THE MYSTERY HUNTERS AT THE HAUNTED LODGE

BY CAPWELL WYCKOFF

THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY Akron, Ohio New York

Copyright, MCMXXXIV The Saalfield Publishing Company Printed in the United States of America

CHAPTER I The Mystery Hunters

The High School at Cloverfield was quiet as the hands of the clock approached the three-o’clock hour. Then a gong pealed out and the building became a very beehive of sound. The thump of many feet and the hum of voices was heard. Healthy, wholesome young boys and girls poured out of the side doors and swarmed over the campus. Overcoats were pulled tighter as the nip of the keen Vermont air was encountered.

Two boys had come out together, and they paused to wait for two others. The boy with the clean-cut, manly face and the sparkling eyes was Barry Garrison, an outstanding boy in the Cloverfield High School. He had been the right halfback on the school team this year and had helped to lead it to a glorious record of no defeats and first place on the Conference list. He was an all-around athlete and stood well in his senior-year studies. Although Barry Garrison would have turned the idea aside with a good-natured laugh, he was the most popular boy in the high school.

His lifelong chum was Kent Marple. Kent’s father owned the local hotel, and the boy had enjoyed many advantages in life. He and Barry had been friends ever since they had been small boys. Young Marple was broader than Barry, with a heavy shock of black hair and a chin that was a trifle determined. He had played fullback on the football team during the past season.

These two boys did not seem to be in any hurry. Barry leaned against a maple tree and whistled softly, while Kent glanced from one side door of the school to the other.

“The twins must have been kept in,” Barry observed.

“Maybe they are clapping erasers for the teacher,” Kent grinned.

“If they are, they’ll clap ’em clean,” Barry laughed. “The Ford twins always finish what they start. Here they come now.”

Two boys came springing down the steps of the school building and looked around for Barry and Kent. When they had seen their particular friends, one of them waved, and then both boys dashed across the hard ground toward the boys under the trees. At first glance there was little to distinguish between Mac and Tim Ford. They were both the same height and build, stocky young fellows who had made splendid ends on the team. But at closer range some differences were apparent. Mac was sandy-haired, and Tim was gifted with a light brown mass of hair that sometimes managed to stay combed. Both boys had attractive, lively countenances and were well liked by everyone in the small town. They were often the leaders in the fun and could always be counted on to join in any kind of a lark. With Kent and Barry, they made up a quartet that was widely known.

Mac Ford beat his brother to the maple tree by a yard. “Thought we never would get out,” he panted. “Took Tim’s advice in a problem, and it was wrong. Had to do it over.”

“The trouble is that you didn’t take my advice,” Tim denied. “I tried to show you how to work it, but——”

“Never mind,” Barry interposed, thrusting his hands deep into his sweater pockets. “Let’s move along. It’s cold today.”

“It ought to be,” Kent observed. “Christmas is almost here.”

Two high-school boys and a girl passed them and nodded and smiled. “There they go,” the girl cried. “The mystery hunters!”

“Four Sherlocks, the locker-room detectives!” chimed in one of the boys. When this trio had passed on, the four chums looked at one another.

“They seem to keep calling us the mystery hunters,” Barry smiled.

“Just because we found out who was stealing things out of the lockers,” grunted Tim. “That wasn’t such a big job.”

“Anybody could have done it, if he had taken the trouble to,” Kent said.

“The biggest surprise about the whole thing was the fact that a boy like Carter Wolf was doing it,” Mac put in.

Proceeding slowly along the sidewalk toward home, the four boys once more discussed the recent events which had resulted in earning the name of “mystery hunters.” For a long time someone had been stealing athletic supplies and even rings and watches from the gymnasium locker room. Persistent efforts had been made to trap the thief, but without success. Finally the four boys had entered the case, chiefly because a birthday ring of Mac’s had been among the things taken. But for a long time they had not made any progress. The prowler seemed to know exactly what they were about. They even tried sleeping in the locker room, but even this produced no results. Finally they decided on strategy and rigged up a camera. This was placed in another room, at a place in the wall where a single brick had been knocked out. The locker doors were hooked up in such a way that when one of them was opened, the camera would operate.

