“We go to lunch now,” Merry informed her. “After we’ve washed up in yonder lavatory.”
The dining-rooms were also in the basement, beyond the recreation hall, and Geraldine was delighted to find that she was to occupy Gertrude’s place at a table with her six friends and one teacher, a Miss Adelaine Brockett, young, who had charge of the gym, understanding theatricals and games. In reality she was Miss Demorest’s assistant and often had entire charge of the seminary during the principal’s absences. The girls seemed to adore Miss Brockett, but of course Merry could not talk about their club plans with anyone else present.
“Isn’t it great that we day pupils are allowed to have lunch here these wintry days? It’s a long mile to the middle of town and that poky old street car never could get us home and back in time for classes,” Peg said to Geraldine, who agreed that it was a jolly plan.
“You missed math,” Rose informed her. “We have that torturous subject first thing in the morning.”
Then the afternoon classes began: History, General Sciences, Drawing, and French. But at last three o’clock arrived and the girls started to walk to town. “I’m so glad you didn’t have your ‘uncle-colonel’ call for you,” Merry informed Geraldine, who was walking at her side, the other girls following two by two, that being as wide as the walk had been shoveled in that suburban part of town. They passed fine old homes set far back on wide snow-covered grounds among bare old trees. “We are having a most important club meeting at my house today, and—”
Geraldine stood still, exclaiming with sincere disappointment: “Then I can’t stop there and wait for Alfred as I told my uncle-colonel that I would.”
“Why not?” Merry asked; then before her companion could reply, she exclaimed: “Oh, I understand now! You think we wouldn’t want to discuss club business with you there. You’re wrong, Gerry, my dear! We especially do want you there. Now, don’t ask me any questions. This is a secret club and it wouldn’t do for me to tell you a thing about it until the meeting is called.” And with that explanation the curious Geraldine had to be content.
CHAPTER XVIII
A MYSTERY TO SOLVE
“Meeting is called to order!” Merry turned to beckon the girl, who, feeling rather like an intruder, had seated herself some distance from the others. “Gerry, come over and sit in Jack’s favorite easy chair,” their hostess said. “Then you’ll be in the circle with the rest of us.”
Geraldine was conscious of the slight flush which she always felt in her cheeks when Jack’s name was mentioned, but she gladly joined the others, sinking into the luxurious depths of a softly upholstered cozy-comfort chair.
“You’ll have to say interesting things to keep me awake,” she laughingly warned them as she snuggled down in it.
“Don’t worry about this meeting not being interesting. It’s going to be a thriller,” the president announced. Whereupon the members all sat up ready to ask a chorus of questions, but Merry pounded on the table before her with her improvised gavel, an ornamented paper-cutter, as she said imperatively: “Silence, if you please! We will now have the roll call. Sleuth Rose, are you present?”
A laughing response: “I am!”
And so on until each had been called. Geraldine was very much awake. “Madame President,” she burst in, “if I’m not too much out of order, will you please tell me why you call these pretty maidens by such a terrible name? Sleuths! Ohoo!” she shuddered. “I thought sleuths were long, lank, stealthy creatures who steal around slums and underworld places trying to find criminals.”
“Well, perhaps some sleuths do,” Merry acknowledged, “but we aren’t quite that desperate.”
Then Peg put in: “Oh, I say, Merry, have a heart; don’t mystify Gerry any longer. Begin at the beginning and tell her what our club has stood for in the past, and what it will accomplish in the future.”
“How can I reveal what nobody knows?” their president inquired. However, she turned to Geraldine and told how the seven girls who always walked back and forth to school together had formed a clique, which at first they had named Sunnyside Club with “Spread Sunshine” for a motto. “Our Saint Gertrude’s suggestion, you may be sure,” Rose interjected.
“Well, we did do a great deal to make the children up in the orphanage happy,” Betty Byrd championed as though feeling that the absent member was in some way being maligned.
Bertha Angel agreed with her emphatically: “Of course we did, little one, and we intend to keep it up. Being sleuths won’t in any way keep us from doing good deeds.”
