The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls

by Mildred A. Wirt

  There was indeed a struggle going on in Geraldine’s heart, but good sense won out. She slipped an arm affectionately about her friend as she said: “Anyone who is good enough for you to associate with is good enough for me!” The other girls had drifted back to the kitchen to resume their tasks, and these two were alone. “Doris, dear,” Gerry said, “I told your friend, Danny O’Neil, I hoped he would come, and I made Alfred promise to bring him.”

  How the pretty face of Doris brightened. “That was mighty nice of you!” she exclaimed. “Now I know he will come. I telephoned him early this morning, but he seemed to think you wouldn’t care to associate with him; that is, not socially.”

  Then an imperative voice called from the kitchen: “Say, you two ornaments in there, come on out and help with this chicken.”

  At six o’clock all was in readiness, and the seven girls, divested of aprons, waited the ringing of the door bell with cheeks as rosy as their ribbons. They had the house quite to themselves, as Mrs. Angel had obligingly invited Merry’s parents to dinner and Katie had been only too glad to spend the afternoon and evening with her friends below the tracks.

  “Here comes somebody. Who do you suppose will arrive first?” Merry had just said when the front door burst open and Jack ushered in Myra Comely. Merry had asked her brother to bring her, but, almost before the door had closed, the bell was jingling, and all of the others arrived at once.

  In the whirl of excitement that followed, with everybody welcoming everybody else, no one noticed that Danny had drawn Doris to one side and was giving her a package. “It’s a valentine that I made for you. Book-ends that I carved,” he said in a low voice. “Don’t open it here.”

  Geraldine glanced in their direction just as Doris lifted sweet, brown eyes and smiled her appreciation at the boy. But before she could puzzle about the meaning of it, Jack had taken her hand and was leading her into the living-room, which was festooned with strings of red paper hearts. Jokingly he began: “Fair Queen o’ Hearts, I’m the Jack o’ Hearts, won’t you please tell me where you’ve hidden the tarts?”

  What a throng of them there was as they swarmed into the brightly lighted living-room.

  “Don’t sit down, anybody,” Merry warned. “The party-part is going to start right away. But first you have to draw for partners.” Then she explained that she would pass a basket to the boys that would contain halves of valentines, and that at the same time Gerry would pass one with the other halves to the girls. “You are each to take one, and the two who have the parts of one valentine are to be partners. The girls are to stand still and the boys to do the hunting.”

  For ten merry minutes boys darted about matching halves of valentines. The result was rather disappointing to several of them, for Rose was not for Bob, and Jack drew Myra Comely, while Gerry, of all the queer tricks of Fate, was Danny O’Neil’s partner; but they took it in good part, and when Merry put an appropriate song record on the Victrola they all marched out to the dining-room. The girls felt quite repaid for their efforts when they heard the sincere exclamation of approval which the boys uttered. Then Merry, as hostess-in-chief, explained that each couple was to select seats and that they should do this thoughtfully, as the ribbons had at the other ends prophecies as to their future. There were tiny bows on the ribbons for girls.

  Amid much laughter from the fair ones and “wise cracks” from the boys, places were chosen, and then when they were all seated, one by one the ribbons were pulled and out of the box-heart on the middle of the table a small red paper heart was drawn, and on it, in jolly jingle, was a prophesy for the future.

  As each was drawn, it was read aloud and was followed by much laughter and teasing, especially when Bob read:

  “A dark brunette shall be your wife,

  And she will lead you such a life

  Of woe and worry and of strife.”

  “Oh, I say, Rose,” Bob grinned across the table at the girl who sat opposite him, “are you going to let that dark brunette get me?”

  “Read yours, Rosie,” Merry called gaily, and so Rose read:

  “A long, lank spinster you will be;

  A cat your only company;

  Your favorite pastime drinking tea.”

  “Oh, that’s a horrid one,” Their prettiest pushed it from her and pretended to frown. “I’m going to choose another place. I really wanted to sit where you are, Peg. Read yours, so I’ll know what I might have had.” Gleefully Peg complied:

  “You’ll marry a gay young millionaire,

  You’ll travel together just everywhere,

  And in all your life have never a care.”

