He and Mrs. Peabody sat down to dinner, and, partly because of her excitement and partly because in her husband’s absence she dared to be more generous, Bob made an excellent meal. Over his second piece of pie he ventured to ask when they had found out that Betty was not in her room.
“Oh, Joseph thought of her as soon as he missed the chickens,” answered Mrs. Peabody. “I never thought she would be spiteful, but I declare it’s queer, anyway you look at it. Joseph flew up to her room and unlocked the door, and she wasn’t there! Do you suppose she could have jumped from the window and hurt herself?”
Bob thought it quite possible.
“Well, I don’t,” said Mrs. Peabody shrewdly. “However, I’m not asking questions, so there’s no call for you to get all red. Joseph seemed to think she had jumped out, and he’s furious because he didn’t nail up both windows, though how he expected Betty to breathe in that case is more than I can see.”
Bob was relieved to learn that apparently Mr. Peabody did not connect him with Betty’s disappearance. He finished his dinner and went out to do the few noon chores. Then he started on the drive to Laurel Grove.
“Looks like a storm,” he muttered to himself, as he noted the heavy white clouds piling up toward the south. “I wish to goodness, old Peabody would spend a few cents and get an awning for the seat of this wagon. Last time I was caught in a storm I got soaked, and my clothes didn’t dry overnight. I’ll be hanged if I’m going to get wet this time—I’ll drive in somewhere first.”
Bob’s predictions of a storm proved correct, and before he had gone two miles he heard distant thunder.
With the first splash of rain Bob hurried the sorrel, keeping his eyes open for a mail-box that would mark the home of some farmer where he might drive into the barn and wait till the shower was over.
He came within sight of some prosperous looking red barns before the rain was heavy, and drove into a narrow lane just as the first vivid streak of lightning ripped a jagged rent in the black clouds.
“Come right on in,” called out the farmer, who had seen him coming and thrown open the double doors. “Looks like it might be a hummer, doesn’t it? There’s a ring there in the wall where you can tie your horse.”
“He stands without hitching,” grinned Bob. “Only too glad to get the chance. Gee, that wind feels good!”
The farmer brought out a couple of boxes and turned them up to serve as seats.
“I like to watch a storm,” he observed. “The house is all locked up—women-folk gone to an all-day session of the sewing circle—or I’d take you in. We’d get soaked walking that short distance, though. You don’t live around here, do you?”
“Bramble Farm. I’m a poorhouse rat the Peabodys took to bring up.”
He had seldom used that phrase since Betty’s coming, but it always irritated him to try to explain who he was and where he came from.
“I was bound out myself,” retorted the farmer quickly. “Knocked around a good bit, but now I own this ninety acres, free and clear. You’ve got just as good a chance as the boy with too much done for him. Don’t you forget that, young man.”
They were silent for a few moments, watching the play of lightning through the wide doors.
“Didn’t two men named Wapley and Lieson used to work for Peabody?” asked the farmer abruptly. “I thought so,” as Bob nodded. “They were around the other day asking for jobs.”
“Are you sure?” asked Bob. “I thought they had left the state. Lieson, I know, had folks across the line.”
“Well, they may have gone now,” was the reply. “But I know that two days ago they wanted work. I’ve a couple of men, all I can use just now, but I sent them on to a neighbor. They looked strong, and good farm help is mighty scarce.”
Bob waited till the rain had stopped and the clouds were lifting, then drove on, thanking the friendly farmer for his cordiality.
“Don’t be calling yourself names, but plan what you want to make of yourself,” was that individual’s parting advice.
“If I had a nickel,” said Bob to himself, urging the sorrel to a brisk trot, for the time spent in waiting must be made up, “I’d telephone to Betty from Laurel Grove. But pshaw! I know she must be all right.”
CHAPTER XX
STORMBOUND ON THE WAY
Bob would not have dismissed his misgivings so contentedly had he been able to see Betty just at that moment.
