The Strange Echo E-Book

Frances K. Judd

• Herausgeber: Alien Ebooks
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Kay Tracey Mysteries
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 211

Beschreibung

In this captivating mystery, Kay Tracey's summer at Lost Lake takes an eerie turn when strange echoes, spooky lights, and ghostly shadows haunt the countryside. As Kay and her friends dig deeper, they uncover a web of secrets involving a foreign woman, missing book pages, and a mysterious old man searching for buried treasure. With the help of her clever detective skills, Kay must piece together the clues before the culprits make off with the hidden fortune.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

THE STRANGE ECHO

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

THE STRANGE ECHO

FRANCES K. JUDD

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Originally published in 1934.

CHAPTER 1

THE FOREIGN WOMAN

“Here comes the postman, Kay,” said Mrs. Tracey, as the familiar blue-coated figure turned in at the walk. “See what he has for us, will you, dear?”

“I hope there will be a letter for me from Betty or Wilma,” responded Kay. “The twins haven’t written since they went to Lost Lake.”

Mrs. Tracey smiled at her daughter. She saw a tall, graceful figure with a face more remarkable for its quick play of expression than for regularity of feature. The brown eyes sparkled with intelligence, and the firm mouth showed strength of character.

Kay intercepted the postman at the door, and returned a moment or two later with several fat envelopes in her hand.

“Three for you, Mother, and one for me. Mine is from Betty, I guess. It has the Lost Lake postmark. I am relieved.”

Betty and Wilma Worth were twins, but of that rare sort who resemble each other neither in looks nor in disposition. Wilma, dark-haired and blue-eyed, was a dreamer; rather melancholy in her outlook on life, and given to reciting poetry. Betty, on the other hand, was fair-haired and blue-eyed, energetic and fun loving.

Directly following the close of the Carmont High School, at which Kay and the Worth twins were students, Wilma and Betty had gone with their mother to their new summer home at a place named romantically Lost Lake. Their departure had left Kay rather lonesome. Now she seized eagerly on Betty’s letter.

“What do you suppose Betty wants me to do?” she cried with delight when she had read half through the missive.

“I can’t imagine,” smiled Mrs. Tracey.

“She wants me to go out there—to Lost Lake. Isn’t it marvelous? Oh, may I go, please?”

“This is all very sudden,” her mother protested. “Lost Lake sounds fascinating, I admit, but how would you get there, and how long do the Worths want you to stay?”

“Three weeks,” cried Kay, answering the last question first. She had skimmed over the rest of the letter, and now her glance returned to her mother. “They want me to drive up with Mr. Worth in his car on Friday.”

In the end Mrs. Tracey gave her consent to the visit, and Kay began to make happy plans for an immediate trip into Carmont to do some necessary shopping.

“I have a long list of things,” she announced, coming into the living room half an hour later, dressed in street clothes. “Is there anything I can get for you while I am in town, Mother?”

“You might stop at the Old Bookshop,” Mrs. Tracey suggested, “and see if Herr Entveg has that volume he promised to get for me.”

Kay made a note of the errand at the bottom of her list, and was about to leave the room when the doorbell rang. The visitor proved to be a Mr. Miller, a friend of Kay’s Cousin Bill, who had come, so he said, to see the young lawyer on legal business.

“Mr. Tracey isn’t home just now,” said Kay, leading the way to the front room, “but if you have an appointment with my cousin he will probably be here very soon.”

Mr. Miller was profuse in his apologies over what he termed his intrusion, but Mrs. Tracey received him graciously; the more so since he offered to adjust the radio set which she had just discovered was out of order.

“Sound is a wonderful thing,” he said, beginning to turn knobs expertly, while he peered into the mysterious depths of the machine’s interior. “The radio is a marvelous instrument,” he went on, speaking over his shoulder, “but it is nothing compared to the amazing devices which we have turned out in our research laboratory. I am head of the Scientific Instrument Company.”

“Your place sounds mysterious,” commented Kay.

“I suppose it is,” responded the man. “Many of our inventions are so weird and uncanny that they seem like witchcraft.”

“Would you mind telling me about some of them?” asked Kay, now thoroughly interested.

“Oh, they are of all sorts,” returned Mr. Miller with a genial laugh. “Some are marvelously delicate and intricate, others just unusual or funny. Take the sound makers, for instance——”

“Sound makers?” prompted Kay.

