MYSTERIOUS BELLS
“Children! What has happened?” cried Mrs. Bobbsey, running in from the
kitchen where she was helping Dinah get supper. She gave one glance at
the collapsed elevated toy railway, saw Flossie and Freddie buried under
an overturned chair, the ironing board, the engine and cars and gasped:
“Oh, are you hurt?”
Another loud clap of thunder drowned, for a moment, the answering voices
of the children. Then from the toy railroad wreck came the faltering cry
of Flossie as she said:
“Oh, I got a terrible bang on the head! Oh, dear!”
“You aren’t hurt much—you’re just frightened!” said Nan, soothingly, as
she helped her small sister get out from beneath the ironing board.
“And I got banged on the knee!” exclaimed Freddie.
“Crickity grasshoppers!” exclaimed Bert, as he viewed the tangled mass
of what, a moment before, had been a fine-running toy railroad system.
“Everything’s gone to smash!”
“Oh, it’s a wreck! Let’s play it’s a railroad wreck!” shouted Freddie.
“That’s what it is—and I’ll be a passenger that was hurt, and Flossie
can be another passenger, and you must send for the amberlance, an’ Nan
can be a trained nurse an’—an’—” He had to stop for breath, he was
talking so fast.
“We don’t need to _pretend_ it was a wreck—it sure _is_ one!” declared
Bert ruefully. “I hope my electric engine isn’t smashed!” he added.
“Crawl out of there, Freddie, until I take a look!”
“Will I get a shock from the ’lectric battery?” faltered Flossie, as Nan
picked her up.
“Yes, Bert, be careful about the electricity, especially in a lightning
storm,” admonished his mother.
“There’s no danger,” the older Bobbsey boy insisted. “The wires are
broken, I guess. Who pulled that ironing board down, anyhow?”
“Freddie did,” said Flossie.
“I did not! You jiggled me and my head hit it. Anyhow, the thunder
knocked it down,” insisted Freddie.
“Well, come out of the mess and clear the wreck away,” suggested Mrs.
Bobbsey. “It’s almost time for supper. Daddy will soon be here and—”
A vivid flash of lightning that seemed to fill the room with its glare,
followed by a terrific clap of thunder, stopped her from talking.
“Oh, what a terrible storm!” murmured Mrs. Bobbsey.
Into the room came waddling fat old Dinah, the colored cook.
“Am any ob mah honey lambs hurt?” she inquired anxiously.
“No one is hurt,” replied Mrs. Bobbsey. “But, oh, such a mess!” She
looked at the conglomeration of chairs, ironing boards, boxes and the
toy railroad, now scattered over the floor.
“We’ll clean it up,” said Bert cheerfully. And while he and Nan are
doing this and while Mrs. Bobbsey is comforting Flossie and Freddie, who
were alarmed over the storm, I shall take just a moment to tell my new
readers a little something about this family.
In the first book of this series, “The Bobbsey Twins,” you learn that
Mr. and Mrs. Richard Bobbsey lived with their two sets of twins in the
eastern city of Lakeport on Lake Metoka, where Mr. Bobbsey owned a large
lumberyard. Bert and Nan, who had dark hair and eyes, were several years
older than Flossie and Freddie, whose hair was light and whose eyes were
blue.
Bert and Nan and Flossie and Freddie were fond of fun and good times,
and they had plenty of them in the country, at school, at the seashore
and on trips. There are various books telling of the adventures of the
Bobbsey twins in different places, at grandpa’s farm, on the deep blue
sea, and out West. Just before this story opens the Bobbsey twins had
been camping and had had some wonderful adventures.
“Well, Bert, was anything broken?” asked his mother, when the “mess,” as
she called it, of the elevated railroad had been cleared away.
“No, nothing much, Mother,” he answered. “One of the cars lost a wheel,
but that’s always coming off. I guess Sam can fix it.” Sam was Dinah’s
husband, a jolly, stout, colored man-of-all-work about the Bobbsey
place.
“I think you’d better wash now and get ready for supper,” his mother
told him.
“If I could put on my bathing suit and stand out in the rain I wouldn’t
have to wash—the shower would wash me,” Bert said, laughing.
“Oh, could we do that? Could we put on our bathing suits?” begged
Freddie.
“Please!” begged Flossie, who was all over her crying spell caused by
having been hit on the head when the ironing board fell.
“No, indeed!” laughed Mrs. Bobbsey. “This isn’t summer yet. The rain is
a cold one. I hope your father doesn’t get drenched. But what made your
elevated railroad fall, Bert?”
“Oh, I guess Flossie or Freddie moved one of the chairs when they
crawled under the ironing board to make believe they were under a
bridge,” the boy answered.
“I didn’t!” asserted Freddie. “It was the thunder!”
“Well, maybe it was,” admitted Bert. “It rumbled terribly loud, anyhow.”
“Hark!” exclaimed Nan suddenly.
“Oh! is it going to thunder again?” cried Flossie, getting ready to bury
her head in Nan’s lap.
“No. But I think I heard daddy come in,” said the older Bobbsey girl.
“Yes, there he is!” cried Bert, and a moment later Mr. Bobbsey, his face
sparkling with rain drops that had blown beneath his umbrella, entered
the room.
