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

by Julia K. Duncan

  It was time for Dorothy to act. As the smuggler’s plane began to ascend, she sent her amphibian diving toward him at a tremendous spurt of speed. The Mystery Plane nosed over and dove in turn at the Ryan, some five hundred feet below.

  “Ha-ha!” Dorothy shut off her motor and brought Will-o’-the-Wisp’s nose gradually back to the horizontal. “Our scheme worked! That bird either doesn’t know his business or he’s lost his nerve!”

  A fighting plane attacking has as its objective a position directly behind the hostile plane at close range. A position either above or below the tail is equally good. From these positions the enemy is directly in the line of fire, and in sighting no deflection is necessary.

  The smuggler’s maneuver showed Dorothy that he was a novice; for instead of going into a climbing spiral which would have eluded her dive and made it possible for him to attain a superior position over both planes, he dove at the Ryan. This might have been a proper fighting maneuver if Bill’s plane had not been nosing upward toward him; and had the Ryan not been the faster of the two.

  By this blunder he put himself in the direct line of fire from Bill’s machine gun. And had that young man been minded to use it the battle would have been over—almost before it started.

  Seeing his mistake almost immediately, the bearded aviator broke his dive by zooming upward. Again Dorothy’s plane dove for his tail and right there he made his second error.

  Instead of gaining altitude and position by making an Immelman turn, which consists of a half-roll on the top of a loop, he pulled back his stick sharply, simultaneously giving the Mystery Plane full right rudder. The result was an abrupt stall and a fall off, and his amphibian emerged from the resultant dive headed in the direction from which he had first appeared.

  Dorothy sent her bus spiralling downward, while Bill simply nosed his Ryan into a steeper climb. By the time the Mystery Plane levelled off from its split-S turn it had lost over a thousand feet. Granted he was headed for home, if that had been his intention; now he was placed in the worst possible situation with regard to his opponents. For instead of one, both planes had attained positions above him.

  For the next few minutes the man in the smuggler’s plane did his best to out-maneuver the elusive pair whose motors roared above his head like giant bees attacking an enemy. Never was he given a chance to better his position or to gain altitude. Every time he maneuvered to place one of the planes within line of fire from his machine gun, the other would effectually block the move; the menacing plane would sheer off at a tangent and its partner, crowding down upon his tail, would hurl forth a smoke bomb. By the time he floundered through the cloud, his antagonists would be back in their relative positions, again, the one directly above his tail plane, the other slightly behind him to the right.

  The bearded aviator knew that he was being outclassed at every move, that gradually they were forcing him down to a point where he must land or crash.

  Both Dorothy and Bill knew exactly when the man in the plane below guessed their purpose. For with a sudden burst of speed he shot ahead, streaking in the direction of North Stamford like a ghost in torment.

  “We’ve got every advantage but one,” mused Dorothy, widening her throttle in pursuit. “He knows where he’s going—and we don’t. He’s up to some trick, I’ll bet.”

  That her thoughts were prophetic was made apparent almost immediately. By shutting off his engine and by kicking his rudder alternately right and left with comparatively slow and heavy movements, the smuggler pilot sent his plane’s nose swinging from side to side. This evolution, known as fish-tailing, he executed without banking or dropping the nose to a steeper angle. Its purpose is to cut down speed and to do so as rapidly as possible.

  The Mystery Plane slowed down as though a brake had been applied, sideslipped to the left over a line of trees and leveled off above a field enclosed by a dilapidated stone fence.

  “Confound!” exclaimed Dorothy, with a glance behind. “He’s going to land and both Bill and I have overshot the field!”

  Nose depressed below level, a lively flipper turn to left brought Will-o’-the-Wisp sharply round facing the field again with its wings almost vertical. Immediate application of up aileron and opposite rudder quickly brought the amphibian to an even keel once more. Then Dorothy nosed over, went into a forward slip, recovered and leveled off for a landing.

