The spoons were gone!
Nettie discovered this very early the next morning, for the truth was, the maid did not return to sleep after the escape of the burglar from the Robinson cottage.
The fact that she had been intrusted with the care of the table silver, during the absence of Mrs. Robinson, gave the girl grave anxiety, and, although Bess was willing to say it was partly her fault that the silver had not been brought upstairs that night, Nettie felt none the less guilty.
The boys, Ed and Jack, were around at the cottage before the tired girls had a chance to collect themselves after breakfast.
"We have got to make a quiet search first," said Jack, after hearing the story. "No use putting the officers on until we get a look over the neighborhood. From Cora's version of the affair he could not have gone very far."
This was considered good advice, and accordingly Jack went back to the bungalow for Walter, so that all three chums might start out together.
"Did you really get a look at him?" Ed asked Cora.
"Not exactly a look," replied Cora, "but I noticed when he jumped up into the window that he wore a beard—he looked almost like a wild man."
"Naturally he would look to you that way, under the circumstances," said Ed, "but what stumps me is how you expected him—how you had the gun loaded and all that."
"Well, didn't he prowl around the very first day we came in from leaving mother at the train? He seemed to know we would be alone," declared Belle. "I hope he is so badly hurt that he had to——"
"Give up prowling," finished Cora. "Well, I hope he is not badly hurt. It is not pleasant to feel that one has really injured another, even if he be a bold, bad burglar."
"Don't let that worry you," encouraged Ed. "I rather guess his legs are used to balls and bullets. But here come the fellows. So long, girls," as he started off to meet Walter and Jack. "If we don't get the spoons we will get something."
"Where are they going?" asked Bess.
"Oh, I am so nervous and tired out this morning!" and Belle's white face corroborated that statement. "I feel I will have to go back to bed."
"It's the best thing you can do," advised Cora, for, indeed, the dainty, nervous Belle was easily overcome. "I might say, though, go out on the porch and rest in the hammock. The air will help."
Nettie was already searching and beating the ground from under the hall window out into the field, and then into the street. She had found one spoon, and she had also found a spot that showed where some one had lately been lying in the tall grass.
Cora joined her now, and the two came to the conclusion that the man had rested there possibly to do something for the injured foot or leg.
"It is well you found even one spoon," said Cora, bending low in the bushes to make sure there were no more dropped there, "for that will help in identifying the others."
"But I do feel dreadfully," sighed Nettie. "I have been with Mrs.Robinson so long, and nothing of the kind has ever before happened."
"There has to be a first time," said Cora, "and I am sure Mrs. Robinson will not blame you."
"Only for you what might have happened," exclaimed the girl, looking into Cora's flushed face. "I cannot see how you ever had the courage to fire!"
"I had to! Think of three helpless girls—and a desperate man. Why, if I showed fright, I am sure we might have all been chloroformed or something. Why, what's this? I declare! a chloroform bottle! There! And it's from the town drug store! Well, now, wasn't it lucky I had the revolver?" She picked up a small phial.
"Don't tell Miss Bess or Miss Belle," cautioned Nettie. "They are so nervous now, I think they would not stay in the house another night if they knew about the bottle."
"All right," agreed Cora, "but it will be well for the boys to know about it. It shows that the man went to the Spray drug store, and that he must belong about here some place."
Meanwhile, Ed, Jack and Walter had done considerable searching. They followed what they took to be a trail, down over the railroad tracks, through swamps, and they finally brought up at an abandoned gypsy camp!
"They left in a hurry," declared Ed. "See, they had a meal here last night, at least."
The remains of food and of a campfire showed that his surmise was correct, and Jack made bold enough to pull down an old horse blanket that hung to the ground from the low limbs of a tree. "Hello! Who are you?" exclaimed Jack, for back of the improvised curtain lay a man asleep!
The other boys ran to the spot.
"That's him," whispered Ed, ignoring his education. "Look at the bandaged foot!"
The man turned over and growled. He was not asleep, but pretended to be, or wanted to be.
"Here!" exclaimed Ed, giving him a shove, "wake up! We want those spoons you borrowed last night!"
The fellow pulled himself up on his arms and made a move as if to get something in his pocket, but the boys were too many and too quick for him.
Ed and Walter had his arms secure before he had a chance to sit upright. Jack whipped out a strap, and while the fellow vigorously protested and exerted a desperate effort to free himself, the young men made him their prisoner.
"You stay here, and I will go for the officer," said Jack, having tied fast the man's hands and noting that the sore foot would not permit of any running away.
"What do you want?" shouted the man. "If you don't let me go, I'll——"
"Oh, no, you won't," interrupted Ed.
"A nice chap to break in on a couple of girls! Even robbers should have some honor," and Ed pushed the man back into the grass just to relieve his feelings.
"I didn't do no breaking in," said the fellow, turning in pain. "I got kicked with a horse."
"A little iron broncho," remarked Walter, with a smile. "Well, that sort of kick stays a while. I guess you won't feel like running after that horse. Did he run away?"
The man looked as if he would like to strangle Walter, but he was forced to lie there helpless.
Jack had gone. The officer, after hearing the story, decided to ask Cora to go to the swamp to identify the man. With this intention the two stopped at the cottage, and Cora promised to hurry along after them down to the abandoned camp.
"I can't go this very minute," she said, "but I know the way. I will follow directly."
"No need to go into the woods," said the officer, on second thought. "Just step down to the station house. We will have him there inside of half an hour."
This was agreed upon, and when Jack and the Constable had gone toward the camp, Cora, without telling Bess or Belle, who did not happen to see the man with Jack, slipped into a linen outing suit and started for the country police station.
The road led cross-cut through a lot. There were trees in the very heart of this big meadow, and when Cora reached a clump of birches she was suddenly startled to see an old woman shuffling after her. Cora stopped instantly. It was broad daylight, so she had no thought of fear.
"What do you want?" she demanded of the woman, whom she saw was an old gypsy.
