Kitabı oku: «The Campfire Girls of Roselawn: or, a Strange Message from the Air», sayfa 6
CHAPTER XV
CAN IT BE POSSIBLE?
“What is this?” Mr. Norwood asked, staring at his eager daughter. “Have I heard anything before about a girl being carried away?”
“Why, don’t you remember, Daddy, about Henrietta who lives over in Dogtown, and her cousin, Bertha, and how Bertha has disappeared, and – and–”
“And Henrietta is the champion snake killer of all this region?” chuckled Mr. Norwood. “I certainly have a vivid remembrance of the snakes, at any rate.”
“Dear me!” cried Momsy. “This is all new to me. Where are the snakes, Jessie?”
“Gone to that bourne where both good and bad snakes go,” rejoined her husband. “Come, Jessie! It is evident I did not get all that you wanted to tell me the other evening. And, it seems to me, if I remember rightly, you got so excited over your radio business before you were through that you quite forgot the snakes – I mean forgot the girl you say was run away with.”
“Don’t joke her any more, Robert,” advised Momsy. “I can see she is in earnest.”
“You just listen here, Daddy Norwood,” Jessie cried. “Perhaps you’ll be glad to hear about Bertha. She is little Henrietta Haney’s cousin, and Henrietta expected Bertha to come to see her where she lives with the Foleys in Dogtown.
“Well, the day that Bertha was expected, she didn’t come. That was the day Amy and I first thought of building our radio. And when we were walking into town we heard a girl screaming in Dogtown Lane. So we ran in, and there was this girl being pulled into an automobile by two women.”
“What girl was this?” asked Mr. Norwood, quite in earnest now. “A girl you and Amy knew?”
“We had never seen her before, Daddy. And I am not positive, of course, that she was Bertha, Henrietta’s cousin. But Amy and I thought it might be. And now you tell about two women who want to keep a servant girl away from you, and it might be the same.”
“It might indeed,” admitted Mr. Norwood thoughtfully. “Tell me what the two women looked like. Describe them as well as you can.”
Jessie did so. She managed, even after this length of time, to remember many peculiarities about the woman who drove the big car and the fleshy one who had treated the girl so roughly. Mr. Norwood exclaimed at last:
“I should not be at all surprised if that were Martha Poole and Mrs. Bothwell. The descriptions in a general way fit them. And if it is so, the girl Jessie and Amy saw abused in that way is surely the maid who worked for Mrs. Poole.”
“Oh, Robert! can it be possible, do you think?” cried his wife.
“Not alone possible, but probable,” declared Robert Norwood. “Jessie, I am glad that you are so observant. I want you to get the little girl from Dogtown some day soon and let me talk with her. Perhaps she can tell me something about her cousin’s looks that will clinch the matter. At least, she can tell us her cousin’s full name, I have no doubt.”
“It’s Bertha for a first name,” said Jessie, eagerly. “And I supposed it was Haney, like Henrietta’s.”
“The girl I am looking for is not named Haney, whatever her first name may be. Anyway, it is a chance, and I mean to get to the bottom of this mysterious kidnaping if I can, Jessie. Let me see this little Henrietta who kills snakes with such admirable vigor,” and he laughed.
It was, however, no inconsiderable matter, as Jessie well understood. In the morning she hurried over to the Drew house to tell Amy about it. Both had been interested from the very beginning in the mystery of the strange girl and her two women captors. There was something wrong with those women. Amy said this with a serious shake of her head. You could tell!
And when, on further discussion, Jessie remembered their names – Poole and Bothwell – this fact brought out another discovery.
“Bothwell! I never did!” ejaculated Amy Drew. “Why, no wonder I thought she looked like somebody I knew. And she drives a fast car – I’ll say she does. Jess Norwood! where were our wits? Don’t you remember reading about Sadie Bothwell, whose husband was one of the first automobile builders, and she has driven in professional races, and won a prize – a cup, or something? And her picture was in the paper.”
