"And that man in the boat was the same one who came here and used the telephone yesterday morning," said Migwan. "I couldn"t help noticing his foreign accent. He said, "We are going to do it on the Centerville Road.
There is a river near." What are they going to do on the Centerville Road?"
The garden work was neglected while the girls discussed the matter. "And the man we saw coming out of the barn when we came home," said Sahwah, "he probably had something to do with it, too."
"And the man I saw in the garden in the middle of the night," said Migwan.
"If you _did_ see a man," said Nyoda, somewhat doubtfully. Migwan did not insist upon her story. What was the use, when she had no proof, and the thing had been so uncanny?
They were all moved to real grief over the fact that the delightful Miss Mortimer should have a hand in such a dark business-in fact, was undoubtedly the famous Bella Venoti herself. "I can"t believe it," said Migwan, "she was so jolly and friendly, and was so charmed with Onoway House."
"I wonder why she wanted to go through it from attic to cellar," said Sahwah, shrewdly. "Could she have had some purpose? _Migwan!_" she cried, jumping up suddenly, "don"t you remember that she said, "How near that tree is to the window"? Could she have been thinking that it would be easy to climb in there? And when she asked how we ever moved about with all that furniture up there, you said, "We never come up here"!
Don"t you see what we"ve done? We"ve given her a chance to look the house over and find a place where people could hide if they wanted to, and as much as told her that they would be safe up here because we never came up."
Consternation reigned at this speech of Sahwah"s. The girls remembered the incident only too well. "I"ll never be able to trust anyone again,"
said Migwan, near to tears, for she had conceived a great liking for the young woman she had known as "Miss Mortimer."
"Do you remember," pursued Sahwah, "how she took the pole of the raft and found out how deep the water was all along, and then afterwards she said to the man in the boat, "I told you it was deep enough." Everything she did at our house was a sort of investigation."
"But it was only by accident that she got to Onoway House in the first place," said Gladys. "All she did was ask me to tell her where she could get a team of horses to tow her to a garage. She didn"t know I belonged to Onoway House. It was I who brought her here, and she only stayed because we asked her to. It doesn"t look as if she had any serious intentions of investigating the neighborhood. She said she was in a hurry to go on." Migwan brightened visibly at this. She clutched eagerly at any hope that Miss Mortimer might be innocent after all.
"How do you know that that breakdown in the road was accidental?" asked Nyoda. "And how can you be sure that she didn"t know you came from Onoway House? She may have been looking for a pretense to come here and you played right into her hands by offering to tow her into the barn."
Migwan"s hope flickered and went out.
"And the man in the barn," said Sahwah, knowingly, "he might have come to look the automobile over and become familiar with the way the barn door opened, so he could get into the car and drive away in a hurry if he wanted to get away." Taken all in all, there was only one conclusion the girls could come to, and that was that there was something suspicious going on in the neighborhood, and it looked very much as if the Venoti gang were hiding explosives in the empty house and were planning to bring something else; what it was they could not guess. At all events, something must be done about it. Nyoda called up the police in town and told briefly what they had seen and heard, and was told that plain clothes men would be sent out to watch the empty house. When she described the man who had called and used the telephone, the police officer gave an exclamation of satisfaction.
"That description fits Venoti closely," he said. "He used to have a mustache, but he could very easily have shaved it off. It"s very possible that it was he. He"s done that trick before; asked to use people"s telephones as a means of getting into the house."
The girls thrilled at the thought of having seen the famous anarchist so close. "Hadn"t we better tell the Landsdownes about it?" asked Migwan.
"They are in a better position to watch that house from their windows than we are."
"You"re right," said Nyoda. "And we ought to tell the Smalleys, too, so they will be on their guard and ready to help the police if it is necessary."
"I hate to go over there," said Migwan, "I don"t like Mr. Smalley."
