The Girl Detective Megapack: 25 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls

by Mildred A. Wirt

  “Come and help me sort this music,” she advised mildly, “it’ll settle your mind somewhat, besides giving me a lift. I’m afraid I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. This is one grand mess of pieces without covers and covers without pieces. You might get all the covers in order for me.”

  Sahwah gazed without enthusiasm upon the littered floor. “Sort music—ugh!” she said, with a grimace and a disgusted shrug of her shoulders. She picked her way to the other end of the library and stood staring restlessly out of the window.

  It was a dreary, dull day. The Christmas snow had vanished in a thaw, and a chilly rain beat against the window panes with a dismal, melancholy sound. The three boys fidgeted from one end of the house to the other, but could not get up enough steam to go out for a hike. Slim and the Captain drummed chopsticks on the piano, and Justice tried to keep up with them on the harp, until Migwan ordered them to be quiet so Sylvia could sleep, after which they sat in preternatural silence before the library fire, listlessly turning over the pages of magazines which they did not even pretend to read. The atmosphere of the house got so on everybody’s nerves that the snapping of a log in the fireplace almost caused a panic.

  The clock struck twelve, and Migwan, rousing herself from her preoccupation, went out into the kitchen to prepare lunch, aided by Gladys and Hinpoha, while Sahwah continued to pace the floor and Katherine went on nervously fitting covers to pieces and pieces to covers, her ear ever on the alert for the sound of the telephone bell. Justice and Slim and the Captain, grown weary of their own company, trooped out into the kitchen after the girls, declaring they were going to get lunch, and it was not long before the inevitable reaction had set in, and pent-up spirits began to find vent in irrepressible hilarity.

  Protests were useless. In vain Migwan flourished her big iron spoon and ordered them out. Justice calmly took her apron and cap away from her and announced that he was going to be Chief Cook. Tying the apron around him wrong side out, and setting the cap backward on his head, he held the spoon aloft like a Roman short-sword, and striking an attitude in imitation of Spartacus addressing the Gladiators, he declaimed feelingly:

  “Ye call me Chef, and ye do well to call him Chef

  Who for seven long years has camped in summertime,

  And made his coffee out of rain when there was no spring water handy,

  And mixed his biscuits in the wash-basin,

  Because the baking-pan no longer was.

  But I was not always thus, an unhired butcher,

  A savage Chef of still more savage menus—”

  The teakettle suddenly boiled over with a loud hissing and sizzling, and the impassioned orator jumped as though he had been shot; then, collecting himself, he rushed over and picked the kettle from the stove and stood holding it in his hand, uncertain what to do with it.

  “Set it down on the back of the stove!” commanded Migwan. “A great cook you are! Even Slim would know enough to do that!”

  “Thanks for the implied compliment,” said Slim stiffly.

  “Slim ought to be Chief Cook,” said the Captain. “He’s fat. Chief cooks are always fat.”

  “Right you are!” cried Justice, taking off the apron and tying it around Slim as far as it would go.

  “But I can’t cook!” protested Slim.

  “That doesn’t make any difference,” replied Justice. “You look the part, and that’s all that’s needed. Looks are everything, these days.”

  He perched the cap rakishly on top of Slim’s head and stood off a little distance to eye the effect critically.

  “Nobody could tell the difference between you and the Chef of the Waldorf,” was his verdict.

  Indeed, Slim, with his full moon face shining out under the cap, and the apron tied around his extensive waistline, looked just like the pictured cooks in the spaghetti advertisements.

  “Isn’t he the perfect Chef, though?” continued Justice admiringly. “He must have been born with an iron spoon in his hand, instead of a gold one in his mouth.” Then, turning to Slim and bowing low before him, he chanted solemnly, “Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena, go forth, beloved of heaven! All the other cooks will drown themselves in their soup kettles in despair when they see you coming. All hail the Chief Cook!”

  “But I can’t cook!” repeated Slim helplessly.

  “You don’t have to,” Justice reassured him. “Chief Cooks don’t have to cook; they just direct the others. Behold, we stand ready to obey your lightest command.”

