Sarita was still looking out over the ledge. Then quickly she stepped back behind the jutting rocks and plumped herself down by the other girls. “It’s Bill,” she said. “He was going on down, but I couldn’t get a good look at him till he suddenly turned; and then I was afraid that he would see me watching him—hence my sudden retreat!”
“Could there be some other ledge along here, and someone on it?” Leslie suggested. “This one ends here, I suppose, with that big bulge of rock.”
“Suppose we fasten a sign of some sort here and then look up from below and see just what is near us here. That does not smell like a pipe, and I can smell it yet. Can’t you?”
“Yes, Peggy, though not so much,” said Leslie. “Sarita, this is more like an Eyrie than ours, isn’t it? You can see most of the bay, our headland, the sea and a bit of the village from here. Do you suppose that we can see this with our ‘mind’s eye’ next winter when we are digging into our books and have nothing better to look at than the flat plains of home?”
“I wonder,” said Sarita. Below them lay the bay, sparkling in the sun. Its salty waves leaped up on many a half-submerged rock near the shore, that sent back the spray. Beyond the rim of confining rocks and the Secrest headland, the sea surged more quietly than usual, though there was a line of breakers to be seen. The sky was a deep blue, its clouds in heaps of billowing, floating white.
“This,” said Peggy, “is the home of the ‘triumvirate.’”
“‘Triumvirate’ is not exactly appropriate, Peggy,” Sarita remarked.
“No,” said Leslie. “How about the Three Bears?”
“Who’s been sitting in my chair?” squeaked Peggy in a high voice.
They all laughed. It did not take much to make them laugh today. Peggy was rummaging in her basket and now handed out some paper napkins. “Let’s have a good name, then,” she continued. “What would a triumvirate of girls be?”
“Femina is the Latin word for woman,” said Leslie. “Put it in place of vir and see what you have.”
“Tri-tri—” began Peggy, thinking; “trium-feminate!” she triumphantly finished, flourishing a bottle of olives so vigorously that the cork, previously loosened, came out and the liquid spilled.
Soon the girls were munching sandwiches and olives, drinking copiously of the cold lemonade and talking as busily as ever of Jack, Dalton and the prospective log house; of the queer happenings at camp and at sea; and of their secret, the ‘mystery’, in regard to which they had teased or tried to tease the boys.
“Tell me again, Peggy,” said Leslie, “just what you heard said and just where it was. I want to get it straight. It may be that we ought to tell Dal and Beth.”
“It’s all right with me, Leslie, if you do,” said Peggy. “I’m sure that Dad has something up with the Count, and if either he or the Count are going to do anything to you folks, I don’t want it to happen. But I’m hoping, of course, that for Mother’s sake Dad isn’t into anything real wicked.
“Well, it was the night after he was supposed to have gone away that last time. I was as wide awake as anything and I thought that I’d slip out of the house and go down to the shore a while. The house was all still, you know, and I guess it must have been about two o’clock. I would have taken my bathing suit for a dip, but I promised Mother that I would never go in all alone. So I just slipped out in my silk negligee and slippers, though it was a little shivery.
“I sauntered down the long flight of steps, holding to the railing, and all at once I heard Dad’s voice below me. I almost ran up the steps in a hurry, but what I heard was interesting, so I scrooched down on the step right where I was to listen a minute. That was curiosity, I’ll admit, and I ought to have been noble enough not to have done it—only that things are queer, and when they are, a body hassome right to find out. What do you think, Leslie?”
“I don’t know, Peggy; but it does seem that way.”
“Anyhow Dad was saying next, ‘They are not mere children to be frightened and driven off as you supposed. If I had known that what you told me was an absolute lie, I wouldn’t have gone as far in my statement to them as I did. Just let it drop.’”
Peggy’s air and dignified speech so reminded the girls of the suave Mr. Ives that both of them smiled broadly. The words were brutally frank, but Peggy’s tone robbed them of sharpness. Now she was the cold Count in her recital. The girls could fairly see him draw himself up in courteous resentment.
