Comfortably seated, with a few rays of the afternoon sunlight coming over her shoulder to the trunk, Jannet commenced her survey. There were all sorts of “cubbies” in this trunk. One in the very top of the trunk opened down, when one loosened a leather strap from a button. But in this there were only a handful of flowers ripped from some hat, some pink roses, still very pretty, and a wreath of yellow buttercups and green leaves. Jannet decided to get a big sun hat and wear that wreath this summer.
In the top tray, two hats, perfectly good, but of a style impossible to wear now, occupied the compartment for hats, with several veils and more French flowers. Some letters were loosely packed in along the sides, with some foreign postcards, much scribbled.
In the compartment next, there were a pile of old music, some note books, photographs, more letters, and over all a sheer white organdy dress, washed but not ironed, and pressed in irregularly to fill the compartment.
Jannet lifted out this tray to find another beneath it. Ah, here were pretty things! Neatly folded, a light blue silk lay on top, covered with a linen towel. A lace and net dress was beneath this. Jannet did not disturb the folds. These could be examined when she had more of the day before her.
In the lower part of the trunk, Jannet found more pretty clothes and a box containing her mother’s wedding veil. This, indeed, she drew out, handling it with a certain reverence. Yes, it was the veil in the picture, delicate, with rose point lace and the pretty crown still as it had been worn except for the orange blossoms. These Jannet found lying in another box among the dresses. Dry and ready to fall to pieces at a touch, they were easily recognized, nevertheless.
Touched and silent, Jannet sat still for a few moments, the veil half out of the box in her hands, the little box with the orange blossoms open beside her. It was sad, but it was worth everything to have these things that made her mother so real, her pretty mother!
For a little while Jannet sat and read a few of the letters. It could do no harm. They were from girl friends, some of them to accompany wedding presents or to announce their impending arrival. “May you have a long and happy life together,” said one. “Douglas is a dear. I had an eye on him myself, but it was of no use, with you singing the heart out of him!”
Girls then were much as they were now, Jannet thought. From her short span of years it did seem so long ago.
Pulling out her mother’s trunk had disclosed a small box behind it, a pretty box of dark wood, stained and rubbed like the nice furniture of the house. The lock was of gilt, a little discolored, but the whole looked like something valuable, or at least interesting. Jannet tried all her keys without success and then, without thinking more of the box, she went back to the trunk, becoming deeply engaged in the contents of a little pasteboard box which was full of funny notes and the treasures of her mother’s younger days. There was even a tiny doll, dressed in a wee silken dress with a train. And in the bottom of the box there was a brass key—the very one which might fit the little dark box. Replacing the pasteboard box, Jannet with some curiosity tried the key and found that it opened the other box.
A piece of old muslin covered the contents. This Jannet raised to find an old doll with a cloth body, some doll clothes, stained and faded and under these some doll dishes, carefully packed.
These could not have been her mother’s. They were too old, too odd. Suddenly it seemed lonesome. Jannet began to feel nervous and depressed. She blamed herself for being a little goose, not in the least realizing that a sensitive girl of her sympathies could not help having her feelings worn upon a little by all this.
Jumping up from locking the little box again, Jannet closed the trunk which was proving to be such a treasure chest. She had scarcely disturbed part of it, and there were other delightful possibilities in prospect before her. She must have Nell over soon, for while she could go on by herself, and in a way she preferred to find her mother’s things by herself, still—Nell was sensible, smart and good company. She would take an interest, too, in discovering any source of ghostly revels. If Nell were afraid, this part of the attic, at least, offered no signs of anything but ordinary storage.
Now, if she could only conciliate Paulina in some way and hear all that “old P’lina” thought about it. That was a good plan! She would try it!
CHAPTER XIII
UNCLE PIETER AS AN ALLY
Promptly at ten o’clock the next morning, Jannet was waiting in the library for her uncle. She had timidly said at breakfast, “I will be in the library at ten, Uncle Pieter,” and he had replied, “Very well, Jannet.”
