The Motor Girls in the Mountains: or, The Gypsy Girl's Secret

CHAPTER XXIX
THE PLOT

The girl screamed and tried to run, but Higby was too quick for her and seized her roughly by the arm.

“No, you don’t!” he cried. “You’re not going to get away from me as easily as all that, after I’ve been watching you for days. You’ve got to listen to what I have to say.”

“Let me go!” cried the girl, pulling away from him.

“Go where?” he leered. “To jail? You’ll go there mighty quick if I care to have you go. All I have to do is to notify the police at Roxbury and you’ll be behind the bars in forty-eight hours.”

The girl turned white as the awful vision that had haunted her for a year past seemed to be assuming form and substance. She had no doubt that he could do as he threatened.

“What do you want with me?” she asked in a trembling voice.

“Now you’re getting a little more sensible,” he remarked. “Sit down on that bank and I’ll tell you what I want.

“Those folks you’re staying with are pretty well off, aren’t they?” he inquired.

“How do you know where I’m staying?” she asked.

“That’s my affair,” he said brusquely. “I know you’re staying at a place they call Camp Kill Kare. Quite a change from the gypsy camp,” he sneered. “You’re flying high these days. But that’s neither here nor there. Those boys and girls there seem to have plenty of money. There’d be quite a haul there in the way of cash and watches and diamond rings and other jewelry, I suppose.”

She grasped his meaning and drew away from him in horror.

“You don’t mean to say that you’re thinking of robbing the house!” she exclaimed.

“You’re pretty squeamish for a jailbird,” he sneered.

“I’m not a jailbird!” she cried passionately. “I never did a dishonest thing in my life!”

“They say differently at Roxbury,” he taunted.

“Yes!” she blazed out. “But why? Because you told a falsehood about me! You know you didn’t see me steal that purse!”

“Let’s cut this short,” he said impatiently. “I’ll put the whole thing in a few words. I’m not going back to Roxbury. I need money, and need it bad! Those folks at Kill Kare have plenty of it, or what can be turned into money, and I want you to help me get it.”

“I never will!” she cried defiantly.

“It’s either that or jail,” he said menacingly. “And I know that you won’t choose jail when you come to think it over. I’ll give you a day to make up your mind. You be here at this same time to-morrow, or it will be the worse for you.”

She pleaded with him to renounce his purpose and leave her in peace, but he laughed at her and went away with a parting threat.

Nina retraced her steps to the house in a state of great agitation. She felt sure that Higby was in desperate earnest and would denounce her to the authorities if she should fail to do his bidding. But she would have died before helping him to rob her benefactors.

What resource then was left? Flight! Once more to become a fugitive – to live under the ban of the law – to fear any moment the touch of an officer’s hand upon her shoulder.

The castle of dreams that she had been building in the last few happy days seemed ready to dissolve in mist.

She tried to assume her usual cheerful manner when she entered the house, but the girls noticed at once that she was pale and anxious.

“What’s the matter, Nina?” asked Bess. “You’re as white as though you’d seen a ghost?”

“I hope you haven’t run across any of the gypsies!” exclaimed Cora, in quick apprehension.

“Nothing like that,” Nina asserted.

“Nor Higby?” asked Belle.

Nina faltered, and at this the others jumped to their feet in great excitement.

“Do you mean to say that that cur is lurking around here yet?” demanded Cora.

Nina broke down then, and told them all the details of her meeting with Higby.

The girls were aghast at the plan to rob the house.

“He’s getting along fast,” remarked Belle bitterly. “He’s graduating from the sneak thief to the burglar class.”

“I wonder what we ought to do,” said Bess. “It’s too bad the boys are away to-day. I suppose the police ought to be told about it.”

“There’s nothing yet to tell,” said Cora. “He’d simply deny that he ever suggested anything of the kind to Nina. It would be only her word against his, and she has no witnesses. Besides, for revenge, he’d blurt out all about that Roxbury matter.”

At this moment the maid announced a visitor, and Nina vanished as Mr. Baxter entered the room and greeted the girls cordially.

“Sort of an Adamless Eden here, I see,” he laughed, as he noted the absence of the boys.

“Yes,” smiled Cora, “they’re out for a spin to-day by themselves. But I expect that they’ll be back before long.”

“I’m rather sorry they’re not here,” said Mr. Baxter, “as I wanted to talk over a matter in which you’re all interested. I refer to the young lady who has been staying with you for the last week or two.”

For a moment the sickening fear came to Cora that Mr. Baxter might be an emissary from the Roxbury authorities.

“Well, what about her?” she asked warily. “She’s a dear friend of mine who is paying me a little visit.”

