The Slipper Point Mystery (novella)/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I
THE ENCOUNTER
She sat on the prow of a beached rowboat, digging her bare toes in the sand.
There were many other rowboats drawn up on the shore, as well as a number of canoes and some sail-boats were anchored farther out. Also there was the pavilion and a long flight of wide wooden steps leading to it, for this was Carter's Landing, the only place on lovely little Manituck River where pleasure-boats could be hired. Down on the sand was a signboard which said:
CHILDREN MUST NOT PLAY IN THE BOATS
Nevertheless, she sat on the prow of one, this girl of fourteen, digging her bare toes aimlessly in the sand. She wore a blue skirt and a soiled middy-blouse, and had dark brown eyes and thick auburn hair, hanging down in a rope-like braid. Her face was freckled, and apart from her eyes and hair she was not pretty. By her side a tiny child of about three sat industriously sucking her thumb and staring contentedly out over the water.
"Stop sucking your thumb, Genevieve!" suddenly commanded the older girl. Whereupon the child hastily removed the offending member from her mouth.
Presently, from around the bend in the river, a red canoe shot into sight, paddled vigorously by a girl of fourteen or fifteen clad in a dazzlingly white and distinctly up-to-date Russian-blouse suit, her curly golden hair surmounted by a smart "tam." The girl of the bare toes eyed her speculatively, and unerringly placed her as a guest of "The Bluffs," the one fashionable and exclusive hotel on the river.
She beached the canoe skilfully, not three feet away from the occupied rowboat, and ran up the steps to the pavilion. In two minutes, however, she was back again, a box of expensive candy in her hand. But in front of the occupied rowboat she stopped, drawn, perhaps, by the need of companionship on this beautiful, but solitary, afternoon in early June.
"Have some?" she queried, proffering the open box of candy. The barefooted girl's eyes sparkled.
"Why—yes, thanks!" she hesitated, gingerly helping herself to a small bit. "You 're awfully kind."
"Oh, take a lot!" cried the girl in white, emptying a third of the box into the other's lap. "And give some to the baby. I'm awfully lonesome up there at that old hotel. Mother is n't very well, and likes to lie down a lot, and I just don't know what to do with myself. Won't you tell me your name?"
"Oh. I'm Sally—Sally Carter. It's a horrid name, is n't it? But my little sister's is pretty—Genevieve. Dad owns this landing, and that was my mother up at the candy counter. What's your name?"
"Doris Craig," replied the girl in white. "And I believe you 're as lonely as I am. or you would n't be sitting here all by yourselves—you and Genevieve. Won't you come and take a paddle in my canoe? We could put the baby in the middle. And you could tell me about the nice places on this river. I only came a day or two ago. Will you?"
The barefooted girl flushed deeply, in mingled delight and embarrassment. This was a new departure for a guest of "The Bluffs," none of whom had ever so much as deigned to notice her existence before. She could scarcely believe her ears. And she began to wish madly that she had put on a clean blouse and her shoes and stockings that afternoon.
"Why—why, I'd like it first rate." she faltered. "But we can't go in the canoe. It's too dangerous for Genevieve. But we could take old '45' if you like. It's a rowboat, and it's heavy, but Dad lets me use it in the off season sometimes."
Doris assented gladly to this change, and the three were soon shooting out into the stream, under the impetus of Sally's short, powerful, native strokes. A slight shyness held them silent for a time; but with the easy freemasonry of fourteen, they were soon busy exchanging the girlish details of their lives in home and school, work and recreation, while overhead the fish-hawks swooped and plunged, and from the shore was wafted the warm scent of the pines and the song of a robin, distantly sweet.
Presently Doris was drawn from personal details to a genuine admiration of the scene about her.
"This is a lovely place," she sighed ecstatically, cuddling Genevieve close to her on the stern seat. "I never in my life saw a prettier river. I suppose you know it all like a book, don't you, Sally? And I have n't seen anything more of it than this part right around the hotel and the Landing."
"Yes," acknowledged her companion. "We 've explored every inch of this river, Genevieve and I, 'cause we 've so little else to do. And I reckon we know something about one part of it, at least, that the oldest inhabitant here does n't know!" She made the latter statement so meaningly that Doris's ready curiosity was fired at once.
"Oh, what have you found out, Sally? Can't you tell me? I will never tell a soul."
But the acquaintance was evidently too new, and the secret too precious for the other to impart just yet. She only shook her head and replied:
"No, honestly, I somehow can't. It's Genevieve's secret and mine, and we 've promised we'd never tell a soul. Have n't we, Genevieve?" The baby gravely nodded, and Sally headed her boat for the wagon-bridge that crossed the upper part of the river. And Doris, too well bred to say another word on the subject, was nevertheless transformed thereby into a seething caldron of excitement and curiosity.
