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

by Julia K. Duncan

  Florence smiled as she recalled his words. She was enjoying “looking at it” this very moment. More than once she had taken it down to handle it lovingly. Once, on seeing a bit of wood bobbing in the water, she had taken aim and fired. The short, stout rifle had a great roar to it. And Florence had a steady aim; she had split the wood in two, first shot.

  “All the same,” she thought to herself, “I wish people would not prowl around the boat at night. And what would one dive for?” she asked herself. “Three or four barrels of oil in the hold—surely they are not worth all that trouble.”

  Then it struck her all of a heap that here was a mystery and perhaps some great secret.

  “Does this broken hulk of a ship hide some rich treasure?” she asked herself.

  She laughed the thought down, but it bobbed up like a cork in water, more buoyant than ever.

  “The ship’s ghost is gone!” she exclaimed, springing up. “I wonder if those men will come back. I’m going to see.”

  “And leave us here?” Greta, too, was on her feet. Youngest of the trio, she was unaccustomed to wild, out-of-the-way places.

  “Come along,” Florence invited. “No ghost costumes though! Get into your long coats.”

  A moment later three dark shadows stole out upon the slanting deck of the wrecked ship.

  “Boo!” Greta gripped Florence’s stout arm. “How spooky it all is in the moonlight!”

  “And just think!” Jeanne whispered. “Thousands of people have walked this deck, thousands upon thousands! The ship’s more than forty years old. Thousands of those passengers will never walk any deck again. They are gone from this world forever.”

  “Oh—oh! Jeanne, don’t talk like that!” dark-eyed Greta implored.

  “But where’s your black schooner?” Florence demanded.

  “Gone for good, I guess,” Jeanne said after scanning the dark waters.

  “For good?” Florence murmured. “I wonder.”

  For a full half hour they marched arm in arm up and down the broad deck. During all that time not a dozen words were spoken. It was a time for thought, not for speech. Here they were, three girls alone on the deck of a wrecked ship. They hoped to make it their summer home. Were intruders to bring all this to an end?

  “Not if I can help it!” Florence told herself.

  “Swen told us we would not be disturbed,” she thought. “No one lives near. The Tobin’s Harbor settlement is five miles away. Blake’s Point with its rugged reefs and wild waves lies between. Few small crafts pass that way.

  “Ah well,” she whispered to herself, “tomorrow we will row over to Duncan’s Bay. Perhaps we shall find some trace of the black schooner there.”

  After that, for many long moments she gave herself over to contemplation of the scene of wild beauty that lay before her. The golden moon, dark waters, a shore line that was like a ghostly shadow, the wink and blink of a distant lighthouse, all this seemed a picture taken down from an art museum wall.

  “Come!” she said at last, giving two slender arms a squeeze. “Come, we must go in. Tomorrow is another day.”

  CHAPTER III

  A PHANTOM OF THE AIR

  “It’s a phantom, a phantom of the air!” Body aquiver, her black eyes reflecting the light of the setting sun, Greta stood intent, listening with all her ears.

  A moment before she had been hearing only the goodnight song and twitter of birds. Strange sounds they were to her. Bird songs all the same. But now this. “It is celestial music from heaven!” she whispered. Yet as she thought it, she knew that was not true. A musician herself, she had recognized at once the notes of a violin.

  The sound came from afar. At times a light breeze carried it quite away.

  “May be miles away. In this still air sound carries far. But where can that one be who plays so divinely?”

  To this question she could find no answer. She was standing on a narrow, natural platform of stone. Before her, almost straight down two hundred feet, were the black waters of Duncan’s Bay. Miles away, with ridges, tangled jungles and deep ravines between, was the nearest settlement.

  She had climbed all the way up Greenstone Ridge from the shore of Duncan’s Bay that she might be alone, that she might think. She was not thinking now. She was listening to such music as one is seldom privileged to hear.

