  “I told Mother we girls would take every other day at the housekeeping,” said Mary Louise as she backed the car out of the garage and onto the road behind the cottages. “That will give her a chance to get some rest from cooking—some vacation. You don’t mind, do you, Jane?” “Course I don’t mind!” replied her chum. “Maybe the family will, though!” “Don’t you believe it! We’re swell cooks, if I do say it myself.” She drove the car along past the backs of the cottages, turning at the road beyond Ditmars in the direction of the little village of Four Corners—a place not much bigger than its name implied. It was a still, hot day; all the vegetation looked parched and dried, and the road was thick with dust. “I wish it would rain,” remarked Mary Louise. “If we should have another fire, it might spread so that it would wipe out all of Shady Nook.” “Oh, let’s forget fires for a while,” urged Jane. “You’re getting positively morbid on the subject!... Is this the grocery?” she asked as her companion stopped in front of a big wooden house. “It looks more like a dry-goods store to me. All those aprons and overalls hanging around.” “It’s a country store,” explained the other girl. “Wait till you see the inside! They have everything—even shoes. And the storekeeper looks over his glasses just the way they always do in plays.” The girls jumped out of the car and ran inside. Jane found the place just as Mary Louise had described it: a typical country store of the old-fashioned variety. “Hello, Mr. Eberhardt! How are you this summer?” asked Mary Louise. “Fine, Miss Gay—fine. You’re lookin’ well, too. But I hear you had some excitement over to Shady Nook. A bad fire, they tell me. Can you figure out how it happened?” “No, we can’t,” replied the girl. “You see, everybody was away at the time—at a picnic on the little island down the river.” “Looks like spite to me,” observed the storekeeper. “Bet Lemuel Adams or his good-fer-nuthin’ son done it!” “Lemuel Adams?” repeated Mary Louise. “Who is he? Any relation to Hattie Adams, who always waited on the table at Flicks’ Inn?” “Yep—he’s her father. You ought to know him. He’s a farmer who lives up that hill, ’bout a couple of miles from Shady Nook. Well, he used to own all this ground around here, but he sold it cheap to a man named Hunter. The one who started the settlement at Shady Nook.” “Yes, I knew him,” said Mary Louise. “He was Clifford Hunter’s father. But he died not long ago.” “So I heard. Anyhow, this man Hunter got fancy prices for his building lots, and naterally old Lem Adams got sore. Always complainin’ how poor he is and how rich old Hunter got on his land. Reckon it got under his skin, and mebbe he decided to take revenge.” “Oh!” Mary Louise wanted to write the name of Lemuel Adams into her notebook then and there, but she didn’t like to. Should she add Hattie’s name too? Had the girl taken any part in the plot? “What sort of looking man is Mr. Adams?” she inquired, thinking of the “tramp” whom the boys had mentioned seeing in the woods. “Old man—with white hair. Has a bad leg—rheumatism, I reckon. He walks with a limp,” explained the storekeeper. Mary Louise sighed: this couldn’t be the same person, then, for the boys would surely have noticed a limp. “Here’s my list,” she said, handing her mother’s paper to Mr. Eberhardt. “Do you think you have all those things?” “If I ain’t, I can get ’em fer you,” was the cheerful reply. The girls wandered idly about the store while they waited for their order to be filled. Jane had a wonderful time examining the queer articles on display and laughing at the ready-made dresses. At last, however, a boy carried their supplies to the car, and Mary Louise asked for the bill. “Nine dollars and sixty-two cents,” announced Mr. Eberhardt, with a grin. “You folks sure must like to eat!” “We do,” agreed Mary Louise. “I suppose this will mean more business for you. Or did the Flicks buy groceries from you anyhow?” “No, they didn’t. They got most of their stuff from the city.... Yes, in a way it’s a streak of luck fer me. The old sayin’, you know—that it’s an ill wind that brings nobody luck!... Yes, I’ll have to be stockin’ up.” Mary Louise and Jane followed the boy to the car and drove away. As soon as they were safely out of hearing, Mary Louise said significantly, “Two more suspects for my notebook!” “Two?” repeated Jane. “You mean Lemuel Adams and his son?” “I wasn’t thinking of the son,” replied Mary Louise, “Though, of course, he’s a possibility. No, I was thinking of Mr. Eberhardt, the storekeeper.” “The storekeeper! Now, Mary Lou, your ideas are running wild. Next thing you’ll be suspecting me!” “Maybe I do,” laughed her chum. “No, but seriously—if Dad is working on a murder case, he always finds out immediately who profited by the victim’s death. That supplies a motive for the crime. Well, it’s the same with a fire. Didn’t this storekeeper profit—by getting extra business—because Flicks’ burned down?” “Yes, he did,” admitted the other girl. “But, on the other hand, it didn’t do him a bit of good for the Hunters’ bungalow to be destroyed.” “No, of course not. But, then, that may have been an accident.” “Yet this Lemuel Adams might have been responsible for both fires. He seems a lot guiltier to me. If he hated Mr. Hunter particularly, he’d naturally burn his cottage first. Then he’d go about destroying all the rest of Shady Nook.” “Your reasoning sounds good to me, Jane,” approved Mary Louise, her brown eyes sparkling with excitement. “And we’ve got to make a call on Mr. Adams right away. This very afternoon!” “Not me,” said Jane. “I’m going canoeing with Cliff Hunter.” Mary Louise looked disappointed. “Suppose Watson had told Sherlock Holmes that he had a date with a girl and couldn’t go on an investigation with him when he was needed?” “Watson was only a man in a book who didn’t make dates. I’m a real girl who’s full of life. I came up here for some fun, not just to be an old character in a detective story! And besides, Mary Lou, you have a date too. I heard you promise David McCall you’d go