“Then the Chinaman saw a chance to make a lot of easy money. He put them to work in his laundry—virtually made slaves of them. Fixed up that old scow for them secretly and made them sneak back and forth to work during the night.
“That lasted for a time, then the greedy old Chinaman suddenly disappeared. Negontisks sacrificed him to the blue god, like as not. Served him right too.
“But that was where the police took up the trail. The savages knew there was trouble coming. They thought you were a plant—that you were set here to spy on them. They’d been betrayed by some woman before, it seems. When they couldn’t get rid of you by frightening you, they decided to cut you loose in a storm.”
“And now—” began Florence.
“Now they’ve vanished. Not a trace of them has been seen since that night.”
“Not a trace?”
“Not one.”
“Why then,” exclaimed Florence leaping to her feet, “I invite you all to a ghost hunt. A ghost hunt for a blue god.”
“Anything for a last nighter,” agreed Lucile.
“For this type of ghost hunt,” said Florence, “one needs an ax and two kettles of boiling water.”
“I’ll provide the ax,” volunteered Mark.
“And we the boiling water,” chimed in Marian and Lucile in unison.
It was a strange little procession that stole from the shadow of the O Moo a short time later. Florence led the way. She was profoundly silent. Lucile and Marian followed, each with a tea kettle of boiling water carefully poised at her side. Mark, as a sort of vanguard, brought up the rear with his ax. Now and then Mark let forth a low chuckle.
“Sh!” Marian warned. “You might disturb her serious poise.”
Straight away toward the end of the lagoon Florence led them. Once on the surface of the lagoon her course was scarcely less certain until she had reached a point in the center of the broad, glistening surface.
“Should be right about here,” she murmured.
Snapping on a flashlight she moved slowly backward and forward, studying the ice beneath the circle of intense light.
“Cold place for a ghost,” whispered Mark.
“Ten thousand people have skated over it and cut it down. Can’t tell. Maybe it’s gone,” Florence said under her breath, but still she kept up the search.
“Water’s getting cooled off in the kettles. Ghost won’t mind it at all,” whispered Mark.
Pausing on tiptoe for a moment, Florence fixed her eyes on a certain spot. Then, bending over, she brushed the ice clear of frost.
“There!” she announced. “There! That’s it.”
“Right here,” she pointed, motioning to Mark. “Cut here. No—let me have the ax. You might go too deep.”
With measured and cautious swings she began hacking a circle in the ice some two and a half feet in circumference.
Mark’s amusement had vanished. Curious as the others, he bent over and watched in awed silence. Eight inches of solid ice had been chipped up and thrown out when they began noticing its peculiar blueness.
“Like a frozen tub of blueing,” whispered Marian.
“Sh!” warned Lucile.
“Now, let’s have the water.”
Florence took one of the teakettles and poured the hot water into the hole she had cut.
As they stood there staring with all their eyes, they thought they made out the outline of something.
“Like a dream picture on the movie screen,” whispered Marian.
Lucile pinched her arm.
“A face,” came from Mark.
Suddenly Lucile gasped, wavered, and all but sank down upon the ice.
“The face!” she cried in a muffled scream. “The horrible blue face.”
“I thought it might be.” Florence’s voice was tense with emotion.
She poured the second kettle of water into the hole.
The pool of water was blue, but through it there appeared the dim outlines of an unspeakably ugly face.
With trembling fingers Florence tested the water. Twice she found it too hot. The third time she plunged in her hand. There followed a sound of water being sucked up by some object. The next instant she placed on the ice, within the circle of light, a strange affair of blue stone.
Covering her eyes Lucile sprang back shuddering. “The blue face! The terrible blue face.”
Marian and Mark stared curiously.
Florence straightened up. “That,” she said with an air of great satisfaction, “is the marvelous and much-sought blue god.”
“Oh! Ah!” came from Marian and Mark. Lucile uncovered her eyes to look.
“Perfectly harmless; merely a blue jade carving. Nevertheless a thing of some importance, unless I miss my guess,” said Florence. “I suggest that we take it to the police station.”
“Tonight?” exclaimed Marian.
“Oh, yes! Right now!” demanded Lucile through chattering teeth. “I could never sleep with that thing on board the O Moo.”
Arrived at police headquarters, they asked for their friend, the sergeant. When he came out, his eyes appeared heavy with sleep, but once they fell upon the thing of blue jade it seemed that they would pop out of his head.
“It ain’t!” he exclaimed. “It is! No, it can’t be.”
Taking it in his hands he turned it over and over, muttering to himself. Then, “Wait a minute,” he said. Handing the blue face to Florence, he dashed to the telephone.
There for a moment he quarreled with an operator, then talked to someone for an instant.
“That,” he said as he returned, “was your friend, Mr. Cole, from down in the new museum. He lives near here. He’s coming over. He’ll tell us for sure. He knows everything. Sit down.”
For ten minutes nothing was heard in the room save the tick-tock of a prodigious clock hung against the wall. From Florence’s lap the blue god leered defiance to the world.
Suddenly a man without hat or collar dashed into the room. It was Cole.
“Where is it?” he demanded breathlessly.
