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CHAPTER V
Freckles’ Story

“What in the world are you doing?” asked Jane when she came out on the porch the following morning to find her chum studiously poring over a notebook. “You must think school has begun!”

Mary Louise looked up.

“It’s harder than school – but it’s more fun,” she replied. “I’m working on the mystery of the fires.”

“Mystery? You really don’t think the Flicks’ Inn was just an accident?”

“No, I don’t. If it were the first fire, I might believe that. But with the Hunters’ a week or so ago, the whole thing looks sinister to me. I’m frightened, Jane. Ours may be the next. We haven’t any insurance to speak of. Besides, something dreadful might happen to Mother. People are burned to death sometimes, you know.”

“Yes, that’s true,” replied Jane seriously. “But what are you going to do?”

“Treat it just like a case, as I did Dark Cedars. List all the possible suspects and search the neighborhood for desperate characters.”

“Such as gypsies?”

“No, not gypsies. They wouldn’t have any motive this time. But somebody must have a motive – unless it’s a crazy person who is responsible.”

Jane’s eyes opened wide.

“That’s an idea, Mary Lou! There are people like that – crazy along just one particular line. They feel they simply have to light fires. Firebugs, you know.”

“Incendiary is the correct term, I believe,” said Mary Louise.

“Oh, so you’ve already thought of it and looked up the word!”

“Yes, I’ve thought of it. Who wouldn’t have? It’s the first explanation that jumps into your head when you hear of a fire. They say lighted cigarettes start them too, and small children.”

“Small children? But not boys as big as Freckles and the Smiths?”

An expression of pain passed over Mary Louise’s face.

“I’m afraid everybody suspects the boys. Especially Mr. Flick… I’m going to call Freckles now and ask him just exactly what he did yesterday. Then, if you’re interested, Jane, I’ll read you all my list of suspects.”

“Sure I’m interested. I love to play the part of Watson to the great Sherlock Holmes Gay!” Mary Louise stuck out her tongue.

“Don’t be so fresh!” she said, but she was pleased and flattered to be called Sherlock Holmes.

Freckles, eating a bun and followed by Silky, came leisurely through the screen door. Mary Louise asked him to sit down and talk to her.

“Can’t long,” was the reply. “Have to go see old man Flick.”

“Don’t speak of Mr. Flick in that disrespectful way!” said Mary Louise disapprovingly.

“I will, though. I hate him. He thinks us guys set his old inn on fire, and we really saved his trees. Sweatin’ like horses, carryin’ water from the river, and that’s all the thanks we get!”

“Freckles,” said his sister seriously, “you must tell me all about what you did yesterday. Everything! No secrets. Because this is important. It may save somebody innocent from imprisonment – and help spot the real criminal.”

“O.K., I will, Sis.” He sat down on the hammock, and Silky jumped up beside him. He gave the little dog a piece of his bun, and then he began.

“Up in the woods beyond Shady Nook – past the Ditmars’, you know, and all the cottages – we’re building a shack. A clubhouse for the ‘Wild Guys of the Road.’ So yesterday we took our lunch – the two Smiths, the two Reeds, and I – to set to work.”

“Did you make a fire?” demanded Mary Louise.

“Sure we made a fire. We got to have a fire. But don’t you go thinking that fire spread to Flicks’. If it had, why wouldn’t Ditmars’ and Robinsons’ cottages have been burned? They’re in between.”

“Yes, that’s true. Did you stay there in the woods all day?”

“Yeah. Cooked some hot dogs for our supper, and Larry Reed had a can of baked beans. Boy, we had a swell feed! And never thought a thing about the picnic on the island till it started to get dark. Then we put out the fire, packed our stuff away, and made tracks for home.”

“About what time was that?” asked Mary Louise. “I mean, when you finally left your camp?”

“Nine-thirty or ten, maybe. I don’t know.”

“And you saw two people on your way back, you said?”

“Four people, really, because the Ditmars were taking a walk in the woods. They were quarreling, I’m sure. She was mad at him. Said she thought he was positively cruel!”

“What!” exclaimed Jane. “Looks as if Horace Ditmar might have set the place on fire himself – just as Mr. Frazier was expecting!”

Mary Louise wrote something in her notebook, and Freckles continued:

“Then, a little farther on, we met a tramp. At least, we think he was a tramp, though it was too dark to see his face. He was a big man in shabby old clothes. Overalls, I think. He was coming towards us – away from Shady Nook. We think he’s the man you want!”