  “All right,” said Slim, “suppose you pare the potatoes.”

  “Ask me anything but that!” Justice begged him. “I never get the eyes cut out, and then when they’re on my plate they look up at me reproachfully, like this—”

  Justice screwed up his face and rolled his eyes into a grimace that convulsed the girls.

  “No, you pare the potatoes, Slim,” he continued. “The Chief Cook always pares the potatoes himself. It’s too delicate a job to entrust to a subordinate.”

  Slim had his mouth open to protest, and Sahwah and Katherine, who had just wandered out into the kitchen, were in a gale of merriment over Slim’s costume, when the doorbell rang and a messenger passed in a telegram.

  They all pressed around eagerly while Katherine read it. It was from Sherry:

  “South America boat sailed yesterday. Dr. Phillips gone. Can get no clue. Coming home to-night.”

  A long, tragic “Oh-h-h!” from Hinpoha broke the stricken silence which had fallen on the group at the reading of the message.

  “Tough luck,” said the Captain feelingly, and Justice repeated, “Tough luck,” like an echo.

  The Winnebagos glanced uncertainly toward the stairway and looked at each other inquiringly.

  “Somebody go up and call Nyoda,” said Katherine.

  Just at that moment the door of Sylvia’s room opened and Nyoda came running downstairs with light, swift footsteps, her face wreathed in smiles.

  “Sylvia’s better,” she called, before she was halfway down. “The fever left her while she was sleeping, and her temperature is normal. The danger of pneumonia is over. I’m so relieved.” She skipped down the last of the stairs like a young girl.

  Then she caught sight of the telegram in Katherine’s hand, and sensed the atmosphere of depression that prevailed in the lower hall. She knew the truth before a word was spoken, and composed herself to meet it.

  “They were too late?” she said quietly, as she joined the group, and held out her hand for the bit of yellow paper.

  “Poor Sylvia!” she exclaimed huskily. “She would soon be well enough to hear the news—and now there is nothing to tell her. If we had only found that letter a day sooner!”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  KATHERINE GOES TO THE CITY

  “Does anyone want to go in to the city this afternoon?” asked Nyoda, as they rose from luncheon. It had been a rather silent, dispirited meal, and quickly gotten over with. “I had planned to go in and take a few things to Mrs. Deane to-day, but now it will be impossible for me to get away. Sylvia has been fretting about her aunt and I think someone ought to go.”

  “I’ll go,” said Katherine readily, her spirits rising at this prospect of action. The suspense of the morning, ending in such a disappointment, had begun to react upon her in a fit of the blues. Sahwah and Hinpoha, with Slim and the Captain, had planned during luncheon to go roller-skating that afternoon, but as Katherine could not roller-skate the plan held no attraction for her. Justice had promised Sherry that he would go over the lighting system on his car while he was away and was planning to spend the whole afternoon in the garage; Migwan was going to sit with Sylvia to give Nyoda a chance to rest; and Gladys had a sore throat which made her disinclined to talk. Taking it by and large, Katherine had anticipated a rather dismal afternoon, a prospect which was pleasantly altered by Nyoda’s request.

  “You can make the two o’clock train if you start immediately,” continued Nyoda, “and the five-fifteen will bring you back i
n time for dinner. I have the things for Mrs. Deane all ready.”

  Katherine rose with alacrity and put on her hat and coat. “Any errands while I am in town?” she asked, hunting for her umbrella in the stair closet.

  “None that I can think of,” replied Nyoda, after wrinkling her brow for a moment, “unless you want to stop at the jeweler’s and get my watch. It’s been there for several weeks, being regulated.”

  “All right,” said Katherine, writing down the name of the jeweler in her memorandum book. “You’ll notice I’m not trusting my memory this time,” she remarked laughingly.

  “I’ll take the five-fifteen train back,” she called over her shoulder as she went out of the front door.

  “Be careful how you hold that package!” Nyoda called warningly after her. “There’s a glass of jelly in it that’ll upset!”

