  “Freckles!” exclaimed Mary Louise as she entered the kitchenette of the bungalow the following morning. “Where are you going?” The boy grinned mysteriously. “Can’t tell you that, Sis,” he replied. “It’s a secret.” “But I wanted to talk to you. And it’s only a little after eight o’clock.” “I know, but I’m a busy guy. Important affairs!” “With whom?” Freckles hesitated; then he decided to tell part of his secret. “The fellows up here have a secret band. It’s called the ‘Wild Guys of the Road.’ I was initiated last night.” Mary Louise burst out laughing. She couldn’t help it. “The ‘Wild Guys of the Road’!” she repeated. “Regular hold-up men?” “Well, not exactly,” replied her brother. “But we’ve got some exciting adventures on.” “Who is the leader?” “Robby Smith. He’s got some swell ideas.” Mary Louise’s eyes narrowed. “Does burning people’s houses come into his plan?” “Gosh, no! We’re not really bad, Sis. We wouldn’t do anything like that.” “Do you make fires at all?” “Sure we make fires. We’ve got to cook our camp meals, haven’t we? And have our ceremonies.” “I see.” She was thinking. “And sometimes those fires spread farther than you want them to?” “No, course not! Now, don’t you go blaming us guys for Hunters’ bungalow burning down!” “I’m not blaming you, Freckles—you weren’t even here. But I’m not so sure about those Smith boys. They are pretty wild, once they get started. Remember the time they locked that little boy in the boathouse and almost left him there all night?” “Gee whiz, Sis! They wouldn’t have left him there. They just wanted to scare him.” “I’m not so sure. They’re spoiled kids. I wish you wouldn’t play with them.” “Now, Sis, don’t be silly! Everybody’s in the gang together. I’ve got to play with the Smith boys or else stay home by myself.” With a yell of good-bye for his mother, the boy was off. Mary Louise and Jane sat down to their breakfast. Mrs. Gay, who had eaten hers with Freckles, came in to talk to them. “What have you on the program for today?” she inquired. “Oh, the usual things,” answered her daughter. “Tennis with the bunch this morning, and I suppose everybody will go in swimming about eleven o’clock. David is coming over to talk about fixing up our canoe for the contest tomorrow night.” Jane coughed nervously. “I—uh—sort of promised Cliff I’d go in his motorboat, Mary Lou,” she said. “Would that be all right?” “Sure it’s all right,” agreed her chum. “It’ll be even better, because the less weight we have in our canoe, the more decoration we can put on. And there’s a prize for each type of boat, you know.” “Then I shan’t be competing against you if I go in Cliff’s launch?” “Oh no, we are in separate classes.” After the girls had finished washing the dishes for Mrs. Gay, they started off for a little walk, with Silky at their heels. “Why not stop for the Reed girls?” suggested Jane, mentioning the twins who lived in the cottage on the far side of the Gays. “I’m crazy to meet them.” “You’ll meet them when we go swimming later on,” replied Mary Louise. “But just now I want to go in the other direction. To call on the Ditmars.” “The Ditmars?” For the moment Jane had forgotten who these people were, for she had heard so many new names the night before. “Yes. Don’t you remember? The young architect that Cliff told us about. The man Mrs. Hunter thinks set her bungalow on fire.” “Oh, yes, of course! In other words—a suspect.” “That’s right,” agreed Mary Louise. “But how can we call on him if we don’t know him?” asked Jane. “We’ll find a way!” “Oh, sure we will!” teased Jane. “Trust the girl detective for that!” “Sh! Please don’t call me that in front of anybody, Jane. If people think I am snooping, they’ll shut up like clams and won’t tell me anything.” Although there were only eight cottages at Shady Nook, the distance from the Reeds’ on one end to the Ditmars’ on the other was over a mile. Cliff’s father, Mr. Hunter, who had planned the little resort, knew that even in a small friendly community like this, people still liked privacy, so he had left a small strip of woods between every two cottages. The girls walked along slowly, Mary Louise pointing out the bungalows as they passed by. “That’s where the Hunters’ was, of course,” she said to her chum. “And now we’re coming to the Partridges’. Next is Flicks’ Inn.” “Yes, I remember this much from last night,” nodded Jane. “But that’s as far as we got. Are there many cottages on the other side of Flicks’?” “Only the Smiths’ and the two new ones. The Smiths don’t actually live on the river road, and you can’t call their place a cottage. It’s really the grandest house around here. Much bigger than the Hunters’ was. They have three children and a lot of servants. Mr. and Mrs. Smith are usually off traveling somewhere, and even when they’re here, they don’t eat at Flicks’.” “So we can’t count on them for any fun?” “No. Freckles plays with the boys, but except for that, we never see them.” A little farther on, the girls came to the two new bungalows, set right in the heart of the woods. They were both perfectly charming; it was evident that young Mr. Ditmar was an architect with both taste and ideas. “Don’t you love it?” whispered Jane, as the two girls approached the Ditmars’ rose-trellised bungalow. “It looks like ‘Honeymoon Cottage’ in a jig-saw puzzle!” “I understand the Ditmars are practically a bride and groom,” returned Mary Louise.... “Oh, there she is, in the garden! Pretty, isn’t she?” An attractive young woman in a pink dress looked up as the girls came nearer. She smiled pleasantly. “Good-morning,” said Mary Louise. “You are Mrs. Ditmar, aren’t you? Everybody knows everybody else here at Shady Nook, so we’ll introduce ourselves. This is my chum, Jane Patterson, and I’m Mary Louise Gay.” The young woman nodded cordially. “I’m awfully glad to meet you both,” she said. “This is a friendly place—I like it a lot. If only my husband did——” “Doesn’t Mr. Ditmar like Shady Nook?” asked Mary Louise in surprise. “No, he doesn’t. But I guess it’s just because he hasn’t enough to do. You know how men are when they haven’t any work: full of gloom.” “Well, things