The mystery of the missing eyebrows
“Oh, I will need you all right,” Renfro laughed. “Just you wait, Mary,
and keep still a little while and then your chance will come.”
It was hard work for Renfro at the breakfast table just to ask enough
questions and talk enough about the kidnaping to avoid suspicion,
without telling his parents anything he knew, or ask any of the
questions in his mind. He went directly to the police station from the
breakfast table. He found the chief of detectives a very busy man.
But still he managed to take time to see Renfro and talked a little
until Renfro began to tell of the man he had seen lurking in the
Wier neighborhood and then he banged his hand on his desk. “You’re
the fifth boy who saw some suspicious looking person lurking in that
neighborhood,” he laughed but there was a note of impatience in his
laugh. “I’ve heard of everything from a colored wash woman to the judge
himself.”
After storming about how busy he was and how people who bothered busy
people should be given jail sentences, the chief pointed toward the
door thru which he intended Renfro to leave. “If you kids would read
your school books,” he said solemnly, “instead of a lot of detective
stories written by old maids afraid to go out at night, you would have
more sense about clues and everything else in general.”
Outside Renfro pursed his lips. “All right, Mr. Chief,” he thought to
himself, “I’ll work on my own clue. I’ve one and I hope your men don’t
find out a thing without it.”
He found the entire Grant School aroused by the kidnaping. Girls, who
had been brought to the building by their fathers under orders not
to leave the building until they came after them, stood in groups
inside the hall and would not have ventured outside the building for
a fortune. Some of the people seemed to think that Helen Wier was the
first one to be taken in a kidnaping plot which was to rob Lindendale
of all its girls.
Miss Turpin, the English teacher, allowed the members of her classes
to discuss the affair. All sorts of reasons, were offered for the
kidnaping, most of them being that of a ransom. But Renfro kept still.
Judge Wier didn’t have a fortune nor did he have resources to raise one
in a hurry. Unlike Mary he didn’t believe that a note would come in a
few days demanding money, telling under what particular forest log to
hide it and the conditions governing its hiding.
Miss Turpin herself ventured a suggestion. She too knew that Judge
Wier was far from being a rich man. Now there was soon to come before
the judge for trial a number of men charged with a series of election
frauds. She wondered if they could have taken this course to frighten
Judge Wier from giving them stiff sentences.
“Well,” Abie Lubin remembered his fine for speeding his father’s car,
“Anybody can’t scare Judge Wier by nothing.”
That afternoon the chief of detectives, having heard of Miss Turpin’s
suggestion telephoned the Grant building for her to come to his office
after school. Renfro, too, received a telephone message. It was from
Route Manager Morrison of the Evening Globe. He offered to send an
extra boy to help Renfro carry his route in case he should feel uneasy.
Now that was the last thing Renfro wanted so he laughed at the
suggestion and by so doing rose several notches in Morrison’s mind. He
went directly to the Circulation Manager with his praise. Mr. Bruce in
turn smiled, “I said that boy would make good,” he smiled. “Of course
he won’t make any money on Old Grief, but as soon as we’re sure he’s
what we think he is we’ll give him a regular route. And I shall have
the pleasure of telling his father that he was wrong in his prediction,
and I was right in mine.”
Renfro fairly rushed along his route that afternoon. Still he searched
for new subscribers. It would be foolish he knew to go out to the big
Hall house and the little shack adjoining it until it was dark. Yet he
was going.
It was very quiet at Judge Wier’s house. The people who crowded there
in the morning had gone home. The house was darkened so that Mrs. Wier
could be kept quiet.
Renfro rolled his copy of the Evening Globe, started to throw it onto
the porch and then stopped. Why not take it around to the back door?
That would give him a chance to pass the shrubbery and the window thru
which the man had peeped on two successive nights. He decided to do so.
The shrubbery was intact. The inside of the window was covered with a
heavy coat of frost. Renfro looked thru it but could see only the green
blind which had been pulled to the very sill. And then he saw something
on the outside of the pane.
He stepped close to the window, and looked up at the two strange
looking things. They were about two inches apart, white and stiff and
made up of--?
And then Renfro almost shouted. They were part of a pair of a man’s
eyebrows. Memory of the frozen pipe with his boyish tongue stuck
against it, and the red skin left fast to the pipe, made him understand
this situation. The man who had stood close to the window pane had
pressed his face against the cold glass while he watched the scene
inside the house, his eyebrows had been frozen to the pane more firmly
than he had thought and when he, suddenly frightened, had pulled away
from it he had left these portions of his eyebrows behind him.
“My first clue” Renfro told himself and reached into his pocket.
CHAPTER VII.
RENFRO TAKES THE EYEBROWS.
Renfro’s hand trembled so that he could hardly pull his knife from his
trousers pocket. It was followed by a notebook, from which he tore two
sheets of paper. Quickly he opened the blade, the thinnest of the three
in his knife, warmed it with several breaths and then slipped it under
one of the frozen eyebrows on the window pane.
