The Girls of Hillcrest Farm: or, The Secret of the Rocks

“Ask him–do,” urged ’Phemie, at last curious enough to have Lyddy share all the mystery that had been troubling her own mind since they first came to Hillcrest.

“I’ll do so the very first time I see him,” declared Lyddy.

But something else happened first–and something that brought the mystery regarding Professor Lemuel Judson Spink to a head for the time being, at least.

’Phemie lost the key to the green door!

Now, off and on, that missing key had troubled Lyddy. She had seldom spoken of it, for she had never even known it had been in the door when the girls came to Hillcrest. Only ’Phemie, it will be remembered, had the midnight adventure in the old doctor’s suite of offices in the east wing.

Lyddy only said, occasionally, that it was odd Aunt Jane had not sent the key to the green door when she expressed all the other keys to her nieces when the project of keeping boarders at Hillcrest was first broached.

At these times ’Phemie had kept as still as a mouse. Sometimes the key was worn on a string around her neck; sometimes it was concealed in a cunning little pocket she had sewn into her skirt. But wherever it was, it always seemed–to ’Phemie–to be burning a hole in her garments and trying to make its appearance.

After finding Professor Spink filling the bottles with water up by Pounder’s Brook, the girl was more than usually troubled about the east wing and the mystery.

She moved the key about from place to place. One day she wore it; another she hid it in some corner. And finally, one night when she came to go to bed, she found that the cord on which she had worn the key that day was broken and the key was gone.

She screamed so loud at this discovery that her sister was sure she had seen a mouse, and she bounded into bed, half dressed as she was.

“Where–where is it, ’Phemie?” she gasped, for Lyddy was as afraid of mice as she was of rats.

“Oh, mercy me!” wailed ’Phemie, “that’s what I’d like to know.”

“Didn’t you see it?” cried her trembling sister.

“It’s gone!” returned ’Phemie.

Lyddy got gingerly down from the bed.

“Then I’d like to know what you yelled so for–if the mouse has disappeared?” she demanded, quite sternly.

And then ’Phemie, understanding her, and realizing that she had almost given her secret away, burst into a hysterical giggle, which nothing but Lyddy’s shaking finally relieved.

“You’re just as twittery as a sparrow,” declared Lyddy. “I never did see such a girl. First you’re squealing as though you were hurt, and then you laugh in a most idiotic way. Come! do behave yourself and go to bed!”

But even after ’Phemie obeyed she could not go to sleep.

Suppose somebody picked up that key? She had no idea, of course, where it had been dropped. Certainly not on the floor of her bedroom. Some time during the day, inside, or outside of the house, the key, with its little brass tag stamped with the words “East Wing,” had slipped to the ground.

Now–suppose it was found?

’Phemie got out of bed quietly, slipped on her slippers and shrugged herself into her robe. Somebody might be down there in old Dr. Phelps’s offices right now.

And that somebody, of course, in ’Phemie’s mind, meant just one person–Professor Lemuel Judson Spink.

Why had he come to Hillcrest to board, anyway? And why hadn’t he gone away when he had been made the topic of many a joke about old Bob Harrison’s treasure trove?

For nearly a fortnight now the professor had stood grimly the jokes and laughing comments aimed at him by the other boarders. The presence of Mrs. Harrison, too, in the house, was a constant reminder to the breakfast food magnate of how his own acquisitiveness had made him over-reach himself.

’Phemie went downstairs, taking a comforter with her, and went into the long corridor leading from the west wing entry to the green door. The girls had never taken the old davenport out of this wide hall, and ’Phemie curled up on this–with its hard, hair-cloth-covered arm for a pillow–spread the quilt over her, and tried to compose her nerves here within sight and sound of the east wing entrance.

Suppose somebody was already in the offices?

The thought became so insistent that, after ten minutes, she was forced to creep along to the green door and try the latch.

With her hand on it, she heard a sudden sound from the room nearby. Was somebody astir in the Colesworth quarters?

This was late Saturday night–almost midnight, in fact; and of course Harris Colesworth was in the house. Sometimes he read until very late.

So ’Phemie turned again, after a moment, and lifted the latch. Then she pushed tentatively on the door, and —

It swung open!

