The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls

by Mildred A. Wirt

  “Why, I thought—” She paused, too astounded for words.

  “You thought I had fallen from a horse. So I did—a leather horse with iron legs. It was in a gymnasium. Rosemary pushed me off. Truly it did not hurt at all.”

  “A frame-up!” Jeanne stared.

  “Yes, a frame-up for a good cause. ‘The Magic Curtain’ was yours, not mine. You discovered it. It was through your effort that this little opera was perfected. It was yours, not mine. Your golden hour.”

  “My golden hour!” the little French girl repeated dreamily. “But not ever again. Not until I have sung and sung, and studied and studied shall I appear again on such a stage!”

  “Child, you have the wisdom of the gods.”

  “But the director!” Jeanne’s mood changed. “Does he not hate you?”

  “Quite the contrary. He loves me. Why should he not? I have found him a fresh little American opera and a future star. His vast audience has gone away happy. What more could he ask?”

  What more, indeed?

  But what is this? Florence is at Jeanne’s side. What is she saying? “They think they have discovered the whereabouts of Rosemary’s pearls. On the island.” Would she go with them? Most certainly, and at once. But alas, she has no clothes save those of Pierre, the usher of the boxes. Ah, well, they must do. She will be ready at once. Yes! Yes! At once! Right away!

  They were all tumbling helter-skelter into the big town car, Jeanne, Florence, Rosemary, Jaeger, the “lady cop” and even Marjory Dean, when a dapper little man approached the car to ask for Petite Jeanne.

  “She is here,” the “lady cop” informed him. Indeed she was, and wedged in so tight it was difficult to move.

  “Ah! At last!” the little man sighed. “May I speak with her? It has been my privilege to bear a message from France.”

  “A message!” Jeanne thrilled to the tips of her toes.

  “I am afraid it is impossible.” The “lady cop’s” tone was business-like. “It is late. Our errand is of the greatest importance.”

  “So, too, is my message. If you will permit, I shall accompany you.” Looking in the crowded car, he opened the driver’s door and, hearing no objections, took his place beside the chauffeur.

  “And mystery still pursued her,” Florence whispered to herself, as she studied the back of the little Frenchman’s head.

  Jeanne was crowded in between Rosemary and the “lady cop.” As Rosemary’s arm stole about her, still conscious of her dress suit and her masquerade, she moved uneasily.

  “It’s all right, little French girl,” Rosemary whispered. “I have known all the time that you were Petite Jeanne and not Pierre.

  “All the same,” she added, “I have enjoyed this little play at life quite as much as you.”

  With a little sigh of relief Jeanne sank back among the cushions.

  Down the boulevard they sped; across a rattling wooden bridge, then across the wind-blown, sandy island.

  The car came to a stop at the entrance to the path that led to Aunt Bobby’s “Cathedral.”

  “You would do well to let me go first,” Florence said to Jaeger and the “lady cop.” “Meg, the girl, has two fine revolvers. She can use them and will do so if she believes she is being attacked.”

  Fortunately there was no trouble about securing an entrance. The strange pair had not yet retired. At the sound of Florence’s voice they threw wide the door. At sight of her numerous company, however, they appeared ready to slam it shut again.

  “Just a little lark.” Florence reassured them. “We have come all the way from the opera to a ‘Cathedral.’”

  “Well, come in then.” Aunt Bobby moved aside to let them pass.

  “You see,” said Florence, when they had crowded into the small living room, “this lady here,” she nodded at the “lady cop,” “has a curious notion about that birthday package of yours, Meg. She believes it contains a pearl necklace of great value.”

  “But I—” Meg’s face flushed.

  “A reward of a thousand dollars has been offered for its return,” the “lady cop” put in quickly. “If you have recovered it, that reward will be your own. Think what that will mean.”

  “But I have waited all this time!” Meg protested. “And tomorrow is my birthday.”

  Florence glanced hastily at her watch. She smiled. “Not tomorrow, but today.” She showed that it was fifteen minutes past twelve.

