The Campfire Girls of Roselawn: or, a Strange Message from the Air

“It does not seem as though that could be the place after all. What do you think, Chapman?” she added, leaning forward again. “Don’t you think that place looked deserted?”

“It often does between racing seasons, Miss Jessie,” the man said. “Whoever owns it now does not occupy it all the year.”

Suddenly Jessie sat up very straight and her face flamed again with excitement. She cried aloud:

“Chapman! Isn’t there a village near? And a real estate office?”

“Harrimay is right over the hills, Miss Jessie,” said the chauffeur.

“Drive there at once, please,” said the girl. “And stop at the office of the first real estate agent whose sign you see.”

“For goodness sake, Jess!” drawled Amy, her eyes twinkling, “you don’t mean to buy the Gandy farm, do you?”

CHAPTER XX

SOMETHING DOING AT THE STANLEYS’

Chapman drove the automobile down into Harrimay only ten minutes later. It was a pretty but rather somnolent place, just a string of white-painted, green-blinded houses and two or three stores along both sides of an oiled highway. It was a long ten-minute jitney ride from the railway station.

“Perkins, Real Estate” faced the travelers from a signboard as they drove into the village. Chapman stopped before the office door, and the eager Jessie hopped out.

“I’m coming, too! I’m coming, too!” squealed Amy, running across the walk after her.

“Do be quiet,” begged her chum. “And for once let me do the talking.”

“Oui, oui, Mademoiselle! As I haven’t the least idea what the topic of the conversation will be, I can easily promise that,” whispered Amy.

A high-collared man with eyeglasses and an ingratiating smile arose from behind a flat-topped desk facing the door and rubbed his hands as he addressed the two girls.

“What can I do for you, young ladies?”

“Why, why–Oh, I want to ask you – ” Jessie stammered. “Do you know who owns the farm over there by the track? The Gandy place?”

“The old Gandy stock farm, Miss?” asked the real estate man with a distinct lowering of tone. “It is not in the market. The Gandy place never has been in the market.”

“I just wish to know who owns it,” repeated Jessie, while Amy stared.

“The Gandys still own it. At least old man Gandy’s daughter is in possession I believe. Horse people, all of them. This woman–”

“Please tell me her name?”

“Poole, Martha Poole, is her name.”

“Oh!” cried Amy, seeing now what Jessie wanted.

But Jessie shook her head at her chum warningly, and asked the man:

“Do you know if Mrs. Poole is at the place now?”

“Couldn’t say. She comes and goes. She is always there when the racing is going on. It is supposed that some things that go on there at the Gandy place are not entirely regular,” said the real estate man stiffly. “If you are a friend of Mrs. Poole–”

“I am Jessie Norwood. My father, Mr. Robert Norwood, is a lawyer, and we live in the Roselawn section of New Melford.”

“Oh, ah, indeed!” murmured the real estate man. “Then I guess it is safe to tell you that the people around here do not approve of Mrs. Poole and what goes on at the Gandy place during the racing season. It is whispered that people there are interested in pool rooms in the city. You know, where betting on the races is conducted.”

“I do not know anything about that,” replied Jessie, in some excitement. “But I thank you for telling me about Martha Poole.”

She seized Amy by the arm and hurried back to the automobile.

“What do you think of that?” gasped Amy, quite as much amazed as was her chum.

“I do wish Daddy was coming home to-day. But he isn’t. Not until dinner time, anyway. I do believe, Amy Drew, that poor Bertha is hidden away somewhere at that farm.”

“But – but–how could she get at any sending station to tell her troubles to – to the air?” and Amy suddenly giggled.

“Don’t laugh. It is a very serious matter, I feel sure. If the poor girl actually isn’t being abused, those women are hiding her away so that they can cheat Daddy’s clients out of a lot of money.”

“Again I ask,” repeated Amy, more earnestly, “how could that girl, whoever she is, get to a sending station? We did not see the first sign of an aerial anywhere near that house and barn, or above the tower, either.”

“I don’t know what it means. It is a mystery,” confessed Jessie. “But I just feel that what we heard over the radio had to do with that missing girl – that it was Bertha Blair calling for help, and that in some way she is connected with that red barn and the silo and the two fallen trees. We traced the place from her description.”

“So we did!”

“And unless it is all a big hoax, somewhere near that place Bertha is held a prisoner. If that Martha Poole is in with some crooked people who break the state gambling law by radio, sending news of the races to city gambling rooms, she would commit other things against the law.”

