The door squeaked as she opened it wide enough to slip through. Unnerved by the sound, Penny moved swiftly across the kitchen to the living room.
“So there you are!” cried Ma Harper from the balcony.
Penny threw caution to the winds. Darting across the room, she jerked at the outside door. It opened, but on the porch, facing her, stood Sweeper Joe and Clark Clayton!
CHAPTER 18
OVER THE BALCONY
Panic-stricken, Penny’s first thought was to try to dart past the men. But she realized that to do so would be impossible. Warned by Ma Harper’s excited cries, they had moved into position to completely block her path.
“Stop that girl!” shouted Ma Harper, bearing down, upon her from the direction of the river balcony. “She’s from the police and sent here to get evidence!”
Whirling around, Penny ran back toward the kitchen, with the woman in pursuit. She did not waste time testing the rear door, for she already knew it to be locked.
However, opening from the kitchen was another closed door which appeared to give exit. With no time to debate, Penny jerked it open and darted inside.
Instantly, she saw that she had made a serious mistake. She had entered a small washroom and had trapped herself. And Ma Harper was practically upon her.
Penny did the only possible thing. She slammed the door and turned the key in the lock. For a moment at least, she was beyond reach.
“I’ve really trapped myself now!” she thought, recapturing her breath. “What a mess! If I had used my head this wouldn’t have happened.”
Penny sat down on the edge of the bathtub to think. Already Ma Harper was pounding and thumping on the flimsy wooden door panel. The door rattled on its hinges.
“You open up or I’ll break down the door!” the woman shouted furiously. “You hear me?”
Penny did not answer. There was no escape from the washroom for it had no window. The tub upon which she sat was ringed with dirt, evidently having seen no use in many weeks. Above her head stretched a short clothesline upon which hung a row of Ma Harper’s stockings.
“You let me in!” Ma Harper shouted again. “If I ever lay hands on you, you’ll pay for this!”
The threat left Penny entirely unmoved. She had no intention of opening the door, no matter what the woman might say or do.
Realizing that her tactics were gaining nothing, Ma tried another approach.
“Please let me in,” she coaxed in a falsely sweet voice. “We won’t hurt you. If you come out now, we’ll let you go home just as you want to do.”
Penny was not to be so easily taken in. She remained silent.
Ma Harper lost her temper completely then. She kicked at the door and shouted for the two men.
“Joe! Clark! Come and help me get this brat out of here!”
Penny, certain that her moments of freedom were limited, heard the two men approach. A heavy body heaved itself against the door, but still the lock held.
“I don’t want my door smashed,” she heard Ma Harper whine. “Can’t you get a screwdriver and take off the hinges? There ain’t no other key in the house.”
The reply of the men was inaudible, but Penny heard their retreating footsteps. The door knob kept rattling, so she decided Ma Harper had been left there to keep watch.
“This probably is my only chance to escape!”Penny reasoned. “I might unlock the door and take a chance on overpowering Ma Harper. But she’s a strong woman!”
Her roving gaze fastened upon the line of drying stockings, and suddenly she had an idea! Jerking one of the stockings down, she seized a thick bar of soap from the dish above the bathtub, and crammed it deep into the toe of the stocking.
“This will make a superb weapon!” she thought gleefully. “Almost as good as a blackjack!”
Taking a firm grip on the stocking, Penny swung it several times to be certain of its possibilities. Then she was ready.
Quickly she unlocked the door and stepped back.
For a moment nothing happened. Then Ma Harper pushed it open, just as she had expected.
“Now I’ll get you!” she screamed, springing at Penny.
Penny kept the stocking behind her back. “I hate to do this,” she thought, “but she’s asking for it!”
As Ma reached out to seize her, she swung the stocking. The encased cake of soap cut a neat arc through the air and clipped the woman sharply on the head.
More startled than hurt, she stumbled backwards and collapsed into the bathtub.
