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

by Julia K. Duncan

  To this argument Jeanne found no answer. They silently grounded their boat on the sand. Turkey Trot drew it up on the beach. He did the same for Tillie’s light craft.

  “It’s funny,” he murmured, as he gazed at the painter. “Brand new rope. Looks like it had been chawed off.”

  Turning, he put out his hand for the flashlight, then led the way into the timber.

  What can be more spooky than following a woodland trail far from the homes of men at the dead of night? Nor was this particular trail devoid of sad ruins telling of other days. They had not followed the narrow, winding, tree-shadowed trail a hundred rods when they came to the ruins of what had once been a prosperous logging camp.

  Years had passed since the last sound of axe, the last buzz of saw, the last shout of teamster had died away. The roof of the cook shack had fallen in. A score of bushes had lifted their heads through its rotting floor.

  The bunk house, proudly displaying its roof, still stood. Its door, which hung awry, was wide open. Into this door, from off the shadowy trail, a dark spot dashed.

  Petite Jeanne started, then drew back. Was it a wolf, a wandering dog, or some less formidable creature? Without glancing back, she at last plodded doggedly on. Since Turkey Trot carried the torch, she was obliged to follow or be left in the dark.

  Once more they were lost in the shadows of cedars and birches as the trail wound up a low hill. And then they came upon the most mournful sight of all, an abandoned home.

  Standing as it did at the center of a grass-grown clearing, with door ajar and broken windows agape, the thing stared at them as a blind man sometimes appears to stare with sightless eyes. To make matters worse, three tall pines with mournful drooping branches stood in a graveyard-like cluster near the door, while beneath them, shining white, some object seemed a marble slab.

  “Boo!” Turkey Trot’s stolid young soul at last was stirred. “We—we won’t pass that way!”

  He turned down a trail that forked to the right.

  Hardly had he done this than Petite Jeanne gripped his arm.

  “Listen!” Her voice was tense.

  Turkey Trot did listen, and to his ears came the sound of music.

  “It—it’s a banjo or somethin’,” he muttered. “And—and singin’.”

  He turned a startled gaze toward the deserted cabin. The sound appeared to come from there. His feet moved restlessly. He appeared about to flee.

  “’Tain’t them,” he said in a near whisper. He spoke of Florence and Tillie. “They didn’t have no banjo. And besides, they wouldn’t.”

  “Of course not.” Petite Jeanne had him by the arm. “All the same, we must see. They may know something. Many things.”

  They moved a few steps down the trail they had chosen. At once they were able to see more clearly. Behind the cabin, and within its shadows, was a half burned-out camp fire. And about the fire people sat.

  “Who can these be?” Jeanne asked.

  Turkey Trot did not reply. Instead, he took her by the hand and led her farther down the trail.

  In time this trail, after circling the narrow hill, came up again, thus bringing them nearer the camp fire.

  At last the boy dropped on hands and knees and began to crawl. Following his example, Jeanne lost herself in the thick bed of tall ferns.

  They had crept silently forward to a point where it seemed that a parting of the ferns would show them the camp of the strangers, when suddenly a blood curdling scream rent the air.

  Instantly Turkey Trot flattened himself to the earth. As Jeanne did the same, she found her heart beating like waves on a rocky shore.

  She thought of Tillie and Florence. The tiller of their boat had been cut. She recalled this. Their boat was adrift. Had they been kidnapped and carried here?

  Instantly she was on her feet and darting forward. Knowing nothing of her thoughts, anxious only for her safety, the boy seized her foot. She fell heavily, then lay there motionless, as if dead.

  The boy was in a panic. But not for long. She was only stunned. Presently she sat up dizzily.

  They listened. Then they rose to their feet. A strange sound had come to them. They guessed its origin.

  When they reached the camp fire no person was there. Old Tico stood grunting with satisfaction over a box of berries spilled in someone’s hurried departure.

  “Tico!” exclaimed Jeanne. “We forgot him!”