“‘You do not mince words, I see. It was the only way to produce the effect through you. If you believed it yourself, you could intimidate them.’”
“‘But they were not intimidated. I do not like this intimacy with my daughter any more than you do. But the first object must be to avoid suspicion. I would suggest that we employ’—then I missed a few words just at the important place! Dad dropped his voice a little, and you know how the surf roars sometimes. But I got one clue or one thing that might be as important. The Count started in to talk. ‘See to it,’ he said, ‘that they’—then a mumble of words—‘by the twenty-eighth.’
“I said it over to myself, so I wouldn’t forget to tell you girls exactly what had been said, and then I realized that Dad was coming up the steps. They shook, as you remember they do a little when somebody walks. It was too far to get to the top before he reached me, so what did I do but whisk out to the side and drop under the steps to wait till he passed!”
“But it is some distance, in places, to the rocks underneath!”
Peggy nodded. “I knew it, but it was ‘instinctive,’ as you say, Leslie, to get out of Dad’s way, and by good luck a nice rock was reachable under my step. I just scrooched there again till Dad went by and I’m sure he never saw me. I waited, because I thought the Count might come next, but he never did, and I was so curious that when I hitched up again—you ought to have seen my acrobatic performance, girls—I sneaked down the steps to the bottom and finally all around the place and never a sign did I see of the Count. There wasn’t a sign of a boat, either, and there had scarcely been time, I think, for a boat to get around behind the channel entrance.”
“I don’t know,” Leslie said. “You may have taken more time than you thought.”
“Perhaps so, but wouldn’t I have heard a boat?”
“A launch certainly, but not a row boat against the sound of the surf if it was rather rough that night.”
“Perhaps the Count was behind a tree,” Sarita suggested.
Peggy looked at Sarita to see if she were in earnest. “You know very well, Sarita, that there isn’t a tree there!”
CHAPTER XI
THE INTENTIONAL “ACCIDENT”
“I wonder what Bill was doing down at your dock,” said Sarita.
“It needs some repairs,” Peggy replied. “I heard Dad say to Mother that he was going to bring the yacht down from where it has been undergoing something or other. I smell that smoke again, Sarita. Where do you suppose it comes from?”
Peggy jumped up and went out upon the shelf again. “Don’t smell it at all out here,” she said. Sniffing, Peggy walked back further within their rocky den. “Must be a volcano under here, girls. I smell it more strongly.”
“Do volcanoes smoke tobacco?” joked Leslie.
“This must be a new kind,” Peggy returned. “Come here, girls.”
Sarita and Leslie, rather cramped from long sitting, rose and shook out their frocks. Leslie tossed a bit of her last sandwich to the rocks below and said that the birds might have it.
“You are right, Peggy. It isn’t very strong, but I do notice a bit of tobacco smoke. Isn’t it queer? Perhaps someone is outside and there is some current that whisks the scent through here.”
“Nothing like having an imagination, Sarita. Perhaps there is a smuggler’s den below us. We may smell the liquor if we stay long enough. Perhaps Bill has some little cave inside, too.” So speaking, Peggy again ran out upon the ledge to look toward the Ives’ dock on this side. There was no sign of Bill.
&
nbsp; “If there is this much of a cave here, why mightn’t there be one somewhere below? We haven’t found the way to one, but we just might have missed it.”
“That is so, Peggy,” said Leslie. “Isn’t this odd!” Leslie and Sarita were sniffing till Peggy laughed at the whole performance.
“If I looked as funny as you girls do, sniffing and going from one crevice to another, I wonder that you didn’t make fun of me at the start!”
“We were more interested in the smoke than in how anybody looked,” Sarita returned. “It is stronger way back here, don’t you think so?”
Sarita was back where she was obliged to stoop considerably. There was a crack, or fissure, and a hole of no great size into what Peggy called the ‘inner darkness.’ “I believe that I could crawl into that,” said Peggy, with some decision.
“Not for the world!” cried Leslie. “My dear chief investigator of the ‘tri-feminate,’ you might step off into space and fall into some crevice that we never could get you out of!”
