The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls

by Mildred A. Wirt

  “Funny old codger!” commented Sherry, looking after him. “He’s chuck full of superstition. If he throws many more such fits, I suppose I’ll have to nail up the old shutter again to keep him from dying of fright.”

  “You’ll do no such thing!” replied Nyoda. “I’ll have no more holes in that casement. Hercules will be all right again in a day or two. By that time he’ll have a new bogie.

  “Now everybody come to breakfast, and forget all about this miserable business.”

  CHAPTER IX

  THE TRIALS OF AN EXPLORER

  “Oh, tell me again about the time you went camping, and the people thought you were drowning,” begged Sylvia.

  Hinpoha drew up a footstool under her feet, and sank back into a cushioned chair with a long sigh of contentment. All day long she had been helping the others search for the secret passage, upstairs and downstairs, and back upstairs again, until she dropped, panting and exhausted, into a chair beside Sylvia in the library and declared she couldn’t stand up another minute. The others never thought of stopping.

  “But you aren’t fat,” she retorted when Sahwah protested against her dropping out. “You can run up and downstairs like a spider; no wonder you aren’t tired. I’m completely inside.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Completely inside. Classical English for ‘all in.’ ‘All in’ is slang, and we can’t use slang in Nyoda’s house, you know.”

  Sahwah snorted and returned to the search, which was now centered in Uncle Jasper’s study.

  “Now tell me about your getting rescued,” said Sylvia.

  “We were spending the week-end at Sylvan Lake,” recounted Hinpoha, “and there were campers all around. Sahwah and I wanted to get an honor for upsetting a canoe and righting it again, so we put on our skirts and middies over our bathing suits and paddled out into deep water. Nyoda was watching us from the shore. We were going to take the complete test—upset the canoe, undress in deep water, right the canoe and paddle back to shore. We got out where the water was over our heads and upset the canoe with a fine splash. We were just coming up and beginning to pull off our middies, when we heard a yell from the shore. Two young men from one of the cottages were tearing down to the beach like mad, throwing their coats into space as they ran.

  “‘Hold on, girls, we’ll save you,’ they shouted across the water, and jumped in and swam out toward us.

  “‘O look what’s coming!’ giggled Sahwah.

  “‘Oh, won’t they be surprised when they see us right the canoe!’ I sputtered as well as I could for laughing. ‘Come on, hurry up!’

  “‘What a shame to spoil their chance of being heroes,’ said Sahwah. ‘They may never have another chance. Let’s let them tow us in.’ Sahwah went down under water and did dead man’s float and it looked as though she had gone under. I followed her. But I laughed right out loud under water and made the bubbles go up in a spout and had to go up for air. The two fellows were almost up to us. Sahwah threw up her hand and waved it wildly, and I began to laugh again.

  “‘Keep still and be saved like a lady!’ Sahwah hissed, and I straightened out my face just in time. The two fellows took hold of us and towed us to shore. People were lined up all along, watching, and they cheered and made a big fuss over those two fellows. We could see Nyoda and Migwan and Gladys running away with their handkerchiefs stuffed into their mouths. We lay on the beach awhile, looking awfully limp and scared and after a while we let somebody help us to our cottage, and you should have heard the hilarity after we were alone! We laughed for two hours without stopping. Nyoda insisted that we go and express our grateful thanks to the two young men for saving our lives, and we managed to keep our faces straight long enough to do it, but the strain was awful.”

  “Oh, what fun!” cried Sylvia, laughing until the tears came, and then with an irresistible burst of longing she exclaimed, “Oh, if I could only do things like other girls!”

  “You are going to do things like other girls!” said Hinpoha in the tone of one who knows a delightful secret. “You’re going to walk again; Nyoda said the doctor said so.”

  Sylvia’s face went dead white for an instant, and then lighted up with that wonderful inner radiance that made her seem like a glowing lamp.

  “Am I?” she gasped faintly, catching hold of Hinpoha’s arm with tense fingers.

