The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls

by Mildred A. Wirt

  “And I shall work! Oh, how I shall work!” Jeanne had replied.

  That had been months ago. But teachers must be paid. Jeanne’s pocketful of money no longer weighed her down. Then, too, times were hard. The little French girl could make people feel the things she did on the stage because she, too, had a warm heart. She could not resist wandering from time to time into the tenement districts where dwelt her gypsy friends. There she found poverty and great need. Always she came away with an empty purse. On Maxwell Street it was no better.

  “I shall apply for work,” she had told Florence at last.

  “But what can you do?”

  “I can act. I can sing.”

  “But no one wants you to act or sing.”

  “On the stage,” Jeanne had shrugged, “perhaps no. But in life one may always act a part. I shall act. But what shall I be?”

  “There, now!” she had cried a moment later. “I shall be a boy. I shall become an usher, an usher in Grand Opera. If I may not be on the stage, I may at least spend every night in the aisles. I shall see all the operas, and I shall earn a little.”

  “But, Petite Jeanne!”

  “No! No! Do not resist me!” Jeanne had cried. “I will do it. I must! It is my soul, my life, the stage, the opera. Hours each day I shall be near it. Perhaps I may steal out upon the stage and sing an aria when the hall is dark. Perhaps, too, I shall meet Marjory Dean, the great one this city adores.

  “And who knows,” she had clasped her hands in ecstasy, “who knows but that in some mysterious way my opportunity may come?”

  * * * *

  “My opportunity,” she thought now, as, sitting before the glowing fire, she contemplated the future, “appears to be a bed in jail. But who knows?”

  Jeanne refused to be depressed. Casting off her dressing gown, she sprang away in a wild dance as she chanted:

  “Now I am Pierre,

  Now I am Jeanne.

  Tonight I sleep on eiderdown,

  Tomorrow I am in jail.

  “Oh, sweet mystery of life.”

  Her voice rang out high and clear. Then, like the flash of sunshine across the brow of a hill, her mood changed.

  “Tomorrow!” she exclaimed, dropping into the depths of a great chair by the fire. “Why think of tomorrow? See! The tea kettle sings for us. Why not one good cup of black tea? And then—sweet dreams.”

  A moment later there was a clinking of thin china cups. A belated midnight lunch was served.

  An hour later, as Petite Jeanne twisted her pink toes beneath her silk-covered eiderdown, brought all the way from her beloved France, she whispered low:

  “Tomorrow!”

  And after a time, once again, faint, indistinct like a word from a dream:

  “Tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER III

  ON THE VERGE OF ADVENTURE

  Long after Petite Jeanne’s dainty satin slippers had danced her off to bed, Florence Huyler sat before the fire thinking. If your acquaintance with Florence is of long standing, you will know that she was possessed of both courage and strength. For some time a gymnasium director, she had developed her splendid physical being to the last degree. Even now, though her principal business in life had for some time been that of keeping up with the little French girl, she spent three hours each day in the gymnasium and swimming pool. Her courage surpassed her strength; yet as she contemplated the step Petite Jeanne had taken and the events which must immediately follow that move, she trembled.

  “It’s all too absurd, anyway,” she told herself. “She wants to be an opera singer, so she dresses herself up like a boy and becomes an usher. What good could possibly come of that?”

  All the time she was thinking this she realized that her objections were futile. Petite Jeanne believed in Fate. Fate would take her where she wished to go.

  “If she wished to marry the President’s son, she’d become a maid in the White House. And then—” Florence paused. She dared not say that Petite Jeanne would not attain her end. Up to this moment Jeanne had surmounted all obstacles. Adopted by the gypsies, she had lived in their camps for years. She had inherited their fantastic attitude toward life. For her nothing was entirely real, and nothing unattainable.

  “But tomorrow night!” Florence shuddered. The little French girl meant to don her dress suit and as Pierre Andrews return to her post as usher in the boxes of that most magnificent of all opera houses.