“Had you ever seen him before?”

“I don’t think so, but I wouldn’t want to be sure. After we passed him, we saw the funny-looking woman with the big pitcher under her arm. The moon was out then, and we got a good look at her. We all think she was crazy – kind of talking to herself as she went along.

“Then, as we came nearer to Shady Nook, we smelled smoke and found out it was Flicks’. The inn was burned down by then – it was all wood, you know – but there was plenty of fire smoldering around. So we got some buckets at our own houses and began carrying water from the river. We must have worked a couple of hours… Till you came along… That’s all.”

“You’re going to tell this story to Mr. Flick?”

“It’s not a story!” cried the boy indignantly. “It’s the truth!”

“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way,” Mary Louise hastened to assure him. “I believe you, Freckles. But I do wish you had someone to swear to the truth of it – for the people who may not believe you. Some witness, I mean. Did the Ditmars see you boys in the woods?”

“No. When we heard their voices – and I told you she was good and mad – we beat it around another path. Women murder their husbands sometimes, you know!” he added solemnly.

“I don’t believe Mrs. Ditmar would commit murder,” replied his sister. “We met her yesterday morning, and she seemed awfully nice.”

Freckles stood up.

“Guess I better be on my way. Old man Flick’s got an awful temper.”

“Well, be sure to keep yours,” Mary Louise warned him as he walked down the steps.

She turned to Jane. “What do you think about it?” she asked.

“I think it’s a mess. But I don’t believe anybody’s guilty. Probably just some careless servant girl.”

“I don’t know. I’m going over to see Mr. Flick this morning. I’ll have a good reason now that Freckles is sort of involved.

“Now I’ll read you my list of suspects and their motives, and you tell me what you think and whether you can add any names:

“‘Horace Ditmar – motive, to make work for himself.

“‘Mr. Flick and Cliff Hunter – owners, to collect insurance.

“‘Tramp and queer-looking woman – firebugs.

“‘Careless servants – and

“‘The boys.’… Now, can you think of anybody else?”

“It looks like Mr. Ditmar to me – or else the careless servants,” replied Jane. “I’d never believe it was Cliff Hunter. Or Mr. Flick. Why, Mr. Flick was making money this summer – he’d be a fool to set his place on fire. Besides, he was at the picnic. How could he?”

“Things like that can be arranged,” replied Mary Louise, thinking of David McCall’s accusation. “That tramp, for instance, might have been bribed.”

“Well, I’m sure he wouldn’t want to. Now, if it were that man Frazier’s place, the Royal Hotel, I mean, it would be possible. You know what Cliff said about the way he’s losing money. The hotel is practically empty, except for the Hunters and their friends.”

“Maybe it will give Mr. Frazier an idea,” remarked Mary Louise, “and his hotel be the next to burn!”

“You seem to feel sure that something is coming next!”

“I’m afraid so. And I only hope it won’t be our bungalow!”

Mary Louise sighed and closed her notebook.

“It’s much more difficult than that mystery at Dark Cedars,” she said. “Because there you had only one place to watch. If I knew which cottage would be the next to burn, I could hide there and spy. But Shady Nook’s a mile long, and I can’t be everywhere.”

“No,” agreed Jane. “And you don’t like to stay home from all the parties just on a chance that there will be a fire. Has it occurred to you, Mary Lou, that both fires started when everybody from Shady Nook was off on a party?”

“Yes, it has. That’s why it seems like a planned crime to me – not just an accident. As if the criminal picked his time carefully.”

The familiar “chug-chug” of a motorboat interrupted the girls’ discussion. Clifford Hunter shut off his engine and threw the rope around the Gays’ dock.

“Hello, girls!” he called, with his usual grin. “I haven’t had time to work up any new card tricks, but I hope I’ll be welcome just the same.”

“Oh, we have more serious things to think about than tricks,” responded Mary Louise.

“You mean that now you have to turn in and do the cooking since Flicks’ Inn is gone?”

“I really hadn’t thought of that,” answered Mary Louise. “Though of course we shall have to do that very thing. We aren’t rich enough to eat at the Royal Hotel.”

“It’s not so steep, considering the service you get. Maybe Frazier will lower his prices, for he sure needs the business. But, of course, you have a large family. It would be kind of expensive.”

