The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls

by Mildred A. Wirt

  “She misses Dimitri terribly,” said Arden.

  “Yes,” agreed Sim.

  The day passed and no word came from Serge. Later it developed that he was so frantically going from one to another of the friends of his brother in New York, a fruitless search, that he forgot all about his promise to communicate with the girls.

  “Well, this settles it!” declared Arden as they were at breakfast the second day after the visit of Serge. The morning mail had come but brought no news. “I’m going to get the chief and visit Melissa and her father again.”

  “Do you mean you’re going with him?” asked Terry.

  “Yes. I think we should all go, I mean we three, don’t you, Mrs. Landry?”

  “Well, if there’s danger—but then I hardly believe there will be if you have the chief with you. Yes, go, by all means.”

  “This is going to be a real expedition!” declared Terry as she drove her chums over to the village, parked their car near the chief’s garage, and walked to where they found the officer still tinkering with his old auto.

  “Good-morning, girls,” he greeted them, wiping a smudge of oil off his face. “You see I’m busy as usual, time and tide in a long race, you know,” and the gold tooth grinned at them cheerfully.

  “Mr. Reilly, can you come with us at once?” asked Arden in businesslike tones. “There may be an arrest to make.”

  “An arrest?” The chief showed new interest.

  “Yes. Over at the Clayton shack. It’s quite a story.”

  The chief, when he heard it, could not but admit it was. There was a new air about him now. He seemed much more in earnest than at any time since Dimitri Uzlov had been missing at Marshlands.

  “I’ll be with you in a few minutes, girls,” the chief said. “Just as soon as I can wash up and pin my badge on. Then we’ll get in my motorboat and ride over to see this Mr. Clayton.”

  “How would it be,” suggested Terry, “if you took us back to our dock in your boat and then we picked up our rowboat? You could tow us in that to the Clayton shack.”

  “Yes, I could do that,” the chief agreed. “It’s a little ways from here to where my motorboat is docked, and my car isn’t running yet, but a walk won’t hurt none of us.”

  “We can all go to your dock in our car,” Terry said.

  “Sure enough. Didn’t think of that. Well, we’ll go see this Clayton. So he was going for his gun, was he? I’ll see about that! Don’t give up the ship and keep your powder dry. Be with you in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.” He was as good as his word, soon coming out of his garage office with a clean face and a badge on his coat. It did not take long to drive to the dock where the chief kept his motorboat tied. The girls got in and were soon chugging on their way to “Buckingham Palace.” Mrs. Landry was rather surprised to see them back so soon, but agreed, after an explanation had been made, that it would be wise to take two boats.

  “You never can tell what may happen,” she said.

  “True enough, as the old lady said when she kissed the cow,” chuckled the chief. “My boat isn’t very good to look at, and we might get stalled. In which case a rowboat would be as handy as a pocket on the end of a dog’s tail.”

  His craft, if not very presentable, had speed, and they went along rapidly. As they passed close to the Merry Jane, Tania either saw, heard, or scented them, for she began to bark in a friendly way.

  “Oh, that poor dog!” exclaimed Arden. “Let’s take her with us!”

  “We could,” agreed Sim.

  “It might be a good thing,” said Terry. “She’s a sort of hound, you know.”

  “And you think maybe she can smell out where Melissa has hid the snuffbox!” chuckled the chief. “But a dog is always a good thing to have on a case like this. Two strings to your rubber boot, you know. We’ll get her.”

  Tania was frantic with joy to be among her friends again and curled up on the stern seat with Arden as the chief again started his boat across the bay.

  They were not long in coming in sight of the Clayton shack. The chief wasted no time in preliminaries but steered at once for the ramshackle old dock where he made his craft fast. Then he assisted the girls to tie theirs, and they got out, Tania following them and sniffing with her pointed nose in the direction of the gloomy house.

  “Perhaps we had better be a bit cautious,” suggested Terry somewhat timidly. “This man may rush out at us.”

