The Second Girl Detective Megapack: 23 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls

by Julia K. Duncan

  “Before you know it we’ll be flying back on the wings of success,” she concluded grandly.

  “I’m sure of it,” Mr. Force said. “Meanwhile, I shall be very comfortable here and ready to come to your aid if it takes more than a week to conclude your task.”

  “Let’s get started, everybody!” Doris cried. “You know that plane is scheduled to start at a certain time and it won’t wait for us, if we’re late.”

  Soon the baggage was in the automobile and the family gathered in the living room for final farewells to Mr. Force.

  “Let’s go!” Marshmallow commanded gaily.

  “Dear me, dear me!” wailed Mrs. Mallow. “I’m so nervous I can hardly stand up! I’m just plain frightened to death!”

  “Shucks, Mother, you haven’t anything to be afraid of!” Marshmallow uttered. “Dave and I are a match for any pair of desperadoes you ever heard of, and we’ll have the law on our side, too!”

  “It isn’t th-that,” Mrs. Mallow said, her teeth chattering. “It’s the thought of g-going up in an airplane.”

  Mr. Force bent solicitously over the agitated woman. He was afraid she might become ill.

  “My dear Mrs. Mallow,” he said, “if I thought there was any danger, I should not allow Doris or any of you to go.”

  “You’ll soon be all right, Mother,” Marshmallow laughed. “When the trip is over you’ll be wanting to buy a plane of your own to go shopping in!”

  He put his sturdy arm around her, led her from the house and literally lifted her into the auto. The others followed.

  Marshmallow put his car into gear and it shot forward.

  “Excuse me, Mother, for hurrying you,” he shouted above the roar of the motor, “but we are late now.”

  Doris and Kitty, in the rear of the car, could not help but feel sympathy for Mrs. Mallow.

  “Just the same, she gives me a hunch this trip is due for trouble,” Kitty remarked. “I’ll bet we crack up, or make a forced landing in the desert somewhere.”

  “There are no deserts between here and Raven Rock,” scoffed Doris. “Buck up, Kitty! See how brave Marshmallow is. He wouldn’t let you get hurt for worlds.”

  Marshmallow settled into silence and gave his full attention to getting the maximum speed out of his car.

  The airport was some distance outside the Plainfield city limits, and soon the car was rocking and careening along the state highway, which was bordered by orchards and truck gardens.

  From the laden apple and peach trees came odors as delicious as any blossoms’ fragrance, and even Mrs. Mallow was enjoying the beauty of it all, when without warning an ear-splitting report rang out and the car bumped to a swaying halt, well off the road-bed.

  “Oh, what’s the matter!” cried Mrs. Mallow. “Marshall, are you hurt?” Kitty screamed, as Marshmallow climbed out of the car, ruefully rubbing himself.

  “No, not much. Got a hard bump against the steering wheel,” he said. “But isn’t it just our luck to have a tire blow out?”

  The one on the rear wheel was practically in fragments. Philosophically, Marshmallow opened the tool box, extracted a wrench and a jack, and began the task of replacing the blown tire.

  “It is twenty minutes to nine now,” Doris said, looking at her wrist watch. “Oh, dear, we can never get there in time!”

  “Maybe—you’d better walk—down to that house and call up the airport,” Marshmallow wheezed. “Tell Dave we’ll be only fifteen minutes late. Maybe they’ll wait for us.”

  “Oh,” exclaimed Kitty, “wouldn’t it be dreadful if they went without us?”

  “You stay here with Mrs. Mallow, Kitty,” Doris said hurriedly. “There is a lunch stand or something at that house, I remember, so there’s probably a ’phone.”

  Quickly she strode along the road to the dwelling visible at the turn of the road a quarter of a mile distant. The fragrant air, spiced with the first promise of autumn, exhilarated Doris, and even in her anxiety she began to sing from the pure joy of it all, one of her favorite songs, Tosti’s “Goodbye.” The melody poured from her throat in a manner that would have swept a crowded concert hall.

  “Better hush up,” she told herself as she approached the house. “They’ll probably think I’m silly.”

