Lucile shivered as she caught sight of a large, low, rambling building which lay well up from the shore.
“What next?” she whispered to herself.
The storm was still rumbling in the west. The sky to the east was clear. Out from the black waters of the lake the moon was rolling. Its light suddenly brightened up the shore. The girls stared about them.
Up from the beach a little way was an affair which resembled an Indian tepee. It was built of boards and covered with birch bark. Its white sides glimmered in the moonlight. Through the shadows of trees and shrubbery they made out a rustic pavilion and beyond that the cottage which was built in rustic fashion as befits a summer residence of a millionaire, although little short of a mansion.
“Wouldn’t you like to see the inside of it?” breathed Florence. “I’ve always wondered what such a place was like.”
“Yes,” whispered Lucile, “but I’d prefer daylight.”
They had been following the child. She had led them as far as a rustic arbor. Built of cedar poles with the bark left on, this presented itself as an inviting place to rest.
“You stay here,” the child whispered. “I’ll come back.”
She vanished into the shadows.
“Well!” whispered Lucile.
“What do you make of it?” Florence asked.
“Nothing yet.”
“Is someone here to meet her or is she entering the place to get something?”
“Don’t know. I—”
Lucile stopped short. “Did you see that?” she whispered tensely as she gripped her companion’s arm.
“What?”
“There was a flash of light in the right wing of the building, like the flicker of a match.”
“She can’t have reached there yet.”
“No.”
“Do you think we should warn her? I can’t help thinking she’s going to break into the place.”
“If she is, she should be caught. If we think she is, perhaps we should notify the police.”
“The police? In such a place? You forget that we are many miles from the city and two or three miles from even a railroad station. Guess we’ll have to see it through.”
“Let’s do it then?”
The two girls rose and began making their way stealthily in the direction the child had taken.
Now and again they paused to listen. Once they heard a sound like the creaking of a door. Lucile caught a second flash of light.
They paused behind two pine trees not ten feet from the side entrance.
The wind rustled in the pine trees. The water broke ceaselessly on the shore. Otherwise all was silence.
“Creepy,” whispered Lucile.
“Ghostly,” Florence shivered.
“I believe that door’s ajar.”
“It is.”
“Let’s creep up close.”
The next moment found them flattened against the wall beside the door.
This door stood half open. Suddenly they caught a flash of light. Leaning far over to peer within, they saw the child bent over before a huge bookcase. The room, half illumined by her flashlight, was a large lounging room. The trimmings were rustic and massive. Beamed ceiling and heavy beams along the walls were flanked by a huge fireplace at the back. The furniture was in keeping, massive mission oak with leather cushions on chairs.
“What a wonderful place!” Florence whispered. “What wouldn’t one give to have it for a study?”
The child had taken three books from the shelves. All these she replaced. She was examining the fourth when Lucile whispered, “That’s the one she has come for.”
“Why?”
“The light fell full upon the inside of the cover. I saw the gargoyle there.”
The prediction proved a true one, for, after carefully closing the case, the child switched off the light.
Scarcely realizing what they were doing, the girls lingered by the door. Then suddenly Lucile realized their position. “She’ll be here in a second,” she whispered.
They turned, but not quickly enough, for of a sudden a glare of light from a powerful electric flashlight blinded them while a masculine voice with a distinctly youthful ring to it demanded:
“Who’s there?”
To their consternation, the girls felt the child bump into them as she backed away and there they all stood framed in a circle of light.
The glaring light with darkness behind it made it impossible for them to see the new arrival but Lucile knew instantly from the voice that it was the millionaire’s son.
For a full moment no one spoke. The tick-tock of a prodigious clock in one corner of the room sounded out like the ringing of a curfew.
“Oh! I see,” came at last in youthful tones from the corner; “just some girls. And pretty ones, too, I’ll be bound. Came to borrow a book, did you? Who let you in, I wonder. But never mind. Suppose you’re here for a week-end at one of the cottages and needed some reading matter. Rather unconventional way of getting it, but it’s all right. Just drop it in the mail box at the gate when you’re done with it.”
The girls suddenly became conscious of the fact that the child was doing her best to push them out of the door.
Yielding to her backward shoves, they sank away into the shadows and, scarcely believing their senses, found themselves apparently quite free to go their way.
“That,” breathed Florence, “was awful decent of him.”
“Decent?” Lucile exploded. “It—it was grand. Look here,” she turned almost savagely upon the child, “you didn’t intend to give that book back but you’re going to do it. You’re going to put it in that mail box tonight.”
“Oh, no, I’m not,” the child said cheerfully.
“You—you’re not?” Lucile stammered. “What right have you to keep it?”
“What right has he? It does not belong to him. It belongs to Monsieur Le Bon.”
“Why, that’s nonsense! That—” Lucile broke off suddenly. “Look!” she exclaimed. “The boat’s gone!”
It was all too true. They had reached the beach where they had left the boat. It had vanished.
“So we are prisoners after all,” Florence whispered.