When she shook the dust of Bramble Farm from her feet, which she did literally at the boundary line on the main road, to the great delight of two curious robins and a puzzled chipmunk, she said firmly that it was forever. As she tramped along the road she kept looking back, hoping to hear the rattle of wheels and to see Bob and the sorrel coming after her. But she reached the crossroads without being overtaken.
Years ago some thoughtful person had taken the trouble to build a rude little seat around the four sides of the guidepost where the road to Laurel Grove and Glenside crossed, and in a nearby field was a boarded-up spring of ice-cold water, so that travelers, on foot and in motor-cars and wagons, made it a point to rest for a few minutes and refresh themselves there. Betty was a trifle embarrassed to find a group of men loitering about the guide-post when she came up to it. They were all strangers to her, but with the ready friendliness of the country, they nodded respectfully.
“Want to sit down a minute, Miss?” asked a gray-haired man civilly, standing up to make room for her. “Didn’t expect to see so many idle farmers about on a clear morning, did you?”
Betty shook her head, smiling.
“I won’t sit down, thank you,” she said in her clear girlish voice. “I’ll just get a drink of water and go on; I want to reach Glenside before noon.”
“Glenside road’s closed,” announced one of the younger men, shortly.
“Closed!” echoed Betty. “Oh, no! I have to get there, I tell you.”
Her quick, frightened glance fell on the man who had first spoken to her, and she appealed to him.
“The road isn’t closed, is it?” she asked breathlessly. “That isn’t why you’re all here?”
“Now, now, there’s nothing to worry your head about,” answered the gray-haired farmer soothingly. “Jerry, here, is always a bit abrupt with his tongue. As a matter of fact, the road is closed; but if you don’t mind a longer walk, you can make a detour and get to Glenside easily enough.”
Betty gazed at him uncertainly.
“You see,” he explained, “King Charles, the prize bull at Greenfields, the big dairy farm, got out this morning, and we suppose he is roaming up and down between here and Glenside. He’s worth a mint of money, so they don’t want to shoot him, and the dairy has offered a good reward for his safe return. He’s got a famous temper, and no one would deliberately set out to meet him unarmed; so we’re posted here to warn folks. A few automobiles took a chance and went on, but the horses and wagons and foot passengers take the road to Laurel Grove. You turn off to the left at the first road and follow that and it brings you into Glenside at the north end of town. You’ll be all right.”
“A girl shouldn’t try to make it alone,” objected another one of the group. “You take my advice, Sis, and wait till your father or brother can take you over in the buggy. Suppose you met a camp of Gypsies?”
“Oh, I’m not afraid,” Betty assured him. “That is, not of people. But I don’t know what in the world I should do if I met an angry bull. I’ll take the detour, and everything will be all right. I’m used to walking.”
The men repeated the directions again, to make sure she understood clearly. Then Betty drank a cup of the fresh, cold spring water, and bravely set off on the new road.
The gray-haired man came running after her.
“If it should storm,” he cried, coming up with her, “don’t run under a tree. Better stay out in the rain till you reach a house. You’ll be safe in any farmhouse.”
He meant safe as far as the kind of people she would meet were concerned, but Betty, who had never in her
life feared any one, thought he referred to protection from the elements. She thanked him, and trudged on.
“I certainly am hungry,” she said, after a half hour of tramping. “Now I know how Bob feels without a cent in his pocket. I’ll have to ask Doctor Guerin for some money. I can’t get along without a nickel. Uncle Dick must be awfully busy, or else he’s sick. Otherwise he would surely let me hear from him.”
When she came to an old apple orchard where the trees drooped over a crumbling stone wall, Betty had no scruples about filling the pockets and sleeves of her sweater with the apples that lay on the ground. Bob had told her that portions of trees that grew over the roadside were public property, and she intended to explain to the farmer, if she met him, how she had come to carry off some of his fruit. But she met no one and saw no house, and presently the rumble of distant thunder put all thoughts of apples out of her mind.
“My goodness!” She looked at the mountain of white clouds piling up with something like panic. “I haven’t even come to the road that turns, and I just know this will be a hard thunderstorm. Mrs. Peabody said last week that the August storms are terrors. I’ll run, and perhaps I’ll come to a house.”
