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

by Julia K. Duncan

  “Apple tart, Miss Betty!” he called imploringly. “Velly nice apple tart—maybe the cook at that school no make good tarts.”

  Betty took the package and thanked him warmly and they drove on.

  “People are so good to me,” choked the girl. “I never knew I had so many friends.”

  “Well, that’s nothing to cry over,” advised Bob philosophically. “You ought to be glad. Do I get a crumb of the tart, Betsey?”

  He spoke with a purpose and was rewarded by seeing Betty’s own sunny smile come out.

  “You always do,” she told him. “But wait till we get home. I want Ki to have a piece, too.”

  Ki, it developed, when they reached the Watterby farm, had been busy with farewell plans of his own.

  “For you,” he announced gravely to Bob, handing him an immense hunting knife as he stepped out of the car.

  “For you,” he informed Betty with equal gravity, presenting her a little silver nugget.

  They both thanked him repeatedly, and he stalked off, carrying his piece of the apple tart and apparently assured of their sincerity.

  “Though what he expects me to do with a hunting knife is more than I can guess,” laughed Bob.

  CHAPTER V

  A REGULAR CROSS-PATCH

  “Be sure you send me a postal from Washington. I never knew anybody from there before,” said Grandma Watterby earnestly.

  “And don’t get off the train unless you know how long it’s going to stop,” advised Will Watterby.

  “Do you think you ate enough breakfast?” his wife asked anxiously.

  Bob and Betty were waiting for the Eastern Limited, and the Watterby family, who had brought them to the station, were waiting, too. The Limited stopped only on signal, and this was no every day occurrence.

  “We’ll be all right,” said Bob earnestly. “You can look for a postal from Chicago first, Grandma.”

  Then came the usual hurried good-byes, the kisses and handshakes and the repeated promises to “write soon.” Then Bob and Betty found themselves in the sleeper, waving frantically to the little group on the platform as the Limited slowly got under way.

  “And that’s the last of Flame City—for some time at least,” observed Bob.

  Betty, who had made excellent use of lessons learned in her few previous long journeys, took off her hat and gloves and placed them in a paper bag which Bob put in the rack for her.

  “I did want a new hat so much,” she sighed, looking rather enviously at the woman across the aisle who wore a smart Fall hat that was unmistakably new. “But Flame City depends on mail order hats and I thought it safer to wait till I could see what people are really wearing.”

  “You look all right,” said Bob loyally. “What’s that around that woman’s neck—fur? Why I’m so hot I can hardly breathe.”

  “It’s mink,” Betty informed him with superiority. “Isn’t it beautiful? I wanted a set, but Uncle Dick said mink was too old for me. He did say, though, that I can have a neckpiece made from that fox skin Ki gave me.”

  “Don’t see why you want to tie yourself up like an Eskimo,” grumbled Bob. “Well, we seem to be headed toward the door marked ‘Education,’ don’t we, Betsey?”

  They exchanged a smile of understanding.

  Bob was passionately eager for what he called “regular schooling,” that is the steady discipline of fixed lessons, the companionship of boys of his own age, and the give and take of the average large, busy school. Normal life of any kind was out of the question in the poorhouse where he had spent the first ten years of his life, and after that he had not seen the inside of a schoolroom. He had read whatever books he could pick up while at Bramble Farm, and in the knowledge of current events was remarkably well-posted, thanks to his steady assimilation of newspapers and magazines since leaving the Peabody roof. But he feared, and with some foundation, that he might be found deplorably lacking in the most rudimentary branches.

  Betty, of course, had gone to school regularly until her mother’s death. In the year that had elapsed she had thought little of lessons, and though she did not realize it, she had lost to a great extent the power of application. Systematic study of any kind might easily prove a hardship for the active Betty. Still she was eager to study again, perhaps prepare for college. More than anything else she craved girl friends.

  “Let’s go in for lunch at the first call,” suggested Betty presently. “I didn’t eat much breakfast, and I don’t believe you did either.”

