PATSY SCENTS A MYSTERY
“Now _who_ do you suppose _she_ is?” broke from Bee, as the old woman
disappeared.
“Ask me something easier,” shrugged Patsy. “She’s a regular old witch,
isn’t she? Dad must know who she is. Funny he never said anything about
her to us. Suppose we trot back to the house and watch for him. He
promised, you know, at breakfast, to be back from Palm Beach in time
for luncheon so as to take us down to the boathouse this afternoon.
He had a business appointment with a man at the Beach. That’s why he
hurried away so fast this morning.”
Suiting the action to the word, the Wayfarers started back through the
orange groves, discussing with animation the little adventure with
which they had recently met.
“That woman was Spanish, of course,” declared Beatrice. “Could you
understand her, Mab, when she trailed off into Spanish, all of a
sudden? She said ‘ingrata.’ I caught that much. What does it mean?”
“It means ‘the ungrateful one,’” Mabel answered. “I couldn’t understand
much of what she said. I caught the words, ‘Camillo, Manuel, Eulalie,’
and something about a spirit torturing somebody--Eulalie, I suppose she
meant. ‘Madre de Dios’ means ‘Mother of God,’ or ‘Holy Mother.’ It’s a
very common form of expression among the Mexicans. I believe this woman
is a Mexican.”
“We know who Eulalie is. By Manuel she must have meant the Manuel
Fereda who died just a little while ago,” said Bee reflectively. “But
who in the world is or was old Camillo? And what did he hide? What made
her call us ‘white-faced thieves’? What is it that we’ll never find?
Will somebody please answer these simple questions?”
“Answer them yourself,” challenged Patsy gaily. “We’ll be delighted to
have you do it. You know you are fond of puzzling things out.”
“It sounds--well----” Bee laughed, hesitated, then added: “Mysterious.”
“Exactly,” warmly concurred Patsy. “We’ve actually stumbled upon
something mysterious the very first thing. I knew, all the time, that
we were going to find something queer about this old place.”
“I don’t think there’s anything very mysterious about a tousle-headed
old crazy woman,” sniffed Mabel. “She certainly didn’t act like a sane
person. Maybe she had delusions or something of the sort.”
“Perhaps _her_ name is Camillo,” suggested Bee, her mind still occupied
with trying to figure out to whom the name belonged.
“No.” Mabel shook her head. “Camillo is a _man’s_ name, not a woman’s.
She might have meant her husband or her brother. Goodness knows whom
she meant. I tell you, she’s a lunatic and that’s all there is to it.
If we hadn’t been armed with four big sticks she might have laid hands
on us.”
“Well, Uncle Jemmy’s snake sticks were some protection, anyhow,”
laughed Eleanor. “I’m going to keep mine and lug it around with me
wherever I go. I may----”
A wild shriek from Mabel left the sentence unfinished. Walking a pace
or two ahead of the others, Mabel had almost stumbled upon a huge
black snake, coiled in a sunny spot between the trees. Quite as much
startled as she, the big, harmless reptile uncoiled his shining black
folds in a hurry and slid for cover.
“Oh!” she gasped. “Did you _see_ him? He was a whopper! And I almost
stepped on him! He might have bitten me.”
“Black snakes don’t bite, you goose,” reassured intrepid Patsy. “He was
probably more scared at the yell you gave than you were to see him. He
must be the same one Uncle Jemmy saw this morning.”
“Maybe he’s been raised a pet,” giggled Eleanor. “We may get to know
him well enough to speak to when we fall over him coiled up on various
parts of the estate. If you ever get really well acquainted with him,
Mab, you can apologize to him for yelling in his ears.”
“First find his ears,” jeered Mabel, who had sufficiently recovered
from the scare to retaliate.
“Our second adventure,” commented Beatrice. “Wonder what the next will
be.”
“Nothing more weird or exciting than luncheon, I guess,” said Patsy.
“There! We forgot to pick those oranges we were going to take to
Auntie.”
“Let’s go back and get them,” proposed Eleanor.
“Oh, never mind. I dare say there are plenty of oranges at the house,”
returned Patsy. “Auntie won’t mind. We’ll go down to the grove
to-morrow and pick a whole basketful for her.”
By this time the Wayfarers were nearing the house. Rounding a corner
of the building they spied Mr. Carroll some distance down the drive.
He was sitting in his car engaged in conversation with a white man who
stood beside it. Both men were too far away from the girls for them to
be able to make out plainly the stranger’s features. They could tell
little about him save that he was tall, slim, dark and roughly dressed.
“That must be the new man,” instantly surmised Patsy.
Pausing, she shaded her eyes with one hand, to shut out the glaring
sunlight, and stared curiously at the stranger.
“Can’t tell much about him,” she remarked. “There; he’s started down
the drive. Now we’ll find out from Dad who he is.”
The stranger, having turned away, Mr. Carroll had started the car and
was coming slowly up the drive. Sighting the group of white-clad girls
he waved to them.
“Hello, children!” he saluted, as he stopped the car within a few feet
of them. “Where have you been spending the morning? Want to ride up to
the house?”
“No, thank you,” was the answering chorus, as the girls gathered about
the automobile.
“We’ve been exploring, Dad,” informed Patsy. “Is that the new man? I
mean the one you were just talking to.”