Holding her sweater stuffed with apples in her arms, and jamming her hat firmly on her head, Betty flew down the road, bouncing over stones, jumping over, without a shudder, a mashed black-snake flattened out in the road by some passing car, and, in defiance of all speed regulations, refusing to slow up at a sharp turn in the road ahead. She took it at top speed, and as she rounded the curve the first drops of rain splashed her nose. But her flight was rewarded.
A long, low, comfortable-looking farmhouse sat back in an overgrown garden on one side of the road.
“D. Smith,” read Betty on the mail box at the gate. “Well, Mrs. D. Smith, I hope you’re at home, and I hope you’ll ask me to come in and rest till the storm’s over. Shall I knock at the back or the front door?”
A vivid flash of lightning sent her scurrying across the road and up the garden path. As she lifted the black iron knocker on the front door a peal of thunder rattled the loose casements of the windows.
Betty lifted the knocker and let it fall three times before she decided that either Mrs. D. Smith did not welcome callers at the front of her house, or else she could not hear the knocker from where she was. But a prolonged rat-a-tat-tat on the back door produced no further results.
“She may be out getting the poultry in,” said Betty to herself, recalling how hard Mrs. Peabody worked every time a storm came up. “Wonder where the poultry yard is?”
The rain was driving now, and the thunder irritatingly incessant. Betty walked to the end of the back porch and stood on her tiptoes trying to see the outbuildings. Then, for the first time, she noticed what she would surely have seen in one glance at a less exciting time.
There were no outbuildings, only burned and blackened holes in the ground! A few loose bricks marked the site of masonry-work, and a charred beam or two fallen across the gaps showed only too plainly what had been the fate of barns and crib houses.
Betty ran impulsively to a window, and, holding up her hands to shut out the light, peered in. Cobwebs, dust and dirt and a few empty tins in the sink were the only furniture of the kitchen.
“It’s empty!” gasped Betty. “No one lives here! Oh, gracious!”
A great fork of lightning shot across the sky, followed at once by a deafening crash of thunder. Far across the field, on the other side of the road, Betty saw a tall oak split and fall.
“I’m going in out of this,” she decided, “if I have to break a window or a lock!”
She leaned her sturdy weight against the wooden door, automatically turning the knob without thought of result. The door swung easily open—there had been nothing to hinder her walking in—and she tumbled in so suddenly that she had difficulty in keeping her feet.
Betty closed the door and looked about her.
The storm shut out, she immediately felt a sense of security, though a hasty survey of the three rooms on one side of the hall failed to reveal any materials for a fire or a meal, two comforts she was beginning to crave. She took an apple from her sweater pocket, and, munching that, set out to explore the rooms on the other side of the hall.
A curious, yet familiar, noise drew her attention to the front room, probably in happier days the parlor of the farmhouse. Peering in through the partly open folding doors, Betty saw seven crates of chickens!
“Why—how funny!” She was puzzled. “Where could they have come from? And what are they doing here? Even if they saved them from the fire, they wouldn’t be left after all the furniture was moved out.”
She went up to the crates and examined them more closely.
“That black rooster is the living image of Mrs. Peabody’s,” she thought, “And the White Leghorns look like hers, too. But, then, I suppose all chickens look alike. I never could see how their hen mothers told them apart.”
Still carrying her sweater with the apples, she wandered upstairs, trying to people the vacant, dusty rooms and wondering what had happened to those who had dwelt here and where they had gone.
“I wonder if the fire was at night and whether they were terribly frightened,” she mused. “I should say they were mighty lucky to save the house, though perhaps the barns are the most necessary buildings on a farm. Why didn’t they build them up again, instead of moving out? I would.”
She was standing in one of the back rooms, and from the window she could look down and see what had once been the garden. The drenched rosebushes still showed a late blossom or two, and there was a faint outline of orderly paths and a tangle of brilliant color where flowers, self-sown, struggled to force their way through the choking weeds. The drip, drip of the rain sounded dolefully on the tin roof, and a cascade ran off at one corner of the house showing where a leader was broken. Toward the west the clouds were lifting, though the thunder still grumbled angrily.
