The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls

by Mildred A. Wirt

  “Hardly,” agreed Sim. “Well, he certainly never saw us. I don’t believe I’d like to have tea with him.”

  “Oh, I think he looks sweet,” declared Arden.

  “Then you won’t need sugar in your tea,” laughed Terry. “But let’s hurry and mail these letters. It would never do to be late for our first class.”

  They had reached the tracks of the Delawanna Railroad, the line that ran from New York to Morrisville, the small city nearest the college. From force of habit the girls stopped and looked up and down the rails for the possible approach of a train. Soon they would know when each one was expected. It was a tradition that by the time one was a senior at Cedar Ridge no watch was necessary, so familiar did the students become with the passage of the trains.

  The post office was a small one-roomed building with a stove in the center. Two windows, one for the sale of stamps and the other for the mailing of parcels, broke the stretch of tiers of glass-fronted boxes behind which the business was carried on. For the post office served the town as well as the college.

  The side walls were literally papered with police posters offering rewards for the arrest, or information leading to the arrest or apprehension, of various persons—criminals—men and women. The posters were from the police departments of several cities, New York among them. Many of the placards were adorned with profiles and front views of the oddest faces the girls had ever seen.

  “Oh, for the love of stamps!” gasped Arden when they had dropped their letters in the slot and were looking at the posters. “What nightmares!”

  “Aren’t they awful!” agreed Terry.

  “Not a good-looking man among them,” was Sim’s opinion. “I’ve heard about these posters. They’ve been here, some of them, for I don’t know how long. It’s a sort of a game among the girls to see who can find the funniest face.”

  “Let’s try it,” suggested Arden, laughing. Suddenly she ceased her mirth and stood as if fascinated in front of a poster showing the full-face picture of a young man. He was rather good-looking and quite an exception to the other portraits so publicly displayed. His face, like most of the others, was smooth, unadorned by beard or mustache.

  “Terry!” impulsively exclaimed Arden. “Look! Haven’t you seen that face before?”

  Terry considered carefully before slowly answering:

  “No, I don’t believe I have. It isn’t a bad face, though.”

  “Rather interesting,” agreed Sim. “What’s he wanted for, murder or bank robbery?”

  “Neither,” answered Arden. “Listen.” She read from the poster:

  “One thousand dollars reward for information as to the whereabouts of Harry Pangborn.” Then followed a general description, the age being given as twenty-three, and there was added the statement that the young man had suddenly disappeared from his home on the estate of his grandfather, Remington Pangborn, on Long Island.

  Part of the poster consisted of a statement from the attorneys of Remington Pangborn—the late Mr. Pangborn, it was made plain.

  “Harry Pangborn,” the statement read, “is not wanted on any criminal charge whatever. He disappeared from his friends and his usual haunts merely, it is surmised, because he was expected to assume the duties and responsibilities of the large estate he was about to inherit from his grandfather. It is understood that he stated he did not want the inheritance just yet. Of a high-strung and nervous temperament, Mr. Pangborn is believed to have gone away because the responsibilities of wealth are distasteful to him and also, perhaps, because he seeks adventure, of which he is very fond. If this meets his eye or if anyone can convey to him the information that he will be permitted to assume as much or as little of the estate as he wishes, a great service will have been done. All that is desired is that Harry Pangborn will return to his friends and relatives as soon as possible. His hasty action will be overlooked. It is rumored that Mr. Pangborn may be in the vicinity of Morrisville, though he may have gone abroad, as he was fond of foreign travel.

  “Information and claims for the above reward may be sent to Riker & Tabcorn, Attorneys, New York City, or to the local police department in the municipality where this poster is displayed.”

  The girls, crowding about Arden, read the poster with her. Then Sim said:

  “Maybe it was in the movies that you saw someone who reminds you of him, Arden. Harry Pangborn isn’t bad looking, compared to all the others.” With a sweeping gesture she indicated the various poster exhibits.