  “Hurray for me!” Peg sang out, but Bob put in: “Well, I’m glad Rose didn’t choose that ribbon. A grocer doesn’t often get to be a millionaire.”

  And so around the table they read their futures, then the dinner was served, and so excellent was every dish that had been prepared by the fair hands that Jack was led to exclaim: “Lucky will be the swains who win these cooks for their valentines through life.” Then, to the actual embarrassment of one of them, he asked: “Gerry, which of these good things did you cook?”

  But, before the city girl, who knew nothing whatever about cooking, could acknowledge the fact, Merry said gaily: “Gerry and I did the decking of the table this time. Some other time we’ll show you what we can do as cooks.”

  Then, to her own amazement, Geraldine heard herself saying: “I’m going to give a party soon all by myself, and everyone who is here now is invited.” Her glance even included Myra Comely and Danny O’Neil. Then she concluded with, “I’ll let you know the date later.”

  Her brother was delighted to think that his sister had entered into the social life of the village with so much evident enjoyment, and that night when they reached home he took occasion to tell her how pleased he had been with the impromptu invitation. They were standing alone in the living-room in front of the fireplace where they had stood on that first day when the “milkmaids and butter-churners” had come to call. Alfred smiled as he thought of that other day which seemed so long ago, but wisely he did not remind his sister of her rudeness and snobbishness on that other occasion. Brightly she was saying, “Oh, Alfred, I’m going to write Dad tomorrow and tell him what a wonderful time I’m having and how glad I am that he wanted us to spend the winter in the town where he was born.” Indeed some influence, not clearly understood by Alfred, was working miraculous changes in his sister.

  CHAPTER XXII

  A NEW RESOLVE

  On Monday morning Geraldine awoke with a new resolve. Never again would she be put in the embarrassing position of not being able to do anything really useful when the “S. S. C.” got up a dinner, and not for worlds would she have Jack Lee know that she had considered cooking menial: an accomplishment far beneath her. His ideas and ideals were very different from those she had acquired at the fashionable seminary in Dorchester.

  When the girl went down to breakfast, she found that the Colonel and Alfred had gone early to town. Mrs. Gray was waiting for her, sitting in the sunny bow window reading the morning paper. “Oh, here you are, dearie.” She rose briskly as she added, “I’ll have to go down to the kitchen to get the things I’ve been keeping warm for us.”

  Geraldine looked surprised. “But why doesn’t Sing send them up on the lift?” she asked.

  Mrs. Gray, at once sober, shook her head as she said: “Poor Sing! It seems that he went to Dorchester to the Chinese quarters yesterday to see a sick friend, and while there the place was quarantined for smallpox and he will have to remain away at least two weeks.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Gray, whatever shall we do? How can you do all the housekeeping and—the cooking as well.”

  The old lady smiled at the girl lovingly. “Do you know, Geraldine,” she began, “I sort of thought that perhaps you would like to help me. Now that you can make a bed the way Merry Lee taught you, if you would make the Colonel’s and Alfred’s—”

  “Of course I can, and will!” wa
s the almost unexpected rejoinder. “And better than that,” the girl flashed a bright smile at the old lady, “I’m glad Sing is going to be away for two weeks, because that will give us a chance to use the kitchen all we want to, won’t it Mrs. Gray?”

  “Use the kitchen, Geraldine?” The old lady could hardly believe that she had heard aright. “I thought I once heard you say that you hoped you would never have to step inside of a kitchen.”

  The girl flushed, but she answered frankly: “You are right, I did! But yesterday, when I saw those girls, all of them from nice families, cooking such a very good meal, I felt sorry. Oh, more than that. I was actually ashamed when Jack Lee asked me which of the dishes I had prepared, and if someone hadn’t changed the subject, I would have felt terribly humiliated to have had to confess that I couldn’t cook at all.”

