The Ghost Wore White

Connie is willing to believe almost anything about the

eerie old mansion on top of Eagle Rock—but a violin-

playing ghost is too much for even her vivid imagination.

On vacation in aristocratic Newport, Rhode Island,

Connie and her twin sister Kit are invited for a moonlight

sail with their cousins Tom and Randy. Passing the long-

deserted mansion, Connie and Randy are sure they see a

strange light in a window, and Connie is determined to

search the imposing old house the first chance she gets.

Her chance comes all too soon, and almost spells disaster

for our intrepid sleuth. Only her quick wits and daring

resourcefulness save her and her friends from something

more dangerous than a musical ghost.

The CONNIE BLAIR Mystery Stories

The Clue in Blue

The Riddle in Red

Puzzle in Purple

The Secret of Black Cat Gulch

The Green Island Mystery

The Ghost Wore White

The Yellow Warning

The Gray Menace

The Brown Satchel Mystery

Peril in Pink

The Silver Secret

The Mystery of the Ruby Queens

A CONNIE BLAIR MYSTERY

The Ghost Wore White

By

BETSY ALLEN

Grosset & Dunlap

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

© 1950 BY GROSSET & DUNLAP, INC.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

1. Little Old Rhode Island 1

2. The Mysterious Light 15

3. Eagle Rock 26

4. The Ghost Walks Again 39

5. Enter Mark Eastham 51

6. The Clue in the Library 64

7. The Cave 76

8. A Blow in the Dark 89

9. Meet the Bo’sun 100

10. Moonlight Sail 113

11. Connie Meets the Guardian 128

12. A Lone Expedition 137

13. The Ghost Helps Out 148

14. Tom Translates 160

15. The Capture 169

16. “All’s Well—” 184

1

CHAPTER 1

Little Old Rhode Island

“Fill ’er up?”

Connie Blair, who had been driving for a hundred

miles through rolling Connecticut countryside,

nodded brightly in response to the gas station

attendant’s conventional question. “Please.”

Connie turned to her twin sister Kit. “Want to

stretch a little?”

Kit opened the door on the other side of the car

and got out to saunter up and down in front of the

pumps. While the man held the nozzle of the hose in

the mouth of the gas tank, he looked from one girl to

the other in frank astonishment. The sisters looked

confusingly alike. Each had bright blond hair falling

almost to her shoulders; each had brown eyes

sparkling with enthusiasm and intelligence; each had

a slim young figure worth a second glance. Connie’s

skin, however, was tanned to a smooth golden tone

2

which almost matched her hair. In contrast Kit

looked pale, as though she had been spending too

much time indoors.

And this was precisely the case. Connie still

showed the effects of her Bermuda sojourn, when

she had spent many hours in the sun in the course of

solving The Green Island Mystery, but Kit had been

working especially long hours at Blair’s Hardware

Store in Meadowbrook, helping her father with a

sudden rush of business that was as exhausting as it

was gratifying.

“You need a vacation, Kit,” Mr. Blair had insisted

finally. “Skiddoo! Get out of here. Call Connie in

Philadelphia and see what you two can cook up. She

ought to be due for some time off pretty soon.”

As a matter of fact, the vacation schedule at Reid

and Renshaw’s, the advertising agency where

Connie worked, had just been posted, and Connie’s

two weeks were imminent. It was the matter of a

few minutes to decide that it would be heaps of fun

to go away together. But where?

Mrs. Blair came through with the perfect

suggestion. “What about Helen?” she asked, naming

her husband’s sister, who had long ago deserted

Pennsylvania for Rhode Island, where she had

married a Providence newspaperman. “She’s always

wanted to have the girls for a visit. Wouldn’t this be

the perfect time?”

3

“By George, you’re right!” Mr. Blair had snapped

his fingers, the laugh lines deepening around his

eyes as he smiled happily at his wife. “Young Tom

would be just a couple of years older than the twins

by now. He might show them a right good time.”

Connie and Kit, consulting each other, could

remember their cousin Tom only vaguely, when he

and his mother had visited in Meadowbrook a few

years ago. There had been a younger boy, too—a

mischievous imp named Randy—who had raced

through the house like a frisky puppy, leaving chaos

in his wake.

“Shall we see if it can be arranged?” Kit had

asked Connie over the telephone.

And Connie, always ready for a new experience,

had cried, “Let’s!”

Now, just two weeks later, they were on their

way, driving the family car, which Mr. Blair had

insisted upon lending them. Both Connie and Kit

were good drivers, and they had spelled each other

on the three hundred miles they had covered since

leaving Meadowbrook after breakfast that morning,

each driving a hundred miles at a stretch.

“It’s my turn again,” Kit said now, rounding the

car as Connie paid the gas station attendant out of

the pocketbook containing their mutual funds.

Connie slid over. “I’m not a bit tired,” she

mentioned. “If you are—?”

4

“Who, me?” Kit laughed. “Just because I look

like a ghost next to you doesn’t mean I feel like one!

Besides, we may need to do some map reading soon,

and it makes me dizzy to read while we’re driving.”

“Of course! I’d forgotten you never like to read in

a train or a car. Speaking of reading, remember that

envelope Dad gave us? Want to see what’s in it as

we ride along?”

Connie was fumbling in her handbag as she

spoke, and as they turned out of the gas station into

Route 84 again she drew a white oblong envelope

from a side pocket. Mr. Blair had been almost as

excited about their trip as the girls were themselves,

and even before she opened the envelope, Connie

could guess what it contained.

Their father was a methodical man and he had

enclosed a folded sheet of notepaper filled with

carefully penned suggestions. “Things to do and see

on Narragansett Bay and in Newport,” Connie read

aloud. “Isn’t that just like Daddy?” He always

wanted his daughters to come home from a trip

richer than when they departed.

Kit nodded, chuckling. “He was talking about

Newport the other night. Said he’d been there as a

boy and he’s never forgotten it. What was the word

he used? It sounded so strange, coming from Dad.

‘Fabulous’—that was it!”

Connie looked up from her father’s notes

5

dreamily. “Fabulous,” she repeated. “I guess it

probably is all of that. The Cliff Walk, especially,

with those big estates. He says to be sure and see

that.”

“What else does he say?” Kit swung out to the

left, seeing clear road ahead, and passed a lumbering

truck.

Connie returned her attention to the paper in her

hand. “He mentions The Breakers, which is

apparently open for visitors. That’s the most

magnificent of all the big 1890 summer residences.

Then he lists the Old Brick Market, Old Trinity

Church, the Old Stone Mill. Golly, everything seems

to have ‘old’ in front of it,” she chuckled.

“I can see we’re expected to go sight-seeing!” Kit

sighed. “Personally, I’d rather sit quietly on a

beach.”

“Pooh, you’ll be rested in a couple of days.”

Connie, herself brimming with energy, felt none of

Kit’s qualms. “He wants us to go quahoging,

whatever that is, and he wants us to be sure to look

up the old Butterworth mansion—‘clipping

attached.’ ”

“Clipping attached?” Kit repeated.

“Yes.” Connie lifted the notepaper and examined

the newspaper column cut out and attached by a

paper clip.

6

“BUTTERWORTH TREASURES

SACRIFICED AT TAX SALE”

She read the two-line head aloud. “Butterworth.

Where have I heard that name before?”

Kit replied without taking her eyes from the road.

“Dad went to school with a boy named Tim

Butterworth. I think he was a relative of the

Newport Butterworths. Anyway, when Dad visited

in Newport he had lunch with Tim at a big house

called Eagle Rock. I can’t remember how it

happened. Maybe Tim was staying there or

something.”

Connie consulted the clipping again. “Eagle

Rock. That’s the name of the Butterworth house. All

is explained. He just wants us to look it up for

sentimental reasons, I guess.”

“He described the place as fairly fantastic. Too

bad it will be empty, now.”

Connie shrugged. “Maybe somebody else has

bought it and fixed it up. You can’t tell.”

“Maybe,” Kit agreed idly.

“But I rather hope it’s empty,” Connie added. “I

adore empty old mansions!” Her eyes grew very

bright.

Kit glanced at her twin sister and laughed.

“Connie, you’re incredible. Will you never grow

up?”

