The Third Girl Detective

by Margaret Sutton

  “Well—” he rose. “I’ll be going. Got a lot of work to do. No more waltz tonight.”

  “No—no more waltz!” Florence looked up at her imitation moon. She was disappointed and unhappy. She had pictured that last dance as something unusual and beautiful.

  “Your Hugo is attractive at any rate,” she said to Danby.

  Just at that moment Hugo went whirling by. He was dancing with Ina Piccalo, the dark-eyed girl who had carried away the dye.

  “She’s wearing a purple dress,” Florence said to herself, “the very shade that was in the ink bottle. I wonder—” she was to wonder many times.

  It was not many hours after Florence had returned to her small room in the bird-cage cottage, when Jeanne, in quite a different part of the country, started on her strange flight following the small silver plane.

  “What can have happened?” Madame Bihari asked herself in utter astonishment as she watched the two planes, like homing pigeons, rapidly disappearing into the distance.

  That which had happened was truly very simple. As Jeanne, after taxiing down the field, came in sight of that silver plane, she caught sight of a tall dark figure just entering the plane. One look was enough. Her lips parted in sudden surprise as she hissed under her breath: “The dark lady! The spy!”

  She was about to spring from her place when the silver plane, whose propeller had been slowly revolving, started gliding away. There was nothing left but to follow.

  Jeanne followed, not alone on the ground, but in the air. And did she follow? Miles and miles the two planes roared on. Perhaps some early milkman, looking up at the sky, wondered where they were going. Jeanne wondered also, but not once did she think of turning back. In her mind’s eye, she could see the earnest look on Danby’s face. She could picture his happy little city and her friend Florence working there.

  “I’ll catch that so terrible spy,” she told herself. “Somehow I must!”

  We feel certain that she would have accomplished her purpose, but for one thing. She and Madame had traveled far on the previous day. Their supply of gas was low. Just when Jeanne fancied that the silver plane was slowing up for a landing, her motor gave an angry sput-sput-sput, then went quite dead.

  “No gas!” she exclaimed in sudden consternation.

  Wildly her eyes sought the earth beneath her. There were plowed fields to the right and left of her, very soft and dangerous, she knew. Directly before her were corn shocks, hundreds of them. There were wide spaces between the shocks. Could she land between them?

  With a little prayer to the god of the air, she set her plane to go gliding in a circle and land as nearly as possible in one particular spot.

  She missed the spot and the space between the shocks completely. With a sudden intake of breath, she saw herself headed for an endless row of shocks.

  “God take pity on one poor little gypsy girl!” she whispered.

  The plane bumped softly. A brown bundle shot past her, another and another, five, ten, twenty. The earth and sky turned brown. Then, her plane quite buried in brown, she came to a standstill.

  Realizing the danger from fire, she leaped from the plane to begin dragging at the bundles of corn fodder that covered her motor. To her surprise, she discovered that someone on the other side was engaged in the same occupation. When at last the motor was quite clear, a freckled youth, with two front teeth gone, came round the side to grin at her.

  “Now you’ll have t’set ’em all up ag’in, I reckon.” He cackled a merry cackle.

  “Oh no; you set them up.” Jeanne joined him in the laugh. Then, digging deep in her knickers pocket, she dragged forth a new five dollar bill. “You take this and get me some gas. You can keep the rest. Just enough gas to take me to the landing field. Where is the nearest one?”

  “Thanks! Er—” the boy paused to cackle again. “Them shocks was just husked. I husked ’em. Weren’t tied none. If they wasn’t husked you’d might nigh cracked up, I reckon.

  “I’ll get the gas,” he added hurriedly. “Sure I will. Landin’ field over thar.” He pointed north. “Ten miles. How come you all didn’t stop thar?”

  “No gas.” Jeanne smiled a happy smile. “But say! You hurry!” she put in as he moved slowly away. “I’m a lady cop of the air. I was chasing a spy.”

  “Gee Whillikins! A spy!” The boy was away on the run.