  “Why, he’s positively handsome when you put him alongside of Dead-eye Dick, here,” laughed Terry. “As for Two-gun Bobbie—”

  “I’m serious, girls,” interrupted Arden. “I’m sure I’ve seen this young man somewhere before. Now, if we could only locate him or tell the lawyers where to look for him and get this reward money, wouldn’t it be just wonderful?”

  “Grand!” agreed Terry. “But wake up, my dear. You’re dreaming!”

  “And I’ve just thought of something else!” went on Arden, oblivious of the banter.

  “What?”

  “If we did collect this money we could donate it to the college to have the swimming pool repaired.”

  “That’s sweet of you and a good idea, Arden, but I don’t believe we could do it,” objected Sim. “Besides, I don’t exactly believe what it says on this poster. It seems very silly for a young fellow to disappear just when he’s coming into a lot of money—a fortune.”

  “Perhaps he was made to disappear,” suggested Terry, her eyes opening wide.

  “Oh! You mean—kidnapped?” asked Arden.

  “Yes.”

  “Worse and more of it!” laughed Sim.

  “Well, anyhow, we could try, couldn’t we?” Arden asked. “You’d help, wouldn’t you, Terry?”

  “Yes, indeed I’ll help. I’ve always fancied myself in the rôle of a detective, spouting pithy Chinese philosophy and generally getting underfoot.”

  “Now, Terry, just be serious for once. And Sim, you also. You know how disappointed you were when you found out the swimming pool was—”

  “Kapoot!” chuckled Sim, supplying Arden’s evident lack of a word with the latest Russian expression. “Go on!”

  “Well,” resumed Arden, pouting a little, “you never can tell. Maybe we could do it. It isn’t impossible. Stranger things have happened. And I just know I’ve seen that young man on the poster somewhere before. If I could only remember where! Did either of you ever have that feeling?”

  “Lots of times. I’m for you, Arden!” declared Sim. “I’ll do what I can and whatever you say. This mysterious Harry Pangborn may very well be right around here.”

  “Around Cedar Ridge!” shrilled Terry.

  “Certainly! Why not? If the authorities didn’t think it likely that he might be in this vicinity, why did they put the poster up here in the post office? And they mentioned Morrisville,” challenged Sim.

  “There’s something in that,” Terry admitted.

  “Oh, if he should be in hiding around here and we could find him and claim the thousand dollars reward,” breathed Arden, “wouldn’t it be just wonderful! And what a sensation when we magnanimously turned the money over to the college for the swimming pool. Oh, oh!”

  “Would you do that for dear old Alma Mater when you don’t know her so very well?” asked Sim, who, with her chums, was still gazing at the poster of the good-looking but missing heir of the Pangborn estate of millions.

  “I’d do it for you, Sim, dear,” murmured Arden. “I want you to be happy here, since I teased you so to come.”

  “And you think I won’t be happy without the swimming pool?”

  “Will you?”

  “Not as happy as I would be with it.”

  “But even admitting that this missing young man may be around here,” suggested Terry, “what chance have we of finding him? We have so much college work to do. For, after all, we were sent here to learn something,” she sighed.

  “Granted,” laughed Arden. “Bu
t we may find time for a little detective work on the side as well as for hazing. Oh, it’s a wonderful prospect!” She swung around in a few dance steps right there in the old post office.

  “Well, we’d better be getting back,” suggested Sim after this. “Oh, look at the clock!” she gasped. Then followed a hurried sending of some picture postcards they had bought; cards on which they marked with an X the location of their room.

  The three chums were bubbling with life, laughter, and merriment as they turned to leave the little building, but their mirth was turned to alarm as a stern voice assailed them.

  “Young ladies!”

  They looked around to see Rev. Dr. Henry Bordmust sternly regarding them from the doorway.

  “Yes, Dr. Bordmust,” Sim almost whispered as the chaplain appeared to be waiting for formal recognition.

  “You are freshmen!” he accused, with a glance at their mortarboards, the tassels of which told the tale. “You know you are not permitted over here—in the post office. It is against the college rules—for you freshmen. Return at once! You must! You must!”

