Nancy Brandon’s Mystery

Nancy Brandon’s Mystery

By LILLIAN GARIS

Author of “NANCY BRANDON”

WHITMAN PUBLISHING CO. RACINE, WISCONSIN

Copyright, MCMXXV, by MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY Springfield, Massachusetts

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America

CHAPTER I JUST A LITTLE LOVE

They both were carefully folding garments—Nancy sort of caressed the few dainty little silk things while her mother placed tissue paper between the folds of her tan tailored skirt, and then laid it gently in the steamer trunk.

“I can’t help feeling a little guilty, Nancy dear,” she murmured. “To go all the way over there without my darling daughter.” The next garment was laid down, and two loving eyes encompassed the girlish figure before her.

“You know I wouldn’t go, anyway,” Nancy bravely answered. “I’m going to save my trip to Europe, until—until—later,” she faltered.

2 “You shall have it,” declared her mother firmly, “and only the importance of this trip to my business—”

“Of course I know that, Mums,” and Nancy forgot the packing long enough to fold two prompt arms about her mother’s neck. “You’ll come back so wise with all your foreign cataloging, that you’ll be made chief of the reference department. Then I’ll go to college—maybe; although I would so much rather go to art school.”

The young mother smiled indulgently. “College will not interfere with your art ambitions, dear,” she explained. “But there’s time enough to decide all that. What’s worrying me now, is leaving you for this long, unknown summer.”

“That’s just it,” Nancy hurried to add. “It is unknown. It seems to me everything happens in summer. Winter is just one school-day after another, but summer! What can’t happen in summer?”

Dancing around with a wild pretense of gaiety, Nancy was dropping this article and3 picking up that, in her efforts to assist with the European packing; but even the most uninformed stranger would easily have guessed that the impending separation was disquieting, if not actually alarming to her, as well as to her mother.

Mrs. Brandon, Nancy’s mother, was being sent abroad in the interest of an educational quest, being carried on by the library which employed her; and besides Nancy there was Ted. Ted the small brother, so important and so loving a member of the little group. But summer for a boy like Ted merely meant the selection of the best camp, with the most trustworthy counsellor and the best established reputation. That, with his little trunk, his brown suits and his endless wood’s-tools, made up Ted’s schedule and outfit, without a possible flaw in the simple arrangements.

Not that he didn’t sniffle, as Nancy whispered to Miss Manners, because he did, every single time he looked at the last picture he, Nancy, and his mother stood against the old tree for, while Manny snapped it.4 More than that, Nancy had seen him take Nero, his dog, down to the pond twice in one day, the day before he left for camp, although Nero could not have needed two baths, with soap and a rub down, in one day.

But Ted was gone now, and there remained but one more night and two hours of the next day before Mrs. Brandon also should be gone.

The thought was appalling. Gone for two whole months while Nancy would be visiting her rich but unknown cousin Rosalind.

The day before any important event is usually a time of anxiety or of joyous expectation, for the joy, or even the fear of anticipation, is a well known preliminary condition. So it was this which Nancy and her mother were experiencing.

The daughter was by no means an unusual girl, for all girls are remarkable in their own peculiar way. Nancy was dark, her eyes having the same tint as her hair—when one regarded their mere color, but looking into them or having Nancy throw out their full powers upon another, gave the quiet little5 pools such glints and flashes, that their color scheme became quite secondary in actual valuation. Laughter seemed to wait in one corner while concern was hidden just opposite, for Nancy Brandon was a girl of many moods, original to the point of recklessness, defiant of detail where that might interfere with some new and novel idea, but always sincere.

It was this last saving quality that endeared Nancy to her many friends, for who can resist a perfectly honest girl, unselfish, and unspoiled? Her prettiness was a matter of peculiar complement, for being tall she was correspondingly thin and supple, being dark she had a lovely olive skin with little patches of rose color, and her hair—well, her hair had been long, curly, and her mother’s pride, but Nancy was now determined to have it bobbed—some day soon!

“It is not only old fashioned,” she had argued with her mother, “but barbaric. American girls are not going to be ape-ish any longer. You’ll see.”

To which the mother had listened reasonably6 and had given Nancy permission to get her hair cut if she chose—after she reached the summer home of her cousin Rosalind. This qualification of the much argued plan was so fixed because Rosalind had wonderful hair and, said Mrs. Brandon, Nancy might not like to be without any, or much, in contrast.

