The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car/Chapter 25
CHAPTER XXV
EXPLANATIONS
Betty furnished the next sensation. As the man in charge of the officers passed near the auto, poor Carrie cowering away from him, though he no longer had it in his power to harm her, the Little Captain exclaimed:
"Girls! Girls! He's the old hair doctor—the man we met with the gay wagon—Bennington's Restorer!"
"Who is?" demanded Amy.
"That man—the one they have arrested. He's the one we gave the bolt to."
"Ha! That settles it!" cried Mollie. "That was where I first saw the scarred thumb! It's all working out now! I didn't remember at first. His hair is black instead of white."
"Dye," murmured Grace. "It is he all right!"
The farmer came hurrying through the crowd with the justice to whom he had gone to make a complaint. Above his head he waved a paper, crying:
"I got it! I have the warrant. Now Mr. Faker, which ought to be your name, you'll spend the rest of the summer behind the bars, on this charge."
"Yes, and with another added to it," perhaps," said Mr. Blackford, with a glance at Carrie.
The faker, which it is easier to call him, as he went by many names, shrugged his shoulders philosophically. He saw that he was caught. Perhaps he had been in the toils of the law before this.
He was quickly taken to the court house, where he was held on the farmer's charge under such heavy bail that it was not produced. This insured him being retained in custody.
"And now to attend to your case, Miss Norton," said Mr. Blackford, when Allen Washburn had been telegraphed for, and promised to come. "So he was your guardian; eh?"
"Yes, and since the girls recognize him for what he was part of the time—a seller of hair tonic—I will explain a little further. He made me pose in his cart, before the crowds, as one whose hair had been restored and made long by his worthless stuff. Oh, it was shameful! That is why I ran away from him!"
"I don't blame you," said Mollie. "And did his stuff do your hair any good?"
"I never used a drop of it! Neither did he. It was trash! He used to make me shake down my hair before the crowd, and then he would tell how I used to have none at all, but by using his medicine it came. I always had nice hair, before I ever met him! Oh, I can't forget it!" and she sobbed a little.
"Never mind," said Betty, gently, "it is all over now."
And it was, as far as any further charge the faker had over Carrie Norton. Allen Washburn came on with the papers in the case. It seems that a distant relative of the girl, learned in a round about way that Clark, or Bennington, to use but two of his names, had forged certain documents in order to make it appear that he was her legal guardian. This gave him control of Carrie, and her money, a tidy sum left by her father. The girl he compelled to accompany him on his vending trips, but when he went into the making of worthless hair restorer and obliged her to pose as having benefited by it, she finally rebelled.
This distant relative, wishing to aid the girl, took the matter up with a law firm, happening to hit on the one where Allen Washburn was employed. The newspaper advertisement was inserted, and at last had its effect.
The facts in the case were presented to the court after the faker's arrest, and the judge lost no time in deposing him as Carrie's guardian. He was obliged to give up the money he had wrongfully retained, and Allen Washburn was, much to Carrie's delight, appointed to look after her affairs.
"You'll be all right now, my dear," said Mollie, when the court action was over.
"She will be, if Betty doesn't get jealous!" said Grace, with a laugh. "Oh, I didn't mean anything!' she added quickly, as she saw her chum frown. "Have a chocolate!"
Bennington, or Clark—the faker, to be brief—was thus held by the law. In view of the other charges against him, Mollie did not press hers.
"It would only bring you into unpleasant notoriety," said Mr. Washburn. "He will get a severe enough penalty as it is."
"He must have mistaken you for me," said Carrie, as they talked over the thrusting of Mollie into the room. "Seeing you in the house whence I had fled, and with your hair hanging down, he made a natural mistake, thinking I had come back to him."
"Except that my hair is nothing like as lovely as yours, my dear."
"Oh, yours is fine, I think. But the dim light might have deceived him."
"But why should he dress up all in white—like a ghost?" asked Grace.
"Probably to play that part," suggested Betty. "That is one point we haven't solved—how the ghostly manifestations were brought about. I wish we could have solved that for the sake of Mr. Lagg."
"I fancy it is solved," said Mr. Blackford, with a smile. " It was the faker, all the while."
"It was?" cried Mollie. "Did he do it on purpose?"
