The Third Girl Detective

by Margaret Sutton

  S. P. ideas were growing. Jean and Nan promised to see Miss Haynes on Monday; and then the planning was directed to immediate affairs with the arranging and furnishing of the club room, the time of meetings, whether they should have refreshments or not, and kindred matters to be decided. Jean was to be spared some things, for it would not be fair, the girls said, for her to be at all the trouble, or expense, if there were any, about the room. It was enough for her to offer the room. But Jean informed them that the furniture was there and the room doing no one any good. “Mother is having the attic all cleaned for us to-day,” she announced, “and this morning we decided that it was foolish to keep a lot of things that might do somebody some good. So you ought to see the clearance! But all the furniture that can be fixed for us, and some trunks of things that will be lovely for us to dress up in will still be there.”

  “I adore an attic!” sighed Leigh. Then a neat maid came to the door to announce that tea was ready, and the girls of the S. P. Club had their first dainty meal together in their official relation.

  CHAPTER V

  THE WITCHING WITCHES

  Phoebe was delighted when Jean told her how glad she was that Leigh was in the club. “Do you know,” said Jean, “if it had not been that you have liked her so much, I would not have called her that afternoon. They seemed like such reserved people and have so much money and travel so much, or I suppose they do, that I imagined Mrs. Dudley would not care for us girls, and Leigh never seemed to. But I understand now.”

  “She didn’t want to show how lonesome she was,” said Phoebe, “and then she hasn’t been around much with other girls anyway. She was sick and tutored, at home or wherever they were.”

  The whole seven, Leigh included, were going to Jean’s after their good supper at Leigh’s. The purpose was to inspect the attic once more.

  “You feel better, Jean, don’t you, to have some sort of a real name picked out, even if it may be only temporary?”

  “Yes, Phoebe, after what I said to Billy. Some day perhaps I’ll tell him all about it.”

  “None of the rest of us will, and it must be understood that if we take in other girls they are never to know how this started. We’ll probably forget it anyway. It isn’t important to the S. P.’s.”

  The girls were delighted with the roomy attic that was floored over the entire house. Full of everything, it had not showed how large it was. “Oh, Jean,” cried Fran, stooping her tall height a little as she explored a corner near the eaves, “the room will be the regular Witches’ Retreat, and we can have all this to fix up for a Hallowe’en party or anything!”

  “Yes,” eagerly seconded Leigh. “The sanctum sanctorum we needn’t let anybody see, if we want to be mysterious, but this would be wonderful, as Fran says.”

  “I wouldn’t want to wait for Hallowe’en,” said Jean. “Let’s have an April Shower or a May Day, before it gets too hot and ask the Black Wizards to have a stunt.” Then Jean gave a little squeal, for the one electric light at the head of the stairs and another shining from the room did not disperse all the shadows and she had not noticed that someone else had come upstairs. It was Judge Gordon.

  “Oh, Daddy how you scared me!” she cried.

  “Sorry, Jean. I just came up to see what these witching witches need. I see that we must have more lights, unless you prefer darkness for your spells.”

  “We wouldn’t need much more light until our party, but if you’re having it wired it would be good to have it when we want it, any time. Of course we could use candles.”

  “And burn up the place. No, I’ll have proper lights. What else?”

  “The running water doesn’t run and the chimney is choked or whatever flue that is. The stove smokes, at least, and couldn’t we have a fireplace instead?”

  “You don’t want much, do you?” asked the judge, laughing. “But if you will investigate, you will find that a little fireplace has been boarded up. If you will be careful about fire, I’ll have it opened up and a grate set in. The radiator was fixed to-day.”

  The girls found the room, or “Witches’ Cavern,” by Molly’s suggestion, quite warm enough for a meeting. They closed the door upon themselves for private conference after Judge Gordon had left them.

  “Do you think that your father heard all we said about witches?” asked Bess. “He called us witching witches, which was very nice of him.”