  It was true. In their excitement they had forgotten the bear. Having smelled refreshments, he had taken a direct course to the strangers’ camp. Beyond doubt he had poked his nose over the shoulder of some fair young lady. A scream, panic, and hasty retreat had followed.

  But who were these people that indulged in an after midnight feast in so lonely a spot? To this question the boy and girl immediately sought an answer.

  They were not long in forming a partial answer. It was Jeanne who cried out:

  “See this handkerchief. Only a gypsy, a French gypsy, wears one like it.

  “And this cigarette case!” she added a moment later. “See! It is from France, too!

  “Gypsies, French gypsies!” A note of sorrow crept into her voice. “They have been here. Now they are gone. I wanted to see them, only to hear them speak!”

  How little she knew.

  “Listen!” The boy held up a hand.

  From the nearby shore came the thunder of a speed boat leaving the beach.

  “Do gypsies have speed boats?” Jeanne asked in surprise.

  “Who knows?” was the boy’s wise answer.

  “But where are our friends?”

  “We won’t find them here.”

  Little Turkey Trot was now fully convinced that his sister and Florence had been taken captive by these strange dark people. He knew little of gypsies. He had heard that they carried people away. He did not wish to disturb Petite Jeanne, so he said not a word. Such was the big heart of the village boy.

  “Might as well go home,” was his conclusion.

  Jeanne did not question this. They passed around the staring cabin and down the trail toward the ruins of the lumber camp.

  Turkey Trot walked rapidly. Jeanne, who was afraid of tripping in the dark, was a little way behind him, when she came abreast of the black bunk house that gloomed in the dark. She stole one glance at it. Then her heart stood still. From the depths of that darkness two eyes gleamed at her.

  “Green eyes!” She barely missed crying aloud.

  With three bounds she was at Turkey Trot’s side.

  Even then she did not speak. The boy had not seen the things. Why disturb him? Perhaps she had seen nothing. Those eyes may have been a creation of her overwrought imagination. So she reasoned, and was silent.

  Turkey Trot was firm in his belief that the missing girls had been carried away. He fastened a rope to the remains of Tillie’s painter, and took the boat in tow.

  “They won’t be back for it,” he muttered. “Big seas come in here. Smash it up.”

  At that he started his motor and they went pop-popping toward home in the deep darkness that lay just before dawn.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  “A BOAT! A BOAT!”

  The sun was high when Florence and Tillie woke on the island where for a time they were Crusoes. Their first thought was of food. To Tillie, Goose Island was no unknown land. She had been here often in winter. The time had been when wild geese laid their eggs here. They came no more. There would be no eggs for breakfast.

  “Fish for breakfast,” Tillie declared. “It’s our only chance.”

  “No line,” said Florence.

  “Yes. Here’s one.” Tillie produced one from the pocket of her knickers.

  “Got a can of worms in your pocket, too?” Florence asked with a laugh. To her the affair was becoming a lark. The sun was bright and cheering, the sea a glorious blue. There was not a cloud in the sky.

  “Someone will find us,” she declared hopefully.

  “We’re a long way off the ship channel,” said Tillie.
“We may be here for days. They’ll search the shores for our boats and our bodies.” She shuddered. “They’ll beat the forest for miles before they think of looking on Goose Island. And you may be sure enough that those villains, whoever they were, will never whisper a word of it. They think we are at the bottom of the lake. That’s what they hope, too.

  “Florence.” Her tone became quite solemn. “It’s not whether you are rich or poor that counts. It’s whether you are honest and loyal and kind. Take Daddy Red Johnson. He was poor. But he was square and kind. Once when he was fishing for trout he caught a ninety pound sturgeon. Mighty near pulled him through the hole. He got over ten dollars for it. He called that Providence. Said God sent the sturgeon so he could help out a poor Indian who was sick and had only dried fish to eat.

  “He was poor. But he was good and kind. Then there’s the Eries. They’ve got millions; yacht worth a hundred thousand, big cottage up here, sailboats, speed boat, everything. But they’re just as square as any poor folks.

