The Secret at Lone Tree Cottage E-Book

Carolyn Keene

• Herausgeber: Alien Ebooks
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: The Dana Girls Mystery Stories
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 221

Beschreibung

Miss Tisdale, Jean and Louise Dana's favorite teacher, disappears mysteriously one afternoon. The Danas search for clues and discover her car abandoned on a nearby road. The key is still in the ignition, and there are signs of a struggle. Miss Tisdale has been abducted!

Jean and Louise learn that Miss Tisdale has been supporting her widowed twin sister, who has been disowned by their parents ever since she married. Mrs. Brixton is being threatened by her husband's former partner, and the Danas suspect that this man is responsible for Miss Tisdale's strange disappearance.

The police cannot be contacted, because Miss Tisdale's father is in frail health and the shock of her disappearance could kill him. The Danas seek Uncle Ned Dana's help in tracking down Miss Tisdale, and the three Danas undertake their difficult mission without assistance.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

THE SECRET AT LONE TREE COTTAGE

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

THE SECRET AT LONE TREE COTTAGE

CAROLYN KEENE

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 1934, by Grosset & Dunlap, Inc.

CHAPTER I

Miss Tisdale Disappears

“Ooh—hoo! Jean! Hurry!”

“Ready in a minute, Louise.”

Louise Dana waited at the head of the stairway. She was a pretty, dark-haired girl of sixteen, one of the most popular sophomores at Starhurst, a boarding school for girls at Penfield.

“Miss Tisdale asked us to meet her at four-thirty, and we’re ten minutes late already,” she called.

A moment later Jean came scurrying out of their study into the hall, cramming a hat down over her blonde, boyish-cut hair. She was a year younger than her sister, gay and impetuous, with laughter in her blue eyes and a humorous tilt to her nose.

As they reached the lower hall and ran toward the front entrance, they saw a tall girl with a sullen face emerge from the office of the headmistress.

“Hello, Lettie Briggs! Don’t you wish you were coming with us?” asked Louise.

“I wouldn’t be a teacher’s pet for anything,” said the girl loftily.

“She’s jealous because she was not invited!” whispered Jean as the two girls sped down the front steps.

Miss Amy Tisdale was waiting at the wheel of her smart little coupé in the driveway. She was a pleasant-looking young woman in her late twenties, and though quiet and reserved, was so gracious and sympathetic that no teacher was better loved by the girls. Moreover, the splendid work done by the students in her English classes was evidence of her ability to inspire confidence among her pupils.

“I had decided to give you three more minutes,” she laughed.

“Oh, Miss Tisdale, we’d have been heartbroken if you had gone away without us,” exclaimed Jean, as she scrambled into the car.

“No harm done,” laughed the teacher.

The car reached the campus gate and slowed down for the turn into Penfield road. Suddenly the girls saw a man step out from behind a stone wall and dart directly into the path of the coupé, holding up his hand.

Miss Tisdale, however, did not stop. She swung the wheel quickly and the car glided past the stranger. At the same time she spoke to him tersely through the window:

“Not tonight!”

After a few moments Louise said:

“It’s good of you to invite us to meet your father and mother. They live north of Penfield, don’t they?”

“About five miles north,” replied Miss Tisdale. “I usually go home only week-ends, but I’ve been worrying about my father lately, so I decided to drive out this afternoon.”

“Is he ill?” asked Jean quickly.

“He has to be very careful.”

Then she began to talk about school matters, and during the journey from Starhurst to her home Miss Tisdale made no further reference to her parent and made no mention of the stranger at the campus gate. The Dana girls realized that she evidently did not care to discuss these matters with them.

Presently they came within sight of the Tisdale home. It was a spacious white colonial house, fronted by a well-kept lawn and a box hedge. Before they could express their admiration of the house and its grounds, while the coupé was speeding up the cinder roadway, Miss Tisdale uttered a gasp of alarm.

“My goodness!” she exclaimed. “He’ll kill himself!”

