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

by Julia K. Duncan

  While waiting for Florence and Peggy to return with the implements, she had tied several knots in the rope and made two loops near the upper end, and now, lying flat, she peered over the edge of the wall to see if the loops came in exactly the right place, just over the edge of the roof.

  “All set! Here I come!” she called joyously to the girls waiting below.

  “Oh, Jo, do be careful! You might fall,” urged Florence.

  So intent was Jo Ann in getting over the edge of the roof that she paid no attention to Florence’s warning. Climbing over a wall two feet or more thick was quite a different proposition from getting over a board fence. She could not back off, and the smooth plaster offered a poor fingerhold while she was catching the loops in the rope.

  Finally, sitting on the edge of the wall, she leaned forward and reached for the upper loop. Grasping the loop firmly with one hand and pressing the fingers of her other hand against the plaster, she stretched her foot toward the other loop. But when within an inch or two of it, she suddenly slipped off the wall.

  She gasped in terror. Down she dropped. Her arm felt as if it surely would be pulled from its socket as the entire weight of her body jerked on it. Could she hang with one hand? What if the sudden jerk should pull the rope loose from the peg? Desperately she clung to the loop. Then, regaining her balance, she wrapped her legs around the rope. Slowly, carefully she slipped from knot to knot. Four strong young arms caught her before her feet touched the floor of the balcony.

  “Oh, Jo! Jo! I thought you’d be killed, sure,” cried Florence, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I was so frightened!”

  “I was so scared I shut my eyes tight to keep from seeing you killed,” added Peggy tremulously. “I hope that taught you a lesson and you’ll be satisfied to stay where you belong after this.”

  “Girls, look at the spectators!” exclaimed Florence the next moment.

  In the street, about thirty feet below, several peons had stopped to watch this unusual performance, while others were running to see what was going on.

  After one hasty glance below Jo Ann fled into the office.

  “Can’t you do anything here without an audience?” she asked a moment later in disgust.

  “Not anything like that,” replied Florence. “I do hope they leave before Felipe sees them, or he’ll have the whole story in a few minutes.”

  “Anyway, I’m glad I’m down here.” Jo Ann drew a sigh of relief. “I hope I never have to stay so long in such a hot place again.”

  CHAPTER VII

  THE PROMENADE

  “Jo, you’re hurt!” cried Florence. “Look at the blood.”

  “Oh, that’s nothing,” she replied. “I just left a little skin up there on the wall when I slipped, but it isn’t enough to worry about.” She stopped abruptly, then added, “Oh dear! I was in such a hurry to get down, I forgot and left your parasol up on the roof.”

  “Well, let it stay there,” put in Florence quickly. “I’d rather lose the old parasol than have you climb up there again.”

  “But I am going up there again,” announced Jo Ann emphatically. “If I can climb down the rope, there’s no reason why I can’t climb back up, is there?”

  “N-o—I suppose not,” admitted Florence hesitatingly. “But Jo—you might get hurt—and—”

  “Oh, but I know exactly how to fix that rope now so it won’t be so hard to get off the roof next time. I’ll pick a time of day when we won’t have so many spectators, for your sake, Florence.”

  Peggy handed Jo Ann a glass of limeade, saying, “Drink this and stop talking about that next time. I’m afraid most of the ice has melted, but it’ll be cool and refreshing, anyway.”

  Jo Ann reached over for the glass. “Nothing could be more appreciated right now, though I’m ’most too dirty to drink it.”

  “You are a sight, all right,” laughed Peggy. “Soot—blood—dirt—all over your face and arms. We can scarcely tell what color you are. You look more like an Indian in full war paint than anything else.”

  “For all my war paint, I’m really quite harmless. I’ve had enough excitement for one day.” Jo Ann sipped the cooling drink. “My, this tastes good! Driving that iron into the wall was harder work than I expected. I can easily understand why these houses are so old. Nothing short of an earthquake or a bomb could destroy them.”

