The Penny Parker Megapack: 15 Complete Novels (158 page)

“I’ll give a thousand dollars for the capture of that rascal!” Mr. Burmaster went on. “And if it proves to be Mrs. Lear I’ll add another five hundred.”

“Why, not be rid of the Ghost in an easier way?”Penny suggested. “Give the money to the Huntley Dam Fund.”

“Never! I’ll not be blackmailed! Besides, the rains are letting up. There’s no danger.”

Penny and Louise did not attempt to argue the matter. The Huntley Dam feud was none of their concern. By the following day they expected to be far from the valley.

“There’s another person who might be behind this,” Mr. Burmaster continued. “A newspaper editor at Hobostein. He always hated me and he’s been using his paper to write ugly editorials. I ought to sue him for slander.”

Though the Headless Horseman episode had excited the girls, they were tired and eager to get to Mrs. Lear’s. Accordingly, they cut the conversation short and started on down the road. Mr. Burmaster fell into step walking with them as far as the house.

“Come to see us sometime,” he invited with a cordiality that astonished the girls. “Mrs. Burmaster gets very lonesome. She’s nervous but she means well.”

“I’m sure she does,” Penny responded kindly. She hesitated, then added: “I do hope you catch the prankster. Have you considered putting a barricade at the end of the bridge?”

“Can’t do it. When we built this place we had to agree to keep the footbridge open to pedestrians.”

“Suppose one had a moveable barrier,” Penny suggested. “Couldn’t your workmen keep watch and swing it into place after the Horseman started across the bridge? With one at each end he’d be trapped.”

“It’s an idea to be considered,” Mr. Burmaster admitted. “The only trouble is that my workmen aren’t worth their salt as guards. But we’ll see.”

Penny and Louise soon bade the estate owner goodnight and went on down the road. Once beyond hearing they discussed the possibility that Mrs. Lear might have masqueraded as the Headless Horseman.

“It was queer the way she disappeared from the dance,” Penny speculated. “Granting that she’s a spry old lady, I doubt she’d have it in her to pull off the trick.”

“I’m not so sure,” Louise argued. “Mr. Burmaster said she was a wonderful rider. Didn’t you think that horse tonight looked like Trinidad?”

“Goodness, it was too dark to see! In any case, what about the buggy?”

“Mrs. Lear could have unhitched it somewhere in the woods.”

Penny shook her head. “It doesn’t add up somehow. For that matter, nothing about this affair does.”

Rounding a curve, the girls came within view of the Lear cabin. No light burned, but they took it for granted Mrs. Lear had gone to bed.

“Let’s give a look-see in the barn,” Penny proposed. “I want to make sure that our horses are all right.”

“And to see that the buggy is there too,” laughed Louise.

They went past the dripping water trough to the barn and opened the doors. White Foot nickered. Bones kicked at the stall boards. Penny tossed both horses a few ears of corn and then walked on to Trinidad’s stall. It was empty. Nor was there any evidence of a buggy.

“Well, what do you think of that!” Penny commented. “Mrs. Lear’s not been home!”

“Then maybe Mr. Burmaster’s theory is right!”Louise exclaimed, staring at the empty stall. “Mrs. Lear could have been the one!”

“Listen!” commanded Penny.

Plainly the girls could hear a horse and vehicle coming down the road. It was Mrs. Lear, and a moment later she turned into the yard. Penny swung open the barn doors. Trinidad rattled in and pulled up short. His sleek body was covered with sweat as if he had been driven hard.

Mrs. Lear leaped lightly to the barn floor and began to unhitch the horse.

“Well, I’m mighty glad to find you here,” she chirped. “Joe brought you home, didn’t he?”

Penny replied that she and Louise had walked.

“You don’t say!” the old woman exclaimed. “I went down the road a piece to see a friend o’ mine. By the time I got back the frolic was over. I calculated Joe must have brought you home.”

Penny and Louise offered little comment as they helped Mrs. Lear unhitch Trinidad. However, they could see that the old lady was fairly brimming-over with suppressed excitement.

“It’s late, but I ain’t one bit tired,” Mrs. Lear declared as they all entered the house. “There’s somethin’mighty stimulatin’ about a barn dance.”