  “You certainly are,” said Hinpoha, in a convincing tone. “Nyoda said you could be cured. The specialist is coming in a day or two to arrange the operation. O dear, now I’ve told it!” she exclaimed. “We were going to save it for a birthday surprise.”

  “Oh-h-h-h!” breathed Sylvia, and sank back in her chair unable to say another word. Her eyes burned like stars. To walk again! Not to be a burden to Aunt Aggie! The sudden joy that surged through her nearly suffocated her. To walk! Perhaps to dance! The desire to dance had always been so strong in her that it sometimes seemed to her that she must die if she couldn’t dance. All the joy that was coming to her whirled before her eyes in a wild kaleidoscope of shifting images.

  “Then I can be a Camp Fire Girl!”

  “You’re going to be a Winnebago!”

  “Oh-h-h!”

  “You can go camping with us!”

  “Oh-h-h!”

  “You will be a singer, and go on the stage, maybe!”

  “Oh-h-h-h-h-h!”

  “Maybe you’ll even—” Hinpoha’s sentence was suddenly interrupted by a mighty uproar from the basement. First came a crash that rocked the house, followed by a series of lesser thumps and crashes, mingled with the racket of breaking glass. The Winnebagos, rushing out into the hall from Uncle Jasper’s study, were brushed aside by Sherry and Justice and the Captain, tearing down the attic stairs. Sherry snatched up his revolver from his dresser and went down the stairs three at a time, with the boys close at his heels.

  “The burglars are in the basement!” came from the frightened lips of the girls as they crept fearfully down the stairs. All felt that the mystery of the footprints on the stairs was about to be cleared up.

  Sherry opened the cellar door and paused at the top. “Who’s down there?” he called, in a voice of thunder.

  From somewhere below came a dismal wail. “Throw me a plank, somebody, I’m drowning. There’s a tidal wave down here!”

  “It’s Slim!” cried Nyoda, recognizing his voice. “What’s the matter?” she called.

  She and Sherry raced down the cellar stairs, with the Winnebagos and the two boys streaming after.

  They found Slim lying on the floor of the fruit cellar, nearly drowned in a pool of vinegar which was gushing over him from the wreck of a two-hundred-gallon barrel lying beside him. Around him and on top of him lay the debris of a shelf of canned fruit.

  Sherry and the boys rescued him and finally succeeded in convincing him that he was not fatally injured. The stream of vinegar was diverted into a nearby drain, and Slim told his tale of woe.

  He had been down in the cellar looking for the secret passage. There was a place in the stone wall that sounded hollow when he struck it with a hammer, and he went around to see what was on the other side of that wall. It was the fruit cellar. While he was poking around in it a big stone suddenly fell down out of the wall and smashed in the head of the barrel, which tipped over almost on top of him, and nearly drowned him in vinegar, while the jars of fruit came down all around him.

  “That loose stone in the wall!” exclaimed Sherry. “I forgot to warn you boys about it when you were sounding the walls with hammers. It’s a mighty good thing it fell on the barrel and not on you.”

  He and Nyoda turned cold at the thought of what might have happened.

  But the sight of Slim, dripping with vinegar and covered with canned peaches, drove all thoughts of tragedy out of their minds, and the cellar resounded with peals of helpless laughter for the next twenty minutes. Justice tried to sweep up the broken glass, but sank weakly into a bin of potatoes and went from one convulsion into another, until the Capta
in finally poured a dipper of water over him to calm him down.

  “O dear,” gasped Justice, mopping his face with the end of a potato bag, “if Uncle Jasper could only have seen what he started with that diary of his, it would have jolted him clean out of his melancholy!”

  CHAPTER X

  THE SECRET PASSAGE

  “Oh, tell Aunt Aggie I think the Winter Palace is the most wonderful place in the whole world!” cried Sylvia enthusiastically. “Tell her that the ladies-in-waiting are the dearest that ever lived, and the three court jesters are the funniest. Tell her I’m so happy I feel as though I were going to burst! And be sure and tell her that I’m going to get well!”