  “Here, I’ll take the glass if you’ve finished,” said Florence, placing it on the tray. “I’ll send Felipe down to the drugstore with these things, and that’ll give you a chance to slip to your room and get a bath and change your clothes. We’d better not let anyone see you like this.”

  “Poor Florence!” laughed Jo Ann as Florence carried the tray to the door and gave it to Felipe. “Doesn’t she have a time trying to keep me from disgracing the family?”

  “You are a problem sometimes,” agreed Peggy. “Especially when you get your head set on a thing. You seem to forget everything else then.”

  “I heard what you said just now,” interrupted Florence coming over and putting her arm around Jo Ann as they started for their room. “I know you sometimes think I’m fussy, but there’re some queer customs here that we must recognize. You know the old saying: ‘When in Rome do as the Romans do.’”

  Having reached their room, Peggy and Florence hastened to bring Jo Ann the necessary toilet articles for removing all traces of her escapade.

  “Here, Jo, you’d better use this cleansing cream first,” said Peggy. “You’ll never get all that grime off without it. Wait, I’ll help you,” she added, rubbing some of the cream on her neck.

  “Ouch! Be careful! You’re rubbing the skin off,” cried Jo Ann, dodging.

  “Why, I’m not! I’m being just as careful as can be. You’re sunburned, that’s the trouble—you’re red as a beet.”

  “You’re blistered!” added Florence. “Just look at your arms and face now that we’ve got some of the dirt off! I was afraid of that when you had to stay up there so long. You don’t know the penetrating qualities of a tropical sun.”

  “I believe you look worse with the dirt off than you did with it on,” laughed Peggy. “What are we going to do with her, Florence?”

  Florence shook her head dubiously. “I don’t know. If Daddy sees her like this we’ll have to explain what’s happened, and I don’t want to do that.”

  “And I don’t want you to, either,” Jo Ann put in quickly. “I want to surprise him by solving the mystery of that window. He doesn’t seem to think there’s anything strange about it—he didn’t even look at it.”

  “You must promise to be very careful, whatever you do,” Florence warned.

  “Didn’t I just tell you, Jo, that sometimes you’re quite a problem?” added Peggy teasingly.

  “You just wait till I’ve had my bath,” Jo Ann replied as she started out of the room. “When I finish dressing, I’ll look all right.”

  When she returned a little later and preened herself triumphantly before them, Peggy burst into a peal of laughter.

  “She looks exactly as if she’d stuck her head in the flour barrel and the flour had stuck in spots, doesn’t she?” she remarked to Florence.

  “Well, her skin does look queer—a little like parchment or canvas,” reluctantly admitted the more polite Florence.

  Jo Ann grimaced. “I like that—after all my efforts.”

  “Let me fix your face,” offered Peggy. “I promise to touch your face as lightly as a butterfly touches a flower.”

  “Listen to the poet!” scoffed Jo Ann.

  “Poet and artist,” added Peggy, smiling widely. “Watch how skillfully this artist works on her canvas now.”

  Lightly brushing most of the powder off Jo Ann’s face, she applied a generous amount of vanishing cream, then dusted it with just the right amount of powder so that enough of the red in her cheeks would show through to look natural.

  When she had finished, she waved her powder puff with a flourish. “Behold the transformation from Indian to a
member of the white race!”

  “You really don’t look bad at all now, Jo Ann,” smiled Florence. “If you stay out of the bright light, I don’t believe anyone—not even Daddy—will notice how sunburned you are.”

  “Is that the best you can say—to tell me I won’t look bad if I stay in the dark?” put in Jo Ann. “How’re you going to manage to keep me in the dark? If I stay in my room and don’t go to dinner tonight, your father’ll be sure to dose me with pills and tonics.”

  “I’ll use candles on the dinner table tonight—I often do—and in their soft light your sunburn won’t be noticeable.”

  To Jo Ann’s vast relief Dr. Blackwell did not make any comment about her complexion at dinner, even though Peggy teasingly hinted that she had taken unusual pains with her toilet this evening.

  Unconscious of anything amiss, Dr. Blackwell asked pleasantly, “Are you girls going over to the Plaza tonight to join in the promenade?”

