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

“You must forgive her, Mrs. Foley,” Jessie said, coming down to meet the woman and taking the baby from her. “Go and see and speak to the child,” she whispered. “She is so delighted that she has not been able to talk for ten minutes.”

“Then,” said Mrs. Foley solemnly, “the wor-r-rld has come to an end. When Hen Haney can’t talk–”

But she mounted heavily to the platform. Little Henrietta stood there like a wax figure. She dared not move for fear something would happen to her finery.

Every individual freckle on her thin, sharp face seemed to shine as though there was some radiance behind it. Absurd as that taffeta dress was for a child of her age, it seemed to her an armor against all disaster. Nothing bad (she had already acclaimed it to Amy and Jessie) could happen to her with that frock on. And those silk stockings! And the patent-toed shoes! And a hat that almost hid the child’s features from view!

“Well, well, well!” muttered the amazed Mrs. Foley. “If anybody had ever told me that you’d have been dressed up like – like a millionaire’s kid! When I took you away from your poor dead mother and brought you out here, Hen Haney, to be a playfellow of me little Charlie, and Billy, and – and – Well, anyway, to be a playmate to them. Ha! You never cleaned out the stove-grate, did you?”

She had looked into the kitchen and saw the dishes in the sink and the gaping stove hearth, and shook her head. Jessie thought it time to intercede for the little girl.

“You must forgive her, Mrs. Foley, and blame me. I made her dress up in the things we brought. I was sure you would want to see her in her Sunday clothes.”

A deep sigh welled up from Henrietta’s chest. “Am I going to sure-enough keep ’em to wear Sundays?” she asked.

“If Mrs. Foley will let you,” said the politic Jessie. “You can keep them very carefully. It is really wonderful how well they fit.”

“Sure,” sighed Mrs. Foley, “she’s better dressed than me own children.”

“But you told us your children were all boys,” Amy put in quickly.

“Aw, but a time like this I wish’t I had a daughter,” declared the woman, gazing at Henrietta almost tenderly. “What a sweet little colleen she might be if she had some flesh on her bones and something besides freckles to color her face. Yes, yes!”

“I am awfully glad, Mrs. Foley,” said Jessie quickly, “to see how much you approve of what we have tried to do for Henrietta. So I am bold enough to ask you to let us take her up to my house for over night. Momsy wants to see her in these new clothes, and–”

“Well, if Mrs. Momsy – Or is it Mr. Momsy, I dunno?”

“Why, Momsy is my mother!”

“The like o’ that now! And she lets you call her out o’ name? Well, there is no understanding you rich folks. Ha! So you want to take little Hen away from me?”

“Only for over night. It would be a little vacation for her, you know.”

Mrs. Foley looked back into the kitchen and shook her head. “By the looks o’ things,” she said, “she’s been having a vacation right here. Well, she’ll be no good for a while anyway, I can see that. Why, she can’t much more than speak with them glad rags on her.”

“Come on,” said Henrietta, and walked down the steps, heading toward the lake.

Amy burst into laughter again, and even Mrs. Foley began to grin.

“She’s as ready to go as though you two young ladies was her fairy god-mothers. Sure, and maybe ’tis me own fault. I’ve been telling her for years about the Good Little People that me grandmother knew in Ireland – or said she knew, God rest her soul! – and she has always been looking for banshees and ha’nts and fairies to appear and whisk her away. She is a princess in disguise that’s been char-r-rmed by a wicked witch. All them stories and beliefs has kept her contented. She’s a good little thing,” Mrs. Foley ended, wiping her eyes. “Go along with her and tell your Mrs. Momsy to be good to her.”

So they got away from Dogtown with flying colors. Henrietta sat, a little silk-clad figure, in the bottom of the canoe and shivered whenever she thought a drop of water might come inboard.

“She ought to have worn her old clothes in the canoe,” Amy suggested, but with dancing eyes.

“O-o-oh!” gasped Henrietta, pleadingly.

“It is going to take dentist’s forceps to ever get the child out of that dress,” chuckled Jessie. “I can see that.”

They got back to Roselawn in good season for dinner. Chapman had returned from town, but had not brought Mr. Norwood home. Jessie’s father, it seemed, had left the courtroom early in the afternoon and had gone out of town on some matter connected with the Ellison case. That case, as Jessie and her mother feared, was already in the court. A jury had been decided upon, as the defendants, Mrs. Poole and Mrs. Bothwell, had been advised by McCracken, their lawyer, to demand a jury trial.