“Oh!” cried Amy. “Both she and that Mrs. Bothwell look like hard characters. But there were no aerials in sight!”

Jessie thought for a moment. Then she flashed at her chum:

“Well, that might be, too. Some people string their aerials indoors. I don’t know if that can be done at a sending station. But it may be. They are inventing new things about radio all the time. You know that, dear.”

“I know it,” agreed Amy.

“And if that broadcasting station up there at the Gandy farm is used for the sending of private racing information, in all probability the people who set it up would want to keep it secret.”

“I see! So they would.”

“It is not registered, you can make up your mind. And as it is only used much when the racing season is on at the Harrimay track, the Government has probably given it little attention.”

“Could they find it, do you think, Jessie?” asked her chum.

“I have read that the Government has wonderful means of locating any ‘squeak-box’, as they call it, that is not registered and which litters up the airways with either unimportant or absolutely evil communications. These methods of tracing unregistered sending stations were discovered during the war and were proved thoroughly before the Government allowed any small stations to be established since.”

“Do you suppose the police knew that that woman was sending racing news to gambling rooms from up there at her farm?”

“We don’t know that she is. Mr. Perkins was only repeating gossip. And we did not see aerials up there.”

“But you say that maybe they could have rigging for the station without any aerials in the open?”

“It might be. I am all confused. There certainly is a mystery about it, and Daddy Norwood ought to know at once. Oh, Chapman! That was thunder. We must hurry home.”

“Yes, Miss Jessie,” said the chauffeur, looking up at the clouds that had been gathering. “I think I can get you home before it rains.”

He increased the speed of the car. They had circled around by another way than the Parkville road, and they came through the edge of New Melford. When the automobile shot into Bonwit Boulevard and headed toward Roselawn the first flash of lightning made the girls jump.

Chapman stepped on the accelerator and the car shot up the oiled way. The thunder seemed to explode right overhead. Before the first peal rolled away there was another sharp flash. Although the rain still held off, the tempest was near.

“Oh!” gasped Jessie, covering her eyes.

“There’s the church,” said Amy. “We’ll soon be home now.”

Even as she spoke another crackling stroke burst overhead. The green glare of it almost blinded them. The thunder shook the air. Jessie screamed.

“See! See! Look at the parsonage!” she cried in Amy’s ear.

“Why, the boys must have already strung their wires and got a radio set established,” said Amy.

“Look at the window – that attic window!” Jessie exclaimed. “Don’t you see what I see, Amy Drew?”

“It’s smoke!” said the other girl, amazed.

“The house is afire! In the attic! That lightning must have struck there. It must have been led in by the wires, just as Momsy feared.”

“Then the boys never closed their switch!” cried Amy. “Oh! I wonder if Doctor Stanley or Nell knows that the house is on fire?”

CHAPTER XXI

A GREAT TO-DO

“Chapman! Stop!” shouted Jessie. “We must tell them!”

The chauffeur wheeled the car in toward the curb and stopped as quickly as he could. But it was some distance past the church and the parsonage.

The girls jumped out and ran back. They saw Dr. Stanley come out on the porch from his study. He was in his house gown and wore a little black cap to cover his bald spot. It was a little on one side and gave the good clergyman a decidedly rakish appearance.

“Come in here, children! Hurry! It is going to rain,” he called in his full and mellow voice.

“Oh, Doctor! Doctor!” Jessie gasped. “The fire! The fire!”

“Why, you are not wet. Here come the first drops. You don’t need a fire.”

“Nor you don’t need one, Doctor,” and Amy began to laugh. “But you’ve got one just the same.”

“In the kitchen stove. Is it a joke or a conundrum?” asked the smiling minister, as the two chums came up under the porch roof just as the first big drops came thudding down.

“Upstairs! The radio!” declared the earnest Jessie. “Don’t you know it’s afire?”

“The radio afire?”

“The lightning struck it. Didn’t you feel and hear it? The boys must have left the switch to the receiver open, and the lightning came right in–”

“Come on!” broke in Amy, who knew the way about the parsonage as well as she did about her own house. “We saw the smoke pouring out of the window,” and she darted in and started up the front stairway.

“Why, why!” gasped the good doctor. “I can hardly believe Nell would be so careless.”

“Oh, it isn’t Nell,” Jessie said, following her chum. “It is the boys.”