They got immediate results with this. And on the day they took the camera down, a certain wealthy boy named Carter Wolf left school. The negative, when developed, showed that Carter Wolf was the guilty one. His startled face was turned toward the camera, whose click he had heard, and one hand was plainly seen opening a locker door. At first he denied the charges, but finally he had made good the losses in one way or another. Mac was lucky enough to get his ring back, but others found that their property had been sold to pay gambling debts that Wolf had contracted. Only the influence and pleading of his father had saved the boy from the punishment he richly deserved. For the time being he had disappeared from the community, but not until he had left a threat behind him.

“I’ll even scores with that Barry Garrison bunch,” he had promised.

With the identification of the mysterious sneak thief a wave of relief had swept over Cloverfield High School. The teachers and students were grateful to the four boys whose persistence had finally caught the prowler. The good-natured title of “mystery hunters” had been given them, and the boys knew that under it lay a genuine admiration for the piece of work that they had done.

“When you figure it all out,” Kent declared, as they stopped a moment before the brownstone house in which Barry lived, “there wasn’t much to it. Maybe there would be a different story if we ever ran up against a real mystery.”

“Mysteries are few and far between,” Tim said. “Let’s talk about something more vital. We’ll have about ten days of vacation at Christmas time. What’ll we do with it?”

“Eat popcorn and candy off the Christmas tree,” Mac grinned.

“Our tree won’t have enough on to keep us eating very long,” Tim answered. “Shall we do a little winter camping?”

“Either that or hunt some,” Barry agreed. “Let’s give it some thought in the next few days.”

The other boys went on down the street, while Barry turned in at the door of the brownstone house. Kent lived two doors beyond, and the twins lived around the corner in a big frame house. The Fords were not among the wealthiest people in the town, although Mr. Ford did have a fairly good business in dry goods. But they were a fine family, and Kent and Barry had been fond of the two lively boys since grammar-school days.

As Barry entered the hall, his sister Pearl was going up the stairs. In the library to the right of him he could see his father, seated under a lamp, reading a magazine. The rattling of a pan on the stove told him where his mother was.

Pearl was in her first year of high school and had preceded him home by several minutes. She paused a moment on the upper landing to address him.

“Here is the chief of the mystery hunters!” she called cheerfully. “Do you know that everybody is calling you that?”

“Yes, I know it,” he nodded. “I wish they would forget it.”

Mr. Garrison looked up from his magazine. “I need some real mystery hunters right now,” he said. “If you want to take on a real puzzler, come ahead.”

Barry was at once interested. His father was a lawyer and frequently handled important cases. The boy placed his books on a hall table and walked into the library.

“What’s it all about, Dad? What mystery are you talking about?”

Mr. Garrison took off his glasses and wiped his eyes. “I was thinking about that haunted hunting lodge up on Lake Arrowtip,” he said. “But I was only joking when I told you to come ahead. It is a job that will test the brains of an expert detective.”

CHAPTER II The Story of the Haunted Lodge

Barry sat down in one of the big chairs and faced his father. Mr. Garrison had put his magazine aside and was looking thoughtfully at his son.

“A haunted lodge, Dad? Where is it? What haunts it?”

The lawyer laughed. “One question at a time, son! I knew that you would want to know about it as soon as I mentioned that it was haunted, or supposed to be haunted. Because of course it isn’t.”

“Then what makes people say that it is? Tell me something about it, Dad. Where is it located on Lake Arrowtip?”

“Right about the middle of the lake, on a high bluff that commands a magnificent view up and down the big sheet of water. It is the hunting lodge that belongs to Mrs. Morganson, one of my clients. Some years ago she had that fine big lodge built and used to go up there once in a while herself, though she hasn’t been there in late years. You know Lake Arrowtip fairly well, don’t you?”

“Yes, I’ve hiked and camped up there with Kent and the twins. I think I know where that lodge is. Isn’t it a big log house with a porch looking out over the lake, off in the direction of Rake Island?”

“Yes, that is the place. Ever been in it?”