  Sylvia had not been able to conceal her rapture for a minute after Hinpoha had told her the news the day before. They all knew she knew it, and when they saw her rapture they did not scold Hinpoha for letting the cat out of the bag before the time set. To have given her those two extra days of happiness was worth the sacrifice of their surprise. All morning she had filled the house with her song and chattered happily of the time when she would go camping with the Winnebagos.

  “We’ve made more plans than we can carry out in a hundred years!” she told Nyoda gleefully. “Oh, please live that long, so you can help us do all we’ve planned.” Nyoda smiled back into the starry eyes, and promised faithfully to live forever, if need be, to accommodate her.

  “I’ll give Aunt Aggie all your messages,” she said now, stopping in the act of drawing on her gloves to pat the shining head.

  “You’re so good to go and see Aunt Aggie!”

  Nyoda patted her on the head again and then started cityward with her big box of delicacies for Mrs. Deane. With her went Migwan and Gladys and Hinpoha, who wanted to do some shopping in the city.

  Sahwah and Katherine refused to give up their search for the passage even for one afternoon. Sahwah had an idea that possibly there was a secret door in the back of one of the built-in bookcases in the library, and had Nyoda’s permission to take out all the books and look. Justice and Slim and the Captain had promised to help take out the books. Sylvia was wheeled into the library where she could watch the proceedings, and the work of removing the books began. Sherry looked on for a while and then went out to tinker with the car.

  Section by section they took the books from the cases and examined the wall behind them, but it was apparently solid. Sahwah and the Captain worked faithfully, taking out the books and replacing them, but Katherine would stop to read, and Slim soon fell asleep with his head against the seat of a chair. Justice spied Slim after a while and began to throw magazines at him. Slim wakened with an indignant grunt and returned the volley and then the two engaged in a good-natured wrestling bout.

  “I know a new trick,” said Justice. “It’s for handling a fellow twice your size. A Japanese fellow down in Washington taught it to me. Let me practice it on you, will you? You’re the first one I’ve seen since I learned it who was so much heavier than I.”

  Slim consented amiably enough and Justice proceeded with a series of operations that rolled his big antagonist around on the floor like a meal sack.

  “Don’t make so much noise, boys!” commanded Katherine, putting a warning finger to her lips. “Don’t you see that Sylvia has fallen asleep? Go on out into the hall and do your wrestling tricks out there.”

  Slim and Justice removed themselves to the hall and continued their wrestling, and the Captain abandoned the books to watch them and cheer them on.

  “Bet you can’t back him all the way up the stairway!” said the Captain, as Justice forced Slim up the first step.

  “Bet I can!” replied Justice, and then began a terrific struggle, science against bulk. Slim fought every inch of the way, but, nevertheless, went up steadily, step by step. Sahwah and Katherine, drawn by the Captain’s admiring exclamations at Justice’s feat, also abandoned the books and came out to watch.

  Justice got Slim as far as the landing, and there Slim got his arms wound around the stair post and anchored himself effectively. One step above the landing was as far as Justice could get him. Justice leaned over him and tried another trick to break his grip on the post and the two were see-sawing back and forth when suddenly the Captain gave a yell that made Justice loosen his hold on Slim and ask in a scared voice, “What’s the matter?”

  “The landing!” gasped the Captain. “Look at the landing!”

  Justice looked, and the others looked, and they all stood speechless with amazement, for the stair landing was doing something that they had never in all their born days seen a stair landing do before. It was sliding out of its place, sliding out over the bottom flight of stairs as smoothly and silently as though on oiled wheels. The five stood still and blinked stupidly at the phenomenon, unable to believe their eyes. The landing came out until there was a gap of about two feet between it and the wall, and then noiselessly came to a stop. In the opening thus made they could see the top of an iron ladder set upright against the wall below.

  Sahwah rallied her stunned senses first. “The secret passage!” she cried triumphantly.

  “Daggers and dirks!” exclaimed the Captain.

  “What made it open up?” asked Katherine curiously. “Where is the spring that works it?”

  Justice and the Captain shook their heads.