  A ray of light was penetrating the darkness for Mrs. Gray. Briskly she replied: “I shall enjoy teaching you to cook, dearie, as I would a granddaughter of my own.” Then Geraldine further surprised the old lady by leading her to her seat and declaring that she would go down to the kitchen and bring up the breakfast.

  While they were eating it cozily in the sun-flooded room with snow sparkling on window sill and icicle, Geraldine confided that she had impulsively invited all of the girls and boys, who had been at Merry’s, to a dinner party which she had said that she would cook.

  How Mrs. Gray laughed. “Good! Good!” she said. “I shall enjoy that. When is it to be?”

  “I thought I would like to have it on Doris Drexel’s birthday. That will be in about two weeks.”

  That very afternoon the lessons began. No one was in the secret except the Colonel, and every day he drove to the seminary to get Geraldine that she might reach home the sooner for the lesson in dinner preparing. The girls wondered, especially when they were so eager to search for more clues in their “Myra Mystery,” as Peg called it.

  “What are you up to?” Doris asked her at last. “Why do you rush home every day after school?”

  “I believe she has a mystery of her own,” Betty Byrd teased.

  Geraldine flashed a merry glance in the speaker’s direction. “Righto! I have,” she confessed. “However, I am going to reveal it to you all at our next meeting of the ‘S. S. C.’ Where is it to be?”

  “At Bertha’s again. That is the most central place,” Merry told her. “We’re all going to try to unearth something which will help solve the ‘Myra Mystery.’”

  * * * *

  When the girls met on the following Saturday afternoon, it was quite evident that at least two of them could hardly wait for the formalities to be over before they could reveal something of interest. The president, being aware of this, said as soon as Sleuth Bertha had read the minutes of the last meeting: “Geraldine and Doris look as though they would burst if they didn’t tell us something. Have you both unearthed clues in the Myra Mystery?”

  But Gerry shook her head. “Nary a clue!” she confessed. “My news item is far less interesting than that.”

  Doris, on the edge of her chair, was waiting to speak, and when the president nodded in her direction, she exclaimed: “Girls, Danny O’Neil’s mother’s first name began with M. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if she should have been that Myra Cornwall? Then Danny would own her share of the ranch. Of course he wouldn’t have to go out there to live, but he could have the money it brings in for his art education.”

  The girls, gazing at the flushed, eager face, wondered why Doris was so greatly interested in the boy, but Bertha, the practical, asked: “Why should you think that the initial M. would mean Myra? There are ever so many Christian names beginning with that letter.”

  “Oh, of course, I’m just grasping at a straw. I only learned about it this morning. Mother had me go over a box of old receipts and throw out many of them, and I found one from Danny’s mother signed merely ‘M. O’Neil.’”

  “That would be splendid!” Merry commented. “I do wish we could find that Myra, especially if she is someone in need, and then we would be spreading sunshine as well as having a mystery club.”

  “I’m going to see Danny tonight,” Doris told them. “Mother was so interested in—in some carving that he did that she wants to meet him, and so she had me invite him to supper.”

  “You call us up as soon as you find out. We’ll be wild to know,” Merry said; then turned toward Geraldine: “Now, may we hear your news item?”

  The city girl beamed on them. “I invited you all to a dinner party, you remember, and told you that later I would let you know the date.”

  “Oh, goodie!” Betty Byrd clapped her hands. “I adore parties. When is it to be?”

  Geraldine told them, and Doris said: “My birthday! I certainly appreciate that.” What Gerry did not tell them was that she was to cook every bit of it. She had the menu all planned, except the dessert, and she wanted that very afternoon to find out what Jack Lee liked best. To achieve this she asked: “What do most boys like for dessert?” She looked at Bertha and then at Rose, but just as she had hoped, Merry was one of the first to reply: “Jack likes whipped-cream cake with banana filling best.” This information was rapidly followed with other suggestions which Geraldine scarcely heard.

  The only dessert that she cared to remember was the one that Jack liked, and she could hardly wait for the Colonel to call for her that she might go home and practice making one for the family’s Sunday dinner.

