The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls

by Mildred A. Wirt

  Night was the time to visit her. Then, looming out of the dark, she seemed to speak of other days, of the glory of Maine’s shipping, of fresh cut lumber, of fish and of the boundless sea.

  It was then that Ruth could fancy herself standing upon the deck, with wind singing in the rigging and setting the sails snapping as they boomed away over a white-capped sea.

  They had rowed to the dark bulk that they knew to be the Black Gull and had moved silently along the larboard side, about the stern and half way down the starboard side, when of a sudden a low exclamation escaped Ruth’s lips. Something had brushed against her in the dark.

  The next instant a gurgling cry came from the bow of the boat. This was followed by a splash.

  “She—she’s overboard!” thought Ruth, reversing her strokes and back paddling with all her might.

  “Ruth!” came a call from the water. “I’m over here! Some-something pulled me in.”

  So astonished was the stout fisher girl that for a moment she did not move. Something had taken her companion overboard. What could it have been?

  By the time she had come to her senses, Betty had gripped the gunwales of the boat and was calling for help. The next moment, drenched with salt water, but otherwise unharmed, she sat shivering in her place.

  “Some-something caught me under the chi-chin,” she chattered, “and ov-over I wen-went.”

  “I felt it,” said Ruth. “Let’s see what it was.”

  Slowly, deftly, she brought the punt about and alongside. Then, with both hands she groped in the dark.

  “I have it!” she exclaimed. “It’s a rope ladder. How queer! There’s no one staying out here. There never was a ladder before. It goes up to the deck.”

  “Let’s go up,” said Betty. “What a lark!”

  “You are drenched. You’ll catch your death of cold.”

  “B-best thing to d-do,” said Betty, beginning to chatter again, “to take off my clo-clothes and wring them out.”

  “Right!” said Ruth, fumbling for the painter. “Guess it’s safe enough. Just tie the boat to the ladder.”

  A moment of feeling about and struggling with ropes, then up they went, like blue-jackets, hand over hand. Another moment on deck and Betty was doing a wild whirling dance in the dark while her companion’s strong hands wrung out her clothes.

  “Boo-oo, it’s cold!” shivered the city girl as she struggled to get back into her sodden and wrinkled garments.

  “Come on,” said Ruth. “Now we’re here, we might as well explore. There’s a cabin forward—the Captain’s. We’ll be out of the wind if we get in there.”

  They were more than out of wind in that cabin. They found a great round stove set up there. With the aid of two matches Ruth examined its flue, and with a third she lighted the fire that was laid in it. The next moment Betty and her clothes were drying before a roaring fire.

  “Think of being in such a place at ten o’clock at night!” Betty said with a delighted shudder.

  “Might not be so good,” said Ruth. “That ladder wasn’t left there accidentally. Someone’s been here.”

  “Tell you what!” she added suddenly. “While you are drying out I’ll play I’m the ship’s watch, and pace the deck.”

  “You don’t think—”

  “Don’t think anything,” said Ruth as she disappeared through the door. “It isn’t safe to take too many chances, that’s all.”

  Ruth had not been on deck three minutes before, lost to all sense of impending danger, she walked the deck, captain of this great sailing craft.

  Few girls are more generously endowed with imagination than are the fisher-folk’s daughters of the coast of Maine. None are more loyal to their state and their seaboard.

  As this girl now paced the deck in the dark, she saw herself in slicker and high boots with a megaphone at her lips shouting commands to nimble seamen who swarmed aloft. Sails fluttered and snapped, chains rattled, rigging creaked as they swept adown the boundless sea.

  But now the scene was changed. No longer was she aboard a great shipping boat, but an ancient man-o’-war. An enemy’s sloop threatened her harbor. With bold daring she set the prow of her ancient craft to seaward ready to do battle with the approaching foe.

  Once more, her craft, half fancied, half real, is a cutter, chasing smugglers and pirates.

  Pirates! How her blood raced at the thought. There had been pirates in those half-forgotten days, real, dark-faced pirates with cutlasses in their teeth and pistols at their belts. Not an island on the bay but has its story of buried treasure. And as for smugglers’ coves, there was one not a mile from the girl’s home.