“But she always knows what the boys are up to, and Sally, too,” declared the minister, confident of his capable daughter’s oversight of the family.

The girls raced up the two flights. They smelled the smoke strongly as they mounted the second stairway to the garret. Then they heard voices.

“They’ve got it right in the old lumber room, Jess!” panted Amy.

“But why don’t they give the alarm?”

“Trying to put it out themselves. We ought to have brought buckets!”

“There is no water on this floor!”

Amy banged open the door of the big room in which they knew, by the arrangement of the outside wires, Bob and Fred must have set up the radio set. Amy plunged in, with Jessie right behind her. The room was unpleasantly filled with smoke.

“Why don’t you put it out?” shrieked Amy, and then began to cough.

“Hullo!” Bob Stanley exclaimed out of the smother. “We want to put it in, not out. Hullo, Jess. You here, too?”

“The fire! The smoke!” gasped Jessie.

“Shucks,” said Fred, who was down on his knees poking at something. “We can’t have the windows open, for the rain is beating this way. We’ve got to solder this thing. Did you have trouble with yours, Jess?”

“Sweetness and daylight!” groaned a voice behind them.

Dr. Stanley stood in the doorway. He was a heavy man, and mounting the stairs at such a pace tried his temper as well as his wind.

“Is this what started you girls off at such a tearing pace? Why, the boys borrowed that soldering outfit from the plumber. It’s all right.”

“I am so sorry we annoyed you,” said Jessie, contritely.

But Amy had begun to laugh and could say nothing. Only waved her hands weakly and looked at the clergyman, whose cap was much more over his ear than before.

“Right in the middle of Sunday’s sermon, young ladies,” said the minister, with apparent sternness. “If that sermon is a failure, Amy and Jessie, I shall call on one of you girls – perhaps both of you – to step up into the pulpit and take my place. Remember that, now!” and he marched away in apparent dudgeon; but they heard him singing “Onward Christian Soldiers” before he got to the bottom of the upper flight of stairs.

“But it certainly was a great to-do,” murmured Jessie, as she tried to see what the boys were doing.

She was able to advise them after a minute. But Amy insisted upon opening one of the windows and so getting more of the smoke out of the long room.

“You boys don’t even know how to make a fire in a fire-pot without creating a disturbance,” she said.

Nell came up from the kitchen where she had been consulting the cook about the meals, and Sally came tagging after her; of course, with a cookie in one hand and a rag doll in the other.

“This Sally is nothing but a yawning cavity walking on hollow stilts,” declared Nell, who “fussed” good-naturedly, just as her father did. “She is constantly begging from the cook between meals, and her eyes are the biggest things about her when she comes to the table.”

“Ain’t,” said Sally, shaking her curls in denial.

“Ain’t what?” asked Jessie.

“Ain’t – ain’t if you please,” declared the little girl, revealing the fact that her sister had tried to train her in politeness.

When the girls stopped laughing – and Sally had finished the cookie – Nell added:

“Aunt Freda came last night to dinner and we had strawberry fool. Cook makes a delicious one. And Sally could eat her weight of that delicacy. When I came to serve the dessert Sally was watching me with her eagle eye and her mouth watering. I spooned out an ordinary dishful, and Sally whispered:

“‘Oh, sister! is that all I get?’

“So I told her it was for Aunt Freda, and she gasped:

“‘What! All that?’”

The boys got the thing they wanted soldered completed about this time, and Bob ran down the back way with the fire-pot. The rain began to lift. As Nell cheerfully said, a patch of blue sky soon appeared in the west big enough to make a Scotchman a kilt, so they could be sure that it would clear.

Jessie and Amy walked home after seeing the Stanley boys’ radio set completed. Their minds then naturally reverted to the adventures of the morning and what they had heard so mysteriously out of the ether the evening before. Jessie had warned her chum to say nothing to anybody about the mysterious prisoner and the stock farm over by Harrimay or of their suspicions until she had talked again with Mr. Norwood.

Momsy came home that afternoon from Aunt Ann’s, but Mr. Norwood did not appear. The Court was sitting, and he had several cases which needed his entire attention. He often remained away from home several days in succession at such times.

“And one of the most important cases is that one he told us about,” Momsy explained. “He is greatly worried about that. If he cannot find that girl who lived with Mrs. Poole–”

“Oh, Momsy!” exclaimed Jessie, “let us find Daddy and tell him about what Amy and I heard over the radio. I believe we learned something about Bertha Blair, only we could not find her this morning.”

