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

by Julia K. Duncan

  “I’ll carry the brooms,” said Gretchen. “You have an armful, with him. By the way, you’re going to keep him, aren’t you?”

  “Surest thing you know! That is, unless someone comes to claim him.”

  They trudged off through the trees and up the hill, Gretchen shouldering the brooms.

  “What are you going to call him?” she asked, after a while.

  “What do you think?”

  “Why, I don’t know. Wait a minute, though—there’s a girl who lives over in Silvermine named Dorothea Gutmann. Daddy sometimes does work for her father. Dorothea has a fox terrier pup and she calls him ‘Professor.’ Do you know why?”

  “I give up,” said Dorothy, floundering through the snow beside her. “Why does Dorothea Gutmann call her fox terrier pup Professor?”

  “Because,” smiled Gretchen in delight, “he just about ate up a dictionary!”

  Dorothy laughed merrily, and hugged the warm little bundle in her arms. “And when you’ve got outside a lot of words like that, even a pup would know as much as the average professor, I s’pose.”

  “That’s the way Dorothea thought about it. I’ve been over to the Gutmanns a couple of times with Daddy and her dog looks enough like yours to be a twin!”

  “We run into doubles nowadays, every day!” Dorothy chuckled. “First it’s Janet and me who can’t be told apart. Then it’s Dorothea’s dog and mine. I know her, too, by the way. She’s in the New Canaan Junior High. But I haven’t seen her puppy. Our names are almost alike, too, but not quite, thank goodness. If any more of this double identity business comes along, I’ll just have to give up. A girl’s got to have some sort of a personality all her own, you know.”

  “I wouldn’t let that worry me,” said Gretchen. “There’s only one Dorothy Dixon, after all.”

  “Thanks for those kind words, Gretchen. That’s really very sweet of you, though. If the pup was a lady, I’d call him ‘Gretchen’. Since he isn’t, ‘Professor’ will do very nicely. We’ll try him on a dictionary when we get home, that is, after he’s had some nice warm bread and milk, and a good sleep.”

  “If,” smiled Gretchen, “what you said just now was meant for a compliment—well, I’m glad Professor is not a lady. You’d better go on to the house, while I drop these brooms in here at the garage. I’ll come to your room just as soon as I can slip into my uniform, and I’ll bring up the bread and milk.”

  “I always knew you were a dear,” said Dorothy, and she continued to push her way on toward the house.

  CHAPTER XV

  TEA AND ORDERS

  After she had changed her clothes and fed the famished pup with a bowl of warm milk and bread, Dorothy took him down to the library. Gretchen brought a small open basket and a blanket and they made him a bed near the open fire. Professor promptly went to sleep, and his mistress curled up in a deep chair beside him, reading and dozing for the rest of the afternoon. To amuse Gretchen, she had placed a dictionary near the basket, to see if Professor would follow his double’s example and so justify his name. When he awoke, however, about four o’clock, he merely jumped out of his bed on to the book, and up to Dorothy’s lap, where he went to sleep again.

  “Good ole pup!” Dorothy rubbed his smooth, warm head between his ears. “You show your intelligence by using the dictionary as a stepping stone to better things, don’t you, Prof!”

  She yawned, closed her book, and promptly went to sleep again herself.

  She awoke with a start, to find Mrs. Lawson smiling down at her. Tunbridge was laying the tea-things on a table at the other side of the fire. “Well, my dear,” the lady said, her eyes on the fox terrier, “I see you’ve found a new friend.”

  “Oh, yes, isn’t he just too darling? I found him out in the blizzard, he was half frozen and almost starved!” She went on to tell Mrs. Lawson about it.

  “I’m afraid I’m not very fond of animals, Janet.” Dorothy noticed that she did not attempt to touch the puppy. “I don’t dislike them, you understand, but somehow they never seem to like me.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Dorothy. “I do hope you won’t mind my keeping him—at least until we learn who his owner is?”

  Laura Lawson looked doubtful. “Well, I don’t mind. But—this is Doctor Winn’s house, you know, and his decision, after all, is the one that counts. You will have to ask him about keeping the dog, Janet.”

  “Is Doctor Winn going to have tea with us, Mrs. Lawson?”

  “He most certainly is, my dear. That is, if you ladies will pour him a cup.”