Pausing only long enough to see that Ma was not really injured, Penny made a dash for safety. But her escape was cut off.
Sweeper Joe and Clayton the gateman were just entering the front door of the living room, armed with tools to use in taking down the washroom door.
Seeing Penny, they again blocked the exit. Desperate, she ran in the only possible direction—to the balcony overlooking the river.
The docks were directly beneath the house, and waves lapped the posts of the two-story porch. It was at least a fifteen-foot drop and the water was shallow. But Penny had no time to calculate the risk.
Leaping to the railing of the balcony, she poised there an instant, staring down at the rocks plainly visible in the still water.
Then, as Sweeper Joe reached out to grasp her by the shoulder, she jumped.
She struck the water head foremost in a shallow dive which wrenched her back but kept her from striking the river bottom. Brushing wet hair from her eyes, she began to stroke. Her shoes were heavy as lead and impeded her.
The force of Penny’s dive had carried her many feet from shore into deep water, and the river current swept her farther away from the docks. Weighted down by the shoes, she knew she did not have sufficient strength to swim to shore with them on.
Burying her face in the water, she doubled up, and groping down, untied them, one at a time.
“Those were good shoes,” she thought with regret as she kicked them off and saw them settle into the river.
Penny struck out with smooth crawl strokes for the nearby pier. Her skirt kept wrapping itself about her legs. Unwilling to discard it, she tucked it high about her waist which made swimming much easier.
Reaching the pier, she was pulling herself out onto it, when Ma Harper and the two men came running out of the house to intercept her.
“Oh! Oh!” thought Penny. “It’s not going to be as easy as I assumed.”
Joe ran out on the pier, while Ma and the other man separated, one starting upstream and the other down. No matter which way she turned, Penny saw that her escape would be cut off.
The river was wide, the current swift. Although an excellent swimmer, she had no desire to attempt such a contest of endurance. But there seemed no other way.
Deliberately pushing off from the pier, she swam directly away from shore, After a dozen strokes she rolled over on her back for a moment to see what was happening. Ma Harper had shouted to Joe, and the words carried plainly over the water.
“Take after her in the boat! We don’t dare let her get away now! She knows too much!”
Penny had forgotten the motorboat tied up at the pier. Now as she saw Joe and Clark Clayton run toward it, her heart sank.
Though the race seemed hopeless, she flopped over onto her face again, and swam with all her strength. Going with the current, her feet churned the water behind her.
Several times, the men tried without success to start the motorboat engine. Penny grew hopeful. Then she heard the blast as the motor caught, and knew that in just a minute the men would overtake her.
Frantically, she glanced about for help. Already late afternoon, there were no fishing boats on the river. Save for Ma Harper, who stood ready to seize her should she try to swim in to the beach, no other persons were visible on either shore. The River Queen apparently was at the far end of her run, hidden beyond the bend.
A hundred yards away, in shallow water, lay a large patch of tall river grass and cat-tails. Seeing it, Penny took new hope. The area was l
arge enough to offer a temporary refuge if she could reach it! Not only would the dense mat of high grass protect her from view, but a boat would not be able to follow.
Starting to swim again, she put everything she had into each stroke. It would be pinch and go to reach the grass patch! Aware of her intention, Sweeper Joe and Clark Clayton had changed course, hoping to intercept her.
CHAPTER 19
FLIGHT
The high water grass loomed up and Penny’s feet struck a muddy bottom. With the boat almost upon her, she plunged into the morass. The water came to armpit level. Pushing aside the thick stalks which wrapped themselves about her arms and body, she waded far into the patch before she paused.
Hidden by the dense growth, she could not at first see the pursuing boat. She knew, however, that it had halted at the edge of the patch, for the motor had been cut off.
And after awhile she heard voices, low spoken, but nevertheless clear, for the slightest sound carried over water.
“She’s over there somewhere in the center of the patch!” one of the men muttered. “I could tell where she went by the way the grass moved. Shall we let her go?”