  “What puzzles me,” said the chief, “is why he hasn’t hailed us before this. Accordin’ to what you told me, he ordered you off before, without you havin’ a chance to set foot on his land.”

  “Yes, he did,” said Terry. “It is rather strange no one appears.”

  The shack showed no sign of life in or about it.

  “I’ll give him a hail,” suggested the chief. And he roared out: “Clayton, where are you? Here’s company! Come out, but if you bring a gun it won’t be healthy for you!”

  There was no answer to this challenge.

  Tania barked. Still all was silent about the place.

  “I’m going in,” the chief suddenly decided. “You girls wait for me here.” He looked to make sure that his badge of office was conspicuous and pushed open the door. It was not locked.

  The girls were a little nervous as the chief disappeared inside. But still there was no sound. The silence was almost terrifying. The chief came out in a few minutes to say:

  “I can’t seem to find anybody.”

  “I think you had better look again and go in every room,” said Arden. Her voice was firm. “There must be someone.”

  “All right, I’ll take another look,” assented the chief. “No trouble to show goods and some pitchers go to the well too often.”

  Again he disappeared inside the place.

  Again portentous silence held them all in its grip.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  The Barking of Tania

  Chief Reilly came out of the poor little house, a veritable shack it was, shaking his head.

  “I suppose,” remarked Sim in an aside to Arden, “he is going to say ‘it’s a long road without a cat in the attic,’ or something equally brilliant.”

  “He might,” remarked Terry, “propose that the race is not always to the swift but there are none so blind as those who won’t eat.”

  “Meaning what?” asked Arden.

  “That we’ve drawn a blank,” said Sim.

  She was right. For the first impression, gathered on arrival at the home of the Claytons, that no one was there, was borne out as the chief emerged a second time from an inspection of the premises.

  “Can’t find anybody,” he announced with a flourish of his big red hands.

  “You mean there’s nobody home?” asked Terry.

  “That’s about it,” said Mr. Reilly. “Nobody home. You can’t get anything out of an empty bag except dust, you know.”

  “And I suppose there was plenty of dust?” suggested Sim.

  “Well, not so much as you’d think for,” said the officer and garage owner. “Melissa must have humped herself, for the old shack was pretty clean. Case of pot calling the kettle black, you know.”

  “Poor kid! I guess she had her own troubles,” remarked Arden. “I wonder where her father took her and why?”

  “Maybe we’ll know that when we find Dimitri,” suggested Terry.

  “If we ever do,” voiced Sim.

  “Oh, don’t be Mrs. Gloom!” exclaimed Arden. “Of course we’ll find him.”

  “And find out why he painted such a lovely picture of you,” said Terry.

  “Silly!” murmured Arden as she blushed beneath her tan. But it was obvious that she was as curious as were her chums about the mysterious portrait.

  “Well, I guess we’ve found out all we can here, which is about less than nothing with a hole in the middle,” said the chief, as he came back from a walk about the place. “None of the Claytons are here. Not that there’s many in this branch of the family—jest Melissa and her dad.
But they’re gone.”

  Suddenly Arden had a thought. She expressed it to Sim and Terry while the chief was looking into a rain-water barrel, as if he might find the missing Dimitri there. Arden said:

  “I think we ought to tell him about the policewoman.”

  “Emma Tash,” murmured Sim.

  “Yes,” said Terry. “I think we had.”

  “Mr. Reilly,” began Arden, after receiving this confirmation, “we have something to tell you.”

  “You ain’t got that Russian stranger hid away with that there gold snuffbox, have you?” chuckled the chief. “Like a hen on a wet griddle, you know.”

  “Oh, he’ll be the death of me,” sighed Sim.

  “It’s about Melissa,” said Arden, and then, much to the astonishment of the chief, the girls told him about the visit of the detective woman and the happier prospects for the unfortunate girl.

  “I always knowed there was something more than met the eye in them Claytons,” said the chief. “Hum! Melissa with a rich aunt that wants to send her to school and make her into a lady. Well, I hope she does. Melissa is a good girl in spite of being a bit queer. She’s the champion swimmer around here.”