  “He probably heard what we said about Hallowe’en,” Jean replied. “Anyhow, he suggested at noon that if the boys were Black Wizards, we girls ought to be some sort of witches. He had walked home with Jimmy Standish and Jimmy told him the latest school gossip, I guess. How about it, Nan?”

  “Nobody knows how all these things get around,” said Nan Standish. “But it’s a good suggestion. Why not have Orders? The Order of the Witch or Wings, for the bird division, for instance.”

  “‘Swooping Pelicans’ would be better,” said Leigh quickly. “They look just like old witches riding the waves in Florida!”

  “So do the kingfishers all scrooched up on a limb over the lake,” suggested Fran.

  “And how about a little green heron watching for that next fish?” queried Bess.

  “This club’s getting altogether too smart,” laughed Jean. “Nan, take these things down quick before we forget ’em! Stormy Petrel is another bird name with S. P., and haven’t we a Phoebe bird and a Crane already?”

  “Help, help!” cried Nan, sharpening her pencil. “Swooping Pelican—Stormy Petrel, any more S. P.’s?”

  Nan scribbled away, taking notes. Nor was she without some excellent ideas of her own. For the next hour or so the girls made their plans with many a laugh and chuckle. Leigh, who always had such pretty things, said that she could bring some cushions for the couch, which Mrs. Gordon had already covered with a gay couch-cover or robe. Fran had some curtains that she would offer.

  “Maybe you won’t like them, though,” she added. “I bought them myself for my room when I was about ten years old, and Mother never would let me put them up, since my room is at the front of the house, like this, to be sure. Oh, I suppose they won’t do! They have all sort of crazy things in the pattern, peacocks and birds and I don’t know what.”

  “Why, that would be fine for Stealthy Prowlers, Fran,” said Jean. “Bring them over and we can see. Mother has some plain draperies that she is fixing. Those will show behind the shades, but we can have our gay curtains inside of those. We’d have to have something to brighten things up. And I have a grand idea—that is, if you think it’s grand, of a witches caldron, right in the middle of the room, with a fire under it, you know, or things fixed to look like one, and maybe an electric bulb hidden in it.

  “And let’s not have our witches all in black, since the wizards will be, I suppose. Let’s have yellow and black, or red and black, or—something!”

  “Why not have each order of witches dressed differently?” asked Molly.

  “In other words, each girl have a separate costume?” said Bess, in smiling reference to their limited numbers.

  “I suppose so,” Molly replied, “but we’ll probably have more girls in outdoor things, won’t we?”

  “That is to be decided,” spoke Jean quickly. It would not do to talk of this as yet. Molly would have everybody, dear girl that she was, but it would not always do. “By the way, girls, Dad said that we wanted to be careful not to make any of the boys mad about us or get mad ourselves—of course he did not put it that way, but that was what he meant. He heard me gibbering to Mother about things, you know. I’ve had to tell her quite a lot, of course. But I told my father that we were being ‘just wonderful’ not to get provoked at the names the boys make up for us, and that we were planning to entertain the Black Wizards, provided they would condescend to an attic party. Dad just laughed and told me that if we advertised plenty of refreshments he thought that the Black Wizards would come. I said that
we liked eats ourselves and that the attic party would be a real supper, moreover, he could come up and have supper with us!”

  “I think that your father is just too nice for anything,” cried Bess, warmly. “Just think of all the trouble and expense, too, in fixing this up for us!”

  “Dad likes to do things to the house, Bess. Besides he said he hoped we’d wake this sleepy old town up and show the folks what boys and girls needed in this ‘day and generation.’ I don’t imagine that he wants us to do anything startling, though.”

  Here there was an interruption from Nan. “Being secretary to this club is just awful. Do you want me to put down all your old suggestions, or wait till we really do something?” Nan was holding up her pencil with a comical expression of despair.

  “No, Nan—you might make a few jottings of anything you think is important, for fear the person that makes the suggestion might forget it. This is not a formal meeting, anyhow.”