The plaintiffs would have to get in their witnesses the next day. If Bertha Blair was ever to aid the side of right and truth in this matter, she must be found and brought to court.

“And we don’t know how to find her. If she is hidden away over there at that Gandy farm, how shall we ever find it out for sure?” wailed Jessie. “I hoped Daddy would get my letter and come and take charge of the search himself.”

“Your idea of taking Henrietta over there and letting her call Bertha is a good one,” declared Amy stubbornly. “Aren’t you going to do it?”

“Yes. We’ll drive over early. But it is only a chance.”

They could not interest Henrietta in her Cousin Bertha that evening, save that she said she hoped Bertha would come and see her before she had to take off the silk dress and the other articles of her gay apparel.

She scarcely had appetite for dinner, although Momsy and Jessie tried their very best to interest Henrietta in several dishes that were supposed to appeal to a child’s palate. Henrietta was polite and thanked them, but was not enthusiastic.

She found a tall mirror in the drawing room and every time they missed her, Jessie tip-toed into that long apartment to see Henrietta posing before the glass. The child certainly did enjoy her finery.

The suggestion of bedtime only annoyed Henrietta. But finally Jessie took her upstairs and showed her the twin beds in her own room, one of which the visitor was to occupy, and so gradually Henrietta came to the idea that some time she would have to remove the new clothes.

They listened in on the radio that evening until late, using the amplifier and horn that Mr. Norwood had bought. Henrietta could not understand how the voices could come into the room over the outside wires.

“I’ll tell Charlie Foley and Montmorency Shannon about this,” she confided to Jessie and Amy. “I guess you don’t know them. But they are smart. They can rig one of these wireless things with wires, I bet. And then the whole of Dogtown will listen in.”

“Or, say! Maybe they won’t let poor folks like those in Dogtown have radios? Will they?”

“This is for the rich and poor alike,” Jessie assured her.

“Provided,” added Amy, “that the poor are not too poor.”

They finally got Henrietta to bed. She went to sleep with the silk dress hanging over a chair within reach. After Amy had gone home Jessie retired with much more worriment upon her mind than little Henrietta had upon hers.

Everybody was astir early about the Norwood and Drew places in Roselawn that next morning. At the former house Jessie and Henrietta aroused everybody. At the Drew place “two old salts,” as Amy sleepily called them from her bedroom window, came rambling in from a taxi-cab and disturbed the repose of the family.

“Where did you leave that Marigold?” the sister demanded from her window. “You boys go off on that yacht, supposedly to stay a year, and get back in forty-eight hours. You turn up like a couple of bad pennies. You–”

“Chop it, Sis,” Darry advised. “See if you can get a bite fixed for a couple of started castaways. The engine went dead on us and we sailed into Barnegat last night and all hands came home by train. Mark has the laugh on us.”

Fortunately the cook was already downstairs and Amy put on a negligee and ran down to sit with the boys in the breakfast room and listen to the tale of their adventures.

“Oh! But,” she said, after a while, “there’s been something doing in this neighborhood, too. At least, our neighbors have been doing something. Do you know, Darry, Jess is bound to find that lost girl we were telling you about? Mr. Norwood goes into court to-day on that Ellison case, and he admits himself that he has very little chance of winning without the testimony of Bertha Blair.”

“Fine name,” drawled Darry. “Sounds like a movie actress.”

“Let me tell you,” Amy said eagerly.

She related how she and Jessie had tried to find Bertha after hearing what they believed to be the lost girl’s voice out of the air. Darry and Burd listened with increasing wonder.

“What won’t you kids do next?” gasped Darry.

“I wish you wouldn’t call us kids. You are as bad as Belle Ringold,” complained his sister.

“Is she hanging around here yet?” demanded Darry. “I don’t want to see that girl. I know I’m going to say something unpleasant to her yet.”

“She is right after you, just the same,” Amy said, suddenly giggling. She told about the coming moonlight box-party down the lake.

“We’ll go right back to the Marigold, Burd,” said Darry promptly. “Home is no place for us. But tell us what else you did, Sis.”

When Amy had finished her tale her brother was quite serious. Particularly was he anxious to help Jessie, for he thought a good deal of his sister’s chum.

“Tell you what,” he said, looking at Burd, “we’ll hang around long enough to ride over to the stock farm with the girls, sha’n’t we?”