  That night every member of the “S. S. C.” received a telephone call, and the voice of Sleuth Doris regretfully told them that Danny’s mother’s name was Martha O’Neil, and so the mystery was no nearer a solution than it had been.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  A PROUD COOK

  On the day of the party Geraldine was up early and at once donned a pretty blue bungalow apron. Then followed merry hours, each one filled with preparations for the dinner. Alfred offered to help stone dates and crack walnuts, while Danny O’Neil was sent on frequent trips to the village.

  At five o’clock, with the help of both boys, the dining-room was prettily decorated; then Geraldine went to put on the dress she had made. Later, with Alfred, she stood near the fireplace waiting the coming of the guests.

  They arrived in a procession of sleighs with ringing of bells and tooting of horns.

  When Geraldine threw open the door, planning to say “Happy Birthday, Doris!” she was met by a laughing throng of young people, but Doris was not among them.

  “Why, where is our guest of honor?” the amazed hostess exclaimed as the others trooped into the brightly-illuminated hall.

  Merry it was who replied: “Doris told me to tell you that she had company arrive unexpectedly. It was so late that there wasn’t time to telephone and ask permission to bring her friend. She knew you would say yes, but she feared it would inconvenience you.”

  The gladness left Geraldine’s face. “But, Merry,” she protested, “we can’t have Doris’ birthday party without Doris here. It would be like giving the play ‘Hamlet’ and leaving Hamlet out.” Then turning to Alfred she said, “Brother, please drive down and bring back both Doris and her guest.”

  Just then Danny O’Neil appeared, and, after having greeted the newcomers, she said: “Miss Geraldine, there’s a beggar at the back door and she insists that she must see you at once.”

  A month previous Geraldine would have tossed her head and replied haughtily that a beggar woman most certainly could have nothing to say to her that she would care to hear. Perhaps even then she might have replied impatiently had she not chanced to see Jack Lee intently watching her.

  Turning to Merry, she asked her to escort the girls upstairs to remove their wraps (Alfred was leading the boys to his den), then she hurried into the kitchen wondering why a beggar should ask to see her.

  In the dimly-lighted back entry stood a frail woman, shabbily dressed, who was leaning on a cane. A black bonnet shaded her face, and Geraldine believed that she had never before seen this beggar person. The stra
nger began to speak in a weak, wavering voice. “Miss Geraldine,” she said, “I am a poor widow with one child and seven husbands. Oh, no, I mean one husband and seven children. My husband is sick, my young ones are starving. I heard as how you were going to have a fine party tonight and I came to beg you to save a few crumbs for my poor babies.”

  Geraldine was puzzled. The woman before her was shabby enough to be a beggar, but her plea did not ring true.

  “If you will come into the kitchen,” the girl replied, “I will pack a basket for you to take to your seven husbands and one child.”

  There was a shout of laughter from the door leading into the dining-room, and Geraldine, turning, beheld the boys and girls peering over each other’s shoulders watching the fun.

  “I just knew it was a prank,” Geraldine laughingly exclaimed. Then to the beggar woman she said, “You’re Doris, of course.”

  “No, she isn’t,” a merry voice called from the doorway, and there, among the others, stood the missing Doris.

  The supposed beggar suddenly removed her bonnet and the laughing face of Geraldine’s dearest friend from the city was revealed.

  With a cry of joy, the delighted hostess embraced the beggar, rags and all.

  “Adelaine Drexel,” she exclaimed, “this is the most wonderful surprise. Why didn’t you write me that you were coming? Or, Doris, why didn’t you tell me?”

  Then turning to the smiling housekeeper, the girl exclaimed: “Mrs. Gray, this is my dear little playmate. We have lived next door to each other ever since our doll days. You’ve heard me speak of Adelaine Drexel just steens of times.”

  Then slipping her arm about the laughing beggar girl, she led the way up to her room. Ten minutes later they reappeared. Adelaine had shed her shabby costume and looked like a rose fairy in a pretty pink gown.