_The Ditmars_
"Freckles!" exclaimed Mary Louise as she entered the kitchenette of the
bungalow the following morning. "Where are you going?"
The boy grinned mysteriously.
"Can't tell you that, Sis," he replied. "It's a secret."
"But I wanted to talk to you. And it's only a little after eight
o'clock."
"I know, but I'm a busy guy. Important affairs!"
"With whom?"
Freckles hesitated; then he decided to tell part of his secret.
"The fellows up here have a secret band. It's called the 'Wild Guys of
the Road.' I was initiated last night."
Mary Louise burst out laughing. She couldn't help it. "The 'Wild Guys of
the Road'!" she repeated. "Regular hold-up men?"
"Well, not exactly," replied her brother. "But we've got some exciting
adventures on."
"Who is the leader?"
"Robby Smith. He's got some swell ideas."
Mary Louise's eyes narrowed.
"Does burning people's houses come into his plan?"
"Gosh, no! We're not really bad, Sis. We wouldn't do anything like that."
"Do you make fires at all?"
"Sure we make fires. We've got to cook our camp meals, haven't we? And
have our ceremonies."
"I see." She was thinking. "And sometimes those fires spread farther than
you want them to?"
"No, course not! Now, don't you go blaming us guys for Hunters' bungalow
burning down!"
"I'm not blaming _you_, Freckles--you weren't even here. But I'm not so
sure about those Smith boys. They are pretty wild, once they get started.
Remember the time they locked that little boy in the boathouse and almost
left him there all night?"
"Gee whiz, Sis! They wouldn't have left him there. They just wanted to
scare him."
"I'm not so sure. They're spoiled kids. I wish you wouldn't play with
them."
"Now, Sis, don't be silly! Everybody's in the gang together. I've got to
play with the Smith boys or else stay home by myself."
With a yell of good-bye for his mother, the boy was off.
Mary Louise and Jane sat down to their breakfast. Mrs. Gay, who had eaten
hers with Freckles, came in to talk to them.
"What have you on the program for today?" she inquired.
"Oh, the usual things," answered her daughter. "Tennis with the bunch
this morning, and I suppose everybody will go in swimming about eleven
o'clock. David is coming over to talk about fixing up our canoe for the
contest tomorrow night."
Jane coughed nervously.
"I--uh--sort of promised Cliff I'd go in his motorboat, Mary Lou," she
said. "Would that be all right?"
"Sure it's all right," agreed her chum. "It'll be even better, because
the less weight we have in our canoe, the more decoration we can put on.
And there's a prize for each type of boat, you know."
"Then I shan't be competing against you if I go in Cliff's launch?"
"Oh no, we are in separate classes."
After the girls had finished washing the dishes for Mrs. Gay, they
started off for a little walk, with Silky at their heels.
"Why not stop for the Reed girls?" suggested Jane, mentioning the twins
who lived in the cottage on the far side of the Gays. "I'm crazy to meet
them."
"You'll meet them when we go swimming later on," replied Mary Louise.
"But just now I want to go in the other direction. To call on the
Ditmars."
"The Ditmars?" For the moment Jane had forgotten who these people were,
for she had heard so many new names the night before.
"Yes. Don't you remember? The young architect that Cliff told us about.
The man Mrs. Hunter thinks set her bungalow on fire."
"Oh, yes, of course! In other words--a suspect."
"That's right," agreed Mary Louise.
"But how can we call on him if we don't know him?" asked Jane.
"We'll find a way!"
"Oh, sure we will!" teased Jane. "Trust the girl detective for that!"
"Sh! Please don't call me that in front of anybody, Jane. If people think
I am snooping, they'll shut up like clams and won't tell me anything."
Although there were only eight cottages at Shady Nook, the distance from
the Reeds' on one end to the Ditmars' on the other was over a mile.