  She was glad that she had stopped singing, for just as she reached the bend in the road a man in overalls came hurrying from the opposite direction. He glanced at her in a surprised way, acted as if he were about to stop, but went on without speaking. Doris was glad he moved off.

  The building that was her goal was set in a grove of dusty and scraggy willows. Once it had been a spacious farmhouse, but now there were metal stools and round tables on the porch, while scores of signs tacked to pillars, walls and even the trees advertised this and that soft drink, confection, ice cream or sandwich. One prominent notice advised the public that here also were “Boarders Took by Week or Month.”

  Only one sign attracted Doris’s eye, however, and that was the blue and white announcement that telephone booths were to be found indoors.

  A drowsy waitress directed Doris to the end of a large, bare room where there were two varnished telephone booths. Doris saw that one was vacant.

  She inserted a nickel in the slot and gave the number of the administrative office at the airport.

  “Line’s busy. We will call you,” the operator said, and Doris leaned against the scribbled wall to wait. Unconsciously she listened to the words of the man in the next booth, and suddenly became all attention when the significance of the conversation dawned on her.

  “—we been layin’ low but de hunt’s got cold, so we start for Rock dis day. See? Never mind, nobody lis’en, Jefe! Wat dat? Hey, long dee-stance! Git off de wire. Sure I pay you w’en I feenish. Alio! W’e start today wid de deed, you savvy? Bueno!”

  There was a click of the receiver, then the man’s voice again asking how much he owed for the call. Doris heard coin after coin rattle into the box, and then the speaker stepped out of the booth.

  Doris cowered in the back of her own cubicle as the man, pausing to adjust his hat, caught sight of her. Evidently he had not been aware that she was in the next booth, for amazement and suspicion flashed across his face.

  What a face! A face never to be forgotten!

  Beneath the broad hat-brim it leered at the girl evilly. Black, very black eyes above high, bronze cheekbones, and a mouth that was extremely straight and thin.

  “Here is your party. Go ahead, please,” spoke the operator’s voice into Doris’s ear.

  Doris could not speak.

  Over the man’s nose, from cheek to cheek, there ran a vicious scar, almost blue against his copper-colored skin.

  “Hello! Hello!” dinned impatiently through the receiver into her ears. “Anybody there?”

  As the scar-faced man spun about on his heel and vanished from the room, Doris turned with a catch in her throat and spoke into the mouthpiece.

  “Dave—David Chamberlin, please.”

  It seemed a long time to Doris, waiting in the stuffy ’phone booth, before an attendant found Dave. The young aviator had taken a stand near the entrance gate to watch for the arriving party, and was passing the time by speaking to his many pilot friends who were coming and going through the main thoroughfare.

  “Chamberlin! Hey, Chamberlin!” shouted a uniformed boy. “You’re wanted on the telephone!”

  Dave covered the ground like a trained sprinter. “Could something have happened to his friends?”

  he suddenly wondered as he neared the office breathlessly.

  “Hello, hello!” he shouted eagerly.

  “Dave,” answered Doris, “we’re coming, but we’ll be fifteen minutes late. Please don’t go without us!”

  CHAPTER V

  Happy Landings!

  “Don’t worry! The plane won’t pull out without you!”

  Dave laughed as he shouted his greetings to the quartet—quintet, if we include Wags—as Marshmallow’s auto roared to a halt i
n front of the airport’s administration building about twenty minutes after Doris’s ’phone call. It was a small brick structure dwarfed by the two hangars which flanked it on either side.

  “We’d have caught you at the next stop,” growled Marshmallow amiably, as he switched off his shuddering motor. “Where can I stow this car until we come back?”

  “Oh, one of the mechanics will shove it into a corner of a hangar,” replied Dave, his dark eyes sparkling as he helped Doris descend.

  “This way, folks. Here, give me those bags!” Thereupon the tall young aviator, topping everyone else in the party by at least a head, strode into a hangar, a grip in either hand and a suitcase under one arm.

  There was only one airplane in the huge shed, a two-place pleasure craft with open cockpits, and at the sight of it Mrs. Mallow’s knees slumped once more.

  “No, sir!” she said as firmly as her trembling chin permitted. “I won’t crowd into that little plane for such a long trip.”