  “Wait till we get back!” she exclaimed. “Somebody’ll suffer for this! Cedar Point has had enough of that sort of thing. Crooks rob city folks in the winter. Then they come up here to try and have a good time like real people. Do you think they ever can? Not much! Man with a black heart never has a good time anywhere. Cedar Point has had enough badness.

  “But there’s the question of breakfast!” she exclaimed. “Plenty of minnows if we can catch ’em. Pull off your shoes.”

  For half an hour they labored on the sandy beach, in shallow water, constructing a minnow trap of stones and sticks. They made a narrow pond that could be closed quickly. After corralling a school of sand minnows, they closed them in. One of them was soon flopping on Tillie’s hook.

  “Have to swim for my breakfast,” she explained, rapidly disrobing. “Some big old rock bass out there beneath that rock, I’ll bet.”

  She plunged into the water, swam thirty yards, then mounted the rock.

  Standing there in the morning sunshine, she seemed a statue of bronze.

  The statue became a thing of great animation shortly after her minnow hit the water. She had hooked a fish.

  “He’s a whopper!” she shouted back. “We’ll get more, too.”

  They did. Half an hour later four plump rock bass, spiked to a broad plank, were roasting to a delicious brown.

  “Nothing better than planked fish,” said Tillie, as she cleaned up the last morsel and sucked her fingers. “Next problem is one of transportation.”

  “Tickets for two,” replied Florence, “and no return tickets, please.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Tillie philosophically. “This isn’t half bad; not near so bad as what was intended for us.”

  “No,” Florence’s tone was a sober one, “it’s not.”

  “Well,” Florence’s voice took on a more cheerful tone, “this appears to be our island. We’d better explore it. There may be some‘Man Friday’ just around the corner.”

  They started out along the pebbly beach. Here and there they came upon bits of wreckage from cottagers’ docks that had been carried away by the high water. Two posts joined by cross pieces, long planks very full of spikes, short bits of broken boards—such was the driftwood that obstructed their path.

  “Enough planks and nails to build a house,” was Tillie’s comment.

  “Why not?” Florence became enthusiastic at once. “At least we could build a three-sided shelter with one side open to the fire. That’s good sound lumber.” She struck one plank a thwack with the small axe she carried in her hand.

  “We might,” admitted Tillie. “We’d better go farther. Find the best place.”

  They trudged on. Then, quite unexpectedly, as they turned a corner, they saw something looming in the distance.

  “A boat! A boat!” Florence fairly shrieked this as she went racing away.

  She was not wholly wrong. It was a boat. But one of those heavy, flat bottomed affairs, used only by commercial fishermen, it lay bottom up, displaying three stoved-in planks.

  “Let’s turn her over.” Tillie’s tone was wholly practical. She had been brought up in a boat.

  They put their shoulders to the craft, and over it went.

  Tillie tapped it here and hacked at it there with the axe. “Not so bad,” was her final judgment. “Sides are sound. Stern, too. Have to give her three new planks in her bottom. We can calk up the seams with moss and rosin. Make some oars out of cedar poles, and there you are. It’ll be a stiff pull. All of two miles to shore. But we’ll make it.”

  “How long will all that take?”

  “Maybe two days.”

  At once Florence became downcast. She was beginning to think of Petite Jeanne. She had come to this place for rest. “Little rest she’ll get while I am missing!” she thought gloomily. “We ought to get away from here at once. But how can we?”

  “All right,” she spoke in as cheerful a tone as she could command. “Let’s get to work at once.”

  They did get to work, and made famous progress, too. Lunch forgotten, supper forgotten, they toiled on until, just as the sun was dropping low, Tillie declared the clumsy craft would float.

  “No oars,” objected Florence.

  “Can pole her close to shore,” replied Tillie. “Try to take her down to our camp.”

  This proved a Herculean task. The boat was clumsy and hard to steer. Three times she filled and all but sank. Bailing with a small wooden box they found was slow work. They reached camp at last, tired, soaked to the skin, and ravenously hungry.

  “Ought to have caught some fish,” Tillie said remorsefully. “Too late now. Only bullheads bite in the dark. They stay in the bullrushes. None here.”

