across the river to take advantage of the swift current. Her powerful
strokes brought her to shallow water and she waded ashore through
ankle-deep mud. As she scrambled up the slippery bank, her wet clothing
plastered to her body, she heard the roar of the cruiser's motor.
"They've started the engine!" she thought. "In another minute the boat
will be at the bridge. Hurry! Hurry!"
Penny could force herself to no greater effort. Breathless, she reached
the gearhouse and groped frantically under the door. Had Thorny failed to
hide the key there? No, her fingers seized upon it.
Trembling with excitement, she turned it in the lock. The door of the
gearhouse swung open. Now could she remember how to lower the bridge? Any
mistake would be costly, for by this time she could hear the cruiser
racing down the river at full speed. If only it were light enough so that
she could see the gears!
She pulled a lever and her heart leaped as the motor responded with a
pleasant purr. The power was on!
"Now to lower the bridge!" thought Penny. "But which lever is the right
one? I'm not sure."
With a prayer in her heart she grasped the one closest at hand and eased
it forward. There was a grinding of gears as the tall cantilevers began
to move. They were coming down, but oh, so slowly!
"Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!" Penny whispered, as if her words could speed the
bridge on its journey.
The white cruiser drove onward at full speed. Lower came the bridge.
Penny held her breath, knowing it would be a matter of inches whether or
not the boat would clear. The man at the wheel, aware of the danger, did
not swerve from his course.
The bridge settled into place. As the crash came, Penny closed her eyes.
"_I did it! I've stopped them!_" she thought, and sagged weakly against
the gear house.
CHAPTER
25
_VICTORY FOR PENNY_
Minutes later Penny was still leaning limply against the building when a
car drove up to the bridge. Her father, Salt, and a bevy of policemen and
government representatives sprang out and ran to her side.
"Penny, what happened?" Mr. Parker clasped his daughter in his arms.
"You're soaking wet! Didn't we hear gunfire as we turned in here?"
Penny waved her hand weakly toward the river below.
"There's your story, Dad. Pictures galore. Boat smashes into dangerous
drawbridge. Police pursue and shoot it out with desperadoes, taking
what's left of 'em into custody. I'm afraid to look."
"And what were you doing while all this was going on?" demanded her
father.
"Me? I was just waiting for the drawbridge to go down."
Mr. Parker, Salt, and the policemen he had brought to the scene, rushed
to the edge of the bridge. A police boat had drawn up beside the badly
listing cruiser, and three men prisoners and a girl were being taken off.
"How bad is it?" Penny called anxiously.
"All captured alive," answered her father. "Salt, get that camera of
yours into action! Where's Jerry? He would be missing at a time like
this! What happened anyhow? Can't someone tell me?"
Penny had fully recovered the power of speech, and with a most flattering
audience, she recounted her adventures.
"Excuse me just a minute," she interrupted herself.
Turning her back, she pulled a sodden photograph from the front of her
dress and handed it to her father.
"This picture is in pretty bad shape," she said, "but it's clue number
one. You see, it's a photograph of Miss Kippenberg, and on the back is
written, 'To Father, with all my love.' I found the picture this
afternoon in Room 381 at the Colonial Hotel."
"Then you've located Kippenberg?" one of the G men demanded.
"I have. He's been masquerading as the Kippenberg gardener, coming back
here no doubt to witness the marriage of his daughter."
"We'll arrest him right away," said the government man, turning to leave.
"Thanks for the tip."
"I am confident Miss Kippenberg and her mother had nothing to do with
Grant Atherwald's disappearance," Penny went on. "Aaron Dietz plotted the
whole affair himself. I guess he must have learned about Kippenberg's
cache of gold while he worked for the man. He believed that Grant
Atherwald shared the secret and could tell where the money was hidden."
"You've located the gold, too, I suppose," Mr. Parker remarked
whimsically.
"No, Dad, I slipped up there. I thought the gold was in a secret vault
under the alligator pool, but I was wrong. I don't know where it is."
"We'll let the G men solve that mystery when they take Kippenberg into
custody," replied her father. "Our work is cut out for us now. We'll find
Jerry, talk with young Atherwald, and rout Miss Kippenberg and her mother
out of bed for an exclusive interview."
"And this time I am sure they'll answer questions," declared Penny.
During the next hour the "story" was taken entirely from her hands.
Jerry, her father and Salt, knew exactly how to gather every fact of
interest to the readers of the _Star_. Sylvia Kippenberg, overjoyed to
find her fiance alive, posed for pictures with him, and answered all
questions save those which concerned her father.
Not until a telephone call came from the Colonial Hotel, saying that Mr.
Kippenberg had been taken into custody, would either Sylvia or her mother
admit that the man had posed as the gardener.
"Very well, it is true," Mrs. Kippenberg acknowledged at last. "James has
been trying to avoid government men for over a year. Wishing to return
for Sylvia's wedding, he disguised himself as a gardener. Then after
Grant's disappearance, he remained here trying to help."
"And it was your husband who managed to get rid of the alligator?" Penny
interposed.
"Yes, we were afraid police might ask embarrassing questions. James
disposed of it to a zoo late yesterday afternoon."
"And the cache of gold under the lily pool," said Mr. Parker. "What
became of that?"
"There is no gold."
"None at all?"
"None."
"And there never was any?" questioned Penny incredulously. "Then why was
the vault ever built?"
"Tell her the truth, Mother," Sylvia urged. "She deserves to know.
