“Where are you going, my pretty maid, and why the step ladder?” said
Nyoda to Migwan one morning. “Have your beans grown up so high over
night that you have to climb a ladder to pick them?”
“Come and see!” said Migwan, mysteriously. Nyoda followed her to the
front lawn. Migwan set the ladder up beside a dead tree, from which the
branches had been sawn, leaving a slender trunk about seven feet high.
On top of this Migwan proceeded to nail a flat board.
“Are you going to live on a pillar, like St. Simeon Stylites?” asked
Nyoda, curiously, as Migwan mounted the ladder with a basin of water in
her hand.
“O come, Nyoda,” said Migwan, “don’t you know a bird bathtub when you
see one?”
“A bathtub, is it?” said Nyoda. “Now I breathe easily again. But why so
extremely near the earth?”
Migwan laughed at her chaffing. “You have to put them high up,” she
explained, “or else the cats get the birds when they are bathing. Mr.
Landsdowne told me how to make it.” The other girls wandered out and
inspected the drinking fountain-bathtub. Hinpoha closed one eye and
looked critically at the outfit.
“Doesn’t it strike you as being a little inharmonious?” she asked.
“Black stump, unfinished wood platform, and blue enamel basin.”
“Paint the platform and basin dark green,” said Sahwah, the practical.
“There is some green paint down cellar, I saw it. Let me paint it. I can
do that much for the birds, even if I didn’t think of building them a
drinking fountain.” She sped after the paint and soon transformed the
offending articles so that they blended harmoniously with the
surroundings.
“It’s better now,” said Nyoda, thoughtfully, “but it’s still crude and
unbeautiful. What is wrong?”
“I know,” said Hinpoha, the artistic one. “It’s too bare. It looks like
a hat without any trimming. What it needs is vines around it.”
“The very thing!” exclaimed Migwan. “I’ll plant climbing nasturtiums and
train them to go up the pole and wind around the basin, so it will look
like a fountain.”
“Four heads are better than one,” observed Nyoda, as the seeds were
planted, “when they are all looking in the same direction.”
Just then a young man came up the path from the road. “May I use your
telephone?” he asked, courteously raising his hat. He spoke with a
slight foreign accent.
“Certainly you may,” said Migwan, going with him into the house. She
could not help hearing what he said. He called up a number in town and
when he had his connection, said, “This is Larue talking. We are going
to do it on the Centerville Road. There is a river near.” That was all.
He rang off, thanked Migwan politely and walked off down the road. The
incident was forgotten for a time.
That afternoon Gladys was coming home in the automobile. At the turn in
the road just before you came to Onoway House there was a car stalled.
The driver, a young and pretty woman, was apparently in great perplexity
what to do. “Can I help you?” asked Gladys, stopping her machine.
“I don’t know what’s the matter,” said the young woman, “but I can’t get
the car started. I’m afraid I’ll have to be towed to a garage. Do you
know of anyone around here who has a team of horses?”
Gladys looked at the starting apparatus of the other car, but it was a
different make from hers and she knew nothing about it. “Would you like
to have me tow you to our barn?” she asked. “There is a man up the road
who fixes automobiles for a great many people who drive through here and
I could get him to come over.”
The young woman appeared much relieved. “If you would be so kind it
would be a great favor,” she said, “for I am in haste to-day.”
Gladys towed the car to the barn at Onoway House and phoned for the car
tinker. The young woman, who introduced herself as Miss Mortimer, was a
very pleasant person indeed, and quite won the hearts of the girls. She
was delighted with Onoway House, both with the name and the house
itself, and asked to be shown all over it, from garret to cellar. “How
near that tree is to the window!” she said, as she looked out of the
attic window into the branches of the big Balm of Gilead tree that grew
beside the house, close to Migwan and Hinpoha’s bedroom. It was much
higher than the house and its branches drooped down on the roof. “How do
you ever move about up here with all this furniture?” asked Miss
Mortimer.
“Oh,” answered Migwan, “we never come up here.”
The barn likewise struck the visitor’s fancy, with its big empty lofts,
and she fell absolutely in love with the river. The girls took her for a
ride on the raft, and she amused herself by sounding the depth of the
water with the pole. They could see that she was experienced in handling
boats from the way she steered the raft. The girls were so charmed with
her that they felt a keen regret when the neighborhood tinker announced
that the car was in running shape again.
“I’ve had a lovely time, girls,” said Miss Mortimer, shaking the hand of
each in farewell. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“Come and see us again, if you are ever passing this way,” said Migwan,
cordially.
“You may possibly see me again,” said Miss Mortimer, half to herself, as
she got into her machine and drove away.
