The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls

by Mildred A. Wirt

  She set out blithely in the direction he pointed, enjoying the walk through the crisp, icy air. A light fall of snow, white as swan’s down, covered the ground and the roofs, and sparkled in the light of the street lamps in myriads of tiny twinkles. Not many people were abroad, for it was the supper hour in Oakland. A Christmas stillness hovered over the peaceful little town, as though it lay hushed and breathless in anticipation of the coming of the Holy Babe. Low in the eastern sky burned the brilliant evening star, bright as that other Star in the East which guided the shepherds on that far-off Christmas night. Katherine felt the spell of it and gradually her hasty steps became slower and at times she stood still and looked upon the quiet scene with a feeling of awe and reverence. “Why, it might be Bethlehem!” she said to herself. “It’s so still and white, and there’s the star in the east, too!” Almost unconsciously she began to repeat under her breath:

  “O little town of Bethlehem,

  How still we see thee lie,

  Above thy deep and dreamless sleep

  The silent stars go by.”

  “Only it isn’t quite true about the deep and dreamless sleep,” she qualified, her literal-mindedness getting the upper hand of her poetic feeling, “because they’re all inside eating supper.” The thought of supper made Katherine suddenly realize that she was ravenously hungry. She had had nothing to eat since an early lunch on the train. “I hope I get there before supper’s over,” she thought, and quickened her pace again. Not that she wouldn’t get something anyhow, she reflected, but somehow the idea of coming in just as supper was ready, and sitting down to a table covered with steaming dishes seized her fancy and warmed her through with a pleasant glow of expectation.

  “Nearly there!” she said to herself cheerfully. “Here’s where Main Street starts to go uphill.” The houses had gradually become farther and farther apart as she went on, until now she was walking along between wide, open spaces, gleaming white in the starlight, with only an occasional low cottage to break the landscape. The walk was steeply uphill now, and looking back Katherine saw Oakwood curled in its sheltering valley, and again she thought of a sleek, well fed kitten lying warm and comfortable and drowsy, at peace with all the world.

  “There aren’t any poor people here, I guess,” she thought to herself. “All the houses look so prosperous. There probably aren’t any hungry children crying for bread. I’m the only hungry person in this whole town, I believe. My, but I am hungry! I could eat a whole house right now, and a barn for dessert! Thank goodness, there’s the top of the hill in sight, and that must be Nyoda’s house.” A great dark bulk towered before her at the top of the steep incline, its irregular outlines standing sharply defined against the luminous sky. Katherine charged up the remainder of the hill at top speed, slipping and falling in the icy path several times in her eagerness, but finally landing intact, though flushed and panting, upon its slippery summit, and stood still to behold this wonderful house that Nyoda lived in, whose charms had been the theme of many an enthusiastic letter from the Winnebagos during the previous summer. It loomed large and silent before her, its frost covered window panes shining whitely in the starlight with a faint, ghostly glimmer. No gleam of light came from any of the doors or windows. The house was still and dark as a tomb. Katherine stood wide-eyed with disappointment and perplexity. Nyoda was not at home.

  She clutched at a straw. Nyoda had gone to meet her and missed her; that was it. But at the same time she felt a doubt rising in her mind which rapidly grew into a certainty. This was not Nyoda’s house before which she stood on this lonely hilltop. It was some other house and it was absolutely empty. Not only was it untenanted, but it had the look of a house that has stood so for years. Even the soft, sparkling mantle of snow that lay upon it could not hide the sagging porch, the broken steps, the broken-down fence, the general air of decay which surrounded the place.

  Katherine emitted a cluck of chagrin. She was puffing like an engine from her dash up the hill, she was tired out, she was ravenously hungry, she was unutterably cross at herself. She scowled at the dark house with its spectral, frosty windows, and made another frantic effort to recall Nyoda’s name, only to be confronted with that baffling blank where the name once had been.

