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

by Julia K. Duncan

  But how?

  Covering his face with his hands, he crouched on the floor, in deep thought.

  One, chimed the library clock, marking the half hour. Anxiously Jack glanced up at the heavy bell above him. Perhaps he could unfasten the clapper, and flatten himself on the floor so that the bell would only graze him as it swung to and fro. Then, when no sound came from the belfry, somebody might investigate. But no; old Jake, who attended to the bell ringing, was too lazy to climb all those stairs to repair the bell for a mere rally. He’d just let it go until some time tomorrow. By that time, the team would have left without him!

  The tickets he had promised Patricia were lying home on his desk. Wonder what she thought when he failed to keep his promise to give them to her in Shakespeare class.

  Tut’s friends would probably pass around the word that Jack had taken the bribe and disappeared. That would be his finish in athletics. Jack groaned aloud, and pulled his handkerchief from his pocket to wipe off the cold perspiration which dampened his face. Tut had always been jealous of him; and since he had refused, a few weeks ago, to work for Jim’s election as Chairman of the Soph Hop, Tut had positively disliked him. Jack did not approve of the bargaining for honors, which went on at the college, but doggedly supported whatever man he thought best fitted for the job, politics notwithstanding—a practice which had not made him any too popular with certain ambitious ringleaders.

  The sight of his handkerchief gave him a sudden inspiration. Quickly tearing it in half, he scrawled on one part of it, in large letters, “HELP! QUICK!” Knotting one end of the ball of twine to it, he painstakingly worked the bit of linen between the slats of the window which faced the observatory, and played out the cord as far as it would go. Fastening the end of it securely to one of the shutters, he took the other half of the handkerchief, slipped it through between the slats, and tied it about in the center of the window.

  “Now I’ve done all I can,” he muttered. “It’s on the laps of the gods, for better or worse.”

  The part of the campus on which the chapel stood was deserted during the week. In a rather out-of-the-way place, beyond the other buildings, it was in the least frequented corner of the campus. Jack’s captors planned all too well when they chose the belfry for his prison.

  One, two, one, two, chimed the library clock. A quarter to five! Would nobody find his message or see his poor little flag? If he could only have stood up and tramped around a bit, it would have relieved Jack’s feelings somewhat; but the belfry was large enough only for the moving of the single bell. Would he be safer flat on the floor, directly under the bell, or as far to one side as he could get, when it began to swing?

  One, two, three, four, chimed the clock. A door slammed somewhere downstairs; the bell rope trembled; the bell quivered; Jack stretched out on the floor as flat as he could, and waited for the first blow of the iron mass.

  Swift steps on the stairs, the turning of a key, hands dragging him quickly out of the way, just as the first clang of the big bell sounded deafeningly through the little room. Jack found himself in the hall with Pat and Ted bending over him.

  “Just in the nick of time, old man!” cried Ted, grinning cheerfully.

  “Don’t stop to talk!” ordered Patricia frantically. “Let’s get out of here right away!”

  Down the stairs they rushed, while the bell clanged and clanged overhead. Pat’s car, with all shades drawn, was waiting close to the doorway.

  “Get in back,” directed Ted; “crawl behind those cartons and don’t breathe.”

  For a second time that day, Jack was driven off, he knew not where.

  “Hi there, Ted,” called Joe Leonard, as they stopped for lights at the corner of College Avenue and Elizabeth Street. “Come on to the meeting!”

  “See you later,” replied Ted; “got to deliver these fruit jars for my mother first.”

  “Wonder if he’s onto us,” whispered Patricia, as they started forward with a jerk.

  Ted only shrugged his shoulders and drove as rapidly as possible to the apartment he and his mother shared on Winton Street. At the side entrance, where Mrs. Carter was waiting to admit them, Ted hustled Jack into the house and up a back stairway to his own room; meanwhile, Patricia drove her car farther back into the yard.

  “Going to keep you here tonight, old fellow,” said Ted, slapping Jack on the back. “Nobody’ll ever think of looking for you here; and we’ll see you safe on the train in the morning. No college people in this house, and we have a back apartment. We’ll keep the shades drawn as an extra precaution. Right across the hall from this room is the door to the attic. If anybody comes tonight to call, just beat it for the loft and slip in behind the big dresser which is near the chimney.”