  So spoke the president, and Nan replied with a twinkle, “When have we had a formal meeting? Tell me that!”

  “Echo answers, ‘When’?” laughed Jean.

  And as informally this conference went on, among girls who were going to try something without a real leader. As yet their plans were unsettled, but they were evolving from chaos quite rapidly. The world was theirs in one sense, and girls in a small town have some advantages over others. It is easy for them to get together and it is only a step, figuratively speaking, into the country, where wonderful things happen all the time for those who have eyes to see them.

  At present, fixing the “club room” stood first. Second, there was a decision to give the Attic Party as soon as possible, by way of opening the club room, or dedicating it. Then, meantime, how much should they tell of what they were doing, and how could they keep it a secret club if they had the party?

  The president had things to say about this.

  “Considering the way this club was formed, I imagine that the less we say right now to the boys, about our plans, the better. I’d dearly love to know what they are doing, but suppose we let them be curious about us, instead of showing too much curiosity about them. We can get up enough funny things to do ourselves, even if their doings are funnier; don’t you think so?” All this was in Jean’s own emphatic manner.

  “And,” she added, “the Attic Party is going to do wonders to everybody’s disposition. Remembering how Billy’s crowing about the Black Wizards made me feel like getting even—in a way, let’s remember how they’ll feel if we act superior or anything like that. Dad is right, and this ought to be fun, pure and simple.”

  The other girls agreed, though Nan remarked that she agreed “with reservations.” “If Jimmy starts anything at home in the crowing line, I may—,” but Nan stopped and laughed, then asked what the girls wanted Jean and herself to say to Miss Haynes.

  “Maybe you’d better not suggest anything about camping at first, girls,” Phoebe suggested. “Just ask her if she knows what other girls do about outdoor work and where we could find out and what she sees on her trips, and if we’re going to have any field trips with her, and—” Phoebe stopped, for they all were laughing at the long list she was making.

  “I think that we’d better add Phoebe to the committee,” giggled the president. “All those in favor of adding Phoebe Wood to the committee, say ‘ay’!”

  CHAPTER VI

  A NEW SORT OF A PARTY

  For some days after this meeting mysterious bundles were brought into the Gordon home. To pass Billy, or Danny, or some of the other boys, with a knobby package whose contents were well kept from view by thick paper and a well-knotted string, was such fun. Jimmy offered to carry one for Nan one afternoon when she was coming from Leigh’s, but Nan said that it was “fragile” and that she could trust it to no one. “Of course, he wanted to feel of it and see if he could tell what it was.”

  Whether the boys had a real club room or not they did not know. Nor did they know how long the Black Wizards had been in existence. “Curiosity killed the cat,” was all that Jimmy would say when Nan asked him where the Wizards met, after informing him first, that the S. P.’s were planning to have all their meetings at Jean’s, their business meetings, at least. The girls carefully noted all the boys that wore the snake pin, and put their names down. This was to make the number of girls fairly even, when they gave their party of celebration.

  Although there were no other children at Judge Gordon’s beside the lively Jean herself, the club room was kept locked and it leaked out among the boys that the judge was having a number of keys made, “I’d like to get into their club room,” said Danny Pierce to Billy, “and see what they have there. What can girls do? If any of those girls lose a key, O boy!”

  Billy Baxter took great delight in repeating Danny’s last sentence to Jean, who passed it on to the rest of the girls, creating quite a stir, as Billy had intended. “Would they dare?” asked Molly, in horror.

  “No,” said Jean, “but they might climb up and peep in. I’d better keep the curtains together, though we’ll have to have the windows on the balcony open part of the time.”

  “Unless they’re human flies, they can’t climb up,” said Leigh, looking out of the front window.

  “There’s that oak tree,” Jean reminded her. “Wouldn’t it be funny if they planned to do it, and then we invited them?”

  “Yes, but we are not sure that we’ll let any one into the inner sanctum.”

