The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls

by Mildred A. Wirt

  “Looks sort of distinguished,” she told herself. “Shouldn’t wonder if the book were valuable because of that writing if for nothing else.” In this surmise she was more right than she knew.

  She put the book carefully away but was unable to banish the questions which the sight of it had brought up. Automatically her mind went over the incidents which had led up to this precise moment. She saw the child in the university library, saw her take down the book and flee, saw her later in the mystery cottage on Tyler street. She fought again the battle with the hardened foster mother of the child and again endured the torturing moments in that evil woman’s abode. She thought of the mysterious person who had followed her and had saved her from unknown terrors by notifying the police. Had that person been the same as he who had followed her this very night in an attempt to regain possession of the two books? No, surely not. She could not conceive of his doing her an act of kindness. She thought of the person who had followed them to the wall of the summer cottage out at the dunes and wondered vaguely if he could have been the same person who had followed them on Tyler street at one time and at that other saved her from the clutches of the child’s foster parents. She wondered who he could be. Was he a detective who had been set to dog her trail or was he some friend? The latter seemed impossible. If he was a detective, how had she escaped him on this trip? Or, after all, had she? It gave her a little thrill to think that perhaps in the excitement of the day his presence near her had not been noticed and that he might at this very moment be traveling with her in this car. Involuntarily she seized the green curtains and tried to button them more tightly, then she threw back her head and laughed at herself.

  “But how,” she asked herself, “is all this tangle to be straightened out? Take that one little book, ‘The Compleat Angler.’ The child apparently stole it from Frank Morrow; I have it from her by a mere accident; Frank Morrow has it from one New York book shop; that shop from another; the other from a theologian; he from a third book shop; and that shop more than likely from a thief, for if he would attempt to steal it from me tonight, he more than likely stole it in the first place and was attempting to get it from me to destroy my evidence against him. Now if the book was stolen in the first place and all of us have had stolen property in our possession, in the form of this book, what’s going to happen to the bunch of us and how are we ever to square ourselves? Last of all,” she smiled, “where does our friend, the aged Frenchman, the godfather of that precious child, come in on it? And what is the meaning of the secret mark?”

  With all these problems stated and none of them solved, she at last found a drowsy sensation about to overcome her, so settling back upon her pillow and drawing the blankets about her, she allowed herself to drift off into slumber.

  The train she had taken was not as speedy as the one which had taken her to New York. Darkness of another day had fallen when at last she recognized the welcome sound of the train rumbling over hollow spaces at regular intervals and knew that she was passing over the streets of her own city. Florence would be there to meet her. Lucile had wired her the time of her arrival. It certainly would seem good to meet someone she knew once more.

  As the train at last rattled into the heart of the city, she caught an unusual red glow against the sky.

  “Fire somewhere,” she told herself without giving it much thought, for in a city of millions one thinks little of a single blaze.

  It was only after she and Florence had left the depot that she noted again that red glow with a start.

  The first indication that something unusual was happening in that section of the city was the large amount of traffic which passed the street car they had taken. Automobiles, trucks and delivery cars rattled rapidly past them.

  “That’s strange!” she told herself. “The street is usually deserted at this time of night. I wonder if the fire could be over this way; but surely it would be out by now.”

  At last the traffic became so crowded that their car, like a bit of debris in a clogged stream, was caught and held in the middle of it all.

  “What’s the trouble?” she asked the conductor.

  “Bad fire up ahead, just across the river.”

  “Across the river? Why—that’s where Tyler street is.”

  “Yes’m, in that direction.”

  “Come on,” she said, seizing Florence by the arm; “the fire’s down toward Tyler street. I think we ought to try to get to the cottage if we can. What could that child and the old Frenchman do if the fire reached their cottage? He’d burn rather than leave his books and the child wouldn’t leave him; besides there are the books that belong to other people and that I’m partly responsible for. C’m’on.”

  For fifteen minutes they struggled down a street that was thronged with excited people.

  “One wouldn’t believe that there could be such a crowd on the streets at this hour of the night,” panted Florence, as she elbowed her way forward. “Lucile, you hang to my waist. We must not be separated.”

  They came to a dead stop at last. At the end of the river bridge a rope had been thrown across the street. At paces of ten feet this rope was guarded by policemen. None could pass save the firemen.

  The fire was across the river but sent forth a red glare that was startling. By dint of ten minutes of crawling Florence succeeded in securing for them a position against the rope.

  A large fire in a city at night is a grand and terrible spectacle. This fire was no exception. Indeed, it was destined to become the worst fire the city had experienced in more than forty years.

  Starting in some low, ancient structures that lay along the river, it soon climbed to a series of brick buildings occupied by garment makers. The flames, like red dragons’ tongues, darted in and out of windows. With a great burst they leaped through a tar-covered roof to mount hundreds of feet in air. Burning fragments, all ablaze, leaped to soar away in the hot currents of air.

