  Sim drove along as fast as she dared, with Arden sitting beside her, both girls wondering, conjecturing, and trying in vain to guess what the answer to the riddle of Jockey Hollow might be. Now and then one of the girls, to make sure all was well, would turn to the man in the rumble seat holding his wounded friend in a slanting position against his own dust-begrimed body; and Jim was begrimed, also. “Does he seem any better?” Arden asked once. “No, miss. Not yet.” “He is still alive, isn’t he?” asked Sim, wondering what they should do if the answer were in the negative. “Oh, yes, miss, he’s alive. I can feel his heart beating.” “That’s good. Is it much farther?” “Not much. Take the next left turn, please.” Sim did this. Down a country road, lined on each side with bare trees, they saw a small house. “There’s the place, miss! That’s where Jim lives,” eagerly called the helping man, who had said his name was Nate Waldon. “I’ll be glad when we get him home. I hope the doctor will come soon.” “So do I,” murmured Arden. “We certainly do manage to get into the most curious mix-ups,” suggested Sim as she ran the car around the bend and up as close as she could get to the house, which had a drive on one side. There was a barn in the rear, but no evidence that it was used as a garage. It was a small house; not unlike, Arden reflected, a picture of the huts used by the soldiers of Washington’s army when it was encamped in Jockey Hollow so many years ago. At the sound of the stopping car, evidently something unusual in front of that little house, a young woman, followed by a small girl about five years old, quickly opened the door and looked out. Then, as she evidently caught sight of her husband held in the arms of Nate, she ran out, crying: “Oh, Jim! What has happened! Are you hurt? Oh, Jim!” Sim and Arden quickly alighted and helped Nate lift the still unconscious Jim out of the rumble seat. It wasn’t easy, for the limp form was heavy. “He’s coming to, I think,” said Arden in a low voice to Sim. “I saw his eyelids flutter.” “Oh, Jim! Jim!” sobbed his wife. The little girl was also sobbing now. Sim, realizing that Arden knew more about first aid than she did, took charge of the child. “He isn’t hurt bad, Mrs. Danton, I’m sure he isn’t,” said Nate with the ready sympathy of one worker for another’s mate. “He just had a sort of a fall and he got bruised a bit and cut up and a hit on the head. But he’ll come around. Mr. Callahan had one of the men telephone for a doctor. Is he here yet?” “Not yet. Oh, Jim! Poor Jim!” wailed the excited woman. “Now, he’s all right, didn’t I tell you that, Mrs. Danton? Here, pull yourself together. You’ve got to help this young lady and me carry him in and put him to bed and then get ready for the doctor. Now don’t be fainting on us.” Nate took charge promptly. “No! No. I won’t faint. But what happened?” Mrs. Danton asked. “He just fell down an old ash-chute,” Arden said as she and Nate, with the help of the man’s wife, carried him into the little cottage where Sim, comforting the child, had already preceded them. Just how they managed, Sim and Arden never had any clear recollection afterward. But they succeeded in getting poor Jim upon a bed in a room downstairs opening out of a small but very neat little kitchen. Then, when his wife was undressing him, with the help of Nate, while Sim, in the neat kitchen, was telling the little girl a fairy story, Dr. Ramsdell arrived. “What’s going on here?” he asked in a bluff hearty voice. He did not know, and had probably not seen before, any of those whom he addressed. But he seemed, as Arden said afterward, “like one of the family.” “Oh, doctor, it’s my husband!” faltered Mrs. Danton, again on the verge of tears. “Tut! Tut! None of that!” warned Dr. Ramsdell. “We’ll soon be having your husband on his feet again. A little accident, I was told,” he remarked, and his eyes swept in turn Arden and Nate. “He had a fall—at the—the ghost house,” Nate answered. “Ghost house! What joke is that?” chuckled the physician, quickly taking off his coat and gloves and picking up the black bag he had set down on a chair. Out in the kitchen Sim was intoning to the little girl: “And when the Prince came riding by in his automobile——” “Didn’t he have a horse?” questioned the child, smiling now. “No, he was a new sort of Prince—he had a car.” “Oh, how queer! A fairy story with an auto. But I like it. Go on, please.” Dr. Ramsdell bent over the man on the bed. He felt his pulse, put his hand on the heart, and pulled back the closed eyelids. “Why, he’s not badly hurt!” he announced. “My goodness, this is no accident at all! Just a little shock. Here, my man! How are you? Drink this!” He had quickly mixed something in a glass of water that Arden, with ready foresight, had in waiting for him. “That’s better. Now tell me the joke about the ghost house.” “It’s Sycamore Hall in Jockey Hollow, where he was