  “A necklace worth thousands of dollars was stolen.” She reviewed events. “Petite Jeanne was near. When they looked for her, she had vanished. She stole the necklace. What could be more certain than this? She stole it! They will say that. They’ll arrest her on sight.

  “She stole it.” She repeated the words slowly. “Did she?”

  The very question shocked her. Petite Jeanne was no thief. This she knew right well. She had no need to steal. She still had a little money in the bank. Yet, as a means to an end, had she taken the necklace, intending later to return it?

  “No! No!” she whispered aloud. “Jeanne is reckless, but she’d never do that!

  “But where is the necklace? Who did take it?” For a time she endeavored to convince herself that the precious string of pearls, having become unclasped, had slipped to the floor, that it had been discovered and even now was in its youthful owner’s possession.

  “No such luck.” She prodded the fire vigorously. “In the end fortune smiles upon us. But in the beginning, nay, nay!

  “And tomorrow evening—” She rose to fling her splendid arms wide. “Tomorrow my little friend walks in, after many brave detectives have spent the day in a vain search for her, and says quite nonchalantly:

  “‘There you are, madame. Shall I remove your sable coat? Or will you wear it? And will you have the chair, so? Or so? Voila!’

  “Who can say it is not going to be dramatic? Drama in real life! That’s what counts most with Jeanne. Oh, my dear little Jeanne! What an adorable peck of trouble you are!”

  And all the time, quite lost in the big, eager, hungry world that waited just outside her window, the little French girl lay among her pink eiderdown quilts and slept the sleep of the just.

  The cold gray dawn of the morning after found Petite Jeanne considerably shaken in her mind regarding the outcome of this, her latest adventure.

  “Will they truly arrest me?” she asked herself as, slipping into a heavy robe, she sought the comfort of an early fire. “And if they arrest me, what then?” She shuddered. She had once visited a police court in this very city. An uninviting place it had been, too. With judge and lawyers alternately laughing and storming at crestfallen individuals who stood, some quite bewildered, others with an air of hopelessness about them, with two women weeping in a corner, and with an ill-smelling, ogling group of visitors looking on, the whole place had depressed her beyond words.

  “Am I to stand there to be stared at? Will the lawyers and the judge make a joke of my misfortune?” She stamped her little foot angrily. “No! No! Nevair! They shall not!

  “And yet,” she thought more soberly, “I must go back. I truly must!

  “Oh, why did I run away? Why did I not say: ‘Search me if you must. You will see that I do not have your necklace!’

  “But no!” She flushed. “As Petite Jeanne I might be searched. But as Pierre. Ah, no! No!”

  A cup of steaming coffee revived her spirits; but for a few hours only. Then the dull, drab day bore down upon her with greater force than ever.

  And indeed it was no sort of day to enliven spirits and bolster up courage. Gray skies, gray streets, gray fog, dripping walls of great buildings, these were all about her. And in the end a slow, weepy, drizzling rain began to fall.

  There is but one way to endure such a day. That is to don storm rubbers, raincoat and an old hat, and defy it. Defy it Petite Jeanne did. And once in the cool damp of it all, she found relief.

  She wandered on and on. The fog grew thicker. Clouds hung dark and low. Lights began to appear. Yet it was not ni
ght.

  Of a sudden, as she wandered aimlessly on, she became conscious of an astonishing fact: numbers of people were hurrying past her. A strange proceeding on a drab day when men prefer to be indoors. But strangest of all, each one of these individuals was shorter than Petite Jeanne herself. And the little French girl was far from tall.

  “How extraordinary!” she murmured under her breath. “It is as if I were some half-grown Gulliver in the land of the Pygmies.”

  She knew this was pure fancy. But who were these people? A look into one storm-clad, bemuffled face told her the answer:

  “Orientals. But where can they be going? They must have come from many places.”

  The question absorbed her attention. It drove trouble from her mind. She followed the one whose face she had scrutinized. In time she saw him dart up a short flight of stairs to enter a door on which were inscribed the words: “Members Only.”

