging trespass, assault and battery and everything else I could think of,” he chuckled.

  “Tomorrow we’ll appear against Moon,” Dave added.

  “If I have finished with supper by then,” Marshmallow laughed.

  The next morning, after a telephone conversation with G Clef Ranch, Doris and her friends appeared at the court-house and testified against Moon and his two accomplices. The drillers they had employed, catching some rumors of their chief’s disgrace, had swiftly left town, but as there was no charge to be brought against them it made no difference.

  “If you want to press all those complaints against these men you’ll have to stay in Raven Rock until the grand jury meets,” the judge told Doris and her uncle. “Suppose instead that I just sentence them each to a year in prison at hard labor, and when you get back to your own state you can press the charges of assault and robbery against them there.

  “Then,” he concluded, “the governor of your state can have them extradited, which means brought there to stand trial, and I have no doubt that in the meantime their fingerprints will prove that many another state is looking for the three of them.”

  It was with considerable satisfaction that Doris and her companions saw the three crooks, handcuffed.

  “I’ll get even yet,” Moon hissed at her out of the corner of his mouth as he was led away.

  “Now, then,” Doris said, “we’ll have to pay one more visit to the cave in the hollow.”

  “Didn’t you see enough of that place?” Dave demanded.

  Doris shook her head.

  “The precious papers, the deeds and tax receipts for the property, are under a box in the cave where I hid them,” she said. “I’m ashamed to say I was so happy at being rescued I forgot to bring them away with me.”

  It was a crowded day. The documents were found and Uncle John busied himself at the courthouse, having his deeds and those of the Misses Gates recorded. The officials admitted that the tax receipts were genuine, revealing that the tax collector who had held the position of trust for a generation had fled to Mexico a few months before with a fortune he had accumulated by diverting taxes to his own pocket.

  Busy as the day had been, nobody was too weary not to look forward to the evening at Miss Bedelle’s ranch.

  They found the singer’s home to be a magnificent reproduction of an old Spanish-American hacienda, its rooms furnished with priceless antiques and old Indian rugs. It was a museum, in which the exhibits were in daily and intimate use.

  Dinner was in Spanish style. Enchilada and tacos, tortillas and chile con carne, dishes familiar and unfamiliar, desert fruits and cactus candy loaded the table spread in the grassy patio where a fountain made silvery music. As a drink there was served delicious iced cocoa in carved calabash gourds with silver mountings, cocoa as the ancient Aztec kings loved it, beaten to a sparkling froth by a “swizzle stick” whirled between the palms of the Mexican servants. Pete Speary, the aviator, was of course among those present.

  “Now we will chat a while before we have some music,” Miss Bedelle said, leading the way into her spacious, low-ceilinged living room.

  “As my new neighbor, Mr. Trent, what do you propose to do with your property?”

  Uncle John shook his head.

  “I do not know,” he said. “I have with me a power of attorney from the Misses Gates, which Wardell Force sent me, to do with their land as I deem best. I am too old to begin a career as a rancher.”

  “Don’t you intend to complete the drillings and sell your oil?” the singer asked.

  “Are you going to drill for oil on your land?” Uncle John asked in turn. “It must be there, as well as on mine.”

  “No, I certainly do not,” Miss Bedelle replied with vigor. “It will not run away. It has been there a million years already.”

  “Then I shan’t,” John Trent said. “Oil wells would destroy all the loveliness you have created here.”

  “Then sell me the property,” Miss Bedelle proposed. “Have it appraised, if you wish, with all the extra value the oil gives it, and I will buy at that price.”

  “You may have it at any price you may set as being fair,” John Trent declared. “The Misses Gates and I are in no need of money.”

  “Then we shall discuss the details later,” the singer said. “Doris, won’t you sing now? I will accompany you on the piano.”

  Doris was frightened at the thought of displaying her immature voice before a grand opera star who had received the plaudits of three continents. What should she sing?

  “May I start with something simple?” she asked, looking through the sheaves of music on the piano and selecting “Swanee River.”

  “One of my favorites,” cried Miss Bedelle, as she struck the opening chords.

  Doris threw aside her nervousness and began the sweet old song without faltering. At its conclusion Miss Bedelle flashed the girl a smile and played the opening bars of “Old Black Joe,” which Doris sang as an encore.

  “Splendid!” she cried, rising and leading the applause. “You are gifted with a real voice, Doris! In a year or two you must come to the Metropolitan and I shall arrange an audition for you!”

  “Do-do you really think I can hope to sing in opera?” Doris quavered.

  “You shall, indeed you shall,” Miss Bedelle said with genuine enthusiasm. “I shall be proud to have you as my protegee. Now let us try something operatic.”

  Doris sang in German and in French, and then Miss Bedelle asked her to play accompaniments for her while the singer rendered some of the more famous of her roles from grand opera.