“That is the person Daddy refers to,” Jessie agreed. “I did not like her at all.”
“Ho! I should say not!” scoffed Amy. “And I wasn’t in love with the fat woman. So she is a race track follower, is she?” Then Amy giggled. “I guess she wouldn’t follow ’em far afoot! She isn’t so lively in moving about.”
“But where do you suppose they took Bertha – if it was Henrietta’s cousin we saw carried off?”
“Now, dear child, I am neither a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter nor–”
“Nor one of the Seven Sleepers,” laughed Jessie. “So you cannot prophesy, can you? We will go down to Dogtown this afternoon and see if Mrs. Foley will let us bring Henrietta back to see Daddy.”
“The child hasn’t been up to see you at all, has she?” asked Amy.
“Why, no.”
“Maybe the woman won’t want her to come. Afraid somebody may take little Hen away from her. Did you see the child’s hands? They have been well used to hard work. I have an idea she is a regular little slave.”
“Oh, I hope not. It doesn’t seem to me as though anybody could treat that child cruelly. And she doesn’t seem to blame Mrs. Foley for her condition.”
“Well, Hen knows how to kill snakes, but maybe she is a poor judge of character,” laughed Amy. “I’ll go with you and defend you if the Foley tribe attack in force. But let’s go down in the canoe. Then we can steal the cheeld, if necessary. ‘Once aboard the lugger!’ you know, ‘and the gal is mine’.”
“To hear you, one would think you were a real pirate,” scoffed Jessie.
At lunch time Nell Stanley had an errand in the neighborhood, and she dropped in at the Drew house. The three girls, Mrs. Drew being away, had a gay little meal together, waited on by the Drew butler, McTavish, who was a very grave and solemn man.
“Almost ecclesiastic, I’ll say,” chuckled Nell, when the old serving man was out of the room. “He is a lot more ministerial looking than the Reverend. I expect him, almost any time, to say grace before meat. Fred convulsed us all at the table last evening. We take turns, you know, giving thanks. And at dinner last evening it was the Reverend’s turn.
“‘Say, Papa,’ Fred asked afterward – he’s such a solemn little tike you have no idea what’s coming – ‘Say, Papa, why is it you say a so-much longer prayer than I do?’
“‘Because you’re not old enough to say a long one,’ Reverend told him.
“‘Oh!’ said Master Freddie, ‘I thought maybe it was ’cause I wasn’t big enough to be as wicked as you and I didn’t need so long a one.’ Now! What can you do with a young one like that?” she added, as the girls went off into a gale of laughter.
But she had other news of her young brothers besides this. Bob and Fred were enamored of the radio. They were ingenious lads. Nell said she believed they could rig a radio set with a hair-pin and a mouse-trap. But she was going to help them obtain a fairly good set; only, because of the shortage of funds at the parsonage, Bob and Fred would be obliged themselves to make every part that was possible.
So she drew from Jessie and from Amy all they knew about the new science, and Jessie ran across to her house and got the books she had bought dealing with radio and the installation of a set.
Jessie and Amy got into their outing clothes when Nell Stanley had gone and embarked upon the lake, paddling to the landing at despised Dogtown. It was not a savory place in appearance, even from the water-side. As the canoe drew near the girls saw a wild mob of children, both boys and girls, racing toward the broken landing.
“Why! What are they ever doing?” asked Jessie, in amazement, backing with her paddle.
“Chasing that young one ahead,” said Amy.
They were all dressed most fantastically, and the child running in advance, an agile and bedrabbled looking little creature, was more in masquerade than the others. She wore an old poke bonnet and carried a crooked stick, and there seemed to be a hump upon her back.
“Spotted Snake! Spotted Snake! Miss Spotted Snake!” the girls from Roselawn heard the children shrieking, and without doubt this opprobrious epithet referred to the one pursued.