Sally headed the boat for the draw in the bridge, and in another few moments they had passed from the quiet, well-kept, bungalow-strewn shores of the lower river to the wild, tawny, uninhabited beauty of the upper. The change was very marked, and the wagon-bridge seemed to be the dividing line.
"How different the river is up here," remarked Doris. "Not a house nor a bungalow nor even a fisherman's shack in sight. Do you know, it made me think, when I passed under that bridge, of a part in 'The Ancient Mariner' that Father used to read me asleep to, every night:
"We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea."
Sally suddenly shipped her oars and stared amazedly into her companion's face.
"Do you know that poem?" she exclaimed incredulously. "Well, you 're the first person I ever met that did. We have it home in a big, book on the parlor table. It has lovely pictures in by a man named Doré! (She pronounced it Door'!) It was one of my mother's wedding-presents, but I don't believe another soul in our house ever read it but Genevieve and me. I love it, and Genevieve likes to look at the pictures. I know it all by heart."
"So do I—almost," echoed Doris, marveling that this ignorant little village-girl should be so well acquainted with her own favorite. And straightway they began comparing notes on other passages in the famous poem. The knowledge seemed to establish a bond between them. It drew Doris closer to this queer new companion, but it did even more for Sally. It made her feel that here she had found a friend she could instinctively trust, and in her heart she cast away all barriers between them.
"Listen, Doris." she said suddenly, after a long silence. "I'm going to tell you my secret!" And, at Doris's sudden start of astonishment, she went on:
"Yes, I 've made up my mind. To begin with, you never asked me again, after I said I could n't. Most girls would have teased me to pieces and then gone straight off and told it to some one else, if I'd been such a fool as to give in. I know you won't. Then, I felt somehow, first, that there was—such a big difference between us—well, that we just could n't be real friends. But now I don't feel that way about it. Do you understand?"
Doris nodded comprehendingly. "It's dear of you to do it, and I 'll just keep the secret as faithfully as you," was all she answered. But with that answer Sally seemed amply content.
"We 're coming to it in a moment," she announced. "Do you see that point ahead?"
Doris looked, and beheld a jut of land projecting several hundred feet into the tide, its end terminating in a long, golden sand-bar. Toward the shore, the land gently ascended in a pretty slope, crowned with velvety pines and cedars. The conformation of bar, slope, and trees gave the land a curious shape.
"They call that 'Slipper Point,' around here," Sally went on, "and—the secret is there!"
They beached the boat on the sand-bar and scrambled out, Doris' heart beating high with the sense of mysterious adventure, and Sally almost as much excited. Only Genevieve appeared to view the excursion with calmness.
Sally grasped her small sister's hand and led the way, Doris following closely in the rear. Along the tiny strip of beach on the far side of the point, where the river ate into the shore in a great sweeping cove, they turned their steps. After trudging along in this way for nearly a quarter of a mile, Sally suddenly struck up into the woods through a deep little ravine. It was a wild scramble through the dense underbrush and over the boughs of fallen pine-trees. Sally and Genevieve, more accustomed to the journey, managed to keep well ahead of Doris, who was scratching her hands freely and doing ruinous damage to her clothes, plunging through the thorny tangle. At last the two, who were a distance of not more than fifty feet ahead of her, halted, and Sally called out:
"Now stand where you are, turn your back to us and count ten—slowly! Don't turn round and look till you 've finished counting."
Doris obediently turned her back, and slowly and deliberately counted ten. Then she turned about again to face them.
To her complete amazement, there was not a trace of them to be seen!
Thinking they had merely slipped down and hidden in the undergrowth, to tease her, she scrambled to the spot where they had stood. But they were not there. She had, moreover, heard no sound of their progress, no snapping, cracking, or breaking of branches, no swish of trailing through the vines and high grass. They could not have advanced twenty feet in any direction in the short time she had been looking away from them. Of both these facts she was certain. Yet they had disappeared as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed them. Where, in the name of all mystery, could they be?
Doris stood and studied the situation for several moments. But as they were plainly nowhere in her vicinity, she presently concluded she must have been mistaken in thinking they had not had time to get farther away.
So she determined to extend her search, and, as she pursued her difficult quest, she became constantly more involved in the thick undergrowth, and more scratched and disheveled every moment, till at length she stood at the top of the bluff. From this point she could see in every direction, but not a vestige of Sally and Genevieve appeared. More bewildered than ever, Doris clambered back to the spot where she had last seen them. And as there was plainly now no other course, she stood where she was and called aloud:
"Sally! Sal-ly! I give it up. Where in the world are you?"