  CHAPTER XVI

  A SUSPICIOUS CHARACTER

  Jeanne had lost her spy. She had lost herself as well. Only after much flying and four landings was she able to find her way back to the spot where Madame Bihari patiently awaited her. When she arrived the sun was setting once more and it was again time for tea.

  As on the previous night, Jeanne lay long beneath her canopy of red and gold. But no silver plane came to shine down upon her.

  “Marvelous plane,” she murmured. “Wonder if I shall ever see it again, or learn the secret of its shining beauty?”

  On the day following the dance, Florence took a forenoon off to climb to the crest of a hill that overlooked the city. She sat herself down upon a heap of fallen leaves, then proceeded to indulge in an occupation quite unusual for a girl. Selecting a fine smooth stick that had lain long enough upon the ground to become brittle and all sort of “whitty,” she began to whittle. A boy cousin had long ago introduced her to the joyous art of whittling. What did she make? Mostly nothing at all. She just whittled. And as she carved away at the brittle wood, she thought. Long, deep thoughts they were too. Ah yes, there was the charm of whittling—it made thinking easy.

  “If it wasn’t all so tranquil and beautiful, I’d leave it,” she thought as her eyes took in the scene beneath her feet. Yes, it surely was beautiful. The red brick factory, built beside a rushing stream, quite old and all covered with vines, had a quiet charm all its own. Beside it, reflecting the golden glory of autumn trees, was the millpond. Beyond that the water flowing over the dam, sparkled like a thousand diamonds.

  “Yes,” she murmured, “it is beautiful. I did not know that old New England could be so entrancing. And yet, it is not the city, the factory, the hills, the trees that hold you. It’s the people.”

  This was true. There was the little family in the canary-cage house who had taken her in. The room she and Verna occupied was so small. There was hardly room to move about. Yet they were happy. Verna was obliging, kind and generous to a fault. More important than that, she was eager to know about everything. And she, Florence, knew so many, many things about which this child of a small city had scarcely dreamed. They talked at night, hours on end.

  Strangely enough as she thought of this flower-like girl, a sudden mental image gave her a picture of Hugo, the idol of last night’s affair. She could see him now as plainly as she might if his picture had been thrown upon a screen before her. His dark eyes were flashing, his tangled hair tossing, his white teeth gleaming, as he exclaimed: “That’s fine! Now let’s have a little jazz!”

  She shuddered. Somehow, she did not wish to think of Verna and Hugo at the same instant. And yet if asked why, she could not have found a sensible reply.

  “Surely,” she said to the trees, the hills and the city before her, “he is handsome, gallant and popular. Who could ask for more?”

  And the hills seemed to echo back, “Who? Who? Who?”

  Ah yes, who? For all this, Florence was experiencing a feeling of unhappiness over the whole affair. “Why?” she asked herself. “Why?”

  She did not have high social ambitions, of this she was certain. Happiness, she knew, could not be attained by sitting close to the head of the table at a banquet, nor of being intimate with great and rich people. Happiness came from within. And yet this had been her first little social venture. Always before she had worked in the gymnasium or on the playground. This time she had planned something different, planned it well. She had dreamed a new dream and the thing had not turned out
as she had expected. The thing she had planned would, she had hoped, be beautiful. Had this affair ended beautifully? She was to be told in a few hours that it had been wonderful. Just now she was thinking, “There was plenty of noise.” Once Hugo had dumped out a whole bank of flowers to seize the tub that had held them, and beat it for a drum. Everyone had laughed and shouted. There had been no beautiful moonlight waltz at the end, only a wild burst of sound.

  “Probably I’m soft and sentimental,” she told herself. “And yet—” she was thinking of Danby Force. “Our people,” he had said, “seemed a little dull, so I hired Hugo. Thought he might stir them up with his saxophone.”

  He had stirred them up—some of them. Some remained just as they had been. Her little family in the canary-cage house were that sort. They lived simply, quietly, snugly in that tiny house. They did not ask for a bigger house. They had no car. They did not crave excitement. Their lives were like small, deep, still running streams.