CHAPTER XVI
SPOTTED SNAKE, THE WITCH
“What are they trying to do to that poor child?” repeated Jessie Norwood, as the crowd swept down to the shore.
“Spotted snake! Spotted Snake!” yelled the crowd, and spread out to keep the pursued from running back. The hump-backed little figure with poke-bonnet and cane was chased out upon the broken landing.
“She will go overboard!” shrieked Jessie, and drove in her paddle again to reach the wharf. Amy, who was in the bow sheered off, but brought the side of the canoe skillfully against the rough planks.
“What are they doing to you, child?” Amy cried.
“Goin’ to drown the witch! Goin’ to drown the witch!” shrieked the rabble in the rear. “Spotted Snake! Spotted Snake!”
“It’s little Henrietta!” screamed Jessie suddenly. “Oh, Amy!”
Amy, who was strong and quick, reached over the gunwale of the canoe and seized upon the crooked figure. She bore it inboard, knocking off the old bonnet to reveal Henrietta’s freckled little face. The cloak and the hump under it were likewise torn off and went sailing away on the current.
“For pity’s sake, Henrietta!” gasped Jessie.
“Yes’m,” said the child composedly. “Did you come to see me?”
“Not expecting to see you in this – this shape,” hesitated Jessie.
Amy went off into a gale of laughter. She could not speak for a minute. Jessie demanded:
“Who are those awful children, Henrietta?”
“Part Foleys, some McGuires, two Swansons, the Costeklo twins, and Montmorency Shannon,” was the literal reply.
“What were they trying to do to you?”
“Drown me,” said Henrietta composedly. “But they ain’t ever done it yet. I always manage to get away. I’m cute, I am. But once they most nearly burned me, and Mrs. Foley stopped that. So now they mostly try to drown the witch.”
“‘The witch’?” murmured the amazed Jessie.
“Yep. That’s me. Spotted Snake, the witch. That’s cause I’m so freckled. It’s a great game.”
“I should say it was,” marveled Jessie, and immediately Amy began to laugh again. “I don’t see how you can, Amy,” Jessie complained. “I think it is really terrible.”
“I don’t mind it,” said Henrietta complacently. “It keeps ’em busy and out from under their mothers’ feet.”
“But they shriek and yell so.”
“That don’t hurt ’em. And there’s plenty of outdoors here to yell in. Where we moved from in town, folks complained of the Foleys because they made so much noise. But nobody ever complains here in Dogtown.”
As Amy said, when she could keep from laughing, it was a great introduction to Henrietta’s home. They went ashore, and Henrietta, who seemed to have a good deal of influence with the children, ordered two of the boys to watch the canoe and allow nobody to touch it. Then she proudly led the way to one of the largest and certainly the most decrepit looking of all the hovels in Dogtown.
Mrs. Foley, however, was a cheerful disappointment. She was, as Amy whispered, a “bulgy” person, but her calico wrapper was fairly clean; and although she sat down and took up her youngest to rock to sleep while she talked (being too busy a woman to waste any time visiting) she impressed the girls from Roselawn rather favorably.
“That child is the best young one in the world,” Mrs. Foley confessed, referring to “Spotted Snake, the Witch.” “Sometimes I rant at her like a good one. But she saves me a good bit, and if ever a child earned her keep, Hen earns hers.”
Jessie asked about the missing cousin, Bertha.
“Bertha Blair. Yes. A good and capable girl. Was out at service when Hen’s mother died and left her to me. Something’s wrong with Bertha, or she surely would have come here to see Hen before this.”
“Did Bertha Blair work for a woman named Poole?” Jessie asked.
“That I couldn’t tell you, Miss. But you take Hen up to see your father, like you say you want to. The child’s as sharp as a steel knife. Maybe she’ll think of something that will put him on the trace of Bertha.”