There was no moon that night and the cloud-covered sky hinted at
approaching rain, but Sahwah wanted to go out on the river on the raft,
so Nyoda and Migwan and Hinpoha and Gladys went with her. It was too
dark to play any kind of games and the girls were too tired and
breathless from the hot day to sing, so they floated down-stream in lazy
silence, watching the shapeless outlines made against the dull sky by
the trees and bushes along the banks. On the other side of Farmer
Landsdowne’s place there was an abandoned farm. The house had stood
empty for many years, its cheerless windows brooding in the sunlight and
glaring in the moonlight. Just as they did with every other vacant
house, the Winnebagos nicknamed this one the Haunted House, and vied
with each other in describing the queer noises they had heard issuing
from it and the ghosts they had seen walking up and down the porch. As
they passed this place, gliding silently along the river, they were
surprised to see an automobile standing beside the house, at the little
side porch, in the shadow of a row of tall trees.
“The ghosts are getting prosperous,” whispered Migwan, “they have bought
an automobile to do their nightly wandering in. Pretty soon we can’t say
that ghosts ‘walk’ any more. Ah, here come the ghosts.”
From the side door of the house came two men, who proceeded to lift
various boxes from under the seats of the car and carry them into the
house. Then they lifted out a small keg, which the girls could not help
noticing they handled with greater care than they had the boxes. The
wind was blowing toward the river, and the girls distinctly heard one
man say to the other, “Be careful now, you know what will happen if we
drop this.”
“I’m being as careful as I can,” answered the second man.
After a few seconds the first one spoke again. “When’s Belle coming?”
“She arrived in town to-day,” said his partner.
When they had gone into the house this time the machine suddenly drove
away, revealing the presence of a third man at the wheel, whom the girls
had not noticed before this. The two men stayed in the house.
“What on earth can be happening there?” said Sahwah.
“It certainly does look suspicious,” said Nyoda.
They waited there in the shadow of the willows for a long time to see
what would happen next, but nothing did. The house stood blank and
silent and apparently as empty as ever. Not a glimmer of light was
visible anywhere. Sahwah and Nyoda were just on the point of getting
into the rowboat, which had been tied on behind the raft, and towing the
other girls back home, when their ears caught the sound of a faint
splashing, like the sound made by the dipping of an oar. They were
completely hidden from sight either up or down the river, for just at
this point a portion of the bank had caved in, and the water filling up
the hole had made a deep indentation in the shore line, and into this
miniature bay the Tortoise-Crab had been steered. The thick willows
along the bank formed a screen between them and the stream above and
below. But they could look between the branches and see what was coming
up stream, from the direction of the lake. It was a rowboat, containing
two persons. The scudding clouds parted at intervals and the moon shone
through, and by its fitful light they could see that one of these
persons was a woman. When the rowboat was almost directly behind the
house it came to a halt, only a few yards from the place where the
Winnebagos lay concealed.
“This is the house,” said the man.
“I told you the water was deep enough up this far,” said the woman, in a
tone of satisfaction. Just then the moon shone out for a brief instant,
and the Winnebagos looked at each other in surprise. The woman, or
rather the girl, in the rowboat was Miss Mortimer, who had been their
guest only that day. The next moment she spoke. “We might as well go
back now. There isn’t anything more we can do. I just wanted to prove to
you that it could be towed up the river this far without danger.”
“All right, Belle,” replied the man, and at the sound of his voice
Migwan pricked up her ears. There was something vaguely familiar about
it; something which eluded her at the moment. The rowboat turned in the
river and proceeded rapidly down-stream. The Winnebagos returned home,
full of excitement and wonder.
The barn at Onoway House stood halfway between the house and the river.
As they landed from the raft and were tying it to the post they saw a
man come out of the barn and disappear among the bushes that grew
nearby. It was too dark to see him with any degree of distinctness.
Gladys’s thought leaped immediately to her car, which was left in the
barn. “Somebody’s trying to steal the car!” she cried, and they all
hastened to the barn. The automobile stood undisturbed in its place.
They made a hasty search with lanterns, but as far as they could see,
none of the gardening tools were missing. Satisfied that no damage had
been done, they went into the house.
“Probably a tramp,” said Mrs. Gardiner, when the facts were told her.
“He evidently thought he would sleep in the barn, and then changed his
mind for some reason or other.”
Migwan lay awake a long time trying to place the voice of the man in the
rowboat. Just as she was sinking off to sleep it came to her. The voice
she had heard in the darkness had a slightly foreign accent, and was the
voice of the man who had used the telephone that morning.