  “The post!” exclaimed Slim, mopping the perspiration from his brow. “I was pulling at it for dear life when all of a sudden something clicked inside of it. Then the Captain yelled that the stair landing was coming out. The spring that works it is in the landing post!”

  Slim reached out and tugged away at the post again, but nothing happened. Then he got hold of the carved head and began to twist it and it turned under his hands. There was a click, faint, but audible to the eagerly listening ears, and the landing began to slide smoothly back into place. In a moment the opening was closed, and the landing was apparently a solid piece of carpentry.

  “Whoever invented that was a genius!” exclaimed Justice in admiration. “And all the while we were trying to find a secret passage through the walls by tapping on the panels! If it hadn’t been for Slim we could have spent all the rest of our lives looking for it and never would have found it, for we never in all the wide world would have thought of twisting the head of that stair post. Slim, you weren’t born in vain after all.”

  “See if you can make it open up again,” said Sahwah.

  Slim twisted the head of the post, and presently there came the now familiar click and the floor slid out with uncanny quietness.

  “Let’s go down!” said the Captain, going to the edge of the opening and looking in.

  “What’s down there?” asked Katherine.

  “Nothing but space,” replied the Captain, straining his eyes to peer into the darkness, “at least that’s all I can see from here. Give me your flashlight, Slim, I’m going down.”

  Slim handed him his pocket flash and the Captain began to descend the ladder. He counted twelve rungs before he felt solid footing under him. He found himself in a tiny room about six feet square, whose walls and floor were of stone. The top was open to allow the passage of the ladder. The Captain figured out that he was standing level with the floor of the basement and that the space above the opening at the top of the little room was the space under the stairway. There was a door in the outside wall, next to the ladder.

  “What’s down there?” asked Sahwah from above.

  “Just a little place with a door in it,” replied the Captain, retracing his steps up the ladder.

  “The passage isn’t inside the house at all,” he reported when he reached the top. “It’s outside. There’s a door down there that probably opens into it. I’m going to get my coat and see where the passage leads to.”

  “We’ll all go with you,” said Sahwah, and it was she who went down the ladder first when the expedition started.

  The Captain came next, carrying a lantern he had found in the kitchen. At the bottom of the ladder he lit the lantern. T
he first thing its light fell upon was a broken glass jar, lying in a corner, and from it there extended across the floor a bright red stream. Sahwah recoiled when she saw it, but the Captain stooped over and streaked his finger through it.

  “Paint!” he exclaimed. “Red paint.”

  “Oh!” said Sahwah. “It looked just like blood. Why—that’s what must have made the footprints on the stairs! The man must have stepped in this paint! He came in through this passage!”

  The other three had come down by that time, and they all looked at each other in dumb astonishment. How clear it all was now! The footprints beginning under the stair landing—the mystery connected with the entrance of the intruder—they all fitted together perfectly.

  “The paint’s still sticky,” said the Captain, examining his finger, which had a bright red daub on the end. “It must have been spilled there quite recently.”

  “The burglar must have spilled it himself,” said Katherine.

  “But how on earth would a burglar know about this secret entrance?” marveled Sahwah.

  The others were not prepared to answer.

  “Maybe Hercules told somebody,” said Justice.

  “But Hercules doesn’t seem to know about it himself,” said Katherine.

  “He says he doesn’t, but I’ll bet he does, just the same,” said Justice.

  “Hercules wouldn’t tell any burglar about this way of getting into the house!” Sahwah defended stoutly. “He’s as true as steel. If anybody told the burglar it was somebody beside Hercules.”

  “Maybe the burglar discovered the other end of the passage himself, by accident, just as we did this end,” said Slim.

  “Come on,” said the Captain impatiently, “let’s go and see where that other end is.”

  “Wait a minute, what’s this,” said Justice, spying a long rope of twisted copper wire hanging down close beside the ladder. This rope came through the opening above them; that was as far as their eyes could follow it. Its beginning was somewhere up in the space under the stairs.

  “Pull it and see what happens,” said Slim.