  “Yes, I can hardly wait,” replied Peggy. “Florence told us about the promenade yesterday while we were driving around the Plaza.”

  Dr. Blackwell exchanged glances with Florence, his eyes twinkling.

  “I understand,” he chuckled, “that if you want to catch a suitor, all you have to do is pick out the young man you prefer, then throw him a rose as you pass. You can deliver your message by the color of the rose you use.”

  “That’d be lots of fun,” replied Peggy laughingly. “Where’ll I get the rose, and what color shall I use?”

  “Why, P-e-gg-y!” cried Jo Ann in consternation. “You wouldn’t really do a thing like that—would you?”

  “If I should, I’d only be doing in Mexico as the Mexicans do—and that’s more than you’ve learned to do yet,” she finished, smiling teasingly at Jo Ann.

  Jo Ann subsided instantly. A little more, and Dr. Blackwell might see through Peggy’s veiled remarks and begin asking questions about what she had been doing.

  To her relief Peggy turned to Florence, saying, “Tell me some more about the why and wherefore of the rose-throwing custom”—her eyes sparkled—“so I can introduce it in the States for Jo’s benefit.”

  Smilingly Florence explained that this was a very old custom but was seldom used now. “The Spanish girls and their caballeros have very few opportunities of meeting each other. When they pass on the promenade—you remember I told you how the girls all walk in one direction and the men in the other—they take advantage of this chance to say a few words or deliver a message.”

  “If you’ve finished dinner, let’s sit out on the balcony a while with Dad before we go down to the Plaza. We can listen to the music and watch the crowds from there.”

  The Plaza, which only a short time before had been almost deserted, began to present a festive appearance now. Clusters of electric lights shone, making it bright as day; lines of cars passed back and forth; and crowds thronged the broad promenade.

  To Jo Ann it seemed as if the balcony were a box at the theater, and from it she was watching a play being enacted on an immense stage. The beautiful, exquisitely dressed girls, who arm in arm were slowly and gracefully strolling along on the outside of the promenade, were the actresses of the play; the caballeros, handsome and well groomed, passing on the inside and never losing an opportunity to bow and smile at the señoritas as they passed, were the actors; as for the background, there were the trees and shrubbery, and the benches filled with chaperons. All the time, the music, soft and rhythmical, was floating up to her—“the orchestra” she told herself, though she knew it was the notes of the wind instruments of the band that she was hearing.

  Peggy broke into her thoughts just then with, “Can’t we go down there now? I’ve never seen anything quite like this before. I love it!”

  “It is fascinating,” put in Jo Ann, “but we can really see better from here.”

  “Oh, I know, but you miss half the fun up here,” Peggy replied quickly. “I want to promenade, too—be a part of the gaiety.”

  “All right, we’ll go now,” said Florence. “Do you mind, Daddy, if we leave you?” she asked solicitously as she stooped to kiss his forehead.

  “Of course not, my Florencita,” he replied, pinching her cheek affectionately. “Run along now and have a good time. Don’t forget, Miss Peggy, what I told you about catching a suitor,” he teased.

  “All right, Doctor, I won’t,” she laughed, “and if I do anything to disgrace Florence, it’ll be all your fault.”

  “I’ll take the consequences,” he returned lightly.

  The three girls ran to their room a moment to add the finishing touches to their toilet, and for once Peggy was ready as soon as Jo Ann. All excitement, she caught Florence and Jo Ann by the arms to hurry them along.

  “O-h, Peg—don’t! My arm’s sore!” cried Jo Ann, holding the injured arm away from her.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Peggy sympathetically. “Your camouflage is so good I’d forgotten about your blisters. I’ll remember hereafter, and we’ll walk one on each side of you, so no one’ll bump into you and hurt you again.”

  They crossed the street and joined the gay promenade around the Plaza.

  While Peggy was enjoying looking at the crowds, Jo Ann kept glancing back across the street at the front of the building in which the Blackwells had their apartment. Since their entrance was on the side street she had never before had an opportunity to examine the front of the house closely. The lower floor, she saw, was occupied mostly by different kinds of stores.