7

“Never—I hope!”

She put away her father’s notes and glanced at the

passing landscape. Long since, New London had

been left behind them, and more recently they had

crossed the Rhode Island border and turned into

Route 3.

“Shouldn’t we turn off soon, on the road to the

Saunderstown Bridge?” Connie consulted the road

map. “I can almost smell salt water, right now.”

“No wonder you’re a success in the advertising

game,” Kit teased. “You have such a wonderful

imagination!”

“Here, here!” Connie pretended to be stern. “Cast

no aspersions on my first love.”

“First love?” In her turn, Kit assumed an

expression of surprise. “Don Fitzgerald and Larry

Stewart and three or four other boys I know would

be disappointed to hear that.”

“You win,” Connie told her twin, chuckling.

Connie liked the game of wits she and Kit often

played together, tossing banter back and forth like a

ping-pong ball. It was fun to look forward to being

with Kit for two long weeks. Her sister was closer to

Connie than any other girl could ever be, and the

wrench of leaving her in Meadowbrook when she

fared forth to Philadelphia and the advertising

business had been greater than anyone had ever

guessed.

8

The winding road from the highway to Saunders-

town seemed especially long, but finally they were

driving across the high span of the silver bridge,

looking down on blue water dotted here and there

with a sailboat or a power launch.

Connie looked out of the window ecstatically.

“Smell!” she cried. “Doesn’t it smell just like

summer? And look like a vacation ad?”

“You and your ads!” But Kit was smiling happily.

“Oh, isn’t this going to be fun!”

Gulls and terns winged above them, and a cluster

of puffy white clouds rode serenely in the sky. The

shore line was low and green, and Jamestown, when

they reached it, was as quaint and sleepy and

charming as Mr. Blair had promised it would be. On

the ferry ride to Newport, Connie and Kit began

talking about Aunt Helen and Uncle Pete, whom

they remembered rather more clearly than the boys.

Their aunt looked enough like their father to make

people remark on the family resemblance. She had

the same easy manner, the same laugh lines around

her eyes. Peter Ridgeway, her husband, was a tall,

rangy man with a high forehead and penetrating blue

eyes. He had the typical newspaperman’s probing

nature, and Connie had an idea that she would enjoy

getting to know him better. She almost always liked

men who were interested in the writing profession.

Kit was more interested in the boys. “Randy will

9

be ten by now,” she figured out, “and Tom should

be just about twice his age, I should think. I wonder

if he’s still going to school?”

“Didn’t Mother say he was studying at Brown?

That would mean he’d be free to take us around a

bit, unless he has a summer job.”

The old-fashioned ferryboat was passing Goat

Island. Far off to the left Connie could see the Naval

War College and some anchored battleships. But the

section of Newport toward which they were heading

looked far from wealthy. Wharves crowded the

shore line, and close-packed buildings lined the

narrow streets of the commercial section of town.

The ferry unloaded slowly, and traffic in the

shopping district was thick, but finally the Blair

twins left Thames Street behind them and turned

into the road which led toward the outskirts of town.

The bay was no longer visible but they could

sense its closeness, because they began to pass the

tall iron fences that were the trade-marks of water-

front estates. Here and there, through stone pillars,

Connie could glimpse a curving white gravel drive,

and once in a while she could even see the turrets of

a house through the sheltering trees. Most of the

grounds were impeccably manicured, but there was

one strip of spiked iron fence through which weeds

straggled and morning-glories twined. Neglect and

decay were brilliantly lighted by the afternoon sun,

10

and Connie involuntarily shuddered.

“How sad it must be,” she murmured to Kit, “to

lose great wealth and see a show place like that fall

into rack and ruin. I’m glad we were born just

middle-class Americans, aren’t you?”

Kit nodded, paying little attention because she

was concentrating on driving. In ten more minutes,

with the help of Uncle Pete’s concise map of the

immediate district, they had made several turns and

curved back to the bay again, entering a less

pretentious countryside, where simple farmhouses

were the rule.

A hand-lettered sign at the end of a short lane

said “Ridgeway,” and Connie cried, “Here we are!”

Both girls peered eagerly through the windshield at

a rambling stone and frame house beyond the

sloping lawn of which stretched the blue expanse of

the bay. “Isn’t it sweet!” Kit breathed. “I didn’t

dream we’d be right on the water. What luck!”

“And do you see what I see?” asked Connie. “Do

you see what I see!” Her eyes were sparkling with

excitement and her attention was absorbed by a

small sailboat bobbing at anchor just off a narrow,

rickety little wharf. If the Ridgeway house had been

a castle, and if Connie had been greeted by liveried

footmen, she couldn’t have been more delighted.

“Nobody ever told us there was going to be a

sailboat!” she sighed.

11

Kit, more cautious than her twin, said as she

turned into the driveway, “Maybe it belongs to

somebody else.”

But Connie’s enthusiasm was not to be checked.

“Nonsense!” she cried. “Oh, Kit, wouldn’t it be

grand if we could get Uncle Pete or Tom to teach us

to sail?”

Kit didn’t have time to reply. She was pulling on

her brake as Connie spoke, and as though in

response to a signal the side door opened and a

slender, tanned woman, looking surprisingly young

for her forty years, came down the steps with a

welcoming smile. Behind her bounded a springer

spaniel puppy, and behind the dog came a boy easily

recognizable as the Randy that Connie and Kit had

known several years before.

Connie opened the car door and a moment later

was caught in her aunt’s quick embrace. Then Helen

Ridgeway held her off by the shoulders. “I’ve been

watching the lane for an hour,” she confessed.

“Which are you, Connie or Kit?”

“Connie.” It was a question each of the twins had

grown to expect, particularly from people who saw

them infrequently.

“Then you’re Kit.” Aunt Helen’s greeting to her

other niece was equally warm. “Are you exhausted,

with the heat and that endless drive?”

“It didn’t seem long,” Kit said honestly. “We had

12

a lot of catching up to do.” Then she turned her

attention to the house and the bay beyond. “But it’s

good to be here,” she added, stretching. “And isn’t

this a divine spot.”

“You like it?” Aunt Helen sounded pleased. “We

all adore it, but of course we’re water rats, all four of

us. We can’t imagine living inland, ever again.”

“Then it is your sailboat?” Connie cried.

“The cat?” Mrs. Ridgeway glanced toward the

water. “Yes. Do you like to sail?”

“Love it,” Connie replied. “But I don’t know

much about it. I’d like to learn more.”

“You will,” her aunt promised. “Tom’s an

enthusiastic teacher when he has a pretty girl as

pupil.”

Connie dropped a mock curtsy. “Even when the

girl’s a cousin?” Then she turned to Randy and held

out her hand. “Remember me?”

Randy said, “Sure!” but he looked rather

helplessly from Connie to Kit, while the twins burst

out laughing. “I’m the paleface,” Kit told him

ruefully. “Connie’s the one with the tan.”

“You’ll even lose that distinguishing difference in

a couple of days,” Aunt Helen promised as Randy

shook hands with Kit in turn. “But what are we

standing here for? Come on in. Randy will bring

your bags.”

Half an hour later, ensconced in a cheerful guest

13

room that overlooked the bay, Connie and Kit

congratulated themselves anew on their luck. Aunt

Helen was even nicer than they had remembered,

genuinely hospitable and easy. Randy had grown out

of his puppy-dog wildness and had attained a less

awkward age. Tom had gone fishing with a friend,

Mark Eastham, but was due home shortly. Uncle

Pete would return from the newspaper office about

six.

The girls were still unpacking when a tall, dark

boy with a wicker fishing basket slung over his

shoulder came whistling across the marshy strip of

land between the lawn and the bay.

Connie paused in her trips from suitcase to closet

and looked out the window. “That must be Tom

now,” she said.

Kit peered over her shoulder, and both girls liked

what they saw—a thin, pleasant-faced boy with the

Blair brown eyes and an easy way of striding along.

He looked as though he belonged in the clothes he

wore, old duck pants and a T-shirt. His arms and

face were brown as an Indian’s, and as he drew

closer, Connie was conscious of a competent

manner of which she highly approved.