“That would be a calamity,” grinned Peggy. “I won’t then—not now, at any rate. It must be as you think, somebody is smoking somewhere and a current brings the odor up here—but some way that theory doesn’t satisfy me.”
“That is because we scent a mystery, Peggy,” said Sarita. “It’s fun to imagine things. I’d just as lief find Bill to be a villain, but perhaps we’d better not meddle too much with things around here, Peggy.”
Peggy set her lips together. “If there’s anything that ought to be found out, why, then, it ought to be—that’s all there is about it!”
Peggy’s attitude settled it. Though the older girls felt that care should be taken not to go beyond the bounds of courtesy within the limits of Steeple Rocks, they certainly had no objections to Peggy’s solving any mystery there, particularly if the Count were the chief villain.
Peggy had not told them of her little adventure in such detail before. With the words of Peggy’s step-father clearly in her mind, Leslie felt jubilant to think that their possession was to be practically undisputed. But what other plan was there in which they were probably concerned? She would tell Dalton, or get Peggy to tell him. Probably Peggy would enjoy the excitement of it. The date was interesting. That would be July twenty-eighth, perhaps. Was something to happen to them before that time? “See that they…by the twenty-eighth!” Pleasant prospect!
Such thoughts ran through Leslie’s mind and Sarita asked her what she was thinking about.
“I’m just thinking what the next enemy move will be. Peggy, I hope that you can find out what the plan is and what they intend to do to us.”
“I’ll try,” Peggy promised. “What I’m wondering about is how we can get over on the front of the cliff and see if there are any caves there.”
“I don’t know that I ever used my glasses on the headland when we were close,” said Sarita. “Suppose we take the Sea Crest out and go over that way.”
“You forget how we watched those gulls and things that were roosting up there,” Peggy reminded Sarita in her usual indefinite way at which Sarita always laughed.
“Gulls and things, indeed. I’m sure that I found an eagle’s nest and we were following a bald eagle as he flew. However, girls, I’m not so sure that we’d see anything if it were there. We never saw this from the bay, you know. There is one opening that we know of.”
“What’s that?” Peggy inquired.
“There in Pirates’ Cove.”
“But there is the whirlpool, or whatever it is, and the buoys say danger.”
“Sometimes I have wondered if that were a fiction,” thoughtfully Leslie remarked, “just to protect the old pirates or smugglers; and maybe Bill and his rum-runners take advantage of it. Do you remember, Sarita, how those gulls the other day were floating near that place? It was fairly quiet, you know, not much spray on the rocks, and I noticed how wide that low opening is. I think that a person could almost stand up there, if there is anything to stand on. I’d like to find out how it looks at low tide. I’m not sure that we ever were out there or thought of it at low tide. Were we?”
The other girls did not know, but Sarita suggested that they would not dare risk going among the rocks there in any event and the girls agreed with her. “Dalton would go up in the air if we rowed in there, to say nothing of Elizabeth,” said Sarita.
“I’d like to do it, girls,” and Peggy’s tones vibrated with her suppressed energy.
“Much you would, if you once got inside and found that the whirlpool, or undertow, or what not, was no joke. Promise me that you’ll not try it.”
“Oh, I’ll not do anything of that sort without you girls. But if ever you do, I want to be along.”
“It is a bargain,” laughed Leslie, with no serious thoughts of its possibility.
Peggy had asked permission to stay at the Eyrie if she were asked for supper, rather imagining that she would be, if chance took her there at the time. Jack probably would be working with Dalton until late. She welcomed, accordingly, the suggestion of their going out in the Sea Crest to take a look at the great bulk of the headland where it jutted out in its irregular masses over the waters that bathed its base. Before leaving, however, Peggy tarried behind to carry out an idea.
It took the girls some time to climb carefully back to level ground and they took their own pace through the woods, or along the cliff, as fancy directed on their way back to the camp. They found Jack and Dalton perspiringly happy over their wood-chopping activities, for they were now trimming the trees of their branches and taking these to an open spot where they would dry for firewood.