  With a growing feeling of helplessness she stood on one foot in the snow in the pose which she always assumed when thinking deeply, and considered what she should do next. Should she keep on walking and climbing all the hills until she finally came to the right one; should she go all the way back to the station and sit there until the name came back to her, or should she walk boldly up to one of the hospitable looking doors she had passed, confide her plight and ask to be taken in for the night? Katherine was trying to decide between the first two, leaving the third as the extreme alternative in case she neither found the right hill nor succeeded in remembering Nyoda’s name before bedtime, when suddenly something occurred which sent a chill of ice into her blood and left her standing petrified in her one-legged pose, like a frozen stork. From the dark and empty house before her came the sound of a song, ringing clear and distinct through the frosty air. It was the voice of a woman, or a girl. Beginning softly, the tone swelled out in volume till it seemed to Katherine’s ears to fill the whole house and to come pouring out of all the doors and windows. Then it subsided until it came very faintly, like the merest ghost of a song. Katherine felt the hair rising on her head; she gave an odd little dry gasp. Wild terror assailed her and she would have fled, but fear chained her limbs and she could not move hand or foot. She stood riveted to the spot, staring fascinated at the dark, untenanted house, which stared back at her with frost veiled, inscrutable eyes; and all the while from somewhere in its mysterious depths came the voice, now louder, now fainter, but always distinctly heard.

  A sudden thought struck Katherine. Was she already a victim of starvation, and was this the delirium which starving people went into? They generally heard beautiful voices singing. No, that wasn’t possible—she couldn’t be starving yet. She was tremendously hungry, but there was still a fairly safe margin between her and the last stages. Somehow the thought of hunger, and the idea of food, commonplace, familiar victuals which it connoted, dissipated the supernatural atmosphere of the place, and Katherine shook off her terror. The blood stopped pounding in her ears; her heart began to beat naturally again; her limbs lost their paralysis.

  “Goose!” she said to herself scornfully. “Flying into a panic at the sound of a voice singing and thinking it’s ghosts! I’m ashamed of you, Katherine Adams! Where’s your ’spicuity? Vacant houses don’t sing by themselves. When empty houses start singing they aren’t empty. Besides, no ghost could sing like that. A voice like that means lungs, and ghosts don’t have lungs. Anybody that’s got breath to sing can probably talk and tell me where the next hill is. I’m going up and ask her.”

  She passed through an opening in the tumble-down fence, in which there was no longer any gate, and went up the uneven, irregular brick walk and up the broken steps, treading carefully upon each one and half expecting them to go down under her weight. They creaked and trembled, but they held her and she went on over the sagging porch to the door, which lay in deep shadow at the one side. She felt about for a bell or knocker, and then she discovered that the door stood open. She could hear the voice plainly, singing somewhere in the house. Failing to find a doorbell she rapped loudly with her knuckles on the door casing. To her nervous ears the sound seemed to echo inside the house like thunder, but there was no pause in the singing, no sound of footsteps coming to the door.

  She rapped again. Still no sign from within. A sportive north wind, racing up the hill, paused at the top to whirl about in a mad frolic, and Katherine shivered from head to foot. She felt chilled through, and fairly ached to get inside a house; anywhere to be in out of the cold. She rapped a third time. Still the voice sang on as before, paying no heed to the knock. Katherine grew desperate. Her teeth were chattering in her head and her feet were going numb.

&
nbsp; “Of course she can’t hear me knock when she’s singing,” thought Katherine. “The sound of her own voice fills her ears. I’m going in and find her. I’ll apologize for walking in on her so unceremoniously, but it’s the only thing to do. I’ve got to get in out of the cold pretty soon.”