  “I swallowed a cup of boiling coffee,” admitted Bob, “but that’s all I remember. So I’m ready when you are.”

  Seated at a table well toward the center of the car, Betty’s attention was attracted to a girl who sat facing her. She was not a pretty girl. She looked discontented and peevish, and the manner in which she addressed the waiter indicated that she felt under no obligation to disguise her feelings.

  “Take that back,” she ordered, pointing a beautifully manicured hand at a dish just placed before her. “If you can’t bring me a poached egg that isn’t raw, don’t bother at all. And I hope you don’t intend to call this cream?”

  Bob glanced swiftly over at the table. The girl consciously tucked back a lock of stringy hair, displaying the flash of several diamonds.

  “Sweet disposition, hasn’t she?” muttered Bob under his breath. “I’d like to see her board just one week with Mr. Peabody.”

  “Don’t—she’ll hear you,” protested Betty. “I wonder if she is all alone? What lovely clothes she has! And did you see her rings?”

  “Well, she’ll need ’em, if she’s going to snap at everybody,” said Bob severely. “Diamonds help out a cross tongue when a poor waiter is thinking of his tip.”

  The girl was still finding fault with her food when Betty and Bob rose to leave the car, and when they passed her table she stared at them with languid insolence, half closing her narrow hazel eyes.

  “Wow, she’s bored completely,” snickered Bob, when they were out of earshot. “I don’t believe she’s a day older than you are, Betty, and she is dressed up like a little Christmas tree.”

  “I think her clothes are wonderful,” said Betty. “I wish I had a lace vestee and some long white gloves. Don’t you think they’re pretty, Bob?”

  “No, I think they’re silly,” retorted Bob. “You wouldn’t catch Bobby Littell going traveling in a party dress and wearing all the family jewels. Huh, here comes the conductor—wonder what he wants.”

  The conductor, it developed, was shifting passengers from the car behind the one in which Bob and Betty had seats. It was to be dropped at the next junction and the few passengers remaining were to be accommodated in this coach.

  “You’re all right, don’t have to make any change,” said the official kindly, after examining their tickets. “I’ll tell the porter you go through to Chicago.”

  The car had been fairly well crowded before, and the extra influx taxed every available seat. Betty took out her crocheting and Bob decided that he would go in search of a shoe-shine.

  “I’ll come back and get you and we’ll go out on the observation platform,” he said contentedly.

  “Chain six, double crochet—into the ring—” Betty murmured her directions half aloud.

  “Right here, Ma’am?” The porter’s voice aroused her.

  There in the aisle stood the girl she had noticed in the diner, and with her was a harassed looking porter carrying three heavy bags.

  “Perhaps you would just as lief take the aisle seat?” said the girl, surveying Betty as a princess might gaze upon an annoying little page. “I travel better when I can have plenty of fresh air.”

  “You might have thought I was a bug,” Betty confided later to Bob.

  The diamonds flashed as the girl loosened the fur collar at her throat.

  “Please move over,” she commanded calmly.

  Betty was bewildered, but her innate courtesy died hard.

  “You—you’ve made a mistake,” she falter
ed. “This seat is taken.”

  “The conductor said to take any vacant seat,” said the newcomer. “You can’t hold seats in a public conveyance—my father says so. Put the bags in here, porter. Be careful of that enamel leather.”

  To Betty’s dismay, she settled herself, flounces and furs and bags, in the narrow space that belonged to Bob, and by an adroit pressure of her elbow made it impossible for Betty to resume her crocheting.

  “I think you done made a mistake, lady,” ventured the porter. “This seat belongs to a young man what has a ticket to Chicago.”

  “Well, I’m going to Chicago,” answered the girl composedly. “Do you expect me to stand up the rest of the way? The agent had no business to sell me a reservation in a car that only went as far as the Junction.”

  The porter withdrew, shaking his head, and in a few minutes Bob came back to his seat. Betty, watching the girl, saw her glance sidewise at him from her narrow eyes, though she pretended to be absorbed in a magazine.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Bob politely.

  There was no response.

