Читать книгу Doris Force at Raven Rock - Julia K. Duncan - Страница 4

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“Marshmallow! Get the car started!” shouted Doris as she hung up the receiver, but still grasped the instrument as if for support.

“He’s outside starting the car now,” Dave answered. “What’s the trouble?”

“Is your uncle hurt?” demanded Kitty.

“Yes—robbed!”

Doris dashed out of the door and ran to the curb, where Marshmallow’s car was throbbing and shaking as if only the strength of its driver could prevent it from rising straight into the air.

“He’s at Police Headquarters,” the girl gasped.

Marshmallow let in the clutch and the venerable car leaped forward six feet and came to a dead stop.

“Gee, the old bus always acts like this in an emergency,” muttered the stout youth as he ground his heel into the starter button. The car responded with an angry whine, but no motion.

The car’s balkiness, however, had given Dave and Kitty time in which to catch up with their friends.

“Here, put her in high gear and I’ll push,” Dave shouted to Marshmallow. “Keep your clutch out until I yell ready!”

Beneath the thrust of Dave’s strong shoulders the ancient automobile rolled along the street. As it gained momentum the youth commanded “Contact!” and sprinted for the running-board.

The car jolted crazily as the gears meshed, and then the decrepit motor roared into life. Marshmallow pressed the accelerator to the floor and the four friends were soon careening toward the city of Plainfield, of which Chilton was the chief suburb.

“Tell us what it’s all about, Doris,” Dave urged.

“I don’t know myself, except that Uncle was struck and robbed of documents concerning which we were going out West,” Doris responded. “Oh, hurry, Marshmallow!”

“Doing twenty-eight now,” shouted the driver. “That’s top speed for this locomotive, and eight miles over the limit at that.”

By manipulating spark and choke throttles he did manage to swing the speedometer dial past the thirty mark, an accomplishment which so delighted Marshmallow that he forgot for the moment how serious his mission was.

He also forgot the existence of a traffic signal which flashed to red while the car was yet twenty yards from the crossing.

As the automobile dashed across the intersection to a chorus of squealing brakes and indignant horns, a grim-faced motorcycle policeman kicked the starter of his machine and started in pursuit.

“Hey, young feller! I saw you go past that light!” the officer yelled as he drew abreast of the car. “I’m sick of you youngsters trying to set new speed records and I’ll make an example of you. Follow me to headquarters!”

With these words, he roared ahead of the automobile, sounding his siren.

Marshmallow’s round face was white with alarm, but his natural pinkness soon returned and a smile creased his lips.

“Some style to us, getting a police escort!” he laughed. “We’re still doing thirty, and look at the traffic scatter for us!”

The imposing motorcade drew up before Police Headquarters in record time. To the policeman’s amazement the four occupants of the car dashed past him up the steps and into the building, Doris leading the way. He was not far behind, however.

A headquarters’ sergeant barred the way of the impatient quartet.

“Where are yez goin’ in sech a hurry, now?”

“I’ve arrested ’em, Casey!” panted the motorcycle man, bursting through the doors. “Racing past a red light.”

“Faith, Wheelock, and I nivver saw sich eager pr-risoners in me twinty years on the for-rce,” the sergeant boomed.

Doris spoke up. “My uncle was robbed and hurt. He is in this building somewhere. Please take us to him.”

“Is Wardell Force your uncle, me lass?” the sergeant demanded. “Come this way, thin. And be on your way, Wheelock. This puts a diff’rent light on the matter. Case dismissed, d’yez hear me?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Wheelock assented, and turned to the door without another word.

“Not that passin’ red lights is any joke,” said the sergeant as he guided the four through the corridors. “And not that bein’ kinfolk of prominent people is any excuse for br-reakin’ the law. But these is ixtinuary circumstances. Here’s the chief av detictives’ office and your uncle is inside.”

Casey rapped at a plain oak door and without waiting for a reply threw it open.

Doris darted in first.

“Uncle Wardell! You are hurt badly!”

Mr. Force rose from the leather armchair he had been occupying. His head was swathed in bandages, yet he walked steadily toward his niece.

“Not at all,” he exclaimed with a brave attempt at a laugh. “Just a bump.”

The stout, ruddy-faced man with whom Mr. Force had been conferring arose and put a huge freckled hand on Doris’s shoulder.

“He’s telling the truth, Miss,” he said. “You have nothing to worry about. It’s my worry to get the papers back that were stolen, and I think we shall do it.”

“Bother the old papers,” Doris exclaimed, hugging the man who had been both father and mother to her almost ever since she could remember.

“Oh, Mrs. Mallow! She’ll be worried!” the girl cried suddenly. “We all rushed out of the house without telling her a thing.”

“I’ll call her up,” Marshmallow volunteered.

“Never mind,” Mr. Force suggested. “Just start right back for home. I’ll go along, and we can tell her in person almost as soon as you could by ’phone.

“Good bye, Chief,” he added, turning to that individual. “I know you’ll do your best.”

“The description you gave us of the robbers has already been received in every nearby city, Mr. Force,” the chief said. “And our men will go through Plainfield with a drag-net. If they are here, we’ll get them.”

“Thank you,” Mr. Force said. “Come, folks. Let’s be on our way.”

Back in the peace and comfort of the Mallow homestead Mr. Force leaned his aching head upon the softest cushion in the house and told the story of his misadventure.

“As I left Mr. Higgins’s office,” he said, “I nearly bumped into two men standing by the door. One was tall and heavily built, the other was of medium height.

“‘Are you Mr. Force?’ one of them asked.

“I replied that I was, and with that the tall one said, ‘This is the hombre, Wolf!’ and pinned my arms to my sides. I felt a sickening blow on the back of my head that left me stunned.”

