Norton Carol
The Seven Sleuths' Club

CHAPTER XIV.
TWO CONSPIRATORS

Doris, knowing that she could trust Bob, made him promise eternal secrecy and then she told him the whole story, withholding only the name of the highwayman.

The lad was indeed surprised at this sudden turn of affairs and he said at once: “You don’t need to tell me who it is, Doris. I know it was Tom Duffy. He was expelled from High last week and he said he was going to skip the town.”

Doris wondered if she ought to deny this, but, desiring to shield Danny, she said nothing at the time.

Bringing forth the bag of gold, she gave it to the boy.

He concealed it in the deep pocket of his heavy overcoat; then he said: “Now, Doris, you just leave it to me. I’ll find some way to return this to the old man tonight so that he may be relieved of his worrying. I’ll wait for a hunch.”

Then, as the work of tidying the kitchen was finished, Bob exclaimed: “Now bundle up, Doris, I’ll draw you on the sled while I skate. We can’t let you miss all of the fun.”

They were greeted with jolly shouts when they appeared, and Dick Jensen slid up to them, stopping only to do a double figure eight, in which accomplishment he excelled. Then, taking the rope of the sled from Bob’s warmly gloved hand, he said: “I’ll be Doris’ pony. I’m sure she would rather have me, and, if I’m not mistaken, you’ll find Rose waiting for you beyond the point.”

Bob’s face lighted. It was understood among these young people that some day, when they were older, Rose and Bob would be engaged, and since it was the only real romance in their midst, they all took a delighted interest in it.

For an hour the gleaming ice was the picture of a merry mid-winter frolic, but, as soon as the sun began rapidly to descend to the horizon, Bob took Rose’s horn and blew thereon a long, clear blast, while the maiden at his side, with cheeks as glowing as her ruddy name flower, beckoned the skaters shoreward.

“Time to be going!” Bob called as they flocked in. “The sky is so cloudy, the moon won’t be able to light us home, so we’ll try to make it before dark.”

Half an hour later the cabin had been securely locked, the sleigh filled with merrymakers, and the horses eager to be away after their long rest in the shelter of a shed.

It was nearly dark when the inn was reached. Mr. Wiggin appeared in the door to exclaim, “Well, I’m mighty glad to see you young folks headed for town. My wife’s been worrying the whole afternoon, knowing that highwayman was still at large. The sheriff and his men found some tracks just back of the inn leading toward the pine wood.” Merry put in excitedly: “Oh, Mr. Wiggin, if that robber was riding a horse, we know where he turned toward the old Dorchester road.” But the innkeeper shook his head.

“No, he was afoot, old man Bartlett said. Hal Spinney, from the milk farm, went by a spell earlier on horseback.”

“How is Mr. Bartlett now?” Gertrude asked solicitously.

“Well, he’s pretty much all in,” Mr. Wiggin replied sympathetically. Then, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, he said in a low voice, as though not wishing to be heard: “My wife wouldn’t hear to his going back to his shack up in the woods, so she’s got him in there by the fire. He’s pretty hard hit, as you can guess, that five hundred dollars being his lifetime savings.”

Bob was thinking hard. Now was the time to give the money back to Old Man Bartlett, but he had promised Doris that he would not tell how she had procured it. He thought it queer that the girl should care to protect that ne’er-do-well of a Tom Duffy; nevertheless he had given his word and would keep it. Jack was driving and was about to start the horses when Bob called: “Wait a minute, Jack, will you? I’d like to take a look at those tracks. Mr. Wiggin, I’m a shark at recognizing shoeprints. I wish you’d show them to me.”

The girls, who were not in the secret, smiled at each other knowingly. This carried out their theory that the members of the “C. D. C.” were trying to solve the mystery of the highwayman.

“Sure thing. I’ll show them to you,” the garrulous innkeeper replied. “Wait till I get a lantern. Dark’s settling down fast.”

A couple of the other boys climbed out of the sleigh, idly curious, and accompanied Bob and Mr. Wiggin, who had reappeared with a lighted lantern. Doris clenched her hands together nervously under the buffalo rope. That Bob had his “hunch” she was sure, but what he was about to do, she could not guess.

Five minutes passed, and ten; then the boys returned greatly excited. They were all talking at once. “What happened?” Merry called out.

“Happened?” Dick Jensen exclaimed. “The money’s been found. Mr. Wiggin stumbled right over that bag of gold. The robber must have been frightened and dropped it in the snow close to his tracks. Every cent of it was there.”