"I—want—you, young lady!" almost hissed the woman. "Do not get Salvo into trouble!" and she raised a black and withered hand in warning, "or trouble shall be upon your head!"
"Salvo!"
"Tony Salvo! Liza has spoken!" and the old gypsy turned away, after giving Cora a look such as the young girl was not apt soon to forget.
But Cora went straight on to the police station.
Cora was pale and frightened. Jack and Ed had already reached the office of the country squire, where that official had taken the sulky prisoner. Walter went back to the cottage to assure the young girls there that everything would ultimately be all right.
From under dark, shaggy eyebrows the man stared at Cora. He seemed to know of the gypsy woman's threat, and was adding to it all the savagery that looks and scowls could impart. But Cora was not to be thus intimidated—to give in to such lawbreakers.
"Do you recognize the prisoner?" asked the officer.
"As well as I can tell from the opportunity I had of seeing him," replied the girl, in a steadied voice.
"What about him do you remember?"
"The beard, and the fact that he is lame. I must have hit him when I fired to give the alarm."
The man looked up and smiled. "Humph!" he grunted, "fired—to give—the alarm!"
"Pretty good firing, eh?" demanded the squire. "Now, Miss Kimball, please give us the whole story."
Again the man cast that swift, fierce look at Cora, but her eyes were diverted from him.
"The first time I saw him—I think it was he—was one evening when we were returning from a motor ride. I saw a man creeping around the cottage. He had that peculiar stoop of the shoulders."
"He's got that, all right," agreed the squire.
"The next time I saw the person, whom I take to be this man, was last night, about midnight. I was aroused from sleep, and upon making a light in the hall I saw a man under the window. The next moment he jumped out, and again I saw the figure under the window."
Cora paused. Somehow she felt unreasonably nervous, but the strain of the night's excitement might account for that.
"What have you got to say for yourself, Tony?" asked the squire.
"Not guilty," growled the man. "I was at the camp last night, and when the old folks were packing up I got kicked with that big bay horse. Ouch!" and he rubbed the injured leg.
"Looks funny, though, doesn't it, Tony?"
Jack and Ed were talking to Cora. "If you have finished with us, Squire Redding, we will leave," said Ed. "My sister is not used to this sort of thing."
"Certainly, certainly," agreed the squire politely. "I am much obliged for her testimony. I guess we will hold Tony for the grand jury. Gypsies in this county have to be careful, or they lose their rights to come in here. I think, myself, we would be better off without them."
"Then give me a chance to leave," snapped the man. "The rest are gone.We are done with this blamed county, anyhow."
"Well, you will have to settle up first," declared Squire Redding."Those spoons were valuable."
"I ain't got no spoons! I tell you I was at the camp all night, and I don't know nothin' about this thing."
"Very well, very well. Can you furnish a thousand-dollar bond?"
"Thousand-dollar bond!" and the gypsy shifted uneasily. "I guess not, judge."
"Then here comes the man to attend to your case. Constable Cummings, take this man to the station again and lock him up. Here, Tony, you can walk all right. Don't play off that way."
But Tony did not move. He sat there defiant.
Officer Cummings was a big man and accustomed to handling prisoners as rough and as ugly as this one. The two steel cells back of the fire house were often occupied by rough fishermen and clammers who forgot the law at the seaside place, and it was always Tom Cummings who put them in "the pen."
"Come, Tony," he said, with a flourish of his stick. "I never like to hit a gypsy; it's bad luck."
The prisoner looked up at big Tom. Then he shuffled to his feet and shambled out of the room.
As he passed down the stone steps he brushed past Cora. Whether intentionally or otherwise, the man shoved the girl so that she was obliged to jump down at the side of the step. Jack saw it and so did Ed, but big Tom winked at them and merely hurried the prisoner along. Cora only smiled. Why should the man not be rude when her evidence had accused him of a serious crime—that of breaking and entering?
"I didn't tell you about the bottle," she said to the boys as they walked along. "I found this bottle in the fields."
"Chloroform!" exclaimed Jack. "You should have told the judge, Cora."
"But could I prove that the man had it? Besides, it would be awful to have that made public."
"You are right, Cora," agreed Ed. "First thing we'd know, it would be in the New York papers. 'Attempt to Chloroform Three Young Girls!' That would not be pleasant news for the folks up home way."
"Oh, well, I suppose you are right," said Jack. "But that bottle puts a different light on the case, and it seems to me the fellow ought to suffer for it."
"And do you know that old gypsy woman, Liza, met me and tried to scare me into—or out of—identifying Tony? She made a most dramatic threat."
"Did, eh? I thought all the gypsies had cleared out!" exclaimed Jack."I'll go and get a warrant for her——"
"She took the eleven o'clock train," said Cora. "I saw her going to the station as I came up the street. Oh, I wouldn't bother with the poor old woman. This man is her brother, and naturally she wants to keep him out of trouble."
"At the expense of trouble for others." Jack was determined to have justice for his sister. "I'm going to make sure she and the whole tribe have left the county. The lazy loafers!"
"Now, Jacky," and Ed smiled indulgently. "Didn't Liza tell your fortune once, and say that you were going to marry the proverbial butter tub? It is not nice of you to go back on a thing like that."
"Did it strike you, boys, that this man answers the description of the man Mrs. Robbins was frightened by?" asked Cora.
"That's so," agreed Ed. "I'll bet he had his eye on something around the bungalow—not Miss Robbins, of course."
"Well, it seems better that he is now safe," said Cora, with a sigh."I'm glad I am through with it."
"I hope you are," said Ed, and something in his manner caused Cora to remember that remark. "I hope you are!"
But Cora was not through with it by a great deal—as we shall soon see.
"Dear me! I did think something else would happen to prevent us from getting off," said Bess, as she and Belle, with Cora, actually started out to get the autos ready for the tour to the Berkshires. "And to think that Miss Robbins can go with us!"
"I'm sure she will be a lot better than a nervous person like dear mamma," said Belle. "Not but what we would love to have mamma go, but she does not enjoy our kind of motoring."