’Phemie gasped–an appalling sound it seemed in the stillness of the corridor and at that hour of the night.

Often, while the key had been in her possession, she had tried the door as she passed it while working about the house. It had been securely locked.

Then, she told herself now, on the instant, the key had been found and it had been put to use. Somebody had already been in the old doctor’s offices and had ransacked the rooms.

She crossed the threshold swiftly and groped her way to the door of the second room–the old doctor’s consulting room. Here the light of the moon filtered through the shutters sufficiently to show her the place.

There seemed to be nobody there, and she stepped in, leaving the green door open behind her, but pulling shut the door between the anteroom and the office.

There was the old doctor’s big desk, and the bookcases all about the room, and the jars with “specimens” in them and–yes!–the skeleton case in the corner.

She had advanced to the middle of the room when suddenly she saw that the door into the lumber room, or laboratory, at the back, was open. A white wand of light shot through this open door, and played upon the ceiling, then upon the wall, of the old doctor’s office.

CHAPTER XXVI

A BLOW-UP

’Phemie’s heart beat quickly; but she was no more afraid than she had been the moment before, when she found the green door unlocked. There was somebody–the person who had found the lost key–still in the offices of the east wing.

The wand of white light playing about her was from an electric torch. She stooped, and literally crawled on all fours out of the range of the light from the rear doorway.

Before she knew it she was right beside the case containing the skeleton. Indeed, she hid in its shadow.

And her interest in that moving light–and the person behind it–made her forget her original terror of what was in the box.

She heard a rustle–then a step on the boards. It was a heavy person approaching. The door opened farther between the workshop and the room in which she was hidden.

Then she recognized the tall figure entering. It was as she had expected. It was Professor Spink.

The breakfast food magnate came directly toward the high, locked desk belonging to the dead and gone physician, who had been a kind friend and patron of this quack medicine man when he was a boy.

’Phemie had heard all the particulars of Spink’s connection with Dr. Polly Phelps. The good old doctor had been called to attend the boy in some childish disease while he was an inmate of the county poorhouse. His parents–who were gypsies, or like wanderers–had deserted the boy and he had “gone on the town,” as the saying was.

Dr. Polly had taken a fancy to the little fellow. He was then twelve years old–or thereabout–smart and sharp. The old doctor brought him home to Hillcrest, sent him to school, made him useful to him in a dozen ways, and began even to train him as a doctor.

For five years Jud Spink had remained with the old physician. Then he had run away with a medicine show. It was said, too, that he stole money from Dr. Polly when he went; but the physician had never said so, nor taken any means to punish the wayward boy if he returned.

And Jud Spink had never re-appeared in Bridleburg, or the vicinity, while the old doctor was alive.

Then his visits had been few and far between until, at last, coming back a few months before, a self-confessed rich man, he had declared his intention of settling down in the community.

But ’Phemie Bray believed that the false professor had come here to Hillcrest for a special object. He was money-mad–his avariciousness had been already well displayed.

She believed that there was something on Hillcrest that Jud Spink wanted–something he could make money out of.

She was not surprised, then, to see a short iron bar in the professor’s hand. It was flattened and sharpened at one end.

By the light of the hand-lamp the man went to work on the locked desk. It was of heavy wood–no flimsy thing like that one which he had burst open so easily the day of the Widow Harrison’s vendue.

The man inserted the sharp end of the jimmy between the lid and the upper shelf of the desk. ’Phemie heard the woodwork crack, and this time she did not suppress a gasp.

Why! this fellow was actually breaking open the old doctor’s desk. Aunt Jane had not even sent them the keys of the desk and bookcases in this suite of rooms.

Then ’Phemie had a sudden thought. She was really afraid of the big man. She did not know what he might do to her if he found her here spying on his actions. And–she didn’t want the lock of the old desk smashed.

She reached up softly and turned with shaking fingers the old-fashioned wooden button that held shut the door of the case beside which she crouched.

She remembered very clearly that it had snapped open before when she was investigating–and with a little click. The door of this case acted almost as though the hinges had springs coiled in them.

At once, when she released the door, it swung open–and in yawning it did make a suspicious sound.

Professor Spink started–he had been about to bear down on the bar again. He flashed a look back over his shoulder. But the corner was shrouded in darkness.