The reason for her fear was obvious. At the top of a ladder braced against the eavestroughing of the house, an elderly man was standing. Up on the roof were two young laborers. The old gentleman was shouting and waving his arms in a state of great excitement.

“It’s Father!” gasped Miss Tisdale.

For a person supposed to be in poor health, Mr. Tisdale was exceedingly active and vigorous just now. The girls could hear him hurling orders at the workmen as he teetered to and fro.

“You’re not doing the job right!” he was yelling. “I never saw such sloppy work in all my life. I ought to discharge you. Bring those wires over by the chimney! By the chimney, I said! Don’t you know what a chimney is?”

Miss Tisdale brought the car to a stop. She was greatly upset.

“He shouldn’t do such things,” she said nervously. “After what the doctor told him—oh!”

She uttered a little scream, for the ladder had slipped along the eavestrough. Mr. Tisdale, still shouting at the workmen, waved his hands wildly.

“That ladder is going to fall!” cried Louise.

She opened the door of the car and leaped out. Even as she rushed toward the house, she saw the ladder slide to one side. Mr. Tisdale lost his balance, grabbed at the roof, and then gripped the eavestrough just as the rung slid out from beneath his feet. The teacher shrieked. Her father yelled. With a crash the ladder toppled over and fell to the ground. Mr. Tisdale was left hanging to the eavestrough.

“Help!” he roared. “I’ll be killed! I can’t hold on much longer.”

Louise had already reached the spot. In a moment she was joined by Jean and in another instant the Dana girls had the ladder back in position. Mr. Tisdale’s wildly kicking feet found the rungs just in time. The old gentleman lost no time in scuttling down the ladder to safety.

“Thanks! Thanks!” he panted. “You saved my life. Never had such a narrow escape. Oh, dear, I’m afraid this will be bad for my heart. Too much excitement. Oh, hello, Amy, my dear. Who are these young ladies? I’m very grateful to them, whoever they are——”

He was a lanky old man with silvery hair. When Miss Tisdale introduced Jean and Louise Dana, he bowed courteously and insisted that they come into the house at once. There the girls were presented to Mrs. Tisdale, a stout, lovable woman with a pleasant face. She was greatly alarmed when she heard of her husband’s mishap.

“My dear,” she said, “you shouldn’t have been up there at all. You know what the doctor said.”

“Yes, I know. I know,” grumbled the old man. “It’s very bad for me. Bad for my heart. I’ll probably suffer for it. But when I hire workmen to do a job, I want the job done right. Incompetent idiots, that’s what those men are.”

“What are they doing?” asked Miss Tisdale.

“We’re putting in a burglar alarm system,” replied her father.

“Burglar alarm?”

“Yes. Prowlers around here lately. I’m not taking any chances.”

The Dana girls noticed that Miss Tisdale appeared greatly worried and disturbed by the news. She questioned her parents closely and learned that on three occasions they had seen strangers on the grounds near the house.

“They won’t steal anything here,” declared Mr. Tisdale. “That burglar alarm will fix them.”

Even as he spoke, Louise happened to turn toward one of the windows overlooking the lawn. Beyond the curtains she saw a man’s face. It was there for only an instant, then it vanished.

Louise was shaken. Her first impulse was to tell the Tisdales. No one but herself had seen the apparition. Then, on second thought, she decided to say nothing, as she did not want to cause undue alarm to her friends.

The visit could scarcely have been termed a success. Mrs. Tisdale did what she could to make her guests feel at home, but when dinner was served her husband dominated the table. Never was there such a grouchy and cantankerous old gentleman.

“I’m afraid I’m not long for this world,” he moaned. “My health is bad. I’m getting worse every day. I’m liable to drop dead any time.”

He was displeased with the soup. He found fault with the roast. He declared that the pudding would give him indigestion. Poor Mrs. Tisdale did her best to enliven the occasion, and her daughter tried to turn the conversation into more cheerful channels, but her father refused to listen.