  “Maybe she might give me points,” said Sim.

  “Oh, yes, she’s a natural swimmer,” went on the chief, taking no notice of this aside. “And a good girl. Loves bright things—birds and flowers. More than once I’ve seen her sitting on a fence where somebody had a garden full of red poppies, looking at ’em to beat the band. Her old man, though—there’s a case! All he cares about are crabs, lobsters, and fish.”

  “Did you ever hear,” asked Arden, thinking to confirm what Emma Tash had said, “that Melissa’s mother came of a good family?”

  “It wouldn’t have to be very good to beat the Clayton end of it,” said Mr. Reilly. “Yes, Mrs. Clayton was a different breed. Give a dog a bad name and throw him a bone,” he chuckled. “Yes, Melissa’s mother made a bad match of it. I hope this here detective woman can do something for the poor kid.”

  “Maybe she has,” said Terry suddenly.

  “What do you mean?” asked Sim.

  “Maybe Emma Tash has been here without us knowing it and has taken Melissa away,” explained Terry. “That detective woman was smart. She may have come here, met George Clayton and Melissa, and have prevailed on him to let her take the girl. That would account for their being gone now.”

  For a moment they were inclined to accept this theory. Then Arden, as usual putting her finger on the critical point, said:

  “It wouldn’t account, though, for the barking of Tania.”

  For the first time they all realized that the dog was barking with an unusual note in the tone and that she kept it up almost continuously. Up to this moment they had been so engrossed with approaching the shack without inciting George Clayton to the point of desperate resistance that they had not paid much attention to Tania.

  Now they noticed that the dog was running about the shack in a most excited manner, scarcely ceasing her growls and barks. And, now that their attention was fixed on her, they saw that she stopped at a certain cellar window and barked there with unusual vigor.

  “The barking of Tania,” murmured Sim. “No, the taking away of Melissa by the detective woman, with her father’s consent, and his desertion of his home, would not account for the barking of Tania. Arden, I think we are going to make a discovery—a big discovery.”

  “What do you mean?” faltered Terry. “Do you think Dimitri—” She could not finish. She dared not finish. But the others knew what she had in mind.

  “Now you speak of it,” said the chief, “that dog is making quite a row. Barking dogs, you know, catch no cats. But we’ll see what’s up.”

  “You think, don’t you, Sim,” said Arden, “that there is something in the cellar?”

  “I can’t help but think that, from the way Tania acts. Look at her now, barking into the window.”

  It was as Sim said. The dog was trying almost to thrust her pointed muzzle into the glass.

  “Maybe Clayton and Melissa are hiding there,” said Terry. “You didn’t go down cellar, did you, Mr. Reilly?”

  “No, I didn’t. Didn’t see any use. But if you think we’d better, why, I got a flashlight in my boat.”

  “I think we had better,” said Arden.

  “Then we will. Nothing like eating your cake and having your bread,” the chief declared. “Wait a minute.”

  He tried to run down to his motorboat but made a bad job of that, for he only waddled. However, he soon came back with the flashlight. Meanwhile Tania had not ceased her barking. She no longer ran frantically about the shack. She remained at the one window and barked continuously.

  “Now, girls,” said the chief as he again started into the house, “there’s no use of you running into any danger. I don’t say there is danger but if it’s there I ain’t going to let you run your pretty necks into no noose. I’m paid for this work and I’ll do it. Nobody can ever say Rufus Reilly let anybody else pull his pancakes out of the ice box. I’ll go down in that cellar alone.”

  “But if Clayton is there,” said Arden, “and starts to fight you—”

  “I’ve got a gun,” said the chief, showing an automatic. “I can fight as good as the next one if I have to, but I don’t think I’ll have to. If I do, well, you’re outside here to go git help. You know what I mean.” A gold-toothed smile.

  “Yes,” said Terry. “If we hear shooting, or any calls for help from the cellar, we’ll take your motorboat and go get assistance. I can run a boat.”