She had brought with her the little slip of paper which she had found in the book. If she had opportunity, she was going to sound him about it, or show it to him, provided she could screw her courage to the point. Just why she should be afraid of her Uncle Pieter, Jannet did not know, but he did not invite confidences. She was sure that he had not the least sentiment about him. But she was not ready to accept any gossip about him. She would find out for herself what sort of a man her uncle was.
As she sat there, thinking, in the midst of the books that lined the walls or stood out in their cases, she remembered what Miss Hilliard had once said in warning the girls: “Most of us are talked about from the cradle to the grave. Some of what ‘they’ say is true and a good part of it is not.”
It was a quarter past ten when her uncle hurried into the library and hung his hat on a small rack. He was in riding costume and looked very nice, Jannet thought, a little like Andy. “I’m late, Jannet. Do not follow my example. I was detained, on an errand to the next farm. Now, let me see, what were we going to talk about?”
“I have ever so many things to talk to you about,” soberly said Jannet, “but you had something, you said, about plans and things.”
“Then we’ll talk about ‘plans and things’ first,” said her uncle smiling a little. He sat down by his desk, leaning back comfortably in a large chair there and motioning Jannet to a seat near him. For a moment he drummed on the desk with the fingers of his right hand, looking down thoughtfully.
“You may have wondered why I have not talked to you before,” he said at last, “but it takes some time to gather up the history of fifteen years or so, and I have hoped that you might find out some things gradually and form the rest. I am not much of a talker.
“The particular thing that I want to ask you is whether you like it here enough to make it your home, whether you will consent to give up your school to be tutored, with some travel, and a few advantages that I think I can give you, or whether you would prefer to go back to the other mode of life. It may be too soon to ask you this. If so, we can put it off.” Jannet was surprised, and more at her own feeling.
“No, Uncle Pieter, it is not too soon. I felt as soon as I reached my mother’s room that here was home. But you would not mean to cut me off from the people that have been so good to me, would you?”
“No, but I’d like to get you away from the eternal atmosphere of a school. I feel a responsibility, now that I know you are on earth.”
“Why, do you?” Jannet’s face lit up. Perhaps Uncle Pieter really liked her a little, too. “That is nice, but I had vacations, you know—only I have never really belonged anywhere.”
Her uncle nodded. “I thought as much,” he said. “Understand that I find no fault with a school. But when I found that you had practically lived in one all your life, I thought it was time for something else.”
Mr. Van Meter frowned and rubbed his hands together in a nervous way which he sometimes had. “How you came to be lost to us I can not understand at all. Why your grandmother did not notify us of your father’s death is another strange thing. Surely her undoubted jealousy of your poor mother would not go that far.”
“Oh, it didn’t, Uncle Pieter! I have a little note that says she had written.”
“And there was the matter of your grandfather’s legacy. Have you had that
?”
“No, sir. I have Grandmother Eldon’s little fortune, enough to keep me in school. Then I thought perhaps I’d be a missionary.”
Mr. Van Meter’s frown changed into a smile. “I’ve no doubt you’d make a good one, Jannet, but suppose you try your missionary efforts here for a while.”
Jannet met her uncle’s eye. Actually there was a twinkle in it!
“At least it would be as well to stay with us until you are grown, Jannet, and we have a chance to clear everything up. Now your grandfather died before your mother did. That much is sure. We have a letter, or did have it, written by your mother the day we telegraphed about your grandfather’s passing. Then we received sad telegrams and orders for flowers, for she could not come, though we told her that it might be possible to wait for the funeral till she arrived. Your father wrote, also. Then there was silence, Jannet, a silence so long that we did not know what to make of it.
“It was not so strange that Jannet would not write often to me, for I was so much older and your mother, too, thought that I was interfering and dictatorial and I admit that I thought her impulsive and foolish. She thought that I did Andy a great injustice by my second marriage and matters were on an uneasy footing between us when she was married.”