’Phemie sighed–this time with intent. She remembered how she had been frightened so herself at her former visit to this office–and she believed the marauder now before her had been partially the cause of her fright.

The jimmy dropped from Spink’s hand and clattered on the floor. He wheeled and shot the white spot of his lamp into the corner.

By great good fortune the ray of the lantern missed the girl; but it struck into the yawning case and intensified the horrid appearance of the skeleton.

For half a minute Spink stood as if frozen in his tracks. If he had known the old doctor had such a possession as the skeleton, he had forgotten it. Nor did he see any part of the case that held it, but just the dangling, grinning Thing itself, revealed by the brilliance of his spotlight, but with a mass of deep shadow surrounding it.

Professor Spink had perhaps had many perilous experiences in his varied life; but never anything just like this.

He might not have been afraid of a man–or a dozen men; no emergency–which he could talk out of–would have feazed him; but a man doesn’t feel like trying to talk down a skeleton!

He didn’t even stop to pick up the jimmy. He shut off the spotlight; and he stumbled over his own feet in getting to the door.

He was running away!

’Phemie was up immediately and after him. She did not propose for him to get away with that key.

“Stop! stop!” she shouted.

Perhaps Professor Spink verily believed that the skeleton in the box called after him–that it was, indeed, in actual pursuit.

He didn’t stop. He didn’t reply. He went across the small anteroom and out of the open green door.

But he had made a lot of noise. A big man with the fear of the supernatural chilling his very soul does not tread lightly.

A frightened ox in the place could have made no more noise. He tumbled over two chairs and finally went full length over an old hassock. He brought up with an awful crash against the big davenport in the corridor, where ’Phemie had tried to keep watch.

And there, when he tried to scramble up, he got entangled in ’Phemie’s quilt and went to the floor again just as a great light flashed into the corridor.

The Colesworths’ door stood open. Out dashed Harris in his pajamas and a robe. He fell upon the big body of Spink as though he were making a “tackle” in a football game.

“Hold him! hold him!” gasped ’Phemie.

“I’ve got him,” declared Harris. “What’s the matter, Miss ’Phemie?”

“He’s got the key,” explained ’Phemie. “Make him give it up.”

“Sure!” said Harris, and dexterously twitched the entangled Spink over on his back.

“By jove!” gasped the young man, standing up. “It’s the professor!”

“But he’s got the key!” the girl reiterated.

“What key?”

“The one to the green door.”

“The door of the east wing?” demanded Harris, turning to stare at the open door, on the threshold of which ’Phemie stood.

“Yes. I lost it. He found it. He’s got it somewhere. I found him trying to break into grandfather’s desk.”

“Bad, bad,” muttered Harris, stepping back and allowing the professor room to sit up. “Your interest in old desks seems to be phenomenal, Professor. Did you expect to find Confederate notes in this one?”

“Confound you–both!” snarled Spink, slowly rising.

“I don’t mind it,” said Harris, quietly. “But don’t include Miss Bray in your emphatic remarks. Give me that key.”

CHAPTER XXVII

THEY LOSE A BOARDER

Harris had something beside a square and determined jaw. He had muscular arms and he looked just then as though he were ready to use them. Spink gave him no provocation.

He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a key.

“Is this the one, Miss ’Phemie?” asked the young fellow.

The girl stepped forward, and in the lamplight from the bedroom doorway identified the key of the green door–with its tag attached.

“All right, then. Go to your room, Professor,” said Harris. “Unless you want him for something further, Miss ’Phemie?”

“My goodness me! No!” cried ’Phemie. “I never want to see him again.”

The professor was already aiming for the stairs, and he quickly disappeared. Harris turned to the still shaking girl.

“What’s it all about, Miss ’Phemie?” he asked.

“That’s what I’d really like to know myself,” she replied, eagerly. “He is after something – ”

“So my father says,” interposed Harris. “Father says Spink has something hidden–or has made some discovery–up there in the rocks.”

“I don’t know whether he really has found what he has been looking for – ”

“And that is?” suggested Harris.

“I wish we knew!” cried ’Phemie. “But we don’t. At least, I don’t–nor does Lyddy. But he tried to buy the farm of Aunt Jane once–only he offered a very small price.

