“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.
“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.”
The girls stepped along at a rapid rate, entirely forgetful of the tennis which had tired Jane so completely a couple of hours ago. In a minute or so they came in sight of the red brick house. It was an ugly place, but it was not run down or dilapidated like Miss Mattie Grant’s. John Grant evidently believed in keeping things in repair.
The house stood next to a vacant lot, and it was enclosed by a wooden fence, which was overgrown with honeysuckle vines. A gravel drive led from the front to the back yard, alongside of this fence, and there were half a dozen large old trees on the lawn.
“We could easily hide there after dark,” muttered Mary Louise. “Climb over that fence back by the garage and sneak up behind those trees to a spot within hearing distance of the porch.”
“I don’t see what good it would do us,” objected Jane.
“It might do us lots of good! Look at that car! That must be Harry Grant’s, judging from Elsie’s description. If his car’s there, he must be home. And if we hear him say anything about spending money, then we can be suspicious. Because, where would he get the money unless he stole his aunt’s?”
Jane nodded her head.
“Yes, I see your logic,” she agreed. “But there isn’t a soul around now, and likely as not there won’t be all evening.”
“They’re probably eating supper. Come on, let’s hurry and get ours over. And meet me as soon as you can afterwards.”
The girls separated at their gates, and Mary Louise ran inside quickly to be on hand to help her mother.
“Daddy isn’t home yet?” she asked, as she carried a plate of hot biscuits to the table.
“No, dear,” answered her mother. “He’s in Chicago—I had a special-delivery letter from him today. He can’t be back before the weekend—Saturday or Sunday.”
Mary Louise sighed. She had been hoping that perhaps she could get some advice from him without giving away any names or places.
Freckles dashed into the room, with Silky close at his heels.
“Where have you been, Sis?” he demanded. “Why didn’t you take Silky with you? He’s been fussing for you.”
“Jane and I had an errand to go,” the girl explained. “And we couldn’t take him along. But we’ll take him with us for a walk after supper.”
“Walk again?” repeated Mrs. Gay, her forehead wrinkled in disapproval. “Mary Louise, you’re doing too much! You must get some rest!”
“We shan’t be out long, Mother. It isn’t a date or anything. Jane and I want to take a little stroll, with Silky, after supper. Isn’t it all right if I promise to go to bed very early?”
“I suppose so. If you get in by nine-thirty——”
“I promise!” replied Mary Louise, little thinking how impossible it was going to be for her to keep her word.
She did not start upon her project until she had finished washing the dishes for her mother. Then, slipping upstairs, she changed into a dark green sweater dress and brown shoes and stockings. Through the window of her bedroom she signaled to her chum to make a similar change.
“Might as well make ourselves as inconspicuous as possible,” she explained, as the two girls, followed by Silky, walked down the street ten minutes later. “Did you have any trouble getting away, Jane? I mean, without giving any explanation?”
“Yes, a little. Mother can’t understand all this sudden passion for walking, when I used to have to ride everywhere in Norman’s or Max’s car. I really think she believes I have a new boy-friend and that I meet him somewhere so as not to make Norman jealous. As if I’d go to all that trouble!”
Mary Louise nodded.
“A little jealousy does ’em good,” she remarked. “Of course, Mother doesn’t think it’s so queer for me, because I always did have to take Silky for walks. And he’s a good excuse now.”
“Oh, well, we’ll be home early tonight,” concluded Jane. “So there won’t be any cause for worry.”
“There’s somebody on the porch—several people, I think,” said Mary Louise as the girls turned into the street on which the Grants’ house was situated.
“Two men,” added Jane as they came nearer. “I think the person sitting down is a woman. But it’s getting too dark to see clearly.”
“All the better! That’s just what we want. Let’s cut across the lot to the back of the place, and sneak up behind the car in the driveway. We can see the porch from there.”
“But I’m afraid we’ll be caught,” objected Jane fearfully.
Nevertheless, she followed Mary Louise around a side street to the rear of the lot, and together they climbed the Grants’ fence, cautiously and silently. Once inside, they crept noiselessly along the grass near the fence until they came to the back of Harry Grant’s car.