"No, he had no intention of being a spook, but he could not have done it better had he planned it. I have been talking to him," and Mr. Blackford nodded in the direction of the court house. "He made a clean breast of everything when Allen hinted that it might have a good effect when he came to be sentenced.
"It seems that he manufactured his hair-tonic in the haunted mansion. It was necessary to heat it in a sort of furnace, and this made the groaning sound you heard, it was caused by air pressure. Sometimes it groaned and again it shrieked as the hot air rushed from the ventilator."
"And the clank of the metal?" asked Grace, not without a look over her shoulder, though it was broad daylight.
"That was when he stirred the stuff in the brass mixing kettle."
"What about the queer blue light, and the smell of sulphur?" asked Cousin Jane.
"That was the burning of sulphur which he used in the preparation. Sulphur is often used in hair-tonics I believe, though I don't know that this man used it to any advantage. At any rate he burned it, making the ghostly flashes of blue fire, and the smell. The flashes were reflected from the room where he worked into the smaller house, by the big window panes."
"But why did he dress like a ghost?" asked Mollie.
"That was a big white garment he put on to avoid soiling his colthes when he made his hair-tonic mixture. And he really did mistake you for Carrie, Mollie. He admitted as much, and asked to be forgiven. It was his lunch you ate. He had prepared for a long stay in the house."
"Well, I guess we won't bother to pay for it," said Betty. "He's made trouble enough. Then the mansion isn't haunted, after all?"
"No, and never was. It was simply the making of his hair-tonic there nights that produced the effect. He says he never even knew that the doctors who were to buy the place were frightened away, and the night you girls stopped there he thought you had, as was the case, taken refuge from the storm. He did not know he had frightened you, but when he saw Mollie he made a rush for her, thinking she was his ward, come back. He locked her up, intending to come for her later, when he had taken off the furnace some of his boiling mixture."
"Then Mr. Lagg can sell his property after all!" exclaimed Grace. "I'm so glad!"
And so was the poetical store keeper himself, when he heard the news. He composed on eight-line verse on the subject, and insisted on rewarding the girls, saying it was due to their efforts that the "ghost was laid." He received a substantial sum for the old mansion, which was turned into a sanitarium.
"And, now that all the explanations are explained," said Mollie a day or so later, "we may as well resume our tour. What do you say, girls?"
"Fine!" cried Betty. " And we'll take Carrie with us. She needs a change, and traveling around will benefit her."
"Though I traveled considerable after I ran away from that horrid man," said the girl, with a smile at her new friends.
"There is one regret," spoke Grace, "and that is that Mr. Blackford didn't find his missing sister."
"I had some hopes that you might prove to be she," he said, looking at Carrie. "However, I have not yet given up the prospect of finding her. I am going to seek farther."
"Let's go for a long ride, anyhow, and then we can plan what to do for the rest of the summer," suggested Mollie, and the girls went off in the car.
And what occurred further to the chums may be learned by reading the next volume of this series, to be entitled "The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp; Or, Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats."
"And so there is no haunted mansion after all," remarked Betty, as they rode on.
"Are you sorry?" asked Grace. "I'm not."
"Well, a haunt is so—romantic," spoke Betty. "But I suppose it is just as well."
Eventually the false guardian was sent to prison for a long term, on several charges. Mr. Bailey was not the only farmer he had swindled, it appeared. The fellow had unexpectedly come to the old mansion, and had boldly decided to use it for his purposes, learning that the title was in dispute. It just suited his needs, and the hair-tonic was not the only nostrum he made there after Carrie ran away. But the tonic was alone responsible for the queer sounds and manifestations. On leaving the mansion to go about peddling his wares, the man would take his apparatus with him in the wagon, so there were few signs of his occupancy.
Mr. Blackford bade the girls farewell a few days after the explanations had been made, saying he was going to look up a new clue regarding his sister. Carrie Norton was made welcome at the home of Betty, though she often stayed for weeks at a time with the other chums. She had income enough to support her now that her fortune was restored to her.
The girls completed their tour, having many good times which the boys and the twins shared, the latter never forgetting to ask, semi-occasionally:
"Has oo dot any tandy?"
And now that the Outdoor Girls have a prospect of "living happily ever after," we will take leave of them.
THE END.