“He has been hanging around here for months trying to find something. He got into the old offices to-night, and tried to break into grandfather’s desk – ”

Harris nodded thoughtfully.

“We want to look into this,” he said. “I hope you and your sister will not refuse my aid. This Spink may be more of a knave than a fool. Now, go back to bed and–and assure Miss Lyddy that I will be only too glad to help ‘thwart the villain’–if he really has some plan to better himself at your expense.”

’Phemie picked up her quilt, locked the green door, and returned to her room. Throughout all the excitement Lyddy had slept; but ’Phemie’s coming to bed aroused her.

The younger girl was too shaken by what had transpired to hide her excitement, and Lyddy quickly was broad awake listening to ’Phemie’s story. The latter told all that had happened, including her experiences on the night they had come to Hillcrest. There was no sleep for the two girls just then–not, at least, until they had discussed Professor Spink and the secret of the rocks at the back of the farm, from every possible angle.

“I shall tell him that his absence will be better appreciated than his company–at once!” declared Lyddy, finally.

“But sending him away isn’t going to explain the mystery,” wailed ’Phemie.

In the morning, before many of the other boarders were astir, the two girls caught the oily professor just starting off with a handbag.

“You’d better get the remainder of your baggage ready to go too, sir,” said Lyddy, sharply, “for we don’t want you here.”

“It’s packed, young lady,” returned Professor Spink, with a sneer. “I shall send a man for it from the hotel in town.”

“Well, that’s all right,” quoth the girl, warmly. “You’ve paid your board in advance, and I cannot complain. But I would like to have you explain what your actions last night mean?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about. I heard people moving about the house and–naturally–I went to see – ”

“Oh, you story-teller!” gasped ’Phemie.

“Ha! I can see that you have both made up your minds not to believe me,” said the odd boarder, haughtily. “Good-morning!”

“I honestly believe we ought to get a warrant out and have him arrested,” observed the older girl, thoughtfully.

“What for? I don’t believe he took anything,” said ’Phemie.

“Well! he was trying to break into grandfather’s desk, just the same,” said Lyddy, and then Harris Colesworth joined them.

Now, Lyddy believed that this young man was altogether too prone to meddle with other people’s affairs; yet ever since the Widow Harrison’s vendue she had been more friendly with Harris.

And now when he began to talk about the professor and his strange actions over night, she could only thank the young chemist for his assistance.

“Of course, we have no idea that that man took anything,” she concluded.

“But you know that he is after something. There is a mystery about his actions–both here at the house and up there in the rocks,” said Harris.

“Well–ye-es.”

“I have been talking to father about it. Father has seen him wandering about there so much. His anxiety not to be seen has piqued father’s curiosity, too. To tell the truth, that is what has kept father so much interested in getting specimens up yonder,” and the young man laughed.

“He tells me that he is sure there can be no great mineral wealth on the farm; yet Spink has found, or is trying to find, some deposit of value here – ”

“Do tell him about the bottles, Lyd!” cried ’Phemie.

“Oh, well, that may be nothing – ”

“What bottles?” demanded Harris, quickly. “Come on, girls, why not take me fully into your confidence? I might be of some use, you know.”

“But they were nothing but bottles of water,” objected Lyddy.

“Bottles of water?” repeated the young chemist, slowly. “Who had them?”

“Spink,” replied ’Phemie.

“What was he doing with them?”

She told him how they had watched the professor with his inexplicable water bottles.

“Foolish; isn’t it?” asked Lyddy.

“Sure–until we get the clue to it. Foolish to us, but mighty important to Professor Spink. Therefore we ought to look into it. Father doesn’t know anything about this bottle business.”

“Well, it’s Sunday,” sighed ’Phemie. “We can’t do anything about the mystery to-day.”

But her sister was fully roused, and when Lyddy determined on a thing, something usually came of it.

After breakfast, and after she had seen Lucas and his mother and Sairy drive past on their way to chapel, she put on her sunbonnet and started boldly for the neighboring farm, determined to have an interview with Cyrus Pritchett.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SECRET REVEALED

Lyddy did not have to go all the way to the Pritchett farm to speak with its proprietor. The farmer was wandering up Hillcrest way, looking at the growing corn, and she met him at the corner where the two farms came together.

