The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
THE QUEER PEDDLER
For a moment after this surprising discovery had been made no one spoke. Dr. Brown looked oddly from one girl to the other, and at Mrs. Meckelburn.
"There is evidently some mystery here," he said. "I supposed there was really some one here who needed my services?" and he glanced questioningly at Mollie, who had summoned him.
"Oh, indeed there was," she said, quickly. "A girl fell out of a tree"
"Out of a tree!" exclaimed the doctor, and for a moment it seemed as though he believed a joke had been attempted on him.
"Yes," went on Betty, taking up the story, "didn't Mollie tell you that? She really fell from a tree as our auto passed, and at first we thought we had struck her." Betty shot a glance of inquiry at Mollie.
"No, I didn't tell that part," confessed the owner of the new car. "I was so flustrated, and I guess Grace didn't say anything either."
"No," answered the willowy one.
"Well, I'm here, at all events, but there is no patient," said the doctor, with a smile.
"Oh, we'll pay you for your call!" exclaimed Betty, quickly taking out her silver mesh bag. "How much"
"No, no!" said Dr. Brown somewhat sharply, "you misunderstand me. I never accept a fee in a simple accident case. What I meant about there being no patient was that she has evidently gone away, possibly in a delirium, and in that case we had better search for her, for she may be badly hurt, or do herself some injury. You say she was in this room?"
"Yes," answered Mrs. Meckelburn.
"And you sat here in view of the door all the while?"
"Yes," spoke Betty. "She never came out of that door, I'm sure." Amy said the same thing.
"Then the only other possible solution is that she got out of the window," went on the physician, "for there is no other door from the room. We must look outisde," and he crossed the apartment to the casement. It had been raised, and the shutters were open when the unconscious girl had been left alone.
"The window is low—she could easily have dropped to the ground," said Dr. Brown. "It is not more than four feet."
He leaned out to look at the ground underneath, and uttered an exclamation.
"That is what she did!" he cried. "There are the marks of feet landing heavily—small shoes—and unless some of you young ladies have been indulging in gymnastics."
"And see!" added Betty, standing beside the physician, "here are some of her long hairs," and she picked some from the window sill. "Oh, she did have the longest, most glorious hair!" and Betty sighed in memory, for Betty loved long tresses and her own, while they became her wonderfully well, were not very luxuriant.
"But I don't see how she could have gotten away, unconscious as she was, and injured," said Grace, with a puzzled air.
"She may have regained consciousness," spoke Dr. Brown; "or, as I said, she may have wandered off in a delirium. In that case we must try to find her. Again, she may not have been as badly hurt as you supposed, and also she may have simulated an injury hoping she would get a chance to escape unobserved. Was there anything strange about her?"
"Yes, there was," admitted Betty, slowly, and she gave the details of the accident, how, most unexpectedly the girl had toppled from the tree, the subsequent swerving of the auto, and how, several times, the girl had murmured something about not going back to a certain man.
"Hum!" mused Dr. Brown, "it is rather odd, I must admit. What do you suppose she was doing in the tree?"
"We haven't been able to guess," confessed Amy; "perhaps she climbed up to avoid a dog—we have met several dogs to-day."
"It's possible," Dr. Brown commented.
"And the tree was an easy one to climb," spoke Mollie. "I am not a very good climber, but that tree offered temptations."
The doctor smiled.
"Well, let us make a search," he proposed. "Is there any special place where a girl, who might wish to escape observation for some unknown reason, could hide around here, Mrs. Meckelburn?"
"There's the barn."
"Very good, we will search there, and we may be able to trace her footprints. Please do not any of you walk under the window, nor in a line from it until we have made some observations. We will play a little detective game," and he smiled frankly at the girls.
But if he had hoped anything from the clue of the footprints he was doomed to disappointment for, though there were plain indications where the girl had landed when she jumped from the window, the marks were soon lost sight of on the harder ground a short distance from the house.
A search of the barn revealed no trace of her, and one of the farm hands, coming to the house a little later, joined in the search. He reported that there had been seen no hatless, injured—or apparently injured—girl crossing the fields.
"Then she must have made a circle about the house, and gone out on the road," suggested Betty. "She is probably far enough away from here by this time, poor thing!"
"Perhaps we ought to search for her," spoke Mollie. "Of course it was not our fault, since we are sure the car did not hit her; but perhaps it scared her so that she fell."
"I should not blame myself if I were you," said the physician, kindly. "It was evidently not your fault. You did all you could for the girl. If she did not want further treatment that is her lookout. Of course, if she wandered away in a delirium, that is another story, and perhaps it would be well to search down the road. She did not pass us, or we would have seen her, coming from my office along the main highway as we did," he said to Mollie. "A search in the opposite direction would be the only feasible thing to conduct."
"Then let's do it!" cried Mollie. "And you please drive, Dr. Brown, I haven't yet gotten over my nervousness."