“What do you think you can do more than they have done?” asked Burd, with some scorn.

“I have an idea,” said Darry Drew slowly. “I think it is a good one. It even beats using that little Hen Haney for a bait. Listen here.”

And he proceeded to tell them.

CHAPTER XXIV

A RADIO TRICK

Jessie was of course delighted to see Darry and Burd in Amy’s company when her chum appeared on the Norwood premises after breakfast. Jessie had dressed Henrietta, and the child was preening herself in the sun like a peacock. The boys scarcely recognized her.

At once Burd Alling called her the Enchanted Princess. That disturbed little Henrietta but slightly.

“I expect I am a ‘chanted princess,’” she admitted gravely. “I expect I am like Cinderella. I know all about her. And the pumpkin and rats and mice was charmed, too. I hope I won’t get charmed back again into my old clothes.”

“You could not very well help Mrs. Foley in that dress, Henrietta,” Jessie suggested.

“No. I suppose not. But if I could just find my cousin Bertha maybe I would not have to help Mrs. Foley any more. Maybe Bertha is rich, and we could hire somebody to take care of Billy Foley and to clean out the kitchen stove.”

She was more than eager to ride along with the others to look for Bertha Blair. As it chanced, Jessie did not have to call for Chapman and the Norwood car when the time to go came. For who should drive up to the house but Mark Stratford, who had come home with Darry and Burd from the yacht cruise and had driven over from Stratfordtown in his powerful car?

It was a tight fit for the six in the racing car, but they squeezed in and drove out through the Parkville road while it was still early morning. Meanwhile Darry had explained his idea to the others, and they were all eager to view the surroundings of the Gandy stock farm.

“If Bertha is there she’ll know me if I holler; of course, she will,” agreed little Henrietta. “But she never will know me by looking at me. Never!”

“So she’ll have to shut her eyes if she wants to know you, will she, kid?” chuckled Burd.

There really did not seem to be any need for the child to call when the party stopped before the closed gate, for there was not any sign of occupancy of either the house or surrounding buildings. The shingled old house offered blank windows to the road, like so many sightless eyes. There were no horses in the stables, for the windows over the box-stalls were all closed. And the tower the girls had marked before seemed deserted as well.

“Just the same, the voice spoke of the red barn and that silo and those two fallen trees there. Chapman says the trees must have fallen lately. And yet there isn’t an aerial in sight, as we told you,” said Jessie.

“Let’s look around,” Darry said, jumping out, and Burd and Amy went with him. Mark turned around in the driver’s seat to talk with Jessie.

“You know, it’s a funny thing that the girl’s name should be Bertha Blair,” the young man said. “I heard you folks talking about her before, and I said something about it to our Mr. Blair at the factory. He’s had a lot of trouble in his family. Never had any children, he and his wife, but always wanted ’em.”

“His younger brother married a girl of whom the Blair family did not approve. Guess she was all right, but came from poor kind of folks. And when the younger Blair died they lost trace of his wife and a baby girl they had. Funny thing,” added Mark. “That baby’s name was Bertha – Bertha Blair. When I told the superintendent something about your looking for such a girl because of a law case, he was much interested. If you go over there again to the sending station, tell the superintendent all about her, Miss Jessie.”

“I certainly will,” promised the Roselawn girl. “But we haven’t even found Bertha yet, and we are not sure she is here.”

Darry and the others had entered the grounds surrounding the stock farm buildings and they were gone some time. When they came back even Amy seemed despondent.

“I guess we were fooled, Jess,” she said. “There is nobody here – not even a caretaker. I guess what we heard over the radio that time was a hoax.”

“I don’t believe it!” declared Jessie. “I just feel that Bertha Blair, little Henrietta’s cousin, is somewhere here.”

“And maybe she can’t get away,” said Henrietta. “I’d like to help Bertha run away from that fat woman.”

“Let’s take the kid in and let her call,” suggested Burd.

“Sure you didn’t see any aerial, Darry?” Mark asked, showing increased interest in the matter.

“Not a sign,” said Drew, shaking his head.

“That tower–”

“Yes. It would make an ideal station. But I went all around it. I can’t see the roof, for it is practically flat. And if what I suggested was there, we will have to get above the level of the roof to see it.”

Mark suddenly got out and opened his toolbox. He brought forth a pair of lineman’s climbers.

“Thought I had ’em here. I’ll go up that telegraph pole and see what I can see,” and he began to strap them on.

