Читать книгу Doris Force at Raven Rock - Julia K. Duncan - Страница 3

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Doris Force was hastening down the shaded street toward her home. With bronze curls tossing and deep blue eyes flashing, she was a picture as she waved toward a car which had just pulled up to the curb in front of her home.

“Kitty! Kitty, you dear old thing!”

Doris’s rich soprano voice, raised in excited greeting, was heard by her arriving chum, Kitty Norris.

Turning from the solicitous attentions of a stout youth who was helping her from an automobile, in itself something to look at twice by virtue of its obvious age and gaudy hue, Kitty Norris dashed down the street to meet her friend. The two girls embraced, Doris dropping her precious music roll, the better, as she put it, “to get a good grip on you again, Kitty!”

“I would have been at the station to meet you,” Doris explained, “but my singing teacher did not have a free hour to substitute for mine—and there is no way of telling how long we shall be away in the wild and woolly West. Are you all prepared for our journey? Oh, what a lovely dress, Kitty!” she added admiringly, holding her chum at arm’s length in order to get a better look at her.

The two girls made a picture any artist might admire as they walked toward the house arm in arm, chatting gaily. “Marshmallow” Mallow was no artist, except when it came to composing menus, but he had appreciation enough for an academy of painters as he watched the girls approach, a suitcase in his right fist and a stylish grip-sack in his left.

“I had a real job coaxing Marshmallow to meet you in my place,” Doris laughed as the girls came up to the youth, who had brought Kitty from the station.

“She argued all of two seconds by the clock,” grinned Marshmallow, his chubby face dimpling. “Lead the way, Doris. These bags are heavy. I do believe Kitty has brought an armory of guns to slay redskins with.”

“A little exercise will help you work up an appetite and you won’t have to take your tonic,” Doris said with mock gravity. Even Kitty laughed, for Marshmallow’s ability to eat six full course meals, not including in-between snacks, amounted to pure genius.

Groaning and puffing with vast pretense Marshmallow followed the girls up the flagstone walk to the pleasant house his mother owned, and a part of which she rented to Wardell Force, Doris’s uncle and guardian, for their home.

Before the trio reached the door they were halted by a shout from the street.

A tall, keen-eyed young man, his face bronzed by sun and wind, vaulted the hedge and ran up to join them.

“Hello, everybody! Hello, Kitty! Welcome back to Chilton,” he cried. “Say, but I have great news, Doris!”

“Hello, Dave Chamberlin!” laughed Kitty. “How’s the air these days?”

Dave was an aviation student, already the proud possessor of a private flying license but toiling to amass the experience which would qualify him for a commercial pilot’s certificate. Both girls had been his passengers on flights in borrowed planes which their owners did not hesitate to entrust to the youth, for his skill in the air was as great as Marshmallow’s was with a roast chicken on a plate.

“Great news, Dave?”

Doris prompted the young flyer, who had been grinning wordlessly at her, deep admiration in his eyes.

“Grand and glorious news! It’s a coincidence, and no mistake,” he said, thoughtfully. “You can just cancel those reservations on the train!”

“What’s the matter?” Marshmallow cried, disappointment written all over his face. “Has something turned up so we don’t have to go out West?”

“No, no!” Dave laughed. “But you won’t have to crawl across the continent in any old slow-poke mile-a-minute choo choo! You’re flying!”

“Flying!” chorused the three.

“Yes, ladies and—er, gentleman,” Dave laughed. “Of all the luck! Pete Speary is taking a big tri-motor cabin ship to—guess where! No, don’t guess! To Raven Rock!”

“What has that to do with us?” Marshmallow demanded.

“He’ll take us with him!” Dave began to hop around in motions that were a cross between an Indian war-dance and an Irish jig. “He’s taking me as mechanic, and you all as ballast!”

“Yee-ow!”

Marshmallow dropped the luggage and did a dance of his own that shook the porch.

“What is—is anybody hurt? Why, Kitty! How are you?”

The questions came from a pleasant-faced woman with graying hair who suddenly appeared in the doorway.

“What has happened to Marshall? Did a wasp sting him?”

“Oh, no, Mrs. Mallow,” Doris laughed. “Dave just brought us amazing news. A great big cabin plane is leaving Plainfield for Raven Rock, of all places, in a few days, and we are invited to fly West!”

“Fly—all the 2,000 miles?” Mrs. Mallow exclaimed. “Why, I haven’t even flown a city block in all my life. No, I think I want that life to last considerably longer.”

“Oh, Mother!” Marshmallow howled. “Don’t throw a monkey wrench into the best luck we ever had.”

“I think our trip will be dangerous enough,” Mrs. Mallow said. “A great deal depends on us—at least, on Doris. Why should we take unnecessary risks?”

“Risks!” snorted Marshmallow. “Why, there is—”

“At least we need not discuss it here on the porch,” Mrs. Mallow exclaimed. “Come in, Dave. Kitty, you must be tired and dusty. Marshall will carry your bags to Doris’s room.”

“Wait here and try to convince Mrs. Mallow, Dave,” Doris commanded her friend in a whisper as she led her guest upstairs. “I will be right down.”