“No, we got to get her or she’ll tell everything she knows to old man Gandiss and the police!” the other answered.
With the motor shut off, the two men then took out paddles, and began to force the boat through the jungle of grass. Observing that they were coming straight toward her, Penny noiselessly waded on, taking every precaution not to move the stalks unnecessarily. Noting the direction of the wind, she went with it, hoping that any movement of the grass would appear to be caused by the stiff breeze.
But she hoped in vain. For suddenly Joe the Sweeper shouted hoarsely:
“There she is! Over there!” He pointed with his paddle blade.
The men pushed the boat on, smashing the grass ahead of them. In despair, Penny saw that wherever she went she was leaving a trail of trampled, broken grass behind her.
No longer trying to prevent splashes, she waded in a wide half-circle. Then quickly she back-tracked, this time making not a sound. Slipping into the dense growth just beside the trail she had made, she breathlessly waited.
The boat came into view. Taking a deep breath, Penny ducked under water. Opening her eyes, she could see the blurred, dark bottom of the craft moving slowly toward her, so close she could have reached out and touched it.
Her breath began to grow short. The boat barely seemed to move. Penny’s lungs felt as if they were ready to burst, but still she remained under water.
Then the men had passed, and she dared raise her head for an instant to gulp in air. The boat reached the end of the trail through the grass that Penny herself had made. There it halted, as Sweeper Joe and his companion, realizing they had lost their quarry, debated their next move.
“She was here a minute ago!” Sweeper Joe growled. “I caught a glimpse of her clothes, and saw the grass move. Where did she go?”
“She must have doubled back.”
With difficulty the men turned the boat around and rowed toward Penny again. When she dared wait no longer, she submerged again.
They passed her and she came up for air. A water snake slithered through the grass, almost touching her hand.
Startled, Penny leaped backwards, making an ugly, loud splash in the water. Slight as was the sound, it told the men where she hid. Turning in the boat, they saw her through the grass, and bore toward her again.
By this time, Penny actually enjoyed the desperate game of hide and seek, for so far, the advantage had been hers. She stood watching the boat until it came very close.
Then she dived, coming up directly underneath the craft. Getting her shoulder squarely under one side, she raised up, and with an ease that surprised her, upset the boat.
The two men went sprawling into the water. Unable to swim, they made animal noises and clutched desperately at the grass for support. But as their feet found solid footing, they started furiously toward Penny. Taking her time, and deliberately seeking deeper water, she waded away.
“That will hold them for a few minutes,” she thought gleefully. “I’ll get out of this jungle now, and swim ashore.”
One more the girl’s hopes were rudely dashed. As she reached the edge of the grass area, she was disconcerted to see another rowboat approaching from the direction of the Harper place. With shadows deepening on the water, she could not at first distinguish the man. Then she recognized Claude Harper.
“He must have come home, and Ma sent him here to help capture me!” she thought. “If I swim out now, I’ll certainly be caught.”
Crouching down so that her nose was just above the water, she waited. Claude Harper rowed on, resting upon his oars when perhaps ten yards away.
“Joe!” he called.
There was an answering shout from the center of the grass patch.
“That gal’s somewhere close by!” Sweeper Joe shouted in warning. “She upset our boat. Stay where you are, and see that she doesn’t slip past you!”
Thus warned, Claude Harper began to survey the grass patch intently. He looked hard at the place where Penny stood. She was certain he had seen her, but after a moment, he turned slightly, and his eyes roved on.
As she hesitated, not knowing what to do, Sweeper Joe and Clark Clayton, who had bailed out their boat, came paddling out to meet Harper. Wet and plastered with mud, they had lost one of the paddles.
“If you ain’t sights!” Harper cackled upon seeing them. He slapped his thigh in glee. “You look like a couple o’ stupid mud turtles!”
“Fool!” rasped Sweeper Joe. “Don’t you have sense enough to figure what will happen if that girl gets away from us?”