“Good as gold!” cried Burd admiringly. “You have a head on you, young fellow.”

“Yes,” said Mark dryly. “I was born with it.”

He proceeded to the tall telegraph pole and swarmed quickly up it. The others waited, watching him as he surveyed the apparently deserted place from the cross-piece of the pole. By and by he came down.

“It’s there, Darry,” he said confidently. “Your big idea was all to the good. That folding wireless staff you use on the Marigold is repeated right on the top of that tower. When they use the sending set they raise the staff with the antenna and – there you have it.”

“Oh! Then she’s in the tower!” cried Amy.

“At least, she was in the tower if she sent her message from this station,” agreed Darry.

“How shall we find out – how shall we?” cried Amy, excitedly.

“If Mr. Stratford is quite sure that he sees the aerials upon that roof, then I am going to get the tower door open somehow,” declared Jessie, with her usual determination.

“It is there, Miss Jessie,” Mark assured her.

“Come on, Henrietta,” said Jessie, helping the little girl to jump down from the car. “We are going to find your Cousin Bertha if she is here.”

“You are real nice to be so int’rusted in Bertha,” said Henrietta.

“I am interested in her particularly because Daddy Norwood needs her,” admitted the older girl. “Come on now, honey. We’ll go up to that tower building and you shout for Bertha just as hard as you can shout. She will know your voice if she doesn’t know you in your new dress,” and she smiled down at the little girl clinging to her hand.

CHAPTER XXV

JUST IN TIME

It seemed as though if there really was anybody left in charge of the Gandy house and premises, such a caretaker would have appeared before this to demand of the party of young folks from Roselawn what they wanted. As Jessie Norwood walked up the lane, with little Henrietta by the hand and followed by Darrington Drew, she saw no person at any window or door.

The tower might have been abandoned years before, as far as appearance went. But Mark Stratford’s discovery seemed to make it plain that the tower was sometimes in use.

Jessie noted that the tower stood on a knoll behind the house from which vantage the race track some quarter of a mile away might be seen. With good field glasses one might stand in the second story of the tower and see the horses running on the track. Then, if there was a sending radio set in the tower, the reports of races could be broadcasted in secret code to sets tuned to the one in the tower.

Of course, if the radio instrument was so illegally used, it was only so used while the races were being held at the Harrimay Track. Then the folding aerials were raised and made use of. The cry for help that had been broadcasted and which Jessie and Amy had heard might have been sent out from this station some night when Martha Poole or her friends had neglected to shut off the aerial by dropping it flat upon the roof of the tower.

The question now was, had Bertha stolen her way into the tower at that time, or was she held prisoner there? Evidently Martha Poole and Sadie Bothwell were determined to hold the girl until after the court had settled in their favor the Ellison will case.

Jessie and those with her came to the foot of the tower. All the lower windows were boarded up and the door was tightly closed. There were shades at the upper windows, and they fitted tightly.

“You call Bertha, honey,” said Jessie. “Tell her we’ve come to let her out. Did you try that door, Darry?”

“Not much! We don’t want to be arrested for trying to commit burglary.”

“Shout for Bertha, Henrietta,” commanded Jessie.

Immediately the little girl set up a yell that, as Burd declared, could have scarcely been equaled by a steam calliope.

“Bertha! Bertha Haney! Come out and see my new dress!”

That invitation certainly delighted Amy and Burd. They sat in the car and clung to each other while they laughed. Little Henrietta’s face got rosy red while she shouted, and she was very much in earnest.

“Bertha! Bertha Haney! Don’t you hear me? I got a new dress! And we’ve come to take you home. Bertha!”

Suddenly the lower door of the tower opened a crack. An old, old woman, and not at all a pleasant looking woman, appeared at the crack.

“What you want?” she demanded. “Go ’way! Martha Poole didn’t send you here.”

Jessie spoke up briskly. “We’ve come to see Bertha. This is her little cousin. You won’t refuse to let her see Bertha, will you?”

“There ain’t nobody here but a sick girl. She ain’t to be let out. She ain’t right in her head.”

“I guess that is what is the matter with you,” said Darry Drew, sternly. He had come nearer, and now, before the woman could shut the door, he thrust his foot between it and the jamb. “We’re going to see Bertha Blair. Out of the way!”

He thrust back the door and the old woman with it. They heard a muffled voice calling from upstairs. Little Henrietta flashed by the guardian of the tower and darted upstairs.