Tom’s likeability was confirmed by his voice

when the twins met him a few minutes later. “Sorry

I wasn’t on hand when you arrived,” he apologized.

“I might have helped carry in your gear.”

14

“Oh, Randy was a fine pinch hitter,” Mrs.

Ridgeway told him. Then she asked briskly, “Are

you going to have to clean those fish, or will you

have time to take the girls for a short swim before

dinner?”

Tom, in typical country fashion, glanced not at

his watch, but at the sinking sun. “The fish do have

to be cleaned,” he said thoughtfully. “Would you

settle for a moonlight sail instead?”

“Would we!” It was Connie who answered.

“Wouldn’t we just!”

15

CHAPTER 2

The Mysterious Light

The moon looked like a big yellow tiddlywink,

pulled by invisible wires through the sky. The stars

were so close they were startling, and the bay was

whipped by a breeze Tom pronounced “perfect.”

“But you girls better wear a couple of sweaters or

something,” he suggested as they made ready to go

sailing. “Nights around here are apt to get cool.”

After the heat of the day it seemed impossible

that they would need woolens, but Uncle Pete

confirmed Tom’s judgment and Connie and Kit each

took a sweater and a jacket along. Randy led the

way over the planks that went across the marsh to

the dock, the twins followed him in single file, and

Tom brought up the rear.

Connie, as usual, was full of questions. “How

long is your boat?” she asked her cousin over her

shoulder as they walked along.

“Eighteen foot,” Tom replied.

16

“And it will ride four?” From this distance the

bobbing, slender craft looked deceptively small.

“Six, even, if there’s enough breeze.”

“Really?” Connie whistled softly.

“You girls ever do much sailing?” Randy asked

from up front, sounding amusingly superior.

Kit said, “No. We’re landlubber Pennsylvanians.

You’ll probably be shocked to know I’ve never been

in a sailboat in my life.”

“Never in a sailboat?” Randy did sound horrified.

“Golly, what a lot you’ve missed!”

“How about you, Connie?” Tom asked.

“I went sailing in Bermuda a few times. And

loved every minute of it!”

“Bermuda?” Randy’s superiority gave way to

envy. “Bermuda! Boy, you really do get around.”

They talked, as they rowed out to the sailboat in

the dory, about Connie’s recent trip, which sounded

equally exciting to Tom and his younger brother.

When Randy discovered that his cousin had actually

flown home, across all those miles of ocean, he was

definitely impressed. But Connie refused to let the

conversation dwell too completely on herself and

brought the talk back to sailing as soon as she

courteously could manage it.

Tom knew a great deal about the theory of the

sport, and he explained things well and logically.

Kit, after the first few minutes, found it difficult to

17

follow his reasoning, but Connie was alive with

curiosity and interest.

“Ever handle a tiller yourself?” Tom asked.

“Never. But I’d like to.”

Tom grinned. “That’s easy enough to arrange.”

“Not tonight!” Kit begged, suddenly timid. “It

isn’t that I don’t trust you, Connie, but—”

“But you trust Tom more!” Connie laughed, not

in the least offended, and let Randy give her a hand

as she climbed from the skiff into the larger boat.

Seen thus closely, the catboat looked much bigger

than she had expected. It boasted both a mainsail

and a jib. The hull was white as a gull in the

moonlight, and the name Sea Swallow was painted

in dark green along the side.

Both boys ignored the girls for a few minutes as

they began to work at duties they apparently took for

granted. Randy tugged at the boom crotch while

Tom untied the sail cover. Kit sat down on a kapok

pillow, keeping well out of the way, but Connie

watched everything with fascination.

“Here. Stow this away for’ard,” Randy ordered,

handing her the forked length of wood that had held

the boom. “Please,” he added belatedly.

Connie crawled over a cork life preserver and

found a place for it under the deck, then came back

to the stern bent almost double so that she would

escape the slowly swinging boom.

18

Now Tom was tugging at the halyards, trying to

pull a rope free so that he could hoist sail. “Here,

hold the tiller a minute,” he told Randy when he

came back to the stern. “I’ll get the centerboard.”

The nautical terms were captivating to Connie.

She tried to interpret them as Randy followed Tom’s

directions obediently. A few seconds later the main-

sail was up, Tom had payed out the sheet, and they

were swinging away from the anchored skiff in a

shallow curve.

The bay was swelling gently, and the breeze was,

as Tom had prophesied, becoming brisk. Connie

turned her head and let the wind blow her hair

straight back from her ears, breathing in the good

salt smell of the bay.

Kit was smiling faintly, looking relaxed and

happy, confident that her cousins knew their

business and that her only obligation this evening

was to enjoy herself. She had none of her twin’s

impulse to explore new experiences to their very

marrow. She was quite content to just sit and absorb

this new sensation so akin to flying, and to store

away in her memory the moonpath on the bay, the

brightness of the stars, the mystery of the dark water

through which they were gliding with ever-

increasing speed.

“We’ll wait to hoist the jib until we see what this

breeze is like,” Tom was saying to Randy.

19

“Maybe we won’t need it.”

“Maybe,” Tom agreed.

Considering the difference in their years, the

brothers seemed companionably attuned. Perhaps it

was because Randy was old for his age, Connie

decided, more responsible than she had expected,

and more interesting. It could be that living near the

sea developed such qualities in a boy.

The Sea Swallow was skimming through the

water like a dragonfly now, leaning far over, the sail

taut. Connie’s eyes were bright with excitement.

Tom grinned at her appreciatively.

“Like it?”

“Mm!”

After a few more minutes Tom began watching

his sail. “Ready about!” he called suddenly, and to

Kit, Randy added, “That means ‘duck.’ “

They all ducked quickly as the boom swung over

and the boat came about on another tack. Connie

could see the lights of Newport now, winking in the

distance, some bunched together in a long, low

rectangle, others scattered along a curve of land like

minute, unblinking stars.

Spray whispered across Connie’s face and she

lifted her head to taste the salt on her lips. She felt

like a bird, no longer an earth-bound human.

“No need to hoist the jib. Swell breeze,” Tom was

saying. He headed for a lighted buoy in the distance

20

and began to help the girls get their bearings in the

moonlit bay.

The town of Newport lay almost behind them to

their portside, and a ribbon of land curved around in

a semicircle before them. Randy pointed out a yacht

club, and the lights of some huge summer

residences, while Tom named the islands and the

coves. They tacked again, and came into a sheltered

bit of quiet water, in the lee of a high promontory of

land. Their speed slowed, and Connie looked up at

the great bulks of houses scattered along the

headland. This was the Newport her father spoke of,

the summer colony of the fabulously rich.

Tom identified the estates by name, and he

described them to the girls, while Connie listened

idly. The names, famous perhaps in the New York

social register or on Wall Street, meant little to her

until her cousin spoke of the Butterworths.

“I wish you could have seen Eagle Rock when it

was still a show place,” Tom said. “It was really

something. One of the most exciting locations

anywhere around, to my way of thinking. Hangs

right over the water, on the bluff above us here.”

Both Connie and Kit looked upward in the

direction Tom indicated. The moon was behind

them, and only faintly illuminated a turreted castle

that might have been haunted by Lorelei.

For a moment neither spoke. Then Kit asked

21

softly, “What was that poem we had to learn in

school, years ago?

“ ‘Hast thou seen that lordly castle,

That castle by the sea?

Golden and red above it

The clouds float gorgeously.’ ”

Connie could always cap a quotation. She had a

memory even better than Kit’s.

“ ‘Well I have seen that castle,

That castle by the sea,

And the moon above it standing,

And the mist rise solemnly.’ ”

“There was lots more,” Kit murmured.

“I know, but I’ve forgotten most of it. Except one

line. ‘But I heard on the gale the sound of a wail—’

It was a sad and eerie sort of poem.”

“Definitely unmerry.” Tom chuckled. “As a

matter of fact, Eagle Rock itself is a little

forbidding.”

“Spooky,” Randy put in. “Always has been.”

Connie looked at the younger boy sharply. “What

do you mean?”

“He doesn’t mean anything,” Tom said.

“I do too.” Randy was insistent. “Wait till you set

22

it in the daytime!”

Tom laughed. “I thought ghosts walked at night,

Small Fry.”