“And, and he was just making fun of us. He knew we couldn’t get away,” breathed Lucile, sinking hopelessly down upon the sand.
CHAPTER XVII
A BATTLE IN THE NIGHT
“Oh, brace up!” exclaimed Florence, a note of impatience creeping into her voice. “We’ll get out of this place some way. Perhaps the boat wasn’t taken. Perhaps it has—”
She stopped to stare away across the water.
“I believe it’s out there away down the beach. Look, Lucile. Look sharp.”
The moon had gone behind a small cloud. As it came out they could see clearly the dark bulk of the boat dancing on the water, which was by now roughening up before the rising storm.
“It’s out there,” exclaimed Florence. “We failed to pull it ashore far enough. There is a side sweep to the waves that carried it out. We must get it.”
“Yes, oh, yes, we must!” the child exclaimed. “It wasn’t mine; it was borrowed.”
“You borrow a lot of things,” exclaimed Florence.
“Oh, no, indeed. Not many, not hardly any at all.”
“But, Florence, how can we get it?” protested Lucile.
“I’m a strong swimmer. I swam a mile once. The boat’s out only a few hundred yards. It will be easy.”
“Not with your clothes on.”
Florence did not answer. She threw a glance toward the millionaire’s cottage. All was dark there.
“Here!” Lucile felt a garment thrust into her hands, then another and another.
“Florence, you mustn’t.”
“It’s the only way.”
A moment later Florence’s white body gleamed in the moonlight as she raced away down the beach to gain the point nearest the boat.
To the listening ears of Lucile and the child there came the sound of a s
plash, then the slow plash, plash, plash of a swimmer’s strokes. Florence was away and swimming strong. But the wind from off a point had caught the boat and was carrying it out from shore, driving it on faster than she knew.
Confident of her ability to reach the goal in a mere breath of time, she struck out at once with the splendid swing of the Australian crawl. Trained to the pink of perfection, her every muscle in condition, she laughed at the wavelets that lifted her up only to drop her down again and now and again to dash a saucy handful of spray in her face. She laughed and even hummed a snatch of an old sea song. She was as much at home in the water as in her room at the university.
But now, as she got farther from the shore, the waves grew in size and force. They impeded her progress. The shore was protected by a rocky point farther up the beach. She was rapidly leaving that protection.
Throwing herself high out of the water, she looked for the boat. A little cry of consternation escaped her lips. She had expected to find it close at hand. It seemed as far away as when she had first seen it.
“It’s the wind off the point,” she breathed. “It’s taking it out to sea. It—it’s going to be a battle, a real scrap.”
Once more she struck out with the powerful stroke which carries one far but draws heavily upon his emergency fund of energy.
For three full moments she battled the waves; then, all but breathless, she slipped over on her back to do the dead man’s float.
“Just for a few seconds. Got to save my strength, but I can’t waste time.”
Now for the first time she realized that there was a possibility that she would lose this fight. The realization of what it meant if she did lose, swept over her and left her cold and numb. To go back was impossible; the wind and waves were too strong for that. To fail to reach the boat meant death.
Turning back again into swimming position, she struck out once more. But this time it was not the crawl. That cost too much. With an easy, hand-over-hand swing which taxed the reserve forces little more than floating, she set her teeth hard, resolved slowly but surely to win her way to the boat and to safety.
Moments passed. Long, agonizing moments.
Lucile on the shore, by the gleam of a flare of lightning, caught now and then a glimpse of the swimmer. Little by little she became conscious of the real situation. When it dawned upon her that Florence was in real peril, she thought of rushing to the cottage and calling to her assistance any who might be there. Then she looked at the bundle of clothing in her arms and flushed.
“She’d never forgive me,” she whispered.
Florence, still battling, felt the spray break over her, but still kept on the even swing. Now and again, high on the crest of a wave, she saw the boat. She was cheered by the fact that each time it appeared to loom a little larger.
“Gaining,” she whispered. “Fifty yards to go!”
Again moments passed and again she whispered, “Gaining. Thirty yards.”
A third time she whispered, “Twenty yards.”
After that it was a quiet, muscle-straining, heart-breaking, silent battle, which caused her very senses to reel. Indeed at times she appeared conscious of only one thing, the mechanical swing of her arms, the kick, kick of her feet. They seemed but mechanical attachments run by some electrical power.
When at last the boat loomed black and large on the crest of a wave just above her she had barely enough brain energy left to order her arms into a new motion.
Striking upward with her right hand, she gripped the craft’s side. The next instant, with a superhuman effort, without overturning it she threw herself into the boat, there to fall panting across a seat.
“Wha—what a battle!” she gasped. “But I won! I won!”
For two minutes she lay there motionless. Then, drawing herself stiffly up to a sitting position, she adjusted the oars to their oarlocks and, bending forward, threw all her magnificent strength into the business of battling the waves and bringing the boat safely ashore.