  “Pardon me, but you’ve made a mistake,” began Bob again. “You are in the wrong seat.”

  The magazine came down with a crash and the girl’s face, distorted with rage, appeared in its place.

  “Well, if I am, what are you going to do about it?” she shrilled rudely.

  CHAPTER VI

  FINE FEATHERS

  Betty Gordon had always, foolishly perhaps, associated courtesy and good-breeding with beautiful clothes. This strange girl, who could speak so on such slight provocation (none at all, to be exact) wore a handsome suit, and if her jewelry was too conspicuous it had the merit of being genuine. Betty herself had a lively temper, but she was altogether free from snappishness and when she “blew up” the cause was sure to be unmistakable and significant.

  Bob jumped when the girl fired her question at him. There had been nothing in his limited experience with girls to prepare him for such an outburst. Betty half expected him to acquiesce and leave the stranger in possession of his seat, but to her surprise he simply turned on his heel and walked away. Not, however, before Betty had seen something bordering on contempt in his eyes.

  “I’d hate to have Bob look at me like that,” she thought. “It wasn’t as if he didn’t like her, or was mad at her—what is it I am trying to say? Bob looked as if—as if—Oh, bother, I know what I mean, but I can’t say it.”

  The little spitfire in the seat beside her wriggled uneasily as if she, too, were not as comfortable as she would pretend. Bob’s silent reception of her discourtesy had infuriated her, and she knew better than Betty where she stood in the boy’s estimation. She had instantly forfeited his respect and probably his admiration forever.

  In a few minutes Bob was back, and with him the conductor.

  “Young lady, you’re in the wrong seat,” that official announced in a tone that admitted of no trifling. “You were in eighteen in the other car and I had to move you to twenty-three in here. Just follow me, please.”

  He reached in and took one of the suitcases, and Bob matter-of-factly took the other two. The girl opened her mouth, glanced at the conductor, and thought better of whatever she was going to say. Meekly she followed him to another section on the other side of the car and found herself compelled to share a seat with a severe-looking gray-haired woman, evidently a sufferer from hay fever, as she sneezed incessantly.

  Bob dropped down in his old place and shot a quizzical look at Betty.

  “Flame City may be tough,” he observed, “and I’d be the last one to claim that it possessed one grain of culture; but at that, I can’t remember having a pitched battle with a girl during my care-free existence there.”

  “She’s used to having her own way,” said Betty, with a laudable ambition to be charitable, an intention which she inadvertently destroyed by adding vigorously: “She’d get that knocked out of her if she lived West a little while.”

  “Guess the East can be trusted to smooth her down,” commented Bob grimly. “Unless she’s planning to live in seclusion, she won’t get far in peace or happiness unless she behaves a bit more like a human being.”

  The girl was more or less in evidence during the rest of the trip and incurred the cordial enmity of every woman in the car by the coolness with which she appropriated the dressing room in the morning and curled her hair and made an elaborate toilet in perfect indifference to the other feminine travelers who were shut out till she had the last hairpin adjusted to her satisfaction.

  She was met at the Chicago terminal by a party of gay friends who whisked her off in a palatial car, and Bob and Betty who, acting on Mr. Gordon’s advice, spent their two-hour wait between trains driving along the Lake Shore Drive, forgot her completely.

  But first Betty fell victim to the charms of a hat displayed in a smart little millinery shop, and had an argument with Bob in which she came off victor.

  “Oh, Bob, what a darling hat!” she had exclaimed, drawing him over to the window as they turned down the first street from the station. “I must have it; I want to look nice when I meet the girls in Washington.”

  “You look nice now,” declared Bob sturdily. “But if you want to buy it, go ahead,” he encouraged her. “Ask ’em how much it is, though,” he added, with a sudden recollection of the fabulous prices said to be charged for a yard of ribbon and a bit of lace.

  The hat in question was a soft brown beaver that rolled slightly away from the face and boasted as trimming a single scarlet quill. It was undeniably becoming, and Bob gave it his unqualified approval.

  “And you will want a veil?” insinuated the clever young French saleswoman. “See—it is charming!”