“How dreadful!” interjected Doris.

“The next thing I knew,” her uncle continued, “I was trying to raise myself from the floor. My brief-case was gone and my coat pockets rifled. The men must have worked at lightning speed, for they were gone.”

Doris gently readjusted the pillows, and made her uncle as comfortable as possible.

“Did they get all your money?” Dave asked.

“Not a cent! It was not money they were after,” Mr. Force said. “The deeds to the ranch property at Raven Rock are gone!”

“Oh, the poor Gates twins!” Doris cried soberly.

At this point it might be well for us to recall Doris Force’s previous adventures that have brought to the point of flying to the Southwest this girl, whose greatest ambition was to become a singer in grand opera.

Doris was an orphan, and until she unexpectedly spent some time at the home of the Gates twins, as recounted in the first volume of this series, “Doris Force at Locked Gates,” she had believed Uncle Wardell to be her only living relative. The twins, maiden ladies of past middle age, had made themselves known to Doris through a note inviting her to visit them at their old-fashioned mansion, Locked Gates, in a town some distance away.

There Doris had met a man who claimed to be a cousin, son of a maternal uncle, John Trent. John Trent had once been a suitor for the hand of one of the Gates girls, but which one not even they had ever learned. After a quarrel with their father, who died suddenly a few days afterward, John Trent had gone away and had never been heard of again until his alleged son had made himself known to the spinsters, under pretence of procuring a fortune left to them by his father.

How Doris exposed the faker and saved for the old ladies a fortune which they had long held but never suspected is told in the first book, but those adventures were but the beginning of a chain of events.

Doris, with a valuable ruby ring as a souvenir of her days at Locked Gates, set out to learn the identity and true fate of her newly-acquired uncle. There was excitement enough and plenty of fun, as her readers will recall, experienced in “Doris Force at Cloudy Cove,” which is the title of the volume telling how this girl did find her uncle and reclaim him from years of life as a hermit.

Both John Trent and the father of the Gates twins had invested in property in the Southwest a generation ago when land was cheap. Mr. Force had persuaded Trent and the sisters to establish their claims to the land, realizing that the passing years had increased its value manifold.

The task of establishing the titles and the more responsible work of trying to dispossess such squatters as might have taken up their abode on the land was to be undertaken by Doris, with the help of her loyal friends.

Kitty, her chum and roommate at Barry Manor boarding school, was to go along. Her share of the reward for exposing the criminal who had posed as Doris’s cousin was ready to be spent, and a trip to the West with her chum appealed to Kitty as the best investment for some of the thousand dollars.

Now the documents which were the only proofs of the Misses Gates’s ownership of the land had been stolen!

“Does that mean our trip West is useless?” Doris asked.

“On the contrary, the quicker some authoritative person gets on the scene the better,” Mr. Force declared. “Unless the robbers are caught with the deeds on their person they will be in possession of the land.”

“Something must have suddenly turned up to make the property very valuable,” Doris observed.

“You are right, Doris,” Mr. Force agreed. “For some reason it is highly important to some unscrupulous man to get that land. Just why, we do not know.”

“I’ll bet a gold-mine was discovered on it!” Marshmallow exclaimed.

“If a pie mine or some chocolate sundae wells were tapped, you’d probably take the deeds yourself,” Dave accused his friend jokingly.

“No, all I’d ask for would be a spoon,” the stout youth said dreamily. “It’s too bad there aren’t such things. You have made me strangely unhappy, Dave. I always thought this was a perfect world, but now I see it could be improved.”

“Oh, hush, you two!” Kitty cried, half in earnest. “Marshmallow doesn’t eat all the time. Please, Mr. Force, tell us what must be done.”

Mr. Force, who had lapsed into deep thought, looked up at the young people.

“If I could possibly get away myself I would go to Raven Rock at once,” he said. “But there is no way. The annual Community Chest drive is just about to begin and upon its success depends the well-being of the hospitals and charitable institutions of the city. I am director and treasurer. It would take four or five days before I could turn over the details to some other man.

“Mrs. Mallow, you have run your own affairs so competently I have every faith that you can help us by going with Doris and the others as planned, but sooner. Tomorrow, if you can.”

“Dave, tell Uncle Wardell—” Doris began.

The young man was bursting to give the information he had already imparted to the others.

“Mr. Force, a friend of mine, one of the country’s most competent pilots, is flying a tri-motor cabin to Raven Rock this week. I am going as his mechanic. He has invited us to go with him, all of us.”

Mr. Force’s face presented a study of mixed feelings.

“It sounds like Providence,” he said. “But also very dangerous. I don’t know what to say.”

“Say yes, Uncle,” Doris begged. “There is no danger—no more than by train. Think of the time we shall save!”

“The thieves may have had ready a stamped envelope in which to mail the stolen papers as soon as they reached a letter box,” Mr. Force mused. “Or they may have given them to confederates. Capturing them may not frustrate their plot. Tell me more about this pilot and the airplane.”

“Hooray!” shouted Marshmallow.

In a straightforward manner and without exaggeration Dave told Mr. Force of Pete Speary’s history, and the details of the new airplane.

“If Mrs. Mallow is willing, I will consent,” said Doris’s uncle.

“Oh, thank you!” Doris cried.

Then the young people turned eager and sparkling eyes upon Mrs. Mallow.

“I—really—flying!” she stammered. “But—well, I agree!”

“Then will you find out from your friend how soon he will start?” Mr. Force addressed Dave.

“Oh, Kitty!” exclaimed Doris. “Isn’t it wonderful? Come upstairs. I’ll pack at once!”