  Shortly after passing opposite the drugstore beneath Dr. Blackwell’s office, she noticed a broad-arched doorway about halfway down the block. As she gazed through this doorway and into the brightly lighted space beyond, she suddenly gave a little gasp of surprise.

  “Isn’t that a patio I see through that big doorway across the street, Florence?” she asked.

  “Yes; there’s a small patio there.”

  “Then that explains it,” Jo Ann went on eagerly. “This afternoon while I was up on the roof I noticed a queer, oblong walled-in place right in the center of the building. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time—I was so worried about getting off the roof, but I believe now that this wall must’ve been around the opening for that patio. I’m wondering if that patio wasn’t at one time a part of your house.”

  Florence’s eyes opened in surprise. “What makes you think that?”

  “Why, because there wasn’t a division wall between that oblong opening and your part of the house. If it were originally one big house with many rooms, that would explain the reason for the huge kitchen and the immense fireplace.”

  “That sounds reasonable enough, but why would they have built such a large house—a casa grande, as they say in Spanish?”

  “I don’t know, but that’s what it’s been—casa grande.”

  “Oh, there you go again, talking about that house,” put in Peggy. “Let’s forget it and enjoy the promenade.”

  “All right, I won’t say another word about it now, but as soon as we get back to the house, I’m going to look around and see if I can find something that will prove that I’m right.”

  “You’re hopeless, Jo—the idea of thinking about an old house when there’s all this lovely music to listen to, and all these beautiful girls with their Paris gowns, and the handsome young men to see!”

  After they had strolled around the square for over an hour, Jo Ann remarked a little impatiently, “Don’t you think we’ve walked long enough? I think it’s time we were going back to the house.”

  “Oh, don’t let’s go back yet!” Peggy replied quickly. “Let’s stay till the concert’s over. That house’ll still be standing there—patio and all.”

  “That won’t be long,” put in Florence. “The band’ll probably only play another piece or two. You can’t do any exploring about the house, anyway, Jo, till Daddy goes to his room,” she added.

  So it was that they did not start homeward until the band had played the last number and the c
rowds were leaving.

  After reaching the house the girls talked for a few moments with Dr. Blackwell, then went on to their room. It was not long afterward that Jo Ann’s keen ears caught the clanging sound of metal as Dr. Blackwell bolted the outer door. She waited impatiently a little longer, then slipped out into the hall, and silently stood at the head of the stairway, trying to figure out how these rooms had been connected with the patio and the other part of the house.

  “I know that patio is in about the center of the house,” she thought. “Then this wall opposite me would be in a direct line with the patio.”

  Since she could not see distinctly in the dim rays of the night light, she turned on a brighter one, and tilting it upward, threw its rays directly on the wall opposite.

  To her disappointment she could see nothing but the plain surface of the plastered wall.

  “This hall must’ve been connected in some way with that patio,” she told herself. “There’s bound to be something somewhere to show how it was connected.”

  Tilting the light first at one angle and then another, she gazed at the wall intently, searching for some sign of a former opening.

  All at once she caught a glimpse of the dim, shadowy outlines of a broad arch.

  Tiptoeing to the bedroom door, she called softly, “Girls, come here quickly! I’ve found it—I knew I was right!”

  Quickly she led Peggy and Florence to the spot in which she had been standing, and again tilting the light, pointed to the wall.

  “Don’t you see the outlines of an arch over there?” she asked, as she threw the rays of the light back and forth across the wall.

  “Your imagination’s running away with you, Jo,” scoffed Peggy. “I can’t see a thing but a blank wall.”

  “I do see something—a faint shadow,” put in Florence slowly. “Why, Jo! I do believe you’re right! There was an arch there.”

  “Sure I’m right,” declared Jo Ann triumphantly. “This arch is the end of a wide hall that connected this back hall with the patio and the rest of the house. I believe your father’s office was the dining room. Can’t you just imagine a long banquet table down the center of that huge room and—”