The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls

by Mildred A. Wirt

“Some queer things have happened there,” said Arden. “But now what are we going to do? I must get Terry home as soon as possible—a doctor must look at her ankle at once!”

  “I know—sprained ankles can kick up quite a fuss. But as I’m sort of to blame for this, I’ll do my best to remedy the trouble. I shouldn’t have kept you here so long talking, by golly! I’ve got my flivver parked over near where I was rehearsing. I can run it here—no trouble at all—my flivver’ll go up the side of a barn. And we’ll put your friend in and I’ll run her home in a jiffy, if you want me to.”

  “I think that will be the best thing to do,” said Arden. “We have a friend in Sycamore Hall—”

  “You have!” cried Mr. Henshot. “Why, I was told Granny Howe couldn’t prove title to the place and she had to get out and it’s being torn down.”

  “That’s right,” Arden assented. “But the friend I speak of is just in there temporarily, looking for ghosts.”

  “My stars!” exclaimed Santa Claus. “Well, I’ll go get my flivver. Be back right quick. Don’t let her step on her ankle. I’m mighty, mighty sorry this happened!”

  He ran away with surprising speed for such an elderly man, his white beard flying in the wind, and almost before Arden could shift Terry to a little easier position on her shoulder Mr. Henshot was back with his creaking roadster.

  To Arden’s surprise he still wore his Santa Claus suit.

  “Aren’t you going to take that off?” she asked, for she knew he had it on over his other clothes.

  “Got no time!” he said briskly. “We got to get this young lady to a doctor right away. I’ll drive you just as I am. I don’t mind,” he said quickly. “It’s in Pentville, and nobody’ll know me there. I wouldn’t want to drive through Bayley Corners like this, for it would sort of spoil things for the youngsters if they see me ahead of time. But it’s all right in Pentville. Drive you just the way I am!”

  Terry was feeling too miserable to object, and Arden realized it would be useless. Besides, she knew Terry must have her injured ankle looked to as soon as possible. After all, perhaps no one the girls knew would see them.

  Terry managed to hobble on one foot and, assisted by Arden and Santa Claus, was placed on the rear seat of the car with her chum to hold her against the rough riding. For it would be rough getting out of the stretch of woods and clearing.

  “Might as well take this holly you picked,” said Mr. Henshot. “It’ll look right pretty in the car with me dressed like Santa Claus and all this snow coming down. A regular white Christmas!” he chuckled. “Right pretty!” He piled the branches in with the girls, putting some in the empty seat beside him, and slid under the wheel.

  Then he started the car, driving carefully, after Terry gave a little moan of pain at a sudden jolt.

  “I’ll have to take a short cut,” he explained, “so we can’t go past the Hall and pick up your ghost-hunting friend. Sorry, but I can’t go that way.”

  “It’s all right,” said Arden. “He has a car.”

  She wondered what those who saw the strange outfit would say, but this held only a moment’s interest. Terry’s injury might mean a curtailment of some of the Christmas festivities, besides all poor Terry’s suffering.

  They were out of the woods at last and on a smoother road, not having passed either Granny’s cottage or the Hall. In a short time they were on the outskirts of Pentville and entered the town by a back road. So not many saw them, and those who did, while they smiled and laughed and pointed, put it down to an advertising stunt. Arden saw no one she knew, Terry saw nothing but Arden’s kind shoulder which she leaned against.

  But when the auto of the modern Santa Claus drew up at Sim’s house and Moselle answered Mr. Henshot’s ring at the door, she jumped back with fright.

  “Mercy sakes alive! Whatever is this? A real live—” Moselle was most eloquent when silence seized her.

  CHAPTER XX

  Harry Hears Something

  Moselle’s involuntary shout of surprise and alarm brought Dorothy on a run to the front door. She gave one look at Terry and Arden seated in the flivver, surrounded by holly branches, another look at Santa Claus, and then laughingly demanded:

  “Where do you play the next performance?”

  “It isn’t any play, Dot!” called Arden. “Terry’s hurt!”

  “Hurt!” She was serious in a moment.

  “It’s only a sprained ankle,” said Terry, trying to speak with vigor. “All my own fault.”