  Yes, she had climbed all that way through the bush that she might think. Greta was an only child. This was her first long journey away from home and mother. Tears had stood in her mother’s eyes as she bade her goodby, yet she had said bravely enough, “You must go, Greta. The doctor says you will escape from the poison of ragweed. I cannot come with you. You will be safe and happy with Jeanne and Florence. Goodby, and God bless you!”

  There were times when this dark-eyed child recalled those words, when great waves of longing swept over her, when her shoulders drooped and all her body was aquiver. At such times as these she wanted nothing so much as to be alone.

  As she had stepped into the still shadows of the evergreen forest at the back of the camping ground on Duncan’s Bay that afternoon, she had been caught in such a wave of homesickness as would seem for the moment must sweep away her very soul.

  “Florence!” she had called, and there was despair in her heart. “Florence, I am going to climb the ridge. You and Jeanne go on. I have my flashlight. I—I’ll be back after the sun has set.”

  “All right,” Florence had called cheerfully. “Don’t go over the ridge. If you do you’ll get lost. Keep on this side. If you lose your way, just come down to the water’s edge and call. We’ll hear you and come for you in the boat.”

  “Oh!” the slim black-eyed girl had breathed. “Oh, how good it will be to be alone—to watch the sun set over the black waters and to know that the same sun is making long shadows in our own back yard at home, and perhaps playing hide and seek in mother’s hair!”

  She turned her face toward the rocky ridge that towered above her and whispered to herself once more, “Alone, all alone.”

  Strangely enough, though no one is known to inhabit Greenstone Ridge, and surely no one at that hour would be found wandering there so far from the regular haunts of men, she had experienced from the first a feeling that on that ridge she was not quite alone.

  “And now,” she breathed, “I know I am not alone up here. There is someone else somewhere. But who can that person be? And where?”

  Here indeed was a mystery. For the moment however, no mystery could hold her attention. Even thoughts of mother and the sunset were forgotten. It was enough to stand there, head bare, face all alight, listening to that matchless melody.

  * * * *

  As Florence had pushed her stout little boat off the sandy shore that afternoon, she had been tempted to call Greta back. “Perhaps,” she said to Jeanne, “we have made a mistake in allowing her to lose herself in that forest alone.”

  “But what can harm her?” Jeanne had reasoned. “Wolves are cowards. The wild moose will not come near her. There is no one on the ridge. It will do her good to be alone.”

  Thus reassured, Florence had straightened the line on her pole, hooked a lure to a bar on her reel, and, with Jeanne in the stern of the boat, had rowed away.

  Someone had told Florence that the waters of Duncan’s Bay were haunted by great dark fish with rows of teeth sharp as a shark’s. From that time the big girl had experienced a compelling desire to try her hand at catching these monsters. Now she breathed a sigh of suppressed excitement as she unwound a fathom of line from her reel.

  “You do it this way,” she said to Jeanne. Her whole being was filled with a sort of calm excitement. “Cousin Joe told me just how you fish for pike. You put this red and white spoon with its four-pointed hook on the line. Then you let the line out, almost all of it, a hundred and thirty feet. Then you row around in curves. You drag that red and white spoon after the boat. See?”

  Jeanne nodded. “And—and what happens then?” She had caught a little of the big girl’s exci
tement.

  “Why then of course the fish takes the spoon.”

  “But what does he want with the spoon?” Jeanne’s brow wrinkled.

  “He thinks—” Florence hesitated, “well, maybe he thinks it’s a herring or a perch. Perhaps red makes him mad. He’s a wolf, this pike is, the wolf of all dark waters. He eats the other fish. He—but come on!” her voice changed. “Let’s get going. Be dark before long. You let out the line while I row.”

  For some time after that, only the thump-thump of oars and the click of the reel disturbed the Sabbath-like stillness of that black bay, where the primeval forest meets the dark water at its banks and only wild creatures have their homes.

  “There!” Jeanne breathed. “It’s almost all out.” She sat in the back seat and, lips parted, pulse throbbing, waited.