Cliff's father, Mr. Hunter, who had planned the little resort, knew that
even in a small friendly community like this, people still liked privacy,
so he had left a small strip of woods between every two cottages.
The girls walked along slowly, Mary Louise pointing out the bungalows as
they passed by.
"That's where the Hunters' was, of course," she said to her chum. "And
now we're coming to the Partridges'. Next is Flicks' Inn."
"Yes, I remember this much from last night," nodded Jane. "But that's as
far as we got. Are there many cottages on the other side of Flicks'?"
"Only the Smiths' and the two new ones. The Smiths don't actually live on
the river road, and you can't call their place a cottage. It's really the
grandest house around here. Much bigger than the Hunters' was. They have
three children and a lot of servants. Mr. and Mrs. Smith are usually off
traveling somewhere, and even when they're here, they don't eat at
Flicks'."
"So we can't count on them for any fun?"
"No. Freckles plays with the boys, but except for that, we never see
them."
A little farther on, the girls came to the two new bungalows, set right
in the heart of the woods. They were both perfectly charming; it was
evident that young Mr. Ditmar was an architect with both taste and ideas.
"Don't you love it?" whispered Jane, as the two girls approached the
Ditmars' rose-trellised bungalow. "It looks like 'Honeymoon Cottage' in a
jig-saw puzzle!"
"I understand the Ditmars are practically a bride and groom," returned
Mary Louise.... "Oh, there she is, in the garden! Pretty, isn't she?"
An attractive young woman in a pink dress looked up as the girls came
nearer. She smiled pleasantly.
"Good-morning," said Mary Louise. "You are Mrs. Ditmar, aren't you?
Everybody knows everybody else here at Shady Nook, so we'll introduce
ourselves. This is my chum, Jane Patterson, and I'm Mary Louise Gay."
The young woman nodded cordially.
"I'm awfully glad to meet you both," she said. "This is a friendly
place--I like it a lot. If only my husband did----"
"Doesn't Mr. Ditmar like Shady Nook?" asked Mary Louise in surprise.
"No, he doesn't. But I guess it's just because he hasn't enough to do.
You know how men are when they haven't any work: full of gloom."
"Well, things will be better this fall," remarked Jane optimistically.
"I don't know," replied Mrs. Ditmar. "At least--for architects. Their
work comes slowly. It was fine all spring, while Horace had this bungalow
to build, and the Robinsons' next door. But now he can't get a thing."
"Maybe the Hunters will rebuild," suggested Jane openly.
Mrs. Ditmar shook her head.
"We did hope so. We went over to see them at the Royal Hotel soon after
their house burned down, but Mrs. Hunter wasn't very nice to us. She
almost acted as if it were our fault!"
Jane suppressed a giggle and muttered under her breath, "The plot
thickens."
"Oh, I guess she was just all upset," remarked Mary Louise nervously.
"She'll get over that." She smiled. "Anyway, you don't have to be gloomy,
Mrs. Ditmar. Can't you get your tennis things on and play with us this
morning?"
"Thanks awfully, but I don't think I had better leave Horace here alone."
"Bring him along!"
"He wouldn't come. No, I better not. But perhaps I'll see you in swimming
later on in the morning. It's awfully nice of you girls to be so
friendly."
"We'll look for you in the water, then.... And, by the way, you'll come
to the party on the island tomorrow night, won't you?"
Again the young woman refused.
"No, we really can't afford that. It's two dollars for the supper, you
know, and besides that; we'd have to hire one of Mr. Frazier's canoes."
"Couldn't you borrow one?" suggested Jane.
"No--I'm sorry--Horace refused to go."
Mary Louise sighed, as if to say how thankful she was that she wasn't
married to a grouch like that. So the girls said good-bye and walked
slowly back to their cottage.
"She can't be over twenty, if she's that," surmised Mary Louise. "I
certainly feel sorry for her."
"So do I," agreed Jane. "Do you really think her husband is guilty, Mary
Lou?"
