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

by Julia K. Duncan

  Both stooped to gather a handful as quickly as possible.

  “Oh, the nasty things!” cried Patricia. “Their stems are just full of red juice.”

  “Looks for all the world like blood,” commented the boy, dropping his flowers into the stream, which quickly whirled them away, and wiping his hands on his handkerchief. Patricia followed his example.

  “It’s awful stuff to get off,” complained Patricia, still rubbing her hands vigorously, as they stepped out upon the state road almost under the wheels of a motorcycle.

  “Good Heavens, girl! Watch your step. That was a narrow shave.”

  “I’ll say it was. Why, it’s coming back,” added Patricia, as the car wheeled about and approached them again.

  “They’re troopers,” breathed Jack, as the car stopped beside them.

  Two young men gazed searchingly at the two disheveled figures before them.

  “What have you been doing?” demanded the man in the side car.

  “Gathering wild flowers in the woods,” replied the girl promptly.

  “Then where are they?” asked the other trooper, fixing his eyes on the red-stained handkerchiefs.

  “Some we lost, and some we threw away,” said Jack.

  “Give me those handkerchiefs,” ordered the red-haired trooper, hopping nimbly out of the side car.

  In speechless astonishment the hikers handed the crumpled rags to the man, who took them to the driver of the motorcycle, and both troopers examined them carefully.

  “Blood, without a doubt,” stated the auburn-haired man. “Guess we’ve made our catch. They certainly answer to the description of Crack Mayne and his pal, Angel. You’re under arrest,” he continued, turning toward the couple.

  “What utter nonsense!” exploded Jack angrily, but Patricia laid her hand on his arm.

  “We got those stains from flower stems,” she stated calmly.

  “You’ll have to show us.”

  “We can’t, now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we picked them all, and when we found that our hands were stained we threw the flowers away.”

  “Oh, yeah? Where did you throw them?” asked the driver, getting off and starting towards the woods.

  “They’ve gone down the stream,” giggled Patricia, her sense of humor unwisely getting the upper hand.

  In later days, when Jack wanted to tease her, he always said that Patricia’s giggle sealed their fate.

  “Quite clear they’ve been up to something,” muttered the red-haired trooper; “maybe a murder. You take ’em in, and I’ll poke about in there to see what I can find. Send Murphy out for me as soon as you get in.”

  Patricia and Jack were hustled into the side car, and rushed off toward town. Soon Jack took from his pocket a pencil and an envelope.

  “Better give middle names at the station,” he scribbled rather illegibly, due to the motion of the car. “Keep college out of it.”

  Patricia nodded; then Jack tore the envelope into little pieces, which the wind eagerly snatched from his hand and bore away.

  At the station, they registered as Peter Dunn and Alice Randall. The stained handkerchiefs were laid aside for expert examination, and the charges recorded.

  “Now may we go?” asked Jack, with elaborate innocence.

  “Why, sure,” replied the sergeant sarcastically. “Just walk right out.”

  “Hullo, Mac,” drawled an exceedingly tall, solemn-looking youth, letting the street door close with a bang. “What have you for me tonight?”

  “Only a couple of—” he began.

  The newcomer took one look at the pair; then announced without a trace of surprise: “You’re Jack Dunn, the football player.”

  “Twin cousin,” corrected Jack gravely.

  “Oh, yeah!”

  “Haven’t you ever seen cousins who looked just alike?” inquired Jack, raising his eyebrows in astonishment. “I have.”

  “That may be, but I didn’t see you on the field and off of it last fall for nothing. What’s the racket?”

  Before Jack could reply, the sergeant irritably gave the desired information, the last of which was drowned by a bark of laughter from the human bean pole.

  “This is rich! This is just too rich!” he chortled. “Brave troopers arrest couple of college students for gathering bloodroot. Oh! Oh!”

  “So that’s what it was!” exclaimed Patricia. “I should have known.”

