THE MYSTERY SOLVED
BETTY found it very hard to keep her mind on the preparations for
supper. Dorothy’s happy little babble of questions and frantic efforts
to “help” with everything, drove her to the verge of distraction.
Betty wanted some crackers and coffee and a chance to write to
Madeline--Babbie had not yet sent any address, and was, besides, too
far away to help much in the present crisis. But Dorothy insisted
upon creamed chicken on toast and hot chocolate, and wished to treat
strawberry jam as an entrée and have “regular dessert” besides. Betty
acquiesced in all her demands not so much from good-nature as because
she was sure that another flood of tears would come the minute she
said no. But she couldn’t make ice-cream, which was Dorothy’s idea of
“regular dessert,” and not a bit had been left over from the day’s
sales.
“Just remember how you love ‘whips,’” she coaxed, and made one out of
her share of the cream for the chocolate.
Dorothy watched the proceedings suspiciously.
“Well, but a ‘whip’ always has jelly in the bottom,” she objected.
Betty suggested using strawberry jam.
“Not that kind--real jelly. I shall be sick of strawberry jam if I have
it so much.”
Betty sighed despairingly, and then smiled. “All right, we’ll turn
it into charlotte russe,” she said, “with this big slice of cake
underneath.”
Dorothy wanted to know which was Charlotte--the cake or the cream--and
Betty craftily encouraged the discussion, so that little Dorothy would
enjoy her dessert and not notice that she was taking all the cream away
from Betty, which would have distressed her dreadfully.
“And now we’ll pile the dishes up, and Bridget will do them in the
morning,” Betty suggested, when they had finished.
“Oh, let’s do them ourselves and s’prise Bridget,” objected Dorothy,
who was beginning to surmise that Betty was in a hurry to be rid of
her. No matter how sleepy she was, Dorothy never wanted to go to bed,
and to-night she was wide awake.
“Couldn’t you do them and surprise me?” Betty asked. “I have a long,
long letter to write to Madeline, and I want to get started, because
I’m very tired and I thought I’d like to go to bed when you do.”
“All right,” agreed Dorothy, and Betty lighted her desk-lamp and two
candles, because candle-light is so soothing and luxurious, found a
fresh sheet of paper to take the place of the one that was still damp
with tears, and had gone as far as, “Dear Madeline, I have some very
bad news for you,” when Dorothy fluttered back.
“I thought it all over,” she announced, “and I thought it would be more
of a s’prise for Bridget if I didn’t do the dishes. She can’t imagine
what it is when she sees them all piled up in her clean sink. But if I
did them, it wouldn’t s’prise you a bit, ’cause you knew I was doing
them.”
“All right. Now we’re all surprised,” said Betty absently. “So you see
if you can’t think of something nice to do while I write my letter.”
“Haven’t you written it yet?” Dorothy demanded, with an elaborate show
of amazement. “Well, now I’m the most s’prised one of all! I thought I
stayed out there ages-an’-ages.”
Betty smiled and went on writing, while Dorothy stood staring
disconsolately at her.
“It’s been ages-an’-ages now,” she declared at the end of three minutes
by the clock.
“Oh, Dorothy, do be quiet!” began Betty impatiently. And then, as the
smallest sister’s lips quivered ominously, “Remember, dearie, you’re my
company, and a company always helps along. This letter I’m writing is
on business about the tea-room, and you can help me just lots by being
nice and quiet until I get it all written.”
Dorothy eyed her sister mournfully. “I thought that when you had
company come to see you, you played what they wanted to, and waited
till they’d gone home to do what you wanted to your own self. That’s
what m-mother always said.” Dorothy gulped miserably over the “mother.”
“Yes, that’s one kind of company,” Betty explained patiently, “and you
are that kind of company too. But you said you wanted to be the other
kind--the kind brother Will told you about, that people have to keep
them in business. And I told you you might be, so we’re Betty Wales &
Co., aren’t we?”