So they bore Spotted Snake away with them in the canoe, while the Dogtown gang shrieked farewells from the old landing. Henrietta had been dressed in a clean slip and the smartest hair ribbon she owned. But she had no shoes and stockings, those being considered unnecessary at Dogtown.
“I believe Nell could help us find something better for this child to wear,” Amy observed, with more thoughtfulness than she usually displayed. “What do you think, Jess? Folks are always giving the Stanleys half-worn clothes for little Sally, more than Sally can ever make use of. And Hen is just about Sally Stanley’s size.”
“That might be arranged,” agreed Jessie. “I guess you’d like to have a new dress, wouldn’t you, Henrietta?”
“Oh, my yes! I know just what I would like,” sighed Henrietta, clasping her clawlike hands. “You’ve seen them cape-suits that’s come into fashion this year, ain’t you? That’s what I’d like.”
“My dear!” gasped Amy explosively.
“I don’t mind going barefooted,” said Henrietta. “But if I could just have one dress in style! I expect you two girls wear lots of stylish things when you ain’t wearing sweaters and overall-pants like you did the other day. I never had anything stylish in my life.”
Amy burst into delighted giggles, but Jessie said:
“The poor little thing! There is a lot in that. How should we like to wear nothing but second-hand clothes?”
“‘Hand me downs’,” giggled Amy. “But mind you! A cape-coat suit! Can you beat it?”
“I saw pictures of ’em in a fashion book Mrs. McGuire sent for,” went on Henrietta. “They are awful taking.”
Little Henrietta proved to be an interesting specimen for the Norwood family that evening. Momsy took her wonted interest in so appealing a child. The serving people were curious and attentive. Mr. Norwood confessed that he was much amused by the young visitor.
A big dictionary placed in an armchair, raised little Henrietta to the proper height at the Norwood dinner table. Nothing seemed to trouble or astonish the visitor, either about the food or the service. And Jessie and Momsy wondered at the really good manners the child displayed.
Mrs. Foley had not wholly neglected her duty in Henrietta’s case. And there seemed to be, too, a natural refinement possessed by the girl that aided her through what would have seemed a trying experience.
Best of all, Henrietta could give a good description of her missing cousin. Her name was Bertha Blair, and that was the name of the girl Mr. Norwood’s clerk had interviewed before she had been whisked away by Martha Poole and Sadie Bothwell.
In addition, Mr. Norwood had brought home photographs of the two women, and both Jessie and Amy identified them as the women they had seen in Dogtown Lane, forcing the strange girl into the automobile.
“It is a pretty clear case,” the lawyer admitted. “We know the date and the place where the missing witness was. But the thing is now to trace the movements of those women and their prisoner after they drove away from Dogtown Lane.”
Nevertheless, he considered that every discovery, even a small one, was important. Detectives would be started on the trail. Jessie and Amy rode back to Dogtown in the Norwoods’ car with the excited Henrietta after dinner, leaving her at the Foleys’ with the promise that they would see her soon again.
“And if those folks you know have any clothes to give me,” said Henrietta, longingly, “I hope they’ll be fashionable.”
CHAPTER XVII
BROADCASTING
Darry and Burd were planning another trip on the Marigold, and so had little time to give to the girl chums of Roselawn. Burd wickedly declared that Darry Drew was running away from home to get rid of Belle Ringold.
“Wherever he goes down town, she pops up like a jack-in-the-box and tries to pin him. Darry is so polite he doesn’t know how to get away. But I know he wishes her mother would lock her in the nursery.”
“It is her mother’s fault that Belle is such a silly,” scoffed Amy. “She lets Belle think she is quite grown up.”
“She’ll never be grown up,” growled out Darry. “Never saw such a kid. If you acted like her, Sis, I’d put you back into rompers and feed you lollipops.”
“You’d have a big chance doing anything like that to me, Master Darry,” declared his sister, smartly. “Even Dad – bless his heart! – would not undertake to turn back the clock on me.”