Zip! It came off--frozen, intact, as solid as it had been when left
on the frozen pane. Carefully Renfro wrapped it in one of the pieces
of paper. By the same process the other portion of an eyebrow was
likewise treated. With both precious packages of what he considered a
magnificent clue stored safely in his most secure inner pocket Renfro
shouldered his now empty paper bag and started toward home.
The desire to journey out to the big Hall house was almost overpowering
him. But wisdom warned him against making the trip. It was late--it
would be eight o’clock before he could get home. If he arrived later
than that there would surely be a family conclave held, the decision
of which might mean that tho he continued to carry his paper route he
would be given no time to either get new subscribers or to follow the
clue which fate had thrust into his hand.
Renfro was almost stunned with his good fortune. In his pocket was the
only clue which, according to the latest reports he had heard, had yet
been found. And he was going to keep it and work it out himself. The
chief of detectives had laughed once, the next laugh would be at his
expense, Renfro vowed, and because he had discovered a clue to the
identity of the person or persons who had kidnaped Helen Wier.
All the way home on the car he kept his hand pressed over the pocket
in which was the clue. Off the car, walking down the home avenue he
watched surreptitiously for a possible bandit. No lady of rank ever
guarded her jewels any more closely than Renfro Horn did the two
mysterious eyebrows.
All around him the bitter wind stung and lashed and hurt like a keen
edged knife. It drove white hard clouds across the sky and at times
hid the moon. But still it was a much lighter night than the one
preceding it had been. Neither Helen Wier nor any other girl could be
successfully kidnaped on a night like this.
“But detectives could follow a clue mighty well,” Renfro turned in at
his own walk, and patted his chest, “only right now they haven’t any
clue.”
His father who had just come past the police headquarters on his way
home from the office, gave testimony that his conclusion was right. The
clue suggested by Miss Turpin about the men implicated in the election
frauds was being traced down but no one hoped for any results.
While they were at dinner Mrs. Horn who had been doubly uneasy over
Renfro’s lateness and also his father’s, voiced her complaints in
fretful language. Mr. Horn, provoked as always by his wife’s fussing
moods issued sharp orders to Renfro, “No trips out at night onto that
route,” he said, “and hereafter you be home at six thirty. Do you
understand?”
Renfro nodded, and reaching into his pocket pulled out the rules
Morrison had given him the first day. “Dad,” he said soberly, “Every
business has its own rules, and the Globe’s carrier system has its own.
You expect your employees to follow yours if they expect to rise in
your business. If I’m to rise to success with the Globe I’ll have to
follow these.”
His mother’s eyes were distinctly hostile but Renfro looked away from
them straight into his father’s interested ones, then back to his paper
and read his rules in a clear, determined boyish voice--
“Never fail to deliver a subscriber.
“A good carrier will get two new subscribers and increase his route two
each week.
“Bills must be paid when due. Only lame ducks pay part of their bills.”
Mrs. Horn sniffed scornfully, caught a gleam of authority in her
husband’s eyes, rose with a rather indifferent apology and strolled
into the library. At a nod from his father Renfro read on--
“Collect your route thoroughly once a week. The meanest man in the
world is the man who would beat a newspaper carrier.
“Tell your customers you come thru the snow and rain and cold six times
a week to their door, for their accommodation, and ask them if they
can’t arrange once a week to have your money for you.
“Get your delivery thru as quickly as possible. The mothers want to
read the Globe before the fathers come home for supper.
“And remember the quitters fail while the boys who respond to
responsibility always succeed as boys and as men.”
When he finished his reading Renfro carefully folded the paper and put
it back into his pocket. He heard his father cough, looked up, caught
his wink and rather low declaration, “I recall my command. These rules
are about the best things I ever heard. Obey them--that’s all.”
Renfro ventured audible thanks. But he cautiously remained in the
dining room when his father left for the library. He knew that his
father would have it out with his mother and that it would be much
better if he were not a listener to their argument. Besides he wanted
to see Mary.
With his hands in his pockets he strolled into the kitchen, watched
Mary stir something into a batter and then carelessly asked, “Did you
see Captain Pete today, Mary?”
To his surprise Mary nodded, “You did, Mary,” he ejaculated, “How did
he look?”
“Cross--fierce like to be sure,” Mary returned. “I didn’t buy none of
his rabbits. They weren’t fresh like. And he had the nerve to argue
with me that frozen rabbits is allus good even if they wuz froze the
week before last.”
A straight look at Mary, and a little delay on Renfro’s part. Then he
smiled scornfully at himself. Experience had taught him that no one
could be trusted better than Mary. Slowly he pulled the two pieces of
paper out of his pocket, laid them on the table, unfolded them so as
not to disturb the arrangement of their contents and called Mary.
In a low, guarded tone he told Mary of the man who had crouched at
Judge Wier’s window, of his trying to follow him and of the finding of
the eyebrows. “They’re my clue, Mary,” he ended proudly, “You’re going
to help me find the man who has these missing eyebrows and who kidnaped
or who helped kidnap Helen Wier--aren’t you?” And he breathed deeply.
“Without the help or knowledge of any member of the detective force.”
“Yes, yes,” Mary whispered, her sibilant tones high with excitement.