  They circled the dark pool. The sun sank behind the fringe of evergreens. A bottle-green shadow fell across the waters. They circled it again. A giant dragon fly coursed through the sky. From afar came the shrill laugh of a loon. A deep sigh rose from nowhere to pass over the waters. A ripple coursed across the glassy surface. And then—

  “Florence! Stop! We’ve hit something! The line! It’s burning my fingers!” Jeanne was wild with excitement.

  “Here! Give it to me!” Florence sprang up, all but overturning the boat. Gripping the rod, she reeled in frantically. “It’s a fish!” Her words came short and quick. “I—I feel him flapping his tail. He—he’s coming. Must have half the line. Here—here he comes. Two—two-thirds.

  “Oh! Oh! There he goes!” The reel screamed. In her wild effort to regain control, Florence felt her knuckles bruised and barked, but she persisted. Not ten feet of line remained on the reel when the fish reluctantly halted in his wild flight.

  “He—he’s hooked fair!” she panted. “And the line is stout, stout as a cowboy’s lariat. We—we’ll get him! We’ll get him!”

  Once again her splendid muscles worked in perfect time as she reeled in yard after yard of the stout line.

  This time she fancied she caught a glimpse of a dark shadow in the water before a second mad rush all but tore rod and reel from her grasp.

  “Florence! Let the old thing go!” Jeanne’s tone was sober, almost pleading. “Think what a monster he must he! Might be a sea-horse or—or a crocodile.”

  “This,” said Florence, laughing grimly, “is Michigan, not Florida. There are no alligators here.”

  Once again she had the fish under control and was reeling in with a fierce and savage delight. “He’s coming. Got to come. Now! Now! Now!”

  CHAPTER IV

  CAPTIVATING PHANTOM

  The music to which Greta listened was unfamiliar. “Is it a song?” she whispered, “or an evening prayer? Who can have written it? Perhaps no one. It may have come direct from heaven.”

  She could not believe it. Someone was playing that violin. Real fingers touched those strings. She longed to search them out, to come before that mysterious person of great enchantment and whisper, “Teach me!”

  Ah yes, but which way should she go? Already the shades of night were falling.

  “No! No!” she cried as the music ended. “Don’t stop! Go on, please go on!” It was as if the phantom violin were at her very side.

  The music did not go on, at least not at once. Emerging from its spell as one wakes from a dream, she became once more conscious of the goodnight song of birds, the dull put-put-put of a distant motor, the cold black rocks beneath her feet, the dark waters far below where some object, probably Florence and Jeanne in the boat, moved slowly forward.

  And then her lips parted, her eyes shone, for the phantom had resumed his song of the strings.

  * * * *

  In strange contrast to all this, Florence continued her battle with the big fish. In this struggle she was meeting with uncertain fortune. Now she had him, and now he was gone. She reeled in frantically, only to lose her grip on the reel and to see her catch disappear in a swirl of foam. At last, when her muscles ached from the strain, the fish appeared to give up and come in quite readily.

  “There! There he is!” Jeanne all but fell from the boat when she caught one good look at the monster. He was fearsome beyond belief, a great head like that of a wolf, two rows of gleaming teeth, a pair of small, snake-like eyes. And, to complete the picture at that moment over the bottle-green waters a long ripple ran like a long green serpent.

  “Florence!” she screamed. “Let go! It’s a snake! A forty-foot long snake!” The slight little girl hid her eyes in her hands.

  No need for this appeal. In a wild whirl of foam the thing was gone again. But still fastened to his bone-like jaw was the three-barbed hook. And the line, as Florence had said, was “stout as a cowboy’s lariat.” She had him. Did she want him? Who, at that moment, could tell?

  Strangely enough, at that moment one of those thoughts that come to us all uninvited, entered the big girl’s mind. “What did that diver on the black boat want on our wreck?”

  No answer to this disturbing question entered her mind. They had left the ship unguarded. They had come to Duncan’s Bay prepared to stay at least for the night. That they would stay she knew well, for the wind was rising again. To face those dark, turbulent waters at night would be perilous. “What may happen to the ship while we are gone?” she asked herself. Again, no answer.