“O, thank goodness!” Gertrude exclaimed. “Now the old man can stop worrying.”

Mr. Wiggin held the lantern up, his round face glowing. “It sure was a lucky thing that Bob, here, wanted to look at those tracks,” he said. “No telling but what that robber might have come back in the night, knowing where he had dropped it.”

“Do hurry in, Mr. Wiggin, and give it to old Mr. Bartlett,” Doris begged, and if there was an unusual tenseness in her voice, none of the others noticed it. Bob glanced meaningly in her direction as he sat beside his Rose, and Doris, who had been silent before that, suddenly became the life of the party. “Oh, boys, please change your minds about taking us right home,” she pleaded. “We girls want to turn up the wood road just a little distance.”

“Why, Doris Drexel,” Betty Byrd cried in evident alarm, “what a wild suggestion! Why in the world should we want to go up the very road where the robbery took place!”

“That’s what I’d like to know!” Bertha began, then she remembered that Doris’ suggestion was merely the carrying out of their plan to try to discover if the boys of the “C. D. C.” held their secret meetings in the old Welsley “haunted” house. If the boys were willing to take the girls through the old ruin, it would mean that it was not their meeting place.

“Oh, yes – do let’s go!” Bertha then seconded.

“All right,” Jack sang out willingly. “I’ll have to back up a little. We’ve passed the wood road.”

“O, girls,” Merry gave Doris and Bertha a wink of understanding, “let’s go there some other time. I think we’ve given our guests of honor enough thrills for tonight.”

To which Geraldine heartily agreed, and so the horses were turned out upon the highway. When the girls had been left at their homes, the boys laughed and shouted as though at a good joke. The girls would indeed have been mystified if they had heard them.

CHAPTER XV.
A BOY’S REPENTANCE

Danny O’Neil, meanwhile having skated across the lake, had returned to his work as he had promised Doris that he would.

The Colonel was away and the lad hurriedly did the tasks expected of him. When these were finished, he went to his barren room over the garage, and, throwing himself down on his bed, he sobbed and sobbed. “Oh, Mom,” he said aloud, “I don’t know how I’m going to get on without you. There’s nobody now that cares, but I promised you I’d be brave and go straight, and I’ll try, Mom, but it’s hard, hard!”

There was a light tap on the door and the boy sat up and hurriedly drew his coat sleeve over his eyes. Then he rose and opened it. There stood the dearest little old lady, dressed in gray. She was smiling at him in a most loving way and she said: “Danny, I’m the Colonel’s new housekeeper. I want to look after everyone living on the place, and so I came out to see what I can do for you.”

The lad wondered if this little woman had heard what he, believing himself to be alone, had said but a moment before. Mrs. Gray had indeed heard and she longed to take the lonely, motherless boy in her arms and try to comfort him, but, since she could not do this, she hurriedly planned to try in some measure to fill the place of the dear one the lad had so recently lost.

Mrs. Gray took the Colonel into her confidence and that kindly man said: “Well, well, I might have known how lonely the boy would be without his mother. I remember how proud she was of him, and, come to think of it, she asked me at one time if there wasn’t some school where he could go without much expense and study drawing. She said he was always making pictures on his books or on anything that was handy, and it caused a good deal of trouble between the boy and his father, because Mr. O’Neil declared that only a shiftless, no account would idle his time away making pictures. I’m glad you spoke to me about the lad, Mrs. Gray. I’ll send for him this evening perhaps, and have a talk with him. In the meantime, do anything you wish to make his quarters more comfortable.”

That very morning, at the housekeeper’s request, the Colonel sent Danny on an errand which would necessitate his being away for several hours.

During that time two easy chairs that were not needed in the big house were taken to the boy’s room in the garage. Curtains made of colored prints were hung at the windows and another piece covered the bureau on which stood a picture of the mother who had so loved her son.

Mrs. Gray, with the Colonel’s permission, looked through his library and found several books that a boy would enjoy, “Ivanhoe,” “The Last of the Mohicans,” and a complete set of the writings of Mark Twain.

These, with a few pictures, gave the room, formerly so barren, a pleasant, home-like appearance.

The little woman was busily renovating the lad’s bed when Danny returned.

“Mrs. Gray,” he said, and there was a catch in his voice, “have you been doing all this just for me?”

“Why of course Danny-boy,” that little woman replied brightly. “What is a housekeeper for, if not to make things cheerful and tidy?” Then she hurried on to say, “The Colonel would like you to come to his study tonight at eight.”

