The Camp Fire Girls Solve a Mystery; Or, The Christmas Adventure at Carver House
"What's the matter with him?" asked Nyoda, in a tone of concern.
"Superstitious," replied Sherry reassuringly. "Most negroes believe the
devil is walking around on two legs, waiting to grab them from behind
every fence. You remember Uncle Jasper mentioned in his diary that he
told Jasper if he ever took that shutter down the devil would come in
through the window and get him. Now he thinks it's happened. Don't be
alarmed at him. Get him his breakfast, and that'll give him something
else to think about."
The Winnebagos hastened to set out his breakfast on the table, but he ate
scarcely anything, and still trembled when he went back to his rooms in
the coach house.
"Funny old codger!" commented Sherry, looking after him. "He's chuck full
of superstition. If he throws many more such fits, I suppose I'll have to
nail up the old shutter again to keep him from dying of fright."
"You'll do no such thing!" replied Nyoda. "I'll have no more holes in
that casement. Hercules will be all right again in a day or two. By that
time he'll have a new bogie.
"Now everybody come to breakfast, and forget all about this miserable
business."
CHAPTER IX
THE TRIALS OF AN EXPLORER
"Oh, tell me again about the time you went camping, and the people
thought you were drowning," begged Sylvia.
Hinpoha drew up a footstool under her feet, and sank back into a
cushioned chair with a long sigh of contentment. All day long she had
been helping the others search for the secret passage, upstairs and
downstairs, and back upstairs again, until she dropped, panting and
exhausted, into a chair beside Sylvia in the library and declared she
couldn't stand up another minute. The others never thought of stopping.
"But you aren't fat," she retorted when Sahwah protested against her
dropping out. "You can run up and downstairs like a spider; no wonder you
aren't tired. I'm completely inside."
"You're what?"
"Completely inside. Classical English for 'all in.' 'All in' is slang,
and we can't use slang in Nyoda's house, you know."
Sahwah snorted and returned to the search, which was now centered in
Uncle Jasper's study.
"Now tell me about your getting rescued," said Sylvia.
"We were spending the week-end at Sylvan Lake," recounted Hinpoha, "and
there were campers all around. Sahwah and I wanted to get an honor for
upsetting a canoe and righting it again, so we put on our skirts and
middies over our bathing suits and paddled out into deep water. Nyoda was
watching us from the shore. We were going to take the complete
test--upset the canoe, undress in deep water, right the canoe and paddle
back to shore. We got out where the water was over our heads and upset
the canoe with a fine splash. We were just coming up and beginning to
pull off our middies, when we heard a yell from the shore. Two young men
from one of the cottages were tearing down to the beach like mad,
throwing their coats into space as they ran.
"'Hold on, girls, we'll save you,' they shouted across the water, and
jumped in and swam out toward us.
"'O look what's coming!' giggled Sahwah.
"'Oh, won't they be surprised when they see us right the canoe!' I
sputtered as well as I could for laughing. 'Come on, hurry up!'
"'What a shame to spoil their chance of being heroes,' said Sahwah. 'They
may never have another chance. Let's let them tow us in.' Sahwah went
down under water and did dead man's float and it looked as though she had
gone under. I followed her. But I laughed right out loud under water and
made the bubbles go up in a spout and had to go up for air. The two
fellows were almost up to us. Sahwah threw up her hand and waved it
wildly, and I began to laugh again.
"'Keep still and be saved like a lady!' Sahwah hissed, and I straightened
out my face just in time. The two fellows took hold of us and towed us to
shore. People were lined up all along, watching, and they cheered and
made a big fuss over those two fellows. We could see Nyoda and Migwan and
Gladys running away with their handkerchiefs stuffed into their mouths.
We lay on the beach awhile, looking awfully limp and scared and after a
while we let somebody help us to our cottage, and you should have heard
the hilarity after we were alone! We laughed for two hours without
stopping. Nyoda insisted that we go and express our grateful thanks to
the two young men for saving our lives, and we managed to keep our faces
straight long enough to do it, but the strain was awful."
"Oh, what fun!" cried Sylvia, laughing until the tears came, and then
with an irresistible burst of longing she exclaimed, "Oh, if I could only
do things like other girls!"
"You _are_ going to do things like other girls!" said Hinpoha in the tone
of one who knows a delightful secret. "You're going to walk again; Nyoda
said the doctor said so."
Sylvia's face went dead white for an instant, and then lighted up with
that wonderful inner radiance that made her seem like a glowing lamp.
"Am I?" she gasped faintly, catching hold of Hinpoha's arm with tense
fingers.
"You certainly are," said Hinpoha, in a convincing tone. "Nyoda said you
could be cured. The specialist is coming in a day or two to arrange the
operation. O dear, now I've told it!" she exclaimed. "We were going to
save it for a birthday surprise."
"Oh-h-h-h!" breathed Sylvia, and sank back in her chair unable to say
another word. Her eyes burned like stars. To walk again! Not to be a
burden to Aunt Aggie! The sudden joy that surged through her nearly
suffocated her. To walk! Perhaps to dance! The desire to dance had always
been so strong in her that it sometimes seemed to her that she must die
if she couldn't dance. All the joy that was coming to her whirled before
her eyes in a wild kaleidoscope of shifting images.