  With her last objection overruled, Meg produced the mysterious package. At once a little circle of eager ones gathered about her.

  With trembling hands, she untied the cord. She had all but unrolled the black wrapping when the package, slipping from her nerveless fingers, fell to the floor.

  At once there came flashing back to them all manner of color: white, pink, red and green.

  “Not pearls alone, but diamonds, rubies, sapphires!” the “lady cop” said, in an awed tone. “What a treasure!”

  At the same time, with a little cry of joy, Rosemary bent over to seize her string of pearls and clasp them about her neck.

  “A thousand dollars, Meg!” It was Aunt Bobby who spoke. “They said a thousand. That will settle all our troubles for many a day.”

  “And there will be more, much more.” The “lady cop” began carefully gathering up the scattered jewels. “All these were stolen. There will be other rewards, and that which is never claimed may be sold.”

  “That dark-faced one thought he had chosen a safe place to hide it!” Meg laughed.

  “He was close pressed by the police,” the “lady cop” explained. “It was his one chance. And he lost; which was right enough.”

  “And now,” came in a polite tone from the corner, “if I may have a word with Petite Jeanne?” It was the little Frenchman. “But where is she? I do not see her.”

  “Meg,” said Jeanne imploringly, “have you a dress to loan me?”

  “Sure have!”

  They disappeared.

  Five minutes later Jeanne reappeared in a blue calico dress.

  “I am Petite Jeanne.” She bowed low to the little Frenchman.

  “Ah, yes! So you are. Then it is my pleasure to announce that you are sole heir to a great castle in France. It is known as ‘Le Neuf Chateau.’ But it is truly very old and carries with it a broad estate.”

  “A castle!” Jeanne seemed undecided whether to shout or weep. “A great castle for poor little me?”

  “Ah, my child,” the Frenchman put in quickly, “it will not be necessary—it is quite unnecessary for you to reside there. Indeed, at this moment it is rented, for an unheard of rental, to a rich American who fancies castles and is fond of following the hounds.”

  “Then,” exclaimed Jeanne, “I shall accept! I shall return to my beautiful Paris. And there, forever and ever, I shall study for the opera. Is it not so, Marjory Dean?

  “And you, all of you, shall come to Paris as my guests.”

  “Yes, yes, on some bright summer’s day,” the great prima donna agreed.

  That night—or shall we say morning?—Petite Jeanne arranged “Pierre’s” carefully pressed dress suit upon a hanger and hung it deep in the shadows of her closet. “Good-bye Pierre,” she whispered. “You brought me fear and sorrow, hope, romance, a better understanding of life, and, after that, a brief moment of triumph. I wonder if it is to be farewell forever or only adieu for today.”

  And now, my reader, it is time to draw the magic curtain. And what of that curtain? Up to this moment you know quite as much as I do. It was used in but one performance of the opera that bears its name. It was then withdrawn by its owner. Not, however, until a stage-property curtain, produced with the aid of tiny copper wires, strips of asbestos and colored ribbons, had been created to take its place. The secret of the original magic curtain is still locked in the breast of its oriental creator.

  The dark-faced one has not, so far as I know, been apprehended. Perhaps he fled to another city and has there met his just fate. Why he haunted the trail of
the page of the opera, Pierre, is known to him alone, and the doer of dark deeds seldom talks.

  And so the story ends. But what of the days that were to follow? Did that little company indeed journey all the way to Paris? And did they find mystery and great adventure in Jeanne’s vast castle? Did Jeanne tire of studying opera “forever and ever” and did she return to America? Or did our old friend, Florence, forgetting her blonde companion of many mysteries, go forth with others to seek adventure? If you wish these questions answered you must read our next volume, which is to be known as: Hour of Enchantment.

  THE ARDEN BLAKE MYSTERY SERIES, by Cleo F. Garis

  This series consisted of 3 volumes:

  The Orchard Secret

  Mystery of Jockey Hollow

  Missing at Marshlands

  THE ORCHARD SECRET, by Cleo F. Garis

  CHAPTER I

  The Warning

  For a few uncertain moments no one had spoken. The old flivver bumped over a little hill, and the girls seemed suddenly to realize they were entering upon that much anticipated new experience—college life.