“Bertha! Bertha! I’m coming, Bertha! I got a new dress!”

“You better go up and see what’s doing, Jess,” said Darry. “I’ll hold this woman down here.”

Jessie was giggling, although it was from nervousness.

“And I thought you did not want to be considered a burglar?” she said as she passed hastily in at the door.

“Oh, well, we’re in for it now,” Darry called after her. “Be as quick as you can.”

Jessie found a door open at the top of the flight. Henrietta was chattering at top speed somewhere ahead. The rooms were dark, but when Jessie found the room in which Henrietta was, she likewise found a girl bound to a chair in which she sat, with a towel tied across her mouth which muffled her speech.

“Here’s Bertha! Here’s Bertha!” cried Henrietta eagerly.

Jessie had the girl free and the towel off in half a minute. She saw then that the prisoner was the girl she and Amy had seen carried away by Martha Poole and Sadie Bothwell, out of Dogtown Lane.

“Oh, Miss! is this little Hennie? And have you come to take me away?” gasped Bertha.

“Surely. Are you Bertha Blair?”

“Yes, ma’am. Hennie calls me Bertha Haney. For I lived with her mom after my mother died. But my name’s Blair.”

“My father is Robert Norwood, the lawyer,” said Jessie swiftly. “He wants you to testify in court about what you heard when that old man made his will at Mrs. Poole’s house.”

“Oh! You mean Mr. Abel Ellison? A gentleman came and asked me about that once, and then Mrs. Poole said I’d got to keep my mouth shut about it or she’d put me away somewhere so that I’d never get away.”

“So I ran away from her,” said Bertha, “and tried to go to Dogtown and see Hennie and the Foleys. Why! wasn’t you one of the girls, Miss, that saw Mrs. Poole putting me into that car?”

“Yes,” sighed Jessie. “I saw it, but couldn’t stop it.”

“Well, they brought me right out here, and I’ve been here ever since. When Mrs. Poole isn’t here that old woman comes and keeps me from running away.”

“But once,” Jessie suggested, “you had a chance to try to send out a cry for help?”

“There’s a radio here. They used it one night. Then I tried to call for help over it. But they heard me and stopped it at once.”

“Just the same, that attempt of yours is what has brought us here to-day. I will tell you all about it later. Come, Bertha! We will get you away from here before Mrs. Poole comes. And we must take you to the city to see my father at once.”

As they left the tower and the ugly old woman, they heard the latter calling a number into the telephone receiver. She was probably trying to report the outrage to Mrs. Poole.

“But the woman will never dare call the police,” Darry assured Jessie. “You tell your father all about it, and he’ll know what to do.”

“And we must see Daddy Norwood as soon as possible,” the girl said. “I must take Bertha to him. The case is already in court.”

“I’ll fix that for you, Miss Jessie,” Mark Stratford said. “I can get you to town just as quickly as the traffic cops will let me – and they are all my friends.”

Darry considered that he should go, too. So they dropped Amy and little Henrietta, with Burd Alling, at Roselawn, and after a word to Momsy, started like the flight of an arrow in Mark’s powerful car for New York.

Jessie and Bertha Blair had never ridden so fast before. Mark Stratford knew his car well, and coaxed it along over the well-oiled roads of Westchester at a speed to make anybody gasp.

But haste was necessary. They knew where the court was, and they arrived there just after the noon recess. Mrs. Norwood had reached her husband’s chief clerk by telephone, and he had communicated the news to the lawyer. Mr. Norwood had dragged along the prosecution until the missing witness arrived. Then he introduced Bertha Blair into the witness chair most unexpectedly to McCracken and his clients.

If Mr. Norwood’s side of the argument needed any bolstering, this was supplied when Bertha was allowed to tell her story. The judge even advised the girl, or her guardians if she had any, that she had a perfectly good civil case against Martha Poole for imprisoning her in the tower on the Gandy farm.

These matters, however, did not interest Jessie Norwood and her friends much. They had been able to assist Mr. Norwood in an important legal case, and naturally everybody, both old and young, was interested in Bertha Blair, the girl who had been imprisoned. Momsy said she would put on her thinking cap about Bertha’s future.

Meanwhile Bertha and little Henrietta went back to the Foleys for a while. Henrietta was bound to be the most important person of her age in all of Dogtown. No other little girl there was the possessor of such finery as she had.