  “What a magnificent ruby ring,” she said suddenly to Doris, while the guests were applauding.

  “Sh-sh!” Doris cautioned. “I will tell you about it some other time.”

  Later in the evening, while the others were chatting together, Miss Bedelle led Doris out of doors, and there the girl told her the story of the ring with which readers of the previous volumes in this series are familiar.

  The romantic account finished, Miss Bedelle said that she, too, had a confidence to share with Doris.

  “I know of the strange coincidence of my brother being a stowaway on the airplane,” she began. “I know you have caught him at other escapades. I must explain for him.

  “Charles was a talented and promising boy until his fourteenth year,” Miss Bedelle continued. “That was three years ago. Then, in a football game at the prep school to which I sent him—we are orphans like yourself, Doris—his head struck a goal post. For days he was unconscious, and for nearly two years he was an invalid. Then he seemed to recover completely.

  “However, the blow did something to warp his poor brain and he has been in one scrape after another ever since. Some of them required every influence I could summon, as well as great sums for damages, to prevent his being se
nt to prison or the reformatory. Even on his way out here he committed some malicious mischief at Los Lobos which caused me expense and worry. I have just returned from there.

  “Now that he is safely in my custody I am going to send him to a sanitarium where the best doctors and surgeons of the country will help restore him to normal young manhood. I just thought I would explain to you. It is really not his fault that he is wild and unruly.”

  Lolita Bedelle pressed a filmy handkerchief to her eyes. However, when the two singers, the one with many triumphs, the other with her successes still to come, returned to the living room Lolita Bedelle was once more her gay and natural self.

  “I must go East to prepare for the coming season,” she announced. “In two or three days I shall leave G Clef for the winter. So why should we not make a party of the return East? We’ll all fly home together!”

  Doris and Kitty and the boys looked at one another with delight, and then turned expectantly toward Mrs. Mallow and John Trent.

  “Thank you very much, Miss Bedelle,” John Trent said, rising and bowing with old-time courtesy. “I am going directly through to spend some time in Southern California.”

  “As for me,” Mrs. Mallow said, “I am very happy to have had the opportunity to fly out here. But I should be very, very much happier returning by train.”

  The young folks’ faces fell.

  “However,” added Mrs. Mallow, “if the others wish to accept your invitation, I have no hesitancy in giving my permission.”

  “Hoorah!” shouted Marshall.

  “Good!” Dave exploded.

  “And then for school,” Doris cried, turning to Kitty. “Won’t we have a story to tell the girls at Barry Manor? It will seem dull there, after this summer, Kitty.”

  “I don’t know,” her chum laughed. “I think to be with ‘Doris Force at Barry Manor’ will prove to be anything but dull.”

  FINDING THE LOST TREASURE, by Helen M. Persons

  CHAPTER I

  A MYSTERIOUS PAPER

  “W-1755-15x12-6754,” read Desiré slowly. “What does it mean?”

  “What does what mean, Dissy?” asked her younger sister, who was rolling a ball across the floor to little René.

  “Just some figures on an old paper I found, dear. I must tell Jack about them. Do you know where he is?”

  “Out there somewhere, I guess,” replied the child, with a vague gesture indicating the front yard.

  Desiré flung back her short dark curls and crossed the room to a window where sturdy geraniums raised their scarlet clusters to the very top of the panes. It was the custom in that part of Nova Scotia to make a regular screen of blossoming plants in all front windows, sometimes even in those of the cellar. Peering between two thick stems, she could see her older brother sitting on the doorstep, gazing out across St. Mary’s Bay which lay like a blue, blue flag along the shore.

  Crossing the narrow hall and opening the outside door, Desiré dropped down beside the boy and thrust a time-yellowed slip of paper into his hands.

  “Did you ever see this?”

  “Yes,” he replied slowly. “A few days before he died, nôtre père went over the contents of his tin box with me to make sure that I understood all about the bills, and the mortgage on the farm and—”

  “Mortgage!” exclaimed Desiré in shocked tones. “I never knew we had one.”

  “I, either, until that day. You see nôtre mère was sick so long that all our little savings were used up, and ready money was an absolute necessity.”

  “And what did he tell you about this?” continued the girl, after a thoughtful pause, running her finger along the line of tantalizing characters.

  “Nothing very definite. He said it was a memorandum of some kind that had been handed down in our family for generations. The name of its writer, and its meaning, have been lost in the past; but each father passed it on to his eldest son, with a warning to preserve it most carefully, for it was valuable.”

  “And now it belongs to you,” concluded Desiré, half sadly, half proudly.

  Jack nodded, and for several moments neither spoke.

  John Wistmore, aged 18, Desiré, 14, Priscilla, 9, and René, 5, were direct descendants of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, whose story the poet Longfellow tells in The Courtship of Miles Standish.