Kit shivered. “Change the subject, can’t you?”

she asked in a voice half-teasing, half-serious. She

was still looking up at the castle on the rock. “I can

see what Randy means.”

The moon, riding high behind them, dodged

behind a cloud as she spoke and the bay was

suddenly darkened. No white path danced on the

water; no light fell on the faces in the sailboat.

Connie found herself following Kit’s glance, leaning

back against the side of the cockpit and looking,

with strange inevitability, upward. She felt awed,

almost afraid, as though on the breeze that was

certainly far from a gale she might actually hear the

sound of a wail, as the German poet had in years

gone by. But instead, to her surprise, she saw a light,

a wan and flickering light that seemed to move

slowly from window to window beyond the

mansion’s stone walls.

“Look!” Connie whispered, and pointed.

“Look at what?” Tom was busy with the tiller and

he didn’t recognize the urgency in her voice.

But Randy responded with gratifying promptness.

“Hey! There’s a light!”

“Where?”

“In the Butterworth place. Honest, Tom!”

23

“Nonsense,” Tom said. “There hasn’t been a soul

living there since old Mrs. Butterworth died six

months ago.”

“But look!” Connie insisted.

The boat had shifted around just enough so that

the sail hid the bluff from Tom’s view. He came

about as quickly as possible on a new tack, but by

then the light had disappeared.

“You’re seeing things!” he teased Connie.

“No, really. There was a light. Randy saw it.”

“Randy’s got an imagination like Edgar Allan

Poe’s,” Tom chuckled. “Did you see it, Kit?”

The moon, emerging again, lighted Kit’s earnest

face. She was frowning, puzzlement creasing her

usually smooth forehead. “I’m not sure,” she said

slowly. “Maybe it was imagination, but for just a

minute or two I did think—” She stopped and

looked at Connie with a question in her eyes. Would

it be wise to pursue the subject any further?

Connie took the hint. “Oh, well, let’s pretend

there was a light, anyway. It makes everything so

much more interesting to have a haunted house to

speculate about.” She tousled her young cousin’s

hair affectionately. “Doesn’t it, Randy?”

“You bet!”

“If it’s old Mrs. Butterworth’s ghost, the poor

soul must be hungry.” Tom took Connie’s cue and

began to treat the matter as a game. “The last of the

24

Butterworths died without a nickel to her name. That

is, except for whatever the furnishings were worth.

Eagle Rock itself, I understand, was heavily

mortgaged.”

“Who were the Butterworths, anyway? I mean,

where did all the money to build a castle like that

come from?” Kit wanted to know.

Tom shrugged. “Lots of people have asked that

question, around here, but I don’t know that

anybody ever got a satisfactory answer. There are

some interesting theories, though.”

“Such as?” prodded Connie lightly.

“Oh, they aren’t very savory. Scarcely worth

repeating.” Tom had glanced at his younger brother

and the avid interest explicit in Randy’s expression

made him cautious. He changed the subject abruptly.

“Come on, Connie, you take the tiller now for a

while.”

Connie didn’t need a second invitation. She let

Tom hand her the sheet and moved into the position

he had been occupying in the stern.

“Keep her headed for a point just to the starboard

of that lighted buoy,” Tom advised.

“Starboard?”

“Right, to you. Port is left.”

“Oh, yes!” Connie felt a little dismayed at her

ignorance, but she promised herself she would learn.

In two weeks she could learn a lot!

25

But she didn’t dream, on that first moonlit, star-

studded evening, that she was to have a most

unusual vacation, and that she was to learn a great

deal about something quite different—and even

more exciting—than how to sail a boat.

26

CHAPTER 3

Eagle Rock

The bay, when Connie and Kit awakened in the

morning, was as smooth as glass. The breeze had

died with dawn, and the day to come was bound to

be hot and still.

But this did nothing to dampen the girls’ spirits.

They were used to hot, still days in Pennsylvania,

when midsummer temperatures were apt to soar into

the nineties and stay there for a week at a time.

Dressing alike, in blue denim shorts and open-

throated plaid gingham shirts, they came down to

breakfast in time to say good-bye to Uncle Pete

before he left for Providence.

It hadn’t occurred to them that their identical

costumes might prove confusing, but they had to

correct their uncle twice when he called Connie Kit,

and Kit Connie.

“We’ll have to make a rule around here,” he told

them with an amused shake of his head. “One of you

27

will have to wear a blue ribbon, if you intend to

dress alike. I don’t like seeing double at eight in the

morning. It’s too nerve-racking for an old, worn-out

newspaperman like me.”

Since Uncle Pete, whose eyes were both merry

and shrewd and whose slender figure was almost as

boyish as Tom’s, looked neither tired nor old

enough to be the father of a young man nearly out of

his teens, Connie and Kit both laughed at him and

continued to tease him. Finally, feigning utter

despair, he fled, but not before threatening to paint

one of the girls blue when he came home that night.

“Give them a day in this sun and they’ll be

scarlet,” Aunt Helen called after him.

“Better be careful,” Uncle Pete warned. “That

won’t be fun.”

“Will you be home for dinner?” his wife wanted

to know.

“I think so. Unless I call you.” The screen door

slammed behind him and he was off.

Tom, who was doing some part-time work at

what Randy called “the clam factory,” had gone off

before the rest of the family breakfasted, and the

younger boy became the twins’ self-appointed escort

for the day. Along with the springer spaniel puppy,

appropriately named Pogo, he took them on a tour of

the immediate neighborhood, helped them pick a

quart of wild blueberries, and brought them back

28

home in time for a swim before lunch.

The tide was high, and all four of them, including

Pogo, dived from the end of the dock. Both Connie

and Kit were strong swimmers, and this, added to

the fact that they didn’t patronize him, as older

people were sometimes apt to do, seemed to increase

their prestige in Randy’s eyes.

He expressed his approval in typical ten-year-old

fashion. “For girls, you’re all right,” he told Connie

as they sat together on the dock, swinging their legs

above the water. Pogo shook himself, showering

both of them with salt spray. “Hey!” Randy plunged

in again, making a tremendous splash.

Later, when Kit had climbed up the ladder to

stand above her, and Randy was beyond hearing

distance, swimming out to the skiff, Connie repeated

Randy’s remark.

“I take that as a real compliment!” Kit nodded,

smiling. “Oh, Connie, isn’t this all just perfect!” She

stretched her arms wide to the sky and the sea.

Just how perfect she thought it was Connie tried

to say in a letter to her mother and dad early that

afternoon. Kit wrote to them at the same time and

together they drove to the post office at Newport to

mail the letters.

Randy went along as guide, and on the way home

he proposed something that had apparently been in

his mind all morning. “How’d you like to explore

29

Eagle Rock?”

“Explore?” Connie questioned.

Randy nodded, his eyes bright with mischief.

Now that he had accepted his cousins as virtual

playmates he could tell them his secret. “I know a

way to get inside.”

“You do?” Connie’s immediate interest was

explicit in her tone of voice. When she was excited

she always spoke in italics.

“Yep. Down on the basement level there’s a

broken window. Us kids found it one day.”

Just who “us kids” happened to be Connie didn’t

stop to inquire. Looking at Kit she cried, “Let’s!”

But Kit was the more cautious twin. “Mightn’t it

be—illegal, maybe?”

“We’re not breaking and entering. We’re just

entering,” Connie replied with a chuckle. “Anyway,

as Aunt Bet always says,” she said, recalling the

young aunt with whom she lived in Philadelphia,

“anything that’s fun is almost always illegal or

fattening. Come on, Katy, be a sport!”

Kit shrugged. “Just so you promise to get me out

of jail in time to enjoy the rest of my vacation.”

“It’s a deal!”

“Nobody cares,” Randy insisted, bouncing up and

down in impatience. “The house is a wreck,

anyway.”

So a few minutes later, at her young cousin’s

30

direction, Connie turned off the main thoroughfare

to a winding road that led them closer to the shore.

The country was hilly here, and they were soon

riding along a ridge of land high above the bay,

which was only occasionally visible through the

trees. The sun once more, as on the previous

afternoon, was beating down with merciless

brilliance on the well-kept lawns of large estates,

and it made the rust splotches on the great iron gates

of Eagle Rock seem sad and ugly by comparison,

the chipped cement of the once impeccable

driveway a malformation in an otherwise tidy world.