“I suppose it will be queer in the big house,” Nancy interposed without need of elucidation. “Big houses always are queer and—spooky.”

Mrs. Brandon laughed lightly at that. “I’m glad you’re not timid, Nance,” she said, “for the old place must seem rather uncanny by this time. But it was beautiful, very beautiful when your Aunt Katherine lived. Of course, Aunt Betty is so much younger—”

“And a step-wife to Uncle Fred,” jerked Nancy. “I always think that step-wives are up-ish and put on a lot of airs. I’m sure Rosalind thinks so too.”

“You mean second wife to Uncle Fred and stepmother to Rosalind,” corrected Mrs. Brandon. “Rosa is just about the age to be7 rebellious—”

“And she’s so—awfully fat.”

All this was merely the going over of well known details, concerning the big house and its occupants, forming the background of Nancy’s prospective summer. For she was to visit Rosalind Fernell at Fernlode, in the New Hampshire mountains, and Rosalind was best known as being “awfully fat.” True, she was also step-daughter to Mrs. Frederic Fernell, the lovely little and very young wife of Mr. Fernell of the famous woolen mill company. But to Nancy, Rosalind seemed unfortunate because of both these conditions; being fat and being a step-daughter were inescapable hardships, thought she.

Letter after letter had poured out Rosalind’s miseries, in fact it was because her troubles were presented by the cousin as being really acute, that Mrs. Brandon hesitated long before deciding to let Nancy visit her. But the big hearted Uncle Frederic, in his letters pointed out what appeared to be the real truth of the situation, namely: that Rosalind8 was rather spoiled from being alone so much, and, of course, Betty, his young wife, couldn’t possibly make a companion of a little spoiled child, so—

“I’m sure to love Rosalind,” Nancy again reflected, “because she seems so frank and honest. Being fat isn’t a crime. She can’t help that.” This decision, merely a repetition of her usual conclusion, was being reached as a sequel to Uncle Frederic’s last letter.

“Mother,” Nancy began, bravely attempting to banish the loneliness that even now seemed to foreshadow herself and her charming young mother, “do tell me once more, just once more, about Orilla. Is she Rosalind’s cousin?”

“No. Orilla is really the daughter of a nurse who was with Uncle Fred’s first wife, your Aunt Katherine, during her long illness. Orilla lived at Fernlode, and naturally felt it should always be her home. In fact, she even felt that she should have been the proverbial Cinderella, but there was no such idea in the minds of Uncle Fred or Aunt Katherine.9 Mrs. Rigney, Orilla’s mother, had been very generously paid for her services, and Orilla’s education was also provided for; but the girl seems to hold a bitter grudge against your new Aunt Betty—quite as if uncle Fred’s marriage to her had cut off Orilla’s hopes, you know.”

“Oh, yes,” murmured Nancy. “I can understand that. But I don’t see why Rosa bothers with her.”

“She is, I believe, a rather persistent young lady and it is she who bothers Rosa. However, dear, don’t you worry about that angle of Uncle Fred’s affairs. Just make up your mind to have a wonderful time and so soothe my conscience for leaving you.”

Followed moments, minutes, little hours of tender endearments. The mother cautioning, telling, advising, reminding Nancy of so many and such various possibilities; the daughter questioning—just that, and only with the loving look from the soft, dark eyes, the appeal from her trembling lips, the protection begged by her eager young arms; for Nancy was now quite conscious of the fact10 that her mother, the great, the wonderful fortress against every possible and every impossible evil, was about to be withdrawn from her life for a time. But time didn’t seem to matter. Two months or two years; it was just the fact, the unavoidable disaster that confronted her.

“Your hat box holds as much as a suitcase,” said Nancy, laying very tenderly into the round, black box, one more pair of nice, white silk stockings, Nancy’s extra gift. “Be sure to wear your black and white felt on the steamer, Mums. You look stunning in that hat.”

“All right, sweet-heart, I’ll remember,” promised the mother, who herself was busy with Nancy’s things. “I’m glad your trunk goes today. Somehow it is easier to attend to mine—”

“Oh, yes. Hum-m-m-hum. You want me out of the way first. But, really, I think it cheating not to let me see you off,” grumbled Nancy in pretty pretense.