"That has nothing to do with it," said Nyoda, firmly. "The fact that he is fearfully stingy and grasping has no bearing on this case. He has a right to know it if his property is in danger." And she proceeded forthwith to the Red House.
Mr. Smalley was inclined to pooh-pooh the whole affair as the imagination of a houseful of women. "Saw a man running out of your barn, did you?" he asked, showing some interest in this part of the tale.
"Well now, come to think of it," he said, "I saw someone sneaking around ours too, last night. But I didn"t think much of it. That"s happened before. It"s usually chicken thieves. I keep a big dog in the barn and they think twice about breaking in after they hear him bark, and you haven"t any chickens, that"s why nothing was touched." It was a very simple explanation of the presence of the man in the barn, but still it did not satisfy Nyoda. She could not help connecting it in some way with the occurrences in the vacant house.
Mr. Landsdowne was very much interested and excited at the story when it was told to him. "There"s probably a whole lot more to it than we know,"
he said, getting out his rifle and beginning to clean it. "There"s more going on in this country in the present state of affairs than most people dream of. You have notified the police? That"s good; I guess there won"t be many more secret doings in the empty house."
As Nyoda and Migwan went home from the Landsdownes they pa.s.sed a telegraph pole in the road on which a man was working. Silhouetted against the sky as he was they could see his actions clearly. He was holding something to his ear which looked like a receiver, and with the other hand he was writing something down in a little book. Migwan looked at him curiously; then she started. "Nyoda," she said, in a whisper, "that is the same man who used our telephone. That is Dante Venoti himself." As if conscious that they were looking at him, the man on the pole put down the pencil, and drawing his cap, which had a large visor, down over his face, he bent his head so they could not get another look at his features. "That"s the man, all right," said Migwan. "What do you suppose he is doing?"
"It looks," said Nyoda, judicially, "as if he were tapping the wires for messages that are expected to pa.s.s at this time. Possibly you did not notice it, but I began to look at that man as soon as we stepped into the road from Landsdowne"s, and I saw him look at his watch and then hastily put the receiver to his ear."
"Oh, I hope the police from town will come soon," said Migwan, hopping nervously up and down in the road.
"Until they do come we had better keep a close watch on what goes on around here," said Nyoda. Accordingly the Winnebagos formed themselves into a complete spy system. Migwan and Gladys and Betty and Tom took baskets and picked the raspberries that grew along the road as an excuse for watching the road and the front of the house, while Nyoda and Sahwah and Hinpoha took the raft and patrolled the river. As the girls in the road watched, the man climbed down from the pole, walked leisurely past them, went up the path to the empty house and seated himself calmly on the front steps, fanning himself with his hat, apparently an innocent line man taking a rest from the hot sun at the top of his pole.
"He"s afraid to go in with us watching him," whispered Migwan. Just then a large automobile whirled by, stirring up clouds of dust, which temporarily blinded the girls. When they looked again toward the house the "line man" had vanished from the steps. "He"s gone inside!" said Migwan, when they saw without a doubt that he was nowhere in sight outdoors.
Meanwhile the girls on the raft, who had been keeping a sharp lookout down-stream with a pair of opera gla.s.ses, saw something approaching in the distance which arrested their attention. For a long time they could not make out what it was-it looked like a shapeless black ma.s.s. Then as they drew nearer they saw what was coming, and an exclamation of surprise burst from each one. It was a structure like a portable garage on a raft, towed by a launch. As it drew nearer still they could make out with the opera gla.s.ses that the person at the wheel was a woman, and that woman was Bella Venoti.
The hasty arrival of an automobile full of armed men who jumped out in front of the "vacant" house frightened the girls in the road nearly out of their wits, until they realized that these were the plain clothes men from town. After sizing up the house from the outside the men went up the path to the porch. The girls were watching them with a fascinated gaze, and no one saw the second automobile that was coming up the road far in the distance. One of the plain clothes men, who seemed to be the leader of the group, rapped sharply on the door of the house. There was no answer. He rapped again. This time the door was flung wide open from the inside. The girls could see that the man in the doorway was Dante Venoti. The officer of the law stepped forward. "Your little game is up, Dante Venoti," he said, quietly, "and you are under arrest."