Before the two young fellows left Roselawn again, they did the girls a favor that Amy and Jessie highly appreciated. It was done involuntarily but was nevertheless esteemed. Mark Stratford drifted up the Bonwit Boulevard in his big and shiny car and halted it in front of the Norwood place to hail Darry and Burd.
“Here’s the millionaire kid,” called out Alling. “Know him, girls? He’s quite the fastest thing that lingers about old Yale. Zoomed over the German lines in the war, stoking an airplane, although at that time he was only a kid. Mark Stratford. His family are the Stratford Electric Company. Oodles of money. But Mark is a patient soul.”
“‘Patient’?” repeated Jessie, wonderingly, as she and Amy accompanied the young fellows down to the street.
“Sure,” declared Burd. “Most fellows would be impatient, burdened with so much of the filthy lucre as Mark has. But not he. He is doing his little best to spend his share.”
However, and in spite of Burd’s introduction, Mark Stratford proved to be a very personable young man and did not look at all the “sport.” Jessie considered that Burd was very probably fooling them about Mark. The young folks were talking like old friends in five minutes. In five minutes more they had piled into the car for a ride.
Mark’s car “burned up the road” so fast that in half an hour they came to Stratfordtown where the huge plant of the Electric Company lay, and on the border of which was the large Stratford estate.
Jessie and Amy did not care anything about the beauties of the show place of the county. While riding over the girls had discussed one particular topic. And when Mark asked them where they wanted to go, or what they preferred to see, Jessie spoke out:
“Oh, Mr. Stratford! take us to the plant and let us go into the radio broadcasting room. Amy and I are just longing to see how it is done.”
“Oh, that!” exclaimed Mark Stratford.
“We’re crazy about radio, Mr. Stratford,” agreed Amy.
“Some radio fiends, these two,” said Darry. And he told his friend to what use the girls had already put Jessie’s set for the benefit of the church bazaar.
“If you girls want to see how it’s done, to be sure I’ll introduce you to the man in charge. Wait till we drive around there.” Stratford was as good as his word. It was a time in the afternoon when the Electric Company’s matinee concert was being broadcasted. They went up in the passenger elevator in the main building of the plant to a sort of glassed-in roof garden. There were several rooms, or compartments, with glass partitions, sound-proof, and hung with curtains to cut off any echo. The young people could stare through the windows and see the performers in front of the broadcasting sets. The girls looked at each other and clung tightly to each other’s hand.
“Oh, Amy!” sighed Jessie.
“If we could only get a chance to sing here!” whispered Amy in return.
It did not mean much to the boys. And Mark Stratford, of course, had been here time and time again. A gray-haired man with a bustling manner and wearing glasses came through the reception room and Mark stopped him.
“Oh, Mr. Blair!” the collegian said. “Here are some friends of mine who are regular radio bugs. Let me introduce you to Miss Jessie Norwood and Miss Amy Drew. Likewise,” he added, as the gentleman smilingly shook hands with the girls, “allow me to present their comrades in crime, Darry Drew and Burdwell Alling. These fellows help me kill time over at Yale, to which the governor has sentenced me for four years.”
“Mr. Blair?” repeated Jessie, looking sideways at her chum.
“Mr. Blair?” whispered Amy, who remembered the name as well as Jessie did.
“That is my name, young ladies,” replied the superintendent, smiling.
“You don’t know anything about a girl of our age named Blair, do you, Mr. Blair?” Jessie asked hesitatingly.
“I have no daughters,” returned the superintendent, and the expression of his face changed so swiftly and so strangely that Jessie did not feel that she could make any further comment upon the thought that had stabbed her mind. After all, it seemed like sheer curiosity on her part to ask the man about his family.
“Just the same,” she told Amy afterward, when they were in the automobile once more, “Blair is not such a common name, do you think?”