  Gingerly holding the package by the string, Katherine picked her way through the rapidly widening puddles on the sidewalks to the station. By some miracle of good luck the package was still right side up when she arrived at the hospital, and she breathed an audible sigh of relief when it was at last safely out of her hands.

  She found Mrs. Deane a frail, kindly-faced woman, bearing her discomfort cheerfully, but, nevertheless, lonesome in this strange hospital ward and very grateful for any attention shown her. Katherine began, as she described it, to “express her sympathy quietly and in a ladylike manner,” and ended up by delivering her famous “Wimmen’s Rights” speech for the benefit of the whole ward. She finally escaped, after her sixth encore, and fetched up breathless on the sidewalk, only to discover that she had left her umbrella behind, and before she retrieved it she had to give her speech all over again, for the benefit of an old lady who had been asleep during the first performance.

  There still being three-quarters of an hour before train time after she had called at the jewelers for Nyoda’s watch, Katherine dropped into a smart little tea-room to while away the intervening moments with a cup of tea and a dish of her favorite shrimp salad. As she nibbled leisurely at a dainty round of brown bread and idly watched the throngs coming and going at the tables around her, a shrill cry of delight suddenly rang out above the hum of voices and the clatter of dishes.

  “Katherine! Katherine Adams!”

  Katherine looked up to see an animated little figure in a beaver coat and fur hat coming toward her through the crowd.

  “Katherine Adams!” repeated the voice, “don’t you know me?”

  “Why—Veronica! Veronica Lehar!” gasped Katherine in amazement. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in New York.” She caught the little brown-gloved hands in her own big ones and squeezed them until Veronica winced.

  “Katherine! Dear old K! How I’ve missed you!” Veronica cried rapturously, and drawing her hands from Katherine’s grip she flung her arms impulsively around her neck, regardless of the curious stares of the onlookers.

  “Let them stare!” she murmured stoutly, seeing Katherine’s face flush with embarrassment as she encountered the quizzical gaze of a keen-eyed young man at the next table. “If they hadn’t seen their beloved K for nearly two years they’d want to hug her, too.”

  She released Katherine after a final squeeze, and stood staring at her with a puzzled expression on her vivacious face.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Katherine wonderingly. “Have I got something on wrong-side before?”

  “That’s just what is the matter,” replied Veronica, her bewilderment also manifesting itself in her tone. “You haven’t anything on wrong-side before. You don’t look natural. What has happened to you?”

  “Nothing,” replied Katherine, laughing, “and—everything. I’ve just learned that clothes do matter, after all.”

  “Why, Katherine Adams, you’re perfectly stunning!” exclaimed Veronica in sincere admiration. “That shade of blue in your dress—it was simply made for you.”

  “I just happened to get it by accident,” said Katherine deprecatingly, almost sheepishly, yet thrilled through and through with pleasure at Veronica’s words of appreciation. It was no small triumph to be admired by Veronica, whose highly artistic nature made her extremely critical of people’s appearance.

  “How I used to make your artistic eye water!” said Katherine laughingly. “It’s a wonder you stood me as well as you did.”

  “It was not I who had to ‘stand’ you, but you who had to ‘stand’ me,” said Veronica seriously. “In spite of your loose ends you were—what do you call it? ‘all wool and a yard wide,’ but I was the original prune.” Veronica, while a perfect master of literary English, still faltered deliciously over slang phrases.

  Katherine, as usual, steered away from the subject of Veronica’s former attitude toward her. When a thing was over and done with, Katherine argued, there was no use of dragging it out into the light again.

  “You haven’t told me yet how you happen to be here in this tea-room this afternoon,” she said, by way of changing the subject, “when you told us, over your own signature, that you would have to stay in New York all this week. What do you mean,” she finished with mock gravity, “by deceiving us so?”

  “I have to play at a concert here in town to-night,” explained Veronica. “It will be necessary for me to be back at the Conservatory to-morrow, and am returning by a late train to-night. I didn’t know about it when I wrote to Nyoda, or I should have insisted on her coming in for the concert and bringing all the girls along. It’s an emergency case; I’m just filling in on the program in place of a ’cello soloist who was taken suddenly ill with influenza. The concert managers sent a hurry call to Martini last night, asking him to send over the first student who happened to be handy, and as I happened to be taking a lesson from Martini at the time, I was the lucky one. I just came over this afternoon.”