“Yes. I met him at the gate. He had been up to the house looking for
me. His name is Crespo; Carlos Crespo. He’s a Mexican. He tells me he
used to work for old Fereda. That he was practically brought up on the
estate.”
“Then he’s the very man we want!” exclaimed Beatrice eagerly. “He’ll be
able to tell us about the Feredas.”
“I doubt your getting much information from him,” returned Mr. Carroll.
“He seems to be a taciturn fellow. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t very
favorably impressed by him. He acted sulky, it seemed to me. I’m going
to give him a trial, because it’s so hard to get a white man for the
job. I can’t afford to let this one slip without giving him a chance.
If I find him balky, and ungracious to your aunt and you girls, I’ll
let him go. He says he knows nothing about automobiles, but a great
deal about horses.”
“Oh, well, we don’t want him as chauffeur, anyway,” declared Patsy.
“You and I can do all the driving. He’ll be handy when we go on our
trip into the jungle. He can attend to the horses. Very likely, when he
gets used to us, he’ll be fairly amiable. He can’t be any more snippy
and disobliging than John was last summer while we were at Wilderness
Lodge. He was positively _hateful_ to us. Of course, that was all on
account of his loyalty to that horrid Rupert Grandin. If this Carlos
man proves honest and dependable, we sha’n’t mind if he sulks at first.
He’ll probably get over it as he comes to know us better. We had an
adventure this morning, Dad.”
Patsy straightway left the subject of the new man and plunged into a
colorful account of their meeting with the strange old woman.
“Do you know who she is, Mr. Carroll? Did you ever see her?” questioned
Mabel eagerly.
“No.” Mr. Carroll shook his head. “She must be the woman one of my
colored boys was trying to tell me about the other day. He described
the cottage you’ve just mentioned and said a ‘voodoo’ woman lived there
who was ‘a heap sight crazy.’ He claimed he saw her out in her yard
late one night ‘making spells.’ I didn’t pay much attention to him, for
these darkies are full of superstitions and weird yarns.”
“We’ll ask Carlos about her,” decided Patsy. “That makes two things
we’re going to quiz him about; the ‘voodoo’ lady and the Feredas. When
is he to begin working for you, Dad?”
“He’ll be back this afternoon. I’m going to set him to work at clearing
up the stable. It’s a regular rubbish shack. I’ll give him a gang of
black boys to help him. I’m anxious to have it put in trim as soon as
possible. To-morrow I must go over to the stock farm and see about
getting some horses for our use while here. I’ll take Carlos with me
and then we’ll see how much he knows about horses.”
“We’d better be moving along. We promised Miss Martha to be back in
plenty of time for luncheon,” reminded Mabel.
“I’ll see you girls at the house,” Mr. Carroll said. “I’m going to
take the car to the garage. We’ll hardly need it this afternoon. The
Wayfarers are such famous hikers, they’ll scorn riding to the beach,”
he slyly added.
“Of course we are famous hikers. Certainly we intend to walk to the
beach,” sturdily concurred Patsy.
“Scatter then, and give me the road,” playfully ordered her father.
Moving briskly out of the way of the big machine, the chums followed
it up the drive at a leisurely pace.
“Well have to change our gowns before luncheon.”
Eleanor ruefully inspected her crumpled white linen skirt, plentifully
stained with orange juice.
The others agreeing, they quickened their pace and reaching the house
hurriedly ascended to their rooms to make the desired change. As usual
Mabel and Eleanor were rooming together. Patsy and Bee shared a large
airy room next to that occupied by the two Perry girls. Miss Martha
roomed in lonely state in a huge, high-ceilinged chamber across the
corridor from the rooms of her flock.
“I don’t care whether or not this Carlos man acts sulky,” confided
Patsy to Bee when the two girls were by themselves in their own room.
“I’m going to beam on him like a real Cheshire cat. He’ll be so
impressed by my vast amiability that he’ll be telling me all about the
Feredas before you can say Jack Robinson. I’m awfully interested in
this queer family and I simply must satisfy my curiosity. Do you really
believe, Bee, that there _is_ a mystery about them?”
“I don’t know whether there’s any mystery about the Feredas
themselves,” Bee said slowly. “That old woman may or may not be crazy.
I was watching her closely all the time we stood there. At first she
was just suspicious of us as being strangers. It was your saying that
we were living at Las Golondrinas and that your father owned the
property that made her so furious. She had some strong reason of her
own for being so upset at hearing that.”
“Maybe she used to be a servant in the Fereda family and on that
account can’t bear to see strangers living here in their place,” Patsy
hazarded.
“I thought of that, too. It would account for her tirade against
Eulalie. I believe there’s more to it than that, though, else why
should she call us thieves and go on as she did?”
Bee reflectively repeated the question she had earlier propounded.
“That’s precisely what we are going to find out,” Patsy said with
determination.
“But you know what your aunt said,” Bee dubiously reminded.
“Don’t you worry about Auntie,” smiled Patsy. “When we tell her at
luncheon about our adventure she’ll probably say we had no business
to trespass. You let me do the talking. I sha’n’t mention the word
‘mystery.’ I’ll just innocently ask her what she thinks the old witch
woman could have meant. She’ll be interested, even if she pretends that
she isn’t. Last summer, at Wilderness Lodge, she was as anxious as we
for the missing will to be found. If there is truly a mystery about
Las Golondrinas, Aunt Martha will soon be on the trail of it with the
Wayfarers. Take my word for it.”