  “Smugglers!” she whispered the word. Rumors had run rife in the bay these last months. Dark craft, plying the waters, were supposed to be smugglers’ boats. A bomb had sunk a revenue cutter. “Smugglers!” the people had whispered among themselves.

  She thought now of the three bolts of red cloth in the beached schooner’s hold, and of the dory that had passed them in the night.

  “Smugglers!” she thought. Then, “Probably nothing to it. Only a wood hauler.”

  Then her heart skipped a beat. She had thought of the rope ladder. What a hiding place for smuggled goods, this deserted six-master, lying alone in the dark waters of the bay!

  “What if it were used as a smuggler’s store room,” she thought as her pulse gave a sudden leap. There was a fire laid in the cabin. The ladder was down. “What if some of them are on board at this very moment.”

  She thought of the slim city girl sitting alone there in the dark. Turning, she started toward the cabin when a sudden sound from the water arrested her.

  The next instant, a few hundred yards from the ship, a light flared up. The sight that struck her eye at that moment froze the blood in her veins.

  For a full half moment she stood stock still. Then with a sudden effort she shook herself into action to go tip-toeing down the deck and thrust her head in at the cabin door and whisper:

  “Betty! Betty! Quick! Get into your clothes! There’s something terrible going to happen. Quick! We must get off the ship!”

  CHAPTER II

  SCULLING IN THE NIGHT

  The thing Ruth saw on the water was startling, mysterious. Nothing quite like it had ever come into her life before. She could not believe her eyes. Yet she dared not doubt them. A moment before she had dreamed of pirates with pistols in their belts. Now out there on the sea they were, or at least seemed to be, in real life. There could be no denying the existence of a boat on those black waters of night; a long narrow boat propelled by six pairs of sweeping oars swinging in perfect rhythm. This much the flare of light had shown her.

  More, too; there was no use trying to deny it. She had seen the men only too clearly. Dressed in long, black coats, with red scarfs about their necks and broad-brimmed hats on their heads, with their white teeth gleaming, they looked fierce enough.

  Strangest of all, there were pistols of the ancient sort and long knives in their belts.

  What made her shudder was the sign of skull and cross-bones on the black flag they carried.

  “Pirates! What nonsense!” she thought. “Not been one off the Maine coast in a hundred years.” Pausing to listen, she caught again the creak of oarlocks.

  “Betty! Betty!” she whispered frantically. “Hurry! We’ll be trapped!”

  Poor Betty! She certainly was having her troubles. Frightened half out of her wits; expecting at any moment to be arrested for trespassing, or who knows what, she struggled madly with her half dry and much wrinkled garments.

  “It’s all my fault,” she half sobbed. “I insisted on coming up here. Now we shall be caught. I—I hope they don’t hang us at the yardarm.”

  This last, she knew, was nonsense; but in the excitement she was growing a trifle hysterical.

  At last, with shoes and stockings in her hands, she emerged from the door.

  Gripping her arm tight and whispering, “Don’t speak! Not a sound!” Ruth led
her rapidly to the end of the rope ladder.

  “Follow me. Drop in the boat. Sit perfectly still.”

  Tremblingly, Betty obeyed. Presently they were in the punt. The sound of rowing came much more clearly now. They could even hear the labored breathing of the oarsmen.

  Thankful for the darkness, Ruth thrust an oar into a socket at the back of the boat and began wobbling it about in the water. She was sculling, the most silent way to move a boat through the water.

  “We-we’ll go round the bow,” she thought, as a sudden sound set her heart racing.

  “If only they don’t light another flare!”

  With a prayer on her lips which was half supplication for forgiveness and half petition for safety, she threw all her superb strength into the task before her.

  Many times she had rowed around the Black Gull. Never before had it seemed half so far.

  Now they had covered half the distance, now three-quarters. And now there came a panic-inspiring gleam of light on the sea. It lasted a second, then blinked out.

