SEARCHING FOR CLUES
The next afternoon the girls found Bob waiting near the seminary with the
delivery sleigh. Geraldine, for half a moment, was amazed to hear the
squeels of delight uttered by her companions as they swarmed up into the
straw-covered box part of the cutter.
“This is great!” Merry exclaimed. “How did you happen to do it, Bobbie
dear?”
The boy nodded toward his sister, who replied for him: “Bob said he would
be returning from Dorchester about this hour, and I asked him to pick us
up, like an angel child, so that we could have a longer meeting. It gets
dark so early and it takes a full half hour to walk the mile to Merry’s.”
“Sort of a ruddy-looking angel child,” Rose, at the boy’s side, teased
him. The round, pleasant face of the boy was always ruddy, but today it
was unusually so, partly because of the long drive he had had in the
frosty air and partly because of his pleasure at having Rose with him.
Down the wide, snow-covered road they sped, and Geraldine could not but
compare this ride with those that were being taken by the pupils of the
Dorchester Seminary, where most fashionable turnouts each day awaited the
closing hours. But she had to honestly confess that she was having much
more fun than she ever had before. Merry smiled across at her and Gerry
smiled back, happily recalling the whispered request of the evening
before: “Let us be sister-friends, shall we?”
“All out for Merry-dale!” Bob was soon calling as he drew rein in front
of the Lee house. Then to the girl at his side he said in a low voice,
“I’ll be through at the store at five. May I drive you home?”
“Yes, indeed, and stay to supper,” Rose said brightly, adding as an
afterthought: “Gerry and Alfred can go with us, can’t they? Then the
Colonel won’t have to come after them.”
“Sure thing,” the good-natured boy replied. “So long!”
“There now,” Merry announced when they were sitting about the fire five
minutes later, “we have a good two hours, if nobody interrupts us, and we
ought to be able to delve deeply into our mystery. Peg, will you or Doris
review the facts in the case?”
“Shouldn’t we call them clues?” Bertha inquired.
“O, I don’t know. I haven’t been a sleuth long enough to be sure about
anything,” the president smilingly admitted. Then Doris reminded them
that it was a ranchman in Arizona named Caleb K. Cornwall who was
searching for a young and pretty sister named Myra, who had married a
ne’er-do-well and supposedly had settled in some small community near
Dorchester, in New York State.
“Well, Sleuth Bertha, you look wise. What would _you_ suggest that we do
first?” Merry had turned toward the tall maiden, whose expression was
habitually serious and thoughtful.
“I was just wondering if there is any woman in town named Myra. Our
mothers might know, for I suppose this lost person is about their age.”
“How come?” Peg asked. “There is no mention of age in the letter. Merely
that she was a young and pretty girl when she was sent East to school.”
“That might have been ten years ago or twenty, thirty, or any number,”
Rose reminded them.
“True enough,” Merry conceded. “Wait a moment. Mother is in her
sewing-room, I think. I’ll ask her if she ever heard of a woman in
Sunnyside named Myra.”
“Won’t she wonder at your asking?” Peg was fearful lest their secret
would be divulged.
“No, indeed,” Merry shook her head. “Mums isn’t even remotely curious
about what our club is doing. She knows we are holding a meeting, but
that’s all.”
In less than ten minutes she was back again with two names written on a
magazine cover. “I don’t think these will help us much,” she informed the
girls, whose alert attitudes proved their eager interest. “One is Myra
Comely. She lives below the tracks and takes in washing. Mother thinks
she may be about forty. The other is Myra Ingersol. She lives out on the
old Dorchester road. Mother doesn’t just know where, but it’s a farm that
makes a specialty of chickens and eggs. The woman makes jelly and sells
it, too. That’s really all Mother knows about her. The name is on each
jar, Mums says. ‘Myra Ingersol’s Jams,’ like that. We get them from the
grocery. You ought to know about them, Bertha.”
“I do,” that maiden replied, “and, what’s more, I know the woman. I’ve
been in the store when she brought in her wares. I’ve been trying to
picture her, Merry, while you were talking, as having ever been young and
pretty, but I just can’t. She is a big-boned, awkward person with
red-grey hair drawn back as though it had a weight on it, and sharp blue
eyes.” The girl shook her head. “I’m convinced she is _not_ the Myra Mr.
Cornwall wants to find.”
“How old is the jam person?” Gerry contributed her first inquiry.
“Oh, close to sixty, perhaps, although she may be younger. She’s had a
hard life, I judge.”
“We might call them up on the telephone and ask them if they ever lived
in Arizona,” Betty Byrd naively suggested. How the others laughed.
“Little one,” Bertha remonstrated, “don’t you know that if they ran away
from Arizona and are in hiding, so to speak, they would, of course,
refuse to tell that it had once been their home. I mean in answer to such
an abrupt question as would have to be asked over the ’phone. My
suggestion is that we make some legitimate excuse for calling at the
homes of the two Myras and finding, if we can, some clues without
arousing their suspicion.”
“Hats off to Sleuth Bertha!” Peg sang out. “When and how shall we make
the first call?”
Doris leaped up in her eagerness. “If one of the Myras is a washwoman,
let’s drive over there tomorrow with the Drexel weekly laundry. Mother
said yesterday that the Palace New Method injures the clothes and she
wants to find someone to do it by hand.”
“Say, Boy, but we’re in luck!” the slangy member exulted.
“And as for the other Myra,” Rose said, “we might chip together and buy a
chicken or two, and that would give us an excuse to visit _her_ farm.”
“Bravo! Keen idea! Hurray for our Rosebud!” were the exclamations which
proved that the suggestion met with general approval.
“But what would we do with two chickens?” round-eyed, the youngest member
inquired.
“Eat ’em, little one,” Peg began.
“Not till they’re cooked, I hope,” Gerry laughingly put in.
“Say, fellow-sleuths, I have a peachy idea,” Peg announced. “Let’s get up
a Valentine dinner and invite the boys. Saturday’s the fourteenth, and we
can make quite a spread of it and kill two birds with one stone, so to
speak.”
“Two hens, do you mean?” Rose inquired. A sofa pillow was hurled at her.
“You need submerging,” Doris told her.
“How about that Valentine party for the orphans?” Merry asked slyly. “It
seems to me one was suggested last night just as the boys came home.”
“Sure thing, we’ll have one, but that will be different. Now, this
Valentine party——”
Peg could say no more, for the door had opened and two laughing boys
stood there. Merry rose and confronted her brother. “Jack Lee, how long
have you been out there in the hall listening to our club doings?”
“Not a fraction of a second, have we, Alf?” he turned to his companion
for corroboration. “All I heard is just what you were saying last night,
that you are going to give a party for the orphans on Valentine’s day.”
The girls looked still unconvinced, and so Alfred leaped into the breach
with, “Here’s proof sufficient, I should think.” He held out his coat
sleeve, on which there were frosty snow stars as yet unmelted. “If we’d
been long in the house, they would be dewdrops. Is it not so?”
“Verily.” Peg seemed relieved, as did the others, but when the boys had
gone into Jack’s study, which adjoined the library, the girls were
puzzled to hear laughter that the boys were evidently trying to muffle.
Merry put a warning finger on her lips, which meant that they would
postpone further discussion until another day.