  As the wheels of her plane touched the ground, she saw the Ryan come to a stop on the grass some yards to the right. Just ahead and between them was the Mystery Plane. It lay drunkenly over on one side, resting on its twisted landing gear and a crumpled lower wing section.

  Dorothy stood up in her cockpit when Will-o’-the-Wisp stopped rolling and saw the smuggler-pilot vault the wall at the far corner of the field and disappear into a small wood. Bill was walking toward the disabled amphibian. She got out of her plane and hurried toward him.

  “Pancaked!” she cried, pointing toward the wreck as she came within speaking distance.

  “You said it—” concurred Bill. “That guy was in such a hurry he leveled off too soon. Usually I don’t wish anybody hard luck but that bird is the great exception. Too bad he didn’t break a leg along with his plane. Now he’s beat it and—”

  “We are just about where we were before,” she broke in.

  “Not quite, Dorothy. The Mystery Plane is out of commission.—I wonder where we are?”

  “Somewhere in the North Stamford hills.”

  “I know—but whose property are we on?”

  “Haven’t the least idea.”

  “I can’t see any houses around here. Did you notice any as you came down?”

  Dorothy shook her head and laughed.

  “My eyes were glued on this field,” she admitted. “I was too busy trying to make a landing myself to take in much of the landscape. Wait a minute, though—seems to me I caught a glimpse of the Castle just before I put Wispy into that reverse control turn. Yes, I’m sure of it.”

  “The Castle?” Bill frowned. “What in the cock-eyed world is that?”

  “A castle, silly!”

  “Make sense out of that, please.”

  “Sorry. You’re usually trying to mystify me—I just thought I’d turn the tables for a change.”

  “Oh, I know—I’ll say I’m sorry or anything else you want. Only please tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, it seems that about fifteen or sixteen years ago, somebody built a castle about two or three miles from North Stamford village. It’s less than five miles from where we live. Not being up on medieval architecture I can’t describe it properly, but Dad says it is the kind that German robber barons put up in the fourteenth century. Anyway, the Castle is built of stone with a steep, slate roof, which spouts pointed turrets all over the place. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been built by a German—it certainly looks as Heinie as sauerkraut!”

  “Who lives there?” asked Bill.

  “Nobody, now. During the war, Dad told me, the place was suspected to be a spy-hang-out or something like that. Anyway, there was a lot of talk about it. What became of the owner, whoever he is, I don’t know. The place has been rented several times during the past few years. It is quite near the road. I drove past it just the other day on my way to and from Nance Wilkins’ tea and the old dump looked quite empty and forlorn.”

  “Well, that’s that,” said Bill. “This bearded guy may have been heading for your Castle, but I doubt it. Fact is, he probably decided to land at the first convenient place when he found we were too much for him, and decided to trust to his legs for a getaway.”

  Dorothy had been swinging her helmet by its chin strap in an absent-minded manner. Now she raised her eyes to his.

  “What are we going to do about it?” she inquired. “We can’t try to break into the Castle in broad daylight.”

  “Hardly. And after our experience with the bank gang, we’ll do no more snooping around strange houses on our own. I am going over to that little wo
od where our friend ran to cover. Maybe I can find some trace of him. You stay here with the planes.”

  “Why can’t I go with you, Bill?”

  “Because that smuggler may simply be hiding in the woods in hopes that we’ll come after him and that we’ll leave these airbuses unguarded. Then when we’re gone, he’ll come back here, grab one of them and fly quietly home.”

  “All right. I see.”

  “Have you got a gun?”

  “That small Colt you gave me is in Wispy’s cockpit.”

  “Get it and keep it on you—and if that guy shows up, don’t be afraid to use it.”

  Dorothy shook her head. “I never shot at anybody in my life—”

  “Don’t shoot at him—shoot him. You might have to, you know.”

  “But surely, Bill—”

  “Oh, I don’t mean for you to kill the guy. Plunk him in the leg—disable him. If you have any qualms about it, just remember that machine gun in his bus here. The man is as deadly as a copperhead and twice as treacherous. Look out for him.”

