A MYSTERY TO SOLVE
“Meeting is called to order!” Merry turned to beckon the girl, who,
feeling rather like an intruder, had seated herself some distance from
the others. “Gerry, come over and sit in Jack’s favorite easy chair,”
their hostess said. “Then you’ll be in the circle with the rest of us.”
Geraldine was conscious of the slight flush which she always felt in her
cheeks when Jack’s name was mentioned, but she gladly joined the others,
sinking into the luxurious depths of a softly upholstered cosy-comfort
chair.
“You’ll have to say interesting things to keep me awake,” she laughingly
warned them as she snuggled down in it.
“Don’t worry about _this_ meeting not being interesting. It’s going to be
a thriller,” the president announced. Whereupon the members all sat up
ready to ask a chorus of questions, but Merry pounded on the table before
her with her improvised gavel, an ornamented paper-cutter, as she said
imperatively: “Silence, if you please! We will now have the roll call.
Sleuth Rose, are you present?”
A laughing response: “I am!”
And so on until each had been called. Geraldine was very much awake.
“Madame President,” she burst in, “if I’m not too much out of order, will
you please tell me _why_ you call these pretty maidens by such a terrible
name? Sleuths! Ohoo!” she shuddered. “I thought sleuths were long, lank,
stealthy creatures who steal around slums and underworld places trying to
find criminals.”
“Well, perhaps some sleuths do,” Merry acknowledged, “but _we_ aren’t
quite that desperate.”
Then Peg put in: “O, I say, Merry, have a heart; don’t mystify Gerry any
longer. Begin at the beginning and tell her what our club has stood for
in the past, and what it will accomplish in the future.”
“How can I reveal what nobody knows?” their president inquired. However,
she turned to Geraldine and told how the seven girls who always walked
back and forth to school together had formed a clique, which at first
they had named Sunnyside Club with “Spread Sunshine” for a motto. “Our
Saint Gertrude’s suggestion, you may be sure,” Rose interjected.
“Well, we _did_ do a great deal to make the children up in the orphanage
happy,” Betty Byrd championed as though feeling that the absent member
was in some way being maligned.
Bertha Angel agreed with her emphatically: “Of course we did, little one,
and we intend to keep it up. Being sleuths won’t in any way keep us from
doing good deeds.”
“But what is there to be sleuthing about in this sleepy little town of
Sunnyside?” Geraldine wanted to know. “And why do you want to do it if
there is?”
“O, we don’t really,” Rose told her. “It’s sort of like taking a dare.
The boys have a club which they call ‘C. D. C.,’ and they’re terribly
secret about it. They have a mysterious meeting-place, and since we girls
aren’t allowed to roam about nights unless our brothers are along to
protect us, we never can find out where they meet. We sort of thought it
might be in the old Walsley ruin on the East Lake Road. That’s why we
asked them to take us there Saturday after that robbery. We thought if
that _was_ their secret meeting-place, they would have it fitted up like
a clubroom some way, and then of course they wouldn’t want us to visit
it. But when they said ‘sure thing,’ they’d take us if we wanted to go,
why then we were convinced that’s _not_ where they hold their secret
meetings.”
Peggy interrupted with: “Maybe _you_ were convinced, old dear, but I was
_not_. You say we can’t go up the East Lake Road at night when the boys
hold their meetings. Of course we can’t, but what’s to hinder us from
going up there alone some time in the daylight. If that old man who
killed himself haunts the place at all, it wouldn’t be while the sun is
shining.”
“Ugh!” Gerry said with a shudder. “Now I believe you _are_ sleuths.
Wanting to visit a haunted house! But tell me, what kind of a club is the
‘C. D. C.’?”
“It’s a detective club, and we, that is, Merry, figured out, by putting
two and two together, that it means ‘Conan Doyle Club.’ Jack shut her in
a closet one day, and before she could let him know she was there, she
heard enough to know that he and his friends have tried to find some
mystery to solve in Sunnyside, and have decided that there isn’t one, and
so they take turns making up mysteries. They read them at these secret
meetings and let the others try to figure out clues.”
“Is that why you girls started to be sleuths?” Gerry wanted to know.
Bertha nodded. “Merry heard one of the boys say that an uncle of his in
New York, who is a lawyer, had written about a famous girl detective, and
the others scoffed at the very idea. They said they couldn’t imagine
_girls_ ever solving a mystery, not if they were all like girls in
Sunnyside. So, you see, _that_ was sort of a dare, and we made up our
mind we would _find_ a mystery and solve it, and then crow about it; but
the joke is, we haven’t found a mystery!”
Merry continued with: “Peggy and Doris were a committee of two to find
one, and they were to make their report last Saturday, but——”
“But nothing,” Peg interrupted, “you know we were so busy planning that
impromptu skating party out at the Drexel Lodge we didn’t have time to
call a meeting.”