  “Only a match.” Her heart gave a bound of joy. “But if they strike another, if they are attempting to light a flare!” She redoubled her energy at the oar. Great beads of perspiration stood out on her brow as they rounded the stern of the ship.

  Even then catastrophe threatened, for the ship’s anchor chain, touched by the punt, sent out a rattling sound.

  “What was that?” came a bass voice from the sea.

  An instant later the sea was all aglow with a second flare. But luck was with them. They had rounded the ship’s hull and were out of sight.

  “If they row around her, we are caught,” whispered Betty.

  Ten seconds passed, twenty, thirty, forty, a minute. Then came the sounds of a boat bumping the ship and of men ascending the rope ladder.

  “Not coming!” Ruth breathed a sigh of relief.

  “We’ll just move back under the stern by the rudder,” she whispered a moment later. “Even if they look over the side they won’t be able to see us there.”

  “Who-who are they?” Betty’s question carried a thrill.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do they look like?”

  Ruth told her.

  “Oh, oh!” Betty barely suppressed a gasp.

  “But they can’t be!” she said the next moment.

  “They are,” said Ruth. “And they are going to man the Black Gull and sail her away. The wind is rising. There’s plenty of sail. A sail boat makes no noise. What’s to hinder?”

  “What could they want with her?”

  “Don’t know; for exhibition, sea pageant, moving pictures, or something. Captain Munson, the owner, has been offered ten thousand dollars for her. Moving picture company wants her. She’s the last six-master in the world.”

  “Betty,” she whispered, impressively, after there had been time for thought, “we’ve got to do something. We can’t let the Black Gull go like this. The Black Gull doesn’t belong just to Captain Munson. She belongs to all us Maine folks. That’s why he won’t sell her. She stands for something, for a grand and glorious past, the past of our coast and of the most wonderful state in the Union.

  “I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” she whispered. “They’re all on board now. We’ll scull around and get their boat. We’ll tow it ashore so they can’t escape, then spread the alarm. Even if they get out to sea, the fast cutter will catch them and bring them back.”

  “I h-hope,” chattered Betty, half beside herself with fear, “that they don’t catch us. I wouldn’t like to walk the plank.”

  “They won’t,” said Ruth. There was an air of conviction in her tone. Alas for conviction.

  Once more their punt, creeping forward in the dark, rounded the ship’s hull and came at last to a point but a boat’s length from a long, dark bulk just ahead.

  “Their boat,” thought Ruth. “We’ll be away in a moment.” But they were not.

  That they were taking grave chances, Ruth knew right well. Her heart was in her throat as she sent her punt gliding through the dark. Only thoughts of her beloved Maine and the ancient six-master that stood for so much that was grand and glorious in the past could have induced her to run the risk. Run the risk she did. Trouble came sooner than she dreamed.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when the dim light told her that there was no one in the long boat that had brought the black-robed crew to the ship.

  Her relief was short lived. She had succeeded in untying the painter of that other boat and swinging it half about, when there came a harsh jangling of chains. A rusty chain dangling from the side of the ship had caught in the stern of the long boat and, slipping free, had gone thudding against the hull. Ten seconds of suspense ended with a gruff:

  “Who’s there?” and the sudden flash of a brilliant electric torch which brought the two girls out in bold relief.

  At once there followed exclamations of astonishment as dark figures crowded the deck above them.

  “Trying to steal our boat,” said one.

  “Ought to walk the plank,” came from another.

  “Up with ’em!” said another, placing a foot on the top rung of the ladder.

  Ruth sat there, red-faced, defiant. Betty was beginning to cry softly, when a fourth person spoke up suddenly:

  “Lay off it, boys! Can’t you see they’re just girls? I don’t know what they are about, but I’m bound to say it can’t be anything wrong. One of ’em is Tom Bracket’s girl. I know her well.”

  Ruth’s heart gave a great leap of joy. She had recognized her champion’s voice. He was Patrick O’Connor, the skipper of a sea-going tug, one of her father’s good friends.

  At once her head was in a whirl. What could it all mean? Captain O’Connor dressed as a pirate and aiding in a night raid of the harbor? The thing seemed impossible.