Dorothy nodded solemnly. “That’s why I help Nora clean the silver and
put the menu cards around on all the tables ’most every day.”
“Of course it is,” Betty took her up eagerly. “You help a lot--I
couldn’t get along at all without my dear little company. But you’ll
help the most you ever have if you’ll be just as quiet as a little gray
mouse until I’ve finished my letter.”
Dorothy considered. “I might draw pictures,” she suggested tentatively
at last.
“Of course you might.” Betty handed her a pencil and paper.
“But I haven’t any good place to sit,” Dorothy demurred. “I ought to
have a desk just as much as you.”
“Dorothy Wales,”--Betty’s voice was very solemn,--“if I let you sit
down here, will you promise, ‘cross your heart,’ not to speak another
word until I’ve finished my letter?”
Dorothy nodded her head so vigorously that her hair ribbon came off
and had to be tied on again. Then she established herself at the desk,
and Betty lighted more candles and moved her writing materials into
the stall of Jack of Hearts. The big room was still, save for the
scratching of Betty’s pen and an occasional loud “ahem” from Dorothy
whose throat was always affected queerly in church or anywhere else
where she was denied the joys of fluent conversation.
As Betty wrote, the hopelessness of the situation grew clearer and
clearer. It seemed a waste of words to explain it all, when there was
absolutely nothing to be done.
“What do girls know about business, anyway?” Will had said that with
his most scornful air, when Betty had first proposed the tea-room
project. Well, he was right. A man would have thought about a contract.
A man would have managed somehow to make out a case in behalf of the
Tally-ho. But how? Betty went over the conversation, trying to think
what she could have said, how she could have answered Mr. Harrison’s
questions so as to defeat his plans. But she had no inspiration. He was
the owner of the barn. If he wanted higher rent, he had a right to it.
To be sure, people sometimes wanted what they couldn’t get. But he had
said--
“I ought to have taken him up about that,” Betty reflected sadly. “I
ought to have asked him if he was perfectly sure that any other people
would pay such a lot more than we have. Madeline would have got him all
confused about it, and perhaps he’d have let us stay.”
She went mournfully over the scene again bit by bit.
“I wonder what he wants our decorations for,” she reflected. “They’re
only good for a tea-room. Then he must mean to use this for a tea-room.
But if he rents it all decorated, of course it’s worth more. Why didn’t
I think to say that? Why didn’t I make him think we would certainly go
right on somewhere else? He can’t steal our name and our ideas. It’s
not fair. Madeline must come and talk to him.”
And she returned with new energy to her letter, trying to make the
case seem as urgent as possible, and Madeline’s presence absolutely
necessary. Madeline was having a beautiful time in Bohemia; Dick
Blake had told her that her stories were improving, and one of them
had actually been accepted by an obscure magazine that “paid on
publication.” Madeline had celebrated this landmark in her Literary
Career by giving a dinner at Mr. Bob’s latest find in the way of
Italian cafés, and she had discovered, over the coffee, that four of
her six guests had been honored by the same magazine, and that all were
still waiting patiently for the years to bring around the mystic time
of publication.
“Who cares? It was a delicious dinner, and just as much fun as if I had
really arrived,” Madeline had written Betty. “And now the other four
are all going to be game and celebrate too.”
Betty realized how much persuasion it would take to detach Madeline
from four impending celebrations, and begged her with all the eloquence
she could command to come to the rescue of the Tally-ho. She was just
folding her letter when a queer little squeal from Dorothy made her
jump.
“I’m through now, Company,” she called, “so you can chatter away as
fast as you like. What’s the matter?”
“I opened the secret drawer all by myself,” cried Dorothy in an excited
treble. “Nobody showed me. I just heard you and Madeline and Miss
Mary--I mean Mrs. Mary--talking about how to do it. And I remembered,
and after I got tired of drawing pictures for magazines I did it.
Look!” and she danced over to Jack of Hearts’ stall with the secret
drawer in her hand.
