The Mystery at Dark Cedars

“How about supper time?” questioned Mary Louise. “Couldn’t somebody have climbed in over the porch roof while the family were eating in the dining room?”

“It’s possible,” answered Hannah. “But it ain’t likely. Burglars ain’t usually as quiet as all that. No; I hold with Miss Mattie – that Elsie or maybe that good-fer-nuthin’ Harry took the money.”

Mary Louise sighed and turned towards the door.

“I’m sure it wasn’t Elsie,” she said again. “But maybe you’re right about Mr. Harry Grant. I hope we find out… By the way,” she added, “you couldn’t tell me just how much was taken, could you, Hannah?”

“No, I couldn’t. Miss Mattie didn’t say… Now, my advice to you girls is: fergit all about it! It ain’t none of your affairs, and Elsie ain’t a good companion fer you young ladies. She ain’t had no eddication, and probably, now she’s fifteen, her aunt’ll put her into service as a housemaid somewheres. And you won’t want to be associatin’ with no servant girl!”

Jane’s eyes blazed with indignation.

“It’s not fair!” she cried. “In a country like America, where education is free. Anybody who wants it has a right to it.”

“Then she can git it at night school while she’s workin’, if she sets her mind to it,” remarked Hannah complacently.

“Well, Hannah, we thank you very much for your help,” concluded Mary Louise as she opened the screen door. “And – you’ll see us again!”

Neither girl said anything further until they were outside the big hedge that surrounded Dark Cedars. Both of them felt baffled by the conflicting information they had gathered.

“I wish I could put the whole affair up to Daddy,” observed Mary Louise, as they descended the hill to the road. “He isn’t home now, but he soon will be.”

“Well, you can’t,” replied her chum. “It might get Elsie into trouble. And besides, we gave our promise.”

“It’ll be hard not to talk about it. Oh, dear, if we only knew where and how to begin!”

“I guess the first thing to do is to find out just what was stolen,” said Jane. “That would make it more definite, at least. We have heard that it was money, but we don’t know how much or what kind.”

“Yes, that’s true – and it would help considerably to know. For instance, if there was a lot of gold, as Elsie seems to think, it would be practically impossible for Harry Grant to have concealed it in his pockets, or for Corinne Pearson to have carried it back to Riverside without any car. But if, on the other hand, it was mostly paper money, it would be no trick at all for either one of them to have made away with it.”

The shrill screech of a loud horn attracted the girls’ attention at that moment. A familiar horn, whose sound could not be mistaken. It belonged on the roadster owned by Max Miller, Mary Louise’s special boy-friend.

In another second the bright green car flashed into view, came up to the girls, and stopped with a sudden jamming on of the brakes. Two hatless young men in flannel trousers and tennis shirts jumped out of the front seat.

“What ho! and hi! – and greetings!” cried Max in delight. “Where have you two been?”

“Taking a walk,” answered Mary Louise calmly.

“Taking a walk!” repeated Norman Wilder, the other young man, who was usually at Jane’s elbow at parties and sports affairs. “You mean – giving us the air!”

“Giving you the air? In what way?” Jane’s tone sounded severe, but her eyes were smiling into Norman’s, as if she were not at all sorry to see him.

“Forgot all about that tennis date we had, didn’t you?” demanded Max. “Is that a nice way to treat a couple of splendid fellows like ourselves?” He threw out his chest and pulled himself up to his full height, which was six feet one.

Mary Louise gasped and looked conscience-stricken.

“We did forget!” she exclaimed. “But we can play now just as well as not – at least, if you’ll take us home to get our shoes and rackets.”

“O.K.,” agreed Max. He turned to Norman. “Get into the rumble, old man. I crave to have Mary Louise beside me.”

The car started forward with its customary sudden leap, and Max settled back in his seat.

“We’ve got some great news for you, Mary Lou,” he announced immediately. “Big picnic on for this coming Saturday! Rounding up the whole crowd.”

Mary Louise was not impressed. Picnics seemed tame to her in comparison with the excitement of being a detective and hunting down thieves.

“Afraid I have an engagement,” she muttered. She and Jane had a special arrangement, by which every free hour of the day was pledged to the other, so that if either wanted to get out of an invitation, she could plead a previous date without actually telling a lie.

“The heck you have!” exclaimed Max, in disappointment. “You’ve got to break it!”

“Sez you?”

