Edith Lavell - The Mystery of the Fires

“Maybe the Hunters will rebuild,” suggested Jane openly.

Mrs. Ditmar shook her head.

“We did hope so. We went over to see them at the Royal Hotel soon after their house burned down, but Mrs. Hunter wasn’t very nice to us. She almost acted as if it were our fault!”

Jane suppressed a giggle and muttered under her breath, “The plot thickens.”

“Oh, I guess she was just all upset,” remarked Mary Louise nervously. “She’ll get over that.” She smiled. “Anyway, you don’t have to be gloomy, Mrs. Ditmar. Can’t you get your tennis things on and play with us this morning?”

“Thanks awfully, but I don’t think I had better leave Horace here alone.”

“Bring him along!”

“He wouldn’t come. No, I better not. But perhaps I’ll see you in swimming later on in the morning. It’s awfully nice of you girls to be so friendly.”

“We’ll look for you in the water, then… And, by the way, you’ll come to the party on the island tomorrow night, won’t you?”

Again the young woman refused.

“No, we really can’t afford that. It’s two dollars for the supper, you know, and besides that; we’d have to hire one of Mr. Frazier’s canoes.”

“Couldn’t you borrow one?” suggested Jane.

“No – I’m sorry – Horace refused to go.”

Mary Louise sighed, as if to say how thankful she was that she wasn’t married to a grouch like that. So the girls said good-bye and walked slowly back to their cottage.

“She can’t be over twenty, if she’s that,” surmised Mary Louise. “I certainly feel sorry for her.”

“So do I,” agreed Jane. “Do you really think her husband is guilty, Mary Lou?”

“I don’t know. He sounds queer.” She lowered her voice: there did not appear to be anybody around, but you never could tell, with all those thick trees to conceal possible eavesdroppers. “And if he believes it’s his right to have work, he may try burning other cottages. That’s what worries me.”

“Well, he surely wouldn’t pick on yours, Mary Lou,” was Jane’s comforting assurance. “He’d select somebody’s who was rich – like the Smiths’, or some place that was absolutely necessary, like the Flicks’.”

The girls were passing the inn at this moment, and as they looked up they saw David McCall in his tennis clothes coming out of the door.

“I was over at the bungalow looking for you girls,” he said. “The Reed girls are on the court, but they wouldn’t let me play until I found a partner. So please hurry up!”

“O.K.,” agreed Mary Louise. “Walk back with us, Dave. I want you to tell me why you think Cliff Hunter set his own bungalow on fire – at such an inconvenient time. When they had company, I mean.”

David smiled knowingly.

“That’s his alibi, of course. What did he care about those four fellows? It didn’t hurt them. You see, Mary Lou, I’m an insurance agent, and I’m up to all these tricks. The Hunters’ place was insured for ten thousand dollars, and if it had been offered for sale, Cliff couldn’t have gotten more than a couple thousand at a time like this.”

“But the Hunters are rich,” objected Mary Louise. “They don’t need the money.”

“Everybody needs money. And I happen to know that Cliff wants to go around the world this fall.”

“He wouldn’t give up college?”

“No. There’s a college course in the bargain. They study and travel at the same time. It costs a small fortune.”

“I don’t believe he set that bungalow on fire,” announced Jane. “He’s too honest. He just couldn’t do a thing like that!”

“Besides,” added Mary Louise, “we have another suspect.” And she told David what she had just learned about Horace Ditmar.

“I’m just as sure that Ditmar didn’t do it as you are that Cliff Hunter didn’t,” replied David when she had finished.

“Probably nobody set it on fire,” concluded Jane. “Just an accident. Let’s forget it. Come on in, Mary Lou, and we’ll put on our sneaks. We’ll be ready in a minute, Dave.”

True to their promise, the girls returned a moment later, with Silky at their heels, and all three young people made their way to the tennis court. There was only one court at Shady Nook – which the boys themselves had made – but there was another across the river on the hotel grounds. However, nobody ever seemed to mind waiting or taking turns, so the crowd usually stayed together.

Jane was introduced to the Reed twins, who looked and dressed so exactly alike that she had not the faintest idea which was Mabel and which was Sue after a couple of minutes had elapsed. Then there were three other young people who were staying at the inn for a short time, besides David McCall and themselves. To her dismay, Cliff Hunter did not come across the river to join the party.

The whole crowd went in swimming about eleven o’clock, and here their elders joined them, with some of the younger children. Not Freckles, however, or the Reed boys or the Smiths: they had gone off hiking for the day. Again Jane did not see Cliff Hunter, and she was giving all her attention to a young man named Stuart Robinson, who lived in the new bungalow next to the Ditmars’, when she heard her name shouted from the shore.

“Jane! Oh, Jane!”

Raising her head from her swimming position and treading water, she peered towards the shore. It was Cliff Hunter – but not attired in a bathing suit.

“Come on out!” he called.

Jane swung into the crawl, and reached the young man in a couple of minutes. He was grinning broadly.

“Take a card,” he said.

Jane burst out laughing. “How can I?” she asked. “I’m soaked.”

“Oh, that’s all right. I’ve got plenty of packs. This is a swell trick. I’ve been studying it all morning.”

Jane dropped down on the grass and listened to his trick. The young man was enchanted. She stayed with him until Mary Louise literally dragged her back into the water.

“How anybody could believe Cliff Hunter guilty of a despicable crime,” she said later to her chum, “is beyond me. He’s as innocent as a child.”

“I hope so,” returned Mary Louise. “Time will tell.”

Everybody at Shady Nook worked all day Monday on the decorations for the boats. Everybody, that is, except Mr. and Mrs. Flick and a few of the older people, who were preparing the food for the supper on the little island that night. Jane was helping Clifford Hunter paint pieces of wood which were intended to transform his launch into an auto-giro, and David McCall and Mary Louise picked flowers and leaves all afternoon to make festoons for her canoe.

“I do think Freckles and those other kids might have helped us,” she remarked as she tied on the last cluster of sunflowers.

“Oh, we didn’t need them,” returned David, smiling. He had enjoyed having Mary Louise to himself all afternoon.

“It’s five o’clock now. We’ll have to hurry and wash and dress. Don’t forget supper at Flicks’ is half-past tonight.”

The young man nodded. “I’ll be ready, Mary Lou.”

Mrs. Gay’s voice interrupted them from the inside of the bungalow.

“Has anybody seen Freckles?” she called.

“Not since this morning,” replied her daughter. “I tried to get him to help us, but he said he was off for the day with his gang.”

“Yes, I know that. I gave him some lunch. But he ought to be home by now.”

“He’ll probably be along in a minute.”

But he did not come. David went back to the inn, and Mrs. Gay and the two girls dressed for the picnic, but still Freckles did not appear.

“We can’t go off and leave him without any supper,” said Mrs. Gay. “Because Mrs. Flick is going to close the dining room and lock up at six-thirty.”