  “But—” began Jack.

  “Pat will tell you all about it later; for Mother asked her to stay to dinner. Wash a bit if you want to, and then go out to the living room. I’ll have to show up at the meeting for a while, I suppose, in case Jim takes a notion to look for me. Don’t want to arouse any suspicions.”

  Still in somewhat of a daze, Jack made himself tidy and then went out to the living room. Aunt Betsy was busy in the kitchen, and Patricia sat alone by the bay window which overhung the side door by which they had entered. The girl smiled a bit shyly as Jack came in and crossed the room to her side.

  “Have I you to thank for my rescue?” he asked, taking her hands in both of his.

  “Well, partly,” she admitted. “But Ted helped a lot. He’s always been my stand-by in moments of difficulty.

  “When you didn’t show up in Shakespeare class,” she continued, as Jack dropped down at the other end of the davenport, “I knew right away something must have happened. You see,” her head dropped a bit, “I heard something this morning about the possibility of your being out of the game; and, oh, it seemed only a joking reference, but I was too stupid, I guess, to have attached enough importance to it. I did wonder if I should say anything to you about it, put you on your guard; and now, oh, how I wish I had!”

  “Don’t get all steamed up over it,” urged Jack; “it came out all right.”

  “But it mightn’t have. If I hadn’t happened to go to the observatory perhaps nobody would have seen your flag; and—and then, if you’d been struck by that old bell, it would have been all my fault!”

  “Nonsense!” cried Jack, laying his arm gently around her shoulders. He was distressed beyond measure by the girl’s self-accusation. “I was lying so flat that the bell probably would only have grazed me.”

  Determinedly Pat pulled herself together and sat up very straight, winking hard and fast to keep back the tears which, much to her embarrassment, had welled up in her eyes.

  “After Shakespeare class,” she continued, “I got away from the rest of the girls—I always want to be alone if I have anything to work out in my mind—and wandered about the most deserted parts of the campus trying to decide what to do. I don’t know all the ins and outs of college affairs yet, and I was afraid of telling my suspicions to the wrong person. As I passed the observatory, I remembered having left my fountain pen in the lecture room; so I ran up to get it. Nobody was in there, and I sat down by the window thinking that was a good place to be quiet. The sun shone full on the side of the chapel, and it was no time at all before I caught sight of the white flag waving in the breeze.

  “I nearly broke all records running down the stairs and along the path toward the chapel. Not far from the building, I found your appeal for help. I felt sure it was your appeal. I tore off the cloth, so nobody else would find it, and ran for Ted. I knew he was in the library. I hadn’t thought about the meeting; but Ted did, right away, and realized what danger you were in. Ted grabbed up a couple of empty cartons that stood in the hall, ready to be thrown out, dumped them and ourselves into my car (which, fortunately, was standing in front of the library) and we just rushed to your rescue. Luckily, all the students were swarming over the front campus, waiting for the meeting; so no one, so fa
r as we know, saw us.”

  “But how did you get the key?” inquired Jack, still somewhat in the dark as to details.

  “Oh, Ted has a master key. He has to get into Forestry Hall at all sorts of odd times. He was sure his key could be used on the belfry door, and he was right. If it hadn’t fitted, he would have had to let Jake in on the rescue, but it was better not; the fewer people knew about it, the safer we were.”

  “I wonder how I can get hold of those tickets for you. I might telephone—”

  “Oh, no! No!” protested Patricia.

  “What the deuce does he want you to do, Pat?” inquired Ted, strolling in just in time to hear his cousin’s vigorous refusal.

  “Why, I could go over to your room in the morning and get them,” offered Ted, when Patricia had excitedly explained the subject of their discussion; “after the train goes, that is, for I’m not letting you out of my sight before that.”

  “Dinner’s ready,” announced Mrs. Carter, appearing in the dining room doorway.

  “And we’re ready for it, Auntie,” replied Patricia, jumping up.