  Acting upon her resolution she stepped through the open door into the hall inside and tried to fix the direction from which the voice was coming. She looked in vain for a glimmer of light under a door to guide her to the mysterious dweller in this strange establishment. The house was apparently as dark on the inside as it looked from without. Katherine opened her handbag and fumbled for her electric flash. In a moment a tiny circle of light was boring valiantly into the gloom. By its gleam Katherine saw that she stood in a long hall. Upon her left was a succession of doors, all closed; upon her right a staircase curved upward into the blackness above. Idly she turned her flashlight on the staircase and noticed that the post was of beautifully carved mahogany. The polish was gone, but it must have been handsome once, must have been—Katherine gave a great start and nearly dropped her flashlight. Her eyes, traveling up the mahogany stair rail, encountered those of a man who was leaning over the banister half way up. His face, in the light of her flash, was white as a sheet, and he seemed to be staring not so much at her as at the door behind her, through which she at that moment discovered the voice to be proceeding.

  Katherine recovered from her surprise and remembered her manners. This man must live here. She must explain quickly, or he would take her for a burglar, coming in that way and looking around with a flashlight. Katherine suddenly felt apprehensive. Suppose he wouldn’t believe her story? It was one thing to go into a house in search of a voice that wouldn’t come to the door; it was another thing to find a man inside.

  She cleared her throat and wet her lips. “Excuse me for coming in like this—” she began. She got no farther with her apologies. At the sound of her voice the man gave a startled jump, backed away from the banister, ran down the stairs two steps at a time and disappeared through the front door, leaving Katherine standing in the empty hall, open-mouthed with astonishment.

  CHAPTER II

  The Princess Sylvia

  Katherine did not know whether she was more astonished or relieved at the sudden flight of the man on the stairs. “I suppose I do look pretty wild,” she reflected, “but I didn’t suppose my appearance was enough to make a man run on sight. Well anyhow, he isn’t going to trouble me, and that’s some comfort. Now to find the singer.”

  There was an open transom over the door before which Katherine stood and she perceived that the voice came through this. With hand raised to knock on the door panel she paused in admiration. The song that floated through the transom had such a gay swing, such an irresistible lilt, that it set her head awhirl and her blood racing madly through her veins in a wild May dance. It was as though Spring herself, intoxicated with May dew and brimming over with all the joy of all the world, were singing. Like golden drops from a sunlit fountain the gay, glad notes showered down on her:

  “Hark, hark, the lark at heaven’s gate sings,

  And Phoebus ’gins arise

  His steeds to water at those springs

  On chaliced flower that lies;

  And winking Mary buds begin

  To ope their golden eyes,

  With everything that pretty been,

  My lady sweet arise!”

  The voice fell silent, and Katherine came back to herself and knocked on the door.

  “Come in, my dear Duchess,” called a merry voice from behind the door. There was no mistaking the note of glad welcome.

  Katherine turned the knob and opened the door. Only darkness greeted her eyes.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  From somewhere in the room came a sudden exclamation of surprise.

  “Who is it?” demanded the voice which had bidden her enter. “You are not my lady-in-waiting, the Duchess.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not,” said Katherine, considerably puzzled at the salutation she had received. She stood still inside the door trying to locate her mysterious hostess in the darkness. Her flashlight lay in her hand, useless, its battery burned out.

  “I’m looking for another house on another hill,” she began hurriedly, speaking into the darkness and feeling as though she had slipped into the Arabian Nights, “and I got the wrong hill and—and now I’m so mixed up I don’t know where to go. I heard you singing and came in to ask if you could tell me where the other hill is. I knocked before I came in,” she added hastily, “but you didn’t come to the door, so I took the liberty of walking in. I beg your pardon for coming right in that way, but I was so cold—”

  “You are welcome in our lodge,” interrupted the invisible voice with lofty graciousness. “Do you not know where you have come?” it continued, in a tone which indicated there was a delicious surprise in store. “This is the royal hunting lodge, and I am the Princess Sylvia!”

  “Oh-h-h!” said Katherine, too much astonished to say another word. She did not know how to act when introduced to a princess.

  “Is there anything I can do for your majesty?” she asked politely, remembering that the other had mentioned a lady-in-waiting that she seemed to be expecting.

  “Light the lights!” commanded the voice imperiously.