With conspiratorial foresight, Connie parked the

car on the main road at some distance from the

gates. She was careful to put it in the shade of a tree,

because the sun would make an oven of the body

before their return. Then she and Kit and Randy set

out with assumed nonchalance, and turned in to the

abandoned estate on foot.

Grass grew between the spreading cracks in the

cement. Weeds choked the shrub border.

Honeysuckle entangled the lower limbs of rare trees,

creeping up to strangle and kill them. Such ravage

made Connie feel almost ill. It was frightening to

see how quickly nature could reclaim and destroy

man-made grandeur. She said as much to Kit.

Her sister nodded, but Randy paid no attention to

such philosophizing. He was imbued with one

31

increasing purpose. He wanted to investigate the

possible source of that weird light he had seen last

night.

Connie knew just what was in the boy’s mind.

She was almost as curious, if not quite so impatient,

as he. But she mentioned nothing of this to Kit,

because she knew her twin would never condone

such childish mystery chasing. This was her

vacation and she did not intend to become embroiled

in such activity. Not Kit!

They walked for quite a distance along the

curving drive before a turn brought the house into

sight. Then Connie stopped with a gasp. Its

crumbling magnificence was even more shocking

than she had imagined, but its past glory was

apparent. It must once have been fabulous indeed!

Great jardinieres, so heavy that it must have taken

a dozen men to lift one, flanked the once-elegant

porte-cochere, but no flowers bloomed in them now.

Ivy trailed dismally up a pillar to the gallery which

seemed to encircle the house at a higher level than

that on which they stood. The lower windows were

barred but the upper ones were uncurtained and

staring. It was easy to see that they were made of

plate glass and that they must once have been draped

with damasks and satins.

“It’s like a castle on the Rhine!” Connie

murmured, half to herself. Pink and green marble

32

was laid like tile in intricate patterns along an oval

terrace that formed an approach to the main door. It

was a temptation to walk across it on tiptoe, as

though the clip-clop of loafers might be an insult to

such sumptuousness.

“Can you imagine living in a shack like this?”

Randy’s boyish question exploded in the still air

and made Connie and Kit both laugh. “It might be

fun for a week end,” Connie replied.

“But it would be an awful lot to live up to,” Kit

added, realistically.

“Wait till you see it in daytime from the bay

side,” Randy told the girls, almost as though he were

bragging about his own private possession.

“Hanging out over the rock the way it does, it’s

really something!”

A bee dive-bombed at Connie’s nose, and she

ducked. A mosquito settled on her arm hungrily, and

she slapped at it. Insects seemed to be the only

tenants left at Eagle Rock. “I have a theory,” she

said as she followed Randy across the terrace.

“Maybe the light we saw last night was just a swarm

of lightning bugs.”

He had the good sense not to take her seriously.

“Phooey. That light came from inside the house.”

Connie didn’t argue the point because she was

convinced of the same thing, and she was glad that

Kit didn’t demur when their young cousin led them

33

down some twisting stone steps to a lower level,

then along a semicircular balcony that hung out over

the bay. The view from here was positively breath-

taking. Near by, to their right, the green lawns of

estates sloped down to the shore whenever absence

of rock permitted, and in the distance, almost

directly across the bay from the point at which they

stood, the business district of Newport sweltered

under the heat haze. The ferry on which Connie and

Kit had crossed the bay only the day before was

once more passing Goat Island, and a schooner

under power was bound for the open sea, just visible

in the distance. Few small sailing craft were abroad,

however, and those in evidence seemed almost

entirely becalmed.

“Come on!” Randy tugged at Connie’s plaid shirt.

He led the girls to a side window which lacked the

forbidding bars of most of the others, pushed it open

with ease, and clambered through into the dim

interior of a room which must once have been a

pantry. Connie followed, and so did Kit.

The pantry led to a kitchen which in its day must

have been the last word in convenience, but which

seemed antiquated and hotel-sized to the girls. They

didn’t linger, but followed Randy upstairs to the

main floor, which interested them far more.

Connie, as she ascended the stairs, kept sniffing.

A tantalizing fragrance, strange in a closed house,

34

seemed to hang in the air. It was stronger than the

dusty, musty odor which anyone might have

expected. She stopped midway. “Do you smell

something?” she asked.

“Smell something?” Kit, whose senses were less

alert, hadn’t caught it.

“Like perfume,” Connie said.

Kit stopped and took a deep breath. “I see what

you mean. That’s strange.”

But Randy was bounding on ahead like an eager

puppy. “Wait’ll you get an eyeful of this!” he said

over his shoulder as he hurried them on.

His enthusiasm was certainly justified, Connie

and Kit agreed. The main hall was truly magnificent.

Floored in imported marble, illuminated at one time

by an enormous crystal chandelier which glittered

high above their heads, and flanked on either side by

a sweeping staircase, it looked fit for any prince.

More to Connie’s taste was an oval reception room

just off it, painted above the wainscoting with

French court scenes. Incredibly elegant, its domed

ceiling also bore scenic paintings, and the whole

apartment was as perfect as a regal gem.

The reception room contained not a stick of

furniture, but the vast entrance hall held two

ordinary oak office desks, apparently abandoned by

the auctioneers who had sold the interior furnishings

of Eagle Rock at the tax sale Connie and Kit had

35

read about in their father’s newspaper clipping. The

mahogany-paneled library, however, a semicircular

room which looked out over the bay, still contained

an upturned inlaid table, a French chair staggering

crazily on only three good legs, and a number of

books which had been spilled out of the shelves and

were lying forlorn and unwanted on the parquet

floor.

Connie bent and picked up one open, yellow-

paged volume in distress. Taught to treat books with

respect, it seemed dreadful to her that these should

have been abandoned in such a rude manner. She

closed the book in her hand and read the title. It

seemed to be a book of sermons, oddly out of

character with the worldliness of the sumptuous

house. “The Very Nature of Sin,” she read aloud.

“What?” Kit looked over her shoulder.

“Oh, come on!” Randy was urging. “We haven’t

got time for any old books!”

Understanding his impetuousness, Connie put the

book gently on one of the shelves and followed

Randy on the tour of inspection, which led them

through a damask-lined drawing room, a huge

dining room with a marble fireplace, and several

other smaller apartments back to the entrance hall.

Randy leaped up the stairs like a rabbit, Connie not

far behind, but Kit came along more slowly, feeling

like an interloper.

36

“There might be tramps living up there,” she

murmured to Connie. “Do you think this is quite

safe?”

But the question occurred to her too late. Randy

was already so far ahead that there was no stopping

him, and despite Kit’s qualms the trio discovered no

sign of recent occupancy. In one or two bedrooms

massive Victorian beds, tortuously carved in black

walnut, had apparently defeated any effort made by

the auctioneers to effect a sale. They remained,

relics of a heavy-handed past, along with some

faded satin draperies and an occasional ornate

marble-topped table too large to be interesting to a

present-day buyer of antiques.

Looking out once more on the bay, Connie and

Randy discussed the points at which the light had

appeared, and settled on a group of guest bedrooms

less elegant than the master suite.

“Let’s look for a clue,” Connie proposed,

indulging Randy’s taste for detection, but they could

find nothing distinctively unusual.

“Maybe the house is haunted,” Randy proposed

to the twins’ intense surprise. “Maybe the old lady’s

ghost walks at night.”

“Randolph Ridgeway, you ought to be ashamed,

talking like a six-year-old!” Connie scolded him.

“You don’t believe in ghosts, at your age!”

“Well, there was a light,” Randy pouted. “You

37

explain it then.”

But Connie’s mind was engaged with a much

more interesting question. How did it happen that

here, on the second floor, no fragrance perfumed the

air. Had a woman wearing a heavy scent quite

recently walked through the lower chambers? What

else could account for the odor both she and Kit had

noticed?

“Listen,” Kit said suddenly. “You two may not

feet like burglars, but I do. It’s all very interesting,

but I’ve seen enough. Think how foolish we’d feel if

somebody should catch us! I’m getting out of this

house.”