  Every possible moment of the week was spent either on the attic floor itself or in sewing draperies or annexing ornaments in the various homes of the S. P.’s. It was not until Friday afternoon that the committee visited Miss Haynes, screwing up their courage to do something that turned out very pleasantly, as things dreaded often do.

  The girls found Miss Haynes at the pleasant occupation of grading test papers in her room after school. She nodded pleasantly as they came in, halting just inside the door, while Jean asked, “Could we see you just a minute, Miss Haynes?”

  “Certainly,” she replied, “but take seats for a few minutes. I’m just in the middle of averaging some grades.”

  The girls sat down at the front desks, while Miss Haynes apparently forgot their existence in her work. But they kept as still as mice, or the Stealthy Prowlers they had decided to be, though time went on and they hoped that she really had not forgotten them.

  “There!” she said presently. “That’s done. Why do we have to have tests and keep grades anyway?”

  “Oh, that’s what we think, Miss Haynes. Can’t you do something about it?”

  “I’m afraid not, Jean,” but Miss Haynes’ eyes danced. Why, it wasn’t going to be hard at all to talk to her. Probably it was because she liked hiking and things that she was so human!

  The girls explained. They had started a club. They wanted to do some things that girls did in some of the organizations they’d read about in Camp Fire and Girl Scout stories and yet they wanted their own fun, too. They knew that she took hikes and knew everything about nature work and maybe camping, and could she suggest anything that would be possible to do?

  Miss Haynes listened thoughtfully. “Why, yes, girls do a great deal that is very wholesome for them these days, but if they take up anything seriously they usually have a leader. I am not familiar with any of the organization work. Isn’t there any young woman in the town who does?”

  “Nobody, Miss Haynes, and besides, the older girls don’t want to bother with us.”

  “Will we have any field work in science, Miss Haynes?” This was Phoebe.

  “Why, yes, a little. I’m sorry that I can’t start more, but there is a reason this year. The schedule will not permit it, the superintendent said, and there is some one who does not want the children to take their Saturdays.”

  Jean looked at Nan. “That old school board!” she thought.

  “But if you want something to
work toward outdoors, I may be able to start you at something. Bird study is my particular hobby, but I also teach and study botany, and bugs and butterflies and anything else in that line. How would you like to begin on snails?” Miss Haynes was actually pretty when she laughed and talked like this. Nan “bet” that she wasn’t much older than the senior girls.

  “My father has an old zoology text with lots of interesting pictures in it,” said Phoebe. “I’d like snails better than snakes, but I think I like birds best.”

  “And you are a phoebe yourself, aren’t you? How many girls have you in the club?”

  “Only seven now.”

  “Hunting birds in a crowd is not very good, but if you will promise to be very still, and if you really want to make a start, you may all come out with me early tomorrow morning. I will show you some tree sparrows, a lot of juncos, possibly some fox sparrows, and there is never any knowing what we may find. I’m perfectly delighted to be in Wisconsin, for I’m sure that birds I’ve never seen will be nesting in this inland lake. Then I found some interesting specimens of other things in that swampy place along the little run. I suppose you girls know the common birds and you can help me, for I have never been around the Great Lakes much.”

  “I wish that we could help you, Miss Haynes,” said Jean, delighted with the sincerity and kindness of the teacher. “We don’t know much, only some of the commonest birds. We know a heron from a gull and that’s about all, I guess.”

  “We’ll study together, then. Now I like to stay out a good while, especially when we are finding things, so bundle up. Any girl that isn’t warmly enough dressed will have to go back!” Miss Haynes smiled, but her firm tone showed that she meant what she said, and it was not the first time that the teachers had mentioned the girls’ dressing too lightly.

  “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to take a lunch, too, in case we want to stay?”

  “That would be lovely!” exclaimed Phoebe.

  “Oh, yes,” said Jean, “and couldn’t we build a fire and have something the way we do at a beach party?”