“You ain’t goin’ back to no job at the Gandiss factory. Nor Clayton neither!”
“It’s a lot more serious than that!” Joe snapped. He guided the boat alongside Harper’s craft. “Why do you think I took that job in the first place, and spent better than two years studyin’ the Gandiss factory layout? I lined up the employes we could get to go along with us, got everything organized—and now this gal has to bust up the show just as the profits begin to roll in!”
“Better pipe down,” Harper warned curtly. “She can hear you, and so can everyone else on the river.”
“What’s the difference?” Joe argued in disgust. “We’re through. I’m gettin’ out of this town tonight!”
“Me with you,” added Clark Clayton. “Ever since Gandiss put detectives on the job, I figured the game was gettin’ too dangerous.”
Now it was Claude Harper who lost his temper. “Hold on,” he said warningly. “It’s all right for you guys to blow town, but what about me and the wife?”
“You can do what you please,” Joe retorted.
“We got your brass cached in our basement. If the cops should find it there, we’d take the rap.”
“Get rid of it.”
“That’s a lot easier said than done. Besides, that brass is worth a tidy sum o’ money.”
“Then why not sell it tonight?” Joe proposed suddenly. “If we can get it to the junkman who has a place across from the factory, he’ll pay us a good price. We can complete the deal, and still get out of town before midnight.”
“That’s okay for you,” Harper argued, “but Ma and I own property here, and we got a good business.”
“It was your stupid wife’s stocking business that got us into this jam!” Clark Clayton snarled.
“I ain’t talkin’ about that. I mean our dance hall. We clean up about a hundred bucks every Saturday night.”
“You should have thought about that before you went in with us,” Joe retorted. “You knew the risks you were taking. Anyway, this mess was your wife’s making.”
A silence fell, and then Clark Clayton said: “We ain’t gettin’ nowhere. We got to decide what we’re goin’ to do, and we got to make sure that gal don’t get out o’ this weed patch until we’ve arranged our escape.”
In whispers, the me
n conferred. Though Penny strained her ears, she could not catch a single word. However, a plan satisfactory to the three seemed to have been formulated, for presently, the two boats separated.
Sweeper Joe and Clark Clayton paddled off, heading for the pier at the Harpers’. The other man remained in his rowboat, unquestionably detailed to keep watch of the grass patch and prevent the girl’s escape.
To amuse himself, he began to call out to her, though he could not see her or know where she was.
“You think you’re a clever one!” he taunted. “But you jest wait! We’ll get you out o’ there, and when we do, you ain’t goin’ to like it!”
Lest a movement of the grass or a splash betray her, Penny remained perfectly still. Shadows deepened on the river for night was fast coming on. Her muscles became stiff and cramped. The wind chilled her to the very bone, and the water which at first had not seemed unbearably cold, made her teeth chatter and dance. Each minute became an hour as the torture increased.
“I’ll have to do something,” she thought desperately. “I can’t endure this much longer.”
CHAPTER 20
A DESPERATE PLIGHT
In the rowboat, Claude Harper slowly patrolled the area, keeping an alert watch for the slightest movement amid the grass. Once as a crane arose from the dense growth into the darkening sky, he focused a flashlight beam on the spot.
“He’s prepared to stay here half the night if necessary,”Penny thought, shivering.
She could think of no means of escape. When it became completely dark, she might be able to swim away without being detected. But long exposure in cold water had weakened her, and she was none too certain of her ability to reach shore.
Her absence at the island surely must have been noticed by this time, she reasoned. Why was not a boat sent in search of her?
“I hope they don’t assume I am staying with Sally for the night,” she worried.
Penny’s thoughts were momentarily distracted as she heard indistinct voices from the direction of the Harper dock. Lights had been turned on in the house and basement.
“Those men are getting rid of the stolen brass,” she reasoned. “If they try to sell it to Heiney, they still may be caught.”
The Penny Parker Megapack: 15 Complete Novels Page 144