She proceeded to explain the adventure which included the automobile trip to Harrimay and the Gandy farm. Momsy became excited. It did not really seem to her to be so; but she agreed that Daddy Norwood ought to hear about it.

When they tried to get him on the long distance telephone, however, the Court had closed for the day and so had the Norwood law office. He was not at his club, and Momsy did not know at which hotel he was to spend the night. There really seemed to be nothing more Jessie could do about the lost witness. And yet she feared that this delay in getting her father’s attention would be irreparable.

CHAPTER XXII

SILK!

Belle Ringold and Sally Moon came up to the Norwood place the next forenoon and found Jessie and Amy in a porch hammock, their heads together, writing a letter to Jessie’s father. Jessie had tried to get Robert Norwood at his office right after breakfast, but a clerk had informed her that Mr. Norwood was not expected there until later. He would go direct to court from his hotel.

“And they have no more idea where he went to sleep than Momsy had,” Jessie had explained to her chum when Amy appeared, eager and curious. “He is so busy with his court work that he does not want to be disturbed, I know. But it seems to me that what we heard over the radio ought to be told to him.”

It was Amy who had suggested the writing of the letter and having it taken into town by Chapman, the chauffeur. The coming of Belle and Sally disturbed the chums in the middle of the letter.

“Glad we found you here, Amy,” said Belle. “You never are at home, are you?”

“Only to sleep,” confessed Amy Drew. “What seems to be the trouble, ladies? Am I not to be allowed to go calling?”

“Oh, we know you are always gadding over here,” said Sally, laughing. “You are Jessie’s shadow.”

“Ha, ha! and likewise ho, ho!” rejoined Amy. “In this case then, the shadow is greater than the substance. I weigh fifteen pounds more than Jess. We’ll have to see about that.”

“And I suppose your brother, Darrington, is over here, too?” asked Belle, her sharp eyes glancing all about the big veranda.

“Wrong again,” rejoined Amy, cheerfully. “But if you have any message for Darry you can trust me to deliver it to him.”

“Where is he?”

“Just about off Barnegat, if his plans matured,” said Amy composedly.

“Oh!” cried Belle. “Did he go out on that yacht? And without taking any of us girls?” and she began to pout.

“No mixed parties until the family can go along,” Amy said promptly. “Jess and I, even, haven’t been aboard the Marigold.”

“Oh, you children!” scoffed Belle. “I shouldn’t think that Darry and Burd Alling and that Mark Stratford would want little girls tagging them. Why, they are in college.”

Belle really was a year older than the chums; but she acted, and seemed to feel, as though she were grown up. Amy stared at her with wide eyes.

“Well, I like your nerve!” said she. “Darry’s my brother. And I’ve known Burd Alling since he and Darry went to primary school. And so has Jess. I guess they are not likely to take strangers off on that yacht with them before they take Jess and me.”

Belle tossed her head and laughed just as though she considered Amy’s heated reply quite childish.

“Oh, dear me,” she proclaimed. “To hear you, one would think you were still playmates, all making mud pies together. I don’t know that you and Jess, Amy Drew, ever will be grown up.”

“Hope not, if we have to grow into anything that looks and acts like you,” grumbled Amy.

But Jessie tried to pour oil on the troubled waters. “Just what did you come for, Belle?” she asked. After all, she must play hostess. “Is it anything I can do for you?”

“Some of us older girls are going to have a box party down at the Carter Landing on Lake Monenset the first moonlight night. Sally and I are on the committee of arrangements. We want to talk it over with Darrington and Burd and get them to invite Mark Stratford.”

“Humph! You’ll have to use long distance or radio,” chuckled Amy.

“Now, don’t interfere, Amy!” said Belle sharply.

“Wait,” Jessie said, in her quiet way. “Don’t let us argue over nothing. The boys really are off on their boat. We do not know just when they are coming back. Why don’t you write Darry a note and leave it at the house?”

“Humph! I wonder if he’d get it?” snapped Belle, with her face screwed up as though she had bitten into something awfully sour.

“Well! I like her impudence,” muttered Amy, as Belle and Sally disappeared. “I don’t see how her mother ever let her grow up.”

“It is not as bad as all that,” her chum said gravely. “But it is awfully silly for Belle and those girls who go with her to be thinking of the boys all the time, and trying to get the older boys to show an interest in them. That is perfectly ridiculous.”