  He appeared strangely stirred and angry, and his dark brows, shading his bright little eyes, bent into a frown. But somehow, after that first booming and accusative “young ladies,” the chaplain seemed exhausted, as though the anger pent up in him had taken something from his none too profuse vitality. He was an old man. Now he essayed a wintry smile and added, as he gently waved them out with motions of his thin white hands:

  “That is to say, you shouldn’t have come here. You—er—have no need to be—er—frightened at this first infraction of the rules, but—er—another time you may be—er—campused for such action.”

  Then, having seen that the three were on their way out, Dr. Bordmust turned to the window, evidently to buy some stamps for the letters he held in one hand. He murmured to himself in those queer, quavering, meaningless tones:

  “Too bad; too bad! I can’t always be watching! Dear me!”

  Wonderingly, Arden and her chums looked at the shrinking figure in black as they passed out of the door. But Dr. Bordmust gave them no further attention.

  CHAPTER V

  Rescued

  Sim, who was hurrying after Arden and Terry up the steep hill on top of which was perched Bordmust Hall, uttered a series of frightened exclamations.

  “Oo-oo-oo! Oh, my! Oh, but I was frightened. Wasn’t he angry!”

  “Since Dr. Bordmust is our chaplain, it was probably what might be called righteous anger,” suggested Arden.

  “What do you suppose he meant when he spoke about not always watching?” asked Terry.

  “I don’t know,” Arden had to admit. “The girls say Dr. Bordmust is really queer at times. I suppose it is because he’s such a profound student. He knows such a lot, all about Egypt, so many languages, and they say ancient history is an open book to him.” Arden was fairly sprinting along the boardwalk that made the steep path up to Bordmust Hall a little easier. What with talking and hurrying, her breath was a bit gaspy.

  “Well, don’t ask me what it all means,” begged Terry. “I can’t even guess. But, oh! I do hope I’m not going to be late for this first class.”

  “So say we all of us,” chanted Sim.

  “They can’t be too severe at the very beginning,” murmured Arden.

  Bordmust Hall, where most of the class sessions were held, crowned with its classic architecture the summit of the long slope which formed the eminence of the broad acres about Cedar Ridge College. It was behind the main, or dormitory, building in which were housed the executive offices and the residence rooms of the faculty. To the southwest of the hall, and easily viewed from the steps, was the unused pool. To the northwest, and in line with the main building, was the beautiful Gothic chapel with its wonderful stained-glass windows. Near the chapel was the unimposing home of the chaplain, Rev. Dr. Bordmust; one of whose ancestors had partly endowed Cedar Ridge. For this reason the hall was named for him.

  At the foot of the slope on which the hall stood were the rambling fields and gardens where much of the farm produce for the college tables was raised. The nearest of the farm-lands, so called, was the orchard, part of which could be seen from the southeast windows of the dormitory. And it was this orchard that the taxi-man had indicated in such a warning manner. It was this orchard into which Tom Scott, the good-looking porter, had been staring the night of the arrival of Arden Blake and her chums. So much had been crowded into the comparatively short time the three freshmen had been at college that they had almost forgotten the strange orchard. Even now they had no chance to consider the matter, for they, with many other girls, were hastening to their first classes.

  They gave a momentary glance toward the orchard, with its quaint gnarled trees. The morning sun was glinting on red, dark-green, and golden russet apples which the gardener and his men had not yet started to gather.

  Arden, especially, gazed searchingly at the orchard. Apple trees grow in such strange shapes and huddle so closely to themselves, as if each one guarded a secret. There was a puzzled look in Arden’s blue eyes as she tried to guess what might be hidden by those trees and the tall hedge surrounding them.

  Sim was gazing rather sorrowfully at the pool building, but Terry was smiling, perhaps because everything seemed, for the moment, at least, to be so filled with good and pleasant life.

  “Go on in, kids!” Sim urged her two chums. “I’ll be along in a minute or two. I just want to take a look at—I just want to—oh, well, go on. Don’t wait for me.”