“But, of course, that Bertha Blair couldn’t be anything to the superintendent of the broadcasting station. Oh, Jessie! What a wonderful program he had arranged for to-day. I am coming over to-night to listen in on that orchestral concert and hear Madame Elva sing. I would not miss it for anything.”
“Suppose we could get a chance to help entertain!” Jessie sighed. “Not, of course, on the same program with such performers as these the Stratford people have. But–”
They happened to be traveling slowly and Mark overheard this. He twisted around in his seat to say:
“Why didn’t you ask Blair about it? You have no idea how many amateurs offer their services. And some of them he uses.”
“I’ll say he does!” grumbled Burd. “Some of the singers and others I have listened in on have been punk.”
“Well, I’ll have you know that Jessie and I wouldn’t sing if we could not sing well,” Amy said, with spirit.
“Sure,” agreed Burd, grinning. “Madame Elva wouldn’t be a patch on you two girls singing the ‘Morning Glories’ Buns’ or the ‘Midnight Rolls’.”
“Your taste in music is mighty poor, sure enough, Burd,” commented Darry. “Jessie sings all right. She’s got a voice like a–”
“Like a bird, I know,” chuckled Alling. “That is just the way I sing – like a Burd.”
“I’ve heard of a bird called a crow,” put in Mark Stratford, smiling on the two girl chums. Jessie thought he had a really nice smile. “That is what your voice sounds like, Alling. You couldn’t make the Glee Club in a hundred and forty years.”
“Don’t say a word!” cried Burd. “I’ll be a long time past singing before the end of that term. Ah-ha! Here we are at Roselawn.”
They got out at the Norwood place and the girls insisted upon Mark coming in to afternoon tea, which Amy and Jessie poured on the porch. The chums liked Mark Stratford and they did not believe that he was anywhere near as “sporty” as Burd had intimated. Naturally, a fellow who had driven a warplane and owned an airship now and often went up in it, would consider the driving of a motor-car rather tame. As for his college record, Jessie and Amy later discovered that Mark was a hard student and was at or near the head of his class in most of his studies.
“And he drives that wonderful car of his,” said Amy, with approval, “like a jockey on the track.”
The girl chums did not forget the concert they expected to enjoy that evening, but Darry and Burd left right after dinner for the moorings of the Marigold at City Island. They took Mark Stratford and some other college friends with them for a three days’ trip on the yacht.
Jessie and Amy were eager to see the Marigold; but their parents had forbidden any mixed parties on the yacht until either Mr. and Mrs. Drew, or Mr. and Mrs. Norwood could accompany the young people. That would come later in the summer.
Amy ran over to the Norwood place before half past eight. The concert, Mr. Blair had told them, was to begin at nine. Jessie had learned a good deal about tuning in on the ether by this time; and there is no other part of radio knowledge more necessary if the operator would make full use of his set.
“The bedtime story is just concluded, Amy,” Jessie said when her chum came in. “Sit down. I am going to get that talk on ‘Hairpins and Haricots’ by that extremely funny newspaper man – what is his name?”
“I don’t know. What’s in a name, anyhow?” answered her chum, lightly.
Amy adjusted the earphones while her friend manipulated the slides on the tuning coil. They did not catch the first of the talk, but they heard considerable of it. Then something happened – just what it was Amy had no idea. She tore off the ear-tabs and demanded:
“What are you doing, Jess? That doesn’t sound like anything I ever heard before. Is it static interference?”
“It certainly is interference,” admitted Jessie, trying to tune the set so as to get back upon the wave that had brought the funny talk about ‘Hairpins and Haricots.’
But it did not work. Jessie could not get in touch with the lecture. Instead, out of the ether came one word, over and over again. And that word in a voice that Jessie was confident must come from a woman or a girl:
“Help! He-lp! He-e-lp!”
Over and over again it was repeated. Amy who had put on her head harness again, snatched at her chum’s arm.
“Listen! Do you hear that?” she cried in an awed tone.