canoeing with him today.” “I’m mad at David,” objected Mary Louise. “He certainly made me furious last night.” “What did he do?” Mary Louise frowned, but she did not tell Jane what the young man had said about Cliff Hunter. No use getting her chum all excited, so she merely shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, just some remarks he made,” she replied. “But I really had forgotten all about the date. When did I promise him?” “Yesterday afternoon, before I went off with Cliff. Oh, come on, Mary Lou! Go along with us. Let’s pack a supper—it’ll be easy with all that food we brought back from the store. Maybe your mother and Freckles will go along.” “No, I really can’t, Jane. I don’t want to be rude to you—you are my guest, I know—but honest, this is important. That I go see old Mr. Adams, I mean. If he has made up his mind to burn down the entire settlement at Shady Nook, our cottage will be included. I’ve just got to do something to save it—and everybody else’s. You know—Dad’s counting on me!” “Yes, I understand how you feel, Mary Lou. But you may be all wrong—these two fires may just have been accidents—and then you’ll be wasting your perfectly good vacation for nothing.” “Oh, but I’m having fun! There’s nothing I love better than a mystery. Only this one does scare me a little, because we may actually be involved in it.” “Well, you do whatever you want,” Jane told her. “Just regard me as one of the family, and I’ll go my own way. I know everybody here now, and I’m having a grand time. Only don’t forget you have David McCall to reckon with about breaking that date!” They drove up to the back door of the cottage, and Freckles, who had returned home by this time, helped carry in the boxes. Mary Louise asked him how he had made out with the Flicks. “Not so good,” was the reply. “He’s sore as anything. Still believes we had something to do with starting the fire, though he admits he doesn’t think we did it on purpose. They’re going away today.” “Oh, that’s too bad!” exclaimed Mary Louise. “I was hoping they would build some kind of shack and continue to serve meals.” “Nope, they’re not going to. They’ve decided to go right back to Albany, where they live in the winter.” “Where are they now?” demanded Mary Louise. She realized that she must hurry if she meant to interview them before they left Shady Nook. “Mr. Flick’s on his lot, and Mrs. Flick is over at the Partridges’. They stayed there all night, you know, Sis.” As soon as the supplies from the store were carefully stored away, the two girls walked over to the spot where the Flicks’ Inn had stood. The charred remains were pitiful to see; the fire had been much harder on the Flicks than the Hunters’ disaster had been for them, because the innkeeper and his wife were poor. And what they made in the summer went a long way toward supporting them all the year round. Mary Louise felt sorry for them, but nevertheless she resented their laying the blame upon her brother. The girls found Mr. Flick standing under a tree talking to some men in overalls—working men, whom Mary Lou remembered seeing from time to time around the hotel across the river. “May I talk with you for a moment, Mr. Flick?” inquired Mary Louise, as the former turned around and spoke to her. “Yes, of course, Mary Louise,” he replied. “I’ll be with you in a minute.” “You really don’t think the boys are responsible, do you, Mr. Flick?” she asked directly, when he joined the girls. “I don’t know what to think,” replied the man. “It may have been an accident. That one servant girl we have is awfully careless.” “Which one?” “Hattie Adams. The one who waits on your table and washes the dishes.” “Hattie Adams!” repeated Mary Louise. “Lemuel Adams’ daughter!” “Yes. And Tom Adams’ sister.” He lowered his voice. “That’s Tom over there—remember him?—he does odd jobs for both me and Frazier sometimes.” Mary Louise nodded and glanced at the young man. He was a big fellow with a somewhat sullen expression. He looked something like Hattie. “How do you know Lem Adams?” inquired Mr. Flick. “I don’t,” replied Mary Louise quietly. “But the storekeeper over at Four Corners told me about him. How he used to own all this land and sold it cheap to Mr. Hunter. So he thinks maybe Mr. Adams is burning the cottages to spite the Hunters.” “But Hunter is dead!” objected Mr. Flick. “And it doesn’t spite the Hunters one bit, because they are fully insured. That’s the worst of it for me. My insurance only covers my mortgage—which Cliff Hunter happens to hold. I’m as good as wiped out.” “Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Mary Louise sympathetically. “Not half as sorry as I am.” He scowled. “And when I get to Albany I’m going to hunt up a lawyer. If those Smith kids did it, their parents can pay for the damage!” “Oh, but they didn’t!” protested Mary Louise. “It’s too bad if your brother was in it too. But if he was, he ought to be punished—though I blame that Robby Smith as the ringleader. Boys like those aren’t safe to have around. They don’t have anybody to control them. They ought to be locked behind the walls of a reform school.” There was nothing Mary Louise could say: the man was far too wrought up to listen to reason. So she and Jane merely nodded goodbye and turned away. They stopped at the Partridges’ cottage to see Mrs. Flick and found her much calmer. “I blame the Adams girl,” she said. “Hattie’s so careless! And she was the last one at the inn. I never should have left her alone. But my other waitresses wanted to get back to their hometown, and they left early—before we did. So I can’t lay the blame on them.” “You really don’t think the boys did it, do you, Mrs. Flick?” inquired Mary Louise anxiously. “No, I don’t,” was the reassuring reply, “even if my husband does!” “Thank goodness for that!” exclaimed the girl in relief. “Well, I’m going to call on the Adams family this afternoon and find out all I can. I’ll pump Hattie, and old Mr. Adams too.” “Good luck to you, my dear!” concluded Mrs. Flick. |
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