Sometime during the night Onoway House was wakened by the sounds of a
terrific thunder storm. The girls flew around shutting windows. After a
few minutes of driving rain against the window panes the sound changed.
It became a sharp clattering. “Hail!” said Sahwah.
“Oh, my young plants!” cried Migwan. “They will be pounded to pieces.”
“Cover them with sheets and blankets!” suggested Nyoda. With their
accustomed swiftness of action the Winnebagos snatched up everything in
the house that was available for the purpose and ran out into the
garden, and spread the covers over the beds in a manner which would keep
the tender young plants from being pounded to pieces by the hailstones.
Migwan herself ran down to the farthest bed, which was somewhat
separated from the others. As she raced to save it from destruction she
suddenly ran squarely into someone who was standing in the garden. She
had only time to see that it was a man, when, with a muffled exclamation
of alarm he disappeared into space. Disappeared is the only word for it.
He did not run, he never reached the cover of the bushes; he simply
vanished off the face of the earth. One moment he was and the next
moment he was not. Much excited, Migwan ran back to the others and told
her story, only to be laughed at and told she was seeing things and had
lurking men on the brain. The thing was so queer and uncanny that she
began to wonder herself if she had been fully awake at the time, and if
she might not possibly have dreamed the whole thing.
The morning dawned fresh and fair after the shower, green and gold with
the sun on the garden, and Migwan’s delight at finding the tender little
plants unharmed, thanks to their timely covering, was inclined to thrust
the mysterious goings-on at the empty house the night before into
secondary place in her mind. But she was not allowed to forget it, for
it was the sole topic of conversation at the breakfast table. Gladys,
with her nose buried in the morning paper, suddenly looked up. “Listen
to this,” she said, and then began to read: “Another dynamite plot
unearthed. Society for the purpose of assassinating men prominent in
affairs and dynamiting large buildings discovered in attempt to blow up
the Court House. An attempt to blow up the new Court House was
frustrated yesterday when George Brown, one of the custodians, saw a man
crouching in the engine room and ordered him out. A search revealed the
fact that dynamite had been placed on the floor and attached to a fuse.
On being arrested the man confessed that he was a member of the famous
Venoti gang, operating in the various large cities. The man is being
held without bail, but the head of the gang, Dante Venoti, is still at
large, and so is his wife, Bella, who aids him in all his activities. No
clue to their whereabouts can be found.”
“Do you suppose,” said Gladys, laying the paper down, “that those men we
saw last night could belong to that gang? You remember how carefully
they carried the keg into the house, as if it contained some explosive.
They couldn’t have any business there or they wouldn’t have come at
night. And they called the woman in the boat ‘Belle,’ or it might have
been ‘Bella.’”
“And that man in the boat was the same one who came here and used the
telephone yesterday morning,” said Migwan. “I couldn’t help noticing his
foreign accent. He said, ‘We are going to do it on the Centerville Road.
There is a river near.’ What are they going to do on the Centerville
Road?”
The garden work was neglected while the girls discussed the matter. “And
the man we saw coming out of the barn when we came home,” said Sahwah,
“he probably had something to do with it, too.”
“And the man I saw in the garden in the middle of the night,” said
Migwan.
“If you _did_ see a man,” said Nyoda, somewhat doubtfully. Migwan did
not insist upon her story. What was the use, when she had no proof, and
the thing had been so uncanny?
They were all moved to real grief over the fact that the delightful Miss
Mortimer should have a hand in such a dark business—in fact, was
undoubtedly the famous Bella Venoti herself. “I can’t believe it,” said
Migwan, “she was so jolly and friendly, and was so charmed with Onoway
House.”
“I wonder why she wanted to go through it from attic to cellar,” said
Sahwah, shrewdly. “Could she have had some purpose? _Migwan!_” she
cried, jumping up suddenly, “don’t you remember that she said, ‘How near
that tree is to the window’? Could she have been thinking that it would
be easy to climb in there? And when she asked how we ever moved about
with all that furniture up there, you said, ‘We never come up here’!
Don’t you see what we’ve done? We’ve given her a chance to look the
house over and find a place where people could hide if they wanted to,
and as much as told her that they would be safe up here because we never
came up.”
Consternation reigned at this speech of Sahwah’s. The girls remembered
the incident only too well. “I’ll never be able to trust anyone again,”
said Migwan, near to tears, for she had conceived a great liking for the
young woman she had known as “Miss Mortimer.”
“Do you remember,” pursued Sahwah, “how she took the pole of the raft
and found out how deep the water was all along, and then afterwards she
said to the man in the boat, ‘I told you it was deep enough.’ Everything
she did at our house was a sort of investigation.”