  Once those streams had been disturbed, horribly disturbed. That was when the mill shut down four years before. It was Tom Maver, father of the family, who had told her about it. Tom was a small, quiet sort of man.

  “I’ve worked in the mill since I was sixteen,” he said. “Always tending a bank of spinning wheels. Never did anything else. We were happy. Had our home, our garden, our little orchard all snug and cozy.

  “Then,” he had sighed, “mills down south where labor is cheap, child labor and all that, cut in on our trade. The mill shut down. I had to find work. I went to a farm. They set me cutting corn, by hand. The corn was taller than I was, and heavier. I lasted three days. My face and hands were cut, and my back nearly broken. I was sick when I came home.” A look of pain overspread his honest face. “I tried ditch-digging and, in winter, putting up ice. That was terrible. I fell in and was nearly drowned. After that I—I just gave up.

  “Well,” he sighed, “we didn’t starve, but we didn’t miss it much.

  “But now,” he added brightly, “the mill is running and we are happy.”

  “Yes,” Florence thought to herself, “they say they are happy, and I believe they are. And that’s what counts most—happiness.” Yes, that was it. They did not need jazz and a saxophone, a grinning Hugo and his roaring tub to make them happy. They had something better, a simple, kindly peace.

  “Jazz,” she murmured. “It seems to get into people’s very lives.” She was thinking now of a friend, a beautiful girl not yet twenty. Her life was a round of jazz dances. Her doctor had ordered her to an island in Lake Superior for her health. She had been taking drugs for hay fever. This was affecting her heart. On this island there was no hay fever. She had escaped hay fever, but there was no jazz and her cigarettes ran out. “In another week I should have died—simply died,” she had said to Florence. And Florence knew she had spoken the truth. “How terrible to become a slave to habits that are not necessary to our lives!” she whispered. “And yet, I must not judge others. I only can try to select the best from both the old and the new for myself.”

  As she sat there looking down upon the city, thinking of its joys and its sorrows, its successes and its perils, she was like some brooding Greek goddess dreaming of the future.

  Suddenly she stood up straight and tall. Flinging her arms wide, she remained thus, motionless as a statue. She was beautiful, was this girl of strong heart and a strong body, beautiful as heroic Greek statuary is beautiful. Standing there, she saw the sun come out from behind a cloud to bathe the hillside with its glory of light. Racing down the hill, this narrow patch of light appeared at last to linger lovingly over the little city.

  “It is a sign,” the girl whispered. “In the end troubles shall be banished!” For the moment her face was transfigured by some strange light from within. Then she turned to walk slowly down the hill.

  As she entered the grounds that surrounded the mill, she was startled to see a strange figure half hidden by a wild cranberry bush at a spot near the gate. At first she believed him to be hiding there and thought swiftly, “This may be the spy!” Next instant she realized that he was raking dead leaves from beneath the bush.

  A strange, rather horrible sort of person he appeared to be. His hair was kinky and cut short, his dark face all but covered with a short curly beard. His bare arms were long and hairy. As he rested there, bent over, clawing at the leaves, he resembled an ape. He grinned horribly at the girl as she passed, but did not speak.

  “One more newcomer to the community,” was her mental comment. “But of course, since he works about the yard he does not enter the mill. He could scarcely be the spy. And yet—” she wondered how strong the locks and bolts of doors and windows were and whether it were possible, after all, for the spy to come from without, at night.

  On enquiry she was to discover that at night the plant was guarded by a watchman, one of the oldest employees of the place, and entirely trustworthy.

  For the moment, however, she was bent on entering the mill. She liked its din, loved to see the speeding shuttles and feel the movement of life about her. Besides, she had not forgotten what Danby Force had said: “Things often happen in the mill after a jazz night.” She thought of the girl who had fallen into a vat of blue dye. “Has anything happened today, I wonder?” she whispered to herself.