  “That isn’t our ship, Mrs. Mallow,” laughed Dave. “Wait till you see her. She’s a beauty!” He continued through the hangar to the flying field on the other side, and even Mrs. Mallow gave a gasp of admiration at what they saw there.

  Poised on the ground like a giant silver dragonfly was a tri-motored all-metal monoplane, its aluminum paint flashing like silver in the morning sun. The three propellers were revolving idly.

  “Isn’t that the grandest sight human eyes ever rested upon?” Dave exclaimed. “Except you, Doris,” he added under his breath to the lovely girl beside him. If Doris heard she gave no sign.

  “It—it looks very competent,” Mrs. Mallow admitted.

  “Come over and look inside,” Dave urged. “Pete is just revving up the motors a bit.”

  A little group of admiring mechanics and hangers-on moved respectfully aside as the party approached the plane.

  Dave opened a door in its side, half way between wing and tail, and pulled out a folding stepladder. “Hi, Pete!” he called. “We’re all here!”

  A moment later a slight, pink-cheeked young-looking man, for all the streaks of gray in his blond hair, appeared in the doorway and climbed down to the ground.

  Dave made the introductions.

  “Pete Speary, one of the best pilots ever to leave the ground,” he concluded.

  “I’ll have to agree to that myself to make you all feel more comfortable when we are up,” Pete laughed, bowing.

  Then they all climbed in, Mrs. Mallow warning the pilots not to take off without giving her one more chance to put her feet on the earth.

  Everyone marveled at the luxurious interior of the plane. Walls and ceiling were covered with green mohair, as were the four swiveled bucket seats, two on either side and each opposite a window. A hinged lap-table was folded back under the windows.

  “It’s marvelous, but there are only four seats,” Doris said. “Where do we all sit?”

  “Oh, I ride in the engineer’s cab up forward,” Dave replied, pointing to a glass-walled compartment in the nose of the ship, about three steps higher than the passenger compartment.

  “See, she has dual controls,” he indicated, as Doris and Kitty peered inside.

  “What are all those dials and clocks and gadgets?” Kitty demanded.

  “In simplest terms, they tell how fast we are going, how level we are flying, if we are drifting sideways, the gas and oil pressures and other tips on the mechanical condition of the ship,” Dave told her.

  They all climbed out of the plane again, and Pete excused himself to attend to some final details in the administration building.

  “I don’t know, it all looks solid enough,” Mrs. Mallow sighed. “Too solid to fly up in the air with us all. But I don’t like your Pete.”

  “Pete? Why, he’s the salt of the earth,” Dave exclaimed. “Why don’t you like him?”

  “I can’t trust a man who smiles on only one side of his face,” Mrs. Mallow declared firmly.

  “Pete can’t help that,” Dave protested. “That side of his face he doesn’t smile with was all smashed up during the war and had to be rebuilt. The doctors made him as good looking as he ever was, but they couldn’t make the muscles work as well.”

  Immediately Mrs. Mallow was all concern and sympathy, ready to mother the hero.

  “I think he’s handsome,” Doris said. “And a real, live hero, too.”

  Dave scowled.

  “That doesn’t help him as a pilot,” he said. “It isn’t my fault I was only a child when the war ended, or that I was blessed with the complexion of an Indian.”

  “Indian!” Doris exclaimed. “Oh, Dave, please —” Then in a whisper, “Walk over this way with me as if you were talking about the airplane. Why, I think you are mighty good-looking, you big ninny, if that makes you feel any better. Now let’s be sensible, Dave. Are any other planes leaving from here for the West today?”

  “No planes scheduled to leave for anywhere,” Dave said. “Only private ships are left. Why?”

  Doris told him of the conversation she had overheard in the telephone booth.

  “The man exactly fits the description of one of the thieves who attacked Uncle Wardell,” she added.

  Dave whistled.

  “I’ll run over and telephone to your uncle and to police headquarters,” he said. “We can’t lose any time hanging around ourselves, that’s clear.”

  He dashed over to the office, passing Pete who was returning. That person, still wearing his lopsided smile, lifted the baggage into the plane and stowed it away in a padded compartment in the tail of the fuselage.

  “Now we’re all set, as soon as Dave arrives,” he said.