“Yeah! Sez I. And you’ll say so too, Mary Lou, when you hear more about this picnic. It’s going to be different. We’re driving across to Cooper’s woods – ”

“Oh, I’ve been there,” yawned Mary Louise. “There’s nothing special there. Looks spooky and deep, but it’s just an ordinary woods. Maybe a little wilder – ”

“Wait! You women never let a fellow talk. I’ve been trying to tell you something for five minutes, and here we are at your house, and you haven’t heard it yet.”

“I guess I shan’t die.”

With a light laugh she opened the car door and leaped out, at the exact moment that Jane and Norman jumped from the rumble, avoiding a collision by a fraction of an inch.

“Tell me about it when I come out again,” called Mary Louise to Max as she and Jane ran into their respective houses to change.

Freckles met Mary Louise at the door.

“Can I go with you, Sis?” he demanded.

“Yes, if you’re ready,” she agreed, making a dash for the stairs. Her mother, meeting her in the hall, tried to detain her.

She asked, “Did the girl like the clothes, dear?”

“Oh, yes, she loved them,” replied Mary Louise. “I’ll tell you more about it when I get back from tennis. The boys are pestering us to hurry.”

Three minutes later both she and Jane were back in the car again, with Freckles and Silky added to the passenger list.

Max immediately went on about the picnic, just as if he hadn’t been interrupted at all.

“Here’s the big news,” he said, as he stepped on the starter: “There are gypsies camping over in that meadow beside Cooper’s woods! So we’re all going to have our fortunes told. That’s why we’re having the picnic there. Now, won’t that be fun?”

“Yes, I guess so. But I really don’t see how Jane and I can come – ”

She was interrupted by a tap on her shoulder from the rumble seat.

“I think we can break that date, Mary Lou,” announced her chum, with a wink.

Mary Louise raised her eyebrows.

“Well, of course, if Jane thinks so – ” she said to Max.

“It’s as good as settled,” concluded Max, with a chuckle.

But Mary Louise was not convinced until she had a chance, after the game was over, to talk to Jane alone and to ask her why she wanted to go on the picnic when they had such important things to do.

“Because I had an inspiration,” replied Jane. “One of us can ask the gypsy to solve our crime for us! They do tell strange things, sometimes, you know – and they might lead us to the solution!”

CHAPTER V

The Stolen Treasure

“I’m not just tired,” announced Jane Patterson, dropping into the hammock on Mary Louise’s porch after the tennis was over. “I’m completely exhausted! I don’t believe I can even move as far as our house – let alone walk anywhere.”

“Oh, yes, you can,” replied Mary Louise. “You’ll feel lots better after you get a shower and some clean clothing. Four sets of tennis oughtn’t to do you up. Many a time I’ve seen you good for six.”

“I know, but they weren’t so strenuous. Honestly, you and Max ran me ragged. I tell you, Mary Lou, I’m all in. And I couldn’t walk up that hill to Miss Grant’s house if it meant life or death to me.”

“But think of poor Elsie! She may need us now.”

“Oh, what could we do?”

“I don’t know yet. But we have to go to find out just what was stolen, if for nothing else. She may know by this time.”

“Then why not let the boys drive us up?” asked Jane, with a yawn.

“You know why. We can’t let them into the secret: they’d tell everybody. And I bet, if the thing got out, Miss Grant would be so mad she’d have Elsie arrested then and there. No, there’s nothing for us to do but walk… So please go get your shower.”

Wearily Jane struggled to her feet.

“O.K. But I warn you, I may drop in my tracks, and then you’ll have to carry me.”

“I’ll take a chance.”

Mary Louise met another protest from her mother, who tried to insist that her daughter lie down for a little rest before supper. But here again persuasion won.

“Really, I’m not tired, Mother,” she explained. “It’s only that I’m hot and dirty. And we have something very important to do – I wish I could tell you all about it, but I can’t now.”

Her mother seemed satisfied. She had learned by this time that she could trust Mary Louise.

“All right, dear,” she said. “Call Jane over, and you may all have some lemonade. Freckles said he had to have a cold drink.”

The refreshments revived even Jane, and half an hour later the two girls were walking up the shady lane which led towards the Grant place. It wasn’t so bad as Jane had expected; the road was so sheltered by trees that they did not mind the climb.

Once inside the hedge they peered eagerly in among the cedar trees for a glimpse of Elsie. But they did not see her anywhere.