“Why, Dorothy Wales!” began Betty in astonishment. “I don’t believe I
could have opened that myself. Why, there’s something in it. What! Oh,
Dorothy, you darling, you’ve helped now, I can tell you! Why, Dorothy
Wales, do you know what you’ve done? You’ve found Eugenia’s theme.”
“If you’d asked me I’d have found it before,” announced Dorothy with
dignity.
“What do you mean, little sister? Did you hide away Eugenia’s theme in
that drawer?”
“Of course not. But I’d have looked everywhere and when I came to this
place, why there I’d have seen it.”
“But Madeline and I looked there,” explained Betty in perplexity, “and
the drawer was empty then. So if you haven’t put it in there since,
some one else has.”
“Here’s another paper,” said little Dorothy, handing Betty a card.
“What does it say? I can’t read that queer kind of printing.”
“Well, if that isn’t the strangest thing!” Betty quite forgot to tell
Dorothy that the card said, “Mrs. George Garrison Hinsdale, Thursdays.”
“Mary put that in there herself the day she opened the drawer--I
remember she said we might lose the combination and then, years after,
her card would be found there, and people would wonder what the things
she wrote on the back could mean. See: ‘Perfect Patron, Promoter of
Ploshkins, Candle-shades, and Cousin Kate’s Cookies.’ And that card
most certainly wasn’t there either, when Madeline and I had the drawer
open hunting for Eugenia’s theme.”
“You didn’t look very hard, I guess,” said little Dorothy wisely. But
Betty was over at the desk, putting back the secret drawer with Mary’s
card still in it. Then she went through the combination, and when the
drawer came out it was empty again.
“Goodness, but this is funny!” she said, shutting it in hurriedly.
“But I think I see how it happens. Now, Dorothy, you open the drawer,
please.”
And when Dorothy opened it, there was the card. She had used the second
combination that Madeline had hit upon, and Betty had used the first.
There were two secret drawers, only one of which could be opened at a
time. They were side by side, and it took close inspection to notice
the slight difference in their positions. When Madeline had shown Mary
how to find the drawer she had used the second combination, and it
was that drawer that had stayed open all day and into which Eugenia’s
ill-fated theme had slipped. But when Madeline had looked for the
theme, she had happened to use the other combination, and consequently
had opened the wrong drawer.
Betty hastily added a postscript to her letter: “Eugenia’s theme is
found. There are two secret drawers in the desk, and it was in the
other.”
Then she took Dorothy home, for it was long past her bedtime, and
mailed her letter, which must reach Madeline without fail the first
thing in the morning, so as to give her the earliest possible chance
to countermand the ploshkin order and get ready to start for Harding.
She reached the campus on her other errand just in time to hear the
college clock toll out the last strokes of ten and to see the shadow
of the Belden House matron and her candle stalk majestically down the
length of the lower hall. That meant locked doors everywhere, so Betty
went home and to bed. She dreamed that Eugenia Ford was throwing the
Tally-ho dishes at Miss Raymond, who was standing on a table pelting
Eugenia with handfuls of oats pulled from the big horseshoe over the
fireplace. And through the door to the kitchen wound a procession of
little ploshkins, who hopped along exactly as Billy and Willy Stocking
had at the Christmas party.
She woke up later than usual the next morning with a queer feeling that
something unpleasant had happened. In a minute she remembered, and
resolved not to waste time in worry, but to get Eugenia’s theme to
her as soon as possible and then devote herself to persuading Nora to
postpone her departure a little.
Eugenia received her with studied coldness. She was “very much
relieved” to have her theme back. Perhaps Betty would explain to Miss
Raymond.