This was the first mention of the second marriage that Jannet had heard, but she kept herself from showing any surprise.
“But that there should be no communication,” continued Mr. Van Meter, “was strange, particularly as I had written her that when she came home in the summer, we could arrange about anything she wanted and her own furniture. Father did an unusual thing, you see. He knew that he could not live a great while and while we had no inkling of that, for he was as active as ever, he divided the property, giving me the home place, giving Jannet another farm and certain bonds and securities which were sent her and which she received. Indeed, I sold the farm for her, with Father’s permission, after he finally overcame all our objections and said that he preferred to see how we would ‘carry on.’ Yet both of us reserved certain funds for Father. Such was the arrangement, and a very poor one from a parent’s standpoint, though Father was safe enough in trusting us.
“I had made a quick trip to Europe on business. My wife reported no letters from your mother on my return. I wrote, and received word that they had moved. I found the new address after considerable trouble. No one was there. A new family had moved in. The word was that all had died of the ‘flu’ or something of the sort. I heard several conflicting stories. The one nearest the truth, according to what I found out about you, was that your father, half ill, started East with you and that your mother died at the hospital, either before or after that time.”
“He told Grandmother that my mother had died,” Jannet supplied.
“I see. There is only one thing, Jannet, that has made me feel strange about it all, and that is a telegram that I found after a long time. Date and address were torn off. Some one in the household had made a mistake. It blew at my feet from some pile of rubbish back where it is burned.”
Mr. Van Meter pulled out a drawer in his desk and took from it a piece of yellow paper, such as is used in telegrams. He handed it to Jannet.
“If you feel so I can never again set foot in your house.” This was the message that the surprised Jannet read. She looked up into her uncle’s face in inquiry.
“Why, that reminds me of a slip of paper that I found in a book. Perhaps just your not replying to something may have made her send the telegram.”
“I did not think of that. I was away—what was the slip of paper?”
Jannet handed to her uncle the slip which she had found. He frowned over it, reading it more than once and looking off into space as if trying to recall something. “I never saw that before, Jannet,” said he, handing it back to her. “This looks pretty serious, Jannet. It looks as if you owe to some unfriendly hand the fact that your mother was so separated from us and that you have been among strangers since your grandmother’s death.”
“Do you think that my mother could possibly be alive somewhere?”
“Of course I do not know the date of this telegram, but the word of her death seemed so clear that I never tried to trace the telegram after finding it. I would not cherish such a possibility, Jannet. Wherever she is, in that other world that she believed in, she will be glad that you are here, and I am glad to have an opportunity to make up to you what I seemed in her eyes to lack.” Mr. Van Meter spoke kindly, but a little bitterly at the last.
“Oh, I believe you, Uncle Pieter!” cried Jannet, stretching out a slender hand to him. He took it, patted it and let her draw it back as gently as she had given it. Then Jannet drew her chair closer and said, “Now may I take time to tell you what has been happening?”
“Yes, child. What is it?”
One entering the library would have seen an interesting picture for the next half hour. The eager Jannet leaned on the desk with both elbows, and a bright face rested between her two hands as she related to her uncle every detail of her ghostly experiences and told him all about the pearls. She was utterly forgetful of herself and her fear of her uncle. Indeed, that had left her for all time.
Mr. Van Meter, thoughtful, as always, listened, smiling a little from time to time, for Jannet told it all in her own vivid way, amused herself, at different times, especially when she told of how she and Nell listened at the boys’ door and of how funny Paulina looked in her night-cap.
At the close of the recital, Mr. Van Meter questioned her further about the pearls, as that seemed to be the most serious feature of the matter. “I feel sure that you will find Jan at the bottom of the ghost affair,” he said. “Of course, you could scarcely offend Paulina more than to express your disbelief in the family ghost. But if you and Nell want to investigate, you have my full permission, so far as you keep within safe bounds. I gather that the ghost has not offered to harm you in any way?”