“But not a very old friend,” said Mr. Baxter quietly, “since two weeks ago she was telling fortunes in a gypsy camp.”

A cry broke from the lips of the girls, and they looked at each other in great trepidation.

“Now, now,” said their visitor with a genial smile, “she hasn’t the slightest thing to fear from me. In fact, I think I’m going to prove one of the best friends she has.”

“Oh,” breathed Cora in relief, “I hope you will! The poor girl is sadly in need of all the help she can get.”

“I have been looking for her for a long time past,” said Mr. Baxter. “At least I feel reasonably sure that she’s the girl I’m after. And my only object in finding her is to restore her to the home and relative that she ran away from in a fit of youthful anger. I suspected that I had found her in Nina the gypsy girl. But now that I have seen her dressed in civilized clothes and compared her with the pictures in my possession, I feel practically sure of it. Still, I won’t know positively until I bring her and my client face to face.”

“O,” cried Cora, “is your client – ”

“There, there!” Mr. Baxter checked her. “No names, please. If I am right in my identification you’ll know all about it before long.”

“I think I can name him now,” smiled Cora.

“Never jump at conclusions,” advised Mr. Baxter. “But what I called for especially to-day was to warn you that your house was to be robbed.”

“So we heard only a few minutes ago,” replied Cora. “Thank you very much for the warning, though.”

“So she told you?” remarked Mr. Baxter with a gratified smile. “That’s good. I am glad that she has defied that fellow’s threats. I was concealed near by and heard the whole conversation.”

“What do you think we ought to do?” asked Cora.

“I think,” replied Mr. Baxter, “that the girl had better meet Higby to-morrow and pretend to fall in with his plans. I will be on hand and hear all he says. In the conversation that goes on between them, Higby may say something that reveals her innocence and his guilt in that Roxbury affair.

“She can arrange to let him into the house at night, which is evidently the part he wants her to play in the theft. We’ll be waiting for him when he comes, and we’ll give Mr. Higby the surprise of his life.”

CHAPTER XXX
BROUGHT TOGETHER

The plan met with the hearty approbation of the girls, and they accepted it, subject to the approval of the boys.

And when the latter reached Kill Kare and learned what was afoot, they agreed to it enthusiastically. They all felt toward Higby as they would toward a particularly noxious reptile. And this latest attempt to make the victim of his falsehoods a criminal brought their feeling of detestation to the highest pitch.

“Oh, won’t it do me good to get a whack at him!” gloated Jack.

“He’ll be as safe with me as if he were on a battlefield,” remarked Walter.

“We’ll fix him!” declared Paul.

Nina had been told that Mr. Baxter had overheard the conversation with Higby, but had been given no hint that the detective was looking for her to restore her to her home.

At the appointed time on the following day, she met Higby, whose face lighted up with an evil smile as he saw her appear.

“Thought better of it, did you?” he remarked jeeringly. “I knew mighty well you would.”

“It’s vile of you to make me do a thing like this,” protested Nina.

“You weren’t so particular at Roxbury,” he taunted.

“Why do you harp on that?” she cried furiously. “You know I didn’t steal that purse. I believe you did it yourself.”

“Suppose I did?” he grinned mockingly, in a way that was itself a half admission. “I deserve credit for being smart enough to make somebody else the goat. But let’s get down to business. I want you to tell me all about the way the rooms are laid out and where the cash and jewelry are kept.”

She gave him an idea of the plan of the bungalow, and promised to leave a door open from the back leading into the kitchen. He was to come a little after midnight.

That afternoon and evening, life took its ordinary course at Kill Kare, as far as external signs were concerned. They knew that Higby was probably watching the house from the shelter of the adjoining woods, ready to take flight at anything which might indicate the betrayal of his plans.

Not that he anticipated betrayal. He was confident that the deadly fear that Nina had of jail would keep her his accomplice, even though an unwilling one. But one could never be too careful when engaged upon such a venture as his.

He noted the girls sitting on the porch with their sewing, or picking flowers in the garden, saw the boys go motoring and return, heard the party singing songs after supper on the steps of the veranda. There was nothing to excite suspicion in the slightest degree and he exulted as he thought of the rich haul he expected to make.

His jubilation would have been less keen, however, had he noted the care with which Joel loaded his favorite revolver and had he seen three men who slipped into Kill Kare under cover of the darkness.

One of the three was an officer who had been brought over from Milford to make the expected arrest. The other two were Mr. Morley and Mr. Baxter.

The botanist had been told of the robbery that had been planned, and had been invited to be “in at the death.” But he had not received the slightest hint of the presence of Nina in the house. The detective did not care to risk a possible disappointment. Then, too, he had a sense of the dramatic, and schooled himself to wait.