"It does seem fortunate that Miss Robbins wanted to go," added Cora."I like her; she is the ideal type of business woman."
"Is she?" asked Belle, in such an innocent way that the other two girls laughed outright.
"Oh, I suppose I ought to know," and Belle pouted; "but we always thinkCora knows so much better—and more."
"Which is another fact I have bumped into," said Cora.
"I just feel that we are going to have the jolliest of good times," remarked Bess, as they started down the road. "I never care what route we take. Isn't it fine that the boys attended to all that arrest and police business for us?"
"Very fine," agreed Cora, "but I like to have my say now about our plans. We are going to take the main road along the New York side. We will touch Bridgeport and Waterbury. You might like to know that much."
"There are the boys, and there is Miss Robbins! My, doesn't she look smart!" suddenly exclaimed Bess.
"That's a smart outfit," Cora agreed, as they saw the party approaching, Miss Robbins "done up" in a tan suit, with the exact shade in a motor cap.
"I'm so glad we have all the things in the cars. It is so much better to do that the night before," remarked Belle.
"But you didn't do it the night before; I did!" her sister reminded her.
"Did you bring the hot-water bottle?" asked Cora. "If Belle gets a headache, you will surely need it."
This was not a joke, neither was it intended for sarcasm, for on previous tours Belle had suffered, and the getting of reliable remedies was one of the real discomforts of the trip.
"I put in the water bag and mustard, too," said Belle. "Bess is just as likely as not to get a cold, and she has to have mustard."
"I suppose Cora brought cold cream," called Bess, with a laugh. "That is usually the important drug in her medicine chest."
"I did," admitted Cora. "I will surely have to use a barrel of it going through the changes in the hills. I cannot stand a stinging face."
Mrs. Robinson had taken a notion that her twins were outgrowing their twinship, consequently their outfits for the mountain trip had been made exactly alike in material and effect. The result was, the boys purposely mixed the girls up, asking Belle what made her so thin, for instance, when they knew perfectly well that she was always thin, and that it was Bess who had to own to being stout.
The twins' costumes were of hunter-green corduroy, with knitted green caps. Cora wore mole-color cloth, with a toque to match, and as they now stood before the garage, waiting the coming of the others, who had stopped at the post office, many admiring eyes turned in their direction.
"They have a lot of mail," remarked Cora gleefully, as Jack waved letters and cards to her. "I hope it is nothing we don't want just now."
"As long as the gypsy man is safe, we needn't fear anything unpleasant," said Bess, "but I did feel a lot better when I heard that they took him to the real county jail."
"Oh, yes," and Cora laughed. "You seemed to think that man was our particular evil genius. Bess, all gypsies are supposed to steal."
"Hello!"
"Here we are!"
"Everybody and everything!"
"No, Wallie forgot his new handkerchief—the one with the pretty rose in the corner."
"And Jacky forgot his rope. We won't be able to haul him this time."
"I forgot something," began Miss Robbins, "my absorbent cotton. See to it that if you must get hurt you don't get——"
"The nose-bleed," Ed finished more practically than eloquently.
Miss Robbins was to travel in Cora's car, with Cora and Hazel Hastings. The boys had tried to alter this plan, they declaring one boy, at least, should go in the big car, but Cora argued that theWhirlwindwas distinctly a girl's auto, and only girls should travel in it. This put Jack in his own runabout and Walter and Ed in theComet. The Robinson girls, of course, were not to be separated, as theFlyawayseemed to know all about the twins, and the twins knew all about theFlyaway.
The weather was uncertain, and the fog horn at the point lighthouse had blown all night, so that the girls were naturally apprehensive. Only Cora's car was canopied, so that should it rain they would be obliged to stop and wait for clear weather.
Nevertheless it was a very jolly party that now waited at the garage for the machines to be run out. The boys went inside and attended to the very last of the preparations, while Cora, too, insisted upon looking over her machine before starting off.
"You'll have a fine trip," remarked the man at the garage. "I think the run through the Berkshires one of the best there is. Fine roads and nice people along the way."
"Well, we need both," answered Miss Robbins. "I don't know so much about roads, but people—we always need them."
"All aboard," cried Ed, as finally they all did get into the cars, and, as usual, theWhirlwindled. Next came theFlyaway, then the two runabouts with the young men.
"What a fine chauffeur Miss Cora is?" remarked Miss Robbins to Hazel.
"Yes, but you must call her Cora," corrected Hazel gayly. "We make it a rule to go by first names when we like people."
"Then you must call me Regina," added Miss Robbins. "I hope the young men don't make me Reggie."
"They're very apt to," commented Hazel.
Cora had thrown in the third speed, and was now bending over her wheel in real man fashion. They were getting out on the country roads, where all expected to make good time. Bess also threw on her full speed, following Cora's lead, and the boys, of course, gave the speeding signal on their horns.
"My!" exclaimed Miss Robbins admiringly, as the landscape flashed by.
"Can't we go," added Hazel exultingly.
"It's like eating and drinking the atmosphere," continued the young lady physician.
"I do love autoing," went on Hazel. "My brother is a perfect devotee of the machine. But we do not happen to own one of our own."
"That is where good friends come in," said Miss Robbins. "This trip is a perfect delight to me. And, really, it will fix me up wonderfully for what I have to undertake this fall. You see, we have just closed the bungalow, mother has gone home, and that left me free to go to the Berkshires and have a little pleasure, together with attending to some business. I have a very old patient there. I have to call on her before she leaves the hills."
"And you really have patients?" Hazel looked in surprise at the young woman beside her.
"Of course, I do. But this one I inherited—she is a great aunt of mine."
Hazel leaned forward to ask Cora what her speedometer was registering.
"Only twenty miles an hour," replied Cora. "And we could go thirty easily. But I don't fancy ripping off a shoe, or doing any other of the things that speed might do."
"I shall enjoy it all the more when I am so sure of that," spokeRegina. "I cannot see why people take risks just for the sake of——"
"Hey, there!" shouted Ed, as his car shot past Cora's. "We are going on ahead."
