DETECTIVE MARGY
“I promised my mother I’d go home at half-past four,” said Joe,
uneasily.
“You can stay another ten or fifteen minutes,” Harry informed him. “You
go back and tell Billy Pierce I say this race is to be done over. Tell
him there’s no decision.”
“I’ll tell him you wouldn’t give a decision,” said Joe, hotly. “I won,
and you’re afraid to say so, just because Polly Marley----”
“I haven’t much doubt about your cheating, Joe,” said Harry, as coolly
as he usually spoke. “But as I didn’t see what happened with my own
eyes, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. You’re lucky, if you’d
only see it the right way.”
Joe turned sullenly away and began to plod up the hill, dragging his
sled after him. At the top of the hill Billy Pierce held the eager
coasters back, for he could see that some sort of argument was taking
place below.
“Just a minute, Fred,” said Harry, as Fred turned to go back. “Are you
willing to race again?”
“Sure,” said Fred, looking everywhere but at Harry or Polly.
“Were you knocked off the road?” asked Harry, a little hesitantly.
“I lost the race, and that’s all there is to it,” said Fred, doggedly.
“All right, go on,” Harry dismissed him.
“Joe put out his hand and gave him a big push,” said Polly, watching
Fred as he trudged up the hill. “If I was Fred I’d tell him what a
cheat he is. I never could stand that Joe Anderson.”
“I didn’t see him do anything,” declared Margy, mildly.
“You never do see anything,” retorted Polly, for, gentle as she was,
any unfairness always roused her, and once “woke up,” as Jess called
it, she was not easily soothed.
“I’m afraid we were asleep at the switch, Margy,” said Harry Worden
ruefully. “This time I mean to glue my eyes on the road and keep them
there.”
“But Fred must know he cheated,” argued Polly.
“Well, you see, Fred’s idea of a good loser is one who doesn’t grunt,”
Harry tried to explain. “He’d rather say nothing than be thought
complaining because he failed to win.”
Polly was not convinced, but she said nothing more. And she and Harry
and Margy stared at the white road till their eyes ached, waiting for
the two black specks to come toward them.
It was a long hill, and when the boys reached the top there were
explanations to be made to Billy Pierce and the curious boys and girls
who wanted to know what had happened. Seated at last on their sleds,
Joe made a start before the signal was given and had to be brought
back. The next time he sulked and did not start at all, and it was Fred
who had to turn around.
At last, though, they got off, and those at the foot of the hill saw
the two dots swooping downward. There was one bad spot in the road--the
depression Harry had mentioned--and Fred grimly swung his sled around,
grazing the deep ditch and even trembling a fraction of a second on
the edge before he threw his weight to the right and shot back to the
center of the road.
Joe had decided to take the hole, changed his mind too late, and went
into it sideways as a result of his effort to swing to the left as
Fred had done. He almost upset his sled, but righted it in time and
was out of the hole a half yard behind the flying Fred. As the boys
had discovered, it was Fred’s quick judgment and willingness to “take
a chance” that gave him the advantage. He had strong wrists, too, and
could change his course as easily as Joe could change his mind.
That was Joe’s great drawback--this habit of changing his mind. It
interfered seriously with his steering, for if there is one place where
it is not wise to change your mind, it is on a steep hill. Having once
decided on his course, the wise coaster sticks to it. Joe’s indecision
was reflected in the wobbly movements of his sled, and this time he
came in a yard behind Fred.
“No doubt about that,” said Harry, with relief. “You win, Fred.”
“I won the other--only you wouldn’t play fair,” said Joe, hardily.
“It’s getting dark, but there’s still time for another race if you want
to call it a tie,” declared Harry, swiftly. “Is it a tie, Joe?”
“Oh, let Fred have it--I don’t care,” Joe mumbled.
“I’ll race again,” said Fred, after a moment’s silence.
“No, the others are coasting now,” decided Harry. “We can’t hold them
up any longer, for it’s getting dark. Fred wins, and if I were you,
Joe, I wouldn’t go around making any uncalled-for remarks.”
Joe took his sled and went back without a word. Harry Worden followed
him to make sure that a truthful report was spread around, and Polly
and Fred ploughed slowly up the road, at one side, pulling Margy on
Fred’s sled.
“I didn’t mean to snap at you, Polly,” said Fred, a little shyly. “I
guess I sounded pretty cranky.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” declared Polly, determined not to let him know
he had hurt her feelings. “I didn’t mind that, Fred. But I saw Joe
Anderson push you--I certainly did.”
“Well, you want to forget that and forget it for good,” said Fred,
stopping in the snow and speaking very earnestly. “I don’t care if he
tipped me off and rode over me. When I lose a race I’m not going to
parade any excuses.”
“I’ll never say a word about it, Fred, if that’s the way you feel,”
Polly promised. “But I do think boys are too queer for anything.”
“Of course they are,” observed Margy from her seat of state. “I’ve
always said they were funny, but you would never believe it.”
For once in their lives, the children in River Bend had enough snow.