  Her thoughts were broken short off by the voice of the man on the ladder.

  “I’m still in favor of havin’ ’em tell their story. An’ mebbe girls don’t care for pie and hot coffee an’ the like.”

  “We’ll leave it to them,” said Captain O’Connor. “If they want to come up we’ll be glad to have them. If they don’t, then they have their punt. Let them go. What do you say, girls?”

  “Come on,” said Ruth. There was a large lump in her throat. “We’ve got to go up. ’Twon’t do to let them misunderstand.”

  Truth was, there were things she did not understand and that she wanted dreadfully to know about.

  So, once more, hand over hand, they went up the rope ladder and tumbled in upon the deck.

  Ten minutes later the two girls found themselves seated one on either side of Captain O’Connor before the massive mahogany table in the cabin of the Black Gull.

  The table was piled high with good things to eat. A great copper kettle filled with doughnuts, a basket of sandwiches, two hams roasted whole, a steaming tank of coffee, and pies without end, graced the board. A merry band of pirates, surely. Most surprising of all was the fact that the pirate at the head of the table, blackest and fiercest of them all, was none other than Captain Munson, owner of the Black Gull.

  “Now,” said Captain Munson, and there was a friendly smile on his formidable face, “I am sure you will enjoy the meal more fully if you tell us first why you were about to take our boat.”

  “Rest assured,” he said, as he saw the crimson flush on Ruth’s cheek, “you stand absolved. You shall not walk the plank.”

  CHAPTER III

  IN THE DUNGEON

  “Please,” said Ruth, “I—I—” She choked as she looked into the many pairs of eyes around the table in the Black Gull’s cabin, and stammered, “We thought you were,—no, we didn’t think. We knew you were not real pirates, but we thought you—were—were going to stea-steal the Black Gull. And we—we thought we could stop you.”

  No laugh followed these stammered remarks. Each man sat at attention as Captain Munson asked in a kindly tone:

  “And why did you wish to sav
e the Black Gull?”

  “Because she stands for something wonderful!” The girl’s tones were ringing now. “Because she tells the story of Maine, our grand and glorious state we all love so well.”

  “Boys,” —the pirate chieftain’s dark eyes glistened—“I propose three cheers for Ruth and her dauntless companion.”

  Never did the walls of that cabin ring with lustier shouts than when those men ended with, “Ra, Ra, Ra! Ruth, Ruth, Ruth! Betty! Betty! Betty!”

  “And now for the feast!” exclaimed the Chief. “Fourteen men on a dead man’s chest. Buckets of blood! There never was a pirate crew but liked their victuals. Ho! You scullions, hove to with the viands!”

  All this talk made Betty shudder, but Ruth only sat and stared.

  They were hungry enough after the long row across the bay and without asking further questions they accepted the cold chicken, coffee, doughnuts and huge wedges of pie and did full justice to all.

  A half hour later, as the pirate crew joined ringing notes of a pirate chantey ending with a rousing, “Heave ho, Ladies, Heave ho!” the girls pushed their punt away from the towering hull of the Black Gull and went rowing away into the night.

  Ruth’s arms had swung in rhythmic motion for a full ten minutes before she spoke. Then dropping her oars, she said in a deep, low tone,

  “Of all the things I ever heard of, that beats ’em.”

  “I thought,” said Betty, solemnly, “that I had seen strange things, but that beats them all.”

  “And somehow,” Ruth said, still more soberly, “I have a feeling that this is the beginning of something very big and mysterious, and perhaps awfully dangerous.”

  “That is just the way I feel about it,” said Betty, with a shudder.

  After that they lapsed into silence, and Ruth renewed her silent rowing.

  The hour was late. Betty’s head began to nod. Ruth, alone with her thoughts, was swinging her oars in strong, sweeping strokes when a curious thing struck her eye. They were passing the ancient abandoned fort on House Island, a massive pile of solid granite, when through a narrow space where cannon had frowned in the long ago, a light appeared. One instant it shone there clear and bright, the next it was gone.