  “Don’t you wear any uniform or helmet?” Kitty asked, looking at the aviator’s neat gray business suit and battered fedora hat.

  “Not in this de luxe job,” he replied, waving toward the cabin. “It’s like flying in your own living room at home.”

  “You know,” Doris said, “I don’t yet understand our good luck. How does it happen you are flying to our destination in this beautiful thing?”

  “Why, it’s like this,” Pete replied. “Lolita Bedelle, the opera star, has a big ranch near Raven Rock. Lots of moneyed people have ranches all through that section—not dude ranches, either. They make ’em pay dividends. This Miss Bedelle has taken up flying so she can look over her 500,000 acres and visit her neighbors. She had this plane fitted up for her, and I got the assignment of delivering it.”

  “Lolita Bedelle!” Doris exclaimed. “I’ve always admired her. I heard her as Marguerite in Faust once and dozens of times on the radio. Maybe I’ll have a chance to meet her!”

  At this juncture Dave ran up.

  “All aboard!” he shouted. “No reserved seats. Pile in, everybody, and let’s go!”

  In the flurry that followed his words he whispered in Doris’s ear, “I couldn’t get your uncle but I gave the police the news. They’re getting busy.”

  “That’s good!” replied Doris. “Thanks, Dave!” When all were seated, with the exception of the excited Wags who insisted upon trying everyone’s lap, Dave shut the door and bolted it. As he climbed into the pilots’ compartment, he waved to the crowd outside. From it arose shouts of “Happy landings!” the aerial farewell.

  “This is better than a Pull—” Doris began, but her voice was drowned out as the huge motors roared into life. The body of the plane trembled, and Doris saw Mrs. Mallow, who had the seat in front of her, grip the arms of her chair as the color ebbed from her cheeks.

  Jerkily the huge aircraft began to move over the ground. Faster and faster flitted the scenery past the windows and then suddenly the plane seemed to stand still. The motors’ staccato roar evened to a resonant hum.

  The passengers looked outside. Already far below them, and oddly tilted, lay the airport.

  “How do you feel?” Doris shouted to Mrs. Mallow.

  “Not as bad as I did a minute ago,” that lady called back. “But not as happy as I was l
ast week!”

  Except for an occasional tremor or the least perceptible dip to one side or another the airplane was as steady and even-keeled as a ferryboat at anchor.

  Doris looked forward to where Dave’s broad back could be glimpsed through the glass partition. She saw him point forward and a little to his left.

  She peered in the direction Dave was indicating to his partner.

  Those who have flown will remember the peculiarity that the horizon is always on a level with the eyes, no matter how high one rises above the earth.

  Doris saw that a portion of the horizon was blotted out by a towering mass of boiling clouds that seemed to rush upward from behind the earth’s curve. Of course it was the speed of the plane that gave that impression, as it rushed toward the storm.

  A thunderstorm! And a bad one!

  “If Mrs. Mallow sees it, she will jump out,” Doris thought. “She is scared enough of storms in her own house, and here we are diving into one a mile above the earth!”

  Her worry grew as she watthed the two pilots signaling to each other and looking behind them with knitted brows.

  Was disaster to overcome the trip at its start, as Kitty had foretold?

  CHAPTER VI

  The Stowaway

  Right into the vortex of the storm headed the airplane, and now Mrs. Mallow became aware of the danger ahead.

  Doris saw her grow tense again, saw her hands clutch the arms of her seat.

  “Don’t worry,” Doris called, leaning over the older woman’s shoulder. “The pilots know what they are about.”

  “They don’t know how frightened I am of the thunder, though,” Mrs. Mallow replied. “I don’t mind lightning. It’s the thunder I hate.”

  “Then you are safe,” said Doris. “I never heard of thunder hurting anyone yet. Besides,” she added, “Dave told me lightning can’t hurt an airplane because there is no place for the electricity to ground.”

  “The ground would look wonderful to me now, if I were only on it,” Mrs. Mallow answered.

  “Look, we’re turning!” Doris exclaimed. “We are going around the storm.”

  As if the storm were painted on a canvas that giant hands were rolling up, the serried clouds passed before the front windows of the giant craft.