“You’re right,” said Amy, bluntly. “And Darry and Burd think that Belle is foolish.”

“Now, let’s finish this letter to Daddy,” Jessie said, hastily. “And then, oh, Amy Drew, I have an idea!”

“Another idea?” cried her friend.

“I don’t know whether there is anything in it or not. But listen. Don’t you think we might get Henrietta, take her over to the Gandy place, and look around again for Bertha?”

“We-ell, I admit that kid has got sharp eyes. But how could she see into those buildings that are all shut up any better than we could when we were over there?”

“You don’t just get my idea, honey. If the girl who radioed her message, and which we heard, is Henrietta’s cousin, she will know Henrietta’s voice. And if Henrietta calls her from outside, maybe she can shout and we will hear her.”

“That is an idea!” exclaimed Amy. “It might work, at that.” Then she laughed. “Anyway, we can give Hen a ride. Hen certainly likes riding in an automobile.”

“And Nell has got an almost new dress and other things for her. Let us go down to the parsonage and get them. And while Chapman goes to town with this letter we’ll paddle around to Dogtown and get Henrietta.”

“Fine!” cried Amy, and ran home for her hat.

A little later, when she had returned from the parsonage with the bundle and the chums were embarked upon the lake, Jessie said:

“I hope the poor little thing will like this dress that Nell was so kind as to find for her. But, to tell the truth, Amy, it seems a little old for Henrietta.”

“Is it a cape-coat suit?” giggled her friend.

“It is a little taffeta silk, and Nell said it was cut in a style so disgracefully freakish that she would not let Sally wear it. It was bought at one of those ultra-shops on Fifth Avenue where they have styles for children that ape the frocks their big sisters wear.”

“Let’s see it,” urged Amy, with curiosity.

“Wait till you see it on Henrietta. There are undies, too, and stockings and a pair of shoes that I hope will fit her. But consider! Taffeta silk for a child like Henrietta.”

There could be no doubt that the girls from Roselawn were welcome when they landed at Dogtown and came to the Foley house. The greater number of the village children seemed to have swarmed elsewhere; but little Henrietta was sitting on the steps of the house holding the next-to-the-youngest Foley in her arms.

“Hush!” she hissed, holding up an admonishing finger. “He’s ’most gone. When he goes I’ll lay him in that soap-box and cover him with the mosquito netting. Then I can tend to you.”

“The little, old-fashioned thing,” murmured Amy. “It isn’t right, Jess.”

Jessie understood and nodded. She was glad that Amy showed a certain amount of sympathy for Henrietta and appreciation of her. In a few moments the child was utterly relaxed and Henrietta got up and staggered over to the soap-box on wheels and laid the sleeper down upon a pillow.

“He ought to sleep an hour,” said little Henrietta, covering Billy Foley carefully so that the flies could not bite his fat, red legs. “I ain’t got nothing to do now but to sweep out the house, wash the dishes in the sink, clean the clinkers out of the stove, hang out a line for clothes, and make the beds before Mrs. Foley and the baby get back. I can talk to you girls while I’m doing them things.”

“Landy’s sake!” gasped Amy, horrified.

But Jessie determined to take matters in her own hands for the time being, Mrs. Foley not being present. She immediately unrolled the bundle of things she had brought, and Henrietta halted on the step of the house, poised as though for flight, her pale eyes gradually growing rounder and rounder.

“Them ain’t for me?”

“If they fit you, or can be made to fit you, honey,” said Jessie.

“Oh, the poor child!” exclaimed Amy softly, taking care that Henrietta should not hear her.

“Silk!” murmured Henrietta, and sat down on the step again, put her arms out widely and squeezed the silk dress up to her flat little body as though the garment was another baby.

“Silk!” repeated the poor little thing. “Miss Jessie! How good you are to me! I never did have a thing made of silk before, ’cepting a hair-ribbon. And I never had any too many of them.”

CHAPTER XXIII

DARRY’S BIG IDEA

When Mrs. Foley and the baby arrived home there stood upon the platform at the back door of the house a most amazing figure. She knew every child in Dogtown, and none of them had ever made such an appearance. She almost dropped the baby through amazement.

“For love of John Thomas McGuire!” burst forth the “bulgy” woman, finally finding her voice. “What’s happened to that child? Is it an angel she’s turned into? Or is she an heiress, I dunno? Hen Haney! what’s the meaning of this parade? And have you washed the dishes like I told you?”