There could be no doubt that it was his. At least five years old, with battered mudguards and rusted trimmings, it looked like the relic Elsie had laughed about. It was a small black coupé, with a compartment behind for carrying luggage.
“If Mr. Harry Grant goes for a ride in this, we’re going with him!” announced Mary Louise.
“No!” cried her chum. “How could we?”
“In the luggage compartment.”
“We’d smother.”
“No, we wouldn’t. We’d open the lid after we got started.”
“Suppose he locked us in?”
“He can’t. I just made sure that the lock has rusted off.”
“But what good would it do us to ride with him?” demanded Jane.
“Sh! They might hear us!” warned Mary Louise. She turned to the dog and patted him. “You keep quiet too, Silky.... Why,” she explained in a whisper, “we could watch to see whether Mr. Harry spends any money. If he brings out a fifty-dollar bill, he’s a doomed man!”
“You are clever, Mary Lou!” breathed her chum admiringly. “But it’s an awful risk to take.”
“Oh no, it isn’t. Mr. Grant isn’t a gangster or a desperate character. He wouldn’t hurt us.”
Jane looked doubtful.
“Have you made out who the people are on the porch?” she asked.
“It must be Mrs. Grace Grant—and her two sons. Yes, and I feel sure that is Harry, coming down the steps now.... Listen!”
The girls’ eyes, more accustomed to the darkness, could distinguish the figures quite plainly by now. The younger of the two men, with a satchel in his hand, was speaking to his mother.
“I ought to be back by Saturday,” he said in a loud, cheerful voice. “And if this deal I’ve been talking about over in New York goes through, I’ll be driving home in a new car.”
“You better pay your debts first, Harry,” cautioned his mother.
“I hope to make enough money to do both,” he returned confidently. “And if you see Aunt Mattie, you can tell her I don’t need her help!”
Mary Louise nudged Jane’s arm at this proud boast and repressed a giggle.
“Maybe he can fool his mother,” she whispered. “But he can’t fool us! Come on, get in, Jane.”
Holding open the lid of the car’s compartment she lifted Silky in and gave her hand to her chum.
“Suppose he puts his satchel in here,” said Jane, when they were all huddled down in the extremely small space and Mary Louise had cautiously let down the lid, shutting them in absolute darkness.
“He won’t—not if it has money in it. He’ll keep it right on the seat beside him.... He will anyway, because it doesn’t take up much room.”
The car rocked to one side, indicating that Harry Grant had stepped in and was seating himself at the wheel. Jane’s lip trembled.
“It’s so dark in here! So terribly dark! Where’s your hand, Mary Lou?”
“Here—and here’s Silky. Oh, Jane, this is going to be good!”
The motor started, and the car leaped forward with a sudden uneven bound. Jane repressed a cry of terror. It turned sharply at the gate and buzzed along noisily for several minutes before Mary Louise cautiously raised the lid and looked out.
Oh, how good it was to see the lights again, and the sky—after that horrible blackness!
The car had reached the open highway which led out of Riverside, and it picked up speed until it was rattling along at a pace of about sixty miles an hour. Growing bolder, Mary Louise continued to raise the lid of the compartment until it was upright at its full height. The girls straightened up, with their heads and shoulders sticking out of the enclosure.
“Quite a nice ride after all, isn’t it?” observed Mary Louise, gazing up at the stars.
“I don’t know,” returned Jane. “It sounds to me as if there were something wrong with that engine. If we have an accident——”
“That’s just what I’m hoping for,” was the surprising reply. “Or rather, a breakdown.”
“Whatever would you do?”
“I’ll tell you. Listen carefully, so we’ll be prepared to act the minute the car stops. While Harry gets out on the left—he surely will, because his wheel is on the left—we jump out on the right. If there are woods beside the road, as I remember there are for some distance along here, we disappear into them. If not, we get to the path, and just walk along as if we were two people out for a walk with their dog. He won’t think anything about that, for he doesn’t know us, or know that we came with him.”
“But how will that help us to find out whether he is the thief?” inquired Jane.
“My plan is to grab that satchel, if we get a chance, and run off with it!”
“But that’s stealing, Mary Lou! He could have us arrested.”
“Detectives have to take chances like that. It isn’t really stealing, for we want to get hold of it merely to give its contents to the rightful owner. Of course, if there’s no money in it, we could return it later.”