  “You’re a reporter,” said Jack accusingly. “For the love of Pete don’t put us in the paper. We—”

  “Now listen, Bozo,” interrupted Craig Denton, “don’t kid yourself that nobody will know this story unless he reads it in the paper. One of your own fellows stopped in at the office before I came over here to say that a couple of college students had just been taken into the police station. That’s how I happened to breeze in so early, Mac.”

  “What did he look like?” demanded Jack.

  “Big blond; jaw sticks out like this; little bits of eyes.”

  “Tut!” breathed Patricia.

  “How the devil did he get hold of it?” exploded Jack.

  “Saw you brought in,” replied Craig, as he held the door open for them. “I’m taking these birds home, Mac,” he called to the sergeant. “So you see,” he continued, as they were out on the street, “you’d better let us present the story truthfully. It’s the best way.”

  “Of course,” replied Jack, ruefully, “you have us at your mercy.”

  “What did the troopers look like?” asked Craig.

  “I couldn’t describe them,” declared Jack emphatically.

  “Nor I,” agreed Patricia. “We were too much upset to notice details.”

  “I wonder,” mused the newspaper man, glancing from one to the other suspiciously; but both met his eyes with well simulated innocence.

  “We’re going somewhere to eat,” announced Jack; “better come along.”

  “Yes, we surely owe you something for your kind rescue,” laughed Patricia.

  “There’s an old saying about two being company,” began Craig.

  “Nonsense! Come along!” cried Jack, who had taken a liking to the grave youth with his keen sense of humor. “Where shall we go, Pat?”

  “Wherever we won’t meet anybody we know. We’re both sketches.”

  “No wonder we were regarded as suspicious characters,” agreed Jack. “Guess we’d better go downtown. Where’s a good place?” turning to the reporter. “We usually eat up on the hill.”

  “The Exeter, on Field Street, is good. Got stalls; you wouldn’t be conspicuous.”

  “Exeter for us,” decided Patricia; “and let’s hurry. I’m starved.”

  After a good dinner, accompanied by much joking and laughter, Jack escorted Patricia up toward College Hill, while Craig hurried back to the office of the Granard Herald, after promising to spare the principals as much as possible in his story.

  “Little did we think this noon what we were in for,” said Jack, as he was about to leave Patricia at the entrance of Arnold Hall. “I’m sorry to have gotten you into such a jam.”

  “You!” protested the girl. “Why, it was all my fault. If I hadn’t picked those flowers—bloodroot’s certainly the right name for them.”

  “But if I hadn’t urged you to cut—”

  “Oh, Jack, we had a good time; and, as for the unpleasant part, well, it didn’t last long. And it was an unusual experience.”

  “But it’s not over yet; all the publicity, and talk. Of course, I could stand it; but—”

  “You think I couldn’t!” finished Patricia with a flash of anger in eyes and voice. “I always try to be a good sport.”

  “You are; and I didn’t mean—” faltered Jack, distressed.

  “Listen!” said Patricia, her anger gone in a minute as she saw that he was really disturbed. “Everybody will laugh and joke about it for a while, and then—pouf! It’s all out, just like a candle. Nothing lasts very long.”

&nb
sp; “What about our benefactors’ opinion of the affair?”

  “Under the circumstances, he or she ought to take a sane view of the matter. We have done nothing of which we should be ashamed. Don’t worry about it.”

  With these words Patricia ran up the steps, and Jack strolled to the Frat House thinking what a sensible girl Patricia was, and what a good pal.

  A most amusing account of their escapade came out in the morning’s paper, and the college world rocked with merriment. Patricia and Jack were bombarded with jokes, questions, congratulations, and cartoons.

  The next day Jack and Patricia met on the stairs leading to their Shakespeare classroom.

  “I got a queer note,” began Patricia.

  “So did I.”

  “What did yours say?” asked Patricia eagerly.

  “‘Keep out of police stations in the future.’”

  “So did mine; but, some way, it didn’t seem cross.”

  “How could you tell that?”

  “I don’t know; but I just felt that whoever sent the note was smiling as he wrote it.”