“But it was only by accident that she got to Onoway House in the first
place,” said Gladys. “All she did was ask me to tell her where she could
get a team of horses to tow her to a garage. She didn’t know I belonged
to Onoway House. It was I who brought her here, and she only stayed
because we asked her to. It doesn’t look as if she had any serious
intentions of investigating the neighborhood. She said she was in a
hurry to go on.” Migwan brightened visibly at this. She clutched eagerly
at any hope that Miss Mortimer might be innocent after all.
“How do you know that that breakdown in the road was accidental?” asked
Nyoda. “And how can you be sure that she didn’t know you came from
Onoway House? She may have been looking for a pretense to come here and
you played right into her hands by offering to tow her into the barn.”
Migwan’s hope flickered and went out.
“And the man in the barn,” said Sahwah, knowingly, “he might have come
to look the automobile over and become familiar with the way the barn
door opened, so he could get into the car and drive away in a hurry if
he wanted to get away.” Taken all in all, there was only one conclusion
the girls could come to, and that was that there was something
suspicious going on in the neighborhood, and it looked very much as if
the Venoti gang were hiding explosives in the empty house and were
planning to bring something else; what it was they could not guess. At
all events, something must be done about it. Nyoda called up the police
in town and told briefly what they had seen and heard, and was told that
plain clothes men would be sent out to watch the empty house. When she
described the man who had called and used the telephone, the police
officer gave an exclamation of satisfaction.
“That description fits Venoti closely,” he said. “He used to have a
mustache, but he could very easily have shaved it off. It’s very
possible that it was he. He’s done that trick before; asked to use
people’s telephones as a means of getting into the house.”
The girls thrilled at the thought of having seen the famous anarchist so
close. “Hadn’t we better tell the Landsdownes about it?” asked Migwan.
“They are in a better position to watch that house from their windows
than we are.”
“You’re right,” said Nyoda. “And we ought to tell the Smalleys, too, so
they will be on their guard and ready to help the police if it is
necessary.”
“I hate to go over there,” said Migwan, “I don’t like Mr. Smalley.”
“That has nothing to do with it,” said Nyoda, firmly. “The fact that he
is fearfully stingy and grasping has no bearing on this case. He has a
right to know it if his property is in danger.” And she proceeded
forthwith to the Red House.
Mr. Smalley was inclined to pooh-pooh the whole affair as the
imagination of a houseful of women. “Saw a man running out of your barn,
did you?” he asked, showing some interest in this part of the tale.
“Well now, come to think of it,” he said, “I saw someone sneaking around
ours too, last night. But I didn’t think much of it. That’s happened
before. It’s usually chicken thieves. I keep a big dog in the barn and
they think twice about breaking in after they hear him bark, and you
haven’t any chickens, that’s why nothing was touched.” It was a very
simple explanation of the presence of the man in the barn, but still it
did not satisfy Nyoda. She could not help connecting it in some way with
the occurrences in the vacant house.
Mr. Landsdowne was very much interested and excited at the story when it
was told to him. “There’s probably a whole lot more to it than we know,”
he said, getting out his rifle and beginning to clean it. “There’s more
going on in this country in the present state of affairs than most
people dream of. You have notified the police? That’s good; I guess
there won’t be many more secret doings in the empty house.”
As Nyoda and Migwan went home from the Landsdownes they passed a
telegraph pole in the road on which a man was working. Silhouetted
against the sky as he was they could see his actions clearly. He was
holding something to his ear which looked like a receiver, and with the
other hand he was writing something down in a little book. Migwan looked
at him curiously; then she started. “Nyoda,” she said, in a whisper,
“that is the same man who used our telephone. That is Dante Venoti
himself.” As if conscious that they were looking at him, the man on the
pole put down the pencil, and drawing his cap, which had a large visor,
down over his face, he bent his head so they could not get another look
at his features. “That’s the man, all right,” said Migwan. “What do you
suppose he is doing?”
“It looks,” said Nyoda, judicially, “as if he were tapping the wires for
messages that are expected to pass at this time. Possibly you did not
notice it, but I began to look at that man as soon as we stepped into
the road from Landsdowne’s, and I saw him look at his watch and then
hastily put the receiver to his ear.”
“Oh, I hope the police from town will come soon,” said Migwan, hopping
nervously up and down in the road.
“Until they do come we had better keep a close watch on what goes on
around here,” said Nyoda. Accordingly the Winnebagos formed themselves
into a complete spy system. Migwan and Gladys and Betty and Tom took
baskets and picked the raspberries that grew along the road as an excuse
for watching the road and the front of the house, while Nyoda and Sahwah
and Hinpoha took the raft and patrolled the river. As the girls in the
road watched, the man climbed down from the pole, walked leisurely past
them, went up the path to the empty house and seated himself calmly on
the front steps, fanning himself with his hat, apparently an innocent
line man taking a rest from the hot sun at the top of his pole.
