The Camp Fire Girls Solve a Mystery Or The Christmas Adventure at Carver House Part 8

"Well, dere ain't in dis!" answered the old man vehemently, and at the same time looking relieved. "Ma.r.s.e Jasper he always useter say to me, 'Herc'les,' he useter say, 'dere's one good thing about dis house, and dat is it ain't cluttered up wif no secrut pa.s.sidges.' Secrut pa.s.sidges am powerful unlucky, Mis' Sahwah. Onct I knew a man dat lived in a house dat had a secrut pa.s.sidge an' one night de ole debbil got in th'u dat secrut pa.s.sidge an' run off wif him! Don' you go huntin' no secrut pa.s.sidges, Mis' Sahwah, if you knows what's good fer you. Dey suttinly am powerful unlucky!"

Nyoda came down stairs and bore Hercules off to the kitchen, and the Winnebagos and the boys had their laugh out behind his back. "How _can_ he tell such fibs in such a truthful sounding way!" remarked Justice. "If I didn't know about that pa.s.sage from Uncle Jasper's diary I'd be inclined to believe every word he said. But I bet the old sinner knows all about it, just as Uncle Jasper did. Even if he doesn't, how can he invent such convincing speeches on the part of Uncle Jasper out of the empty air? He's the most engaging old fibber I ever came across."

Nyoda came back and bore Sylvia off to bed and then she returned to the library. "Sherry," she said thoughtfully, leaning her chin in her hand, "Dr. Crosby was here this morning to return those binoculars he borrowed the other day, and I talked to him about Sylvia. He said he had once been called in to treat her for tonsilitis when she lived in Millvale, and had examined her spine at the time. He said it was a splintered vertebra and it could be fixed by grafting in a piece of bone. They're doing wonders now that way. He said Dr. Gilbert, the famous specialist, could perform an operation that would cure her. He hadn't had a chance to talk it over with Sylvia's aunt because he had been called away suddenly and when he returned to town the Deane's were gone. He had no idea what had become of them. He only made a hasty examination, but he is positive she can be cured. I know the Deane's can't afford to pay for such an operation, but Dr. Crosby said he was sure he could persuade Dr. Gilbert to perform it free, in his clinic. I told Dr. Crosby to bring Dr. Gilbert to Oakwood as soon as he could. He said he thought it would be possible soon. I thought as long as we are going to keep Sylvia in our care until her aunt is well again we might as well have her fixed up in the meantime. I would like to have the operation over before her aunt knows anything about it, say the first week of the new year. What do you think?"

"Whew!" whistled Sherry, looking at his wife in astonishment. The rapidity with which Nyoda got a project under way was a nine days' wonder to Sherry, who usually spent more time in deliberating a course of action than she did in carrying it out. "Go ahead!" was all he could say.

The Winnebagos gave long exclamations of joy. It had never occurred to them that anything could be done for Sylvia.

"Does she know it?" asked Hinpoha.

"Not yet," replied Nyoda. "I thought we would keep it for a birthday surprise. Her birthday is the twenty-ninth. I'll have Dr. Gilbert come that day and let him tell her himself. Don't anybody mention it to her until then."

"We won't," promised the Winnebagos, and trooped off to bed, heavy with their delicious secret.

CHAPTER VIII THE FOOTPRINTS ON THE STAIRS

The Winnebagos woke bright and early the next morning, eager to begin the search for the secret pa.s.sage again, but whatever plans they had formed were driven entirely out of their minds by the appearance of the footprints on the stairs. Nyoda discovered them first when she raised the curtains on the stair landing on her way down to bring in the morning paper.

The day before, in antic.i.p.ation of the coming of the men from the second hand store to remove the discarded furniture from Uncle Jasper's study, she had improvised a runner to cover the front stairs to keep them from being scratched. The stretch from the upstairs to the landing she had covered with a strip of rag carpet, and from the landing down she had used a length of white canvas. The landing itself was still bare, as she had not yet found the old rug she intended laying there.

Now, as she came downstairs, she noticed, on the strip of white canvas that covered the bottom half of the stairs, three dark red footprints. On the white background they stood out with startling distinctness. They began on the third step from the top and appeared on every other step from then on to the bottom. All three were the prints of a right foot. No heel marks were visible, only the upper half of the foot. From the direction which they pointed they were made by a person descending the stairs, and from their size that person was a man.

Nyoda's first thought that Sherry had cut his foot and had gone downstairs, leaving a b.l.o.o.d.y trail on her stair runner, and full of concern she immediately sought him. But her search revealed him down in the bas.e.m.e.nt, coaxing up the furnace, and there was nothing the matter with his feet. The Captain was with him and he likewise disclaimed a cut foot. The two of them had come down the back stairs. Nyoda hurried back upstairs. Justice and Slim were in the upper hall when she came up, just in the act of coming down.

"Good morning!" they both called out in cheery greeting.

"Which one of you has the cut foot?" she asked.

"Cut foot? Not I," said Justice.

"Nor I," said Slim. "Did somebody cut his foot?"

"Look," said Nyoda, pointing to the marks on the lower steps.

"It must have been your husband, or the Captain," said Justice. "It wasn't either of us."

"It wasn't either of them," replied Nyoda. "I asked them. They're down in the bas.e.m.e.nt fussing with the furnace."