"I don't know. He sounds queer." She lowered her voice: there did not
appear to be anybody around, but you never could tell, with all those
thick trees to conceal possible eavesdroppers. "And if he believes it's
his right to have work, he may try burning other cottages. That's what
worries me."
"Well, he surely wouldn't pick on yours, Mary Lou," was Jane's comforting
assurance. "He'd select somebody's who was rich--like the Smiths', or
some place that was absolutely necessary, like the Flicks'."
The girls were passing the inn at this moment, and as they looked up they
saw David McCall in his tennis clothes coming out of the door.
"I was over at the bungalow looking for you girls," he said. "The Reed
girls are on the court, but they wouldn't let me play until I found a
partner. So please hurry up!"
"O.K.," agreed Mary Louise. "Walk back with us, Dave. I want you to tell
me why you think Cliff Hunter set his own bungalow on fire--at such an
inconvenient time. When they had company, I mean."
David smiled knowingly.
"That's his alibi, of course. What did he care about those four fellows?
It didn't hurt them. You see, Mary Lou, I'm an insurance agent, and I'm
up to all these tricks. The Hunters' place was insured for ten thousand
dollars, and if it had been offered for sale, Cliff couldn't have gotten
more than a couple thousand at a time like this."
"But the Hunters are rich," objected Mary Louise. "They don't need the
money."
"Everybody needs money. And I happen to know that Cliff wants to go
around the world this fall."
"He wouldn't give up college?"
"No. There's a college course in the bargain. They study and travel at
the same time. It costs a small fortune."
"I don't believe he set that bungalow on fire," announced Jane. "He's too
honest. He just couldn't do a thing like that!"
"Besides," added Mary Louise, "we have another suspect." And she told
David what she had just learned about Horace Ditmar.
"I'm just as sure that Ditmar didn't do it as you are that Cliff Hunter
didn't," replied David when she had finished.
"Probably nobody set it on fire," concluded Jane. "Just an accident.
Let's forget it. Come on in, Mary Lou, and we'll put on our sneaks. We'll
be ready in a minute, Dave."
True to their promise, the girls returned a moment later, with Silky at
their heels, and all three young people made their way to the tennis
court. There was only one court at Shady Nook--which the boys themselves
had made--but there was another across the river on the hotel grounds.
However, nobody ever seemed to mind waiting or taking turns, so the crowd
usually stayed together.
Jane was introduced to the Reed twins, who looked and dressed so exactly
alike that she had not the faintest idea which was Mabel and which was
Sue after a couple of minutes had elapsed. Then there were three other
young people who were staying at the inn for a short time, besides David
McCall and themselves. To her dismay, Cliff Hunter did not come across
the river to join the party.
The whole crowd went in swimming about eleven o'clock, and here their
elders joined them, with some of the younger children. Not Freckles,
however, or the Reed boys or the Smiths: they had gone off hiking for the
day. Again Jane did not see Cliff Hunter, and she was giving all her
attention to a young man named Stuart Robinson, who lived in the new
bungalow next to the Ditmars', when she heard her name shouted from the
shore.
"Jane! Oh, Jane!"
Raising her head from her swimming position and treading water, she
peered towards the shore. It was Cliff Hunter--but not attired in a
bathing suit.
"Come on out!" he called.
Jane swung into the crawl, and reached the young man in a couple of
minutes. He was grinning broadly.
"Take a card," he said.
Jane burst out laughing. "How can I?" she asked. "I'm soaked."
"Oh, that's all right. I've got plenty of packs. This is a swell trick.
I've been studying it all morning."
Jane dropped down on the grass and listened to his trick. The young man
was enchanted. She stayed with him until Mary Louise literally dragged
her back into the water.
"How anybody could believe Cliff Hunter guilty of a despicable crime,"
she said later to her chum, "is beyond me. He's as innocent as a child."
"I hope so," returned Mary Louise. "Time will tell."