“Where can we buy food?” inquired Jane. So far, the Gays’ breakfasts had consisted of supplies they brought along with them, with the addition of milk, butter, and eggs from a farmer who stopped daily at Flicks’.

“There’s a store over at Four Corners,” replied her chum, naming the nearest village – about five miles away. “We usually drive over once a week for supplies. I suppose I better go in now and ask Mother how soon she wants me to go.”

“Be my guests tonight at the Royal for dinner,” suggested Cliff. “Then you won’t have to bother about buying stuff.”

“Thanks, Cliff, but there are too many of us. Besides, I’d have to go to the store anyway. We’ll need things for lunch. You know how hungry we are when we come out from swimming.”

“By the way,” asked Jane, “where is David McCall staying? And the other people who were boarding at Flicks’?”

“They’re all over at the hotel,” answered Cliff. “Makes the place seem quite lively. Frazier’s stepping around at a great rate, looking pleased as Punch.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Mary Louise significantly, and she wrote another name into her notebook.

She ran inside the cottage and five minutes later returned with her mother’s list of groceries and the keys to the car.

“I’m going over to Four Corners now, Jane,” she announced. “Will you come with me or play around with Cliff?”

Her chum stood up.

“I’ll go with you,” she said. “If you’ll excuse me, Cliff.”

The young man made a face.

“Jane only likes me for my card tricks,” he whined. “If I can’t amuse her, I’m no use.”

Both girls burst out laughing.

“Work up a new one while we’re gone,” advised Jane. “And we’ll see you in swimming.”

CHAPTER VI
More Suspects

“I told Mother we girls would take every other day at the housekeeping,” said Mary Louise as she backed the car out of the garage and onto the road behind the cottages. “That will give her a chance to get some rest from cooking – some vacation. You don’t mind, do you, Jane?”

“Course I don’t mind!” replied her chum. “Maybe the family will, though!”

“Don’t you believe it! We’re swell cooks, if I do say it myself.”

She drove the car along past the backs of the cottages, turning at the road beyond Ditmars in the direction of the little village of Four Corners – a place not much bigger than its name implied. It was a still, hot day; all the vegetation looked parched and dried, and the road was thick with dust.

“I wish it would rain,” remarked Mary Louise. “If we should have another fire, it might spread so that it would wipe out all of Shady Nook.”

“Oh, let’s forget fires for a while,” urged Jane. “You’re getting positively morbid on the subject!.. Is this the grocery?” she asked as her companion stopped in front of a big wooden house. “It looks more like a dry-goods store to me. All those aprons and overalls hanging around.”

“It’s a country store,” explained the other girl. “Wait till you see the inside! They have everything – even shoes. And the storekeeper looks over his glasses just the way they always do in plays.”

The girls jumped out of the car and ran inside. Jane found the place just as Mary Louise had described it: a typical country store of the old-fashioned variety.

“Hello, Mr. Eberhardt! How are you this summer?” asked Mary Louise.

“Fine, Miss Gay – fine. You’re lookin’ well, too. But I hear you had some excitement over to Shady Nook. A bad fire, they tell me. Can you figure out how it happened?”

“No, we can’t,” replied the girl. “You see, everybody was away at the time – at a picnic on the little island down the river.”

“Looks like spite to me,” observed the storekeeper. “Bet Lemuel Adams or his good-fer-nuthin’ son done it!”

“Lemuel Adams?” repeated Mary Louise. “Who is he? Any relation to Hattie Adams, who always waited on the table at Flicks’ Inn?”

“Yep – he’s her father. You ought to know him. He’s a farmer who lives up that hill, ’bout a couple of miles from Shady Nook. Well, he used to own all this ground around here, but he sold it cheap to a man named Hunter. The one who started the settlement at Shady Nook.”

“Yes, I knew him,” said Mary Louise. “He was Clifford Hunter’s father. But he died not long ago.”

“So I heard. Anyhow, this man Hunter got fancy prices for his building lots, and naterally old Lem Adams got sore. Always complainin’ how poor he is and how rich old Hunter got on his land. Reckon it got under his skin, and mebbe he decided to take revenge.”

“Oh!”

Mary Louise wanted to write the name of Lemuel Adams into her notebook then and there, but she didn’t like to. Should she add Hattie’s name too? Had the girl taken any part in the plot?