There are few crafts more capable of riding a stormy sea than is a clinker-built rowboat. Light as a cork, it rides the waves like a seagull. Florence was not long in finding this out. Her trip ashore was one of joyous triumph. She had fought a hard physical battle and won. This was her hour of triumph. Her lips thrilled a “Hi-le-hi-le-hi-lo” which was heard with delight by her friends on land. Her bare arms worked like twin levers to a powerful engine, as she brought the boat around and shot it toward shore.
A moment for rejoicing, two for dressing, then they all three tumbled into the boat to make the tossing trip round the wall to shore on the other side.
For the moment the book tightly pressed under the child’s arm was forgotten. Florence talked of swimming and rowing. She talked of plans for a possible summer’s outing which included days upon the water and weeks within the forest primeval.
As they left the boat on the beach, they could see that the storm was passing to the north of them. It had, however, hidden the moon. The path through the forest and across the river was engulfed in darkness.
Once more the child prattled of haunts, spooks, and goblins, but for once Lucile’s nerves were not disturbed. Her mind had gone back to the old problems, the mystery of the gargoyle and all the knotty questions which had come to be associated with it.
This night a new mystery had thrust its head up out of the dark and an old theory had been exploded. She had thought that the young millionaire’s son might be in league with the old man and the child in carrying away and disposing of old and valuable books, but here was the child coming out to this all but deserted cottage at night to take a book from the young man’s library.
“He hasn’t a thing in the world to do with it,” she told herself. “He—”
She paused in her perplexing problem to grip her companion’s arm and whisper, “What was that?”
They were nearing the plank bridge. She felt certain that she heard a footstep upon it. But now as she listened she heard nothing but the onrush of distant waters.
“Just your nerves,” answered Florence.
“It was not. I was not thinking of the child’s foolish chatter. I was thinking of our problem, of the gargoyle’s secret. Someone is crossing the bridge.”
Even as she spoke, as if in proof of her declaration, there came a faint pat-pat-pat, as of someone moving on the bridge on tiptoe.
“Someone is shadowing us,” Lucile whispered.
“Looks that way.”
“Who is it?”
“Someone from the cottage perhaps. Watching to see what the child does with the book. She must take it back.”
“Yes, she must.”
“It might be,” and here even stout-hearted Florence shuddered, “it might be that someone had shadowed us all the way from the city.”
“The one who followed me the night I got caught in that wretched woman’s house, and other times?”
“Yes.”
“But he couldn’t have gone all the way, not up to the cottage. He couldn’t get through the fence and there was no other boat.”
“Well, anyway, whoever it is, we must go on. Won’t do any good standing here shivering.”
Once more they pressed into the dark and once more Lucile resumed her attempt to disentangle the many problems which lay before her.
CHAPTER XVIII
FRANK MORROW JOINS IN THE HUNT
That she had reached the limit of her resources, her power to reason and to endure, Lucile knew right well. To go on as she had been day after day, each day adding some new responsibility to her already overburdened shoulders, was to invite disaster. It was not fair to others. The set of Shakespeare, the volume of Portland charts, the hand-bound volume from the bindery and this book just taken from the summer home of the millionaire, were all for the moment in the hands of the old man and the child. How long would they remain there? No one could tell save the old man and perhaps the child.
That she had had no part whatever in the taking of any of them, unle
ss her accompanying of the child on this trip might be called taking a part, she knew quite well. Yet one is responsible for what one knows.
“I should have told what I knew about the set of Shakespeare in the beginning,” she chided herself. “Then there would have been no other problems. All the other books would be at this moment in their proper places and the old man and child would be—”
She could not say the words, “in jail.” It was too terrible to contemplate! That man and that child in jail! And, yet, she suddenly remembered the child’s declaration that she would not return the book to the summer cottage. She had said the book belonged to the old man. Perhaps, after all, it did. She had seen the millionaire’s son in the mystery room talking to the old man. Perhaps, after all, he had borrowed the book and the child had been sent for it. There was some consolation in that thought.
“But that does not solve any of the other problems,” she told herself, “and, besides, if she has a right to the book, why all this creeping up to the cottage by night by way of the water. And why did he assume that she was borrowing it?”
And so, after all her speculation, she found herself just where she had left off; the tangle was no less a tangle than before.
“Question is,” she whispered to herself, “am I going to go to the police or to the university authorities with the story and have these mysterious people arrested, or am I not?”
They reached the station just as the last train was pulling in. Florence and the child had climbed aboard and Lucile had her hand on the rail when she saw a skulking figure emerge from the shadows of the station. The person, whoever he might be, darted down the track to climb upon the back platform just as the train pulled out.
“That,” Lucile told herself, “is the person who crossed the bridge ahead of us. He is spying on us. I wonder who he is and what he knows.” A cold chill swept over her as if a winter blast had passed down the car.
When Florence had been told of what Lucile had seen, she suggested that they go back and see who the man was.
“What’s the use?” said Lucile. “We can’t prove that he’s following us. It would only get us into another mess and goodness knows we’re in enough now.”
So, with the mystery child curled up fast asleep in a seat before them, hugging the newly acquired book as though it were a doll, they rattled back toward the city.
The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls Page 76