  “I will. But su-suppose you get into trouble, Bill. How long do you want me to wait here before I come after you?”

  “My dear girl,” Bill was becoming impatient. “I’m just going to try to find out where that lad is headed. I won’t be gone more than ten or fifteen minutes.”

  “Yes. But suppose you don’t come back here!”

  “Wait for half an hour. Then fly back home and tell Dad what has happened. He’ll know what to do. Don’t get nervous—I’ll be all right. So long. See you in a few minutes.”

  With a wave of his hand, he ran across the field and Dorothy saw him hurdle the low wall and disappear between the trees of the wood where the bearded aviator had run to cover.

  CHAPTER XVI

  The Tunnel

  Dorothy walked slowly back to Will-o’-the-Wisp and climbed into the cockpit. From the pilot’s seat she had an unobstructed view of the field and the two other airplanes. Overhead, fluffy wind clouds began to appear from out of the northwest. Near the stone wall, three small rabbits sported in the sunshine; and presently a groundhog waddled across the field.

  She glanced at her watch. The hands marked five past five. Bill had been gone twenty minutes.

  “And he told me not to get nervous,” she thought indignantly. “This waiting around is enough to set anybody off—I’ll give him just ten minutes more!”

  Dorothy counted those ten minutes quite the longest she had ever experienced. Fifteen minutes past five and still no Bill. He had told her to wait half an hour and then to fly home for help! But she was not the sort of girl who permits herself to be quietly wiped off the picture by an order from a boy friend! She just wasn’t made that way. Bill might be worried about the safety of the planes; it was his safety that worried her.

  Determinedly she transferred the small revolver from its holster to a pocket of the jodhpurs she was wearing. Should she pack a flash light, too? No need of that, she decided. Figuring on daylight saving time, it wouldn’t be dark until after eight o’clock. Without more ado, she got out of the plane and crossed the field toward the wood.

  After she had climbed the wall at the spot where she had seen Bill disappear on the trail of the bearded aviator, she came upon a path. Narrow it was, and overgrown, yet certainly a path, leading through the trees at a diagonal from the stone fence. Without hesitation, Dorothy followed it.

  She was soon certain that her idea of the wood from the air was correct, and that it covered no great acreage. Hurrying along the winding footpath, she began to catch glimpses of blue sky between the tree trunks, and less than three hundred yards from the wall she came into the open.

  The trees ended at the edge of a broad gully, apparently the bed of a shallow stream in the spring or after a shower; but now, except for a puddle or two, it was dry. On the farther side, cows were grazing in a meadow.

  “Nice pastoral landscape,” she said aloud. “Doesn’t look like much of a spot for mischief—”

  In spite of her bravado, Dorothy felt a lump in her throat. If Bill were missing, too, and she could not find him.…

  The pasture sloped gently upward over a hill, perhaps a quarter of a mile away. And on the horizon above the hilltop, the Castle reared its pointed turrets skyward. For a little while she watched the huge, grey pile of stone, whose narrow leaded windows reflecting the late afternoon sun, winked at her with many mocking eyes. What a dreary-looking place it was, she thought. Ugly and forbidding, it was entirely out of place in this New England countryside. The Castle seemed utterly deserted. It probably was. At least the path ended at the gully; there was no sign of it across the meadow.

  Where was the bearded aviator—and above all, where was Bill?

  “Bill distinctly said he would not snoop around the Castle,” she thought. “I wonder if he really came this far?”

  So eager had she been to reach the edge of the wood that she had paid very little attention to the ground she was covering. As this new thought struck her, she turned and gazed back over the way she had come. There were her own footprints clearly defined in the damp earth—but there was no sign that either Bill or the smuggler had passed that way.

  Back along the path she trudged, walking slowly this time.

  “I’m a pretty poor woodsman,” she told herself. “They must have turned off somewhere.”

  Her eyes searched the soft earth of the narrow trail and the thick bushes through which it wandered. But it was not until she had gone half way back to the stone wall that she discovered traces of footprints. And where the prints left the path, a ragged remnant of a handkerchief swung from a twig near the ground.