Immediately after dinner the teacher explained that they would have to return to Starhurst at once. Jean and Louise, knowing that she had planned to spend the evening at home, realized that Miss Tisdale was trying to save them from further embarrassment. The girls felt sorry for her.

“Well, goodbye, Amy,” said Mr. Tisdale. “I’m glad you came, even if it was for only a couple of hours. Every time you go away, I feel that I’ll never see you again.”

“Oh, don’t say that, Father.”

The kindly Mrs. Tisdale cordially invited the girls to come again, and accompanied them all to the door.

“You’ll be home for the week-end, Amy?” she asked anxiously.

“Yes, Mother. I’ll be home on Friday.”

While they were driving back to the school, Miss Tisdale apologized for her father’s behavior.

“I’m very sorry your visit was disappointing,” she said in conclusion.

“Oh, but it wasn’t,” they protested.

“I know it was. I do wish Father wouldn’t talk so much about his health. Of course, he really isn’t well, and the doctor says that any sudden shock might kill him.”

After this she became very quiet and did not say another word until Starhurst was reached.

“It’s a shame,” declared Jean, as the girls were preparing for bed later, “that Miss Tisdale seems so unhappy. She’s about the nicest teacher here.”

“She certainly has been sweet to me,” commented Louise, “giving me extra time on those things I was writing. With her encouragement I believe I might even publish a story some day—maybe a mystery story.”

Jean laughed.

“I haven’t forgotten her bravery in the woods, either, that day we had the picnic,” she reminisced. “Do you recall how she killed that poisonous snake just when it was going to strike?”

“Yes, I do, and how kind she was to Lettie,” put in Louise, “even when that snob lost her head and threw the whole group into a panic.”

“It’s a perfect shame such a lovely person has to have so much trouble,” sighed Jean.

“It’s her home life, I suppose,” answered Louise. “She must be dreadfully worried about her father.”

Jean was thoughtful.

“She seemed different today. She wasn’t nearly as cheerful as usual when we were driving out to her home. Right from the minute we met that man at the gate——”

Louise looked at her sister.

“Do you mean you think that might have had something to do with it?”

“Well, it was odd, don’t you think? I wonder what the man wanted.”

“All in all,” observed Louise, “I think there is some mystery about Miss Tisdale.”

“She does act as if she had some great secret on her mind,” agreed Jean.

Anything in the way of a mystery always intrigued the Dana girls. They had some talent as amateur detectives, and all Starhurst had recently buzzed with their adventures following the theft of a study lamp presented to them by their Uncle Ned. The story of this strange affair has already been related in the first volume of this series, By the Light of the Study Lamp.

The suggestion that Miss Tisdale might be involved in a mystery returned vividly to Jean’s mind two days later. It was Friday afternoon, while she was in English class, with the lovable teacher presiding.

“Although he wrote many books,” the teacher was saying, “Charles Dickens created his masterpiece when he wrote David Copperfield. The book is crowded with characters who will remain immortal as long as the English language is spoken. It is one of the finest bits of fiction——”

At this moment there was a knock at the classroom door and Zeke Daly, the school porter, entered. He shuffled across the room and handed Miss Tisdale a note, then shuffled out again.

The teacher quietly excused herself to the class and opened the note. She read it and then looked up, her face suddenly turning pale.

“Please—go on with your reading assignment for today,” she faltered. “You must excuse me.” With that she hurried from the room.

There was much whispered speculation among the girls. Jean, who was sitting beside a window, recalled Louise’s remark to the effect that there was some mystery about Miss Tisdale. She wondered if the note had anything to do with the stranger they had encountered at the gate.

Idly she looked out across the campus where the dead leaves lay thick on the grass. To her surprise she saw her favorite teacher, hatless, running across the grounds. As the young woman neared the gate, Jean noticed a flat white object flutter from her hand, then she was gone.

“Perhaps something has happened to Mr. Tisdale!” mused Jean.