“She’s probably in the kitchen helping Hannah with the dinner,” concluded Mary Louise. “Let’s go around back.”

Here they found her, sitting on the back step, shelling peas. She was wearing her old dress again, and the girls could see that she had been crying. But her eyes lighted up with pleasure at the sight of her two friends.

“Oh, I’m so glad to see you girls!” she cried. “I wanted you so much, and I didn’t know how to let you know. You see, I don’t even have your address – though that wouldn’t have done me much good, because I’m not allowed out of the gate, and I haven’t any stamp to put on a letter. The only thing I could do was pray that you would come!”

“Well, here we are!” announced Mary Louise, with a significant look at Jane. “Now tell us why you specially wanted us.”

“I wanted you to assure Aunt Mattie that you really did give me those dresses and things. Right away she said I must have bought them with her money. Though how she thinks I ever had a chance to get to any store is beyond me. She knows I never leave this place.”

“How did she find out about them?” inquired Mary Louise. “You didn’t show them to her, did you?”

“No, I didn’t. She found them while she was searching through my things this morning, to see whether I had her money hidden anywhere.”

“That’s terrible!” exclaimed Jane. “Oh, how dreadful it must be to be all alone in the world, without anybody who trusts you!” Something of the same thought ran through Mary Louise’s brain at the same time.

“Tell us just what has happened today, since we left,” urged Mary Louise. “Has anybody been here?”

“No. Not a soul. But Aunt Mattie put me through a lot more questions at lunch, and afterward she gave my room a thorough search. When she found my new clothes, she was more sure than ever that I was the thief. She told me if I didn’t confess everything right away she’d have to change her mind and call the police.”

“Did she call them?” demanded Jane.

“Not yet. It’s lucky for me that she hasn’t a telephone. She said she guessed she’d send William after supper. So you can see how much it meant to me for you girls to come over now!”

Mary Louise nodded gravely, and Jane blushed at her reluctance in wanting to come. If Elsie had gone to jail, it would have been their fault for giving her the clothing!

“When can we see your aunt?” inquired Mary Louise.

“Right now. I’ll go in and tell her. She’s out on the front porch, I think.”

Elsie handed her pan to Hannah and went through the kitchen to the front of the house. She was back again in a moment, telling the girls to come with her.

They found the old lady in her favorite rocking chair, with her knitting in her lap. But she was not working – just scowling at the world in general, and when Elsie came out on the dilapidated porch an expression of pain crossed her wrinkled brows. Whether it was real pain from that trouble in her side which she had mentioned, or whether it was only a miserly grief over the loss of her money, Mary Louise had no way of telling.

“Good-afternoon, Miss Grant,” she said pleasantly. “How is your kitten today?”

A smile crept over the woman’s face, making her much more pleasant to look at.

“She’s fine,” she replied. “Come here, Puffy, and speak to the kind girls who rescued you yesterday!”

The kitten ran over and jumped into Miss Grant’s lap.

“She certainly is sweet,” said Mary Louise. She cleared her throat: why couldn’t the old lady help her out by asking her a question about the clothing?

But Elsie, nervously impatient, brought up the subject they were all waiting for.

“Tell Aunt Mattie about the dresses and the coat,” she urged.

“Oh, yes,” said Mary Louise hastily. “Your niece told us, Miss Grant, that she never gets to Riverside to buy any new clothes, so when I noticed we were all three about the same size, Jane and I asked our mothers whether we couldn’t give her some of ours. They were willing, and so we brought them over this morning.”

“Humph!” was the only comment Miss Grant made to this explanation. Mary Louise could not tell whether she believed her or not and whether she was pleased or angry.

“You didn’t mind, did you, Miss Grant?” she inquired nervously.

“No, of course not. Elsie’s mighty lucky… I only hope when she’s working as somebody’s maid that they’ll be as nice to her. It helps out, when wages are small. For nobody wants to pay servants much these days.”

A lump came into Mary Louise’s throat at the thought of Elsie’s future, which Miss Grant had just pictured for them. She longed to plead the girl’s cause, but she knew it would do no good. Especially at the present time, with Miss Grant poorer than she had ever been in her life.

The old lady’s eyes suddenly narrowed, and she looked sharply at Mary Louise.

“See here!” she said abruptly. “You two girls are the only people besides those living in this house who know about this robbery, and I don’t want you to say a word of it to anybody! Understand? I don’t want the police in on this until I am ready to tell them. Or my other relatives, either. I expect to get that money back myself!”