will be better this fall,” remarked Jane optimistically. “I don’t know,” replied Mrs. Ditmar. “At least—for architects. Their work comes slowly. It was fine all spring, while Horace had this bungalow to build, and the Robinsons’ next door. But now he can’t get a thing.” “Maybe the Hunters will rebuild,” suggested Jane openly. Mrs. Ditmar shook her head. “We did hope so. We went over to see them at the Royal Hotel soon after their house burned down, but Mrs. Hunter wasn’t very nice to us. She almost acted as if it were our fault!” Jane suppressed a giggle and muttered under her breath, “The plot thickens.” “Oh, I guess she was just all upset,” remarked Mary Louise nervously. “She’ll get over that.” She smiled. “Anyway, you don’t have to be gloomy, Mrs. Ditmar. Can’t you get your tennis things on and play with us this morning?” “Thanks awfully, but I don’t think I had better leave Horace here alone.” “Bring him along!” “He wouldn’t come. No, I better not. But perhaps I’ll see you in swimming later on in the morning. It’s awfully nice of you girls to be so friendly.” “We’ll look for you in the water, then.... And, by the way, you’ll come to the party on the island tomorrow night, won’t you?” Again the young woman refused. “No, we really can’t afford that. It’s two dollars for the supper, you know, and besides that; we’d have to hire one of Mr. Frazier’s canoes.” “Couldn’t you borrow one?” suggested Jane. “No—I’m sorry—Horace refused to go.” Mary Louise sighed, as if to say how thankful she was that she wasn’t married to a grouch like that. So the girls said good-bye and walked slowly back to their cottage. “She can’t be over twenty, if she’s that,” surmised Mary Louise. “I certainly feel sorry for her.” “So do I,” agreed Jane. “Do you really think her husband is guilty, Mary Lou?” “I don’t know. He sounds queer.” She lowered her voice: there did not appear to be anybody around, but you never could tell, with all those thick trees to conceal possible eavesdroppers. “And if he believes it’s his right to have work, he may try burning other cottages. That’s what worries me.” “Well, he surely wouldn’t pick on yours, Mary Lou,” was Jane’s comforting assurance. “He’d select somebody’s who was rich—like the Smiths’, or some place that was absolutely necessary, like the Flicks’.” The girls were passing the inn at this moment, and as they looked up they saw David McCall in his tennis clothes coming out of the door. “I was over at the bungalow looking for you girls,” he said. “The Reed girls are on the court, but they wouldn’t let me play until I found a partner. So please hurry up!” “O.K.,” agreed Mary Louise. “Walk back with us, Dave. I want you to tell me why you think Cliff Hunter set his own bungalow on fire—at such an inconvenient time. When they had company, I mean.” David smiled knowingly. “That’s his alibi, of course. What did he care about those four fellows? It didn’t hurt them. You see, Mary Lou, I’m an insurance agent, and I’m up to all these tricks. The Hunters’ place was insured for ten thousand dollars, and if it had been offered for sale, Cliff couldn’t have gotten more than a couple thousand at a time like this.” “But the Hunters are rich,” objected Mary Louise. “They don’t need the money.” “Everybody needs money. And I happen to know that Cliff wants to go around the world this fall.” “He wouldn’t give up college?” “No. There’s a college course in the bargain. They study and travel at the same time. It costs a small fortune.” “I don’t believe he set that bungalow on fire,” announced Jane. “He’s too honest. He just couldn’t do a thing like that!” “Besides,” added Mary Louise, “we have another suspect.” And she told David what she had just learned about Horace Ditmar. “I’m just as sure that Ditmar didn’t do it as you are that Cliff Hunter didn’t,” replied David when she had finished. “Probably nobody set it on fire,” concluded Jane. “Just an accident. Let’s forget it. Come on in, Mary Lou, and we’ll put on our sneaks. We’ll be ready in a minute, Dave.” True to their promise, the girls returned a moment later, with Silky at their heels, and all three young people made their way to the tennis court. There was only one court at Shady Nook—which the boys themselves had made—but there was another across the river on the hotel grounds. However, nobody ever seemed to mind waiting or taking turns, so the crowd usually stayed together. Jane was introduced to the Reed twins, who looked and dressed so exactly alike that she had not the faintest idea which was Mabel and which was Sue after a couple of minutes had elapsed. Then there were three other young people who were staying at the inn for a short time, besides David McCall and themselves. To her dismay, Cliff Hunter did not come across the river to join the party. The whole crowd went in swimming about eleven o’clock, and here their elders joined them, with some of the younger children. Not Freckles, however, or the Reed boys or the Smiths: they had gone off hiking for the day. Again Jane did not see Cliff Hunter, and she was giving all her attention to a young man named Stuart Robinson, who lived in the new bungalow next to the Ditmars’, when she heard her name shouted from the shore. “Jane! Oh, Jane!” Raising her head from her swimming position and treading water, she peered towards the shore. It was Cliff Hunter—but not attired in a bathing suit. “Come on out!” he called. Jane swung into the crawl, and reached the young man in a couple of minutes. He was grinning broadly. “Take a card,” he said. Jane burst out laughing. “How can I?” she asked. “I’m soaked.” “Oh, that’s all right. I’ve got plenty of packs. This is a swell trick. I’ve been studying it all morning.” Jane dropped down on the grass and listened to his trick. The young man was enchanted. She stayed with him until Mary Louise literally dragged her back into the water. “How anybody could believe Cliff Hunter guilty of a despicable crime,” she said later to her chum, “is beyond me. He’s as innocent as a child.” “I hope so,” returned Mary Louise. “Time will tell.” |
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