Dante Venoti looked at him in open-mouthed astonishment. "Vatevaire do you mean?" he gasped. "I am under arrest? Has ze law stop ze production?
Chambers, Chambers," he called over his shoulder, "come here queek. Ze police has stop" ze production!"
A tall, lanky, decidedly American looking individual appeared in the doorway behind him. "What the deuce!" he exclaimed, at the sight of all the men on the porch. At this moment the second automobile drove up, followed by a third and a fourth. A large number of men and women dismounted and ran up the path to the house.
"Caruthers! Simpson! Jimmy!" shouted Venoti, excitedly to the latest arrivals, "ze police has stop ze production!"
"What do you know about it!" exclaimed someone in the crowd of newcomers, evidently one of those addressed. "Where"s Belle?"
"She is bringing zeze caboose! Up ze rivaire!" cried the black haired man, wringing his hands in distress.
The plain clothes men looked over the band of people that stood around him. There was nothing about them to indicate their desperate character.
Instead of being Italians as they had expected, they seemed to be mostly Americans. The leader of the policemen suddenly looked hard at Venoti.
"Say," he said, "you look like a Dago, but you don"t talk like one. Who are you, anyway?"
"I am Felix Larue," said the black haired man, "I am ze director of ze Great Western Film Company, and zeze are all my actors. We have rent zis house and farm for ze production of ze war play "Ze Honor of a Soldier."
Last night we bring some of ze properties to ze house; zey are very valuable, and Chambers and Bushbower here zey stay in ze house wiz zem."
The plain clothes men looked at each other and started to grin. Migwan and Gladys, who had joined the company on the porch, suddenly felt unutterably foolish. "But what were you doing on top of the pole?"
faltered Migwan.
Mr. Larue turned his eyes toward her. He recognized her as the girl who had allowed him to use her telephone the day before, and favored her with a polite bow. "Me," he said, "I play ze part of ze spy in ze piece-ze villain. I tap ze wire and get ze message. I was practice for ze part zis morning." He turned beseechingly to the policeman who had questioned him. "Zen you will not stop ze production?" he asked.
"Heavens, no," answered the policeman. "We were going to arrest you for an anarchist, that"s all."
The company of actors were dissolving into hysterical laughter, in which the plain clothes men joined sheepishly. Just then a young woman came around the house from the back, followed at a short distance by Nyoda, Sahwah and Hinpoha. Seeing the crowd in front she stopped in surprise.
Larue went to the edge of the porch and called to her rea.s.suringly.
"Come on, Belle," he called, gaily. When she was up on the porch he took her by the hand and led her forward. "Permit me to introduce my fellow conspirator," he said, in a theatrical manner and with a low bow. "Zis is Belle Mortimer, ze leading lady of ze Great Western Film Company!"
CHAPTER VII.-MOVING PICTURES.
The Winnebagos looked at each other speechlessly. Belle Mortimer, the famous motion picture actress, whom they had seen on the screen dozens of times, and for whom Migwan had long entertained a secret and devouring adoration! Not Bella Venoti at all! "Did you ever?" gasped Sahwah.
"No, I never," answered the Winnebagos, in chorus.
Miss Mortimer recognized her hostesses of the day before and greeted them warmly. "My kind friends from Onoway House," she called them. The Winnebagos were embarra.s.sed to death to have to explain how they had spied on the vacant house and thought the famous Venoti gang was at work, and were themselves responsible for the presence of the policemen.
"I never _heard_ of anything so funny," she said, laughing until the tears came. "I _never_ heard of anything so funny!" The plain clothes men departed in their automobile, disappointed at not having made the grand capture they had expected to. "Would you like to stay with us for the day and watch us work?" asked Miss Mortimer.