  Other figures appeared. One and all, they followed in this one’s wake.

  As Jeanne looked up she saw that the three-story building was possessed of a highly ornamented front. Strange and grotesque figures, dragons, birds of prey, great, ugly faces all done in wood or metal and painted in gaudy colors, clustered in every available niche.

  Suddenly she was seized with a desire to follow these little men.

  “But no!” she whispered. “They would never allow me to pass.”

  She looked for the street number. There was none. She walked a few paces to the left.

  “Seven, three, seven,” she read aloud. She gave a sudden start. She knew this location. Only three blocks away was a costumer’s shop. For a dollar or two this costumer would turn her into any sort of person she might choose to be, a pirate, an Eskimo, yes, even a Chinaman. That was his business. At once Jeanne was on her way to that shop.

  In an astonishingly short time she was back; or at least some person answering her description as to height, breadth of shoulders, glove number, etc., was coming down the street. But was it Jeanne? Perhaps not one of her best friends could have told. Certainly in the narrow hallway of that mysterious building, which little men were still entering, her nationality was not challenged. To these mysterious little people, who were gathering for who knows what good or evil reason, she was for the moment an Oriental.

  CHAPTER IV

  A LIVING STATUE

  In the meantime Florence, too, had gone for a walk in the rain. The discovery she made that day was destined to play a very large part in her immediate future.

  Florence by nature belonged to the country, not to the city. Fate had, by some strange trick, cast her lot in the city. But on every possible occasion she escaped to quiet places where the rattle and bang of city life were gone and she might rest her weary feet by tramping over the good, soft, yielding earth.

  Since their rooms were very near the heart of the city, at first thought it might seem impossible for her to reach such a spot of tranquility without enduring an hour-long car ride.

  This was not true. The city which had for so long been Florence’s home is unique. No other in the world is like it. Located upon a swamp, it turned the swamp first into a garden, then into a city where millions live in comfort. Finding a stagnant river running into the lake, it turned the river about and made it a swift one going from the lake. Lacking islands upon its shore-line, this enterprising metropolis proceeded to build islands. A brisk twenty-minute walk brought Florence to one of these islands.

  This island at that time, though of a considerable size, was quite incomplete. In time it was to be a place where millions would tread. At that moment, save for one dark, dome-shaped building at its north end, it was a place of desolation, or so it seemed to Florence.

  At either end the land rose several feet above the surface of the lake. In the center it was so low that in time of storm waves dashed completely over it.

  Since the island had been some years in building a voluntary forest which might better, perhaps, be called a jungle, had sprung up on its southern extremity. Beyond this jungle lay the breakwater where in time of storm great waves mounted high and came crashing down upon heaps of limestone rocks as large as small houses.

  To the left of this jungle, on the side facing the lake, was a narrow, sandy beach. It was toward this beach that Florence made her way. There she hoped to spend an hour of quiet meditation as she promenaded the hard-packed sand of the beach. Vain hope. Some one was there before her.

  * * * *

  Petite Jeanne had entered many strange places. None was more strange nor more fantastically beautiful than the one she found within the four walls of that dragon-guarded building in the heart of a great city.

  Playing the role of an American born Chinese lady, she passed the attendant and climbed two flights of stairs unmolested.

  As she reached the top of the second flight she found her feet sinking deep in the thick pile of an Oriental rug. One glance about her and she gripped at her heart to still it.

  “It is a dream!” she told herself. “There is no place like this.”

  Yet she dared not distrust her senses. Surely the lovely Chinese ladies, dressed in curious Chinese garments of matchless silk, gliding silently about the place, were real; so, too, was the faint, fragrant odor of incense, and the lamps that, burning dimly, cast a shadow of purple and old rose over all.

  “Dragons,” she murmured, “copper dragons looking as old as time itself. Smoke creeps from their nostrils as if within them burned eternal fire. Lamps made of three thousand bits of glass set in copper. Banners of silk. Pictures of strange birds. Who could have planned all this and brought it into being?