“Instruments that produce artificial sounds,” the caller explained. “Like the ones used in broadcasting studios to make noises like rain or wind. Hundreds of them. And I have a secret laboratory, too.”

Kay’s eyes sparkled with enthusiasm.

“How would you and Mrs. Tracey like to come down to my place some day?” the inventor asked. “I’d be delighted to show you around.”

“We should love to accept your invitation, wouldn’t we, Mother?”

Mrs. Tracey assented, adding that it was very kind of Mr. Miller to make the suggestion.

Kay waited around for a few moments, hoping that their new acquaintance would set a definite day for the expedition to his strange place. Since he did not do so, however, but was once more deeply absorbed in the mysterious workings of the radio, she waved good-bye to her mother and set out on her shopping tour.

The thriving town of Carmont was only a short trip by rail from Brantwood, where the Traceys and Worths made their home. Kay’s feet seemed winged as she hurried toward Simpson’s Department Store.

“Two wonderful invitations in one day,” she thought over and over again. “I can hardly wait to see Mr. Miller’s laboratory, and I’m going to Lost Lake!”

Lost Lake! What an odd, romantic sound that name had! Thrilling, a little mysterious, somewhat sad. Anything might happen at a place called Lost Lake.

The thought of a trip to the Scientific Instrument Company intrigued Kay. Mr. Miller’s talk about queer mechanical devices and artificial sound makers had fascinated her, for such things appealed to Kay’s deep love of the mysterious, even when the “mysteries” could be explained away by sober scientific facts.

She decided that she had better give some thought to the errands at hand, for being a good planner, she knew the uselessness of several trips to town, when one was sufficient.

Having arrived at the store, Kay hurried from counter to counter, making numerous purchases. After a time she decided to visit the waiting room, where she might check her list.

She had barely seated herself at one of the small desks, when her attention was diverted by the odd behavior of a woman seated at an adjoining writing table. The stranger was very attractive in appearance, having the high cheek bones, very fair complexion, and whitish-gold hair of the Nordic.

She was muttering to herself, partly in English and partly in some foreign language, consulting some secret memoranda which was concealed within her open purse. She seemed to be translating what was contained in the hidden notes.

“ ‘Echo from a mountain,’ ” overheard Kay. “ ‘—carries three miles,’ ” the woman whispered.

Kay, increasingly curious, saw this stranger shut her purse hurriedly and dart into a nearby telephone booth. In a few moments she began to pour into the instrument a torrent of agitated phrases, some in English, some in an alien tongue.

“Oh, please come right down—somet’ing very strange has happened—I vill not start for de lake till you come. I vill vait for you here, only hurry!”

When the woman returned to her desk, she glanced at the girl, then leaned forward, her face white as chalk.

“You heard what I said—yes?” she whispered worriedly.

Before Kay had a chance to reply, the strange woman suddenly burst into a torrent of speech—in a foreign language!

Kay merely stared at her. Her expression seemed to reassure the woman that the girl had not caught all she had said. She accordingly broke off abruptly in her flow of words and leaned back in her seat.

“Ach, you do not understand,” she muttered. “I was afraid, maybe— Oh, but you are a nice girl,” she added abruptly. “Vill you do somet’ing for me?”

CHAPTER 2

A QUEER INTERVIEW

“Of course I’ll help you,” said Kay to the foreign woman, feeling very much bewildered. “That is, I will—if——”

The stranger leaned toward the Tracey girl confidingly.

“It is this English of yours. Sometimes I find the words not so easy, when they are of science. And to spell them—poof—it is quite, what you say ‘beyond me.’ ”

“You want me to spell some words for you?” asked Kay, and the woman took her up eagerly.

“Yes, dat is it, if you vill be so kind. And help me with some ideas.”

“Gladly,” offered the wondering girl.

“Vat you call dis lots of air?” asked Kay’s new acquaintance.

“Do you mean space?”

“Yah. And vat you send by space?”

“ ‘What you send by space?’ ” Kay repeated. “Do you mean wireless—broadcast?”

“Yah, that is right,” said the stranger, scribbling hastily. “And how you spell broadcast?”

Kay gave her the required information, and after a few more questions the woman thanked the girl profusely, and sank back in her chair. Kay once more began to check her shopping list, and finding that her allowance still showed a margin of safety, she began to make plans.

“I can get myself one new evening dress, anyway,” she thought happily. “And I must be sure to stop at the jeweler’s and leave my wrist watch to be adjusted.”