“Here.” Florence held out the blue face.
For a full five minutes the great curator studied the face in silence. Turning it over and over, he now and again uttered a little cry of delight.
Florence, as she watched him, thought he could not have been more pleased had a long-lost son been returned to him.
“It is!” he murmured at last. “It is the blue god of the Negontisks.”
“See that!” exclaimed the sergeant, springing to his feet. “I told you he’d know. And that’s the end of that business. The whole gang of ’em was caught in Sioux City, Iowa, last night, but they didn’t have the blue god. They’ll be deported.”
“Will—will you give it back to them now?” faltered Lucile.
“Give it back?” he roared. “I’d say not! You don’t know what crimes have been committed in the name of the blue god. No! No! We’ll not give it back. If they must have one when they get to where they’re going they’ll have to find a new one.”
“Sergeant,” said Cole, “I’d like to speak with you, privately.”
“Oh! All right.”
The two adjourned to a corner, where for some time they conversed earnestly. The sergeant might be seen to shake his head emphatically from time to time.
At last they returned to the group.
“I have been trying,” said Cole thoughtfully, “to persuade the sergeant to allow you to sell the blue god to our museum. It is worth considerable money merely as a specimen, but he won’t hear to it; says it’s sort of contraband and must be held by the police. I’m sorry. I’m sure you could have used the money to good advantage.”
“Oh, that’s all right—” The words stuck in Florence’s throat.
“Hold on now! Hold on!” exclaimed the sergeant, growing very red in the face. “I’m not so hard-hearted as I might seem. There’s a reward of five hundred dollars offered for the arrest and conviction—or words to that effect—of this here blue
god. Now you girls have arrested him and before Mr. Cole he’s been convicted. All’s left is to make out the claims and I’ll do that free gratis and for nothing.”
“Five hun—five hundred dollars!” the girls exclaimed.
The sergeant stepped back a pace. It was evident that he was in fear of the embarrassment which might come to him by being embraced by three young ladies in a police station.
“I—I’ll lock him up for the night,” he muttered huskily and promptly disappeared into a vault.
“Well, I guess that’s all of that,” breathed Florence. “Quite a thrilling night for our last on the O Moo.”
“Not quite all,” said Cole. “There’s still the blue candlestick. The state makes no claims upon that. In the name of the museum I offer you two hundred dollars for it. How about it?”
“Splendid! Wonderful!” came from the girls.
“All right. Come round in the morning for the check. Good-night.” He disappeared into the darkness.
“We—we’re rich,” sighed Lucile as they walked toward the O Moo, “but you know I have a private fortune.”
She drew a letter from her pocket and waved it in air. “One hundred dollars for my story. Hooray!”
“Hooray!” came from the rest.
“Of course,” sighed Lucile, “the editor said the check would spoil me for life, but since the story was worth it he was bound to buy it. Regular fatherly letter, but he’s a dear and the check is real money.”
“To eat has a more pleasant sound than to sleep,” said Florence when they were once more in the cabin of the O Moo. “What do you say to lamb chops, french fried potatoes, hot coffee and doughnuts?”
“At two in the morning?” grinned Mark.
“What’s a better time? All in favor, say ‘aye.’ The ayes have it.”
“There are a few things I don’t yet understand,” said Lucile as they sat enjoying their repast.
“And a lot that I don’t,” added Mark. “Miss Florence Huyler, the pleasure’s all yours.”
“Well,” said Florence, “it was about like this: The Negontisks were living in that old scow. Instead of three or four sleepy old Chinamen, there were twenty or thirty near-savages skulking about this dry dock. Being afraid of us, they tacked a note of warning to our yacht. When we didn’t leave they decided to frighten us or kill us, I don’t know which. They chased me into the old museum and tried to surround Lucile among the ice-piles. Lucile’s seeing the blue face in the old Mission was of course an accident; so too was my finding the blue candlestick. That man who chased me lost it. When other plans failed they decided to set us adrift, which they did.”
“But the blue god frozen in the ice?” questioned Marian.
“You remember the two men with the sled and the one man who appeared to come from nowhere? Well, I guess he was dropped off the sled with the blue god, a jug of blue water, and an ax. He cut a hole in the ice and, after covering the blue god with blue water left it to be frozen in. I stumbled upon the spot next morning. Little by little I guessed what was hidden there and how it was hidden.”
“Seems strange they never came back for it,” said Lucile.
“Police were too hot on their tracks,” declared Mark. “They didn’t dare to.”
“And that,” said Florence, “is the story of the blue god. Quite an exciting episode. Tomorrow we enter upon the monotonous life of modern city cave dwellers. Good-bye to romance.”
“Well,” said Mark, “you never can tell.”
He rose. “I must bid you good-night and good-bye. I work in the ‘stacks’ of your great university library. Come to see me there sometime. Perhaps I might dish up a bit of excitement for you, you never can tell.”
He bowed himself out of the cabin. Fifteen minutes later the cabin was dark. The cruise of the O Moo was at an end.