All three girls breathed a sigh of relief: it was evident that the police would not be summoned that evening. And both Mary Louise and Jane gave their promise of utmost secrecy.

“But we’d like to help discover the thief, if we can,” added Mary Louise. “You don’t mind if we try, do you, Miss Grant – if it’s all on the quiet?”

“No, I don’t mind. But I don’t see what you can do.” Miss Grant looked sharply at Elsie, as if she thought maybe her niece might confess to these girls while she stubbornly refused to tell her aunt anything. “Yes,” she added, “you might succeed where I failed… Yes, I’ll pay ten dollars’ reward if you get my money back for me.”

“We think it might have been a robber,” remarked Mary Louise, to try to divert Miss Grant’s suspicious eyes from her niece. “He could have slipped in while you were at supper.”

“It wasn’t a robber,” announced Miss Grant, with conviction. “If it had been, he’d have taken everything. The most valuable things were left in the safe. My bonds. They’re government bonds, too, so anybody could see the value of them – except a child! No, it was somebody right in this house!”

And she laughed with that nasty cackle which made Jane so angry, that, she said afterward, if Miss Grant hadn’t been an old lady, she would have slapped her then and there in the face.

“Or maybe it was one of your other relations,” said Mary Louise evenly.

“Possibly. I wouldn’t trust Harry Grant or Corinne Pearson. Or Corinne’s mother, either, for that matter!”

“How about Mrs. Grant?”

“My sister-in-law? No, I don’t think she’d take anything. And I know it wasn’t John – or either of the servants… No.” She looked at Elsie again. “There’s your culprit. Make her confess – and you get ten dollars!”

She paused, while everybody looked embarrassed. But she was enjoying the situation. “I’ll make it ten dollars apiece!” she added.

“It isn’t the money we want, Miss Grant,” said Mary Louise stiffly. “It’s to clear Elsie of suspicion.”

“Nonsense! Everybody wants money!”

Mary Louise took her notebook out of her pocket.

“Would you tell us just how much money was taken, Miss Grant?” she asked. “And – all about it?”

“Yes, of course I will. There was a metal box in the safe with five hundred dollars in gold – ”

“Gold!” exclaimed Jane. “I thought you were supposed to turn that in to the government!”

“You mind your business!” snapped Miss Grant.

“We will – We will!” said Mary Louise hastily. “Please go on, Miss Grant!”

“Five hundred dollars in twenty-dollar gold pieces,” she repeated. “Then there was eight hundred and fifty dollars in bills – all in fifty-dollar notes. I have the numbers of the bills written down in a book upstairs. Would you like to copy them down, Mary Louise?”

“Yes, indeed!” cried the latter rapturously. Miss Grant was treating her just like a real detective!

“Come upstairs, then, with me, and you can see the safe and my room at the same time.” The old lady turned to her niece, who was still waiting nervously beside the door. “Go back to your work, Elsie,” she commanded. “Hannah will be wanting you.”

The girl nodded obediently, but before she disappeared she softly asked Mary Louise, “Will you and Jane be back again tomorrow?”

“Yes, of course,” was the reply. “You can count on us.”

Miss Grant gathered up her knitting and picked up her kitten from the porch floor, where it had been rolling about with a ball of its mistress’s wool.

“I may want you girls to walk over to the bank with me tomorrow,” she remarked. “Unless John happens to come here in his car. I’ve about decided to put my bonds into a safe-deposit box at the bank.”

“We’ll be glad to go with you,” Mary Louise assured her.

The old lady struggled painfully to her feet and led the way through the house, up the stairs to her room. Both girls noticed the ominous creak which these gave when anything touched them, and Jane shuddered. It must be awful to live in a tumble-down place like this!

Miss Grant’s room on the second floor was at the front of the house, just as Elsie had said, and one window overlooked the porch. It was furnished with ugly, heavy wooden furniture, and a rug that was almost threadbare. Along one wall, opposite the bed, was a huge closet, in which, no doubt, Miss Grant kept those old dresses which she had offered to Corinne Pearson. And the most astonishing thing about the bedroom was the fact that it contained not a single mirror!

(“But, of course,” Jane remarked afterward, “you wouldn’t want to see yourself if you looked like that old maid!”)

Off in the corner was the iron safe, with the only comfortable chair in the room beside it. Here, evidently, Miss Grant spent most of her time, rocking in the old-fashioned chair and gloating over her money.