“But what is there to be sleuthing about in this sleepy little town of Sunnyside?” Geraldine wanted to know. “And why do you want to do it if there is?”
“Oh, we don’t really,” Rose told her. “It’s sort of like taking a dare. The boys have a club which they call ‘C. D. C.,’ and they’re terribly secret about it. They have a mysterious meeting-place, and since we girls aren’t allowed to roam about nights unless our brothers are along to protect us, we never can find out where they meet. We sort of thought it might be in the old Walsley ruin on the East Lake Road. That’s why we asked them to take us there Saturday after that robbery. We thought if that was their secret meeting-place, they would have it fitted up like a clubroom some way, and then of course they wouldn’t want us to visit it. But when they said ‘sure thing,’ they’d take us if we wanted to go, why then we were convinced that’s not where they hold their secret meetings.”
Peggy interrupted with: “Maybe you were convinced, old dear, but I was not. You say we can’t go up the East Lake Road at night when the boys hold their meetings. Of course we can’t, but what’s to hinder us from going up there alone some time in the daylight. If that old man who killed himself haunts the place at all, it wouldn’t be while the sun is shining.”
“Ugh!” Gerry said with a shudder. “Now I believe you are sleuths. Wanting to visit a haunted house! But tell me, what kind of a club is the ‘C. D. C.’?”
“It’s a detective club, and we, that is, Merry, figured out, by putting two and two together, that it means ‘Conan Doyle Club.’ Jack shut her in a closet one day, and before she could let him know she was there, she heard enough to know that he and his friends have tried to find some mystery to solve in Sunnyside, and have decided that there isn’t one, and so they take turns making up mysteries. They read them at these secret meetings and let the others try to figure out clues.”
“Is that why you girls started to be sleuths?” Gerry wanted to know.
Bertha nodded. “Merry heard one of the boys say that an uncle of his in New York, who is a lawyer, had written about a famous girl detective, and the others scoffed at the very idea. They said they couldn’t imagine girls ever solving a mystery, not if they were all like girls in Sunnyside. So, you see, that was sort of a dare, and we made up our mind we would find a mystery and solve it, and then crow about it; but the joke is, we haven’t found a mystery!”
Merry continued with: “Peggy and Doris were a committee of two to find one, and they were to make their report last Saturday, but—”
“But nothing,” Peg interrupted, “you know we were so busy planning that impromptu skating party out at the Drexel Lodge we didn’t have time to call a meeting.”
“Well, if we had called one,” the president persisted, “you girls wouldn’t have had a mystery to present.”
“Wouldn’t we, though?” Peg’s eyes fairly glistened. “Doris, now is the psychological moment, as Miss Preen would say, for springing our find.”
The girls, except Geraldine, gasped. She was yet too mystified to realize the importance of the announcement. They watched Doris, who unstrapped her school books and drew from her history a clipping from a newspaper. “This is from the Dorchester Chronicle,” she announced, “and it certainly sounds mysterious to Peg and me.” She looked around at them, deliberately, tantalizing.
“Oh, for goodness sakes, do hurry and read it,” Bertha Angel urged.
“Peg, you read
it. You can do it full justice.” Doris passed it over to her fellow-committeeman, who pretended to study it leisurely.
“Peg, if you don’t hurry and tell us, we’ll mob you.” Bertha stood up and seized a pillow from the window seat, holding it threateningly. “Be calm, Sister Sleuth,” Peg said. Then she held the small scrap of paper close to a window as the short afternoon was drawing to a close. “It is headed, ‘Information wanted.’ A man owning a cattle ranch in Arizona has written the Chronicle asking that the following letter be given publicity:
“‘Dear Sirs:
“‘My young and pretty sister, Myra, was sent East to be educated. Our parents wanted to get her away from a ne’er-do-well gambler she had met in Douglas. He followed her East and married her. We never heard from her again, but believe she settled in some small community near Dorchester. I am running the ranch, but half of it belongs to Myra, and, as I believe if she is living she must be in need, I want to find her.
“‘(Signed) Caleb K. Cornwall.’”