Betty went through the rather narrow hall and entered a pleasant, prettily papered room where a low white rocking chair and a pink sock on the floor spoke mutely of the baby whose kingdom had been bounded by the wide bay window.
“They forgot the rocker,” said Betty, drawing it up to the window and resting her elbows on the narrow window ledge. “I hope he was a fat, pretty baby,” she went on, picking up the sock and holding it in her hand. “Is that some one coming down the road?”
It was—two people in fact; and as they drew nearer Betty’s eyes almost popped out with astonishment. The pair talking together so earnestly, completely oblivious of the rain, were Lieson and Wapley, the two men who had worked for Mr Peabody! And they were turning in at the path guarded by the mail box inscribed “D. Smith.”
Betty flew to the door of the room where she sat and drew the bolt.
CHAPTER XXI
THE CHICKEN THIEVES
Over in one corner of the bay-window room, as Betty had already named it, was a black register in the floor, designed to let the warm air from a stove in the parlor below heat the bedroom above. Toward this Betty crept cautiously, testing each floor board for creaks before she trusted her whole weight to it. She reached the register, which was open, and was startled at the view it opened up for her. She drew back hastily, afraid that she would be discovered.
Lieson and Wapley stood almost squarely under the register, above the crates of chickens and looking down on the fowls.
“I began to think you wasn’t coming,” Lieson said slowly, putting a hand on his companion’s shoulder to steady himself as he lurched and swayed. “I got soaked to the skin waiting for you in those bushes.”
“Well, it’s some jaunt to Laurel Grove,” came Wapley’s response. “I got a man, though. Coming at ten tonight. There’s no moon, and he says he can make the run to Petria in six or seven hours, barring tire trouble.”
“Does he take us, too?” demanded Lieson. “I’m tired of hanging around here. What kind of a truck has he got?”
Wapl
ey was so long in answering that Betty nervously wondered if he could have discovered the register. She risked a peep and found that both men were absorbed in filling their pipes. These lighted and drawing well, Wapley consented to answer his companion’s question.
“Got a one-ton truck. Plenty of room under the seat for us. He’s kind of leery of the constables, ‘cause he’s been doing a nice little night trade between Laurel Grove and Petria carrying one thing and another, but he’s willing to do the job on shares.”
Lieson yawned noisily.
“Wish we had some grub,” he observed. “Guess the training we got at Peabody’s will come in handy if we don’t eat again till we sell the chickens. Wouldn’t you like to have seen the old miser’s face when he found his chickens were gone?”
So, thought Betty, she had not been mistaken; the black rooster was the same one who had been the pride of Mrs. Peabody’s heart.
A burst of harsh laughter from Wapley startled her. Leaning forward, she could see him stretched out on the floor, his head resting on his coat, doubled up to form a pillow.
“What do you know!” he gurgled, the tears standing in his eyes. “Didn’t I run into Bob Henderson, of all people!”
Lieson was incredulous.
“You’re fooling,” he said sullenly. “What would Bob be doing in Laurel Grove? Unless he was playing ferret! I’d wring his neck with pleasure if I thought the old man sent him over to spy.”
“Don’t worry,” counseled Wapley, waving his pipe airily. “The lad doesn’t hook us up with the missing biddies. They never knew they were stolen till ten o’clock this morning. The old man sold ’em to Ryerson, and the hen houses stayed shut up till he came to get ’em. Can you beat that for luck?”
Both men went off into roars of laughter.
“We needn’t have spent the night lifting ’em,” said Lieson when he could speak. “I hate to lose my night’s rest. What did Bob say about it? Was the old man mad?”
“’Bout crazy,” admitted Wapley gravely. “Bob wasn’t home, but the old lady told him he carried on somethin’ great. Wish we coulda heard him rave. But, Lieson, you haven’t got it all. Betty Gordon’s run off, and Peabody’s doped it out she ran off with the hens!”
The Second Girl Detective Megapack: 23 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls Page 195