When the boy was alone, he stood gazing out at the snowy fields, although he did not see them. He was wondering if by any chance the Colonel had heard of the highway robbery, and was going to rebuke him, perhaps discharge him.

Half an hour later he was called to the house by Mrs. Gray. “You’re wanted at the phone,” she said. “It’s a lassie with a sweet voice as is askin’ for you,” she added.

The boy was sure that it must be Doris who wished to speak to him, and he was right. “Danny, come over to my house tonight at eight o’clock promptly. I have something important to tell you.”

The lad turned away. Perhaps Doris knew that the sheriff was again on his trail and wanted to warn him. What should he do, and how could he explain his absence to the Colonel?

As Danny was leaving the telephone, he met the housekeeper, who smiled at him pleasantly.

“Mrs. Gray,” the boy said, “a friend has just called up and asked me to be in town tonight at eight. Do you think the Colonel would be willing to see me at another hour?”

“I’m sure of it,” the little old lady replied. “He is alone in his study now. Wait here. Danny, and I will ask him.”

A moment later she returned and told the boy that the Colonel would see him. Almost fearfully the lad entered the pleasant room, where the walls, lined with books, statues and paintings, told the artistic and literary taste of the gentleman who spent there many quiet hours each day. The kindly welcome that Danny received banished his fear, and when he left the study half an hour later, in his heart there was a new hope and a strengthened resolve. He whistled as he tramped into town that evening, and when Doris opened the door at his ring, his radiant face was so unlike the one she had last seen in the cabin, she marveled at the change.

“Do tell me what has happened,” she said as soon as they were seated.

“It’s almost too wonderful to believe,” the boy exclaimed. “It seems that last year my mother asked the Colonel’s advice about sending me to some inexpensive art school, and today he told me that if I still desired to go, he would help me accomplish that end. I’m to prove that I can stick at a thing by working for him faithfully all winter and then, in the spring, he will permit me to go to the Dorchester Art Institute. The days will be long, and I can be up with the birds and work in the garage and garden before I go to the city and again when I return. I want to do commercial drawing of some sort.” Then the boy paused and a deep flush mounted his face. “Good Angel,” he said, “I forgot that you probably think of me as a criminal and a highwayman.”

“Indeed I do not,” Doris protested. “I’m so happy for you, and I just know that you will make good, but, Danny, you haven’t asked me about the gold. I want you to know that it has been returned.”

The boy’s sensitive face expressed his great relief, then, unexpectedly, tears brimmed his eyes. “Doris,” he said, “the rest of my life will not be long enough to atone for that terrible wrong. I hope I may be able to do a real service for that old man some day.”

“I know you will, Danny,” the girl put her hand lightly on his arm. “Now, I want you to promise me that we will never again mention or even think of what happened. Promise me, Danny.”

Before the boy could reply, the door bell had pealed and laughing voices were heard without. The lad rose at once.

“Danny, don’t go!” Doris urged. “Geraldine and Alfred and some of the others are out there, and they would be glad to meet you.”

The brightness left the boy’s face, and he said bitterly, “You are wrong, Good Angel. Geraldine Morrison has never spoken a pleasant word to me. You must remember I am only their gardener.”

The bell was ringing insistently and so Doris swung open the door. A laughing crowd of girls and boys trooped into the hall. Danny tried to leave but Bob stopped him.

“Hello, Dan,” he said good-naturedly, “don’t hurry away on our account. The more the merrier, you know.”

“Have you met Miss Morrison?” he asked, then quickly added: “Of course you have. I forgot at the minute that you both live at the Colonel’s.”

Geraldine, pretending not to have heard her name, was talking to Doris and her back was toward the boys.

Bob noticed this, and then he realized that the proud city girl might consider Danny’s position in the Wainright home a menial one.

“Sorry you are going, Dan,” Alfred now came forward. “Why don’t you wait and ride home with Sis and me?”

“Thanks,” the other replied as he reached for his great coat. “I think I would better be going now.”

Suddenly there was a crashing noise in their midst, and a loosely wrapped bundle containing a pair of skates fell to the floor from beneath Danny’s coat.

“Why, Doris,” Peggy exclaimed in astonishment, “those are your skates, aren’t they? This morning when I asked if I might borrow them, you said you weren’t able to find them.”

Bob hurried to the rescue. “Guess you must have left them in the sleigh. Good thing Danny found them for you. Well, so long, old man, if you must go. See you again.”