"Then I can be a Camp Fire Girl!"
"You're going to be a Winnebago!"
"Oh-h-h!"
"You can go camping with us!"
"Oh-h-h!"
"You will be a singer, and go on the stage, maybe!"
"Oh-h-h-h-h-h!"
"Maybe you'll even----" Hinpoha's sentence was suddenly interrupted by a
mighty uproar from the basement. First came a crash that rocked the
house, followed by a series of lesser thumps and crashes, mingled with
the racket of breaking glass. The Winnebagos, rushing out into the hall
from Uncle Jasper's study, were brushed aside by Sherry and Justice and
the Captain, tearing down the attic stairs. Sherry snatched up his
revolver from his dresser and went down the stairs three at a time, with
the boys close at his heels.
"The burglars are in the basement!" came from the frightened lips of the
girls as they crept fearfully down the stairs. All felt that the mystery
of the footprints on the stairs was about to be cleared up.
Sherry opened the cellar door and paused at the top. "Who's down there?"
he called, in a voice of thunder.
From somewhere below came a dismal wail. "Throw me a plank, somebody, I'm
drowning. There's a tidal wave down here!"
"It's Slim!" cried Nyoda, recognizing his voice. "What's the matter?" she
called.
She and Sherry raced down the cellar stairs, with the Winnebagos and the
two boys streaming after.
They found Slim lying on the floor of the fruit cellar, nearly drowned in
a pool of vinegar which was gushing over him from the wreck of a
two-hundred-gallon barrel lying beside him. Around him and on top of him
lay the debris of a shelf of canned fruit.
Sherry and the boys rescued him and finally succeeded in convincing him
that he was not fatally injured. The stream of vinegar was diverted into
a nearby drain, and Slim told his tale of woe.
He had been down in the cellar looking for the secret passage. There was
a place in the stone wall that sounded hollow when he struck it with a
hammer, and he went around to see what was on the other side of that
wall. It was the fruit cellar. While he was poking around in it a big
stone suddenly fell down out of the wall and smashed in the head of the
barrel, which tipped over almost on top of him, and nearly drowned him in
vinegar, while the jars of fruit came down all around him.
"That loose stone in the wall!" exclaimed Sherry. "I forgot to warn you
boys about it when you were sounding the walls with hammers. It's a
mighty good thing it fell on the barrel and not on you."
He and Nyoda turned cold at the thought of what might have happened.
But the sight of Slim, dripping with vinegar and covered with canned
peaches, drove all thoughts of tragedy out of their minds, and the cellar
resounded with peals of helpless laughter for the next twenty minutes.
Justice tried to sweep up the broken glass, but sank weakly into a bin of
potatoes and went from one convulsion into another, until the Captain
finally poured a dipper of water over him to calm him down.
"O dear," gasped Justice, mopping his face with the end of a potato bag,
"if Uncle Jasper could only have seen what he started with that diary of
his, it would have jolted him clean out of his melancholy!"
CHAPTER X
THE SECRET PASSAGE
"Oh, tell Aunt Aggie I think the Winter Palace is the most wonderful
place in the whole world!" cried Sylvia enthusiastically. "Tell her that
the ladies-in-waiting are the dearest that ever lived, and the three
court jesters are the funniest. Tell her I'm so happy I feel as though I
were going to burst! And be _sure_ and tell her that I'm going to get
well!"
Sylvia had not been able to conceal her rapture for a minute after
Hinpoha had told her the news the day before. They all knew she knew it,
and when they saw her rapture they did not scold Hinpoha for letting the
cat out of the bag before the time set. To have given her those two extra
days of happiness was worth the sacrifice of their surprise. All morning
she had filled the house with her song and chattered happily of the time
when she would go camping with the Winnebagos.
"We've made more plans than we can carry out in a hundred years!" she
told Nyoda gleefully. "Oh, _please_ live that long, so you can help us do
all we've planned." Nyoda smiled back into the starry eyes, and promised
faithfully to live forever, if need be, to accommodate her.
"I'll give Aunt Aggie all your messages," she said now, stopping in the
act of drawing on her gloves to pat the shining head.
"You're _so_ good to go and see Aunt Aggie!"
Nyoda patted her on the head again and then started cityward with her big
box of delicacies for Mrs. Deane. With her went Migwan and Gladys and
Hinpoha, who wanted to do some shopping in the city.
Sahwah and Katherine refused to give up their search for the passage even
for one afternoon. Sahwah had an idea that possibly there was a secret
door in the back of one of the built-in bookcases in the library, and had
Nyoda's permission to take out all the books and look. Justice and Slim
and the Captain had promised to help take out the books. Sylvia was
wheeled into the library where she could watch the proceedings, and the
work of removing the books began. Sherry looked on for a while and then
went out to tinker with the car.
Section by section they took the books from the cases and examined the
wall behind them, but it was apparently solid. Sahwah and the Captain
worked faithfully, taking out the books and replacing them, but Katherine
would stop to read, and Slim soon fell asleep with his head against the
seat of a chair. Justice spied Slim after a while and began to throw
magazines at him. Slim wakened with an indignant grunt and returned the
volley and then the two engaged in a good-natured wrestling bout.
"I know a new trick," said Justice. "It's for handling a fellow twice
your size. A Japanese fellow down in Washington taught it to me. Let me