Penny was tempted to remark that her hostess had spent very little time at Silas Malcom’s place. Instead she remained silent.

The girls went at once to bed. Mrs. Lear did not follow them upstairs immediately, but puttered about the kitchen preparing herself a midnight snack. Finally her step was heard on the stairs.

“Good night, girls,” she called cheerfully as she passed their door. “Sleep tight.”

Mrs. Lear entered her own bedroom. Her door squeaked shut. A shoe was heard to thud on the floor, then another.

“I wish I knew what to think,” Penny confided to Louise in a whisper. “She’s the queerest old lady—”

Louise had no opportunity to reply. For both girls were startled to hear a shrill cry from the far end of the hall.

The next instant their bedroom door burst open. Mrs. Lear, grotesque in old fashioned flannel nightgown, staggered into the room.

“Why, what’s wrong?” Penny asked in astonishment.

“I’ve been robbed!” Mrs. Lear proclaimed wildly. “I’ve been robbed!”

CHAPTER 12

PREMONITIONS

Penny leaped out of bed and touched a match to the wick of an oil lamp. In its flickering yellow glow Mrs. Lear looked as pale as a ghost.

“While we were at the barn dance someone broke into the house,” the old lady explained in an agitated voice. “The deed’s gone! Now I’ll be put off my land like the others. Oh, lawseeme, I wisht I was dead!”

“What deed do you mean?” Penny asked, perplexed.

“Why, the deed to this house and my land! I’ve always kept it under the mattress o’ my bed. Now it’s gone!”

“Isn’t the deed recorded?”

“No, it ain’t. I always calculated on havin’ it done, but I wanted to save the fee long as I could. Figured to have the property put in my son’s name jes’ before I up and died. He’s married and livin’ in Omaha. Now see what a mess I’m in.”

“If the deed is lost and not recorded, you are in difficulties,” Penny agreed.

“Perhaps it isn’t lost,” said Louise, encouragingly. “Did you search everywhere, Mrs. Lear?”

“I pulled the bed half to pieces.”

“We’ll help you look for it,” Penny offered. “It must be here somewhere.”

“This is the fust time in twenty years that anyone ever stole anything off me,” the old lady wailed as she led the way down the dark hall. “But I kinda knowed somethin’ like this was goin’ to happen.”

Mrs. Lear’s bedroom was in great disorder. Blankets had been strewn over the floor and the limp mattress lay doubled up on the springs.

“You see!” the old lady cried. “The deed’s gone! I’ve looked everywhere.”

Penny and Louise carefully folded all the blankets. They straightened the mattress and searched carefully along the springs. They looked beneath the bed. The missing paper was not to be found.

“Are you sure you didn’t hide it somewhere else?”Penny asked.

“Fer ten years I’ve kept that deed under the bed mattress!” the old lady snapped. “Oh, it’s been stole all right. An’ there’s the tracks o’ the thievin’ rascal that did it too!”

Mrs. Lear lowered the oil lamp closer to the floor. Plainly visible were the muddy heelprints of a woman’s shoe. The marks had left smudges on the rag rugs which dotted the room; they crisscrossed the bare floor to the door, the window and the bed. Penny and Louise followed the trail down the hallway to the stairs. They picked it up again in the kitchen and there lost it.

“You don’t need to follow them tracks no further,”Mrs. Lear advised grimly. “I know who it was that stole the deed. There ain’t nobody could o’ done it but Mrs. Burmaster!”

“Mrs. Burmaster!” Louise echoed, rather stunned by the accusation.

“She’d move Heaven and Earth to git me off this here bit o’ land. She hates me, and I hate her.”

“But how could Mrs. Burmaster know you had the deed?” Penny asked. “You never told her, did you?”

“Seems to me like onest in an argument I did say somethin’ about having it here in the house,” Mrs. Lear admitted. “We was goin’ it hot and heavy one day, an’ I don’t remember jest what I did tell her. Too much, I reckon.”

The old lady sat down heavily in a chair by the stove. She looked sick and beaten.