  “It’s lovely, isn’t it!” exclaimed Arden Blake, resting her hand on Terry’s shoulder. “Such beautiful pines—so tall and—”

  “Mysterious!” supplied Sim Westover, making a dive for her compact.

  “Thank you. I was about to say—stately,” remarked Arden with assumed superciliousness. “And see the deer behind the bush, a stone deer, I suppose. But it’s all so lovely!”

  “Lovely indeed,” agreed Terry as she was apt to do with anything Arden said or did. “Don’t you think so, Sim?”

  Sim, occupying most of the back seat of the rickety station car, felt differently about it and said so. Sim was that way.

  “It’s all very well,” she murmured, busy with her compact, “all very well, my good girls, but isn’t it about time we got inside the college? After a train trip like the one we have just endured, I’ll be glad to get my feet off Arden’s suitcase. Wherever did you get such a big one, Arden?”

  “It was given to me when we all decided to come to Cedar Ridge. You’ll wish it was yours when you see what’s inside. Oh, look! That must be the swimming-pool building!” There could be no mistake about it as they could note when the harassed little flivver was slowly completing the half circle of the cinder drive which curved like a crescent moon in front of Cedar Ridge College, and was approaching a glass-roofed structure set somewhat apart from the other buildings.

  The roof was dome-shaped, and its glass panes, set in frames of copper which glinted in the rays of the red autumn sun, were thick and green like petrified ocean waves.

  As they rattled past the pool building they saw a wheelbarrow standing right in the pathway. Somehow that odd obstruction looked out of place near a natatorium, and Sim said so, adding:

  “I wonder what’s the idea?”

  “Oh, they’re probably just cleaning it out,” suggested Arden.

  The cultivated rustic setting for the big gray stone structures made the whole scene picturesquely perfect, just as the prospectus had stated. But to the girls the college was also a little forbidding. Certainly there was nothing cozy about it—nothing inviting—and not every girl can boast the artist’s taste.

  The buildings were solid and massive, as solid and dependable as the women instructors within who guided the four student years of “their girls.” Besides the swimming pool, only the chapel, with its tall spire, caught the warm sunset glow and displayed it more lavishly. But that, of course, thought Arden, was because there was so much more glass, beautifully tinted, in the chapel windows.

  As the wheels of the car crunched the cinders, Arden hoped she hadn’t been wrong in urging Terry and Sim to come to Cedar Ridge with her. They had come because of her urging. There was no doubt of this. Had it not been for the promise of swimming, implied by the beautiful picture of the pool in the college prospectus, Sim would, she said, have been content to stay at home in Pentville.

  As for Terry—where Arden went, there went Terry. They had been inseparable since the “baby grade” in Vincent Prep.

  The driver of the car, a typical country taxi-man, probably too well trained to talk unbidden to the students, pulled up suddenly as he neared a lane that curved around a big elm and wended its way toward a distant grove.

  “Down below there’s th’ orchard,” he said hesitantly. “Ef I was you, I wouldn’t go prowlin’ around in it.” He indicated a part of the extensive farm ground that was an inheritance of Cedar Ridge College—long rows of old gnarled trees, many of them now heavy with russet, red, golden, and yellow fruit. The orchard was separated from the eastern end of the dormitory building by a tall and tangled hedge but could be seen from the hill on which the building stood. “No, don’t go down there,” advised the driver as he let in the clutch.

  “Why?” came a surprised and gasping chorus.

  “Waal, queer things are said to happen down in that orchard. But don’t ask me what!” he quickly cautioned. “I’m only hired to drive this tin Lizzie, an’ I dassn’t talk.”

  Terry, who sat beside Arden, evinced a desire to put a question but thought better of it.

  The girls looked wonderingly at one another as the car speeded along. They were puzzled over this mysterious introduction to Cedar Ridge. For here was the college. That was no mystery but a solid fact.

  They were there!