“Now, you know, dear—”

11 “’Course I do. I’m just teasing you, Mumsey. I wouldn’t really want to get mixed up with your party. They might sweep me away and put goggles on me, to match me up with the library high-brow folks. When a girl’s mother is made a librarian delegate, I suppose,” sighed Nancy affectedly, “she ought to wear goggles anyway.”

“Don’t go making fun of my—peers,” cautioned Mrs. Brandon in the same bantering manner. “I tell you, my dear, if it were not for the library we wouldn’t any of us be taking a vacation. There’s the postman now. And I can see Ted’s postcard coming!”

“Four of them!” shouted Nancy, who had already made hold the bright pictured messages. “Why four, all at once?”

“Laid over,” laconically answered the postman. “Those camps let their mail pile up, I’ll tell you.”

But Nancy was deciphering the boy’s scrawl which, when classed as handwriting, was never model, but now, classed as his first message home from his first week at camp,12 amounted to perfectly ideal “broad-casting.”

They read and re-read, Nancy finding little secret words sticking on the canoe sails and peeping out of, what might have been a cloudburst, if the postcard had not carried with it the other explanation. This read “Beautiful Lake Tuketo by Moonlight” and it was the moonlight effect that was so apt to be misleading.

“He’s all right, at any rate,” remarked the mother, thus betraying her anxieties. “And he seems to be having a good time,” she sighed relievedly.

“Trust Ted for that,” Nancy reminded her. “But what an awful looking lot of boys! Just see my card! They look like a comedy parade.”

“Why Nancy! They’re fine looking little chaps, I’m sure,” defended Mrs. Brandon. “But I suppose that picture was taken to show the raising of Old Glory, not as a beauty contest illustration.”

“’S’cuse me,” murmured Nancy. “Of course, they’re—darlings, every one of them,13 but I wouldn’t swap our Ted for—the whole bunch!”

“Nancy—Brandon!!”

“Yes-sum!” confessed Nancy, glorifying in her pretended ungrammatic freedom.

CHAPTER II AN INCIDENTAL EXPLOSION

Even the most difficult tasks are finally accomplished, and now Nancy was actually riding towards Boston. The details of closing up their little home had been rather confusing, especially as each member of the small family was starting out in a different direction, but it was all done at last, and soon Nancy would cross Boston and take the Maine line out toward New Hampshire.

It seemed so unnecessary for any one to meet her at the South Station and taxi with her over to the North Station, but there was Miss Newton, a friend who had visited the Brandons and who lived almost in Boston. With her, Nancy’s mother had arranged, both for crossing the big city and having lunch, so that there could be no possible danger in her daughter’s journey. Also, after lunch in the15 upstairs station restaurant, Miss Newton, a lively young woman who seemed just like a girl to Nancy, insisted upon making up a little box of fruit for the train journey.

“Never can tell about these long afternoon rides,” said Miss Newton, when she bought five more blue plums. “They may side-track you and you’ll be glad to have a fruity supper along with you.”

Nancy expressed her gratitude, of course, and as the Boston and Maine afternoon train steamed out, she didn’t feel quite so lonely without her mother, because of Miss Newton’s jolly waving and pleasant little send-off.

The train was crowded. Many mothers and children seemed to have been on shopping tours. Naturally Nancy was concerned with the prospect before her, for since Rosalind’s letters were so effusively pre-welcoming and so hysterically anxious about what she termed, “the troubles and trials at Fernlode,” Nancy could form no opinion of the strange household. She knew she was going to be shy of that important new, stylish, beautiful Aunt16 Betty, for the reputation she had obtained was enough to strike awe into the heart of any girl visitor. Of Uncle Frederic she knew positively that she just loved him, for he had visited her own home late last fall, and he was “a king” as Ted expressed it. Rosalind had been away at boarding school all the time, it seemed to Nancy, so the young cousins had never met, for even Rosalind’s vacations had been usually spent abroad. This year, however, she had insisted upon remaining at home, although her father and step-mother were to sail shortly.

But now Nancy’s train sped on, and the flying landscape, though novel after the big factories and the bridges were passed, held small interest for the young summer tourist. She noticed that a woman with two small boys had bought those silly little boxes of ice-cream with the foolish tin spoons, and their delight in lapping up the stuff was rather amusing. It was funny, too, to see the people spill water cups along the aisle, and when a very stout man dozed off, and let his bald17 head tap a lady on her bead-bedecked shoulder, Nancy indulged in an audible titter while the ice-cream boys shouted loud enough to wake up the indecorous gentleman.