  “It’s no end good of you all to take me in like this,” began Jack, as they seated themselves at the little round table.

  “For dear old Granard, I’ll live and die!” carolled Ted. “Now tell us all about the great abduction.”

  Jack was in the middle of the story of his capture, when the telephone rang sharply.

  CHAPTER XI

  AUNT BETSY TO THE RESCUE

  Ted sprang to answer the call.

  “Yes. Ted. Yes, she is. Who is it, please? Just a minute.”

  He turned, putting his hand over the transmitter: “Pat, Norman Young wants to speak to you.”

  “Good Heavens!” responded his cousin, getting up so suddenly that her chair toppled over backwards and fell to the floor with a loud crash.

  “He’ll think I’m throwing you to the phone,” commented Ted with a grin.

  “Hush! You wanted to speak to me? What? He is? Why, how should I know?”

  Pat was nervously clenching and unclenching her left hand as she talked, and frowning heavily.

  “Certainly not! He’s probably out for the evening, and I don’t see that you or anybody else has a right to meddle with his things.”

  “Don’t burn up, Pat,” advised her cousin.

  “Well, perhaps,” she admitted grudgingly to the man at the other end of the telephone. “Certainly. No, you may not; my cousin will take me home. Goodbye.”

  Patricia hung up the receiver with a bang, threw herself into the chair which Jack had meanwhile righted, leaned her elbows on the table and announced explosively: “If there’s anybody in this college whom I cordially dislike, it’s Norman Young!”

  “Why, what did he have to say?” inquired Ted, calmly helping himself to another piece of beefsteak.

  “He told me that Jack was missing, and wanted to know if I knew where he was. The nerve of him! Somebody sent him to Jack’s room, looking for Jack, and our smart Norman found an envelope on the desk addressed to me.”

  “The tickets,” interpolated Jack.

  “And he wanted to know,” went on Patricia, “if he should bring it to me!”

  “Quite a meddler,” said Ted.

  “After I put him in his place, he apologized; and then wanted to know if he couldn’t call for me and take me home when I was ready to go. How did he know I was here, anyhow?”

  “That fellow smells a rat!” announced Ted.

  “I’m terribly afraid so,” admitted Patricia. “Still I think I had better go back to the dorm right after we finish dinner—”

  “Oh,” began Jack in protest.

  “I really think it’s wiser,” said Patricia, looking at him with a worried expression.

  The telephone rang sharply a second time.

  “Don’t tell me it’s that pest again!” cried Patricia, as Ted took off the receiver.

  “Yes. Oh, hello, Anne. Well, spill it. You heard what? The deuce he did! Of all the rot I ever—To be sure it will. Thanks a lot for telling me. I’ll see what can be done right away. Goodbye.”

  “Well, what’s happened now?” demanded Patricia.

  “No use in my trying to break the news gently. Anne says there is a rumor around college tonight that Jack was offered a big bribe to stay out of the Greystone game; that he took it, and has disappeared. Can you beat that?”

  Patricia, speechless with distress, simply twisted her napkin into a mere rope.

  “The curs! The contemptible curs!” exploded Jack. “I might have known they’d get even with me some way!”

  “Don’t tell me there’s a foundation for that rumor!” cried Ted sharply.

  “There is,” replied Jack shortly. “I didn’t mean to tell this; but listen.” Rapidly, yet omitting no important detail, he related the story of the afternoon previous to his imprisonment in the belfry. “And the worst of it is, I haven’t a single witness. They can say pretty nearly what they choose, and go unchallenged.”

  “Tut’s responsible for the rumor, of course,” decided Ted; “if we could only corner him some way.”

  “We will!” declared Patricia, with vehemence.

  “And make him eat crow!” concluded her cousin.

  “But how?” asked Jack, with a short laugh. “Tut’s pretty hard-boiled, and who—”

  “I shall,” announced Mrs. Carter firmly, getting up from the table.

  “Aunt Betsy!”

  “Mother!”

  “Mrs. Carter!”

  “No use objecting. I’m going to find him right now, and I’ll promise you to be back with his scalp before the evening’s over. I won’t give any of you away. He doesn’t know me from Adam.”

