The Campfire Girls of Roselawn Part 32

"And I thought you did not want to be considered a burglar?" she said as she pa.s.sed hastily in at the door.

"Oh, well, we're in for it now," Darry called after her. "Be as quick as you can."

Jessie found a door open at the top of the flight. Henrietta was chattering at top speed somewhere ahead. The rooms were dark, but when Jessie found the room in which Henrietta was, she likewise found a girl bound to a chair in which she sat, with a towel tied across her mouth which m.u.f.fled her speech.

"Here's Bertha! Here's Bertha!" cried Henrietta eagerly.

Jessie had the girl free and the towel off in half a minute. She saw then that the prisoner was the girl she and Amy had seen carried away by Martha Poole and Sadie Bothwell, out of Dogtown Lane.

"Oh, Miss! is this little Hennie? And have you come to take me away?"

gasped Bertha.

"Surely. Are you Bertha Blair?"

"Yes, ma'am. Hennie calls me Bertha Haney. For I lived with her mom after my mother died. But my name's Blair."

"My father is Robert Norwood, the lawyer," said Jessie swiftly. "He wants you to testify in court about what you heard when that old man made his will at Mrs. Poole's house."

"Oh! You mean Mr. Abel Ellison? A gentleman came and asked me about that once, and then Mrs. Poole said I'd got to keep my mouth shut about it or she'd put me away somewhere so that I'd never get away."

"So I ran away from her," said Bertha, "and tried to go to Dogtown and see Hennie and the Foleys. Why! wasn't you one of the girls, Miss, that saw Mrs. Poole putting me into that car?"

"Yes," sighed Jessie. "I saw it, but couldn't stop it."

"Well, they brought me right out here, and I've been here ever since.

When Mrs. Poole isn't here that old woman comes and keeps me from running away."

"But once," Jessie suggested, "you had a chance to try to send out a cry for help?"

"There's a radio here. They used it one night. Then I tried to call for help over it. But they heard me and stopped it at once."

"Just the same, that attempt of yours is what has brought us here to-day. I will tell you all about it later. Come, Bertha! We will get you away from here before Mrs. Poole comes. And we must take you to the city to see my father at once."

As they left the tower and the ugly old woman, they heard the latter calling a number into the telephone receiver. She was probably trying to report the outrage to Mrs. Poole.

"But the woman will never dare call the police," Darry a.s.sured Jessie.

"You tell your father all about it, and he'll know what to do."

"And we must see Daddy Norwood as soon as possible," the girl said. "I must take Bertha to him. The case is already in court."

"I'll fix that for you, Miss Jessie," Mark Stratford said. "I can get you to town just as quickly as the traffic cops will let me--and they are all my friends."

Darry considered that he should go, too. So they dropped Amy and little Henrietta, with Burd Alling, at Roselawn, and after a word to Momsy, started like the flight of an arrow in Mark's powerful car for New York.

Jessie and Bertha Blair had never ridden so fast before. Mark Stratford knew his car well, and coaxed it along over the well-oiled roads of Westchester at a speed to make anybody gasp.

But haste was necessary. They knew where the court was, and they arrived there just after the noon recess. Mrs. Norwood had reached her husband's chief clerk by telephone, and he had communicated the news to the lawyer. Mr. Norwood had dragged along the prosecution until the missing witness arrived. Then he introduced Bertha Blair into the witness chair most unexpectedly to McCracken and his clients.

If Mr. Norwood's side of the argument needed any bolstering, this was supplied when Bertha was allowed to tell her story. The judge even advised the girl, or her guardians if she had any, that she had a perfectly good civil case against Martha Poole for imprisoning her in the tower on the Gandy farm.

These matters, however, did not interest Jessie Norwood and her friends much. They had been able to a.s.sist Mr. Norwood in an important legal case, and naturally everybody, both old and young, was interested in Bertha Blair, the girl who had been imprisoned. Momsy said she would put on her thinking cap about Bertha's future.

Meanwhile Bertha and little Henrietta went back to the Foleys for a while. Henrietta was bound to be the most important person of her age in all of Dogtown. No other little girl there was the possessor of such finery as she had.

What Mark Stratford had said to Jessie about Superintendent Blair kept recurring to the Roselawn girl, and she felt that she should tell the man who had charge of the Stratford Electric Corporation radio program about the girl who had been rescued from the horsewoman. As we meet Jessie and Amy and Bertha and all their friends in another volume, called "The Radio Girls on the Program; Or, Singing and Reciting at the Sending Station," in all probability Jessie Norwood will do just that.

"You girls," Darry Drew said to Jessie and Amy, "have got more radio stuff in your heads than most fellows I know. Why, you are as good as boys at it."

"I like that!" exclaimed his sister. "Is there anything, I'd like to know, that girls can't beat boys at?"

"One thing," put in Burd Alling solemnly.

"What's that?"

"Killing snakes," said Burd.

"Wrong! Wrong!" cried Jessie, laughing. "You ought to see little Henrietta attack a flock of snakes. She takes the palm."

"Think of it, a little girl like that going after snakes!" murmured Burd. "She must have nerve!"

"She has," declared Jessie. "And she is as clever as can be, too, in spite of her odd way of expressing herself."

"I wonder what they'll do about Bertha Blair," came from Darry.

"She certainly had an adventure," observed Burd. "Maybe the movie people will want her--or the vaudeville managers. They often pick up people like that, who have been in the limelight."

"I don't think Momsy will allow anything of that sort," returned Jessie. "I'm sure she and Daddy will think up something better."

Suddenly Amy, who was resting comfortably in the porch hammock, leaped to her feet.

"I declare! I forgot!" she cried.

"Forgot what?" came in a chorus from the others.

"Forgot that special concert to-day--that one to be given over the radio by that noted French soprano. You know who I mean--the one with the unp.r.o.nounceable name."

"Oh, yes!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Jessie. "Let me see--what time was it?" She consulted her wrist watch. "I declare! it starts in five minutes."

"Then come on and tune in. I've been thinking of that concert ever since it was advertised. Miss Gress, the music teacher, heard her sing in Paris and she says she's wonderful. Come on. Will you boys come along?"

"Might as well," answered Darry. "We haven't anything else to do."

"And I like a good singer," added Burd.

In another moment all were trooping up to Jessie's pretty room where she had her receiving set. The necessary tuning in was soon accomplished and in a minute more all were listening to a song from one of the favorite operas, rendered as only a great singer can render it. And here, for the time being we will say good-bye to the Radio Girls of Roselawn.

THE END