She meant it too. She ran downstairs quickly,

Connie and Randy trailing behind. As they retraced

their steps through the rooms of the main floor to the

stairs leading down to the kitchen Connie kept

looking for some trace of the perfumed visitor, but it

was unlikely that the lady would have conveniently

dropped anything so revealing as a handkerchief or a

pair of gloves.

Had they imagined the flowerlike fragrance?

Connie began to wonder, but the next moment she

became acutely conscious of it again.

“Kit, that is the smell of perfume.” She spoke

sharply, as though she were trying to convince

herself.

Kit frowned and nodded. “I don’t understand it.”

38

“Neither do I,” Connie confessed.

“Perfume worn by some person or persons

unknown,” her sister teased, feeling easier now that

they were about to leave the house.

“It isn’t a joking matter. What woman could have

been here, and why?”

“I can’t answer either of those questions, but I

can tell you one thing,” Kit replied. “Whoever she

was and for whatever reason she came, she doesn’t

explain your light on the second floor.”

“Why not?” Randy wanted to know, asking the

question just for the sake of asking a question.

“There was no perfume odor upstairs.”

Connie nodded, proud of her sister’s perspicacity.

She let Kit crawl out of the window first, turned, and

took one more deep, thoughtful breath. Then she

snapped her fingers and her eyes sparkled. “Lily of

the valley!” she cried.

“That’s it!” Kit was stopped in mid-flight.

But Randy only gave a disgusted grunt and,

revising his previous decision, muttered, “Girls!”

39

CHAPTER 4

The Ghost Walks Again

When Connie, Kit, and Randy reached home, Mrs.

Ridgeway was busily making sandwiches and

deviling eggs.

“Peter wants me to meet him in Providence for

dinner,” she told the twins, “so I’m packing a picnic

supper for you and the boys. When Tom comes

home he may want to call Mark Eastham, too. Then

you can take the boat and go wherever you please.”

Such spontaneous parties always appealed to

Connie, and she looked forward to the picnic with

pleasure. Tom fell in with the plan readily when he

returned in the late afternoon, but he couldn’t reach

his friend Mark. So the four of them set off in the

Sea Swallow, with the picnic basket and gallon

thermos of iced tea stowed under the deck.

The bay, Connie decided, changed with every

passing hour. A modest breeze had come up, just

enough to fill the sails, and their trip to the beach

40

where they intended to picnic was relaxed and

peaceful. By tacit agreement neither she nor Kit nor

Randy spoke of their exploration of the Butterworth

mansion, but Connie couldn’t get Eagle Rock out of

her mind. When they passed the cove, from a

distance, she kept glancing up curiously at the

rococo old castle on the cliff. A mysterious light, a

perfumed visitor, a broken window latch. What did

it all add up to? Who was haunting the mansion, and

to what purpose? She discovered an urge to know

more of the history of the Butterworth family. She

must remember to ask Uncle Pete. . . .

For Connie had already discovered that her

newspaper-trained uncle typified men in his

profession. He loved to discuss local lore and he was

as informative as, and far more entertaining, than a

history book.

“Come back, Connie! You’re a million miles

away!” Tom, holding the tiller with a steady hand,

chided her.

“Not a million. Only about a mile,” Connie

wanted to reply, but she kept her own counsel for

the moment.

Randy, sprawled on his stomach along the deck,

waved to a passing boat, then turned his head and

called back to his brother. “There’s the Bo’sun,

Tom.

Tom waved too, and a gray-haired, distinguished-

41

looking man in a commodore’s cap waved back.

“The Bo’sun?” Kit murmured.

“That’s just a nickname for Mr. Meredith. I don’t

know why everybody calls him that. Maybe because

he was in the Navy years ago.”

“He certainly has a pretty boat,” Connie said

admiringly. Her eyes swept the trim powerboat that

was passing some distance to starboard. The bright

work, as her cousins called the brass trimmings,

gleamed in the setting sun, and the paint was fresh

and white.

“He’s a charter boatman,” Randy explained.

“What’s that?”

“A guy who takes out fishing parties,” Tom

explained. “It’s sort of a strange occupation for Mr.

Meredith. He looks to be several cuts above that sort

of thing. But he apparently likes it.”

“Every man to his taste,” Connie murmured.

“Me, I think it would be a slick kind of life,”

Randy said over his shoulder. “All day, every day on

the water. Why knock yourself out?”

“Why, indeed? What’s money?” Tom snapped his

fingers and grinned at the girls. “But I think Randy

would make a better beachcomber than a charter

boatman. It would be such an effort to take the fish

off the hook.”

Randy, realizing that he was being teased, made a

sound between a grunt and a snort. “When are we

42

eating, and where?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Thought we’d tie in at the Websters’ dock and

use their beach. We have a standing invitation,”

Tom explained to Connie and Kit.

In half an hour more they were all settled on a

sheltered rocky beach, far different from the sandy

Jersey beaches with which the girls were more

familiar. They were seeing the bay from still a

different point of view now, and they watched boats

come and go in the distance. Large cabin cruisers,

sloops, ketches, even schooners were on the water

tonight, and Connie tried to learn their

distinguishing characteristics.

“It’s hardest to tell the difference between a ketch

and a yawl,” she decided aloud. “I’m afraid I’ll

never really learn.”

But Tom encouraged her. “You’ve learned a lot

already. Just wait a few more days.”

After supper they climbed into the boat again,

feeling lazy and replete. The early evening was

pleasantly cool after the hot, still day, and the

twilight seemed to linger endlessly.

Tom sailed back toward the Ridgeway dock on

short tacks. The breeze was still so light that the boat

moved very slowly. The girls chatted with their

cousins in desultory fashion about a number of

things, and not until one tack brought them directly

into the cove below Eagle Rock did Connie’s

43

thoughts stray back to the mysterious house.

Then she shifted her position so that she could

look up at it, gray and monumental atop the cliff, its

windows no longer painted gold by the setting sun.

Tom intercepted her glance. “See a light tonight,

Connie?” His eyes were merry.

“No,” Connie admitted, “but then, it isn’t dark

yet.” She refused to be teased.

Idly, Tom let the boat drift closer and closer to

shore. The tide was low, and the sloping beach

below the cliff had broadened. The house from here,

rising almost above them, looked overpowering.

Kit shivered a little. “That place gives me the

creeps,” she said.

From the bay side there were three semicircular

galleries or balconies curving, one over the other,

above the cliff. “At high tide,” Connie said

thoughtfully, “the house must hang right above the

water, but at low tide there’s really quite a strip of

beach.”

“On this side, yes,” Tom agreed. “But on the

other side of the rock there’s a little inlet that rarely

runs dry.” He broke off short. “Say! Look up there!”

His gaze was fastened on the upper balcony, but

Connie, for a moment, could see nothing. Then a

shadow seemed to move behind one of the pillars,

and ever so slowly, as though pulled by invisible

hands, a window that had been open was closed.

44

Speechless for a moment, not one of them quite

believing his own eyes, the four cousins sat in the

sailboat and stared upward. Then Tom started to roll

up his pants. “I’m going to anchor and see what’s

cooking. There’s somebody in that house,” he said.

Randy looked confused. “Somebody or

something,” he muttered, a small-boy fascination in

the supernatural coming to the fore.

“Oh, act your age!” Tom scolded. He was already

dropping anchor. Quickly he began to tie a couple of

stays around the lowered sail.

“I’m coming with you!” Connie started to pull at

the laces of her sneakers.

Tom didn’t try to dissuade her, but he said, “Then

you’d better keep your sneaks on. There are

thousands of barnacles on this beach.”

The thrill of a chase was irresistible, even to Kit.

She followed the rest over the side of the boat,

slipping into the knee-deep water soundlessly. In a

couple of seconds they were invisible from the

house because they were almost immediately

beneath it. The shrub-covered hillside on the left of

the mansion looked unscalable to Connie, and as she

followed Tom up the sloping beach she said so.

“I know a path,” her cousin said shortly. “I’ve

been here before.”

He led them to an outcropping of rock and

zigzagged up it to an apparently impenetrable

45

thicket. After searching for a moment he parted

some bushes with both hands. “O.K. Here it is.”