“No, but we’ve passed it in a canoe. There was a party at the lodge at the time. There is another cabin close by, a small log building.”

“Yes, that is the Bronson cabin. It is owned by a retired lawyer friend of mine, and he never uses it any more. It is very close to the lodge.”

“Well, tell me about this mystery, Dad. Do the people around there think the place is haunted?”

“There aren’t very many people around there to think that, but some of our town people won’t go to the place. I suppose you remember that Mrs. Morganson’s nephew disappeared up there over a year ago and has never been found.”

Barry slung one leg over the arm of the chair. “I do remember hearing something about that,” he replied. “Wasn’t he kidnaped and carried off to Canada somewhere?”

“It seemed so,” his father nodded. “There was one letter from Canada, telling his aunt not to worry, that he was being well treated. But no trace of him has ever been discovered, and some splendid detectives have been looking for Felix Morganson. Well, since the time that he disappeared, things haven’t been going well at Bluff Lodge.”

“Is that when the haunting began?” Barry asked.

“A little later than that. You see, Felix Morganson disappeared during a Thanksgiving party at the lodge. There was quite a crowd at the lodge, and they were enjoying a gathering at the time. Along about ten o’clock or so at night Mr. Morganson walked out of the place smoking a cigarette. Several saw him go, but no one asked him where or why he was going. As time went on they missed him, and finally some of the men walked out on the bluff which overlooks the lake, following his footsteps in the light snow that had fallen. Close to the edge of the bluff they found the snow kicked and scuffed up and his cigarette only partially smoked. Then there were long, dragging marks in the snow that seemed to indicate that he had been pulled along down the path to the lake. All trace of him was lost at that point, because the lake was frozen over and the ice was as smooth as glass.”

Barry was absorbed in the story. “No one in the lodge heard anything? No outcry or anything?”

His father shook his head. “No. But that same night a servant, a Frenchman, disappeared. He was a man that had been hired to cook and to wait on the tables, and this man was gone. No one knows whether he had anything to do with it all or not, but he left the lodge about the same time Felix Morganson did. No trace of him was ever found.”

“How long after the disappearance of Mr. Morganson before they heard from him?”

“About a month later. Then a hastily scrawled letter came from a little town in Canada, telling his aunt that he was well and not to worry. He stated that he did not have time to write any more at the moment. Of course the detectives hustled up to that town, but so far have been unable to learn anything or to uncover a single clue.”

“He has been missing well over a year now, hasn’t he?” Barry mused.

“Yes, because Thanksgiving was three weeks ago, and it was at that time that he vanished. The queer part about it all is the fact that no request for a ransom was ever received. Mrs. Morganson is quite wealthy, and a considerable sum could be raised among the friends of Felix. But there has never been any demand.”

“It’s funny.” Barry slumped lower in the chair, his mind busy with the details of the event. “But how about this haunting that you spoke of? That came later, didn’t it?”

“About three months after Felix Morganson disappeared,” Mr. Garrison answered. “Besides going up there herself once in a while, Mrs. Morganson also rents the place out to sportsmen who go up for the winter season to hunt, and to those that go there in the summer to fish. Well, late in January a group of sportsmen went there, and the understanding was that they would stay about three weeks. But at the end of one week they gave it up and took a smaller place down at the tip of the lake. They complained of ghostly rappings, or knocks on the door and no one there when they opened, and they also complained that some of their things had been stolen.”

“Sounds foolish,” Barry said.

“We thought it was, at first. You see, I handle all of Mrs. Morganson’s business, and I had rented the place to these men, who came from Connecticut. We thought for a while that they were just cranky and let it go at that. But two weeks later another party went in, and it was the same thing over again. Added to that, one of the men had an expensive fur coat stolen, and he wanted to bring suit against us. It seems that they heard about the experience of the former party and claimed that we had rented the lodge to them under false pretenses. We had some trouble getting out of that.”

“It must be just some ordinary thief that lives in the woods near there,” Barry ventured.