“All safe and sound?” he asked cheerfully.
“Yes,” his wife answered. “But if you had been here a little while
ago—”
“Why, what happened?”
“Oh, my elevated railroad was wrecked!” laughed Bert, and by turns the
children told of the happening.
“Daddy,” began Nan a little later, as they sat at the supper table, the
storm having quieted somewhat. “Daddy—”
“Yes, Nan?” he answered. “What is it?”
“Did you see a funny old lady with a green umbrella out in the storm?”
“What’s this—a riddle?” and Mr. Bobbsey smiled.
“Oh, no! We all saw her!” cried Freddie.
“An’ she had a big basket!” added Flossie.
Mr. Bobbsey looked at his wife, to ask what it was all about, and she
told briefly about the strange woman passing the house in the storm,
carrying the big basket, which seemed to be heavy.
“No, I didn’t see her,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “It’s hard to see anything in
this storm,” he added. “Is my rubber coat here at the house?” he asked
his wife.
“Why?” she wanted to know, looking quickly at him. “You aren’t going out
again to-night, are you?”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to,” he replied. “The river is rising with so much
rain, and I have men moving back some of the lumber so it won’t be
washed away. But I’ll not be gone longer than I can help.”
The Bobbsey twins were disappointed that their father could not remain
indoors with them and tell stories this stormy night. But, as he
explained, it was needful that he look after his lumber, many great
piles of which were on the very brink of the river that flowed into Lake
Metoka.
“I started men moving back some of the piles before I left to come home
to supper,” he said. “I want to go back and find out how much more is
left.”
“Could I come with you?” Bert begged.
“No, I’m afraid not, little man,” his father answered. “You couldn’t do
anything in the darkness, and you’d only be in the way.”
“Could I go down to-morrow?”
“Maybe. I’ll see about it,” promised Mr. Bobbsey. He put on his big
rubber coat and went out into the storm after supper.
The thunder and lightning seemed to have passed over, but it was still
raining hard. Mrs. Bobbsey let the younger twins stay up a bit later
than usual, but at last their nodding heads showed her it was time they
went to bed. Bert and Nan soon followed and Mrs. Bobbsey sat down to
read until her husband should return.
The wind howled mournfully through the trees, dashing the rain against
the windows, and, more than once, Mrs. Bobbsey looked up and shivered a
little as she thought of her husband out in the storm, trying to save
his lumber from being washed away.
“That poor old woman, too,” mused Mrs. Bobbsey, as she thought of the
one with the green umbrella. “She looked friendless and forlorn. I hope
she finds shelter for the night.”
She kept on with her reading. Presently there was a rumble of thunder,
not so loud, however, but that Mrs. Bobbsey heard the ringing of the
front doorbell at the same time.
“I wonder who that is at this time of night, and out in all this storm,”
she said to herself, as she arose and walked through the front hall.
Before she reached the door she heard the patter of bare feet in the
upper hall.
“Mother, did you hear the bell ring?” asked Freddie.
“I heard it! I haven’t been asleep yet,” called Flossie. “Is that daddy
come home? I want to kiss him!”
“No, it can’t be your father—he has a key,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “Go back
to bed this instant, children! You’ll catch cold in your nighties! Go
back to bed!”
Flossie and Freddie did so, though they did not want to. Mrs. Bobbsey
went to the front door. There was an electric lamp outside, which she
could light by pushing a button within the hall. This she did and
glanced out before opening the door.
But, to her surprise, she saw no one standing on the steps. The rain was
running down the glass in little streams, but no one could be seen.
“That’s strange,” mused Mrs. Bobbsey. “I’m sure I heard the bell
ring—and so did the children. Perhaps it was some one who made a
mistake and got the wrong house, and after they saw the number they
walked away. My, how it rains!”
She went back to her reading. Again came the distant rumble of thunder,
following a flash of lightning. And, again, the doorbell tinkled.
“That must be some one!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey, and, she said
afterward, she had a “queer feeling” as she again arose and went to the
door.
Before she had a chance to switch on the light and look out she once
more heard the patter of bare feet in the upper hall.
“Flossie—Freddie—you mustn’t get out of bed again!” she called up the
stairs.
“This isn’t Flossie or Freddie—it’s me,” said Bert, in a low voice. “I
mean it’s I,” he added, as he recollected that his teacher had corrected
him for saying that in class. “Who’s ringing the bell, Mother?” he
asked.
“That’s just what I’m going to find out,” answered Mrs. Bobbsey. But
when, once more, she looked out on the rain-swept porch she saw no one.
“This is certainly queer!” she exclaimed. “Did you hear the bell, Bert?”
“Yes, Mother, I sure did. I thought it was dad.”
“But there is no one here,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “Not a soul!”
“Oh, well, maybe the lightning rang the bell,” said Bert.
“Does lightning ever do such things?” Mrs. Bobbsey wanted to know.
“Yes,” answered Bert. “We had a lesson on electricity in class the other
day—not much, just a little one—and teacher said it did funny things.
I guess it could ring a doorbell without anybody being near.”
“Well, perhaps it could,” admitted Mrs. Bobbsey. “Certainly no one is
here. Better get back to bed, Bert.”
“I will, Mother!”
Just then a noise was heard at the back door.