  “No, it’s my fault,” insisted Santa Claus.

  Moselle, her eyes almost popping from her head, had retired to the back hall, but was still peeking and listening.

  “This is Christmas and then some,” said Dorothy. “But whatever happened?”

  Explanations were quickly made, amid contrite apologies from Mr. Henshot for his part in Terry’s accident. She was helped into the house and a doctor summoned. Then, having asked several times if he could be of any further service, aside from carrying in the holly branches, which he did, and having been thanked for what he had done, further help being graciously declined, the little man took himself away.

  “But first,” he said, with a jolly laugh, “I’ll take off my disguise—all but my whiskers. I need them. And without my red suit there will be no chance for the children of Bayley Corners to recognize me.

  “If you folks haven’t anything else to do,” he said to Arden and Dorothy when Terry had been put to bed, with Sim (whose headache was better) to sit beside her, “why, we’d be glad to have you over at the Bayley Corners Sunday-school entertainment—me playing the part of Santa Claus after my rehearsals,” he chuckled.

  “Thank you,” murmured Arden, trying to be cheerful about it.

  Dr. Ramsdell gave it as his opinion that Terry’s ankle wasn’t as bad as she feared. It was strained, not sprained, and bound to be painful, but a day or two of rest would make it all right, the physician said, and she could get around, though she might want to use a cane for a while.

  “You can still go ghost-hunting,” said Arden, when they were all gathered in Terry’s room to commiserate with her.

  “I’m getting sort of fed up with it,” Terry said. “I believe it will all turn out as this ghost of Patience Howe did—in a Santa Claus outfit.”

  “Well, if we could play Santa Claus to Granny Howe,” suggested Arden, “and find some way to do something so she could get the money for this property that has been taken by the state for Jockey Hollow Park, it would be the best Christmas gift we could give her, I’m sure of that.”

  “And it would help Dick to his college education and Betty to realize her ambition to become an interior decorator,” added Sim.

  “But I suppose it is too much to hope for,” sighed Arden. “I imagine we shall have to be content if we can find the troublesome old ghost.”

  “Or even if Harry Pangborn finds it,” said Terry.

  “Oh, yes, we saw him in the Hall,” Arden exclaimed. “We forgot to tell you. There are no workmen tearing the place down now and Harry had it to himself.”

  “I wonder if he heard anything or saw anything,” spoke Dorothy reflectively.

  The doorbell rang. It gave them a sudden start.

  “Wouldn’t it be sort of—psychic if this was Harry now,” exclaimed Sim.

  “You should more properly say, ‘if this were he, my dear young lady,’” corrected Arden, imitating one of their teachers at Cedar Ridge.

  “School is out!” declared Sim. “Yes, Moselle?” she inquired.

  “Mr. Pangborn,” Moselle announced with dignity.

  The girls looked at one another but didn’t dare laugh. The sounds might carry downstairs.

  “Oh, I wish he might come up here and let me hear what happened!” begged Terry as she saw her three friends rise as if to leave the room.

  “I don’t see why he can’t,” spoke Dorothy quickly. “You are quite ‘decent,’ as mother’s theatrical friends say when they mean they are dressed enough to ha
ve gentlemen friends in their room—with plenty of chaperons,” and she laughed gayly.

  “Ask him to come up, Moselle!” Sim ordered with sudden decision.

  Harry was not at all abashed by coming into a girl’s room while she was reclining and with three other pretty girls seated around her. Young Mr. Pangborn was not easily flustered. But he did look surprised.

  “Well, what happened?” he inquired anxiously as he bowed to each one in turn and went over to Terry in the bed. “Did the bad old ghost get you?”

  “Almost,” she smiled as he took her hand. “Only it turned out to be a Santa Claus ghost; the real thing, too.”

  “Tell me,” he begged.

  They did.

  Harry laughed. He absent-mindedly took out his cigarette case and then quickly put it back in his pocket, and almost as quickly took it out when Sim said: “You may.”

  “Well, I’m one up on you,” he said to Terry and Arden.

  “What do you mean?” Arden asked as he blew out a cloud of smoke.