  * * * *

  The melody, faint, coming from afar, indistinct yet unbelievably beautiful, having reached Greta’s ears once more and entered into her very soul, she stood as before, entranced, while the light faded. She was, however, thinking hard.

  “Where can it be, that violin?” she whispered.

  Where indeed? On that end of Isle Royale there are two small settlements. To reach the nearest one from that spot would require three hours of struggling through bushes, down precipices and over bogs. The traveler would be doing very well indeed if he did not completely lose his way in the bargain. It was unthinkable that any skilled violinist would undertake such a journey only that he might fling his glorious music to the empty air about the Greenstone Ridge. It was even more unthinkable that anyone could have taken up his abode somewhere among the crags of that ridge. On Isle Royale there are summer homes only along the shore line, and there are very few of these. The three hundred and more square miles of the island are for the most part as wild and uninhabited as they must have been before the coming of Columbus.

  “It is a phantom!” Greta whispered, “A phantom of the air, a phantom violin.”

  Had she willed it strongly enough, she might have gone racing away in fear. She did not will it. The music was too divine for that. It held her charmed.

  What piece was it the mysterious one played? She did not know or care; enough that it was played. So she stood there drinking it in while twilight faded into night. Only once had she heard such music. In a crowded hall a young musician had stood up and, all unaccompanied, had played like that.

  Could it be he? “No! No!” she murmured. “It cannot be. He is far, far away.”

  Then a thought all but fantastic entered her mind. “Perhaps I have radio-perfect ears.” She had heard of people, read of them in some magazine, she believed, whose ears were so attuned to certain radio sounds that they could receive messages, listen to music with their unassisted ears.

  “It has never been so before,” she protested. “Yet I never before have been in a place of perfect peace and silence.” The thought pleased her.

  And then, as it had begun, the marvelous music died away into silence.

  For ten minutes the girl stood motionless. Then, seeming to awake with a shudder to the darkness all about her, she snapped on her flashlight and went racing over the narrow moose trail leading away to the distant camping grounds of Duncan’s Bay.

  CHAPTER V

  PALE GREEN LIGHT

  The little drama, in which Florence and Jeanne played major roles, continued.

  Duncan’s Bay is primeval. Not an abandoned shack marks its s
hores, not a tree has been cut down. When darkness “falls from the wings of night” this bottle-green bay, reflecting the trees, shut in by the gloom of the forest, casts a spell over every soul who chooses to linger there.

  It is a solitary spot. Six miles away, around a wind-blown, wave-washed point there are human habitations, none nearer. Little wonder, then, that the frail, blond-haired Jeanne should renew her pleading.

  “Florence, let that thing go!”

  The “thing” of course was a living creature caught on Florence’s hook at the end of the stout line.

  “But Jeanne,” the big girl remonstrated, “I can’t let him go!”

  “Cut the line!” Jeanne was insistent.

  “It cost two dollars. And that red and white spoon cost another dollar. Shall I throw three dollars into the lake?

  “Besides,” Florence began reeling in once more, “the thing’s a fish, not a snake. There are no boa constrictors in America. He’s just a big, old northern pike. Looks like a snake, that’s all.

  “I—I’ll bring him in,” she panted. “You just take a good look.”

  She reeled in fast. The fish, at last weary of battle, came in without a struggle and, for one full moment lay there upon the surface of the water. A magnificent specimen of his kind, he must have measured close to four feet from tip to tail. His eyes and cruel teeth gave him a savage look, but in that failing light his sleek, mottled sides were truly beautiful.

  “Wolf of the waters,” Florence murmured. “Truly you do not deserve to live! If a herring, gorgeous flash of silver, passes your way, there is a mad swirl and his favorite pool knows him no more. The beautiful speckled trout and the perch fare no better. Even little baby ducklings that sport about on the surface are not safe from your cruel jaws. A swirl, a frantic quack, qua-a-ack, and he is gone forever. And yet,” she mused, “who am I that I should set myself up as a judge of wild life?”

  “Florence,” Jeanne pleaded, “let him go! What do we want with him?”