The moment the English class was over, Jean spoke to Louise and expressed her fear that the instructor had received bad news from home. They were so concerned that they sought out Mrs. Crandall, headmistress of Starhurst, and asked her. The principal, however, had no information.

“I’m sure Miss Tisdale would have told me if anything had happened to her father. She didn’t leave any word.”

Next morning the affair of the beloved English teacher took a surprising turn. The Dana girls were summoned to Mrs. Crandall’s office immediately after breakfast.

“You were asking me about Miss Tisdale yesterday,” the headmistress said. “I have just received a telephone call from her mother, who is greatly worried.”

“Why, what has happened?” asked Louise quickly.

“Miss Tisdale has disappeared,” was the reply.

CHAPTER II

The Empty Coupé

“Miss Tisdale has disappeared?” exclaimed Jean. “What could have happened?”

“Her mother told me,” said Mrs. Crandall, “that her daughter had not come home yesterday, and that she had had no word from her.”

“Has no one seen her since she left the school yesterday afternoon?” asked Louise.

“I don’t believe so,” went on Mrs. Crandall. “It’s very strange. If she doesn’t show up soon, I’ll be tempted to turn the matter over to the police.”

“Please let us do what we can,” Jean begged. “We think a great deal of Miss Tisdale.”

“I don’t want to call the police to Starhurst unless it’s absolutely necessary,” said the principal. “Perhaps you girls can help. Mrs. Tisdale seems to have heard of your propensities as amateur detectives, and she requested that I ask you to aid in locating the teacher.”

“We’ll do our best to trace her,” promised Louise eagerly.

“But do not neglect your studies,” warned the headmistress. “And I cannot allow you to become involved in anything dangerous.”

Although the Danas assured Mrs. Crandall that their marks would keep up to standard, and that they would be mindful of school rules, they were already turning over in their minds the exciting mystery which they had just heard. As they left the office, Jean took hold of her sister’s arm and hurried her along, saying:

“When Miss Tisdale received the note yesterday, she left the school in a hurry. She didn’t even wait to get her hat.”

“Meaning,” declared Louise, “either that she did not expect to be away very long, or that it was an emergency call of some kind.”

“First of all,” she added, “who sent the note? Perhaps Zeke Daly can tell us something about that. He delivered the message to the classroom, you said.”

“Better still,” exclaimed Jean with a sudden recollection of the previous afternoon, “we may be able to find the note.”

Quickly she explained to Louise that as she had seen Miss Tisdale hurrying across the campus, she had noticed something white flutter from the teacher’s hand.

“She was near the gate at the time,” said Jean. “If it was the note she dropped, and if we find it, we may learn where she went.”

The girls lost no time in leaving the building and hastening across the campus in the direction taken by Miss Tisdale. They scanned the ground closely, realizing that the wind might have carried the white object a considerable distance since the day before.

“I haven’t much hope of finding it,” confessed Louise. “And perhaps it wasn’t the note after all.”

Luck, however, was with them. Jean caught sight of a scrap of white paper lying in the weeds at the base of the campus wall. With a cry of delight she snatched it up. It was damp with dew, and almost fell apart as Jean with trembling fingers unfolded it.

“Is it the note?” cried Louise excitedly.

Five words were typewritten on the paper. When the girls read them, they had little doubt but that this was the message Miss Tisdale had received. Yet the contents, instead of helping them, mystified them all the more, for the words were:

“Faith gone. Come at once.”

No name was signed to this strange summons.

“What can it mean?” asked Louise.

“It must have meant a great deal to Miss Tisdale. She turned deathly pale when she read that note.”

“Who gave the message to Zeke Daly in the first place? That’s the point,” said Louise.

They found Zeke Daly burning rubbish at the back of the school. He was an elderly, stoop-shouldered man, somewhat deaf. When the girls asked him about the note he cupped his hand to his ear and shouted “Hey?”

“It’s about the note! The note you gave Miss Tisdale,” cried Jean.