  Dorothy glanced up, and beside her stood an old gentleman, very tall and spare, but bowed with the weight of his years. She knew that the scientist was well over eighty. Catching up the fox terrier, she rose to her feet.

  “How do you do, Doctor Winn?” She smiled and offered him her hand.

  The old gentleman bent over it with courtly grace. “Good afternoon, Miss Janet Jordan. Welcome to Winncote.” Merry gray eyes twinkled at her from behind pince-nez attached to a broad black ribbon. An aristocrat of the old school, Dorothy thought, as she studied his handsome, clean shaven face crisscrossed with the tiny wrinkles of advanced age. She had imagined him to be quite a different sort of person. His next words proved that he read her thoughts.

  “You expected to see a musty old fellow, with a long white beard, wearing a smock stained by chemicals, eh?” He chuckled softly. “Now, tell me, young lady, isn’t that so? Though I admit these flannel slacks and old Norfolk jacket are hardly fashionable habiliments when one is taking tea with ladies!”

  He released her hand and smiled a greeting to Mrs. Lawson. The second footman, he of the plum-colored knee-breeches, set the tea table before that young matron, under the supervision of the stately Tunbridge.

  Dorothy liked this gallant old scientist and his courtly ways. Her own eyes sparkled gaily back at him. “Yes, you did surprise me, Doctor Winn,” she confessed. “Please don’t think I’m being forward, but—but you seem much more like the English fox-hunting squires I’ve read about, than the world-renowned chemist you really are, with stacks of letters after your name. But ever so much nicer, and jollier, you know!”

  Doctor Winn beamed. “Now that, my dear, is a most charming compliment. Old fellows like me aren’t used to compliments from young ladies, either. Do sit down again, please, and tell me how you like Winncote and our New England snowstorms. We old people need young folks around. I can see that we are going to be good friends.”

  He sat down in a chair the butler drew up for him.

  “Mrs. Lawson will tell you,” replied Dorothy, “that I love it out here in the country.” She accepted a cup of tea from Tunbridge and added sugar and a slice of lemon. The butler was followed by his liveried assistant, bearing silver platters of hot, buttered scones and tiny iced cakes. Professor immediately began to show interest in the proceedings. Dorothy held him firmly out of harm’s way, and placed her tea and eatables on the broad arm of her chair.

  Mrs. Lawson looked up from her place behind the shining silver and old china of the tea table. She smiled graciously. “Oh, yes, Janet loves blizzards, too, Doctor Winn. She went out for a walk this afternoon and acquired a fox terrier puppy, as you see.”

  “And naturally, she wants to keep him.” The old gentleman leaned forward in his chair, the better to look at Professor. “You certainly may, Janet. And by the way, I hope you’ll agree that it’s an old man’s privilege to call you by your first name?”

  “Oh, that is sweet of you!” Dorothy cried delightedly, and the Doctor’s chuckle echoed her pleasure.

  “The dog’s got a fine head—a very fine head, indeed. If anybody advertises for him, or comes to claim him, I’ll take pleasure in buying the puppy for you.”

  “Why, you’re nicer every minute,” declared Dorothy. “Isn’t he, Professor?”

  The pup yawned with great indifference, which set all three of them laughing. His mistress put him in his blanket where he promptly curled up and fell into slum
ber once more.

  “I sadly fear,” said Doctor Winn, as he polished his pince-nez with a white silk handkerchief, “that you are a good deal of a flirt Janet. But inasmuch as I am old enough to be your grandfather, or great-grandfather, for that matter, you are pardoned with a reprimand.” He chuckled deep in his throat, a habit he had when pleased. “Now tell me, how you happened to find him out in the snow.”

  Dorothy recounted the story in detail. When she came to the part about Gretchen’s fear of the wildcat and the fox, even Mrs. Lawson, who was none too sure she liked the turn things were taking, broke into a merry peal of laughter.

  “Capital, capital!” Doctor Winn beamed. “I only wish I’d been there to see it. But why, may I ask, do you call him Professor?”

  Dorothy explained about the dictionary and Gretchen’s idea of the pup’s resemblance to Dorothea Gutmann’s fox terrier.

  “Better and better,” exclaimed the Doctor. “This is the jolliest tea we’ve had in this house for ages. We need young people around us to be really happy. You and I and Martin, Laura, have been working too hard of late. ‘All work and no play’—We’ve been bothering too much about things scientific, and neglecting things personal. Well now, we can rest a while, and become human beings again.”