“Mr. Pritchett,” she said, abruptly, “I want to ask you a serious question.”

He looked at her in his surly way–from under his heavy brows–and said nothing.

“You knew Mr. Spink when you were both boys; didn’t you?”

The old man’s look sharpened, but he only nodded. Cyrus was very chary of words.

“Mr. Spink left Hillcrest this morning. Last night my sister caught him in the east wing, trying to break open grandfather’s desk with a burglar’s jimmy. I am not at all sure that I shan’t have him arrested, anyway,” said Lyddy, with rising wrath, as she thought of the false professor’s actions.

“Ha!” grunted Mr. Pritchett.

“Now, sir, you know why Spink came to Hillcrest, why he has been searching up there among the rocks, and why he wanted to get at grandfather’s papers.”

“No, I don’t,” returned the farmer, flatly.

“You and Spink were up at Hillcrest the first night we girls slept there. And you frightened my sister half to death.”

The old man blinked at her, but never said a word.

“And you were there with Spink the evening Lucas took ’Phemie and me down to the Temperance Club–the first time,” said Lyddy, with surety. “You slipped out of sight when we drove into the yard. But it was you.”

“Oh, it was; eh?” growled Mr. Pritchett.

“Yes, sir. And I want to know what it means. What is Spink’s intention? What does he want up here?”

“I couldn’t tell ye,” responded Pritchett.

“You mean you won’t tell me?”

“No. I say what I mean,” growled Pritchett. “Jud Spink never told me what he wanted. I was up to the house with him–yep. I let him go into the cellar that night you say your sister was scart. But I didn’t leave him alone there.”

“But why?” gasped Lyddy.

“I can easy tell you my side of it,” said the farmer. “Jud and me was something like chums when we was boys. When he come back here a spell ago he heard I was storing something in the cellar under the east wing of the house. He told me he wanted to get into that cellar for something.

“So I met him up there that night. I opened the cellar door and we went down. I kept a lantern there. Then I found out he wanted to go farther. There’s a hatch there in the floor of the old doctor’s workshop – ”

“A trap door?”

“Yes.”

“And you let him up there?”

“Naw, I didn’t. He wouldn’t tell me what he wanted in the old doctor’s offices. I stayed there a while with him–us argyfyin’ all the time. Then we come away.”

“And the other time?”

“On Saturday night? I caught him trying to break in at the cellar door. I warned him not to try no more tricks, and I told him if he did I’d make it public. We ain’t been right good friends since,” declared Mr. Pritchett, chewing reflectively on a stalk of grass.

“And you don’t know what it’s all about?” demanded Lyddy, disappointedly.

“No more’n you do,” declared Mr. Pritchett; “or as much.”

“Oh, dear me!” cried Lyddy. “Then I’m just where I was when I started!”

“You wanter watch Jud Spink,” grumbled Mr. Pritchett, rising from the fence-rail on which he had been squatting. “Does he want to buy the farm?”

“Why–I guess not. He only made Aunt Jane a small offer for it.”

“He’ll make a bigger,” said Pritchett, clamping his jaws down tight on that word, and turned on his heel.

She knew there was no use in trying to get more out of him then. Cyrus Pritchett had “said his say.”

When Lyddy got back to the house again she found that Grandma Castle’s folks had come to see her in their big automobile, and she and ’Phemie had to hustle about with Mother Harrison to re-set the enlarged dining table and make other extra preparations for the unexpected visitors.

So busy were they that the girls did not miss Harris Colesworth and his father. They appeared just before the late dinner, rather warm and hungry-looking for the Sabbath, Harris bearing something in his arms carefully wrapped about in newspapers.

“Oh, what have you got?” ’Phemie gasped, having just a minute to speak to the young man.

“Samples of the water Spink has bottled up there,” returned Harris.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. But we’ll find out. Father has an idea, and if it’s so– ”

“Oh, what?” cried ’Phemie.

“You just wait!” returned Harris, hurrying away.

“Mean thing!” ’Phemie called after him. “You oughtn’t to have any dinner.”

But there was little chance for Harris to talk with the girls that day. Before the dinner dishes were cleared away, a thunder cloud suddenly topped the ridge, and soon a furious shower fell, with the thunder reverberating from hill to hill, and the lightning flashing dazzlingly.