  The firemen, all but powerless, fought bravely. Here a fire tower reared itself to dizzy heights in air. Here and there fire hose, like a thousand entwined serpents, writhed and twisted. Here a whole battery of fire engines smoked and there two powerful gasoline driven engines kept up a constant heavy throbbing. Roofs and walls crumbled, water tanks tottered and fell, steel pillars writhed and twisted in the intense heat, chimneys came crashing in heaps.

  The fire had all but consumed the row of four-story buildings. Then with a fresh dash of air from the lake it burst forth in earnest, a real and terrible conflagration.

  Lucile, as she stood there watching it, felt a thousand hitherto unexperienced emotions sweep over her. But at last she came to rest with one terrible fact bearing down upon her very soul. Tyler street was just beyond this conflagration. Who could tell when the fire would reach the mysterious tumble-down cottage with its aged occupant? She thought of something else, of the books she might long since have returned to their rightful owners and had not.

  “Now they will burn and I will never be able to explain,” she told herself. “Somehow I must get through!”

  In her excitement she lifted the rope and started forward. A heavy hand was instantly laid on her shoulders.

  “Y’ can’t go over there.”

  “I must.”

  “Y’ can’t.”

  The policeman thrust her gently back behind the rope and drew it down before her.

  “I must go,” she told herself. “Oh, I must! I must!”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  INSIDE THE LINES

  “Come on,” Lucile said, pulling at Florence’s arm. “We’ve got to get there. It must be done. For everything that must be done there is always a way.”

  They crowded their way back through the throng which was hourly growing denser. It was distressing to catch the fragments of conversation that came to them as they fought their way back. Tens of thousands of people were being robbed of their means of making a living. Each fresh blaze took the bread from the mouths of hundreds of children.

  “T
’wasn’t much of a job I had,” muttered an Irish mother with a shawl over her head, “but it was bread! Bread!” “Every paper, every record of my business for the past ten years, was in my files and the office is doomed,” roared a red-faced business man. “It’s doomed! And they won’t let me through.”

  “There’s not one of them all that needs to get through more badly than I,” said Lucile, with a lump in her throat. “Surely there must be a way.”

  Working their way back, the two girls hurried four blocks along Wells street, which ran parallel to the river, then turned on Madison to fight their way toward a second bridge.

  “Perhaps it is open,” Lucile told Florence.

  Her hopes were short-lived. Again they faced a rope and a line of determined-faced policemen.

  “It just must be done!” said Lucile, setting her teeth hard as they again backed away.

  An alley offered freer passage than the street. They had passed down this but a short way when they came upon a ladder truck which had been backed in as a reserve. On it hung the long rubber coats and heavy black hats of the firemen.

  Instinctively Lucile’s hand went out for a coat. She glanced to right and left. She saw no one. The next instant she had donned that coat and was drawing a hat down solidly over her hair.

  “I know it’s an awful thing to do,” she whispered, “but I am doing it for them, not for myself. You may come or stay. It’s really my battle. I’ve got to see it through to the end. You always advised against going further but I ventured. Now it’s do or die.”

  Florence’s answer was to put out a hand and to grasp a fireman’s coat. The next moment, in this new disguise, they were away.

  Had the girls happened to look back just before leaving the alley they might have surprised a stoop-shouldered, studious-looking man in the act of doing exactly as they had done, robing himself in fireman’s garb.

  Dressed as they now were, they found the passing of the line a simple matter. Scores of fire companies and hundreds of firemen from all parts of the city had been called upon in this extreme emergency. There was much confusion. That two firemen should be passing forward to join their companies did not seem unusual. The coats and hats formed a complete disguise.

  The crossing of the bridge was accomplished on the run. They reached the other side in the nick of time, for just as they leaped upon the approach the great cantilevers began to rise. A huge freighter which had been disgorging its cargo into one of the basements that line the river had been endangered by the fire. Puffing and snarling, adding its bit of smoke to the dense, lampblack cloud which hung over the city, a tug was working the freighter to a place of safety.

  “We’ll have to stay inside, now we’re here,” panted Lucile. “There’s a line formed along the other approach. Here’s a stair leading down to the railway tracks. We can follow the tracks for a block, then turn west again. There’ll be no line there; it’s too close to the fire.”

  “Might be dangerous,” Florence hung back.

  “Can’t help it. It’s our chance.” Lucile was halfway down the stair. Florence followed and the next moment they were racing along a wall beside the railway track.

  A switch engine racing down the track with a line of box cars, one ablaze, forced them to flatten themselves against the wall. There was someone following them, the studious boy in a fireman’s uniform. He barely escaped being run down by the engine, but when it had passed and they resumed their course, he followed them. Darting from niche to niche, from shadow to shadow, he kept some distance behind them.

  “Up here,” panted Lucile, racing upstairs.

  The heat was increasing. The climbing of those stairs seemed to double its intensity. Cinders were falling all about them.

  “The wind has shifted,” Florence breathed. “It—it’s going to be hard.”

  Lucile did not reply. Her throat was parched. Her face felt as if it were on fire. The heavy coat and hat were insufferable yet she dared not cast them away.

  So they struggled on. And their shadow, like all true shadows, followed.