“Well, if we had called one,” the president persisted, “you girls
wouldn’t have had a mystery to present.”
“Wouldn’t we, though?” Peg’s eyes fairly glistened. “Doris, _now_ is the
psychological moment, as Miss Preen would say, for springing our find.”
The girls, except Geraldine, gasped. She was yet too mystified to realize
the importance of the announcement. They watched Doris, who unstrapped
her school books and drew from her history a clipping from a newspaper.
“This is from the Dorchester _Chronicle_,” she announced, “and it
certainly sounds mysterious to Peg and me.” She looked around at them,
deliberately, tantalizing.
“Oh, for goodness sakes, do hurry and read it,” Bertha Angel urged.
“Peg, you read it. You can do it full justice.” Doris passed it over to
her fellow-committeeman, who pretended to study it leisurely.
“Peg, if you don’t hurry and tell us, we’ll mob you.” Bertha stood up and
seized a pillow from the window seat, holding it threateningly. “Be calm,
Sister Sleuth,” Peg said. Then she held the small scrap of paper close to
a window as the short afternoon was drawing to a close. “It is headed,
‘Information wanted.’ A man owning a cattle ranch in Arizona has written
the _Chronicle_ asking that the following letter be given publicity:
“‘Dear Sirs:
“‘My young and pretty sister, Myra, was sent East to be educated. Our
parents wanted to get her away from a ne’er-do-well gambler she had met
in Douglas. He followed her East and married her. We never heard from her
again, but believe she settled in some small community near Dorchester. I
am running the ranch, but half of it belongs to Myra, and, as I believe
if she is living she must be in need, I want to find her.
“‘(Signed) Caleb K. Cornwall.’”
Peg looked up triumphantly. “There! What do you think of _that_ for a
mystery?”
Merry acknowledged that it _was_ a mystery, of course, but why think the
pretty young Myra settled in Sunnyside? “There are at least six small
villages within a radius of forty miles,” she reminded them.
“Oh, of course, maybe it isn’t our town, _but_, also, _maybe_ it is.” Peg
was not going to let them lose sight of whatever value there was in the
“find” she and Doris had made.
“Oh, how provoking, here come Jack and Alfred! Now we’ll have to adjourn
just when the meeting is most interesting. Ssh! Don’t let them hear us
talking about it. Let’s meet here again tomorrow afternoon.” Merry said
hurriedly.
“But you won’t want _me_ to come, will you?” Geraldine asked, very much
hoping that they would say that they _did_ want her. Nor was she
disappointed.
“Why, of course we do, Gerry.” Then Merry exclaimed self-rebukingly: “How
_stupid_ of me! I started to tell in school that Gertrude wanted us to
invite _you_ to take her place in the ‘S. S. C.’ for the rest of the
winter, while she is away, but I remember now, the gong rang, then I
forgot and sort of thought I _had_ told you.”
Then Peg asked: “You’d like to be Sleuth Gerry, wouldn’t you?”
How the older girl’s eyes were glowing! “I’d like it more than anything
that has ever happened in my life,” she answered them. Then Merry put a
finger on her lips and nodded toward the hall door. Doris, taking the
hint, exclaimed: “And those dear little orphans will be simply delighted
to have a Valentine party. We can fix things up so prettily. I do
think——”
The door had opened and Jack sang out: “Our Sunnyside Spreaders, I
observe, are holding one of their most commendable meetings. Unlike the
‘C. D. C.’s,’ they have no secrets to hide.” He winked at Alfred, who
laughed so understandingly that the observers were led to believe that
Geraldine’s brother had also been admitted to the boys’ club. Nor were
they wrong.
“How did you like your first day in our country school?” Jack asked Gerry
as he crossed to where she sat by the fire and stooped over the blaze to
warm his hands.
“O, I loved it!” that maiden frankly confessed; then acknowledged, “It’s
really nicer in lots of ways than the Dorchester Seminary.” Then she
rose. “We’d better be going, Brother,” she began when the telephone
whirred. Merry turned from it to say that the Colonel was in town and
would call for them in five minutes.
“Well, we’ll be over tomorrow to plan that Valentine party for the
orphans,” Peg called as the girls trooped away. Then the Colonel’s sleigh
bells were heard coming up the drive. Just before she left, Geraldine
drew Merry to one side to say in a low voice: “Tell the girls how _very_
grateful I am to them for having taken me in after I had been so
unforgivably horrid.”
Merry gave her friend’s hand a loving squeeze. “I think _we_ are the ones
to ask forgiveness for the prank we played,” she said; then impulsively
added: “Let’s be _sister-friends_, shall we?”
Gerry felt the tell-tale flush in her cheeks, but Alfred was calling, “Do
hurry, Sister. This isn’t good-bye forever.” And so laughingly they
parted.