When the Irish boy had gone Doris glanced at Bob, wondering if he had surmised that Danny O’Neil was the real highwayman, but that boy said nothing to confirm her suspicion that evening nor ever after. However, Bob did know, and he determined that he would do all he could to help Danny O’Neil.

“Take off your things and stay a while,” Doris urged, but Merry shook her head. “No, we just came to get you. We’re so noisy when we’re all together, I know we would disturb your mother. Mums and Dad have gone to a concert and good old Katie doesn’t mind how much noise we make, so put on your duds and let’s go through the hedge. Jack shoveled a path today from your door to ours. One of his daily good deeds.”

The Drexels and Lees were next-door neighbors with a pine hedge between them, but of course there was a gate in it.

Fifteen minutes later they were in the big comfortable Lee library with the victrola turned on. Jack at once asked Geraldine to dance with him, and since she thought him nicest of all the boys, she was pleased to accept. After a time he led her to the settee in front of the fireplace, on which a log was burning. “I’d rather talk a while,” he said, but, instead of talking, he sat looking into the fire. Geraldine, glancing at him, thought how good-looking he was. At last she asked lightly, “Are your thoughts worth a penny?” Then she added, “I don’t believe that you even know that you are here.”

The boy laughed as he replied: “I will have to confess that my thoughts had taken me far away. I was traveling years into the future when you recalled me to the present.”

Then, because of the girl’s very evident interest, the lad continued: “Dad and I had a heart to heart talk this morning. He thinks that if I plan taking up his business of building and contracting, I would better begin to specialize along those lines, but I told him that, first of all, I want to go West and try cattle ranching.”

“Oh, Jack, what a dreadful thing to do!” the girl protested.

The boy’s face was radiant as he replied: “You are mistaken. It’s great out there!”

But it was quite evident that his companion did not agree with him.

“A man who goes out to live on a desert ranch must expect to be a bachelor all his life,” Geraldine ventured, “for no girl of our class would want to live in such a desolate place.”

The boy looked up brightly. “Wrong again, Geraldine!” he said. “The girl I would want to marry would love it out there.” Then he laughingly added: “You see, I never intend to marry until I find someone who will be as fine a little homemaker as my mother is. Mom could be a rich man’s wife or a poor man’s wife and shine in either position. She can make her own dresses and hats if need be and enjoy doing it, and, as for cooking, Kate can’t compare with her. Of course I wouldn’t expect my wife to be a drudge, but I do want her to know how to do all of the things that make home a place of solid comfort. None of these pretty, dolled-up, society girls for me!”

The lad was not looking at his listener and so he did not know that the rose in her cheeks had deepened, or that she was biting her lips angrily. Although she had no real reason for thinking so, she was convinced Jack was expressing his very poor opinion of her, Geraldine Morrison. She rose and said coldly, “It is late. Alfred and I must be going.”

That night she cried for a long time, though she could not have told why, and she decided that the very next morning she would ask the Colonel to permit her to return to the city where the boys admired and understood her.

CHAPTER XVI.
THE HEART OF A SNOB

The Colonel glanced anxiously at his young guest the next morning. She had been so bright and animated for days that the good man was beginning to hope that the city girl was becoming acclimated, but again she was looking pale and disinterested. When she had finished her breakfast and had retired to her room, the Colonel called Mrs. Gray into his study and together they had a long talk about Geraldine.

“Poor little girl,” the kind old lady said. “She has never known a mother’s love and I would be glad to help her, but I can’t reach her heart. She treats me courteously, but her attitude says as plainly as words: ‘Mrs. Gray, you are only an upper servant from whom I wish no familiarity.’ I have tried ever since I came to find something which would be the open sesame of this stone barrier which the little girl has raised between us, but I am beginning to think that there is none.”

“Try just once more,” the Colonel said anxiously, “and then, if you do not succeed, I will comply with her father’s suggestion and send her away to a boarding school if she is unhappy here.”

The little old lady went directly to Geraldine’s room and tapped on the door. There was no reply and so she softly entered.

The girl had thrown herself down on the window seat and her shoulders were shaken with sobs. Strangely enough in one hand she held a stocking which she had evidently been attempting to darn.

Truly touched, the kind old lady went toward her and said with infinite tenderness: “Dear, dear little girl! Won’t you tell me why you are unhappy?” She sat beside Geraldine and smoothed her hair.

“Oh, why didn’t my mother live?” was the sobbing reply. “She would have taught me the things that other girls know how to do, and then no one could have called me a pretty dolled-up butterfly.”