Connie, then Kit and Randy, followed him from

the twilight into a dark-green tunnel, and found steps

cut in the shaly ground. All three were soon

breathless as they climbed this natural, curving

staircase, and Connie wondered what sturdy soul

among the opulent Butterworths had caused the path

to be built.

Then, as suddenly as they had entered the tunnel

of green, they emerged from it to the lowest of the

semicircular balconies. Tom turned, a cautioning

finger to his lips, and pointed to the stairs which led

to the next level. A jerk of his head indicated that

they were to follow him soundlessly.

Just once, Connie glanced back toward the bay.

The sailboat lay at anchor below them, but from this

height it was out of sight unless one went to the

stone railing and looked directly down. She had a

small qualm of doubt. It was one thing to explore

Eagle Rock in the daylight, but it was quite another

to steal upon a window-closing ghost unaware.

But Tom did not seem to be considering the

consequences. His curiosity thoroughly aroused, he

was as eager as a boy on a treasure hunt. From one

level to another he led them, then started up the

second set of steps.

It was then that they heard the music. All four of

46

them stopped simultaneously. It came from

somewhere above them, thin, eerie, haunting.

Wraithlike, the notes from a violin floated on the

twilit air, and to Connie it occurred that there was no

distinguishable tune.

Tom’s eyes widened in astonishment. “Well, can

you beat that!” he whispered. “D’you suppose some

guy’s got a radio on?”

Immediately Connie knew that he had been

pursuing the theory that a tramp or a homeless bum

was camping out in Eagle Rock, but she knew that

there had been no evidence of any such thing this

afternoon. And her good sense told her that this was

not radio music, this eerie, tuneless wail.

Tom didn’t wait for an answer to his own

question but crept on up the steps. Connie could

hear the water sloshing gently in his sneakers, but

aside from the music, this was the only sound.

Then, just as Tom reached the top balcony, an

unfortunate thing happened. With absolutely no

warning, Randy gave a Gargantuan sneeze.

“Ka-choo!”

As though it had been a prearranged signal, the

music stopped dead in the middle of a high, piercing

note. “Golly, Randy, you would do something like

that!” Tom whispered in disgust. Then he sprinted

along the balcony toward the window they had

noted from the bay.

47

No longer at great pains to keep quiet, Connie

followed, but Kit and Randy had lost some of their

previous enthusiasm. Night was closing in fast now,

and this game of chasing a shadow lacked its former

appeal.

At the same moment it apparently occurred to

Tom that he might be leading his cousins into real

danger, because he pulled up short and grabbed

Connie’s arm. “This isn’t smart,” he whispered.

“We’d make perfect targets from behind one of

those plate-glass windows.”

But Connie was not to be dissuaded. “Oh, Tom,

who’d want to shoot at us?” she whispered back,

and broke free, streaking along the balcony ahead of

the older boy.

There was nothing for Tom to do but follow his

impetuous cousin, who had the window they were

seeking spotted just as definitely as he. When she

reached it Connie had the foresight to stop and peer

cautiously into the room, but when she could see

nothing in the gloom she didn’t hesitate to try the

sash, and she wasn’t really very much surprised

when the lower pane slid upward at the pressure of

her palms.

A second later they were in the room.

She had been in this same room this afternoon,

but Connie had the immediate feeling that

something was changed.

48

Then she remembered.

She had closed the door on the way out. She was.

certain of it, because she had been careful to close

all the bedroom doors, leaving the house just as they

had found it so that there would be no record of their

intrusion. Now the door was open on the hall that

led to the grand staircase. Quickly she tiptoed across

the room.

Tom, right behind her, was in time to see a

formless white something fade into the darkness of

the stair well like a receding ectoplasm. He was

witness to the fact that she didn’t imagine it,

although Kit and Randy were not on hand to confirm

Connie’s first sight of what they later all referred to

as “the ghost.”

Afraid of nothing, she would have given

immediate chase, but once more Tom grabbed her

arm, and this time he held fast. “We’re getting out of

here. Right now!” There was command in his voice.

Unsuccessfully, Connie tried to pull away. Then,

impatiently, she whispered, “That’s no ghost!”

Punctuating her imperative announcement came

the bang of a door from the lower regions. Sharp as

a pistol crack, the sound echoed and re-echoed in the

empty house. Kit was in the bedroom behind Tom

and Connie by now, and Randy was close beside

her. Suddenly, with instinct unfettered by advancing

years, the little boy turned and ran. He didn’t need

49

Tom to tell him it was time to get out of here. He

knew!

There was nothing for the twins and his older

brother to do but to follow. Randy’s thin bare legs

twinkling ahead of them, the three raced down the

balcony steps from one level to another until they

reached the thicket which concealed the path down

the side of the cliff.

It took courage to plunge into the pitch darkness

of the leafy tunnel, through which now not a flicker

of light came. Now Randy hung back and Tom

edged past him and went ahead, finding his way

more by intuition than by knowledge down the

slippery, moss-covered, uneven footholds which led

to the beach.

Now, for the first time, Connie felt a sharp thrill

of fear. They were so hemmed in, so captive in this

perpendicular passage. Roots writhed and twisted

beneath her feet, ready to pitch her headlong

downward at the slightest misstep.

How had it grown dark so quickly? Why had they

ever launched forth on such a ridiculous quest?

What had possessed Tom, previously so sensible, to

yield to such a childish impulse and lead them all

on?

Connie could hear Kit panting behind her, and

she wondered whether her twin sister’s breath was

coming as short as her own. Blood was pounding in

50

her ears and she had a frantic desire to scream and to

pull at the vines above her head, clawing her Avay

out of this murky passage. She was beginning to

understand what claustrophobia must be like.

Yet Connie didn’t speak; nor did anyone else.

They all seemed to realize how readily they could be

trapped.

Slipping, sliding, righting themselves by grabbing

at roots and branches, they made their way

downward. Mosquitoes buzzed around their heads

and swarmed about their bare legs. Brambles tore at

their ankles. Swinging ropes of fox grapes slapped

their faces and twigs caught in the girls’ hair.

But by now, so great was their desire for freedom,

they were almost impervious to pain. When Tom

finally pushed aside the final curtain of vines the

sight of the shining beach was like the discovery of

Shangri-La.

Connie stumbled out on the stones with such

thankfulness that she never thought to glance

upward, to see whether a light now shone from

Eagle Rock.

So far as she was concerned for the rest of this

evening, the ghost could walk alone!

51

CHAPTER 5

Enter Mark Eastham

“Great Scott!” cried Peter Ridgeway when the four

cousins, bramble-scratched, mosquito-bitten, and

generally the worse for wear, walked from the outer

darkness into the lamplit living room. “What under

the sun have you been doing?”

“It wasn’t under the sun,” said Tom ruefully, and

the rest of them laughed.

Connie had torn her shorts; Randy had snagged

his T-shirt; Kit’s right cheek was decorated with a

long red welt. As a group, they looked as though

they had been fighting a private war.

Randy would have spilled the whole story of their

evening adventure, but Tom hustled him off to bed

before he had a chance. Connie and Kit were

relieved, because they had no desire to admit to such

a childish pastime as ghost chasing. They

appreciated the fact that Tom undoubtedly felt the

same way.

52

Their Uncle Pete, however, wasn’t inclined to let

them dodge the issue. With a reporter’s inclination

to ferret out the truth, he asked the girls some

leading questions.

“Where did those sons of mine take you?”

“Oh, we went rock climbing,” Connie said.

“Exploring,” added Kit unexplicitly.

Both the twins nodded and smiled at each other

and at their uncle.

Peter Ridgeway’s eyes narrowed and his

answering smile was wry. “Never saw a rock scratch

a girl like that.” He was looking at the welt on Kit’s

cheek.

“Oh, that was a bramble.” Kit continued to smile

with assumed cheerfulness. She hadn’t yet had a

chance to catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror,

and she had no idea how utterly disheveled she

looked.

Connie, however, burst into spontaneous

laughter. “We were playing a sort of game with

Randy,” she explained without really explaining. “I

guess we’re getting a little too old for that sort of

thing.”