  The little town of Sissiboo, an Indian corruption of Six Hiboux1where they lived, is one of those settled by the Acadians upon their return to the land of their birth some years after the expulsion. So closely, so ramblingly are the villages strung along the shores of St. Mary’s Bay on the northwest coast of Nova Scotia that it is hard to tell where one ends and the next begins. Their inhabitants live exactly as did their ancestors, speaking French and preserving with care all the old habits and customs.

  The lives of the children had been simple, happy ones, until the recent death of their father and mother, hardly three months apart. John Wistmore, in whose veins flowed the blood of men of culture and ambition, had been anxious to give his children greater educational advantages than Sissiboo afforded. Jack, therefore, had been sent to Wolfville to school, and was now ready for college; while Desiré was looking forward to high school in the autumn. Now all was changed. Without relatives, without money, and without prospects, they faced the problem of supporting the two younger children and themselves.

  “Where did you find this?” asked Jack, rousing himself.

  “On the floor in front of the cupboard.”

  “It must have slipped from the box when I took out the mortgage. I went over it with Nicolas Bouchard this morning.”

  “Oh, does he hold it?”

  “Yes—and—”

  “He wants his money?”

  Jack nodded.

  “But what can we do? We can’t possibly pay him.”

  “Nothing, I guess, dear, except let him foreclose.”

  “Would we get any money at all, then?”

  “Very little. Not enough to live on, certainly.”

  “I wish I knew what these mean,” she sighed wistfully, touching the paper still between her brother’s fingers. “If we could only find out, maybe we’d get enough money to pay Nicolas.”

  Jack laughed in spite of his anxiety. “I’m afraid we’d all starve before they could be interpreted. Too bad, as things have gone, that I didn’t farm as soon as I was old enough—”

  “Don’t say that! We’ll hope and plan for your college course—”

  “Desiré, dear,” protested her brother, gently but firmly, “it is absolutely out of the question, even to think of such a thing.”

  “But, Jack, every one should have some special goal in life, as an incentive if nothing else; and I’m not going to give up planning for our education. One never knows when good fortune is waiting just around the next corner to complete one’s own efforts.”

  “I guess our goal will be to provide food and clothing for the children. I’m afraid it will be a hard pull for you and me to keep the family together—”

  “Oh, but we must stay together, Jack,” she cried, grasping his arm.

  “As far as I can see,” he continued slowly, “the only thing to be done is to move to Halifax or Yarmouth, where I could get work of some kind. Should you mind very much?”

  “Whatever you decide, I’ll be willing to do,” replied the girl bravely.

  “If it will make you any happier,” continued Jack, giving her one of his grave, sweet smiles, “we’ll place higher education among our day dreams.”

  “If you folks ain’t hungry, we are!” announced Priscilla, opening the door behind them so suddenly that both jumped.

  “You see?” laughed Jack, as he pulled Desiré up from the low step.

  “I’ve just had a wonderful inspiration though,” she whispered as they entered the hall.

  CHAPTER II

  DESIRÉ’S INSPIRATIONS

  It was a quaint old room in which they settled down after supper had been eaten and the children put to bed. The woodwork
was painted a deep blue, known as Acadian blue, and the floor was bare except for a couple of oval braided rugs in which the same color predominated. In the center of the room stood a hutch table, one that can be changed to a chest by reversing its hinged top. Around it were half a dozen high-backed chairs, their seats made of strips of deerskin woven in and out like the paper mats made in kindergartens. A spinning wheel stood beside the fireplace, before which sat Jack and Desiré, with no other light except that of the dancing flames.

  “Now Dissy,” said the boy, laying his hand affectionately over hers, “let’s have the inspiration.”

  “It’s this: that we stay on here as tenants. Nicolas can’t live in this house and his own too!”

  “But one trouble with that plan is that Nicolas wants to sell the property and get his money out.”

  “Who’d buy it? Nobody ever moves into or out of this town.”

  “He has a customer now. André Comeau’s prospective father-in-law wants to move here after the wedding. He can’t bear to have Marie live so far away from him. Sorry to spoil your inspiration, dear.”

  Desiré made no reply; for she was very close to tears, and she hated to act like a baby instead of the good pal her brother had always called her.

  “We’re going to work on André’s house again tomorrow,” observed Jack presently. “The roof’s on, the floors laid, and by Saturday we should be able to start the barn.”

  In New Acadia all the relatives, friends, and neighbors of a man who is about to be married join in building a new house for him. They clear a piece of land, haul materials, and labor for weeks on the construction of house, barn, and sheds. When these are finished, the garden is prepared, the fields ploughed and planted, and the buildings furnished. The bride-to-be contributes linens, and her people stock the farm with animals. Some morning the whole countryside walks to church to see the couple wedded, returning to the home of the bride’s mother, where the day is spent in feasting and merry-making. If the groom can afford it, he then takes his bride to Yarmouth to spend a few days at the Grand Hotel. That is the greatest ambition of every rustic pair.