“Don’t take it so hard,” Penny advised kindly. “You can’t be sure that Mrs. Burmaster stole the deed.”

“Who else would want it?”

“Some other person might have done it for spite.”

Mrs. Lear shook her head. “So far’s I know, I ain’t got another enemy in the whole world. Oh, Mrs. Burmaster done it all right.”

“But what can she hope to gain?” asked Penny.

“She aims to put me off this land.”

“Mr. Burmaster seems like a fairly reasonable man. I doubt he’d make any use of the deed even if his wife turned it over to him.”

“Maybe not,” Mrs. Lear agreed, “but Mrs. Burmaster ain’t likely to give it to her husband. She’ll find some other way to git at me. You see!”

Nothing Penny or Louise could say cheered the old lady.

“Don’t you worry none about me,” she told them. “I’ll brew a cup o’ tea and take some aspirin. Then maybe I kin think up a way to git that deed back. I ain’t through yet—not by a long shot!”

Long after Penny and Louise had gone back to bed the old lady remained in the kitchen. It was nearly three o’clock before they heard her tiptoe upstairs to her room. But at seven the next morning she was abroad as usual and had breakfast waiting for them.

“I’ve thought things through,” she told Penny as she poured coffee from a blackened pot. “It won’t do no good to go to Mrs. Burmaster and try to make her give up that deed. I’ll jes wait and see what she does fust.”

“And in the meantime, the deed may show up,”Penny replied. “Even though you think Mrs. Burmaster took it, there’s always a chance that it was only misplaced.”

“Foot tracks don’t lie,” the old lady retorted. “I was out lookin’ around early this morning. Them prints lead from my door straight toward the Burmasters!”

Deeply as were the girls interested in Mrs. Lear’s problem, they knew that they could be of no help to her. Already they had lingered in Red Valley far longer than their original plan. They shuddered to think what their parents would say if and when they returned to Riverview.

“Lou, we have to start for Hobostein right away!”Penny announced. “We’ll be lucky if we get there in time to catch a train home.”

Mrs. Lear urged her young guests to remain another day, but to her kind invitation they turned deaf ears. In vain they pressed money upon her. She refused to accept anything so Penny was compelled to hide a bill in the teapot where it would be found later.

“You’ll come again?” the old lady asked almost plaintively as she bade them goodbye.

“We’ll try to,” Penny promised, mounting Bones. “But if we do it will be by train.”

“I got a feeling I ain’t goin’ to be here much longer,” Mrs. Lear said sadly.

“Don’t worry about the deed,” Penny tried to cheer her. “Even if Mrs. Burmaster should have it, she may be afraid to try to make trouble for you.”

“It ain’t just that biddy I’m worried about. It’s somethin’ deeper.” Mrs. Lear’s clear gaze swept toward the blue-rimmed hills.

Penny and Louise waited for her to go on. After a moment she did.

“Seen a rain crow a settin’ on the fence this morning. There’ll be rain an’ a lot of it. Maybe the dam will hold, an’ again, maybe it won’t.”

“Shouldn’t you move to the hills?” Penny asked anxiously.

Mrs. Lear’s answer was a tight smile, hard as granite.

“Nothin’ on Earth kin move me off this land. Nothin’. If the flood takes my house it’ll take me with it!”

The old lady extended a bony hand and gravely bade each of the girls goodbye.

Penny and Louise rode their horses to the curve of the road and then looked back. Mrs. Lear stood by the gate for all the world like a statue of bronze. They waved a fast farewell but she did not appear to see. Her eyes were raised to the misty hills and she stood thus until the trees blotted her from view.

CHAPTER 13

RAIN

“Somehow I can’t get Old Mrs. Lear out of my mind, Lou. I keep wondering what happened at Red Valley after we left.”

Penny sprawled on the davenport of the Parker home, one blue wedge draped over its rolling upholstered arm. Her chum, Louise, had curled herself kitten fashion in a chair across the room.

A full week now had elapsed since the two girls had returned to Riverview from Red Valley. During that time it had rained nearly every day. Even now, a misty drizzle kept the girls indoors.

“Wonder if it’s raining at Red Valley?” Penny mused.