“Boat?”

“No. Not boat. Note!”

“What note?” bellowed Zeke.

“The note you gave Miss Tisdale!”

Zeke scratched his head thoughtfully.

“Oh, yes. That note. What about it?”

“Who gave it to you?”

Zeke raked a few leaves onto the rubbish pile.

“Man in a car,” he said finally.

“Where was he?” asked Jean.

“What did he look like?” demanded Louise.

“Don’t shout,” advised Zeke. “I can hear you. I’m not deaf. What did you say?”

“Where was he and what did he look like?” cried Jean in exasperation.

Zeke thought it over before answering. Finally he said:

“Well, he come along in a car and stopped near the gate. He called me over and asked me to give a note to Miss Tisdale. And by the time she come out he’d gone away.”

“What did he look like?”

“Well—he might have been a short fellow and he might have been a tall fellow. I dunno, seein’ as he was sittin’ in the car. Just an ordinary-lookin’ fellow.”

“What color was his hair?” asked Louise.

“He had his hat on,” grunted Zeke. “Just an ordinary-lookin’ hat.”

“My, but you’re helpful,” sighed Jean.

Zeke did not hear her and went on talking.

“So when Miss Tisdale run out to the gate and found he was gone, she went back to the garage and got her own car.”

“Which way did she go?” the girls demanded.

Zeke gestured toward the south.

“Down that way. She couldn’t have gone very far, though. Didn’t have much gas. She asked me to fill up the tank the night before. I forgot.”

This was all the information they could glean from Zeke, but it was sufficient to establish two important facts. Miss Tisdale had gone south, and she had gone in her own car. This gave Louise an idea.

“What we must do now,” she declared, “is to call at all the gas stations along the south road.”

“Yes,” agreed her sister, “she would have had to stop for fuel sooner or later.”

The girls knew that there was such a place about half a mile down the road, so they set out at once. They realized that their chances of tracing the car were slim if Miss Tisdale had continued along the main road. However, Louise argued that if the teacher had stopped along the way, it was possible that she might have dropped some hint as to her destination.

A young man in overalls grinned cheerfully at them as they approached the gas station.

“Hello, girls! Out for a hike?”

“We’re trying to trace a car,” replied Louise.

“You’ll never catch up to it on foot,” retorted the attendant.

“Maybe not,” laughed Jean. “Were you on duty yesterday afternoon at about three o’clock? We’re trying to trace a blue coupé, driven by a lady——”

“Blue coupé. Driven by a lady. Correct,” said the young man. “I saw it. The car stalled a couple of hundred yards from here. Out of gas.”

“Which way did she go?”

“She left the main road at the first turn,” the station attendant told them. “She went down that wood road to the left. You can see it from here.”

“The road to Hilton!” said Jean.

“The lady seemed to be in a hurry to get to Hilton—of all places in this world. I can imagine people being in a hurry to get away from Hilton, but hurrying to get there—no!”

“Thank you,” said Louise. “You’ve helped us a great deal.”

The girls went on their way, delighted that they had made better progress than they had expected.

“She probably went farther than Hilton, though,” said Jean. “That’s only a tiny village!”

However, they entered the winding road that led from the main highway and patiently trudged along. The route was bordered by a rail fence almost hidden by high bushes.

“Listen!” commanded Jean suddenly, when they had gone a few hundred yards.

The girls stopped. From a distance came a plaintive cry.

“I thought so,” said Jean. “It is a child.”

The sound was repeated, and this time there was no chance of mistaking its origin. Somewhere beyond the bushes a little one was weeping as if heartbroken.

“Probably lost,” reflected Louise.

They scrambled over the fence and forced their way through the underbrush. There, in a clearing, they found a golden-haired little girl sobbing pitifully. Her pretty face was stained with tears, and she was trembling with fear. The moment she saw the girls she doubled her sobs and stumbled toward them.

“I’se losted!” she wept, rubbing her eyes with a grubby little fist.