  Katherine took a step forward uncertainly. “Where—” she began.

  “On the table beside you!” continued the voice.

  Katherine put out her hand and came in contact with the edge of a table, and after groping for a moment found a box of matches. She struck one and by its flare saw an oil lamp standing on the table beside the matches. She lit it and looked around the room curiously. She could not see the owner of the voice at first. The room was large and shadowy and contained very little furniture. A bare pine table on which the lamp stood; a couple of kitchen chairs; a cot bed next to the wall; a small stove; a rocking chair and a sewing machine; these were the objects which the lamp illuminated. The other end of the room lay in deep shadow. It was from this shadow that the voice now issued again.

  “Bring the lamp and come here,” it commanded.

  Katherine picked up the lamp from the table and advanced toward the shadowy corner of the room. The darkness fled before her as she advanced and the corner sprang into light. She saw that the corner was a bay, with three long windows, in which stood a couch. On the couch was a mountain whose slopes consisted of vari-colored piecework, and from whose peak there issued, like an eruption of golden lava, a tangle of bright yellow curls which framed about a pair of big, shining eyes. The eyes were set in a face, of course—they had to be—but the face was so white and emaciated as to be entirely inconspicuous, so Katherine’s first impression consisted entirely of hair and eyes. The eyes were dark brown, a strange combination with the fair hair, and sparkled with a hundred little dancing lights, as the girl on the couch—for it was a girl apparently about fourteen years old—looked up at Katherine with a roguish smile.

  “You must be Her Grace, the Marchioness St. Denis,” she said with an air of stately courtesy, “of whose presence in our realm we have been informed. I trust Your Grace is not over fatigued. You will pardon the informality of our life here,” she continued, her brown eyes traveling around the room and resting somewhat regretfully on the shabby furnishings. “We take up our residence in the Winter Palace for state occasions,” she went on, “but for our daily life we prefer the simplicity of our Hunting Lodge. We are less hampered by formal etiquette here.”

  Katherine stared in perplexity. Winter Palace? Hunting Lodge? Her Grace the Marchioness? What was this strange child talking about? Her feeling of having wakened in the midst of a fairy tale deepened.

  “You can see the Winter Palace from the window here, when there isn’t any frost on it,” proceeded the “princess,” setting up a volcanic disturbance inside the patchwork mountain by turning herself inside of it, and she pointed toward one of the bay windows with a
thin white hand. “It’s on top of a high hill and at night it twinkles.”

  It came over Katherine in a flash that possibly it was Nyoda’s house that this queer child meant by the “Winter Palace.” A big house set on a high hill—

  A rippling laugh caused her to look down hastily, and there was the girl on the couch fairy convulsed with laughter.

  “It’s been such fun!” she exclaimed, demolishing the mountain by throwing the quilt aside with a sudden movement of her arms and disclosing a slender little body wrapped in a grayish woolen dressing gown. “I never had anybody from outside to play it with before. I get tired playing it alone so much, and Aunt Aggie is mostly always too busy to play it with me. Besides,” she said with a regretful sigh, “she has no imagination, and she forgets most of the really important things. Oh, it was wonderful when you said, ‘Is there anything I can do for you, Your Majesty?’ It was just as real as real!” She laughed with delight at the remembrance.

  Katherine, as much startled by the swift change in her little hostess as she had been at her strange manner of speech in the beginning, was still uncertain what to say. “Is it a game?” she asked finally.

  The girl nodded and began to explain, talking as though to an old friend.

  “You see,” she began, “not being able to walk, it’s so hard to find anything really thrilling to do.”

  “You are lame?” asked Katherine with quick sympathy. It had just come over her that while the slender arms had been waving incessantly in animated gestures as the voice chattered gaily on, the limbs under the dressing gown had not moved.

  The girl nodded in reply to Katherine’s question. “Crippled,” she explained. “I was following a horse down the middle of the street trying to figure out which leg came after which when I slipped and fell and hurt my spine, and I have never walked since.”