  “But won’t you be late?” objected Arden.

  “No, I have some time to my credit.”

  As her surprised friends watched, Sim left them and hurried down across a stretch of smooth lawn toward the disused swimming pool.

  “Too bad,” murmured Arden.

  “What is?” asked Terry.

  “I really think Sim feels more keenly than we realize about the pool. But she’s such a good sport. Look at her! Going to view the ashes of her hopes or the collapse of her dreams or something equally tragic.”

  “Don’t let’s say anything about this,” proposed Terry. “If Sim cares so much, I’m sure she’d rather not talk about this little visit.”

  Arden agreed and, taking Terry’s arm, they hurried into the hall.

  Sim reached the pool building and tried to get some idea of the wreck within by peering through a window. But the sill was too high to afford a view, even if the window had not been made of heavily frosted glass, quite opaque.

  Then she stepped back and gazed up at the copper and glass domed roof. Around the top of the building were set at intervals glazed tiles depicting nautical scenes. Dolphins were diving merrily as if to tantalize sea horses with necks proudly arched, and mermaids flicked their tails disdainfully at Father Neptune.

  “I may as well try the door,” Sim murmured. “I’d like to see what it’s like inside, though it will probably break my heart!”

  After several hard pushes to the extent of her strength, she succeeded in swinging back the door. She found herself in a sort of vestibule, but the inner door of this opened easily, and then Sim stood almost on the edge of the abandoned pool.

  A peculiar smell assailed her, as of a place long shut up, but at the same time it had something of out-of-doors about it, the odor of clean earth and ripe vegetables.

  “It isn’t as bad as Toots said,” mused Sim. “At least, it looks as though there isn’t so very much the matter. It isn’t filled with vegetables, either; just a few bags as yet, though they probably will bring in more when they pick the apples. This must have been a beautiful pool once.”

  The bottom of the pool was tiled a pea green, a color which must have given the water a most cooling tone on a hot day. But the white tile sides no longer gleamed, and in more than one place jagged dark cracks ran crazily down the walls like streaks of black lightning. Sim looked at the cracked tile and concrete edge at her feet. The depth was still indicated, though there was no wate
r in the pool—5 feet.

  “This is the shallow end, of course,” Sim thought, and she walked slowly around the edge and toward the melancholy spring-boards to which some strips of cocoa-fiber matting still clung.

  “How quiet it is in here,” Sim murmured. “Like a museum after hours—or an Egyptian tomb.” She shivered a little, though it was warm in the natatorium.

  In the deep end several filled burlap bags were piled up, and in each corner were barrels of cabbages leaning against the walls.

  “I thought, from what Toots said, the whole place would be filled to the brim with cabbages and turnips,” Sim said to herself, smiling a little ruefully. “I wonder how long this pool is, or should I say was?”

  She began to measure the length with her eyes, mentally swimming with long, smooth strokes while her feet churned up and down.

  “About seventy-five yards long, I guess,” she went on. “And about twenty-five across. A lovely size. I could do three lengths a day here and really enjoy it. Let’s see how deep it is from the end of the board.”

  She walked gingerly out on the diving plank, choosing the center one for there were three at the deep end, tiered at different heights. It was difficult to estimate, without water in the pool and with the barrels and bags of vegetables scattered about, how close the different boards came to the surface of the filled space. Sim decided that the plank she was standing on was the lowest.

  She permitted herself a little pre-diving, teetery bounce on the very end, half fearful lest the dried wood should crack beneath even her light weight. But it held, and Sim gave a bolder jump.

  “A straight dive—cutting the water about there!” With her eyes Sim indicated to herself just the spot where her finger tips should enter the water—had there been any water there.

  She jumped again and came down safely, with no warning cracking of the dried plank. Then she balanced herself on the very tip of the board before, mentally, springing into the air. Now she performed a most ambitious jump, but this time the stiffened wood snapped back suddenly. Sim was thrown to one side, and she swung her arms around and around like a child on its first roller skates, trying desperately not to topple backward.