  “Eve, you mean, Mother,” laughed her son.

  “And, now where will I be most likely to find him?” she asked, slipping on her coat and perching a hat on the back of her head.

  Jack looked at the clock. “Probably in his room at No. 9 Craig Street. It’s on the second floor, a single, right opposite the stairs; but at least let one of us take you as far as the house.”

  “I won’t. You stay quietly here until I come back, all of you.” With a slam of the door, she was gone.

  The three young people looked at one another in speechless astonishment. Finally, Ted laughed.

  “I feel kind of sorry for old Tut, much as I dislike him. Mother will have the truth out of him if she has to stand him on his head. He’ll do what she says, or she’ll know why.”

  The tension was broken, and they all laughed.

  When the table was cleared, Ted announced that he was going to do the dishes.

  “We’ll help,” said Patricia.

  “No, you won’t. You two sit in the living room and chatter.”

  Patricia shrugged her shoulders, and led the way into the next room; extinguished all but one of the lamps, turned on the gas log, and sat down before the fire. Jack threw himself on the hearth rug and propped his back against the big chair in which Patricia was sitting.

  “Will—will this do you much harm, do you suppose?” she asked, after a moment’s silence.

  “Hard to tell. Of course if I can’t be cleared, it will mean my finish as far as sports are concerned—that’s all Tut thinks of, naturally. But, as I told you once before, I think, there is a special reason why I must make good here; and if my reputation comes into question, well—”

  Jack broke off abruptly, and frowned at the fire. In a moment he continued:

  “I haven’t told anyone else about this, but I’d like you to know; and I’m sure it won’t go any farther.”

  “Of course not.”

  “On the tenth of last August, I received a special delivery letter,” began Jack slowly, gazing steadily at the fire.

  Patricia leaned forward, breathless with surprise.

  “In that letter,” continued the boy, “was a cashier’s check for One Thousand Dollars; and on a slip of paper, the words, ‘For John Dunn, to be spent on
a year at Granard College.’ We tried in every way to find out where it came from, but when all of our efforts were fruitless we decided that the only thing to do was to use the money as requested. So you see why I feel under such heavy obligations to make good.”

  “Jack,” whispered Patricia, with a little excited catch in her throat. “I’ve never told anybody, either—not even my aunt or cousin; but that’s exactly what happened to me.”

  “You mean,” cried the boy, twisting around to look up into her face, “that you got money that same way—to come here?”

  Patricia nodded.

  “How very, very queer!”

  The strangeness of the situation silenced them completely for a time. Then Jack murmured: “This should make us better friends than ever, shouldn’t it?”

  Patricia smiled, but she did not withdraw the hand that Jack imprisoned in both of his.

  “Doesn’t it seem sometimes as if you just must find out who sent the check?” asked Jack, a moment later.

  “Yes; and sometimes I feel really nervous over it, as if somebody whom I couldn’t see were watching me all the time, to make sure that I behaved properly.”

  The door flew open at that moment, and Aunt Betsy darted into the room just as Ted came in from the kitchen.

  “Well,” she exclaimed, sinking down in a big chair and throwing off her coat, “I’ve settled his hash! He’s going around now contradicting the rumor he started, and he’ll never bother you again.”

  “Hurrah for you, Mother!” cried Ted. “But tell us the whole story. How did you ever—”

  “I knew that young man’s father; used to go to school with him. Got him out of an awful scrape once, and he promised he’d do anything I asked him to pay up for it. Never had any occasion to before. Told the young fellow about his dad’s promise (though of course not the reason for it) and said I was now about to ask him to redeem it. I said I knew what a contemptible thing he was up to, and that I stood ready right now to telephone the whole affair to his dad. Then I just lit into him, told him what a cad and a coward he is. Told him I’d start a public investigation and testify against him. Like all conceited blowbags, he collapsed when under fire; asked what I wanted him to do, begged me not to tell his father; for he’d take him out of college and put him to work in the store. Made him tell me just where and to whom he’d told that abominable lie, and told him I’d go with him while he corrected it. ‘You can call it a joke,’ I said, ‘if you must save your face.’”