“Don’t take the Sea Crest,” said Dalton. “Catch us a fish for supper, girls.”
“All right, we’ll either catch or buy one for you boys. Where’s Beth?”
“Haven’t seen her this afternoon. She said that she was going to write to Mrs. Marsh. I went down to the village for her to get some groceries; so mind you have a good supper for your workmen, Les!”
“We will. I’ll stop to see Beth.”
At the camp they found Beth bringing up her correspondence, which was such a waste of valuable time in this glorious spot, the girls thought. Leslie and Beth planned their meal, which was to be a good one, whether they caught a fish or not. Peggy received her desired invitation before they descended the rocky way to where the row boat was moored. Sarita had stopped at the tent to get her field glass.
They looked rather longingly at the Sea Crest, but their purpose could be as easily accomplished in the Swallow and there was a better chance of catching a fish for supper. Leslie was in charge of the fishing tackle and prepared to lure some unwary denizen of the deep to its destruction. So Sarita said, as she put her glass in a safe place and took the oars.
The bay was calm and beautiful. This, after all, was their chief pleasure.
Rowing steadily, for there was really no time to waste if they caught any fish for supper they reached the spot immediately opposite Pirates’ Cove and its frowning cavern.
“See? There are a lot of water birds now,” said Leslie, pointing to some herring gulls that floated contentedly in the cove, not very far from the opening.
“Yes,” said Sarita, “but remember that they can lift their little feet and fly away from any wave or tugging below.”
Letting her oars rest, Sarita took her glass and began to scan the rocks above. “What’s that sign up there?” she queried, her glass turned toward the left. “Funny! I never noticed it before.”
Sarita lowered her glass and looked at the girls. Peggy was as sober as a judge, her eyes widening. “Let Leslie look first,” she said, as Sarita offered her the lenses.
Sarita put them into Leslie’s hand and she, too, expressed surprise. “There doesn’t seem to be anything written on it,” she remarked, still looking. “It is just a square white thing of some sort.”
Sarita looked again and then offered the glass again to Peggy, who did not try to keep from laughing now. “You little mischief!”
Leslie cried. “Sarita, that is where we were this afternoon and Peggy stuck something up there. What is it, Peggy?”
“Oh, there was just a piece of pasteboard in the bottom of the basket and I had a brilliant thought. That is why I stayed behind and you had to call to me to hurry up. I just pinned our paper napkins on top of the pasteboard and then stuck it up. The first good wind will blow it down. I thought that we could tell from down here what was next to it, you know, and whether there would be any chance of getting around any further.”
“Did you want our retreat discovered, Peggy?”
“I thought of that, but I imagine that people have climbed all over there before, don’t you?”
“Very likely,” Leslie replied. “Now be good children while I get ready to catch Dal’s fish.”
The boat had drifted a little, and Peggy, who now was the only one with oars, looked mischievous as she allowed it to go just within the circle indicated by the chief buoy and one or two others. The other girls did not notice. Sarita was scanning the cliff and Leslie was engaged with the line.
But they heard a hail and saw a boat approaching. “They’d better do all their calling before I begin to fish,” said Leslie, looking at the approaching boat. “That’s Bill and there’s somebody else—oh, it’s Tom! We haven’t seen him for an age.”
Tom was beckoning and Leslie looked around to see what could be the matter. “Peggy,” she said, “child, you’ve gotten us inside the forbidden territory. Pull out!”
Peggy did so without a word, but Tom continued to pull toward them and came up smiling. “How do you do, Miss Secrest and—?” He did not mention the other names, but took off his cap in salute. “Bill called my attention to you and I saw that you were in dangerous quarters, so I rowed over. See what luck we have had.”
Tom displayed the fish in the bottom of their boat with pride, while the girls acknowledged the presence of Bill with little nods and “how do you do’s.” He was not very responsive and one “How do you do, Miss?” sufficed for all.
The Second Girl Detective Megapack: 23 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls Page 299