As for Nina herself, she kept carefully out of view, as she always did when there were visitors at Kill Kare.

Eleven o’clock was the usual hour of retiring at the bungalow, and no deviation from the custom occurred on that night. A few minutes after eleven the lights were out, and Kill Kare seemed to be peacefully sleeping.

The door at the rear had been left unlocked, as arranged. The members of the party, all fully dressed, waited in different rooms the outcome of the drama.

“He’ll probably stop in the dining room to look over the silver,” remarked the officer, Thompson by name, to Mr. Baxter. “Do you think we’d better nab him then?”

“Don’t be in too much of a hurry,” advised Baxter. “He’ll probably look for his biggest haul in the sleeping rooms upstairs. Give him plenty of rope and let him hang himself. Besides, the farther he gets into the heart of the house, the harder it will be for him to escape in case any of our plans go wrong.”

The girls were seated in the dark in their own rooms, their hearts beating fast with excitement.

“I suppose we’ll be only lookers on,” remarked Bess in a low tone. “The men will do all the work.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” replied Cora. “We may come in somewhere.”

“What was it you put in that cedar chest you’re sitting on?” asked Belle curiously.

“I’ll tell you later,” replied Cora. “And, girls, stay right where you are, whatever happens.”

In the dark she busied herself with something at the entrance of the room.

Shortly after midnight, Higby slipped in through the rear door. He had taken off his shoes and was in his stocking feet.

It was pitch dark within, and he moved with such feline stealthiness that he had reached and stolen up the stairs before the watchers were sure that he was not one of themselves.

The jewelry of the girls was the chief object that he had in view, and he went to their rooms first. But as he stepped inside, he tripped over a wire that extended from one side of the door to the other, at the height of a foot, and fell headlong with a crash that jarred the house.

Cora reached into a chest, and clutching an acetylene lamp that was already lighted, turned its blinding glare right into Higby’s eyes.

“Don’t dare to move!” she commanded.

Higby, not knowing how many weapons were turned upon him, and unable to see anything in that pitiless blaze, lay perfectly still. The next instant he was in the grasp of the men and boys, who handled him none too gently and jerked him to his feet.

“Trapped by a woman!” he growled, as he saw the wire over which he had fallen and the lamp that Cora still held.

“You’re trapped all right,” declared Thompson, as he snapped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists.

“And in for a good long term in the State Prison,” added Mr. Baxter. “We have you dead to rights, Higby, and you haven’t a show in the world. But you may be able to have some years cut from your term if you help now to undo a wrong.”

“What is it?” muttered Higby, his craven soul clutching at straws.

“That theft at Roxbury that you charged Helen Holman with committing,” Baxter reminded him. “You stole that purse yourself, didn’t you? Speak up now. Nothing but the truth will help you.”

“Yes,” admitted Higby, sheepishly.

“I thought as much,” remarked Baxter. “Take him away, Thompson.”

There was a wild hubbub after the officer had driven away to Milford with his prisoner. All the boys and girls were laughing and talking at once.

“Who is this Helen Holman you were talking of?” asked Mr. Morley.

A sudden hush fell on Cora and the others, as they listened for Mr. Baxter’s answer.

“A girl that has lately been leading the life of a gypsy,” replied Mr. Baxter. “She’s a very interesting character. Miss Kimball,” he continued, turning to Cora, “will you ask Miss Holman to step here for a moment?”

Cora darted into the adjoining room, and returned an instant later leading Nina.

She and Mr. Morley looked casually at each other. A startled look leaped into the eyes of each. There was a gasping cry, and the next instant she was in his arms, sobbing as though her heart would break, while he held her tight as though he never intended to let her go.

“Alice!”

“Uncle!”

The girls were sobbing openly, while Mr. Baxter blew his nose vigorously, and even the eyes of the rollicking boys were momentarily dimmed.

Mutual explanations followed, together with mutual requests for forgiveness. Both had reaped the bitter fruit of hasty tempers, and had been made to realize during their separation how really dear they were to each other. The reconciliation was complete, and the Motor Girls were delighted beyond measure at the part they had played in bringing it about.

During the remainder of her stay at Kill Kare, Alice Morley grew more and more deeply attached to the girls to whom she owed so much, and when she finally went back with her uncle to Saxton, it was with the promise that she would soon make a long visit to them at their homes in Chelton.

“Dear old Chelton!” remarked Belle, as, shortly after the departure of Alice, they themselves turned their faces homeward. “How glad I’ll be to get back.”

“Yes,” agreed Cora. “But you must admit that we’ve never spent such a glorious outing as this one at Camp Kill Kare.”

And with this delightful memory as their cherished possession, we bid farewell to the Motor Girls.

THE END