"So—we—see!" answered Cora dryly.
"What do you suppose they are up to?" asked Bess, as she turned theFlyawayup to the side of theWhirlwind.
"Haven't any idea," replied Cora, just as Jack, too, shot by.
"See you later," called Jack.
"Not deserting us, are they?" asked Regina.
"Oh, no, just some lark," answered Cora.
But scarcely had the boys' machines disappeared than a trail of three gypsy wagons turned into the mountain highway from some narrow crossroad.
"Oh!" sighed Belle, apprehensively clutching the arm of her sister.
"Don't, Belle. You almost turned me into theWhirlwind," cautioned the sister, as she quickly twisted around the steering wheel.
"Those are the beach gypsies," Cora was able to say to Bess.
Then no one spoke. Bess leaned over her wheel, while Cora looked carefully for a place to turn out that would bring her clear of the rumbling old wagons.
A woman sat in the back of one of the vehicles. She poked her head out and glared at the approaching machines. Then she was seen to wave a red handkerchief so that the persons in the next wagon could distinctly see it.
The motor girls also saw it.
This caused some confusion, as the motorists were trying to get out in the clear road, while the wagons were blocking the way.
Then, just as theWhirlwindwas about to pass the second wagon, the driver halted his horse and stepped down directly in her path. He waved for Cora to stop.
"Don't!" called Miss Robbins, and Cora shot by, followed closely byBess, who turned on more gas.
The gypsy wagons had all stopped in the middle of the road.
The automobiles were now safely out of the wanderers' reach.
"That was the time a chaperon counted," said Cora, "for I had not the slightest fear of stopping. I thought he might just want to ask some ordinary question."
"You are too brave," said Miss Robbins. "It is not particularly interesting to stop on a road like this to talk to gypsies when our boys are out of reach."
"We must speed up and reach them," said Cora. "I might meet more gypsies."
Belle was thoroughly frightened. Hazel did not know what to make of the occurrence, but to Cora and to Bess, who had so lately learned something of queer gypsy ways, the matter looked more serious, now that there was time to think of it.
"There they are!" shouted Bess, as she espied the two runabouts stopped at the roadside.
"They are getting lunch," said Hazel. "Look at Jack putting down the things on the grass."
"They certainly are," confirmed Cora. "Now, isn't that nice of them?And we have been blaming them for deserting us!"
Neither the motor girls nor the motor boys knew what the meeting of the gypsy wagons was about to lead to—serious trouble for some of the party.
The rain came. It descended in perfect sheets, and only the fact that our tourists could reach a mountain house saved them from more inconvenience than a wetting.
They had just partaken of a very agreeable lunch by the roadside, all arranged and prepared by the boys, with endless burned potatoes down on the menu as "fresh roasted," when the lowering clouds gave Dame Nature's warning. Next the thunder roared about what it might do, and then our friends hurried away from the scene. The run brought them some way on the direct road to the Berkshires, and in one of those spots where it would seem the ark must have tipped, and dropped a human being or two, the young people found a small country community.
The special feature of this community was not a church, nor yet a meeting house, but a well-equipped hotel, with all the requisites and perquisites of a first-class hostelry.
"No more traveling to-day," remarked Cora, as, after a wait of two hours, she ventured to observe the future possible weather. "It looks as if it would rain all there was above, and then start in to scoop up some from the ocean. Did you ever see such clouds?"
Ed said he had not. Walter said he did not want to, while the girls didn't just know. They wanted to be off, and hoped Cora's observations were not well-founded.
Miss Robbins found in the hotel a sick baby to take up her time, and she inveigled Bess into helping her, while the wornout and worried mother took some rest. The little one, a darling girl of four years, had taken cold, and had the most troublesome of troubles—an earache—so that she cried constantly, until Miss Robbins eased the pain.
When the boys realized what a really good doctor the girls' chaperon was, they all wanted to get sick in bed, Jack claiming the first "whack."
But Walter had some claim on medical attendance, for when the storm was seen to be coming up he had eaten more stuff from the lunch basket than just one Walter could comfortably store away, and the headache that followed was not mere pretense.
So the rainy afternoon at Restover Hotel was not idle in incident. It was almost tea time when Cora had a chance to speak with her brother privately. She beckoned him to a corner of the porch where the rain could not find them; neither could any of their friends.
"Jack," she began, "do you know that the people in the gypsy wagon really did try to stop us? All that prattle of Bess and Belle was not nonsense. Only for Miss Robbins I should have stopped."
"Well, what's the answer?" asked her brother.
"That's just what I would like to find out," replied the sister. "It seems to me they would hardly have stopped a couple of girls to ask road directions or anything like that, when so many wagons, easier to halt than automobiles, had also passed by them."
"Maybe they wanted some gas—gasoline. They use that in their torches."
"But why ask girls for it?" insisted Cora.
"Because girls are supposed to be soft, and they might give it. Catch a fellow giving anything to a gypsy!"
"Well, that might be so, but I have a queer feeling about that old witch's threat. She looked like three dead generations mummified. Her eyes were like sword points."
"She must have been a beaut. I should like to have met her witchship. But, Cora dear, don't worry. We boys are not going to run away again, and if we see the gypsies we will see them first and last."
"But there are bands of them all over the hills, and I have always heard that they have some weird way of notifying each band of any important news in the colony. Now, you see, Jack, the arrest of that man would be very important to them. They are as loyal to each other as the royalty."
"Nevertheless it is a good thing the fellow is landed, and it was a blessing that he went for the cottage instead of to Miss Robbins' bungalow.Theyhad no means of calling help," mused Jack.
"I suppose it was," answered Cora. "But I tell you, I do not want another such experience. It was all right while I had to act, but when it was all over I had to——"
"React! That's the trouble. What we do with nerve we must repeat without nerve. Now, what do you think of your brother as a public lecturer?" and Jack laughed at his own attempt to explain the reaction that Cora really felt.