There was a low, chuckling laugh, directly behind her, and whirling about, she beheld Sally's laughing face peeping out from an aperture in the tangled growth that she was positive she had not noticed there before.
"Come right in!" cried Sally, "and I won't keep it a secret any longer. Did you guess it was anything like this?"
She pushed a portion of the undergrowth back a little farther, and Doris scrambled in through the opening. No sooner was she within than Sally closed the opening with a swift motion, and they were all suddenly submerged in inky darkness.
"Wait a moment," she commanded, "and I 'll make a light."
Doris heard her fumbling for something, then the scratch of a match and the flare of a lighted candle.
With an indrawn breath of wordless wonder, Doris looked about her. "Why, it's a room!" she gasped, "a little room all made right in this hillside. How did it ever come here? How did you ever find it?"
It was, indeed, the rude semblance of a room. About nine feet square and seven high, its walls, floor, and ceiling were finished in rough planking of some kind of timber, now covered in many places with mold and fungus growths. Across one end was a low wooden structure, evidently meant for a bed, with what had once been a straw mattress on it. There was, likewise, a rudely constructed chair, and a small table on which were the rusted remains of a tin platter, a knife and spoon. There was also a metal candlestick, in which was the candle recently lit by Sally. It was a strange, weird little scene in the dim candle-light, and for a time Doris could make nothing of its riddle.
"What is it? What does it all mean, Sally?" she exclaimed, gazing about her with awe-struck eyes.
"I don't know much more about it than you do," Sally averred; "but I 've done some guessing!" she ended significantly.
"But how did you ever come to discover it?" cried Doris, off on another tack. "I could have searched Slipper Point for years and never have come across this."
"Well, it was just an accident," Sally admitted. "You see, Genevieve and I have n't much to do most of the time but roam around by ourselves, so we 've managed to poke into most of the places along the shore, the whole length of this river, one time and another. It was last fall when we discovered this. We'd climbed down here one day, just poking around looking for beech-plums and things, and right about here I caught my foot in a vine and went down on my face right into that lot of vines and things. I threw out my hands to catch myself, and instead of coming against the sand and dirt, as I'd expected, something gave way, and, when I looked, there was nothing at all there but a hole.
"Of course, I poked away at it some more, and found that there was a layer of planking back of the sand. That seemed mighty odd, so I pushed the vines away and banged some more at the opening, and it suddenly gave way. because the boards were so old, I guess, and I found this!"
Doris sighed ecstatically. "What a perfectly glorious adventure! And what did you do then?"
"Well," went on Sally, simply, "although I could n't make very much out of what it all was, I decided that we'd keep it for our secret, Genevieve and I, and we would n't let another soul know about it. So we pulled the vines and things over the opening the best we could; and we came up next day and brought some boards and a hammer and nails—and a candle. Then I fixed up the broken boards of this opening,—you see it works like a door, only the outside is covered with vines and things so you'd never see it,—and I got an old padlock from Dad's boat-house, and I screwed it on the outside so's I could lock it up, besides, and covered the padlock with vines and sand. Nobody'd ever dream there was such a place here, and I guess nobody ever has, either. That's my secret."
"But, Sally!" exclaimed Doris, "how did it ever come here to begin with? Who made it? It must have some sort of history."
"There you 've got me!" answered Sally.
"Some one must have stayed here," mused Doris, half to herself. "And what's more, they must have hidden here, or why should they have taken such trouble to keep it from being discovered?"
"Yes, they 've hidden here, right enough," agreed Sally. "It's the best hiding-place any one ever had, I should say. But the question is, what did they hide here for?"
"And also," added Doris, "if they were hiding, how could they make such a room as this, all finished with wooden walls, without being seen doing it? Where could they have got the planks?"
"Do you know what that timber is?" asked Sally.
"Why, of course not," laughed Doris, "how should I?"
"Well, I do," said her companion. "I know something about lumber, because Dad builds boats and he's shown me. I scratched the mold off one place,—here it is,—and I discovered that this planking is real, seasoned oak, such as they build the best ships of. And do you know where I think it came from? Some wrecked vessel down on the beach. There's plenty of them cast up, off and on, and always have been."
"But gracious!" cried Doris, "how did it get here?"
"Don't ask me," replied Sally. "The beach is miles away."
They stood for some moments in silence, each striving to piece together, from the meager facts they saw about them, the story of the strange little retreat.
At last Doris spoke.
"Sally," she asked, "was this all you found here? Was there absolutely nothing else?"
Sally started, as if surprised at the question, and hesitated a moment. "No," she acknowledged finally. "There was something else. I was n't going to tell you right away, but I might as well now. I found this under this the mattress of the bed."
She went over to the straw pallet, lifted it, searched a moment, and, turning, placed something in Doris's hands.