Mrs. Grey realized that someone had deeply hurt Geraldine’s pride, but perhaps this was the very cleft in the stone wall for which she had been seeking.

“Little girl,” she said kindly, “you cannot know how my heart has yearned through the years, first for a daughter of my own and then for a granddaughter to whom I might teach the things that would help her to become a truly womanly woman. It would mean so much to me, Geraldine; it would give me so much happiness, if you would let me just pretend that you are that little girl.”

The wondering lassie sat up, her beautiful violet eyes brimming with unshed tears. There were also tears in the eyes of the old lady, and, perhaps, for the first time in her sixteen years the girl felt a rush of sympathy in her heart for someone not herself.

“You, too, are lonely, Mrs. Gray?” she asked. Then she added sorrowfully: “I guess I never really knew what I had missed until I heard the boys and girls here telling about their wonderful mothers. Father has often told me that my mother was wonderful, too. She would have taught me to sew and make my own dresses and hats and to cook, if that is what a girl should know.”

The housekeeper marveled. This was not the Geraldine of yesterday. What had happened? Mrs. Gray could not know, but what she did know was that it was a moment to seize upon, and this she did.

“Geraldine,” she said, “let me teach you these things.”

“Oh, will you?” was the eager reply. “How long will it take me to learn, do you think? May I begin a dress today?”

Mrs. Gray laughed, and, stooping, she kissed the girl’s wet cheek, then she said: “Get on your coat, dearie, and we will go into town and buy the material.”

This was the beginning of happy days for these two.

A week later Geraldine stood in front of the long mirror in her sun-flooded room, gazing with shining eyes at her own graceful self, clothed, for the very first time, in a garment of her own making.

She had begged Mrs. Gray to permit her to put in every stitch so that she might truthfully say that she made it all herself. To whom she wished to say this, the little old lady could not surmise.

“Isn’t it the prettiest color, Mrs. Gray?” Geraldine asked for the twentieth time as she looked at the clinging folds of soft blue cashmere.

“It is indeed, dearie,” the housekeeper replied, “and it’s the blue that makes your eyes look like two lovely violets.”

The girl’s gaze wandered to the reflection of her face and she smiled. “Daddy says that my eyes are just like Mother’s. I’m so glad.” Then she added happily: “It’s all done, isn’t it, Mrs. Gray, except a collar, and we haven’t decided how to make that yet, have we? Oh, there’s the telephone. I wonder who it is?”

Skipping to the little table near her bed, she lifted the receiver and called, “Good morning.”

Merry’s voice said: “Geraldine, we want you to come over this afternoon.”

“I’ll be there!” the seamstress replied, and then, whirling around, she exclaimed: “It was Merry Lee. She wants me to be at her house about three. How I wish I could wear my new dress.”

“Why, so you can, dearie. I’ll cut out a deep muslin collar and you can sew tiny ruffles around the edge and the dress will be complete long before that hour.”

In the early afternoon, all alone, Geraldine tramped down the snowy road and her heart was singing. She could not understand why she felt so happy.

The girls were gathered in the cheerful library of the Lee home when Geraldine entered.

They welcomed her gladly, and when her wraps were removed Merry, in little girl fashion, exclaimed: “Oh, do look, everybody. Isn’t that the sweetest new dress Geraldine has on?”

The wearer of the dress, with flushed cheeks and glowing eyes, turned around that the girls might all examine her gown, and then, unable longer to keep her wonderful secret, she exclaimed: “You’ll never believe it, but it’s honestly true. I made every stitch of this dress myself. Of course, Mrs. Gray cut it out and showed me how, but truly I made it, and I never enjoyed doing anything more in my whole life.”

Then it was that Geraldine chanced to glance at the open door of the music room, and the rose in her cheeks deepened, for Jack, with book in hand, was standing there. Luckily he had completely forgotten the conversation of the week before and so he did not even dream that his theories had been the incentive for Geraldine’s experiments in dressmaking.

“Jack,” his sister called, “isn’t this a pretty dress? Geraldine made it all herself.”

“It surely is!” the lad replied as he entered the room. “It’s the color I like best.” Then, as Merry and Doris served hot chocolate and cookies, the lad sat on the window seat beside Geraldine and talked about his favorite subject, cattle-raising in Arizona. An hour later, when the girls were about to depart, he reappeared to announce that he would take them all home in his father’s big sleigh if they did not mind being crowded. It was with a happy heart that Geraldine noticed that one by one Jack left the town girls at their homes, and then went round the longest way to the Wainright place.