"My, wasn't that a bright stroke of lightning?" exclaimed Cora."Listen! Something is struck!"
"That's right!"
"An explosion!"
A terrific report followed the flash. Then cries and shrieks all over the hotel alarmed those who were not directly at the scene of the panic.
"Oh, it's the kitchen! See the smoke!"
Jack and Cora rushed indoors, their first anxiety being to make sure that all the girls and boys of their party were safe.
"Where is Bess?"
"Where is Belle?"
"Where are Walter and Ed?"
"Oh! where is Miss Robbins?"
Every one was looking for some one. In the excitement the guests at the hotel were rushing about shouting for friends and relatives, while smoke, black and heavy, poured up the stairs from the basement.
Jack, Ed and Walter were among the first to get out and use the fire extinguishers. There were plenty of these about the hotel, but on account of the injury to the men who were working in the kitchen at the time of the explosion, and owing to the fact that all the guests in the hotel just then were girls and women, the men having gone to the city, there really were not enough persons to cope with the flames that followed the lightning.
"Quick!" shouted Cora, "we can get the buckets. Bess take that one," pointing to the pail that hung on the wall, and which was filled with water. "Belle, run around and find another! Regina is with the injured men, so we cannot have her, but there is a girl! Won't you please get a bucket from the hall?" this to a very much frightened young lady. "The fire extinguishers seem to be all emptied, and the men are beating back the flames from the stairway."
In a remarkably short time more than a dozen frightened girls and women had formed a bucket brigade under Cora's direction, and as fast as they could get the pails they handed them, filled and again refilled, to the boys, who were now doing all in their power to keep the fire from spreading to the dining-room floor.
"What happened?" demanded one woman, when Jack turned to take a pail of water from Cora.
"Lightning struck the boiler," replied the young man.
"Oh, mercy!" exclaimed the same unreasonable person, who was delaying the men with her questions. "Any one hurt?"
"Yes, three," and Jack, his shirt sleeves rolled up, and looking like the earnest worker he was, dashed again down a step into the dense smoke to splash the pail of water on the smouldering but now well-wetted woodwork.
It seemed then as if all the guests but our own friends had run out of the building, and were huddled on the porch or standing in the rain under the trees along the path.
Ed and Walter had carried the cook and the dishwasher out from the kitchen immediately after the explosion of the boiler, and the other injured ones were in the little cottage adjoining the hotel, where Miss Robbins was binding up their burns and making good use of her skill and the materials that she carried in her emergency case.
"But I am afraid this man is very dangerously injured," she told Ed."A piece of the boiler struck him directly on the back of the head."
"Should he go to the hospital?" asked the young man.
"Without question, if he could. But this is so far from anything like a hospital."
"We could take him to Waterbury in Cora's car," suggested Ed. "That is large enough to make him somewhat easy."
"The very thing! But I could not go with him. This other man is suffering so," and she poured more oil on the face that had not yet been bandaged in cotton.
"Cora could run the machine, and I could hold Jim—they say his name isJim."
"Poor Jim!" sighed the young lady doctor. "He has a very slight chance. See, he is unconscious!"
Ed rushed out, and in a short time had theWhirlwindat the door. Jack and Walter were still busy with the fire, but they stopped when he called them, and together all three carried Jim tenderly out, and when Ed got in first they put the man in his arms. Cora also had been summoned, and without as much as waiting for her cap, but, getting into the cloak that Bess threw from the hall rack, she cranked up, and was at the wheel, following the directions for the nearest way to a hospital in Waterbury.
"It is his only chance," remarked Miss Robbins, when she heard some one say the jolting of the auto would kill him outright, "and both the car and its chauffeur can be depended upon."
"That was plucky, Cora."
"What, Ed?"
"You running into Waterbury with a man who might have died in your car."
"Then he would have died in your arms."
"But I thought girls were so queer about things of that sort. When one dies in a house, for instance, a girl never likes the room——"
"But you would have had to keep your arms. Ed, I think the pluck was all on your side. But I do hope Jim has a chance. He seems an awfully frail little fellow."
"Weighs about as much as you do, I should judge. But they say that kind of build is the best for fighting disease—there is not so much blood to take up the poison."
They were riding back to Restover. Ed insisted upon driving the car, although Cora declared that she was not the least tired. The trip to the hospital had been made at a very high rate of speed, as the unconscious man seemed in imminent danger, and Cora's hands now trembled visibly from their work at the wheel of theWhirlwind.
"I suppose we will have to live on love tonight," remarked Ed, "for that kitchen is certainly a thing of the past."
"What saved the second floor?"
"The heavy beams and metal ceiling. I guess they have had fires before in that hotel, for the ceiling was practically of iron. I just wonder what the boys are doing about now. I fancy Walter has turned nurse to assist Miss Robbins."
"And Jack has taken up the role of engineer—to be made chief of the fire department. I shouldn't wonder but what they had formally organized by this time."
"He certainly deserves to be chief; he did good work. When a gas tank—a small affair—started to hiss in the servants' dining room, Jack grabbed up a big palm and dumped the contents of the flower pot into the tank. It was a small thing they heated coffee on, and when, the next moment, the tank broke it was surprised to find itself buried under a bed of sand, with flowers on the grave."
Cora laughed heartily at Ed's telling of the incident. Certainly strange things, if not really funny things, always seem to occur during the excitement caused by fire.
"If everything in the kitchen is gone, don't you think we had better bring back some refreshments?" asked Cora. "The folks will all have appetites when they find there is nothing to eat."
"Great idea. Here is a good-looking store. Let's load up."
"But is there no manager at the hotel? Who was or who is boss?"
"Jim. The management of that sort of place goes into the shape of bills and accounts, settled every month. Some New York company owns the place. It was a failure, and they leased it to a local man. That's why there will be no one to look after things now."
"Well, we will buy the food and send our bill in to the company. I guess they will be glad enough to pay it when they hear of the emergency."
"Yes, it would not do for the hotel disaster to get into the New York papers, with a starved-to-death head. Well, here's our store. What shall we buy?"