Now she hobbled directly to the safe and opened the door for the girls to look into it. “You can see how the lock has been picked,” she pointed out. “It’s broken now, of course.” She suddenly eyed the girls suspiciously, as if they were not to be trusted either, and added, “The bonds aren’t in there now! I hid them somewhere else.”

Mary Louise nodded solemnly.

“Yes, that was wise, Miss Grant… Now, may I write down the numbers of the bills that were stolen?”

After she had concluded this little task, she went to examine the windows. They were both large – plenty big enough for a person to step through without any difficulty. But the one over the porch proved disappointing, for the roof of the porch was crumbling so badly and the posts were so rotted that anyone who attempted to climb in by that method would be taking his life in his hands.

“I always keep that window locked,” said Miss Grant, following Mary Louise. “So you see why I don’t think it was a burglar who took my money. Locked – day and night!”

Mary Louise nodded and examined the other window. It was high from the ground; there was a tree growing near it, but not near enough to make it possible for a human being to jump from a branch to the window sill. Only a monkey could perform a trick like that!

Mary Louise turned away with a sigh. She was almost ready to admit that the robbery was an inside job, as Miss Grant insisted.

“May we see inside the closet before we go?” she asked as an afterthought.

Miss Grant nodded and opened the door, disclosing a space as large as the kitchenettes in some of the modern apartments. Miss Grant herself used it as a small storeroom for the things that she did not want to put up in the attic.

“Anybody could hide here for hours,” Jane remarked, “without being suffocated.”

“Which is just what I believe Elsie did!” returned Miss Grant, with a smirk.

And the girls, unhappy and more baffled than ever, went home to their suppers.

CHAPTER VI

A Wild Ride

“One of the best points in this case,” Mary Louise observed, in her most professional tone, “is its secrecy.”

“Why do you say that?” questioned Jane.

The girls were returning from their second visit that day to Dark Cedars and were walking as fast as they could towards home. It was almost six o’clock, and Mary Louise usually helped her mother a little with the supper. But Freckles was there; she knew he would offer his services.

“What I mean is, since the robbery hasn’t been talked about, nobody is on guard,” she explained. “If any of those relatives did take the money, probably they think the theft hasn’t been discovered yet, or Miss Grant would have called them over to see her. In a way, it’s pretty tricky of her.”

“But, do you know, I can hardly believe any of them stole all that gold,” returned Jane. “Because, what would they do with it? Nobody is supposed to use gold nowadays, and it would arouse all sorts of suspicions.”

“Yes, that’s true. But then, they might want to hoard it, the same as Miss Grant did.”

“A man like Harry Grant wouldn’t want to hoard any! From what I hear of him, he spends money before he even gets it.”

“True. But there are other relatives. And somebody did steal it!”

“Yes, somebody stole it, all right. Only, the fact that a lot of it was gold makes Elsie look guilty. She probably wouldn’t know about the new law.”

Mary Louise frowned: she didn’t like that thought. “Well, I’m not going to suspect Elsie till I’ve investigated everybody else. Every one of those five relations – Mrs. Grant, John Grant, Harry Grant, Mrs. Pearson, and her daughter Corinne!”

“Have you any plan at all?” inquired Jane.

“Yes, I’d like to do a little snooping tonight.”

“Snooping? Where? How?”

“Sneak around those two houses in Riverside – the Grants’, where John and Harry live with their mother, and the Pearsons’! It’s such a warm evening they’ll probably be on their porches, and we might overhear something to our advantage.”

“But suppose we were arrested for prowling?”

“Oh, they wouldn’t arrest two respectable-looking girls like us! Besides, if they did, Daddy could easily get us out.”

“Is he home?”

“No, he isn’t. But he’ll be back in a day or two.”

“A day or two in the county jail wouldn’t be so good!”

“Nonsense, Jane! Nothing will happen,” Mary Louise assured her. “We’ve got to take some chances if we’re going to be detectives. Daddy takes terrible ones sometimes.”

“Do you know where these people live?” inquired her chum. “The Grants and the Pearsons, I mean?”

“I know where the Grants live: in that big red brick house on Green Street. Old-fashioned, set back from the street. Don’t you remember?”

“Yes, I guess I do.”

“We can pass it on our way home, if we go one block farther down before we turn in at our street.”

“How about the Pearsons?” asked Jane.

“I don’t know where they live. But I think we can get the address from the phone book.”