  “You have a wonderful imagination, Pat,” said Jack, grinning down at her. “I only hope it’s a reliable one.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  A PICNIC

  “Could I hire any of you ladies to swim for me next Tuesday?” inquired Clarice, popping out of the back door and perching on the porch railing.

  It was Saturday morning. Patricia, Anne, Frances, Katharine, and Betty had washed their hair, and were strung along the sunny top steps drying it, preparatory to going to town for a wave.

  “None of us were keen enough about that swimming exam to be looking for chances to try it twice,” replied Katharine decidedly.

  “You ought not to mind it,” drawled Anne sleepily; “you’re a regular mer—maid,” her last word cut short by a huge yawn.

  “Look out, Anne,” cried Frances, grabbing her by the shoulders, “you’ll be sound asleep in a minute and roll down the steps.”

  “It’s this strong sunlight,” said Anne, leaning comfortably back against Frances’ knees, and closing her eyes.

  “What’s the matter with you doing your own swimming?” asked Betty, glancing up at Clarice through a tangle of brown hair.

  “Can’t. Don’t know enough about it,” replied the girl nonchalantly, swinging one foot. “I hate it.”

  “Do you mean to say that you’ve been in gym class all this year, and don’t know yet how to swim?” inquired Katharine bluntly.

  “Guilty!”

  “I should think Professor Wilson would have killed you off long ago,” remarked Frances. “He’s such an irritable creature.”

  “Yes,” agreed Clarice, “and also so near-sighted that he doesn’t know half the time who’s in the pool and who’s out of it. Haven’t you noticed how dependent he is on his class books?”

  “Then can’t you take a chance on his being too near-sighted to see that you can’t swim?” asked Betty.

  “No such luck! All women may look alike to him, but not all strokes in swimming.”

  “How did you manage all term?” inquired Patricia, shaking her yellow mop of hair vigorously.

  “Oh, he was always hollering at me.”

  There were two divisions of the Sophomore Gymnasium class. Clarice was in the second, while all the rest of the Alley Gang were in the first. To be able to swim was absolutely necessary for promotion to the Junior class at the end of the year, and the second week in May had been assigned for the final tests. Professor Wilson, a critical, quick-tempered little man, was an excellent teacher, but he did not like women and never bothered to get acquainted with the individual members of his classes, which did not at all add to his popularity.

  “When I can swim out of doors by myself, I think I shall like it,” commented Anne, “but not while Professor Wilson dances around the rim of the pool snapping like a turtle.”

  “That’s the way I feel about it,” agreed Patricia. “Why don’t we go out to Green Lake some Saturday and try our skill?”

  “Let’s go next Saturday,” proposed Katharine enthusiastically. “We’ll go in the morning, and have a roast.”

  “Who?” asked Betty.

  “Us and the rest of the Gang. Everybody willing, hold up the left foot,” directed Katharine.

  A laughing scramble ensued during which Clarice nearly fell off the railing. When they had settled back into their former positions, Patricia suggested hesitatingly, “Let’s take Rhoda. She’s so very nice to all of us.”

  “Good idea,” agreed Katharine promptly.

  “But who’d take her place?” questioned Betty doubtfully. “Could she get off for the whole day?”

  “I think so. That day she was ill, Sue Mason subbed for her; and she probably would again. Sue doesn’t have many dates,” said Frances.

  “I wish we could invite her, too, then,” said Patricia slowly. “It must be pretty lonely to be among so many girls, and not be in on their good times.”

  “I know, but you can’t start asking people from upstairs,” protested Anne. “If you do, there’ll be no stopping place.”

  “What’s the matter with Sue, anyhow?” asked Patricia.

  “Mostly her queer ways,” replied Clarice quickly. “Last year she was always rapping on people’s doors and asking them to keep quiet so she could study. Then she complained to the Dean every so often about how long some of the girls kept her out of the bathroom. She also felt it her duty to report the maid several times for being late in distributing the clean linen. In short, Sue just disapproved of the way everything was run, and got herself in most awfully wrong. She belongs in some boarding house, not in a dorm.”