  “My ghost got away from me.”

  “No!”

  “Really?”

  “Did you see anything?”

  This in turn from Arden, Sim, and Terry. Dorothy was getting him an ash tray.

  “Oh, tell us!”

  This came in a most proper Greek chorus.

  “Well,” he began, adjusting himself comfortably in the chair that gave him a view of all the girls, “I began my investigation at the ghost house this morning. Two of you were witnesses to that.” He indicated Terry and Arden. They bowed in answer.

  “I went all over the old place,” the young millionaire resumed, “from cellar to what was left of the fourth floor. And I found nothing except the old furniture, the beds, a picture of a pretty girl in a green riding habit, and some old chests that were locked so I didn’t open them. I understand they belong to Mrs. Howe.”

  “Yes,” Arden said. “But didn’t you find any secret passage, anything to explain how Jim Danton disappeared out of that closet and was found in the cellar? Didn’t you discover the remains of the ghost of the old soldier, Nathaniel Greene—didn’t you find any traces of Patience Howe?” breathlessly Arden demanded to know.

  “Not a trace,” and Harry shook his head. “I tried to find some secret passage out of that closet, but I couldn’t. My only explanation is that Jim got mixed up and really fell down the big ash-chute. No, I really didn’t find a thing.”

  “But you said,” interposed Terry, “that you heard—”

  “Yes. That’s unexplainable. As I was tramping around the old place, pulling at loose boards here and there, suddenly, when I was in the room where, you say, a dead woman was seen on the bed, I heard the most unearthly groan, screech, yell, or scream. It was a combination of all four. It gave even me a start, I assure you,” he admitted.

  “What happened then?”

  “What did you do?”

  “Who screamed?”

  “Didn’t you discover anything?”

  Dot joined in the questioning this time.

  It was a big moment, and Harry was making the most of it.

  What young man wouldn’t have?

  CHAPTER XXI

  Rift in the Clouds

  Harry helped himself to another cigarette before he answered the barrage of inquiries.

  “As nearly as I could tell,” said the ghost-hunter, “the scream came from the room of the mysterious closet. At least, it sounded so to me. As I say, I was in the room where the old four-poster bed was.”

  “Where the workman said he saw the dead body,” interposed Arden.

  “Exactly. Well, I left that room on the jump, you may be sure, when I heard that terrible yell. I knew it hadn’t come from the room where I was, and I headed for the closet room, as we’ll call it.”

  The girls nodded their heads understandingly but did not interrupt.

  “But there was nothing there,” young Pangborn said. “Not a thing that could have screamed. There was nothing there. Absolutely!”

  “Whatever did you do?” asked Terry, her eyes brighter. Really, this was all so eerily interesting that she almost forgot the pain of her bandaged ankle.

  “I just looked around,” was the answer. “That horrible scream seemed to be still echoing through the big bare room, and to me it seemed to come up out of the ash-chute of the fireplace.”

  “That’s what one of Jim’s companions said,” remarked Sim. “He said it sounded like a dying cat, and he dropped a brick down.”

  “If this was a cat it must have been a mountain lion,” said Harry, seriously enough. “I’ve hunted them, and those catamounts do yell, groan, or scream in a most unearthly fashion at times. But there are none within many miles of here, unless one has escaped from a menagerie. Of course, that’s possible.”

  “Do you think,” asked Dot, examining one of her pink nails, “that it could be an animal who has been responsible for all the demonstrations?”

  “What a fade-out for our ghosts!” murmured Sim.

  “Not to be thought of!” declared Arden.

  “I did have the idea of an animal for a moment,” was the young man’s answer. “But not after I investigated. I looked down the old ash-chute and even threw some pieces of bricks down. There was no come-back. Then I made another search of the old house, even going down cellar and looking at the bottom of the chute, where, you say, Jim was found.”

  Arden nodded in confirmation.

  “There was nothing there,” went on the narrator, “not even a wild animal smell, which is very characteristic, I assure you. So I went outside and had a look around. I got positive evidence, then, that no one but myself had entered the house.”

  “How did you prove that?” pursued Terry.