As Kay left the waiting room a few moments later she glanced back, and saw that the strange woman seemed lost in deep thought.

“A queer person,” mused the girl. “Very attractive in a way, too; yet how relieved she seemed when it came out that I did not understand her language. Why should she feel that way unless she feared that I had overheard something that might prove damaging to her? In that case she must have had something to conceal. What could it have been, I wonder?”

At this point Kay caught herself up with a little laugh.

“There I go,” she thought, “trying to make a mystery where there probably isn’t any. Why must I always see mysteries in the most ordinary things?”

Yet her curiosity concerning the foreigner persisted.

“The woman said something about an echo, too,” Kay reflected. “What was it? Ah, I know. ‘Echo from a mountain—carries three miles.’ That’s the second time today I’ve heard something about queer sounds—first from Mr. Miller, and then from this foreigner.”

All the while these thoughts were in her mind, Kay nevertheless was attending strictly to the business of shopping. Remembering her mother’s request that she bring home a certain book, she turned down Main Street, intending to call at Herr Entveg’s book store.

She had not gone very far, however, when a cheery voice hailed her and a familiar figure blocked her way. It was her cousin, Bill Tracey, the jolly young lawyer who had made his home with the Traceys ever since the death of Kay’s father, Roger Tracey, several years before.

Cousin Bill was in his early thirties. He was of medium height, plump, and almost invariably good-natured. His position in the household was unique. Devoted to both mother and daughter, he had constituted himself a sort of combination brother and guardian to Kay, a relationship that was eminently satisfactory to both.

Now, as Cousin Bill loomed up in front of her, Kay greeted him joyfully.

“Oh, I have the most glorious news!” she cried.

“What about?” asked her cousin.

Kay told him about Betty’s invitation to visit Lost Lake. Her relative was properly pleased and sympathetic. Then she told him about Mr. Miller.

“Great Scott, I forgot all about him!” Cousin Bill confessed when Kay mentioned the name. “I’ll drive right home now on the chance that he’s still there. But Kay, will you do something for me?”

“That depends,” she said with a teasing smile, “on what it is.”

“Well, you see,” said Cousin Bill, looking uncomfortable, “I want to buy a birthday present for a certain young lady. I thought of a bottle of perfume, but I don’t know just what kind she likes.”

“And you want me to find out?” asked Kay.

“Oh, would you?” asked the man gratefully. His face was flushed and he looked like an overgrown schoolboy in his embarrassment. “It’s a thing you don’t like to—I mean, it’s kind of hard to——”

“I understand perfectly,” laughed Kay. “But you will have to give me the name of the lady.”

“Oh, yes! Of course! It’s Elise Conklin.”

Flustered, the young lawyer reached into his pocket and drew forth a business card on which he scribbled a telephone number.

“Thanks, Kay,” he grinned. “I’ll be no end obliged. Maybe I’ll do something for you some day.”

There was a drug store next to Herr Entveg’s bookshop, and Kay stopped there to carry out her cousin’s errand.

She was only slightly acquainted with Elise Conklin, the young lady of Cousin Bill’s stumbling confession. As Elise was several years older than Kay, it was natural that the girls, moving in different groups, seldom met.

Now, as she slipped into a telephone booth, Kay glanced down at Cousin Bill’s card. The call which followed was, from Kay’s standpoint at least, a perfect success. She managed to get information from Elise on the subject of her favorite perfume without revealing her reason for desiring it. If the young woman suspected anything concerning the real motive behind Kay’s call, she concealed it admirably. After a few moments of casual conversation, Kay said good-bye and approached the drug counter.

She made her purchase, a vial of rare French perfume which bore the name of a famous importer. While the gift was being wrapped up, Kay could not resist the temptation of playing a joke on Cousin Bill. She picked up a cheap bottle dressed in a tawdry wrapper, and bearing the flaunting title “Heart’s Desire.”

“I’ll take this one, too,” she said, pretending not to notice the drug clerk’s look of surprise.

She chuckled over this latest purchase as she wended her way to Herr Entveg’s bookshop.

“Won’t Cousin Bill be furious!” she thought. “It will be worth the price of ‘Heart’s Desire’ just to see his face.”

When she arrived at the Old Bookshop, Kay found its proprietor in a state of great perturbation and distress. Poor Herr Entveg was fuming about the place in distracted fashion. His scanty hair was pushed up in ridiculous points all over his head; his spectacles had fallen down on his nose so that he was forced to peer over them; his entire appearance was one of extreme agitation and excitement.