  “And there,” she whispered, as she dared a few steps across the first soft-carpeted space, “there is an altar, an altar to a god wholly unknown to me. The ladies are kneeling there. Suppose they invite me to join them!” At once she felt terribly frightened. She sank deep in the shadows. She was playing the part of a Chinese lady, yet she knew nothing of their religion. And this appeared to be a temple.

  She was contemplating flight when a sound, breaking in upon her attention, caused her to pause. From somewhere, seemingly deep down and far away, came the dong-dong of a gong. Deep, serene, melodious, it seemed to call to her. A simple, impulsive child of nature, she murmured:

  “It calls. I shall go.”

  Turning her back to the broad stairs that led down and away to the cool, damp, outer air, she took three steps downward on a narrow circular staircase which led, who could tell where?

  Smoke rose from the spaces below, the smoke of many incense burners.

  Pausing there, she seemed about to turn back. But again came the deep, melodious, all but human call of the gong. Moving like one in a trance, she took three more steps downward and was lost from sight.

  * * * *

  The person who had disturbed Florence’s hoped-for hour of solitude on the island beach was a girl. Yet, as Florence first saw her, she seemed less a living person than a statue. Tanned by the sun to a shade that matched the giant rock on which she stood, clad only in a scant bathing suit that in color matched her skin, standing rigid, motionless, she seemed a thing hewn of stone to stand there forever.

  Yet, even as Florence looked on entranced, she flung her arms high, gave vent to a scream that sent gulls scurrying from rocky roosts, and then, leaping high, disappeared beneath the dull surface of the water.

  That scream, together with the deft arching of her superb body as she dove, marked her as one after Florence’s own kind. Gone was her wish for solitude. One desire possessed her now: to know this animated statue of the island.

  “Where does she live?” she asked herself. “How can she dare to visit this desolate spot alone?”

  Even as she asked this question, the girl emerged from the water, shook back her tangled hair, drew a rough blue overall over her dripping bathing suit, and then, leaping away like a wild deer, cleared the breakwater at a bound and in a twinkling lost herself on a narrow path that wound through the jungle o
f low willows and cottonwoods.

  “She is gone!” Florence exclaimed. “I have lost her!” Nevertheless, she went racing along the beach to enter the jungle over the path the girl had taken. She had taken up a strange trail. That trail was short. It ended abruptly. This she was soon enough to know.

  CHAPTER V

  THE SECRET PLACE

  Petite Jeanne was a person of courage. Times there had been when, as a child living with the gypsies of France, she had believed that she saw a ghost. At the heart of black woods, beneath a hedge on a moonless night some white thing lying just before her had moved in the most blood-chilling fashion. Never, on such an occasion, had Jeanne turned to flee. Always, with knees trembling, heart in her throat, she had marched straight up to the “ghost.” Always, to be sure, the “ghost” had vanished, but Jeanne had gained courage by such adventures. So now, as she glided down the soft-carpeted, circular staircase with the heavy odor of incense rising before her and the play of eerie green lights all about her, she took a strong grip on herself, bade her fluttering heart be still, and steadily descended into the mysterious unknown.

  The scene that met her gaze as at last she reached those lower levels, was fantastic in the extreme. A throng of little brown people, dressed in richest silks, their faces shining strangely in the green light, sat in small circles on rich Oriental rugs.

  Scattered about here and there all over the room were low pedestals and on these pedestals rested incense burners. Fantastic indeed were the forms of these burners: ancient dragons done in copper, eagles of brass with wings spread wide, twining serpents with eyes of green jade, and faces, faces of ugly men done in copper. These were everywhere.

  As Jeanne sank silently to a place on the floor, she felt that some great event in the lives of these people was about to transpire. They did not speak; they whispered; and once, then again, and yet again, their eyes strayed expectantly to a low stage, built across the far end of the room.

  “What is to happen?” the girl asked herself. She shuddered. To forget that she was in a secret place at the very heart of a Chinese temple built near the center of a great city—this was impossible.