  They made a fire, dried their clothes, then heated some water in a hollow stone. To this water they added bitter willow leaves. As they sipped this they pretended they were drinking tea.

  “To-morrow,” said Tillie with a sigh, “I’ll catch a lot of fish.”

  “To-morrow I would like to go home.”

  “Well, maybe,” replied Tillie thoughtfully. “All depends on that old boat. If she only soaks up so she don’t leak like a gill net, we might.”

  There was nothing left for it but to attempt to round out the night with sleep. They were tired enough for that, beyond question.

  After building a hot fire, they curled up in their herring box shelter and prepared to sleep.

  Florence had all but drifted off to the land of dreams, when she fancied she heard the throb of a motor. The impression was half real, half dream. Reality struggled for a time with dream life. Dream life won, and she slept.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  THE “SPANK ME AGAIN”

  Florence awoke with a start. She sat up abruptly, rubbing her eyes in a futile attempt to remember where she was.

  “I am—” she muttered. “This is—”

  A dull red glow met her eyes. Like a flash she knew. She and Tillie had started their second night on Goose Island. The red glow was their camp fire, burned low. She had been asleep for some time.

  “But that sound!” She was now fully awake. A loud throbbing beat in upon her eardrums.

  “It’s a boat! Some sort of motor boat!” she fairly screamed. “Tillie! Tillie! Wake up! There’s a boat!”

  Tillie did wake up. She sprang to her feet to stare into the darkness at a spot where a dot of red light was cutting its way through the night.

  “He’s passing!” she exclaimed. “It’s that boy in the Spank Me Again. He has not seen our fire. We must scream.”

  Scream they did, fairly splitting their lungs. And with the most astonishing results.

  The crazy little craft gave vent to a series of sharp sput-sput-sputs. Then suddenly it went dead; the light disappeared. Night, dark and silent as the grave, hung over all.

  “We—we frightened him,” Tillie gasped. “He—he—went over. He may be hurt, may drown. We must save him!”

  “How?”

  “Swim.” T
illie was kicking off her shoes.

  Florence followed her example. Together they entered the chilling water to begin one more long swim, to the spot where the strange little motor boat had last been seen.

  “He’s hurt,” Tillie panted between strokes, “or he’d yell for help.”

  Florence thought this probable, and her heart chilled. In their eagerness for deliverance, had they caused another to lose his life? She redoubled her efforts.

  A dark bulk, lying close to the water, appeared before them.

  “The boat,” thought Florence, “it did not sink. There is hope.”

  She was right. As they reached the overturned boat, they found the Erie boy, in a semi-conscious condition and with a bad cut on his temple, clinging feebly to the stern.

  To assist him to a position across the boat’s narrow hull, then to push and pull the small craft ashore, was the work of an hour.

  By the time they reached the beach, the boy had so far regained his strength that he was able, with their assistance, to walk to their camp.

  A great fire was soon busy dispelling the cold, while clouds of steam rose from their drenched clothing.

  Florence bandaged the boy’s head; then, with all the skill of a trained nurse, she brought him fully back to life by chafing his hands and feet.

  “So—so that’s who it was?” he found words to gasp at last.

  “I thought it was—well, mebby I didn’t think at all. I just lost control and she went over. Good thing you were here.”

  “It was.” There was conviction in Tillie’s tone. “I always knew that thing would kill you. And it’s pretty near done it.”

  “Mighty close,” he agreed.

  “But why are you here?” he asked in some amazement, as he took in their crude accommodations.

  “Because we can’t get away. We’re marooned,” Florence explained.

  She proceeded to relate in a dramatic manner their strange adventure.

  “The beasts!” exclaimed the boy. “How could they?”

  “Guess that gets asked pretty often these days,” said Florence soberly.

  “Question is,” mused the boy, “how are we to get away?”

  “Your boat—” began Florence.

  “Soaked. Engine dead. Besides, she carries only one person. Positively. Couldn’t even hold one of you on my lap.”