Betty was quite willing to do that. She didn’t blame Eugenia for being
vexed about the theme and disappointed about the ploshkins. She would
have been, in Eugenia’s place, no doubt; but when she asked Eugenia if
she should be down in the afternoon to see Dorothy, and Eugenia replied
coldly that she was very busy, and never even sent a message of thanks
to the little girl for finding the missing theme--then Betty was vexed
in her turn. Dorothy wasn’t to blame for any of Eugenia’s troubles. It
would be just as sensible for Miss Raymond to be disagreeable to her
because her desk had two secret drawers.
But Miss Raymond was very friendly and very much interested in the
two drawers, which she promised to come and see for herself soon. And
Nora, won by the suspicion of tears in Betty’s eyes and by the honor
of being entrusted with Betty’s unhappy secret, promised to stay a few
days longer, until Madeline had come up and they knew how matters stood.
Madeline arrived that very afternoon.
“Show me the drawers,” she demanded before she was well inside the
Tally-ho, and to Betty’s dismay she utterly refused to talk business,
while she sat for an hour opening one drawer after another, and hunting
through the recesses of the desk for more sliding panels or hidden
springs.
“For if there are two drawers, there may just as well be three or even
four,” she said. “And who knows what may be in them or how long they’ve
been lost and forgotten? Don’t look so disgusted, Betty. I ordered the
ploshkins the first day I was in New York, and this morning it was too
late to change. To-morrow I’ll hunt up your dreadful Mr. Harrison and
try my blarney on him, though after the way you managed Dick Blake
for Eleanor when we were sophomores, I don’t see how you expect me to
succeed where you’ve failed.”
“This was so unexpected,” Betty explained. “He frightened all my
ideas away, because he came at me so suddenly. I’m never any good at
impromptus.”
Madeline sighed. “And that’s all I am good for. Now I may struggle over
this drawer business for hours and find nothing, and then some day,
when I’m not trying, I shall just put my hand out and snap the right
spring. It’s horribly provoking--gives you such a lazy, purposeless
feeling at times.”
Evidently Madeline didn’t care much about the disaster that threatened
the Tally-ho. She could sit and play with an old-fashioned desk, not
asking a question about all the matters that Betty had not taken time
to write of fully, nor making a single plan for the campaign against
Mr. Harrison. Well, if she believed so thoroughly in her impromptu
inspirations, why should she bother with making plans? If she only
would act as if she cared a little--as if she realized what the failure
of the tea-room meant to Betty. But she only played with the drawers,
and gave absurd accounts of the Literary Celebrations. The next one
was to be a roller-skating party, and not one of the crowd had ever
been on roller-skates before.
“But the first one whose story is printed is going to reimburse the
rest of us for the doctors and the liniments we expect to need,”
Madeline explained, “and Bob Enderby has solemnly promised to ask the
editor of ‘The Leisure Hour’ to come and meet his near-contributors.
It’s to-morrow night. Now say I’m not businesslike if you dare, to come
straight up here and miss it all.” Then she laughed. “I may as well
’fess up that it was only the postscript about the secret drawer that
brought me. But that doesn’t matter, does it? Because now that I’m
here, I shall do my full duty by Mr. Harrison.”
But the next morning Madeline came back in dismay from her visit to Mr.
Harrison’s Harding office.
“He’s away,” she lamented. “The agent was there, and I talked to him;
but he can’t do anything. He’s in deep disgrace now for letting us have
so many repairs. And Mr. Harrison won’t be back for at least a week; so
you’ll have to tackle him yourself after all.”
“Oh, Madeline, can’t you stay over?”
Madeline shook her head decisively. “Absolutely impossible. I’ve just
hired a studio apartment consisting of two closets, miscalled rooms,
and I’ve begun a novel. It was spinning along like mad when you stopped
it. I should have to go to-morrow anyway, so why not go now, in time
for the roller-skating party? I did want to stay long enough to find
the other secret drawers, though.” Madeline frowned absently at the old
desk.
“Perhaps there aren’t any others,” Betty reminded her practically.