Peg looked up triumphantly. “There! What do you think of that for a mystery?”
Merry acknowledged that it was a mystery, of course, but why think the pretty young Myra settled in Sunnyside? “There are at least six small villages within a radius of forty miles,” she reminded them.
“Oh, of course, maybe it isn’t our town, but, also, maybe it is.” Peg was not going to let them lose sight of whatever value there was in the “find” she and Doris had made.
“Oh, how provoking, here come Jack and Alfred! Now we’ll have to adjourn just when the meeting is most interesting. Shh! Don’t let them hear us talking about it. Let’s meet here again tomorrow afternoon.” Merry said hurriedly.
“But you won’t want me to come, will you?” Geraldine asked, very much hoping that they would say that they did want her. Nor was she disappointed.
“Why, of course we do, Gerry.” Then Merry exclaimed self-rebukingly: “How stupid of me! I started to tell in school that Gertrude wanted us to invite you to take her place in the ‘S. S. C.’ for the rest of the winter, while she is away, but I remember now, the gong rang, then I forgot and sort of thought I had told you.”
Then Peg asked: “You’d like to be Sleuth Gerry, wouldn’t you?”
How the older girl’s eyes were glowing! “I’d like it more than anything that has ever happened in my life,” she answered them. Then Merry put a finger on her lips and nodded toward the hall door. Doris, taking the hint, exclaimed: “And those dear little orphans will be simply delighted to have a Valentine party. We can fix things up so prettily. I do think—”
The door had opened and Jack sang out: “Our Sunnyside Spreaders, I observe, are holding one of their most commendable meetings. Unlike the ‘C. D. C.’s,’ they have no secrets to hide.” He winked at Alfred, who laughed so understandingly that the observers were led to believe that Geraldine’s brother had also been admitted to the boys’ club. Nor were they wrong.
“How did you like your first day in our country school?” Jack asked Gerry as he crossed to where she sat by the fire and stooped over the blaze to warm his hands.
“Oh, I loved it!” that maiden frankly confessed; then acknowledged, “It’s really nicer in lots of ways than the Dorchester Seminary.” Then she rose. “We’d better be going, Brother,” she began when the telephone whirred. Merry turned from it to say that the Colonel was in town and would call for them in five minutes.
“Well, we’ll be over tomorrow to plan that Valentine party for the orphans,” Peg called as the girls trooped away. Then the Colonel’s sleigh bells were heard coming up the drive. Just before she left, Geraldine drew Merry to one side to say in a low voice: “Tell the girls how very grateful I am to them for having taken me in after I had been so unforgivably horrid.”
Merry gave her friend’s hand a loving squeeze. “I think we are the ones to ask forgiveness for the prank we played,” she said; then impulsively added: “Let’s be sister-friends, shall we?”
Gerry felt the tell-tale flush in her cheeks, but Alfred was calling, “Do hurry, Sister. This isn’t good-bye forever.” And so laughingly they parted.
CHAPTER XIX
SEARCHING FOR CLUES
The next afternoon the girls found Bob waiting near the seminary with the delivery sleigh. Geraldine, for half a moment, was amazed to hear the squeals of delight uttered by her companions as they swarmed up into the straw-covered box part of the cutter.
“This is great!” Merry exclaimed. “How did you happen to do it, Bobbie dear?”
The boy nodded toward his sister, who replied for him: “Bob said he would be returning from Dorchester about this hour, and I asked him to pick us up, like an angel child, so that we could have a longer meeting. It gets dark so early and it takes a full half hour to walk the mile to Merry’s.”
“Sort of a ruddy-looking angel child,” Rose, at the boy’s side, teased him. The round, pleasant face of the boy was always ruddy, but today it was unusually so, partly because of the long drive he had had in the frosty air and partly because of his pleasure at having Rose with him.
Down the wide, snow-covered road they sped, and Geraldine could not but compare this ride with those that were being taken by the pupils of the Dorchester Seminary, where most fashionable turnouts each day awaited the closing hours. But she had to honestly confess that she was having much more fun than she ever had before. Merry smiled across at her and Gerry smiled back, happily recalling the whispered request of the evening before: “Let us be sister-friends, shall we?”