Cora and Ed left the car and went into the store. They bought all sorts of canned goods, although Cora declared they would have to be eaten raw. Then they bought bacon and eggs. Ed insisted on that, no matter, he said, if they had to come to town again and take back to Restover a gas stove. He insisted that no well-regulated emergency feed ever went without bacon and eggs. Bread and butter they procured for fifty persons. Some cake for the ladies, Ed suggested. Pork and beans, canned, Cora thought might do for breakfast, even if they had to be eaten from the cans. Then the last thought, and by no means the most trifling, was wooden plates and tin cups. The bill footed up to ten dollars, and Ed insisted that the man make out the bill as paid and marked for the Restover Hotel.
A half hour later theWhirlwinddrew up to the hostelry.
The rain had ceased, and the hotel patrons were almost all out of doors, so that the motor girls and boys trooped down to meet Ed and Cora.
As was anticipated, hunger prevailed, and when it was found that stores of eatables were in the tonneau of theWhirlwindeven the most helpless, nervous ladies at the hotel wanted to help get the refreshments into the house.
"But where can they be cooked?"
"What can we cook on?"
"There is no gas stove!"
"Not even an oil stove!"
"We can't eat bacon raw!"
"The bread is all right, anyway!"
Such was the volley of remarks that came out from the crowd.
"We will manage somehow," said Cora. "Our boys are used to emergency work in the line of eating and fixing meals."
"Seems ter me," whined a wizen old lady, "thet the girls knows somethin' about it, too!"
In the dining room on the second floor were two chandeliers. Under these were, of course, tables, and before the anxious ones had time to settle their fears there stood on these tables Cora, Bess and Belle, and on the other Ed, Jack and Walter. Each of our friends had in his or her hand something that answered to the pan or pot brand of utensil, and in the pan or pot, which was held over the gas, was something that began to "talk-talk" out loud of good things to eat, sizzling and crisping.
It was very funny to see the young folks cooking over the handsome chandeliers, from which, of course, the glass globes had been removed.
"Well, did you ever!" exclaimed more than one.
"Those young folks do beat all! I used to think ma and pa brung us up right, but whoever on earth would have cooked bacon and eggs over a lamp," ejaculated an old man.
"I guess driving them machines makes them smart," said another guest, as she took the pan Cora handed down and gingerly slopped the stuff over on a wooden plate. "I guess it is a good thing to know how to drive an automobile. Makes you right smart! Whew! but that was hot!" and she put the overheated fingers into her mouth.
"Put another dish over it to keep it hot," Cora ordered. "And can't some one set a table? That is not such a difficult thing to do."
"See here!" called out Ed, "this is no pancake party. I am not going to stay up here cooking all night. I am going down to eat. We have enough of tomatoes warmed to fill the wash bowl, and I love canned tomatoes if they are out of a washbowl. We washed the bowl, and sterilized it, and it's as good as a soup tureen."
There stood the white wash basin almost filled with the steaming tomatoes. As Ed said, there could be no objection to the crockery.
Jack had charge of the water for tea. This took a long time to boil, owing to the fact that the kettle was a very much bent-up affair that had been rescued from the ruined kitchen.
Bess was cooking canned peas, while Belle insisted that all she could do was to turn over, with a fork, the things that cooked nicely on Cora's pan.
"Done to a turn!" announced Jack, as he jumped down with his pots. "Now, if you folks need any more you will really have to go into active service."
His initiative was followed by the others, and presently the less timid of the guests had put food into pans and taken up their places on the tables to do their cooking, while it seemed that all at once every one "fell to" and procured something to eat.
"Let there be no unbecoming haste!" remarked Walter gently, but it was a great meal, that.
"Isn't she disappointing?" remarked Hazel.
"Very," answered Cora.
"To think that she should leave us for a patient!"
"I cannot understand it."
"I have heard that girls not home raised are like that—they have no sentiment."
"Nor honor, either!"
"Well, she didn't think she was bound to go with us, and, of course, there was money besides reputation in being on the spot when the hotel owners would arrive. But I am disappointed."
"I hope the boys will not feel obliged to return for her," and Cora's lip curled slightly. "She is such a good business woman she ought to be able to get to the Berkshires from here."
"Walter seems enthralled," and Hazel laughed. "I wonder how Jack got him to leave her?"
They were on the road again, and Miss Robbins, the physician, the business woman, the chaperon, had stayed behind to take care of those who had been injured in the explosion. There were good doctors within call, but she simply would stay, and saw no reason why the girls should not go on alone. To her the idea of being obligated to them was not to be thought of when a matter like professional business came up. Of course, this was a general disappointment, for the girls would never have entrusted themselves to her patronage if they had not felt certain that she would keep her word with them. However, the fact was that they were on the road again, and Regina Robbins was happy on the sunny porch of the big hotel, incidentally attending to a cut or two on one man's face and a bad-looking burn on the arm of another.
Bess and Belle were driving along, "their faces as long as fiddles," as Cora said. The boys had taken the lead, and they were having their own trouble trying to convince Walter that Miss Robbins had "dumped" the girls, and that it was a "low-down trick."
TheWhirlwindglided along apparently happy under the firm hand of its fair owner. TheFlyawayseemed, too, to be glad of a chance to get away again, and as Bess threw in the third speed, according to commands from Jack, who was leading, the little silver machine darted away like an arrow freed from the bow.
The day was wonderfully clear after the rain, and even the sunshine had been polished up by the scouring of the mighty storm of late summer.
"I shouldn't care so much," Belle confided to her twin sister, "but when we get to Lenox alone, without a chaperon, what will people say?"
"Well, Tinkle, we have not got there yet. Maybe we may pick up a chaperon between this and that."
"If we only could! Where do we stop tonight?"
"Wherever we get."
So they sped on. Mile after mile was lapped up in the dust of the motors. Out through Connecticut, over the line into Massachusetts, and along the splendid roads that border the Housatonic River.