“Why, Herr Entveg!” cried Kay. “Is anything wrong?”

“Wrong!” cried the book dealer, pulling at his hair, and causing the spectacles to tremble on the end of his nose. “It is terrible! It is the most tragic thing that has ever happen to me! The book, he is ruined!”

“What book?” asked Kay.

“What book, she asks!” he cried, raising his arms above his head as though calling the heavens to witness. “What book should, it be but—Here, then, you shall see with your own eyes!”

He broke off abruptly, and approached Kay. In his hands was a thick volume printed in a foreign language which he thrust toward the girl.

“Look!” he exclaimed, opening it to a page which Kay noticed was numbered 183. “Some of it has been stolen, do you see? The pages ripped out—five of dem. Now the book, he is ruined. It is no good to me any more. And he is old, very old, and rare.”

“What a pity,” cried Kay as she took the volume from Herr Entveg’s shaking hands. “Is it very valuable?”

“Four, five hundred dollars I could get for him.” The dealer took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. “But now part of him is gone—all the part about echoes. It is no longer any good to me.”

“Echoes!” repeated Kay thoughtfully. “That reminds me of something. Just a minute! Let me think!”

Before Kay’s mental vision there flashed a picture of the waiting room in Simpson’s Department Store. A fair-haired woman, seated before a desk, was glancing furtively at something which she kept hidden in a purse. Muttered phrases were coming from her lips—“echo from a mountain—carries three miles——”

“Herr Entveg,” cried Kay suddenly, “if you will come with me, I think I can show you the thief!”

CHAPTER 3

INSTRUMENTS OF MAGIC

“Wait just a minute and I vill be with you,” said Herr Entveg. “First I must close up the shop.”

A few moments later the book store was securely locked, and a sign affixed to the outside of the door announcing that the proprietor would soon return. Then Kay, accompanied by the excitable owner, started back to Simpson’s Department Store.

Straight up to the waiting room Kay led her companion, pausing at the entrance to look toward the seat which she had so recently occupied. A stranger of undistinguished appearance sat there now; the desk next to it was empty. The fair-haired, foreign-looking woman had gone!

Kay looked around the various sections of the waiting room while poor Herr Entveg waited for her just outside the entrance.

“Vell,” he cried, when she came back to him, “vat is it for which you look? You have not told me. You have only promise to show me the thief, this woman. Now where is she?”

“Gone, I am afraid,” said Kay reluctantly. “I am sorry to have raised your hopes all for nothing, Herr Entveg. But I honestly thought I was on the right track. I still think so,” she added thoughtfully.

“You are quite sure—she—is gone?”

“I have searched in every corner,” Kay assured him. “But I’ll go back with you to your bookshop if you like. On the way I’ll tell you about this person we are looking for, and why I suspect she may know something about the pages stolen from your book.”

Her companion eagerly assenting, Kay told of her interesting encounter with the foreign woman, including the hurried telephone call. By the time she had finished they had retraced their steps to the bookshop, and Herr Entveg had become almost speechless with excitement.

“The woman, she is the thief, there is no doubt of it,” he cried, fitting the key in the lock with trembling fingers. “The ‘notes’ of which you speak and which she kept hidden in her purse, what could they be but the missing pages of my book? Ach, if I could but catch her, I would tell her what I think of her, the thief! And I would get my pages back!”

With these words Herr Entveg removed his hat, the better to pull at his much-abused hair. Kay did her best to calm him. Finally, after promising to try to find the fair-haired woman she left the shop, the book for which her mother had asked under her arm.

On her way home Kay pondered the strange coincidence of her meeting with the foreign woman and her discovery of Herr Entveg’s misfortune. She still felt that the two incidents were connected, but how, or in what way, she could not determine.

Kay sank back in the train seat with a deep sigh. She was happy to have a problem confronting her once more. She was confident that, given time and a reasonable amount of good luck, she would be able to fit the pieces of the puzzle together.

It was not until after dinner that Kay recalled her purchase of the two bottles of perfume, and her intention of playing a joke on good-natured Cousin Bill with one of them. With a twinkle in her eye she excused herself, and ran up to her room to get the package.

When she had gone, Mrs. Tracey looked up long enough from her appraisal of the book Kay had brought her from Herr Entveg’s shop, to smile at Cousin Bill.