“What sort of looking man is Mr. Adams?” she inquired, thinking of the “tramp” whom the boys had mentioned seeing in the woods.

“Old man – with white hair. Has a bad leg – rheumatism, I reckon. He walks with a limp,” explained the storekeeper.

Mary Louise sighed: this couldn’t be the same person, then, for the boys would surely have noticed a limp.

“Here’s my list,” she said, handing her mother’s paper to Mr. Eberhardt. “Do you think you have all those things?”

“If I ain’t, I can get ’em fer you,” was the cheerful reply.

The girls wandered idly about the store while they waited for their order to be filled. Jane had a wonderful time examining the queer articles on display and laughing at the ready-made dresses. At last, however, a boy carried their supplies to the car, and Mary Louise asked for the bill.

“Nine dollars and sixty-two cents,” announced Mr. Eberhardt, with a grin. “You folks sure must like to eat!”

“We do,” agreed Mary Louise. “I suppose this will mean more business for you. Or did the Flicks buy groceries from you anyhow?”

“No, they didn’t. They got most of their stuff from the city… Yes, in a way it’s a streak of luck fer me. The old sayin’, you know – that it’s an ill wind that brings nobody luck!.. Yes, I’ll have to be stockin’ up.”

Mary Louise and Jane followed the boy to the car and drove away. As soon as they were safely out of hearing, Mary Louise said significantly, “Two more suspects for my notebook!”

“Two?” repeated Jane. “You mean Lemuel Adams and his son?”

“I wasn’t thinking of the son,” replied Mary Louise, “Though, of course, he’s a possibility. No, I was thinking of Mr. Eberhardt, the storekeeper.”

“The storekeeper! Now, Mary Lou, your ideas are running wild. Next thing you’ll be suspecting me!”

“Maybe I do,” laughed her chum. “No, but seriously – if Dad is working on a murder case, he always finds out immediately who profited by the victim’s death. That supplies a motive for the crime. Well, it’s the same with a fire. Didn’t this storekeeper profit – by getting extra business – because Flicks’ burned down?”

“Yes, he did,” admitted the other girl. “But, on the other hand, it didn’t do him a bit of good for the Hunters’ bungalow to be destroyed.”

“No, of course not. But, then, that may have been an accident.”

“Yet this Lemuel Adams might have been responsible for both fires. He seems a lot guiltier to me. If he hated Mr. Hunter particularly, he’d naturally burn his cottage first. Then he’d go about destroying all the rest of Shady Nook.”

“Your reasoning sounds good to me, Jane,” approved Mary Louise, her brown eyes sparkling with excitement. “And we’ve got to make a call on Mr. Adams right away. This very afternoon!”

“Not me,” said Jane. “I’m going canoeing with Cliff Hunter.”

Mary Louise looked disappointed.

“Suppose Watson had told Sherlock Holmes that he had a date with a girl and couldn’t go on an investigation with him when he was needed?”

“Watson was only a man in a book who didn’t make dates. I’m a real girl who’s full of life. I came up here for some fun, not just to be an old character in a detective story! And besides, Mary Lou, you have a date too. I heard you promise David McCall you’d go canoeing with him today.”

“I’m mad at David,” objected Mary Louise. “He certainly made me furious last night.”

“What did he do?”

Mary Louise frowned, but she did not tell Jane what the young man had said about Cliff Hunter. No use getting her chum all excited, so she merely shrugged her shoulders.

“Oh, just some remarks he made,” she replied. “But I really had forgotten all about the date. When did I promise him?”

“Yesterday afternoon, before I went off with Cliff. Oh, come on, Mary Lou! Go along with us. Let’s pack a supper – it’ll be easy with all that food we brought back from the store. Maybe your mother and Freckles will go along.”

“No, I really can’t, Jane. I don’t want to be rude to you – you are my guest, I know – but honest, this is important. That I go see old Mr. Adams, I mean. If he has made up his mind to burn down the entire settlement at Shady Nook, our cottage will be included. I’ve just got to do something to save it – and everybody else’s. You know – Dad’s counting on me!”

“Yes, I understand how you feel, Mary Lou. But you may be all wrong – these two fires may just have been accidents – and then you’ll be wasting your perfectly good vacation for nothing.”

“Oh, but I’m having fun! There’s nothing I love better than a mystery. Only this one does scare me a little, because we may actually be involved in it.”