They were silent for a while, listening to the pounding of the engine. Fifteen minutes passed; Mary Louise saw by her watch when they rode under a light that it was quarter after nine, and she recalled her promise to her mother. But she couldn’t do anything about it now.
They were ascending a hill, and the speed of the car was diminishing; it seemed to the girls that they were not going to make it. The engine wheezed and puffed, but the driver was evidently doing his best. Ahead, on the left, shone the lights of a gas station, and this, Mary Louise decided, must be the goal that Harry was now aiming for.
But the engine refused to go the full distance: it sputtered and died, and the girls felt the car jerked close to the right side, with no sign of civilization about except the lighted gas station about fifty yards ahead.
But, lonely or not, the time had come for action, and there was not a second to be lost. Before Harry Grant’s feet were off the running board both girls were out of the car on the other side, holding Silky close to them and hiding in the shadow.
Mr. Grant stepped forward and raised the hood of his motor, peering inside with a flashlight. Keeping her eye on him through the open window of the car, Mary Louise crept cautiously along the right side towards the front.
The young man turned about suddenly and swore softly to himself. But it was not because he had seen or heard the girls, although Jane did not wait to find that out. Desperately frightened, she dashed wildly into the protecting darkness of the bushes at the side of the road.
Mary Louise, however, remained steadfastly where she was, waiting for her opportunity.
It came in another moment. Lighting a cigarette, Mr. Grant started to walk to the gas station.
“What could be sweeter!” exclaimed Mary Louise rapturously to herself, for Jane was out of hearing distance by this time. “My big chance!”
She reached her hand quickly through the open window and picked up the satchel from the seat. Then, with Silky close at her heels, she too made for the protecting woods. In another moment she was at Jane’s side, breathless and triumphant.
“You’re all right?” demanded her chum exultantly. “Oh, Mary Lou, you’re marvelous!”
“Not so marvelous as you think,” replied the other, feeling for Jane’s hand in the darkness. “Lift that satchel!”
Jane groped about, and took it from Mary Louise, expecting a heavy weight.
But it was surprisingly, disappointingly light!
“It can’t possibly contain any gold,” said Mary Louise, dropping to the ground in disgust. “All our trouble—and we’re only a common pair of thieves ourselves!”
Silky came close to her and licked her hand reassuringly, as if he did not agree with her about the name she was calling herself and Jane.
“Stranded on a lonely road—at least ten miles from home!” wailed Jane.
“Sh!” warned Mary Louise. “They’re at the car—Harry and another man. We might be caught!”
But she stopped suddenly: something was coming towards them, as they could sense from the snapping of a twig close by. Not from the road, however, but from the depth of the woods!
The two girls sat rigid with terror, Mary Louise holding tightly to Silky. In the darkness they could see nothing, for the denseness of the trees blotted even the sky from view. The silence of the woods was broken only by a faint rustle in the undergrowth, as something—they didn’t know what—came nearer.
Silky’s ears were alert, his body as tense with watching, and Jane was actually trembling.
“Got your flashlight, Mary Lou?” she whispered.
“Yes, but I’m afraid to put it on till Harry Grant gets away. He might see it from the road.”
The sudden roar of the motor almost drowned out her words. The noise startled whatever it was that was near them, and the girls felt a little animal pass so close that it nearly touched them. They almost laughed out loud at their fear: the cause of their terror was only an innocent little white rabbit!
Mary Louise took a tighter grip upon her dog.
“You mustn’t leave us, Silky! You don’t want that bunny! We need you with us.”
The engine continued to roar; the girls heard the car start, and drive away. Jane uttered a sigh of relief.
“I wonder whether he missed his satchel,” she remarked.
“Probably he didn’t care if he did,” returned her chum. “I don’t believe it has anything in it but a toothbrush and a change of linen.”
“Let’s open it and see.”
Mary Louise turned on her flashlight and looked at the small brown bag beside them.
“Shucks!” she exclaimed in disappointment. “It’s locked.”
“It would be. Well, so long as we have to carry it home, maybe we’ll be glad that it’s so light.”
“I’ve got my penknife. I’m going to cut the leather.”