working,” Arden supplied. “Oh, there. Yes, I know Sycamore Hall. Old Mrs. Howe claims she ought to have it, but the Park Commission thinks differently. But this is the first I’ve heard about ghosts. Never mind them. That’s the joke. Now, let me look you over.” It did not take Dr. Ramsdell long to ascertain that Jim Danton was not seriously hurt. He was cut and bruised, he had a very slight concussion of the brain, but no fracture of the skull, and a week’s rest would make him well again, the physician announced. “Keep him quiet,” the doctor ordered as he left. But Jim was roused now. He seemed to want to talk. “Let him tell what’s on his mind if he cares to,” the physician suggested as he left, having set out some medicine from his bag and given orders as to its administration. And when the doctor had gone Jim falteringly told his story. “How did it happen?” asked his wife, having heard Nate’s version. “I don’t know, Minnie. I was up in the room with another man—I sort of forget his name—and we were sizing it up—getting ready to rip it apart——” “Why, I was there with you,” interrupted Nate. “Oh, that’s right—you were.” Jim had to talk very slowly. “Well, I went in the closet to get a crowbar I’d left there.” “I saw you go in,” Nate contributed. “But you didn’t come out.” “No,” said Jim in a curiously dull voice. “I didn’t come out. All I know is that I reached for my crowbar that was leaning against the closet wall and then, all of a sudden, it felt as though somebody hit me on the head. I fell down, and that’s all I know—until just now.” He sighed gratefully and pressed his wife’s nervous hand. “But what really happened to him? Who hit him?” demanded Mrs. Danton. “That’s what nobody knows,” said Nate. “After Jim disappeared, we started looking for him. All but gave up when one of these young ladies found him in the cellar—unconscious.” “Neither of us found him,” Arden said. “It was the granddaughter of the woman who claims to own Sycamore Hall—Betty Howe.” “Oh, that terrible ghost house!” moaned Jim’s wife. “We heard stories about it before Jim went to work there—stories floating around Jockey Hollow—told by the Negro and Italian workmen. A lot of them quit. Then Mr. Callahan—Jim’s worked for him before—sent out word for better men. Jim has been sick, but he decided to go. “We needed the money so much. We are so poor—so much in debt.” She had come out of the sick-room and closed the door. Her husband appeared to be sleeping. “And there was a bonus of a hundred dollars for any man who would work a full week, ghost or no ghost. Jim said he would. He tried, but—the ghost got him!” She hid her face in her folded arms on the table and sobbed. The little girl looked frightened. “Stop!” commanded Arden. “You mustn’t give way like this. Everything is going to be all right. Your husband isn’t badly hurt. He will get well!” “But how can we live, meanwhile?” She raised her tear-stained face. “I will see Mr. Callahan about that,” said Sim determinedly. “He must carry workmen’s compensation insurance. My father does in his stores. You will be looked after. Now, don’t cry. See, you are frightening Suzanne.” The little girl had told her name. “Yes, I must be brave. But, oh, that terrible ghost house. It should be burned down! It almost killed—Jim,” Mrs. Danton sobbed. “It will soon be torn down now,” Arden said. “And, really, I don’t believe it’s a ghost house at all. Those are only silly stories. Your husband’s accident is explainable on perfectly natural grounds, I’m sure we’ll find out. Now we must go. But you will need help. Can’t we get some neighbor in?” “Yes, Mrs. Johnson—she lives in the next house down the road—she will come in, I think.” “I’ll get her,” offered Sim. “You wait here, Arden.” Sim soon returned with the kind neighbor, and as the girls had done all they could do, they said good-bye, promising to come again. “And tell me another fairy story!” stipulated Suzanne. “I will, my dear. You can tell your father the one I told you when he gets better, as he soon will.” “I’ll do that—yes.” Suzanne was cute and had fascinating dimples. Sim and Arden drove away as the sun was beginning to set. They must pick up Terry and Dot. “Well,” remarked Sim as she speeded the little roadster along, “we’ve got something to think of now.” “I think,” said Arden seriously as she recalled the pathetic scene back at Jim Danton’s house, “that we have a stronger motive than ever in finding out about this ghost business—I mean a stronger motive than just trying to help Granny Howe prove her right to the place.” “There is something queer under all this, Sim. Men shouldn’t be hurt like this just because, possibly, somebody is playing jokes. I’m going to find out the secret of Jockey Hollow!” she declared now. “And we’re all going to help you!” Sim added. “This isn’t a ghost story, it’s a detective story now.” |
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