“You poor darling!” said Louise, picking the tot up in her arms. “You’re lost, are you? Well, never mind. We’ll bring you home again. Where do you live?”

The little girl was about five years old. She was so forlorn and frightened that the girls’ hearts went out to her. It was some time before she stopped crying. Jean dried the child’s eyes with her handkerchief.

“Now,” she said briskly, “where do you live?”

“Wiv Muvver.”

“Who is Mother?”

“Why—why—she’s just Muvver.”

“Well, where does she live?” asked Louise.

“At our house,” replied the child. “In Hilton.”

“Well, that isn’t very far away,” said Jean. “What’s your name?”

“Muvver calls me Baby Fa-ab.”

“All right, Fa-ab,” laughed Louise. “We’ll bring you back to your mother.”

Jean noticed a trail leading from the clearing. “Did you come from Hilton by the road, Fa-ab?”

The child pointed to the trail.

“I walked,” she said, “an’ walked, an’ walked. Then I got losted.”

“That path is a short cut to Hilton, I imagine,” Louise suggested. “We’ll follow it, anyway.”

They struck out, Louise carrying the little girl, and in a few minutes they emerged from the woods on the edge of a small settlement. There they saw an anxious woman scurrying about, obviously looking for someone, and they at once assumed that she was the child’s mother. When she saw the girls approaching, she ran toward them.

“Thank goodness!” exclaimed the woman, a sharp-featured housewife with stringy black hair. “I just missed her this minute. I was looking high and low.”

“We found her up near the woods road,” explained Louise. “She was lost. All right, Fa-ab. Here you are, back with your mother again.”

“That’s not Muvver,” said the child indignantly.

“Indeed, and I’m not,” the woman said. “I was just minding her, as if I hadn’t enough to do, what with children of my own and the Saturday baking. Her mother lives across the street.”

She indicated a little brown-shingled cottage on the other side of the road. It was set back on a rise of ground, and its entrance was completely hidden by a huge pine, the only tree near the tiny house.

“Her mother had to go to see the doctor, and she asked me to mind the little girl while she was gone,” went on the woman. “I like to be neighborly, but I have enough to do looking after my own youngsters. Besides, it isn’t as if she’s the kind of person you like to do favors for. I believe in neighbors bein’ neighbors, but her—my goodness, you’d think she was doing us all a favor by living in Hilton at all. Keeps to herself like the Queen of Egypt, she does, and close-mouthed. You can never get a word out of her.”

The woman evidently had small regard for Baby Fa-ab’s mother.

“She won’t hold her head so high one of these days, I’m thinkin’,” she declared. “Believe me, all widows who keep their mouths so tight shut have got something to be ashamed of, and the truth will come out sooner or later.”

The Dana girls were embarrassed by these confidences. They had no desire to listen to the woman’s malicious gossip, so they hurriedly changed the subject.

“By the way,” said Jean, “did you see a blue coupé pass through here yesterday afternoon at about half-past three? There was a lady driving.”

The woman shook her head.

“Not many cars pass through Hilton,” she said. “It’s sort of out of the way. No, there was no such car went through yesterday afternoon. I would have seen it.”

The Dana girls were disappointed. Their search had ended in a blind alley. If this well-informed woman had not seen the car pass through Hilton, then it was probable that it had not.

“We had better go back,” said Jean. “The auto may have gone down a side road.”

“All that walk for nothing,” grumbled Jean.

“I shouldn’t say it was for nothing,” replied Louise. “I’m glad we found that poor child. Her mother would have been greatly worried.”

“That’s true,” admitted Jean. “And wasn’t the little girl darling? I wonder what her mother is like. She must not lead a very pleasant existence with that gossipy woman spying on her from across the street all the time.”

The girls decided to follow the woods road instead of taking the shortcut back to the place where they had found the lost child. As events later proved, this was a momentous decision, for after walking a short distance they saw a car in the ditch some distance ahead of them.