“Our Kay is very happy,” she remarked. “If the prospect of going to Lost Lake has done this for her, then I’m glad the Worths asked her to be their guest.”

“Just between you and me, I believe she has run into some sort of a mystery,” said Bill Tracey. “She hasn’t said much, but her looks betray her. I know the signs.”

Mrs. Tracey nodded.

“You may be right. How much Kay is like her father,” she added thoughtfully, a sad note in her voice. “Roger was a newspaperman by profession, but I always felt that he should have been a detective. He had a passion for apparently unimportant little details that most people would have passed by. He used to work out the solution of criminal cases just for fun, and he was usually correct.”

“I know,” Cousin Bill nodded. “He would have made a good lawyer. And his daughter is like him—a regular chip off the old block.”

When Kay returned she went over to Cousin Bill and held out to him a small, neatly wrapped parcel.

“For ‘the young lady’,” she said, with a twinkle in her eye. “I do hope she will like it, Cousin Bill.”

“What—oh—yes—the perfume, I suppose.” Feeling Kathryn Tracey’s amused look on him, Cousin Bill took the packet from Kay a little sheepishly. “I—ah—appreciate your going to the trouble, Kay.”

He fumbled with the string, getting it in a hard knot, man-fashion, so that Kay was forced to come to his rescue.

There emerged, in all its blatant vulgarity, the bottle of cheap perfume labeled “Heart’s Desire.” Kathryn Tracey looked, sniffed, and wrinkled her nose. Then she cried:

“Kay, how dreadful! Where in the world did you get it?”

The girl gave her mother a mischievous glance and nodded toward Cousin Bill.

That poor man was eyeing the bottle of “Heart’s Desire” dubiously. He turned it over and smelled of it suspiciously, carefully avoiding the two pair of amused eyes regarding him.

“We-el,” he said finally, “I don’t know much about ladies’ perfume. This smells a bit strong to me, but if it’s what Elise likes——”

A smothered chuckle made him glance quickly at Kay.

“You little tease!” he cried suspiciously. “Are you playing a joke on me?”

Kay now drew from a place of concealment the second bottle, the costly French product which had been Elise Conklin’s real choice. She thrust this toward her cousin.

“There,” she demanded, “is that any better?”

Cousin Bill took the vial and sniffed appreciatively. His eyes twinkled as they rested on Kay.

“This is the real thing, of course,” he said. “What am I going to do with you? Have you no respect for years?”

He joined in the hearty laughter, however, and then began to question his young relative about her plans. She spoke of Mr. Miller’s invitation, wondering when he would set a time for the visit.

On the day before Kay was to start for Lost Lake, that gentleman telephoned, saying that if the girl and her mother could come, he would send them special passes for two o’clock. Kay was delighted with the prospect, and accepted happily for her mother and herself.

At the appointed hour Mrs. Tracey and her daughter arrived at the watchman’s shed at the exterior of the grounds of the Scientific Instrument Company. Ahead of them was a lean, fiery-eyed stranger arguing with the gateman.

“I worked here for several years—now you refuse me admittance. What’s the idea?”

“You haven’t a pass. Can’t let you by,” returned the guard wearily. “Orders is orders.”

“You make me tired. I’m a first-rate inventor. I’ll show this outfit a thing or two. Even if they don’t need me any more, I’ll get back here some day—and with a royal welcome, too!”

Kay and her mother stepped forward. The girl held the magical passes. The unwanted stranger glared at the Traceys as they were admitted to the grounds and escorted to Mr. Miller’s office. The tall, dark, bushy-haired fellow, who had long white teeth and full red lips, shook his fist at the guard, then stalked off.

“He is certainly undesirable,” said Mrs. Tracey. “I’m not surprised the management discharged him.”

“He’s crazy,” commented the watchman. “This is no place for such as he. Secrets are too valuable for a snoop to light on. Everything is guarded.”

“How thrilling!” murmured Kay. “We surely are favored.”

Mr. Miller, though busy over a strange blueprint, greeted his guests genially and conducted them through various departments, each one more intriguing and mystifying than the last.

“I suppose you have rivals or disgruntled workmen whom you must guard against all the time,” remarked Kay, thinking of the unruly man at the outer gate.

“Yes,” whispered Mr. Miller confidentially. “More than we care to admit. Our ideas and inventions are strictly original and very valuable, so we must be extremely cautious.”