THE SECRET MARK, by Roy Snell
CHAPTER I
A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR
Lucile Tucker’s slim, tapered fingers trembled slightly as she rested them against a steel-framed bookcase. She had paused to steady her shaken nerves, to collect her wits, to determine what her next move should be.
“Who can it be?” her madly thumping heart kept asking her.
And, indeed, who, besides herself, could be in the book stacks at this hour of the night?
About her, ranging tier on tier, towering from floor to ceiling, were books, thousands on thousands of books. The two floors above were full of books. The two below were the same. This place was a perfect maze of books. It was one of the sections of a great library, the library of one of the finest universities of the United States.
In all this vast “city of books” she had thought herself quite alone.
It was a ghostly hour. Midnight. In the towers the great clock had slowly struck. Besides the striking of the clock there had been but a single sound: the click of an electric light snapped on. There had instantly gleamed at her feet a single ray of light. That light had traveled beneath many tiers of books to reach her. She thought it must be four but was not quite sure.
She had been preparing to leave the “maze,” as she often called the stacks of books which loomed all about her. So familiar was she with the interior of this building that she needed no light to guide her. To her right was a spiral stairway which like an auger bored its way to the ground four stories below. Straight ahead, twenty tiers of books away, was a small electric elevator, used only for lifting or lowering piles of books. Fourteen tiers back was a straight stairway. To a person unfamiliar with it, the stacks presented a bewildering labyrinth, but to Lucile they were an open book.
She had intended making her way back to the straight stairway which led to the door by which she must leave. But now she clutched at her heart as she asked herself once more:
“Who can it be? And what does he want?”
Only one thing stood out clearly in her bewildered brain: Since she was connected with the stacks as one of their keepers, it was plainly her duty to discover who this intruder might be and, if occasion seemed to warrant, to report the case to her superiors.
The university owned many rare and valuable books. She had often wondered that so many of these were kept, not in vaults, but in open shelves.
Her heart gave a new bound of terror as she remembered that some of these, the most valuable of all, were at the very spot from which the light came.
“Oh! Shame! Why be so foolish?” she whispered to herself suddenly. “Probably some professor with a pass-key. Probably—but what’s the use? I’ve got to find out.”
With that she began moving stealthily along the narrow passageway which lay between the stacks. Tiptoeing along, with her heart thumping so loudly she could not help feeling it might be heard, she advanced step by step until she stood beside the end of the stack nearest the strange intruder. There for a few seconds she stuck. The last ounce of courage had oozed out. She must await its return.
Then with a sudden burst of courage she swung round the corner.
The next instant she was obliged to exert all her available energy to suppress a laugh. Standing in the circle of light was not some burly robber, but a child, a very small and innocent looking child.
Yet a second glance told her that the child was older than she looked. Her face showed that. Old as the face was, the body of the child appeared tiny as a sparrow’s. A green velvet blouse of some strangely foreign weave, a coarse skirt, a pair of heavy shoes, unnoticeable stockings and that face—all this flashed into her vision for a second. Then all was darkness; the light had been snapped out.
The action was so sudden and unexpected that for a few seconds the young librarian stood where she was, motionless. Wild questions raced through her mind: Who was the child? What was she doing in the library at this unearthly hour? How had she gotten in? How did she expect to get out?
She had a vaguely uneasy feeling that the child carried a package. What could that be other than books? A second question suddenly disturbed her: Who was this child
? Had she seen her before? She felt sure she had. But where? Where?
All this questioning took but seconds. The next turn found her mind focused on the one important question: Which way had the child gone? As if in answer to her question, her alert ears caught the soft pit-pat of footsteps.
“She’s going on to my right,” she whispered to herself. “That’s good. There is no exit in that direction, only windows and an impossible drop of fifty feet. I’ll tiptoe along, throw on the general switch, catch her at that end and find out why she is here. Probably accepting a dare or going through with some childish prank.”
Hastily she tiptoed down the aisle between the stacks. Then, turning to her left, she put out her hand, touched a switch and released a flood of light. At first its brightness blinded her. The next instant she stared about her in astonishment. The place was empty.
“Deserted as a tomb,” she whispered.
And so it was. Not a trace of the child was to be seen.
“As if I hadn’t seen her at all!” she murmured. “I don’t believe in ghosts, but—where have I seen that face before? You’d never forget it, once you’d seen it. And I have seen it. But where?”
Meditatively she walked to the dummy elevator which carried books up and down. She started as her glance fell upon it. The carrier had been on this floor when she left it not fifteen minutes before. Now it was gone. The button that released it was pressed in for the ground floor.
“She couldn’t have,” she murmured. “The compartment isn’t over two feet square.”
She stared again. Then she pressed the button for the return of the elevator. The car moved silently upward to stop at her door. There was nothing about it to show that it had been used for unusual purposes.
“And yet she might have,” she mused. “She was so tiny. She might have pressed herself into it and ridden down.”
Suddenly she switched off the lights and hurried to a window. Did she catch a glimpse of a retreating figure at the far side of the campus? She could not be sure. The lights were flickering, uncertain.
“Well,” she shook herself, then shivered, “I guess that’s about all of that. Ought to report it, but I won’t. They’d only laugh at me.”
The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls Page 68