The Campfire Girls of Roselawn Part 25

"There may be somebody on watch," Jessie hissed. "They will suspect us. And if it is either of those women, they will recognize you."

"Cat's foot!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Amy. "I don't see any signs of occupancy about the house. Nor is there anybody working around the place. It looks abandoned."

"We don't know. If the poor girl is shut up here----"

"Where?" snapped Amy.

"Perhaps in the house."

"Perhaps in the barn," scoffed her chum. "Anyway, every window of that tower, both the lower and the upper stories, is shuttered on the outside."

"Maybe that is where Bertha is confined--if it is Bertha."

"But, honey! Where is the radio? There is nothing but a telephone wire in sight. There is no wireless plant here."

"Dear me, Amy! don't you suppose we have come to the right place?"

The car was now getting away from the Gandy premises. Jessie had to confess that there was no suspicious looking wiring anywhere about the house or outbuildings.

"It does not seem as though that could be the place after all. What do you think, Chapman?" she added, leaning forward again. "Don't you think that place looked deserted?"

"It often does between racing seasons, Miss Jessie," the man said.

"Whoever owns it now does not occupy it all the year."

Suddenly Jessie sat up very straight and her face flamed again with excitement. She cried aloud:

"Chapman! Isn't there a village near? And a real estate office?"

"Harrimay is right over the hills, Miss Jessie," said the chauffeur.

"Drive there at once, please," said the girl. "And stop at the office of the first real estate agent whose sign you see."

"For goodness sake, Jess!" drawled Amy, her eyes twinkling, "you don't mean to buy the Gandy farm, do you?"

CHAPTER XX

SOMETHING DOING AT THE STANLEYS'

Chapman drove the automobile down into Harrimay only ten minutes later. It was a pretty but rather somnolent place, just a string of white-painted, green-blinded houses and two or three stores along both sides of an oiled highway. It was a long ten-minute jitney ride from the railway station.

"Perkins, Real Estate" faced the travelers from a signboard as they drove into the village. Chapman stopped before the office door, and the eager Jessie hopped out.

"I'm coming, too! I'm coming, too!" squealed Amy, running across the walk after her.

"Do be quiet," begged her chum. "And for once let me do the talking."

"Oui, oui, Mademoiselle! As I haven't the least idea what the topic of the conversation will be, I can easily promise that," whispered Amy.

A high-collared man with eyegla.s.ses and an ingratiating smile arose from behind a flat-topped desk facing the door and rubbed his hands as he addressed the two girls.

"What can I do for you, young ladies?"

"Why, why----Oh, I want to ask you--" Jessie stammered. "Do you know who owns the farm over there by the track? The Gandy place?"

"The old Gandy stock farm, Miss?" asked the real estate man with a distinct lowering of tone. "It is not in the market. The Gandy place never has been in the market."

"I just wish to know who owns it," repeated Jessie, while Amy stared.

"The Gandys still own it. At least old man Gandy's daughter is in possession I believe. Horse people, all of them. This woman----"

"Please tell me her name?"

"Poole, Martha Poole, is her name."

"Oh!" cried Amy, seeing now what Jessie wanted.

But Jessie shook her head at her chum warningly, and asked the man:

"Do you know if Mrs. Poole is at the place now?"

"Couldn't say. She comes and goes. She is always there when the racing is going on. It is supposed that some things that go on there at the Gandy place are not entirely regular," said the real estate man stiffly. "If you are a friend of Mrs. Poole----"

"I am Jessie Norwood. My father, Mr. Robert Norwood, is a lawyer, and we live in the Roselawn section of New Melford."

"Oh, ah, indeed!" murmured the real estate man. "Then I guess it is safe to tell you that the people around here do not approve of Mrs.

Poole and what goes on at the Gandy place during the racing season. It is whispered that people there are interested in pool rooms in the city. You know, where betting on the races is conducted."

"I do not know anything about that," replied Jessie, in some excitement. "But I thank you for telling me about Martha Poole."

She seized Amy by the arm and hurried back to the automobile.

"What do you think of that?" gasped Amy, quite as much amazed as was her chum.

"I do wish Daddy was coming home to-day. But he isn't. Not until dinner time, anyway. I do believe, Amy Drew, that poor Bertha is hidden away somewhere at that farm."

"But--but----how could she get at any sending station to tell her troubles to--to the air?" and Amy suddenly giggled.

"Don't laugh. It is a very serious matter, I feel sure. If the poor girl actually isn't being abused, those women are hiding her away so that they can cheat Daddy's clients out of a lot of money."

"Again I ask," repeated Amy, more earnestly, "_how_ could that girl, whoever she is, get to a sending station? We did not see the first sign of an aerial anywhere near that house and barn, or above the tower, either."

"I don't know what it means. It is a mystery," confessed Jessie. "But I just _feel_ that what we heard over the radio had to do with that missing girl--that it was Bertha Blair calling for help, and that in some way she is connected with that red barn and the silo and the two fallen trees. We traced the place from her description."

"So we did!"