“If so, he goes around annoying everybody that puts up in the lodge. Later in the year some fishermen took over the place, and they had similar experiences, and, besides all that, they found their fishing boat scuttled one morning, three holes bored in it. Fortunately we had told them the reputation that the place was getting, but they had just laughed at it. They came away mad as hornets. Well, you can see what it is all doing. No one will rent the lodge now, and it had a long list of prospective renters once. The value of it keeps going down, and since we cannot rent or sell it at a decent price, it is standing idle.”

“Does Mrs. Morganson want to sell it?”

“She does now. We have both become so tired of the place and its problem that we would like nothing better than to get it off our hands. There is only one buyer at present, a man named Brand Curry, but he wants it at a price so low that we won’t even discuss it. The man never comes to me, he always goes directly to Mrs. Morganson.”

“But look here, Dad, did you ever have a detective on the case? Ever have any one go up there?”

“Oh, yes. I have had two private investigators spend some time on the case. One of them didn’t find anything or have any kind of an experience. But the other man did. He was a big, chunky fellow named Riley, and he said he could catch anything he went after. Said he would come home dragging the ghost or spook, or whatever it was, by the neck. He remained there two days and then came back and resigned from the case. The first night he was kept busy investigating thumps all over the place, and the second night his shoes and shirt were mysteriously whisked away somehow and he was in a fix because he hadn’t taken any baggage with him. He had to go to Fox Point and outfit himself there, and he had to go down there without shirt or shoes. He didn’t hear anything that night, and all the time he was there he didn’t see anything. He was a disgusted man when he came back here, and it was his opinion that the National Guard should be ordered up there.”

Barry and his father laughed at the plight of the private detective who had been so sure of victory over the haunting presence at Bluff Lodge. “But of course, Dad, you believe that someone is doing all this for a purpose?”

“I can’t see any other explanation,” his father confessed. “But I can’t figure out any reason for it. Why should anyone want to frighten camping parties that way? And who is clever enough to make raps and groans and knocks and yet disappear before anyone can spot him? That lodge stands pretty well out of the trees, and no one could dodge behind some convenient tree trunk after every one of these meaningless pranks. As for the disappearance of Mr. Riley’s shirt and shoes, that isn’t so much of a mystery, after all. The window was open in his room, and anyone could have fished the clothing out. He is lucky that they didn’t steal anything more and put him in a bad position.”

“That is one thing that convinces me that the spook is a clever one,” Barry said. “An amateur or a plain fun maker would have stolen all of his things. This one took just enough to create an air of mystery.”

The kindly face of Mrs. Garrison appeared in the doorway. “Supper is ready,” she smiled. Barry and his father walked out of the room together.

“Dad,” said Barry, “that’s a real mystery. I’d like nothing better than to go up there with some of the boys and nose around a bit. Maybe we could find out something.”

His father smiled and slapped him on the back. “Aren’t you taking that title of ‘mystery hunter’ a little seriously, Barry?”

“Maybe I am, Dad, but you never can tell. I still think our bunch could find out something of value. Just try us and see.”

CHAPTER III Planning an Expedition

Shortly after supper Barry Garrison left the house and crossed the grass in the direction of Kent’s home. But he was saved the trouble of a journey to his chum’s house by the appearance of Kent himself. He came dashing down the walk and joined Barry.

“Going for a walk?” he hailed.

“I’m going down to Sadler’s store and get my ice skates,” Barry replied. “I left them there to be sharpened. Thought you’d like to go along.”

“Glad to,” nodded Kent, falling into step beside him. “I want to do some studying a little later, and, after the supper I ate, I felt the need for a brisk walk. I was going to drop in and see you for a second before going back to the midnight oil.”

“I wanted to see you,” Barry informed him. “I’ve got quite an idea in my head for our winter vacation.”

“What? A hunting trip?”

“Yes, but not hunting animals. Hunting spooks!”

“What?” Kent demanded. “What did you say?”

“I said hunting spooks. Or ghosts or haunts or something. Think we could take a photograph of a rapping spook?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kent growled. “It all sounds goofy to me!”

Barry laughed. “It did to me, when my father was telling me about it. Tune in to the proper station while I tell you something about it.”

“I’m tuned in,” Kent said. “You’ll have to make it a good one, or it will all be static. Let’s hear it.”