Such trifling incidents helped to while away the time, and after the big mill dam was passed, which according to the timetable indicated the state line of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, with somehow touching on a corner of Maine, then Nancy knew the journey was almost over.

The afternoon was cool and pleasant, for early June was still behaving beautifully, and Nancy was not sorry that she had taken her mother’s advice and worn her school suit of blue serge.

“I suppose,” she ruminated, “Rosalind’s clothes will be gor-gee-ous.” This visioned her own limited outfit. “But being so fat it must be hard getting clothes. They all have to be made to order, of course.”

It was at this juncture that the little old-fashioned woman, in the seat opposite Nancy, spread her ginghamed self out in the aisle, in18 order to cope more freely with the over-crowded bag she was struggling to close. Her efforts were so violent, and her groans so audible, that everybody around took frank notice of her. First, she would get between the two seats, backing to that in front, and trudge away at the helpless, hopeless carry-all. Then, she would put the bag on the floor and work from the aisle. Finally, she literally threw up her hands and looked comically at Nancy.

“Ain’t it the mischief, sissy?” she said suddenly. “I got to get off with that bag bulged wide open.”

Nancy laughed outright. “Sissy” was such an old-fashioned name to be called. Then she looked critically at the recalcitrant bag.

“Maybe I could do it,” she suggested, although she instinctively felt like calling the car man to help. Yet the funny little country woman, with her checked gingham dress, her bronzed skin and her perfectly useless hat, that merely rested on the top of her frowsy head, was smiling so friendly, that Nancy felt19 impelled to offer personal aid.

So she stepped over and tackled the bag. It was too full, much too full, of course, and the articles in it were the non-crushable kind, hard and firm. Surely the biggest opponent to the catch and its clasp meeting was a bottle, for it bulged out in one place as fast as Nancy tried to push it in at another.

“I’m afraid I can’t close it,” Nancy admitted reluctantly. “Couldn’t you take anything out?”

The woman pulled her face into such funny crinkles, it looked as if she was winking all over it. Then she made queer noises, but they could not be called words, and at last a man who had been watching the performance, over his reading glasses, dropped his paper and silently offered his services.

He was a very dignified gentleman, and he readily acknowledged Nancy’s presence, although he did not directly address her. The little woman was being regarded as very much out of order, and truth to tell she was very generally disturbing the peace in that end of20 the car.

But now the man, with his strong hands and white shirt-cuffs, undertook to conquer the rebel bag. He would plainly have no nonsense, would make short work of it, for his face was set with a look of active determination.

Once, twice, he tried to snap it shut. Then—there was something like an explosion!

Splash! A perfect fountain of red liquid shot straight up in the air!

“Oh, mercy!” yelled the owner of the bag. “There goes Martha’s grape juice!”

And go it did, apparently as far and farther than even good home-made grape juice is supposed to travel, for it covered the face and shirt front of the determined man, it all but shampooed the blonde head in the next seat front, it managed, somehow, to include Nancy in its area, for across the aisle shot a thin but virulent little stream, and while one party was trying to dodge it another would fall into its furious path.

“A bomb! A bomb!” yelled one of the ice21 cream boys joyfully.

“Maybe it’s a bandit’s hold-up,” yelped the other boy, hopefully.

“It’s my lovely grape juice and it’s working—” moaned the woman in the gingham dress. But what she meant by “working” was not what the spectators were thinking of. She meant effervescing, while they simply saw liquid fireworks shooting around the car.

It was all over in a few moments, but the well intentioned man could not erase the stains from his expansive shirt front—it was hard enough to get the grape juice out of his eyes.

The blonde woman, whose bobbed head had been caught in the shower, seemed the one most injured, and she took no trouble to restrain her indignation!

“The idea! Carrying that stuff around!” she argued. “Just imagine! Black and blue grape juice,” and she swabbed her head frantically with all the handkerchiefs she could resurrect from pockets and hand bags. Blonde hair dyed wine color did look odd.

22 “I’m awfully sorry,” the gingham woman admitted. “It was just a present from my cousin Martha—”