“But, Mary Lou, it doesn’t belong to us!”
“Can’t help that. We’ll buy Harry Grant a new one if he’s innocent.”
“O.K. You’re the boss. Be careful not to cut yourself.”
“You hold the flashlight, Jane,” said Mary Louise. “While I make the slit.”
The operation was not so easy, for the leather was tough, but Mary Louise always kept her knife as sharp as a boy’s, and she succeeded at last in making an opening.
Excitedly both girls peered into the bag, and Jane reached her hand into its depths. She drew it out again with an expression of disappointment.
“An old Turkish towel!” she exclaimed in dismay.
But Mary Louise’s search proved more fruitful. Her hand came upon a bulky paper wad, encircled by a rubber band. She drew her hand out quickly and flashed the light upon her find.
It was a fat roll of money!
The girls gazed at her discovery in speechless joy. It seemed more like a dream than reality: one of those strange dreams where you find money everywhere, in all sorts of queer, dark places.
“Hide it in your sweater, Mary Lou!” whispered Jane. “Now let’s make tracks for home.”
Her companion concealed it carefully and then took another look into the satchel to make sure that none of the gold was there. She even inserted the flashlight into the bag, to confirm her belief. But there was nothing more.
Both girls got to their feet, Jane with the satchel still in her hands.
“I wish we were home,” she remarked after the flashlight had been turned off, making the darkness seem blacker than before.
“We can pick up a bus along this road, I think,” returned Mary Louise reassuringly. “They ought to run along here about every half hour.”
“Shall we use some of this money for carfare?”
“No, we don’t have to. I have my purse with me.”
Choosing their way carefully through the bushes and undergrowth, the two girls proceeded slowly towards the road. But their adventures in the wood were not over. They heard another rustle of twigs in front of them, and footsteps. Human footsteps, this time!
“Hands up!” snarled a gruff voice.
The reactions of the two girls and the dog were instantaneous—and utterly different. Jane clutched her chum’s arm in terror; Mary Louise flashed her light upon the man—a rough, uncouth character, without even a mask—and Silky flew at his legs. The dog’s bite was quick and sharp: the bully cried out in pain. Mary Louise chuckled and, pulling Jane by the hand, dashed out to the road, towards the lights of the gas station in the distance. As the girls retreated, they could hear groans and swearing from their tormentor.
When they slowed down across the road from the gas station, Mary Louise looked around and whistled for Silky. Jane, noticing that she still clutched the empty bag in her hand, hurled it as far as she could in the direction from which they had come.
In another moment the brave little dog came bounding to them. Mary Louise stooped over and picked him up in her arms.
“You wonderful Silky!” she cried, as she led the way across the road. “You saved our lives!”
“Suppose we hadn’t taken him!” said Jane in horror. “We’d be dead now.”
“Let’s go ask the attendant about buses,” suggested Mary Louise, still stroking her dog’s head.
“We better not!” cautioned Jane. “He may suspect us, if Harry Grant told him about his loss of the satchel.”
“Oh no, he won’t,” replied Mary Louise. “Because we’ll tell him about the tramp, or the bandit, or whatever he is—and he’ll suspect him.”
They walked confidently up to the man inside the station.
“We’re sort of lost,” announced Mary Louise. “We want to get to Riverside. There was a tramp back there about fifty yards who tried to make trouble for us. Can we stay here until a bus comes along—they do run along here, don’t they?”
“Yes, certainly,” replied the man, answering both questions at once. “About fifty yards back, you say? Did he have a brown satchel with him?”
“I saw a brown satchel lying in the road,” replied Mary Louise innocently. “Why?”
“Because a motorist stopped there a few minutes ago with engine trouble, and while he came to me for help his grip was stolen.”
“Did it have anything valuable in it?” inquired Jane, trying to keep her tone casual.
“Yes. I believe there was about eight hundred dollars in it.”
Mary Louise gasped in delight. That meant that practically all of Miss Grant’s paper money was there—in her sweater! All but one fifty-dollar bill!
“Well, I wouldn’t go back there for eight thousand dollars!” said Jane.
“You can be sure there ain’t any money in the bag now,” returned the attendant shrewdly. “Here comes your bus. You’re lucky: they only run every half hour.... I’ll go stop it for you.”