  Mrs. Lawson leaned forward eagerly. “Then, the formula is complete?” she asked in a low voice, in which Dorothy detected the barely controlled tremor of excitement.

  “Yes, indeed. Finished and locked in my safe. I added the final figures and quantities three-quarters of an hour ago. Tomorrow, or if the weather doesn’t clear by then, the next day at latest, I shall take it on to Washington.”

  “I congratulate you, Doctor. And I know that once it is in the hands of the government, a great load will be taken off your mind.”

  “You’re right, my dear, you are right. I’ve been jumpy as a cat with eight of its lives gone for the past year.” He turned to Dorothy. “Thank goodness, you’re young and without responsibilities, Janet. There are so many unscrupulous people about nowadays. If those papers were lost or stolen, there is no telling what would happen. I dare not think of it. The whole world might suffer if that formula got into the wrong hands!”

  Dorothy could not help thinking that the world at large would be much better off if the formula were destroyed. She, therefore, merely nodded and looked impressed. How this gentle, kindly old man could have brought himself to invent such a ghastly menace to life, she found it difficult to understand.

  Laura Lawson stood up. “Doctor Winn likes to dine early, Janet, so if we are to be dressed by six-thirty, we had better start upstairs.”

  “My word, yes!” The old gentleman snapped open the hunting case of his repeater and got stiffly to his feet. “Time flies when one is enjoying oneself. It’s nearly six o’clock. This has been very pleasant indeed, the first of many afternoons, I hope.” He snapped the watch shut and returned it to his pocket. “You ladies will excuse me, I’m sure.” He bowed to them both, and holding himself much more erect than he had formerly, walked stiffly from the room.

  “He’s simply darling,” exclaimed Dorothy in a hushed voice.

  “Yes, he’s a very simple and a very fine old gentleman,” said Laura Lawson. She seemed lost in her thoughts and evidently unaware that she uttered them aloud. “Sometimes—I hate to hurt him so.”

  “Why—why, what do you mean?” Dorothy could have bitten her own tongue out for speaking that sentence.

  “Mean—? Oh, nothing, child. Run along now, and change. But take your dog with you. I’ll see that one of the men gives him a run in the stables while we’re at dinner.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Dorothy. She turned the sleeping pup out of his bed, caught up the basket, and with Professor at her heels, ran lightly from the room.

  Just outside the door she collided with Tunbridge, and Professor’s basket was jerked from her grasp.

  “Oh, I’m so very sorry, Miss Jordan!” His acting was perfect. Dorothy knew that Mrs. Lawson was close behind them. Then as they both stooped to retrieve the basket their heads came close together. “Under your pillow!” It was hardly more than the breath of a whisper, but Dorothy caught the words, nodded her understanding, and stood up.

  “I’m afraid I’m to blame, Tunbridge. I didn’t see you coming.”

  “Not at all, Miss. It was my fault, entirely. Very clumsy of me I’m sure!”

  From the corner of her eye Dorothy caught a glimpse of Laura Lawson watching them from the doorway.

  “Don’t let it worry you, Tunbridge. I’m not hurt, neither is the basket. Professor will probably park himself on my pillow tonight, anyway. Puppies have a way of doing such things, you know. So it really wouldn’t matter much if you had smashed it.”

  She gave him a nod, and picking up the dog made for the staircase.

  “So instructions are waiting under my pillow,” she mused, as she slowly mounted the broad stair. The afternoon had been a pleasant one, but the evening, with those instructions ahead of her, portended to be something quite different. It had been so nice and cheerful, chatting round the tea table; so cozy sitting before the glowing logs, just talking of jolly things and forgetting all worry and responsibility. Of course, beyond the curtained windows, the blizzard howled. And it whipped the swirling snowflakes into disordered clouds with its arctic lash before it let them seek the shelter of their fellows in the drifts. She felt very much as though she too were a snowflake, tossed hither and thither on the storm of circumstance, to be whipped forward by the secret lash of underlying crime.

  If she could only drop down on to her bed and sleep—and awake to find it all a bad dream! She sighed and went toward her door on the gallery. Her pillow held no peace for her tonight—nothing more nor less than detailed instructions as to how Tunbridge wished her to rob a safe. Why didn’t the man do his own stealing? Her part was to take Janet’s place out here, and kill suspicion in Laura Lawson. Well, she’d done that, hadn’t she? And now they loaded this other job on to her. It wasn’t fair. She had done enough—she’d—

  “Oh, shucks!” She pulled herself up mentally as her hand fell on the doorknob. “I’ll be losing my nerve altogether, if I let my thoughts run on this way. D. Dixon, you just must not funk it!”