  “That’s the idea,” said the chief. “You go right back to town and get Henry Doremus and Ike Tantker. They’re deputy constables, and you can generally find ’em around my garage. If they ain’t there, Ted Rollaby, my mechanic, will tell you what to do. Now I’m goin’ in.”

  There was an outside slanting door leading down into the cellar. The chief pulled this up, hooked it into place, and then, with his flashlight in one hand and his automatic in the other, started down the half-rotten wooden steps.

  He had no sooner started down than Tania, deserting her barking post at the window, rushed past him and was into the dark musty cellar ahead of him.

  “Oh,” murmured Arden, “I’m glad the dog went down.”

  “So am I,” said Sim. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to the funny old chief, even if he does drive me crazy with his proverbs.”

  “What do you think he’ll find?” asked Terry.

  Before either of her chums could hazard a guess they all heard, above the frantic barking of Tania, the chief’s voice shouting:

  “I’ve got him! I’ve found him! Here he is, tied up like a bag of potatoes in the cellar. I’ve found Mr. Uzlov!”

  CHAPTER XXX

  All Is Well

  Gazing with fear-widened eyes at one another, the three girls waited for what might happen next.

  The chief had found the man missing from Marshlands; but in what condition? The worst might have happened, for it was now obvious that Dimitri had been the prisoner of George Clayton ever since the mysterious disappearance from the Merry Jane.

  “Oh,” murmured Arden, “if he is—”

  She could not finish.

  “I—I feel sort of funny,” said Terry.

  “Girl, if you pass out on us now I’ll never speak to you again as long as I live!” threatened Sim.

  “Oh, I’m all right—I guess,” Terry said. “But—”

  She was interrupted by the voice of Chief Reilly coming, muffled, from the cellar.

  “Guess maybe you girls had better come down here,” he called. “I might need your testimony for evidence.”

  “Oh!” almost shouted Arden. “Is he—”

  “Mr. Uzlov is all right. He’s alive, though I can’t say he’s very well,” went on the chief. “He’s bound and gagged and all knocked out, but I can’t see anything very wrong. There’s so many ropes on him I’ll need help in getting them off quick. B
ut I want you to see him so you can testify against this rat of a Clayton. Nasty piece of business, if you ask me.”

  The girls could hear Tania now joyously whimpering. The dog no longer barked fiercely. It was evident she was with her beloved master whom she found to be alive, at least.

  Thus reassured, the three descended the outside cellar steps. The chief held his torch for them to see, and by its light they noted that he had already started on the work of rescue. A cloth that had been bound around the Russian’s mouth had been taken off. But he was still trussed up.

  With a slash of his knife, while Arden held the light, the chief released the roped hands. And as Dimitri rubbed his numbed lips he said weakly:

  “So you’ve come at last.”

  “Oh, if we had only guessed this before!” exclaimed Arden.

  “Still, you are in good time. I am not harmed,” said Dimitri. Then he could talk no longer, for Tania was frantically licking his face.

  With the help of the girls, one of whom held the light while the chief and the others loosed the binding strands, Dimitri Uzlov was soon set free. He was a little weak in his legs, but after stamping about managed to regain the use of them and was able to leave the cellar.

  He had been found in a sort of closet in one corner, small and dark, with only the cracks around the sealed window for ventilation.

  “I seen that shut closet door as soon as I got down here,” said the chief as they all went into the upper sunlight. “I’d ’a’ knowed somebody was in that closet even if the dog hadn’t rushed for it like—well, like a mouse goin’ for cheese in a trap,” he finished.

  “It is good to be out again,” said Dimitri as he paused at the top of the steps and took a long deep breath. “I have been in the dark too long.”

  “But what happened?”

  “How did he get you?”

  “Did he harm you?”

  “Where is he now, and Melissa?”

  The girls’ questions came trippingly.

  “I think it is best if I go back to my houseboat and there tell you the story,” said the artist. “Perhaps there is even left some tea—and I should dearly love a cup of tea. This Clayton jailer gave me nothing but coffee. I am so sick of it!”

  “There is tea left,” said Arden.