Indeed, she was on Marshmallow’s heels a moment later, and the two settled themselves to listen to Dave quoting endless statistics to prove to Mrs. Mallow that flying was far less dangerous than doing ordinary housework.

“I wish you could see the ships rolling in and out of a big airport, Mrs. Mallow,” he said earnestly. “All day long one can see huge transport planes coming in from the Pacific coast, from Canada, from Florida, just like trains.

“There are waiting rooms and crowds of people no more excited than if they were taking the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. Red Caps are putting baggage in the planes and taking it out, men and women and little children land fresh as daisies not even hungry for supper, although they had lunch in a place six hundred miles away!”

“I’m going to take some sandwiches, just the same,” Marshmallow murmured.

At this juncture Kitty entered the room, having refreshed herself after her journey. Although not as strikingly pretty as her chum and schoolmate Doris, Kitty was attractive enough to command attention anywhere. Indeed, with affected indifference, Marshmallow was not long in sauntering across the room to a seat beside her on the davenport.

“I know, I guess I am old-fashioned,” Mrs. Mallow admitted. “But the thought of rushing through the clouds almost clear across the United States makes me uneasy.”

“The plane is brand-new, Mrs. Mallow, but it has been tested under all sorts of conditions,” Dave went on. “Pete did everything but fly her upside down this morning. He told me she almost flies herself.”

“Who is this Pete?” Mrs. Mallow asked cautiously.

“Pete? Why, Pete Speary!” Dave seemed surprised to find someone who did not know Pete. “He has flown thousands of hours with never an accident except when he was shot down in the World War.”

“Oh, a war aviator!” Doris exclaimed. “How thrilling! Is he a hero, a real ace?”

“Ye-es.” Dave showed a trace of jealousy in his voice. “He was in the famous Rochambeau Escadrille before we entered the war. He was only seventeen then. He became a captain in the American Air Forces, and on top of that he joined the Pulaski Escadrille of American aviators who enlisted to help the Polish Republic fight off the Bolsheviki.

“A hero? Why, he has dozens of medals. He was shot down in flames three times, and brought down thirty enemy planes!”

“I’m just dying to meet him!” Doris cried.

“And so am I!” exclaimed Kitty. “You will consent, Mrs. Mallow, won’t you?” begged the girl earnestly.

“Huh, he must be kind of old by now,” Marshmallow grunted, uneasy at Kitty’s enthusiasm.

“Yes, he has a lot of gray hairs,” Dave said with obvious satisfaction. “And half of his face was rebuilt on account of wounds he received from the enemy.”

“Oh, dear!” Mrs. Mallow cried. “I could not trust us all to a man in that condition, and one who is so ruthless and warlike!”

“Mother!” Marshmallow groaned. “You do think up the queerest things to be afraid of.”

“I don’t think that queer,” Mrs. Mallow replied firmly. “But perhaps it is not kind to judge another’s misfortune.”

“Then you really will let us go in the airplane?” Marshmallow shouted.

“No-o, I’m not sure,” Mrs. Mallow said.

“Please, please say yes,” the others begged.

“Let Marsh drive you to the airport to look at the ship, Mrs. Mallow,” suggested Dave.

“I know nothing about them,” Mrs. Mallow replied. “That would not help me to decide. However, I will talk it over with Mr. Force. If he can see no objections, I will try to overcome my timidity.”

“Whoops!” yelled Marshmallow. “Hooray!”

“I can’t wait until Uncle Wardell comes home,” beamed Doris. “It’s only three o’clock—two hours to wait!”

“No, he will be early today,” Mrs. Mallow said. “In fact, he should have been here before now. He has been at Lawyer Higgins’s office since lunch time going over the details of our errand at Raven Rock, and to get the all-important deeds to the property out there.”

“Doesn’t that sound thrilling?” Kitty asked, giving a little shiver of delight. “Oh, what an adventure to be party to!”

Mrs. Mallow excused herself and returned to the kitchen to supervise preparations for the evening meal.

The four youthful companions searched the bookcases for atlases, and were absorbed in studying maps and computing distances when the telephone rang.

“I’ll answer it,” Marshmallow sighed. “Gosh, imagine flying over the Mississippi!”

He went into the hall where the telephone was insistently ringing, while the rest studied the charts as if the trip were to be a circumnavigation of the earth via the two Poles.

A sharp exclamation from Marshmallow made them sit bolt upright.

“Doris, it’s your uncle,” Marshmallow said, his eyes wide with concern. “Something’s happened!”

“Has he been hurt?” cried the girl, flying to the telephone and snatching the receiver. “Uncle Ward! Hello? Hello?”

“Doris?”

The familiar deep voice came reassuringly over the wire, but the message it conveyed was so startling that for a moment the girl had to lean against the wall for support.

“Doris, this is Uncle Wardell. I am at the Plainfield police station. In the hallway of the office building I was struck down from behind and the important papers were stolen from me. No, I am not badly hurt—a big bump and a small cut. But the deeds to the property at Raven Rock are gone! And so are the robbers!”