  She threw over the hat a cobwebby pattern of brown silk net embroidered heavily with chenille dots and deftly draped it back from Betty’s glowing face.

  “You don’t want a veil!” said Bob bluntly.

  Now the mirror told Betty that the veil looked very well indeed, and made her, she was sure of it, prettier. Betty was a good traveler and the journey had not tired her. The excitement and pleasure of choosing a new hat had brought a flush to her cheeks, and the shining brown eyes that gazed back at her from the glass assured her that a veil was something greatly to be desired.

  “You don’t want it,” repeated Bob. “You’re only thirteen and you’ll look silly. Do you want to dress like that girl on the train?”

  If Bob had stopped to think he would have realized that his remarks were not exactly tactful. Especially the reference to Betty’s age, just when she fancied that she looked very grown up indeed. She was fond of braiding her heavy thick hair and wrapping it around her head so that there were no hair-ribbons to betray her. In Betty’s experience the border line between a young lady and a little girl was determined by the absence or presence of hair-ribbons.

  “How much is it?” she asked the saleswoman.

  “Oh, but six dollars,” answered that young person with a wave of one jeweled hand as though six dollars were a mere nothing.

  “I’ll take it,” said Betty decisively. “And I’ll wear it and the hat, too, please; you can wrap up my old one.”

  Bob was silent until the transaction had been completed and they were out of the shop.

  “You wait here and I’ll see about getting a car to take us along the Drive,” he said then.

  “You’re—you’re not mad at me, are you Bob?” faltered Betty, putting an appealing hand on his arm. “I haven’t had any fun with clothes all summer long.”

  “No, I’m not mad. But I think you’re an awful chump,” replied Bob with his characteristic frankness.

  Before the drive was over, Betty was inclined to agree with him.

  The car was an open one, and while the day was warm and sunny, there was a lively breeze blowing straight off the lake. The veil persisted in blowing first into Betty’s eyes, then into Bob’s, and interfered to an amazing degree with their enjoyment of the scenery. Finally, as th
ey rounded a curve and caught the full breath of the breeze, the veil blew away entirely.

  “Let it go,” said Betty resignedly. “It’s cost me six dollars to learn I don’t want to wear a veil.”

  Bob privately decided he liked her much better without the flimsy net affair, but he wisely determined not to air his opinion. There was no use, he told himself, in “rubbing it in.”

  They had lunch in a cozy little tea-room and went back to the train like seasoned travelers. Bob was an ideal companion for such journeys, for he never lost his head and never missed connections, while nervous haste was unknown to him.

  “Won’t I be glad to see the Littells!” exclaimed Betty, watching the porter make up their berths.

  “So shall I,” agreed Bob. “Did you ever know such hospitable people, asking a whole raft of us to spend the week at Fairfields? How many did Bobby write would be there?”

  “Let’s see,” said Betty, checking off on her fingers. “There’ll be Bobby and Louise, of course; and Esther who is too young to go away to school, but who will want to do everything we do; Libbie Littell and another Vermont girl we don’t know—Frances Martin; you and I; and the five boys Mr. Littell wrote you about—the Tucker twins, Timothy Derby, Sydney Cooke and Winifred Marion Brown. Twelve of us! Won’t it be fun! I do wish the Guerin girls could be there, but we’ll see them at the school.”

  “I’d like to see that Winifred Marion chap,” declared Bob. “A boy with a girl’s name has his troubles cut out for him, I should say.”

  “Lots of ’em have girls’ names—in history,” contributed Betty absently. “What time do we get into Washington, Bob?”

  “Around five, probably six p.m., for we’re likely to be a bit late,” replied Bob. “Let’s go to bed now, Betty, and get an early start in the morning.”

  The day spent on the train was uneventful, and, contrary to Bob’s expectations, they were on time at every station. Betty’s heart beat faster as the hands of her little wrist watch pointed to 5:45 and the passengers began to gather up their wraps. The porter came through and brushed them thoroughly and Betty adjusted her new hat carefully.