“All out for Merry-dale!” Bob was soon calling as he drew rein in front of the Lee house. Then to the girl at his side he said in a low voice, “I’ll be through at the store at five. May I drive you home?”
“Yes, indeed, and stay to supper,” Rose said brightly, adding as an afterthought: “Gerry and Alfred can go with us, can’t they? Then the Colonel won’t have to come after them.”
“Sure thing,” the good-natured boy replied. “So long!”
“There now,” Merry announced when they were sitting about the fire five minutes later, “we have a good two hours, if nobody interrupts us, and we ought to be able to delve deeply into our mystery. Peg, will you or Doris review the facts in the case?”
“Shouldn’t we call them clues?” Bertha inquired.
“Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t been a sleuth long enough to be sure about anything,” the president smilingly admitted. Then Doris reminded them that it was a ranchman in Arizona named Caleb K. Cornwall who was searching for a young and pretty sister named Myra, who had married a ne’er-do-well and supposedly had settled in some small community near Dorchester, in New York State.
“Well, Sleuth Bertha, you look wise. What would you suggest that we do first?” Merry had turned toward the tall maiden, whose expression was habitually serious and thoughtful.
“I was just wondering if there is any woman in town named Myra. Our mothers might know, for I suppose this lost person is about their age.”
“How come?” Peg asked. “There is no mention of age in the letter. Merely that she was a young and pretty girl when she was sent East to school.”
“That might have been ten years ago or twenty, thirty, or any number,” Rose reminded them.
“True enough,” Merry conceded. “Wait a moment. Mother is in her sewing-room, I think. I’ll ask her if she ever heard of a woman in Sunnyside named Myra.”
“Won’t she wonder at your asking?” Peg was fearful lest their secret would be divulged.
“No, indeed,” Merry shook her head. “Mums isn’t even remotely curious about what our club is doing. She knows we are holding a meeting, but that’s all.”
In less than ten minutes she was back again with two names written on a magazine cover. “I don’t think these will help us much,” she informed the girls, whose alert attitudes proved their eager interest. “One is Myra Comely. She lives below the tracks and takes in washing. Mother thinks she may be about forty. The other is Myra I
ngersol. She lives out on the old Dorchester road. Mother doesn’t just know where, but it’s a farm that makes a specialty of chickens and eggs. The woman makes jelly and sells it, too. That’s really all Mother knows about her. The name is on each jar, Mums says. ‘Myra Ingersol’s Jams,’ like that. We get them from the grocery. You ought to know about them, Bertha.”
“I do,” that maiden replied, “and, what’s more, I know the woman. I’ve been in the store when she brought in her wares. I’ve been trying to picture her, Merry, while you were talking, as having ever been young and pretty, but I just can’t. She is a big-boned, awkward person with red-grey hair drawn back as though it had a weight on it, and sharp blue eyes.” The girl shook her head. “I’m convinced she is not the Myra Mr. Cornwall wants to find.”
“How old is the jam person?” Gerry contributed her first inquiry.
“Oh, close to sixty, perhaps, although she may be younger. She’s had a hard life, I judge.”
“We might call them up on the telephone and ask them if they ever lived in Arizona,” Betty Byrd naively suggested. How the others laughed. “Little one,” Bertha remonstrated, “don’t you know that if they ran away from Arizona and are in hiding, so to speak, they would, of course, refuse to tell that it had once been their home. I mean in answer to such an abrupt question as would have to be asked over the ’phone. My suggestion is that we make some legitimate excuse for calling at the homes of the two Myras and finding, if we can, some clues without arousing their suspicion.”
“Hats off to Sleuth Bertha!” Peg sang out. “When and how shall we make the first call?”
Doris leaped up in her eagerness. “If one of the Myras is a washwoman, let’s drive over there tomorrow with the Drexel weekly laundry. Mother said yesterday that the Palace New Method injures the clothes and she wants to find someone to do it by hand.”
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