  “How did she happen to come back here, since she found so much fault with the place?” inquired Patricia.

  “Don’t know. Maybe she found out that she liked it after all. Hasn’t opened her mouth this year, so the girls upstairs say; but she queered herself for good and all last year,” replied Clarice carelessly. “But to return to my original question, can’t I interest any of you in helping me out?”

  “I don’t know what we could do,” began Anne.

  “Go into the pool for me when my name is called,” answered Clarice boldly. “There’s a ten in it for anybody who will.”

  “You’re surely not in earnest,” said Patricia, pushing back her hair to look directly at the girl on the railing above her. Patricia was so easily embarrassed for others, frequently an embarrassment in which the “others” took no part.

  “Why shouldn’t I be?” retorted Clarice.

  “Why, Clarice!” cried Frances reprovingly.

  “I can’t help it if you are shocked. If it were as necessary for any of you to be graduated from this institution as it is for me, you’d go the limit, too!” Clarice’s tone was defiant, but as she slid off of the railing and hurried into the house, Patricia who was still watching her saw sudden tears fill the girl’s hard, black eyes.

  Anne shrugged her shoulders as the back door banged. Frances raised her eyebrows and looked troubled. Betty and Katharine nonchalantly continued the business of hair drying. Patricia sighed—“I wish we could help her out,” she said thoughtfully. “I know a little of what graduation means—”

  “Then why doesn’t she work?” demanded Betty sharply.

  No one was able to answer that question, so after a moment they began to discuss plans for the picnic. In the meantime a girl who had been sitting quietly at an open window above the back porch left her room and went in search of Clarice.

  By four o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, the swimming tests were over and the gym was filled with chattering girls discussing the probabilities of success and failure.

  “I won’t draw a full breath until I see the list posted,” declared Frances, as she left the building with Anne and Patricia.

  “I imagine we all passed,” observed Anne placidly.

  “Wish I knew how poor Clarice came out,” said Patricia. “Yet I hate to ask her righ
t out.”

  “Haven’t heard her mention the subject since Saturday morning,” said Frances. “Have you?”

  Both girls shook their heads.

  “Maybe she took some time to practice, and managed to pull through,” suggested Anne. “Clarice can do almost anything if she tries.”

  “I truly hope so,” said Patricia fervently.

  That evening the Alley Gang was in such a furore over arrangements for the picnic that the test was not even mentioned.

  “Isn’t the water going to be awfully cold so early in the season?” objected Jane, when the question of “eats” had been satisfactorily settled, and that of bathing was under discussion.

  “If the day is fairly warm, and we go in where it’s sunny, I think it will be all right,” replied Katharine.

  “All right for an out-door girl like you,” retorted Betty, with a shiver, “but it doesn’t sound altogether attractive to me.”

  “Then stay out of it,” advised Katharine sensibly.

  “Yes; anybody who doesn’t want to go in can get busy around the fireplace and have a big feed all ready for us. We’ll be starved.”

  “Never saw you when you weren’t, France,” called Clarice, who just then appeared in the doorway of Jane’s room where the girls had congregated.

  “Know anybody who runs up to the Varsity Shoppe any oftener than you do?” retorted Frances quickly.

  “Don’t quarrel, children,” admonished Jane. “We can all do our share when it comes to eating.”

  “By the way,” inquired Anne, “what did Rhoda say when you asked her? Will she go?”

  “She wasn’t quite sure,” replied Patricia, “but will let us know on Friday.”

  “Say,” interrupted Frances, leaning forward to look at Patricia, “does anybody know why she goes over to Mrs. Brock’s early in the morning?”

  Patricia glanced at Jane and Ruth before she replied with a laugh, “I’m sure I don’t.”

  “How do you know she does go?” demanded Lucile quickly.

  “Saw her, this very morning.”

  “What were you doing, awake before the bell rang?” inquired Anne.