Mrs. Meckelburn refused an invitation to go in the car, but the four girls started off, Dr. Brown at the wheel. They went as far back as the tree which was the scene of the accident and saw no trace of the girl. Nor had any of several other autoists, or drivers of horse vehicles, to whom they appealed, seen her.
"She has just disappeared—that's all," said Betty. "I wonder if we had better notify the police?"
"I will attend to that for you," responded Dr. Brown, kindly. "There is no need for you to be mixed up in this. Sometimes, with the best intentions in the world, one gets unpleasant notoriety in these cases. I will notify the authorities to be on the lookout for the girl, for her own sake alone. Later, if there is need of you"
He paused suggestively.
"We will leave you our addresses," said Betty, quickly. "Thank you for looking after this for us."
"I am only too glad to be of service. Well, as long as there is no patient to be found here, I had better return to those waiting for me at my office."
"Go there in my car," proposed Mollie, quickly, "and then I will take the wheel again. I am feeling better now."
"Such a fine car as this ought to make anyone feel fine! It is a beauty!" and he seemed to caress the steering wheel. "I am getting a small runabout," he went on, "and that is how I happen to know how to drive. I learned some time ago."
They flashed past Mrs. Meckelburn's house, calling to her of their failure, and saying that they would be back soon. A little later, having left the physician at his home, they were again in the pleasant farm house, sipping tea which their hostess had thoughtfully made.
"Isn't it queer?" observed Betty.
"A strange enough happening," Amy commented.
"Quite a mystery," asserted Grace.
"And really she was a pretty girl," declared Mollie. "I wish I had her hair," and she sighed as Betty had done.
Grace strolled into the room where the girl had been, and half idly she looked about it, as though in that way she might solve the mystery. A piece of paper in one corner caught her eye and she picked it up.
"I found this in there," she said, coming out. "It has some writing on it. Perhaps this is yours, Mrs. Meckelburn," and she held out the scrap.
"No, I'll guarantee there was not a piece of paper in that room when you carried that girl in," said the fanner's wife. "I had just swept," and she tossed her head in pardonable pride of her housework.
"What does it say?" asked Amy.
"It's evidently a piece torn from a letter," answered Grace, as she accepted the paper from the woman, "and all I can make out are the words—'not go to Shadow Valley even if'—and that's all there is to it."
"How odd!" exclaimed Mollie. "Shadow Valley is not far from here."
"And the queer girl evidently dropped that paper," declared Betty, examining the scrap. "Well, the mystery deepens, but I do not see that we can do anything to solve it."
They talked it over for some time, but could come to no other conclusion. Grace saved the scrap of paper, and soon, having bidden good-bye to Mrs. Meckelburn, they were on their way again, with Mollie at the wheel.
Gradually their nerves, upset by their adventure, resumed their poise under the influence of the fresh air and sunshine, and the gloomy atmosphere raised by the girl's accident, passed away.
They had made the turn into a road that would lead them to Deepdale when they came in sight of a man standing in the road beside a small, and rather gaudily painted wagon. He seemed to be looking in the dust for something, and Mollie, seeing him, slowed up, remarking:
"Perhaps he has a break-down. Let's ask if we can help him."
The appearance of the man, in some ways, was enough to invite the confidence of four girls, and in others was not. He had long, and very white hair, fluffy and wavy, and was dressed in a shabby suit of black, but his face had hard, cruel lines in it, as though he were in the habit of imposing his will on others.
A look at his wagon showed the character of his trade, for it was brilliantly lettered with such devices and mottoes as—"Bennington's Hair is All His Own." "Use His Restorer and Be Likewise." Another was: "Bennington's Restorer Really Restores."
"Have you lost something?' asked Mollie, bringing the car to a stop. He looked up quickly, and smiled, but the smile only seemed to make his face harder, instead of softening it.
"Yes, ladies," he said with a smirk and bow, taking off his broad brimmed hat, and running his fingers through his hair, making it fluff out more than ever, "I have lost a bolt out of part of my wagon, and I'm afraid to go on lest I break down. It dropped somewhere in the dust, but I can't find it."
"I have a supply of spare bolts in my tool box," spoke Mollie, "I'll give you one, and that will save you looking any more."
"Thank you, lady. It will be just what I want." From the tool box on the run board he soon selected a bolt that fitted his wagon.
"And now let me repay your kindness," he said. "I am, as you see, a traveling peddler of hair tonic. May I present you with a bottle?" and he offered Mollie one.
"No, thank you," and she laughed merrily. "It is something that I never use."
"You all have fine hair," returned the peddler; "but at that it would be all the better for Bennington's Restorer—I am Bennington—I make it myself," and he bowed. "Won't you take it. I can guarantee it harmless."
"No, thank you just the same," repeated Mollie. " And you are entirely welcome to the bolt. Good-bye," and she started her car.