“Well, you do whatever you want,” Jane told her. “Just regard me as one of the family, and I’ll go my own way. I know everybody here now, and I’m having a grand time. Only don’t forget you have David McCall to reckon with about breaking that date!”

They drove up to the back door of the cottage, and Freckles, who had returned home by this time, helped carry in the boxes. Mary Louise asked him how he had made out with the Flicks.

“Not so good,” was the reply. “He’s sore as anything. Still believes we had something to do with starting the fire, though he admits he doesn’t think we did it on purpose. They’re going away today.”

“Oh, that’s too bad!” exclaimed Mary Louise. “I was hoping they would build some kind of shack and continue to serve meals.”

“Nope, they’re not going to. They’ve decided to go right back to Albany, where they live in the winter.”

“Where are they now?” demanded Mary Louise. She realized that she must hurry if she meant to interview them before they left Shady Nook.

“Mr. Flick’s on his lot, and Mrs. Flick is over at the Partridges’. They stayed there all night, you know, Sis.”

As soon as the supplies from the store were carefully stored away, the two girls walked over to the spot where the Flicks’ Inn had stood. The charred remains were pitiful to see; the fire had been much harder on the Flicks than the Hunters’ disaster had been for them, because the innkeeper and his wife were poor. And what they made in the summer went a long way toward supporting them all the year round. Mary Louise felt sorry for them, but nevertheless she resented their laying the blame upon her brother.

The girls found Mr. Flick standing under a tree talking to some men in overalls – working men, whom Mary Lou remembered seeing from time to time around the hotel across the river.

“May I talk with you for a moment, Mr. Flick?” inquired Mary Louise, as the former turned around and spoke to her.

“Yes, of course, Mary Louise,” he replied. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

“You really don’t think the boys are responsible, do you, Mr. Flick?” she asked directly, when he joined the girls.

“I don’t know what to think,” replied the man. “It may have been an accident. That one servant girl we have is awfully careless.”

“Which one?”

“Hattie Adams. The one who waits on your table and washes the dishes.”

“Hattie Adams!” repeated Mary Louise. “Lemuel Adams’ daughter!”

“Yes. And Tom Adams’ sister.” He lowered his voice. “That’s Tom over there – remember him? – he does odd jobs for both me and Frazier sometimes.”

Mary Louise nodded and glanced at the young man. He was a big fellow with a somewhat sullen expression. He looked something like Hattie.

“How do you know Lem Adams?” inquired Mr. Flick.

“I don’t,” replied Mary Louise quietly. “But the storekeeper over at Four Corners told me about him. How he used to own all this land and sold it cheap to Mr. Hunter. So he thinks maybe Mr. Adams is burning the cottages to spite the Hunters.”

“But Hunter is dead!” objected Mr. Flick. “And it doesn’t spite the Hunters one bit, because they are fully insured. That’s the worst of it for me. My insurance only covers my mortgage – which Cliff Hunter happens to hold. I’m as good as wiped out.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Mary Louise sympathetically.

“Not half as sorry as I am.” He scowled. “And when I get to Albany I’m going to hunt up a lawyer. If those Smith kids did it, their parents can pay for the damage!”

“Oh, but they didn’t!” protested Mary Louise.

“It’s too bad if your brother was in it too. But if he was, he ought to be punished – though I blame that Robby Smith as the ringleader. Boys like those aren’t safe to have around. They don’t have anybody to control them. They ought to be locked behind the walls of a reform school.”

There was nothing Mary Louise could say: the man was far too wrought up to listen to reason. So she and Jane merely nodded goodbye and turned away.

They stopped at the Partridges’ cottage to see Mrs. Flick and found her much calmer.

“I blame the Adams girl,” she said. “Hattie’s so careless! And she was the last one at the inn. I never should have left her alone. But my other waitresses wanted to get back to their hometown, and they left early – before we did. So I can’t lay the blame on them.”

“You really don’t think the boys did it, do you, Mrs. Flick?” inquired Mary Louise anxiously.

“No, I don’t,” was the reassuring reply, “even if my husband does!”

“Thank goodness for that!” exclaimed the girl in relief. “Well, I’m going to call on the Adams family this afternoon and find out all I can. I’ll pump Hattie, and old Mr. Adams too.”

“Good luck to you, my dear!” concluded Mrs. Flick.