“No, sir, even if it did want my comforters.”
“I fancy that there will not be any more ghostly visitations till the next time Jan is home, but let me know if there is one. I should like to enjoy it with you.”
Mr. Van Meter spoke so seriously that Jannet looked at him doubtfully. It was hard to tell what Uncle Pieter meant sometimes. But he wasn’t such a riddle as “Old P’lina,” anyhow.
“Well, don’t you think it possible, Uncle Pieter, that there is a secret passageway of some sort?”
“It is entirely possible, Jannet. I had no work done by the carpenters about the old chimney, though it was pointed up and had bricks renewed at its top. I am too busy now to do anything, but later I may be of some assistance. By the way, Jannet, did you know that Andy mounted a horse and rode with me quite a little? All at once his back seems to be better. The doctors said it might be so. Do you like Andy?”
“Oh, yes, Uncle Pieter! No one could help loving Cousin Andy.”
It was not until Jannet had left the library and her uncle that she recalled one thing which she had forgotten. She had not asked him how he had discovered her. But her doubts about her uncle were at rest. He was a peculiar man in some respects. Jannet felt that he was ashamed to show the least emotion, but she was sure that he had some feelings for all that. She might never love him as she could love her cousin Andy, but she respected him. More than ever Jannet felt herself a part of her mother’s family.
Hurrah for Jannet and Nell, the famous “deteckatives,” she thought, and before dinner she telephoned Nell to see how soon she could come over. “I’ve got lots of things to tell you, Nell,” she urged.
“I’d love to come to-day, Jannet,” Nell replied, “but we have company. I was just going to call you to see if you could ride over this afternoon. Can’t you?”
“Why, yes, I can, so far as I know now. I’ll call you later.”
Thus it happened that attic investigations were postponed; but the detective-in-c
hief sought an interview with one of the main “suspects” as soon as she could.
CHAPTER XIV
JANNET AND “OLD P’LINA”
Mr. Van Meter had advised silence on the matter of the pearls, but told Jannet to report to him if she suspected anyone in particular. “Your Cousin Di is above suspicion, and as for Andy and me, I can assure you that we have not acquired any pearls of late. As to Paulina, I could scarcely imagine such a thing. Drop into the kitchen and get acquainted with the cook, Jannet, and the maids, in a natural way.”
Jannet remembered this, but it was not natural for Jannet to drop into a kitchen, no matter how much she wanted to do it. Such things at school had been expressly forbidden, and at the Marcys’ the members of the family were the cooks. However, she braced herself for the effort and pleased the black cook beyond expression by appearing at the outside door after a canter and saying, “Seems to me I smell something awfully good, Daphne. Don’t tell me that you are baking a cake!”
“Come in, come in, Miss Jannet. How come you ain’t been here befo’?” The shining chocolate-colored face beamed and white teeth shone, as fat Daphne, so inappropriately named, hastened from the stove to pull up a chair for Jannet. “Jes’ you wait, honey,” and Daphne’s fat figure shook as she hurried back to the oven door and opened it with the dish towel in her hand.
“Yum, yum,” said Jannet, as a big pan of ginger cookies, the big, soft kind, was drawn out and the savory odors were wafted her way.
“Has Ah got cake foh suppuh? Sho Ah has! But sumpin’ mus’ atol’ me to mek cookies.” Deftly Daphne took the hot cookies from the pan with a pancake turner and set the brown crock, into which she put them, before Jannet on the table.
This was fine. Jannet daintily took hold of one hot cooky and dropped it immediately, which amused Daphne very much. But that lady was pulling a second pan from the oven and hurrying to put other cookies, rolled and cut and laid in similar pans, into the hot oven. “Git a sauceh f’om the pantry, chile. Them cookies will be cool in a minute.”
The Third Girl Detective Page 10