After the coasters went home, more snow fell, and it continued to
snow at intervals all night. As a result a whole new world, without a
footprint from the day before left on it, was ready for inspection the
next morning.
“Tell you what let’s do,” remarked Artie, as they came home from school
at noon. “Build a snowman!”
“I don’t think that’s so much fun,” Margy maintained.
“Oh, I don’t mean just a snowman,” explained Artie. “Not one of those
little ones the kids build. I mean a great, big giant of a snowman with
a head higher than a house!”
“How would we build a snowman as high as that?” demanded Fred. “Get in
a tree and put his head on?”
“We could use a stepladder,” said Artie.
Though inclined at first to laugh at this scheme, the more they
discussed it, the better it sounded.
“They had an enormous snowman over in Stockton,” said Artie, naming
a neighboring town. “Daddy read about it. They built him in the main
square, and every one helped. He had electric lights for eyes and
clothes and everything.”
“I’ll bet we could build one just as good,” declared Ward. “We’ll make
ours the tallest snowman River Bend ever saw.”
“Let’s make him a big hat with R.C. on it,” suggested Polly. “Then
every one will know he belongs to the Riddle Club.”
This idea was pronounced “great,” and the Riddle Club could hardly wait
till school was out to begin their statue.
A snowball fight was in progress in the school yard when they went back
after lunch, and the battle continued furiously till the one o’clock
bell rang. Flushed and warm, the pupils marched up to their classrooms,
and on the stairs Polly made a distressing discovery.
Her precious Riddle Club pin was missing!
These pins had been envied or admired by every pupil in the school, and
there was probably nothing Polly owned which possessed more value in
her eyes.
She thought the loss warranted writing a note to Margy, though the
teacher severely discouraged this practice.
“Lost your pin!” Margy’s lips echoed silently, when she had read the
note. “How perfectly awful! Where?”
Polly shook her head to show she did not know. But she was afraid she
had lost it in the midst of the snowball battle, and the prospects of
recovering it were exceedingly dim.
Now Margy had sharp eyes when she chose to use them, and she could be
counted on to be interested in what went on outside her books. While
poor Polly was trying to forget her troubles in the writing lesson,
Margy’s dark eyes were roving over the room in search of amusement.
Carrie Pepper sat near her, over two aisles, and she, too, was
apparently little interested in the lesson. When the teacher’s back was
turned, Carrie swiftly passed something to Mattie Helms, who sat behind
her.
“I wonder what she has,” thought Margy, idly.
Mattie’s head bent over something as she examined it, then she dropped
her pencil. It rolled under the desks and Mattie stooped to get it.
As she straightened up, she dropped the something lightly on Joe
Anderson’s writing book.
Margy could not see, from where she sat, what the something was, but,
like a flash, she guessed.
“Polly’s pin!” She almost said the words aloud. “Polly’s pin! Carrie
was right behind her coming up the stairs this noon. I’ll bet she found
the pin, and she’s so mean, she won’t give it back.”
Margy hastily took her pen and attacked the writing lesson. She wanted
to think. Apparently absorbed in the work before her, she was planning
to find out whether Carrie had really found the missing pin.
“It’s something so small it doesn’t show when she has it in her hand,”
Margy reasoned. “And she is showing it to Mattie and Joe, who aren’t
exactly crazy about Polly or our club. I do believe it is Polly’s pin,
and I intend to find out.”
Margy’s writing lesson may have left something to be desired that day,
but by three o’clock she had a clever plan worked out to solve the
mystery.
“Wait a minute,” she said to the impatient five, who waited for her
in the hall. “Yes, I know you want to get to work on the snowman, but
Polly lost her club pin this noon, and I think I’ve found it.”
“Lost her pin?” echoed Jess. “Where?”
“You haven’t found it?” gasped Polly.
“Well, of course I’m not sure,” said Margy, modestly, “but I think I
have. I noticed Carrie walked right behind you this noon, as you were
going upstairs. I didn’t think anything of that till I saw her passing
something around this afternoon. I couldn’t see what it was, but she
showed it to Mattie Helms and to Joe Anderson.”
“It might be anything,” said Polly, gloomily.
“If it is the pin, what are you going to do about it?” Fred asked his
sister. “You can’t go up and accuse her of taking Polly’s pin.”
“I could, but I don’t intend to,” said Margy. “I might ask her and she
would say she ‘found’ it. But I know a better way than that. I’m going
back to our room now and you go out in the yard and wait for me. It
will take me a little while.”
“Look here, what are you up to?” said Fred, a little quickly.
“I’m going through Carrie’s desk,” returned Margy, placidly.
“Oh--suppose some one finds you?” said Jess, with a shiver of fear.
“They won’t. That’s why you have to wait,” said Margy, who had thought
out her plan carefully. “You see, I figure that if Carrie found the pin
she won’t dare wear it and she won’t take it home to show her mother,
because she would make her give it back. She can’t do a thing with it,
but keep it to plague Polly and show the Conundrum Club. So I think
she’ll leave it in her desk, and I mean to take it out.”