“He’s afraid to go in with us watching him,” whispered Migwan. Just then
a large automobile whirled by, stirring up clouds of dust, which
temporarily blinded the girls. When they looked again toward the house
the “line man” had vanished from the steps. “He’s gone inside!” said
Migwan, when they saw without a doubt that he was nowhere in sight
outdoors.
Meanwhile the girls on the raft, who had been keeping a sharp lookout
down-stream with a pair of opera glasses, saw something approaching in
the distance which arrested their attention. For a long time they could
not make out what it was—it looked like a shapeless black mass. Then as
they drew nearer they saw what was coming, and an exclamation of
surprise burst from each one. It was a structure like a portable garage
on a raft, towed by a launch. As it drew nearer still they could make
out with the opera glasses that the person at the wheel was a woman, and
that woman was Bella Venoti.
The hasty arrival of an automobile full of armed men who jumped out in
front of the “vacant” house frightened the girls in the road nearly out
of their wits, until they realized that these were the plain clothes men
from town. After sizing up the house from the outside the men went up
the path to the porch. The girls were watching them with a fascinated
gaze, and no one saw the second automobile that was coming up the road
far in the distance. One of the plain clothes men, who seemed to be the
leader of the group, rapped sharply on the door of the house. There was
no answer. He rapped again. This time the door was flung wide open from
the inside. The girls could see that the man in the doorway was Dante
Venoti. The officer of the law stepped forward. “Your little game is up,
Dante Venoti,” he said, quietly, “and you are under arrest.”
Dante Venoti looked at him in open-mouthed astonishment. “Vatevaire do
you mean?” he gasped. “I am under arrest? Has ze law stop ze production?
Chambers, Chambers,” he called over his shoulder, “come here queek. Ze
police has stop’ ze production!”
A tall, lanky, decidedly American looking individual appeared in the
doorway behind him. “What the deuce!” he exclaimed, at the sight of all
the men on the porch. At this moment the second automobile drove up,
followed by a third and a fourth. A large number of men and women
dismounted and ran up the path to the house.
“Caruthers! Simpson! Jimmy!” shouted Venoti, excitedly to the latest
arrivals, “ze police has stop ze production!”
“What do you know about it!” exclaimed someone in the crowd of
newcomers, evidently one of those addressed. “Where’s Belle?”
“She is bringing zeze caboose! Up ze rivaire!” cried the black haired
man, wringing his hands in distress.
The plain clothes men looked over the band of people that stood around
him. There was nothing about them to indicate their desperate character.
Instead of being Italians as they had expected, they seemed to be mostly
Americans. The leader of the policemen suddenly looked hard at Venoti.
“Say,” he said, “you look like a Dago, but you don’t talk like one. Who
are you, anyway?”
“I am Felix Larue,” said the black haired man, “I am ze director of ze
Great Western Film Company, and zeze are all my actors. We have rent zis
house and farm for ze production of ze war play ‘Ze Honor of a Soldier.’
Last night we bring some of ze properties to ze house; zey are very
valuable, and Chambers and Bushbower here zey stay in ze house wiz zem.”
The plain clothes men looked at each other and started to grin. Migwan
and Gladys, who had joined the company on the porch, suddenly felt
unutterably foolish. “But what were you doing on top of the pole?”
faltered Migwan.
Mr. Larue turned his eyes toward her. He recognized her as the girl who
had allowed him to use her telephone the day before, and favored her
with a polite bow. “Me,” he said, “I play ze part of ze spy in ze
piece—ze villain. I tap ze wire and get ze message. I was practice for
ze part zis morning.” He turned beseechingly to the policeman who had
questioned him. “Zen you will not stop ze production?” he asked.
“Heavens, no,” answered the policeman. “We were going to arrest you for
an anarchist, that’s all.”
The company of actors were dissolving into hysterical laughter, in which
the plain clothes men joined sheepishly. Just then a young woman came
around the house from the back, followed at a short distance by Nyoda,
Sahwah and Hinpoha. Seeing the crowd in front she stopped in surprise.
Larue went to the edge of the porch and called to her reassuringly.
“Come on, Belle,” he called, gaily. When she was up on the porch he took
her by the hand and led her forward. “Permit me to introduce my fellow
conspirator,” he said, in a theatrical manner and with a low bow. “Zis
is Belle Mortimer, ze leading lady of ze Great Western Film Company!”