  She turned the knob and entered her room.

  CHAPTER XVI

  CAUGHT IN THE ACT

  When Dorothy went down to dinner that evening, she knew exactly what she had to do. After reading Tunbridge’s note which she found had been slipped between the pillow case and the pillow itself, she had memorized the combination to Doctor Winn’s safe, and destroyed the missive as she had his warning of the night before. After a bath and a complete change of clothing, she felt refreshed and in a much better frame of mind. She had selected one of the prettiest gowns in Janet’s wardrobe, a turquoise blue crepe, with a cluster of silver roses fastened in the twisted velvet girdle, put on slippers to match, and surveyed the result in the mirror.

  “Decidedly becoming, my girl,” she smiled at her reflection, and gave a last pat to her shining bob that she had brushed until it lay like a bronze cap close about her shapely head. “Might as well look my best at my criminal debut!” She made a face at herself, turned and kissed the sleeping puppy in his basket, and went downstairs.

  Doctor Winn and Mrs. Lawson were standing talking in the entrance hall, near the fireplace. The old gentleman, dressed in immaculate dinner clothes, looked more than ever like the English squire in his ancestral hall. He came forward to meet her, both hands outstretched.

  “As charming as an English primrose and twice as beautiful!” he greeted gaily.

  “Thank you kindly, sir.” She dropped him a little curtsey and let him lead her to Mrs. Lawson.

  “Our little secretary has blossomed into a very lovely debutante,” he beamed.

  Dorothy bit her lip, remembering her own phrase of a few moments before, then smiled at her employer. Mrs. Lawson was regal in black velvet, trimmed in narrow bands of
ermine. She returned Dorothy’s smile, and lifted her finely pencilled brows at the Doctor. “Oh, you men. You are all alike. A pretty gown, a pretty face intrigues you, young or old. Pay no attention to his flattery, Janet. I can hardly blame him, though. You look lovely tonight. That is an exquisite frock. Did you buy it abroad?”

  “Oh, no, at a little place on fifty-seventh street.” Of course Dorothy had no idea where Janet had bought the dress. “It is a Paris model, though, Mrs. Lawson.”

  “I thought as much. Ah, here comes Tunbridge with the cocktails. I wonder which side of the fence you are on?”

  “I’m—I’m afraid I don’t know quite what you mean, Mrs. Lawson.”

  “I’ll explain,” broke in the old gentleman. “I’m the prohibitionist in this house, Janet. Mrs. Lawson is one of the antis. She likes a real cocktail before dinner. I prefer one made of tomato juice.”

  Mrs. Lawson had already helped herself to a brimming glass and a small canapé of caviar from the silver tray Tunbridge was holding.

  “Oh, I love tomato cocktails,” smiled Dorothy. She took one from the man and helped herself to the caviar. “Daddy asked me not to drink until I was twenty-one—and I’m not so keen on the idea, anyway.”

  “I try to keep an open mind about such things,” the Doctor said seriously, “but I’ve never found that the use of alcohol did anyone any good. Well, here’s your very good health, ladies!” He raised his glass of tomato juice and drank.

  Dinner was announced a few minutes later. Doctor Winn offered his right arm to Mrs. Lawson and his left to Dorothy and they walked into the dining room. Dorothy did not enjoy that meal as much as she had her luncheon. True, the food was delicious and the panelled room with its cheerful fire on the hearth and the soft glow of candle light was delightfully homey, while Doctor Winn’s easy chatter and fund of interesting reminiscence helped to break the tedium of the courses. But Dorothy found it difficult to play up to his amusing sallies. The old gentleman appeared to be in very good spirits indeed. Laura Lawson, on the other hand, was unusually quiet. At times she seemed distrait and merely smiled absently when spoken to. She drank several glasses of claret, but hardly touched her food. Dorothy felt surer than ever that the Lawsons had planned their coup for tonight. She shrewdly surmised that this cold-blooded adventuress had become fond of the genial, fatherly old man, and realized that at his age the blow she contemplated might very well prove a fatal one.