Houses were becoming scarcer and fewer; it was now largely a matter of woodlands and roads.
"We have to make time now," called Cora to the twins. "The boys say we should get to Pittsfield by evening."
"To Pittsfield! Why, that's——"
"About a hundred," called Cora again. "Look out for your shoes, and don't be reckless on the turns. Stripping your differential just now would be fatal."
"All right," responded Bess, "but mine is not the only car in the race."
"Thanks," called back Cora, "and now we will clear off. Good-by!"
TheWhirlwindshot ahead. Jack's car was clear of the other—Walter's, and as the run had to be made against time it was best for each machine to have "room to look around it."
"Oh!" gasped Hazel, as Cora swerved around a sharp bend, "I don't fancy this sort of riding."
"But we have to get to a large town before night. It's all right. The roads are so clear."
On they flew. Only the shrieking of Jack's siren and the groaning of the deep horn on Walter's car gave messages to the girls.
Several miles were covered in silence, and then they came to a signboard. It told that the main road was closed, and that they must take to a side road—a highway that was fairly good, but much more lonely.
"I suppose we'll get back to the main road before a great while," saidCora.
"I hope so," returned Bess. "This looks dreadfully lonely, doesn't it?"
"Don't think about it," came from her sister.
On they went, the way becoming wilder each instant. Yet the road itself was fairly smooth, so that it was not necessary to slacken the speed of the cars.
"Something really smells hot," said Hazel. "Could anything ignite?"
"Not exactly," replied Cora, "but we don't want to get too hot. It makes trouble."
She slackened just a bit to make sure that Hazel's anxiety had no foundation in fact, for, indeed, the big machine was using its engine and gas to the utmost capacity.
Just ahead the glare of theCometcould be seen as it plunged into a deep turn in a deeper lined wood. Jack, in hisGet-There, was after the first, and then the girls had difficulty even in getting a responding sound from the toots and the blasts which all were continually sounding.
"They are away ahead," said Bess. "I thought they had seen enough of getting too far away from us. How do we know but that we might meet the gypsies on this lonely road?"
"I wonder if it is late or early for motorists?" asked Cora of Hazel."We haven't met a single party."
"Just happened so, I suppose," said Hazel. "Surely people out here must enjoy this sort of weather."
"Listen!"
Cora gave three sharp blasts on her horn, but no answer came. "The boys are getting too far ahead.
"I will have to accelerate——," she called.
She pressed down the pedal and bent over the wheel as if urging the machine to its utmost. Then there was jolt—a roar! a bang! Cora jammed on brakes.
"A shoe is gone!" she cried. "Exploded!"
Without the slightest warning a big tire overheated, had ripped clear off the front wheel, the inner tube exploded, and the car had almost gone into a ditch when Cora stopped it.
Bess had seen the trouble, and was able to halt her car far enough away to avoid a collision.
"Isn't that dreadful!" cried Cora, her face as white as the tie at her throat. "It ripped off just from speed!"
"Can't it be fixed?" asked Hazel, who now was out beside Cora.
"Oh, of course! but how and when? I have another shoe, but to get it on, and the boys, as usual, out of sight!"
She had pulled off her gloves and was looking at the split tire. It was marvelous that it should have come off so clean—simply peeled.
"And it's five o'clock," said Belle, with her usual unfortunate way of saying something to make things worse.
"But it isn't midnight," almost snapped Cora.
"Let's try to call the boys," suggested Belle. "Aren't they dreadful to get so far away?"
"Very rude," and Cora showed some sarcasm. "But the thing to do right now is not to wait for anybody, but to get to work. Bess, can you help me slip in a tube and put on a shoe?"
"I never have, but, of course, I'll try," and she, too, pulled off her gloves.
Cora quickly opened up the tool box, got out the jack, and then she unbuckled the shoe that was fast at the side of theWhirlwind.
"I always thought folks carried them to ornament the cars," said Hazel, with an attempt at good nature, "but it seems that a cobbler is the thing we ought to carry for an ornament. We really don't need him, but we do need new shoes."
"How long will it take?" asked Belle.
"There's no telling," replied Cora. "It isn't exactly like putting a belt on a sewing machine."
She handled the inner tube freely enough, and soon had it in the big rubber shoe, partly inflated.
"Easy as putting tape in a jelly bag," remarked Hazel.
"But we must get it on now and blow it up," said Cora. "Bess, get the pump."
The pump was gotten, after which, with much exertion, the shoe was on the rim, and then the blowing began. This was not so easily accomplished as had been the other parts of the mechanical operation. First Bess pumped, then Belle tried it. Hazel was sure she could do it, for she often blew up Paul's bicycle, but this tire would not blow full.
The girls were rapidly losing their complexions. Such strenuous efforts!
"Oh, that's hard enough," declared Bess, trying to push her pretty fingers into the rubber.
"Yes," answered Cora, pressing on the tire, which sank with the pressure, "it's about as hard as rice pudding!"
"How many pounds?" insisted Bess.
Cora looked at the gauge. "Sixty. I have got to have a full ninety for this car."
"Then I don't see how we are going to get it!"
Cora did not heed the discouragement. She was pumping now, and the shoe was becoming rigid. "If I get it a little harder I'll call it done!" she panted, "though we may ditch the car next time."
It was an hour later when the boys came back. They had discovered the loss of the girls when they had gone so far ahead that it took some time to return. The race was too much for them. They were obliged to admit that, in its interest, they had forgotten the girls.
"If Miss Robbins had been along, I fancy Walter would not have become so engrossed in the race," said Belle maliciously.
"Well, Miss Robbins was not along," replied Walter, with equal meaning.
"And what's more, Miss Robbins will not be along," spoke Cora. "I have heard of all sorts of things being permissible in the business world, but this, from a young lady, seems to be——"
"The utmost," admitted Jack. "But, sis, you must make allowances. We would dump Miss Robbins in the mountains, and likely crawl home by train, while the hotel reputation will continue to reputate."