  CHAPTER XVII

  A SURPRISE VISIT

  To Florence with her interest in mechanical things and her love for the glorious throb of life, the cotton mill was a place of great enchantment. As she entered now she was greeted by the crack-crack-crack of a hundred shuttles and by the boom-bang of weavers’ beams.

  “It sounds like a battle,” she told herself. “And so it is—a battle against depression, cold, hunger and despair.” She looked about her. Everywhere hands were busy, faces bright and hearts light.

  “And to think,” she whispered, “all unknown to these honest, happy ones, there hangs above them a shadow like some great bombing airplane, a shadow that some day may drop a bomb as if from the sky upon all this glorious harmony of noise and still it forever. Unless—” she was thinking of the spy who, all undiscovered, lingered in their midst. He was a thief. No, he did not take their money, nor their other trifling treasures. He took their means of living—or would if he could.

  “And who is he?” she asked herself. “Who?” She thought of the hunchback German who tended the motors, of the two dark-faced silent sisters who so resembled the spy that had escaped. “That one too may come back,” she told herself. Danby Force had said that he was sure they had not discovered all the secrets. “It’s a complicated process. Each secret is known by only one or two workers.” These had been his words. “No one of them knows all of it.” She thought of the black-eyed girl she had seen carrying away the bottle of dye stuff. “She may have wanted to analyse it,” she thought. “More likely that she merely used it to dye that dress she wore last night.” She laughed in spite of herself. Then she recalled the little ape-like man working out there among the shrubbery. He might know a great deal. Who could tell?

  “No one knows now.” She clenched her hands tight. “But we shall know!”

  That evening after working hours she was favored with a surprise visit. She had entered her tiny room in the canary-cage house. Weary and perplexed, wondering uneasily whether she had as yet been of any real service to this unusual community, and wondering too in a disturbed sort of way whether she should not tell Danby Force there was no use of her staying longer, she threw herself on her bed and had fallen half asleep when a touch like the brush of a feather awakened her.

  At once she sprang to a sitting position.

  “It is I, Verna.” There followed a low laugh. “You have a caller. And such a romantic one! You’d never guess.” Verna laughed a low, happy laugh.

  “Danby Force is not romantic,” said the big girl, fumbling at her hair.

  “And it’s not Mr. Force,” said Verna. Her cheeks, Fl
orence saw, were flushed. “It is Hugo, Hugo!” There was a note of deep admiration in her tone as she repeated the name a second time softly: “Hugo.”

  “Oh, Hugo?” Florence started. Hugo, the one who had stolen her act, was here to see her. She wondered why. And, what was more, this lovely school girl admired him greatly.

  “Did you see him?” she asked.

  “No. Oh! I wish I had!” Verna clasped her hands. “Mother opened the door. She seated him, then called me from the kitchen to tell you. Aren’t you thrilled? You are not hurrying at all.”

  “No,” Florence said quietly, “it isn’t wise to hurry—at least not for a man.” She smiled at this, then gave the girl a pat on the cheek.

  She found herself considerably disturbed as she stepped into the little parlor.

  “Ah!” Hugo, the magnificent, sprang to his feet at sight of her. And he was, in his own way, magnificent—bright blue suit, orange colored tie, a flower in his buttonhole, a smile showing all his white teeth. “Ah, Miss Huyler. I came to congratulate you, to tell you how wonderful the party was last night. You certainly are a marvelous hostess. We of the mill—”

  He broke short off to stare at something on the wall. He stood there for a count of ten, then he murmured, “How exquisite! How charmingly beautiful!”

  He was looking at a picture. It was indeed beautiful. Done by a very great artist who had chanced to visit the little city, it was carefully done—a picture of a very beautiful face.

  “Yes,” Florence said quietly, “that is a picture of Verna, the daughter of this house.”

  “Do you mean to say she lives—that she is real!” The man’s astonishment was genuine.

  “Yes,” Florence replied.

  “I must meet her.” Hugo smiled a dazzling smile.