"It's the print of a foot with a shoe on," said Justice, examining the marks.

"Somebody must have gotten into the house last night!" exclaimed Nyoda in a startled tone. "Sherry," she called, "come up here!"

Sherry came up from the bas.e.m.e.nt on the run, for he recognized something out of the ordinary in his wife's tone, and the Captain came hard on his heels. The girls came running down from above to see what the commotion was about, and the whole household stood staring at the mysterious footprints in startled bewilderment.

"Burglars!" cried Hinpoha with a little shriek.

"Oh, my silverware!" exclaimed Nyoda in a stricken tone, and raced into the dining room. She pulled open the sideboard drawers with trembling hands, expecting to find them ransacked, but nothing was amiss. Every piece was still in its place. Neither had the sterling silver candlesticks on top of the sideboard been disturbed. A thorough search through the house revealed nothing missing. Various gold bracelets and watches lay in plain sight on dressers, and Hinpoha's gold mesh bag hung on the back of a chair beside her bed. Sherry reported no money gone.

Nothing stolen! Who had entered the house then, if not a burglar? The thing had resolved itself into a mystery, and everyone looked at his neighbor with puzzled eyes. Breakfast was completely forgotten.

"What gets me," said Sherry, "is where those footprints started from. By the way they point, the man was going downstairs, but they begin in the middle of the stairway. Clearly he didn't start at the top. Do you suppose he came in through the landing window?"

He examined the triple window on the landing closely, but soon looked around with a puzzled expression on his face.

"The windows are all fastened from the inside," he reported, "and there's no sign of their having been tampered with. It doesn't look as though anyone could have come in this way." He examined all the rest of the windows on the first floor, and found them all latched and their latches undisturbed. The doors, too, were locked from the inside. The cellar windows had a heavy screening over them on the outside which could not be removed without being destroyed, and this screening was everywhere intact.

"He must have come in through one of the upstairs windows after all,"

said Nyoda. "There were about a dozen open in the various bedrooms. The window in the room Hinpoha and Gladys sleep in is directly over the front porch."

Hinpoha and Gladys gave a simultaneous shriek at the thought of the mysterious intruder coming through their room while they lay sleeping.

"But if he came down from upstairs, why aren't the footprints _all_ the way down, instead of beginning in the middle?" insisted Katherine. "He _couldn't_ have come down from upstairs; he _must_ have come in through this window on the landing," she said decidedly, going up to the window and looking it over sharply for any sign of having been opened, and, by shaking the wooden framework of the little square panes vigorously, as if she would shake the truth out of it by force.

The window, however, still yielded no sign of having been opened, and the sill outside bore no marks of an instrument. The mystery grew deeper. How could those footprints have started under the landing window if the feet that made them did not enter by that window?

"Maybe he did come from upstairs after all," said Sahwah, whose lively brain had been working hard on the puzzle, "but his foot didn't begin to bleed until he was half way down. Maybe he hurt it on the landing."

"Sat down to trim his toe-nails and cut his toe off, probably," suggested Justice, and the girls giggled hysterically.

Striking an att.i.tude in imitation of a story book detective, Justice began to address the group. "Gentlemen of the jury," he began, "we have here a mystery which has baffled the brightest minds in the country, but unraveling it has been the merest child's play to a great detective like myself. Here are the facts in the case. A man goes down a stairway. The first half of his descent is shrouded in oblivion; half way down he begins to leave b.l.o.o.d.y footprints. There is only one answer, gentlemen; the one which occurred to me immediately. It is this: Upon reaching the landing the mysterious descender suddenly remembers that it is the day on which he annually trims his toe-nails. Being a very methodical man, as I can detect by the way his feet point when he goes downstairs, he sits down and does it then and there. But the knife slips and he cuts off his toe, after which he makes b.l.o.o.d.y footprints on the rest of the stairs."

"Justice Dalrymple, you awful boy!" exclaimed Katherine, and then she laughed with the rest at his absurd explanation of the mystery.

"Well, can you think up any argument that disproves my theory?" he retorted calmly.

"I can," replied the Captain. "If your theory was correct we'd have found the toe lying on the stairs."

The girls shrieked and covered their ears with their hands. The Captain chuckled wickedly, but said no more.

"I can think up another argument," said Sahwah. "Your man went barefoot after he cut his toe off, but this one had his shoe on."

"So he did!" admitted Justice. "Now you've 'done upsot my whole theory!'"

"But how could his foot bleed through his shoe?" asked Katherine skeptically.

"The sole must have been cut through," said Justice. "He probably wore a rubber-soled shoe, like a sneaker, and stepped on some broken gla.s.s that went right through the sole into his foot. I did the same thing myself once. It bled through, all right."

"But what did he step on?" asked Nyoda, puzzled. "There isn't any sign of broken gla.s.s around."

"I give it up," said Sherry, who could make nothing from the facts before him and had no imagination to help him supply missing details. "The man undoubtedly got in through the upstairs window and out the same way. He was a burglar, only he got scared away before he could steal anything.

Some noise in the house, probably."

"He must have heard Slim snoring, and thought it was a bombing plane coming after him," said Justice, and then dodged nimbly as Slim made a pa.s.s at his head with a menacing hand.