"Suppose we quit buzzing and get at the car," suggested Ed. "Seems, though, as if Cora had about fixed it up."
"I'm not so sure," said Cora eagerly. "I am afraid that there's something wrong other than the 'busted' tire. I was just about to look when you gentlemen returned. But will you please finish pumping first?"
Finally it was hard enough, and then Cora jumped into the car, while Jack cranked up. A noise that might have come from a distant sawmill rewarded the effort.
"A nut or a pin loose," suggested Walter, who now did what Jack called the "collar-button crawl" under the big car.
But that was only the beginning, and the end was that night came on and made faces at a very desolate party of young people, stalled miles from nowhere, with nothing but remorse of conscience to keep off the damp, night air.
Jack went around literally kicking himself, demanding to know whether they hadn't done the same thing before, and dumped those poor girls in a graveyard at midnight. When would boys learn that girls can't be trusted out of sight, and so, while the boys are supposed to be the girls' brothers, these same brothers must forego sport of the racing brand?
Jack really felt the situation keenly. There was no way out of it, the girls could not get to a town even in the able-bodied cars, for Cora would no more leave herWhirlwindthere in the darkness than she would have left Bess or Belle. Then, when it was proposed that one of the boys stay to guard the machine, and the others of the party go along to some place, the objection of "no Miss Robbins" robbed the distracted young men of their last argument.
"We will stay together," announced Cora. "At any rate, that will be better than some of us going to a hotel, and all that sort of thing. We can bunk in the cars."
"Oh, in the woods!" almost shrieked Belle.
"Well, no, you might go up a tree," said Cora rather crossly.
"There's many a nest unseen——"
"Wallie, you quit. The unseen nest is not for yours. You are hereby appointed for guard duty!" and Ed snatched up a stout stick to serve as "arms" for the guard.
"I have a little something," admitted Jack, flashing a brand new revolver. "I have heard of the gypsy camps around these mountains, so I came prepared."
"Oh, those gypsies!" and Belle had another spasm. "I feel that something will happen tonight! Those dreadful gypsies!"
"We can lock you in the tonneau of Cora's car," suggested Ed, "and when the gypsies come they can't 'gyp' you. They may take all of us, but no power on earth, not even palm reading, can move that monster."
The idea that she really could be locked up in the car gave Belle some comfort, although Bess and Hazel were holding a most secret convention over under a tree, where the last rays of light lingered as day hurried along.
"Why did you speak about the gypsies?" Cora asked Jack, by way of reproof rather than question. "You know the girls go off in kinks when they think of the burglar."
"Well, I suppose I shouldn't. But the fact is, we might as well be prepared, for there are bands of our friends tied up around these hills. Fortune telling is a great business among summer idlers."
"Well, I hope we have seen the last of them. I'm going to stay in the open, in theFlyaway. I'd rather do it than be cooped up with the girls in the tonneau, and there will be room for Bess, Belle and Hazel inside theWhirlwind. It won't be so bad—a night in the wide open."
"Oh, we fellows don't mind it, but, sis, might not some cocoon drop in your hair in the night? We had better rig up some sort of hood."
"My own hood will do nicely, and I am almost dead from the exertion of that tire. I grant you, I will not lie awake listening for gypsies."
"Then we boys will take turns on the picket," said Ed. "You can really depend upon us this time, girls. One will be awake and watching every minute."
"Oh, I'm sure it's all right out here," replied Cora. "What would any one want in these woods at night?"
"Might want fishing tackle," answered Walter. "Yes, I agree with thee,Edward; it is up to us to stay up to-night."
With this positive assurance, the young ladies proceeded to make themselves comfortable in their novel quarters. Cora curled up in theFlyaway, and theComet, with Ed and Jack "sitting up in a lying-down posture," as they expressed it, was placed just where the young men could hear the girls whisper should any gypsies appear, or rather be scented. The first man to do picket duty, Walter, was in theGet-There, directly out in the road, so that presently it seemed a night in the wide open might be a novelty rather than a misfortune.
Some time must have passed. Belle declared she was not asleep. Bess vowed she was still asleep. Hazel begged both girls to keep quiet, but the light of the gas lamps from theGet-Therewas bobbing about, and the flash of a new revolver was reflected in the night.
"What can be the matter?" sobbed Belle. "Oh, I knew we shouldn't stay in these dreadful woods."
"As if we could help it," complained her sister. "Belle, if you insist upon going on motor tours, why don't you try to get some sense?"
"All right, there!" called Jack, who now, with another headlight in hand, was looking under and about theWhirlwind.
"Yes! What's the matter?" answered and asked Bess.
"Nothing that we know of," replied Jack, "but Wallie thought he scented game, and we need something for breakfast."
"Goodness sakes! Likely a turtle or something," growled Bess, dropping her plump self down plumper than ever on the cushions.
"I don't believe it," objected Belle. "They wouldn't wake us up for a turtle—or something."
"Make it a moose then," suggested Hazel. "Moose are plenty in NewEngland, they say."
"With the horns?" asked Belle.
"With and without," replied Hazel. "But if you don't mind, I'm going out to join in the hunt. I have always longed for a real, live hunt."
"Oh, please don't," begged Belle. "It might be a man!"
"No such luck. There's Cora with her lamp. They are certainly after something," and with this she opened the tonneau door and went out with the others into the wild, dark, lonely night.
"I distinctly saw him," she heard Jack say. "Now, keep your nerve.Cora, where is the little gun?"
"I've got it," she replied. "I feel better with it. You boys have two."
"What is it?" asked Hazel, now thoroughly alarmed.
"A man!" whispered Cora. "Walter saw him crawling around, and we are bound to find him. He is alone, that's sure, and there are seven of us."
"Oh!" gasped Hazel. "But isn't it dangerous?"
"A little, of course. But it would be worse to let sleeping dogs lie.It may be a harmless tramp—or a poor laborer—a woodsman."
At the same time she knew perfectly well that any character of either type she mentioned would not go crawling around under stalled motor cars in the Berkshire hills.