Anyway, it can do Father no harm now."
"At one time my husband did have a considerable supply of gold," Mrs.
Kippenberg admitted. "Since he could not trust a bank he constructed his
own vault under the pool and placed the alligator there as a precaution
against prying persons."
"My father really did nothing so very wrong," Sylvia broke in. "The gold
was bought with his own money. If he chose to sell it later at a profit
it was his own affair."
"Not in the opinion of the government," Mr. Parker said with a smile. "He
held the gold illegally. So your father disposed of it?"
"Yes, he shipped it out of the country months ago. And no one will ever
be able to prove anything against him."
"My husband is a very clever man," added Mrs. Kippenberg proudly.
"That remains to be seen," said Mr. Parker. "I know a number of very
clever government men, too."
Later, in dry clothing loaned to her by Miss Kippenberg, Penny motored
back to Corbin with her father, Jerry, and Salt. There they learned that
the three prisoners had been locked up in jail, while James Kippenberg
was being questioned by government operatives. He readily admitted that
he had disguised himself as the gardener but defied anyone to prove he
ever had disposed of illegal gold.
Mr. Parker did not wait to learn the outcome of the interview. Instead he
telephoned the big story to DeWitt and arranged for complete coverage on
every new angle of the case. Satisfied that no more could be learned that
night, the party sped back toward Riverview.
"Aaron Dietz and his confederates ought to get long prison sentences,"
Penny remarked as they drove through the night. "But what will happen to
Mr. Kippenberg, Dad? Do you think he will escape punishment as his wife
believes?"
"He'll get what is coming to him," replied Mr. Parker. "A government man
told me tonight that Kippenberg's income tax reports have been falsified.
And Kippenberg knew they had evidence against him or he never would have
gone into hiding. No, even if it can't be proven that he held gold
illegally, he'll certainly be fined and given a year or so in prison for
tax evasion."
"I hope he receives a light sentence for Sylvia's sake," said Penny.
After a moment she added: "Sylvia and Grant Atherwald are going to be
married tomorrow. They told me so."
"There's a fact we missed," declared Jerry. "Penny always is showing us
up."
"Oh, I didn't prove myself so brilliant tonight," responded Penny. "When
I was down in that vault I decided I was just plain dumb. If you hadn't
had sense enough to guess where Grant Atherwald and I were being
held--well, Dad would have had to adopt a new daughter."
"It was easy enough to tell what had happened," said Jerry. "You had told
me you thought there was a secret vault beneath the pool. Then, too, I
found your handkerchief floating in the bottom. The water had only been
running in a few minutes." He fished in his pocket and brought out a pin
which he handed to Penny. "I also found this."
"Thanks, Jerry," said Penny. "That's Louise's cameo pin. She dropped it
the day we were on the Kippenberg estate together."
"The police gave you full credit for the capture of those men, Penny,"
said her father with pride. "You yanked the drawbridge just in time to
trap them."
"Salt did his share, too," mentioned Penny generously. "He went for the
police just as soon as he realized Jerry and I had been carried away on
the cruiser."
"The only trouble was that the cops wasted too much time searching for
you down river," the photographer drawled. "We finally went back to
Corbin and ran into Mr. Parker who suggested we come to the estate."
"How did you happen to be in Corbin, Dad?" asked Penny curiously.
"You might know--I was looking for you. Isn't that my usual occupation?"
"You're not provoked at me, Dad?"
"No, of course not," the publisher answered warmly. "You've all done fine
work tonight. This is the biggest story we've run into in over a year!
We'll score a beat on the rival papers."
"Then don't you think Jerry and Salt have earned a raise?" suggested
Penny.
"Yes," agreed her father absently, "I'll take care of it tomorrow."
"And you might tack on another dollar to my allowance, Dad. I'll also
have a small bill to present. There will be several dollars for gasoline,
lunches going and coming from Corbin, two ruined dresses, a pair of torn
silk stockings, and--"
"That's enough," broke in Mr. Parker with a laugh. "If you keep on
listing your expenses, I'll be broke. You turned out to be an expensive
reporter."
"It was worth it, wasn't it?" Penny demanded, placing her hands on her
hips.
Her father agreed heartily. "It certainly was, Penny. The _Riverview
Star_ obtained a smashing story to scoop all the other newspapers, and
I've got my elusive daughter back again safe and sound."
Penny moved closer to her father. She grasped the lapels of his coat in
her slender fingers and tipped her weary but still lovely face toward
him.
"Dad, will you promise me one thing?"
"That depends on what you are after," Mr. Parker told her gravely.
"Whenever the _Riverview Star_ has a baffling mystery to be run down to
earth, will you promise to call in your ace sleuth?"
"And who would that be?" demanded Mr. Parker with a puzzled frown. Then
as Penny laughed gaily, he also started to grin. "So you are the ace
sleuth? I guess I was a little slow in understanding. But you seem to be
right. This is the third mystery you've solved. Maybe we will use you on
the next mystery."
"Thanks, Dad," said Penny. "I just hope I won't have to wait too long for
the next mystery to come along."
THE END
Transcriber's Notes
--Replaced the list of books in the series by the complete list, as in
the final book, "The Cry at Midnight".
--Silently corrected a handful of palpable typos.
--Conforming to later volumes, standardized on "DeWitt" as the name of
the city editor.
End of Project Gutenberg's Danger at the Drawbridge, by Mildred A. Wirt