  “There!” she pounced upon it joyfully. “How could I have been so stupid as to miss it—I might have known!”

  The initials, “W. B.” embroidered in one corner of the dirty fragment of linen banished any doubt she may have had as to its ownership. Leaving it tied to the bush, she struck into the wood.

  Now that she was intent upon her stalking, there was no mistaking the trail left by the other two. A broken twig, heel marks on the soft mold, a trampled patch of moss; all these signs bespoke a hasty passage through the brush.

  She had not gone far, when suddenly in a clearing she came upon the end of the trail. The earth here was bare of undergrowth and sloped sharply down into a marshy ravine. In the center of the little clearing a pile of brush was heaped with dead grass and rubbish,—tin cans, old shoes, automobile fenders, rusty bed-springs, boxes and weathered newspapers.

  For a moment Dorothy stared at the rubbish dump. Then she noticed footprints circling the heap and followed them down to the ravine. Here, as if to bulwark the miscellaneous junk and to keep it from sliding, was a buttress of boxes and barrels.

  Dorothy got down on her knees and examined these carefully. At the very bottom, almost on a level with the tussocky surface of the marsh, a barrel lay on its side, its depth leading inward. A sudden inspiration made her pull a long stick from the pile and run it into the barrel. She gave a little gurgle of astonishment. The barrel had no bottom.

  Still on her knees she peered inside. Just beyond the rim lay a scrap of paper. She picked it up and scrawled upon it were the words “This way”.…

  “Another message!” she whispered jubilantly.

  She tried to move the barrel but found that it was securely nailed to the bulwark of packing-cases. The soft earth about its mouth was heavily marked with footprints.

  “Well, there’s no doubt about it now—‘this way’—” she murmured and without further waste of time wormed her way into the barrel.

  As she crawled through the other end, she found herself in a narrow tunnel. The daylight appearing through its ingenious entrance was strong enough to show her that the rubbish had been built over a frame of two-by-fours and chickenwire, which formed the roof and sides of the tunnel under the dump.

  Dorothy got to her feet. A short distance ahead the tunnel led straight into the high ground over whic
h she had come from the wood path. Here the sides were timbered with stout posts, and ceiled with cross beams to prevent the earthen roof from falling.

  “Gee, if this isn’t like Alice in Wonderland! Why, I might meet the White Rabbit any minute now.” She giggled, then shivered as she remembered why she was there.

  For a moment she considered returning to the plane for her flash light, but decided it would take too much precious time, and passed on cautiously, stopping now and then to listen. She could hear nothing but the squashy sound of her footsteps on the marshy floor of the tunnel.

  After proceeding about fifteen feet, the dark passage turned slightly in its course. Just beyond the turn, as Dorothy was groping to find which way it led, her hands touched a wooden surface. This proved to be a heavy door, standing partly open. As she shoved it back with her shoulder, she tripped over a heavy object which lay across the sill. Dorothy reached down in the darkness and picked up a crowbar.

  She advanced, dragging the crowbar after her. The floor of the passage at this point began to slope up hill. But after a few paces ahead, she found it went abruptly downward at a considerable angle, took a sharp turn to the right, then began to slope gently upward again.

  By this time she had lost all sense of direction. She progressed slowly, feeling along the wall with her left hand, resting it on one timber until she had advanced half way to where she supposed the next would be. In this manner she crept on for nearly a quarter of a mile without meeting any obstruction. The air, though cold and lifeless, was breathable; but the darkness and the horrid feeling of being shut in began to get on her nerves. Once more she stopped to listen. Absolute stillness. Dorothy could hear nothing but the beating of her heart as she strained her eyes to pierce the black passage. She seemed completely shut off from everything on earth.

  Feeling that inaction was even more unbearable than running head-on into danger, she recommenced her slow advance. Presently, she came to a place where the tunnel widened out. Here, even with outstretched arms, she could not reach both walls at once.