  Veronica modestly suppressed the fact that it had been the great Martini himself who had been urgently requested to play at the concert, but having a previous engagement, had chosen her, out of the whole Conservatory, to play in his stead.

  “My aunt is here with me,” continued Veronica. “She’s over at that table in the far corner behind that palm. I suppose she is wondering what has become of me by this time. When I saw you over here I just jumped up and ran off without a word of explanation. She’s probably eaten up my nut rolls by this time, too; they were just being served when I rushed away. Come on over and see her.”

  Katherine followed Veronica through the crowded room to the far corner, where, at a little table beneath a softly shaded wall lamp Veronica’s aunt, Mrs. Lehar, sat placidly sipping tea and eating cakes. She did not recognize Katherine at first, never having seen her otherwise than with clothes awry and hair tumbling down over her eyes, and Katherine was secretly amused at the gentle lady’s look of astonishment upon being told who it was.

  “She did eat my rolls, after all,” said Veronica to Katherine. “I knew she would. But I’m glad she did; I am in far too exalted a mood for nut rolls now. Nothing but nectar and ambrosia will do to celebrate our meeting. Look and see if there’s any nectar and ambrosia on your menu card, will you, Katherine dear? There doesn’t seem to be any on mine.”

  “None here, either,” reported Katherine, after gravely reading her card through.

  “Then let’s compromise on lobster croquettes,” said Veronica. “I never eat them ordinarily, but I feel as though I could eat a dozen to celebrate this occasion.”

  “Be careful what you eat, now,” warned her aunt. “It would be rather awkward if you were to be taken with an attack of acute indigestion just when you are due to appear on the platform.”

  “Never fear!” laughed Veronica. “I am so transported over meeting Katherine that nothing could give me indigestion now. What an inspiration I shall have to play to-night!”

  Then, taking Katherine’s hand, she said coaxingly, “You will come and hear me play, won’t you?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t,” replied Katherine regretfully. “I’m due to
go back on the five-fifteen train.”

  “O, but you must come!” cried Veronica pleadingly. “I’ll be so miserable if you don’t that I won’t be able to play at all. You wouldn’t want me to spoil the concert on your account, would you, Katherine dear? There is a later train you can go home on just as well, isn’t there?”

  “There is one at ten-forty-five,” replied Katherine, consulting the time-table which she carried in her hand bag.

  “You can hear me play, and make that train, too,” said Veronica eagerly. “My numbers come in the early part of the program, all but one. If you went out after I had played my first group you could make your train beautifully. Do telephone Nyoda that you are going to stay over, and have her send somebody down to meet you at the later train. That Justice person—” she said mischievously, finishing with an expressive movement of her eyebrows.

  Katherine finally yielded to her pleading, and telephoned Nyoda that she was going to stay in town until the ten-forty-five, which so delighted Veronica that she ordered another croquette all the way around to celebrate the happy circumstance.

  “Do be careful, dear,” warned her aunt a second time. “Those croquettes are distressingly rich. What would happen if you were to be taken ill to-night?”

  Veronica smiled serenely. “I’m not going to be taken ill to-night, aunty dear,” she replied. “I’m going to be like Katherine, who can eat forty lobster croquettes without getting sick.”

  “Remember the mixtures we used to cook up in the House of the Open Door?” she asked, turning to Katherine. “They were lots worse than lobster croquettes, if the plain truth were known. You wouldn’t worry at all, aunty, dear, if you knew what we used to eat at those spreads without damaging ourselves!”

  Katherine was completely carried away by Veronica’s vivaciousness and temperamental whimsies. If she had admired the fiery little Hungarian in the days of the House of the Open Door, she was now absolutely enslaved by her. To plain, matter-of-fact Katherine, Veronica, with her artistic temperament, was a creature from another world, inspiring a certain amount of awed wonder, as well as admiring affection.