“Oh, but I’m sure there are. I have a leading.” Madeline stretched
out her hand, and, just as she had predicted, it hit the spring. A
fan-shaped panel slipped to one side, the wall at the back of the
opening dropped, and a tiny drawer, deep and very narrow, appeared, the
small key still in the lock.
“There!” said Madeline triumphantly, opening it. “Oh, it’s stuffed
full! Betty Wales, these are love-letters, I just know it! Tied with
pink ribbons and scented with lavender. Did you ever imagine anything
so nice? It’s surely all right to read them, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps we ought to take them to the woman you bought the desk of,”
Betty suggested.
“But her husband had just taken it for a bad debt, and I remember she
said all the family it really belonged to had died or moved away.”
“Then I guess it’s all right, so long as they’re so very old.”
They were love-letters, the sweetest, merriest letters to a girl named
Patricia from a man who signed himself “R.” One or two of Patricia’s
notes to “R.” were tucked in with the letters, but as they all began
“Mine,” they threw no light on the significance of the “R.” Betty liked
that; it added to the sense of remoteness, to the story-book atmosphere
of “long-ago and far-away” that belonged to the yellowed sheets, the
faded ribbons, and the quaint, old-fashioned expressions. Most of the
letters had never been mailed. Madeline almost wept with joy when
she discovered that they had been put in a hollow tree in Patricia’s
apple orchard. They were arranged by dates and once there was a gap
of six months. That was because the squire of the village had asked
Patricia’s father for his daughter’s hand in marriage, and Patricia’s
father had said yes. Patricia was an obedient child, so there were
no more letters in the tree, in spite of “R.’s” pleadings, until one
day when Patricia could show good reason for sending the squire about
his business. And then there was a duel. Was it between “R.” and the
squire, or “R.” and some other disappointed suitor? They were still
discussing the evidence when Madeline remembered her train.
“Let me take these along,” she begged. “I’ll send them back in a day or
so, but I simply must know how it all ended.” She turned to the desk.
“There ought to be a drawer on the other side to correspond to this
one.”
“Let me try to find it,” cried Betty hastily, and after a minute’s
fumbling she snapped the spring. “It’s getting almost tiresome, finding
so many secret hiding-places, isn’t it?” she laughed.
This drawer was full too, but of dusty, uninteresting-looking
documents. Madeline glanced them through rapidly.
“Nothing exciting there, I guess. You can look them over, and if
they’re about Patricia and ‘R.’ send them to me, won’t you? And if
you hate talking to Mr. Harrison, get Emily to go for you, or send
Young-Man-Over-the-Fence. He’d like nothing better than to champion the
cause of oppressed damsels, Babbie Hildreth being one of them.”
“You don’t take this seriously enough, Madeline,” Betty told her sadly.
“No,” agreed Madeline, “I don’t, but that’s because I have such perfect
confidence in your persuasive powers. Good-bye.”
The whistles shrieked for noon. Betty hastily straightened up her desk,
gave some last touches to the dainty tables, and resolutely forced a
smile to meet the usual twelve-o’clock invasion of hungry customers.
Never in her life had she felt so forlorn and lonely, but she was too
proud to show it. She resolved that if the Tally-ho Tea-Shop must be
abandoned at least it should go out in a blaze of glory. At first she
had not thought it worth while to begin the dinner service for only a
month, but now she decided to inaugurate it at once. She hung up the
prettily lettered signs that Madeline had made: “Beginning to-morrow
the Tally-ho Tea-Shop will serve dinners, and will therefore be open
until nine in the evening.” The appearance of this announcement
created no little excitement. Six girls ordered special dinners for
the opening night. Eugenia Ford sent a written order by a friend who
came in for tea. She explained that she wanted everything “as elegant
as possible,” because her dinner was in honor of her roommate’s mother
and father--“very wealthy people.” She hoped the waitress would wear
a cap. As caps were Nora’s bête noir, Betty decided to ask the newest
Student’s Aid waitress if she would mind wearing one just this time, by
way of helping to heap coals of fire on Eugenia’s pretty head.