  “By the footprints in the snow. Or, rather, by a lack of footprints. The only marks were those I had made in entering and those Terry and Arden left, but they did not come near the house. So I knew that there was no one in the house with me.”

  “And yet you heard that terrible yell!” whispered Terry.

  “Yes, I heard it. There was no mistake about it.”

  “What is your explanation?” asked Arden after a rather long pause.

  Harry laughed, shrugged his shoulders, crushed his cigarette out on the tray Dot had brought him, and said:

  “I haven’t any! I’m as much up in the air as you girls are.”

  They were rather wide-eyed at hearing this.

  “Of course,” he went on, “this yell is the only manifestation that has come to me. I understand you girls have both seen and heard things.”

  “No.” Arden shook her head. “We were never really in the house when anything actually happened. We would arrive on the scene after the men had run out, yelling that they had either seen or heard something. What they heard, so they said, was a scream like the one you describe. Also there was the sound of heavily booted feet tramping on the stairs. And I think one man said he saw what he thought was a soldier in one of the rooms. Then there was the figure on the bed. But we never saw either of those.”

  “And the last thing that happened,” said Sim, “I mean just before what you heard this afternoon, Harry, was the disappearance of Jim and his subsequent discovery in the cellar.”

  “He said something hit him on the head,” suggested Dot.

  “Oh, yes, so he did,” Arden recalled.

  “Then,” stated the young man, “we have three sorts of ghostly demonstrations: visible, audible, and manual, I might say, to describe the assault on Mr. Jim. It’s very odd. I can’t account for it. I was sure, after I heard that scream, that some prank-loving chap had slipped into the house after me and was practising his college yell. But the snow told a different story.”

  They were silent a little while, and then Arden, in rather a small voice, asked:

  “What are you going to do next, Harry?”

  “I don’t know. What do you want me to do?”

  “Well, we’d like to have you help us fin
d that ghost, if it’s only to satisfy ourselves that there’s no such thing,” said Sim.

  “And we want to help Granny Howe,” suggested Terry. “It seems pathetic that her Sycamore Hall, or what she claims is her ancestors’ manor house and ought to be hers, must be torn down, taken away, and she and the two grandchildren get nothing for it.”

  “Yes,” admitted Mr. Pangborn. “Pass that, and I shall have something to say on it in a moment. But can I do anything else to help you? I’ll say now, in between times of laying out the bird sanctuary, I’m going to keep after the ghost.”

  “There’s one other thing,” Arden said. “About Jim Danton’s family. They are in want and he was hurt while working for that contractor.”

  “Oh, yes, I was going to tell you about that,” Harry went on. “As I was coming away, after my unsuccessful, mysterious-voice hunt, I met Mr. Callahan. I had in mind what you told me last night about this Jim, and I spoke about him. Callahan says he will see that he gets workman’s compensation all the while he is ill. The contractor carries insurance.”

  “That’s fine,” exclaimed Arden. “Well, outside of finding the ghost, which perhaps we can’t do, and helping Granny—which seems impossible—”

  “Perhaps not quite as impossible as you think,” interrupted the bird-sanctuary man with a smile, asking pardon for his interruption. “I talked with my friend Dr. Thandu over the telephone after I left here last night. I spoke of this case, the old ancestral hall being torn down and no compensation being paid to the evident heirs, Granny, Dick, and Betty.

  “Dr. Thandu said it was a very complicated case. It appears when the state took over Jockey Hollow for a park Mrs. Howe and her grandchildren lived in the Hall. She had lived there many years and always supposed it was her property. But when, under the law known as the right of eminent domain, the state took it to make a Revolutionary memorial park, Mrs. Howe could produce no papers proving her claim. She never had occasion to use them, she said, and had no idea where they might be. She surmised that her father or grandfather had put them away, but a diligent search failed to reveal them.

  “Well, the state waited a long time, and then, as she could show no legal title, they asked her to move, which she did, as they were soon going to start tearing down the place. However, Dr. Thandu and his fellow commissioners did all they could. They had the Hall appraised and the money was paid into court. It is there now, and whoever can prove title to Sycamore Hall will get that money.”