Mary Louise kept Silky in her arms, and the two girls followed their protector to the middle of the road. The bus stopped, and the driver looked doubtfully at Silky.
“Don’t allow no dogs,” he announced firmly.
“Oh, please!” begged Mary Louise in her sweetest tone. “Silky is such a good, brave dog! He just saved our lives when we were held up by a highwayman. And we have to get home—our mothers will be so worried.”
“It’s agin’ the rules——”
“Please let us this time! I’ll hold him in my lap.” Her brown eyes looked into his; for a moment the man thought Mary Louise was going to cry. Then he turned to the half a dozen passengers in his car.
“I’ll leave it up to youse. Would any of youse people report me if I let this here lady’s dog in the bus?”
“We’d report you if you didn’t,” replied a good-natured woman with gray hair. “These girls must get home as quickly as possible. It’s not safe for them to be out on a lonely road like this at night.”
“Oh, thank you so much!” exclaimed Mary Louise, smiling radiantly at the kind woman. “It’s so good of you to help us out.”
The door closed; the girls waved good-bye to the attendant, and the bus started. Mary Louise gazed dismally at her watch.
“Even now we’ll be an hour late,” she remarked. “We promised our mothers we’d be home by half-past nine!”
“Girls your age shouldn’t go lonely places after dark,” observed the motherly woman. “Let this be a lesson to you!”
“Oh, it will be, we assure you!” Jane told her. “One experience like this is enough for us.”
The bus rumbled on for twenty minutes or so and finally deposited the girls in Riverside, half a block from their homes.
“Still have the money?” whispered Jane, as they ran the short distance to their gates.
“Yes, I can feel the wad here. I was so afraid somebody in the bus would notice it. But having Silky in my lap helped.”
“It seems we have company,” remarked Jane, recognizing a familiar roadster parked in front of their houses.
“Now what can Max want at this time of night?” demanded Mary Louise impatiently. She longed so terribly to get into her room by herself and count the money.
“Here they are, Mrs. Gay!” called a masculine voice from the porch. “They’re all right, apparently.”
The two mothers appeared on Mary Louise’s porch.
“What in the world happened?” demanded Mrs. Patterson. “Mrs. Gay and I have been worried to death.”
“Not to mention us,” added Norman Wilder from the doorstep. “We phoned all your friends, and nobody had seen a thing of you.”
“I wish we could tell you all about it,” answered Mary Louise slowly. “But we aren’t allowed to. All I can say is, it’s something in connection with Elsie Grant—the orphan, you know, Mother, whom we told you about.”
Mrs. Gay looked relieved but not entirely satisfied.
“I can’t have you two girls going up that lonely road at night, dear,” she said. “To the Grants’ place, I mean. It isn’t safe.”
“Oh, we weren’t there tonight,” Jane assured her, not going on to explain that they had gone somewhere far more dangerous.
“Well, if you do have to go there, let Max or Norman drive you,” suggested Mrs. Patterson. “The boys are willing, aren’t you?”
“Sure thing!” they both replied.
“Let’s all come inside and have some chocolate cake,” said Mrs. Gay, delighted that everything had turned out all right. “You girls must be hungry.”
They were, of course; but Mary Louise was more anxious to be alone to count her treasure than to eat. However, she could not refuse, and the party lasted until after eleven.
Her mother followed her upstairs after the company had gone home.
“You must be tired, dear,” she said tenderly. “Just step out of your clothes, and I’ll hang them up for you.”
“Oh, no, thanks, Mother. I’m not so tired. We rode home in the bus.... Please don’t bother. I’m all right.”
“Just as you say, dear,” agreed Mrs. Gay, kissing her daughter good-night. “But don’t get up for breakfast. Try to get some sleep!”
Mary Louise smiled.
(“Not if I know it,” she thought to herself. “I’m going after the rest of that treasure! The gold! Maybe if I get that back for Miss Grant, she’ll consent to let Elsie go to high school in the fall.”)
Very carefully she drew off her sweater and laid the bills under the pillow on her bed. Then, while she ran the shower in the bathroom, behind a locked door, she counted the money and checked the numbers engraved on the paper.