  “Look! Oh, look!” cried Florence, reeling in her tracks.

  A sudden gust of wind had sent the fire swooping against the side of a magnificent building of concrete and steel. Towering aloft sixteen stories, it covered a full city block.

  “It’s going,” cried Lucile as she heard the awful crash of glass and saw flames bursting from the windows as if from the open hearth furnace of a foundry.

  It was true. The magnificent mahogany desks from which great, high-salaried executives sent out orders to thousands of weary tailors, made quite as good kindling that night as did some poor widow’s washboard, and they were given quite as much consideration by that bad master, fire.

  “Hurry!” Lucile’s voice was hoarse with emotion. “We must get behind it, out of the path of the wind, or we will be burned to a cinder.” Catching the full force of her meaning, Florence seized Lucile’s hand and together they rushed forward.

  Burning cinders rained about them, a half-burned board came swooping down to fall in their very path. Twice Lucile stumbled and fell, but each time Florence had her on her feet in an instant.

  “Courage! Courage!” she whispered. “Only a few feet more and then the turn.”

  After what seemed an age they reached that turn and found themselves in a place where a breath of night air fanned their cheeks.

  Buildings lay between them and the doomed executive building. The firemen were plying these with water. The great cement structure would be completely emptied of its contents by the fire but it would stand there empty-eyed and staring like an Egyptian sphinx.

  “It may form a fire-wall which will protect this and the next street,” said Florence hopefully. “The worst may be over.”

  CHAPTER XXIV

  SECRETS REVEALED

  On a night such as this, one does not stand on formalities. There was a light burning in the mystery cottage on Tyler street. The girls entered without knocking.

  The scene which struck their eyes was most dramatic. On a long, low couch lay the aged Frenchman. Beside his bed, her hair disheveled, her garments blackened and scorched by fire, knelt the child. She was silently sobbing. The man, for all one could see, might be dead, so white and still did he lie.

  Yet as the girls, still dressed in great coats and rubber hats, stepped into the room, his eyes opened; his lips moved and the girls heard him murmur:

  “Ah, the firemen. Now my books will burn, the house will go. They all will burn. But like Montcalm at Quebec, I shall not live to see my defeat.”

  “No, no, no!” the child sprang to her feet. “They must not burn! They shall not burn!”

  “Calm yourself,” said Lucile, advancing into the room and removing her coat as she did so. “It is only I, your friend, Lucile. The fire is two blocks away and there is reason to hope that this part of Tyler street will be saved. The huge concrete building is burning out from within but is standing rugged as a great rock. It is your protection.”

  “Ah, then I shall die happy,” breathed the man.

  “No! No! No!” almost screamed the child. “You shall not die.”

  “Hush, my little one,” whispered the man. “Do not question the wisdom of the Almighty. My hour has come. Soon I shall be with my sires and with my sons and grandsons; with all the brave ones who have so nobly defended our beloved France.

  “And as for you, my little one, you have here two friends and all my books. It is in the tin box behind the books, my will. I have no living kin. I have made you my heir. The books are worth much money. You are well provided for. Your friends here will see that they are not stolen from you, will you not?”

  Florence and Lucile, too touched to trust themselves to speak, bowed their heads.

  “As for myself,” the man went on in a hoarse whisper, “I have but one regret.

  “Come close,” he beckoned to Lucile. “Come very close. I have something more to tell you.”

  Lucille moved clo
se to him, something seeming to say to her, “Now you are to hear the gargoyle’s secret.”

  “Not many days ago,” he began, “I told you some of my life, but not all. I could not. My heart was too sore. Now I wish to tell you all. You remember that I said I took my books to Paris. That is not quite true. I started with all of them but not all arrived. One box of them, the most precious of all, was stolen while on the way and a box of cheap and worthless books put in its place.

  “Heartbroken at this loss, I traced the robbers as best I could at last to find that the books had been carried overseas to America.

  “I came to America. They had been sold, scattered abroad. The thief eluded me, but the books I could trace. By the gargoyle in the corner and by the descriptions of dealers in rare books, I located many of them.

  “Those who had them had paid handsomely for them. They would not believe an old man’s story. They would not give them up.

  “I brought suit in the courts. It was no use. No one would believe me.

  “Young lady,” the old man’s voice all but died away as his feeble fingers clutched at the covers, “young lady, every man has some wish which he hopes to fulfill. He may desire to become rich, to secure power, to write a book, to paint a great picture. There is always something. As for me, I wished but one thing, a very little thing: to die with the books, those precious volumes I had inherited. The foolish wish of a childish old man, perhaps, but that was my wish. The war has taken my family. They cannot gather by my bedside; I have only my books. And, thanks to this child,” he attempted to place his hand on the child’s bowed head, “thanks to her, there are but few missing at this, the last moment.”

  For a little there was silence in the room, then the whisper began again, this time more faint:

  “Perhaps it was wrong, the way I taught the child to get the books. But they were really my own. I had not sold one of them. They were all my own. She knows where they came from. When I am gone, if that is the way of America, they may all be returned.”