  The flivver chugged on to the main entrance, and the girls alighted. As they reached the top of the massive stone steps, a young man, porter evidently, picked up their bags as the taxi-man slid them along to him and quickly led the way inside the portals.

  The very sight of a young man there, at this college for girls, even clad, as he was, in blue overalls, prompted a giggle. But Arden pinched Sim’s arm and Sim didn’t.

  Just inside the doorway, at a desk near which the young man set down the bags, sat a severe-looking woman in black with the judicious linen collar and cuffs. She waited with a pencil poised over a large sheet of paper.

  “I suppose this is where we are expected to register,” murmured Arden.

  “Yes,” agreed Terry, as usual.

  They gave their names to the severe woman, who permitted herself a frosty smile as she remarked:

  “Oh, yes, freshmen. You young ladies have all been assigned to the same room. Let me see.” She consulted a list. “It is number 513 on the fifth floor of the main building.” She made a note on the paper, and then, turning, addressed a distant shadowy corner, saying:

  “Miss Everett will show you where it is. You may go to your room now, and when you hear the bell you will come to the recreation hall, which you will pass on your way. Miss Everett!” she called sharply.

  A tall blonde girl came forward from the shadows, a little reluctantly, it appeared. Just why, neither Arden nor her two chums could imagine. They didn’t even know, yet, who Miss Everett was. This stately blonde girl, however, took matters into her own hands with some show of authority.

  “Come this way, please,” she said, addressing the three freshmen. They were a little uncertain whether or not to pick up their bags, now that the luggage had been brought into the building for them. But Miss Everett knew what to do.

  The young fellow in the clean suit of blue overalls could now be seen at the end of the corridor. He was apparently deeply interested in the outside view, for he stood squarely before a window and seemed oblivious of his humble duties.

  “Tom!” sharply called Miss Everett. At that the blue-clad man turned quickly and hurried toward the desk. “These bags to the fifth floor, Tom!”

  “Yes’m,” he murmured. He kept his head bowed. Perhaps he still wanted to retain that vision of the apple orchard in which he had been so interested. For it was toward the orchard he had been looking, as Arden and her chums noted when they went down toward the window. They could see the strange gnarled trees over the top of the high dark hedge. “Fifth floor?” questioned Tom, the porter. He was also an assistant garde
ner, as the girls later learned.

  “Room 513,” added the woman at the desk.

  “Yes’m.”

  Arden thought she saw a little smile playing over the face of the good-looking young man as he started off ahead of the three freshmen, led by the stately Miss Everett. The porter was evidently going to a service elevator, as he passed out through a side door and was then lost to sight, with the bags he carried so efficiently, all three of them, and not small, either.

  Arden, Terry, and Sim, following Miss Everett, started up the brown polished stairs that reared skyward at the back of the large entrance hall.

  Up and up and up they walked. All the landings and halls looked exactly alike, and the freshmen wondered how their guide retained her sense of direction and maintained the count.

  Halfway up Terry murmured to Arden:

  “Do you think there was anything in what he said?”

  “Who said?”

  “The taxi-man who drove us here from the station.”

  “About what?”

  “The orchard. You know he warned us to keep away from it. And if there is something terrible or scary about an orchard so near the college, why, I’m going—”

  “You’re going to keep right on walking up!” interrupted Arden with her usual clear-headedness in a critical situation. “If there’s any mystery here at Cedar Ridge we’ll have the time of our lives solving it. But I don’t believe there is. That orchard is no different from any other, except, from what little we saw of it, there seemed to be some fine apples there. Now don’t go making mountains out of the camel in the eye of the needle, or something like that.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Terry meekly. “But I was thinking—”

  “This is no time to think!” came from Sim. “Use your legs! Whew! Five flights! Is your room this high up, Miss Everett?”

  “No, I’m a sophomore. I’m a floor lower than you are. But this is the fourth time I’ve taken freshies up here today. I don’t see why they have to pick on me!”

  “Oh, this is too bad!” exclaimed Sim impulsively. “Perhaps if you could have a swim in the pool before dinner tonight you wouldn’t feel so tired.”