The attendant was right! There were eight hundred dollars in all, in fifty-dollar notes. And the best part about it was the fact that the numbers proved that the money belonged to Miss Mattie Grant!
It was a little after nine o’clock the following morning that Mary Louise and Jane set off for Dark Cedars. The money was safely hidden in Mary Louise’s blouse, and Silky was told to come along for protection.
“I’ll never leave him home again,” said Mary Louise. “Miss Grant will have to get used to him. But when we tell her about last night I guess she’ll think he’s a pretty wonderful dog.”
“I dreamed about bandits and robbers,” remarked Jane, with a shudder. “No more night adventures for me!”
“Well, it was worth it, wasn’t it? Think of the pleasure of clearing Elsie of suspicion!”
“It won’t, though. Her aunt will insist that she took that gold.”
“We’re going to get that back too,” asserted Mary Louise confidently.
“By the way,” observed Jane, “Norman tried to make me promise we’d drive over to the Park with them this afternoon and have our supper there, after a swim. I said I’d let him know.”
Mary Louise shook her head.
“We can’t make dates, Jane. It’s out of the question, for we don’t know what may turn up. I want to investigate the Pearsons today. That disagreeable Corinne may have had a part in the theft.... I’m sorry now that we promised the boys we’d go on that picnic.”
“That picnic’s going to be fun! You know what marvelous swimming there is down by Cooper’s woods. And don’t forget the gypsies! I love to have my fortune told.”
“Yes, that’s fun, I admit. But a whole day——”
“Oh, well, maybe we’ll solve the whole crime today! And maybe Miss Grant will let us take Elsie with us, now that she has some nice dresses.”
Mary Louise’s eyes brightened.
“That is an idea, Jane. I’ll ask Miss Grant today—as our reward for returning her money.”
The increasing heat of the day and the steepness of the climb to Dark Cedars made the girls long for that swimming pool in the amusement park, and Jane at least wished that they were going with the boys. But one glance at her chum’s determined face made her realize that such a hope was not to be fulfilled.
Both girls felt hot and sticky when they finally mounted the porch steps at Dark Cedars and pulled the old-fashioned knocker on the wooden door. It was opened almost immediately by Hannah, who evidently had been working right there in the front of the house.
The woman looked hot and disturbed, as if she had been working fast, under pressure.
“Good-morning,” said Mary Louise brightly. “May we see Miss Grant, Hannah?”
“I don’t know,” replied the servant. “She’s all of a fluster. We’re at sixes and sevens here this mornin’. The ghosts walked last night.”
“What ghosts?” asked Mary Louise, trying to repress a smile.
“You know. Elsie’s told you about ’em. The spirits that wanders through this house at night, mussin’ up things. They had a party all over the downstairs last night.”
“Hannah!” exclaimed Jane. “You know that isn’t possible. If there was a disturbance, it was caused by human beings. Burglars.”
The woman shook her head.
“You don’t know nuthin’ about it! If it was burglars, why wasn’t somethin’ stolen?”
“Wasn’t anything stolen?” demanded Mary Louise incredulously. “Not Miss Grant’s bonds?”
“Nope. They’re all there—safe. Pictures was taken down—old pictures that must-a belonged to the spirits when they was alive. That old desk in the corner of the dinin’ room—the one that belonged to Miss Mattie’s father—was rummaged through, and all the closets was upset. But nuthin’s missin’!”
“It looks as if somebody were searching for a will,” remarked Jane. “You know—‘the lost will’ you so often read about.”
“There ain’t no will in this house,” Hannah stated. “Miss Mattie give hers to Mr. John Grant to keep, long ago. No, ma’am, it ain’t nateral what’s goin’ on here, and William and I are movin’ out——”
“What’s this? What’s this?” interrupted the shrill, high voice of the old lady. “What are you gossiping about, Hannah? And to whom?”
“I’m just tellin’ them two young girls—the ones that come here before, you know——”
“Well, never mind!” snapped the spinster. “We haven’t time to bother with them this morning. Tell them to run along and not to take up Elsie’s time, either. She’s got plenty to do.”
Jane laughed sarcastically.
“Somebody ought to teach that woman manners,” she whispered to Mary Louise. “Serve her right if we didn’t give her the money!”