But her uncle was not easily fooled. “You’re up

to something, the lot of you. But if you don’t intend

to tell me, I suppose I can bide my time. Murder will

eventually out.”

“Murder?” Kit looked so startled that Connie

53

burst into laughter again. She went over to her uncle

and gave him a quick hug, thanking him wordlessly

for not pressing them further.

“Come on, Kit,” she said to her twin. “What we

both need is a good bath.”

A good night’s sleep, too, did much to restore

Connie’s usual self-confidence. The memory of their

harrowing flight faded with a new day, cooler by ten

degrees than yesterday, but the curiosity that had

attended them on their climb to Eagle Rock

remained.

At the breakfast table she showed her father’s

clipping about the Butterworth tax sale to her uncle.

“By the way,” she said, pretending to be very casual,

“Daddy met these people once. Went to their house

with a friend when he was a young man. He was

wondering what had happened to the family.”

“Just died out,” said her uncle succinctly. “Oh,

there probably are relatives, but the last Mrs.

Butterworth, the old lady who lived alone in Eagle

Rock, passed away just a few months back.”

“Was Eagle Rock really so grand?” Without

admitting that she already knew the mansion both

inside and out, Connie was trying to get Uncle Pete

to tell her what he knew of its history.

“Pretty spectacular. On a scale that’s fairly absurd

today, of course. Lots of Louis XV and gilt and

marble.”

54

“Where did people get so much money?” Connie

asked innocently.

Peter Ridgeway chuckled. “Well, they do say the

first Butterworth to make a pile was a

privateersman. You see, the name goes back to

Colonial days, long before the big influx of summer

people came and the palaces along the Cliff Walk

began to take shape. The early history of the family

wasn’t very savory. The Butterworths may even

have done a little slave smuggling on the side. There

was money in that sort of thing, a fortune even.”

“Slave smuggling?”

“Sure. This was a major port, remember, even in

the 1600’s”

Spurred on by Connie’s occasional questions, her

uncle described what he knew about the rise of the

Butterworths, which was accomplished

simultaneously with the rise of Newport.

“Families are quick to forget their beginnings,”

he said. “By the time the Butterworths were

entrenched at Eagle Rock, the ships bursting with

silk, spices, slaves, and rum were pretty well

discounted. Then along came the panic and

depression of ’93 and money got mighty scarce, but

did the Butterworths decamp?”

“Decamp?”

“Nope. They did not. And this has always

interested me!” Uncle Pete said with a shake of his

55

finger. “Just in the nick of time up sprang a

throwback, a chip off the old block, so to speak. At a

time when the Butterworth fortune was sagging, this

fellow—Nelson was his name—hit on some sort of

get-rich-quick scheme that put them back on easy

street.”

“What was the scheme?”

Uncle Pete shrugged. “I wish I knew. Someday

I’m going to write a history of Newport’s old

families. If I ever find out, I’ll let you in on the

secret, Connie.”

Looking at his watch, Mr. Ridgeway whistled in

alarm. “You’ll get me fired, young lady! I’m already

twenty minutes late.”

He picked up his hat from a chair in the hall,

slapped it on the back of his head, and went off

whistling, leaving Connie and her questions behind.

Half an hour later he had forgotten the conversation,

but Connie kept puzzling about Nelson

Butterworth’s money-making scheme as she

wandered alone down to the dock. She wondered

what more recent turn of fate had caused the family

to fall on evil days, and she wondered what person

or persons were haunting the mansion and for what

reason. Could there be any connection between the

Butterworth history and the present turn of events?

“Hello, there!”

A voice from directly under the dock made her

56

start.

“Hello.” Connie looked down as a young man,

with high cheekbones and intense blue eyes,

emerged from between the pilings and grinned up at

her.

“You must be Tom’s cousin.”

Connie nodded. “I am.”

“My name’s Mark Eastham.”

“Oh, yes! I’ve heard Tom speak of you.” Connie

smiled genially and sat down, cross-legged, on the

edge of the dock. “Do you live under there?” Her

eyes were mischievous as she indicated the spot

from which Mark had emerged.

“No,” the boy answered quite seriously, “I was

quahoging.”

Connie snapped her fingers. “Splendid! Now you

can tell me what that peculiar word means.”

Now Mark laughed. “Peculiar? It’s mighty

common around here. Quahogs are big clams. We

use them to make chowder.” He reached into a split

wood clam basket and showed her one.

Connie examined it with mild interest. “Then the

clams live under the dock!”

Mark laughed again. “Some of them do. They

live all along shore here. You dig them with a clam

fork like this.” He brought his into view.

“Very interesting!”

“We have plenty of littlenecks around here too.

57

Do you mean to say Tom hasn’t dug you any yet?”

he asked as though he considered the possibility

quite shocking.

Connie shook her head, and her corn-colored hair

rippled on her shoulders. “Nary a littleneck. But I do

know what they are,” she added, “and I love them!”

Mark promised to remedy Tom’s oversight

himself, if necessary. Then he heaved his basket of

quahogs onto the dock, laid his clam fork beside it,

and swung himself up to sit beside Connie and

dangle his legs over the side.

“Which twin are you? Connie or Kit?”

Connie was amused that he knew their names.

“Connie.”

“First time you’ve ever visited on Narragansett

Bay?”

Connie nodded. “The first time. And I love it! I

work in the city,” she went on to explain. “You

don’t know how lucky you are, living where

everything is so clean and fresh.”

But Mark didn’t look as though he felt lucky. He

looked faintly envious. “What city?”

“Philadelphia.”

“Oh!” His eyebrows lifted, as though he had more

than a cursory interest in this particular city. Then,

just as Connie thought he was going to pursue this

conversational tack, he became unexpectedly quiet,

and sat staring moodily out over the bay. His hands,

58

long-fingered and sensitive, gripped the edge of the

dock and he swung to and fro slightly, looking

remote and unhappy and even a little glum.

As the silence lengthened, Connie began to

search for something to say, “Do you go to college

with Tom?” she asked finally.

Mark shook his head. “I do not. But I’m apt to

end up there, if my guardian gets his way.”

“What’s the matter? Don’t you want to go to

college?” asked Connie in considerable

astonishment.

“I don’t want to go to college at all.”

To anyone else, Connie would have put a further

question. “Why not?” But somehow she sensed that

Mark would resent such prying. She waited to see

whether this moody young man would offer any

further information about himself, and meanwhile

she, too, stared out at the bay.

Guardian. Mark had mentioned his guardian and

the very name fascinated Connie. She had never

known anyone who had a guardian before. Most of

the boys and girls of her past acquaintance had been

equipped with families, or with at least one parent. It

made Mark, somehow, rather special and interesting.

After a while Connie’s forbearance proved

effective. “I don’t know why some people seem to

think college is an absolute ‘must,’ ” Mark said with

a thoughtful frown. “My uncle is positively hipped

59

on the subject. Just because he went to M.I.T., I

should go to M.I.T. I should be an engineer, I

suppose.” He shrugged. “When I refused point-

blank he agreed to settle for Brown, but that’s not

much better, from my point of view.”

“Aren’t you being a little hasty?” Connie asked.

“After all, you don’t dismiss the chance to get a

college degree just like that!” She blew an

imaginary feather from the palm of her hand.

“No, but I don’t want to spend four years getting

a liberal education.” He emphasized the last two

words.

“Oh, you don’t think you need it?” Connie felt a

little annoyed.

“I want to specialize,” Mark explained.

“Oh.” She waited for him to go on but he broke

off short again, his blue eyes looking dreamily

beyond her.

Goodness, she thought, he’s attractive enough in

a gaunt, artistic sort of manner, but he’s really

impossibly difficult to talk to. She began to consider

breaking away and walking back to the house.

Mark, however, apparently anticipated some such

move, because he changed the subject abruptly. “By

the way,” he said, “Tom gets home from his job at

noon today, I think. Why don’t we all get together

and swim this afternoon? Or, if it stays decently

cool, we might do the Cliff Walk.”

60

“Kit and I would love that,” said Connie frankly,

responding to the latter proposition. “Not that we

don’t like to swim, but Dad will skin us alive if we

don’t go sight-seeing at least once!”

“Tell Tom to call me, then,” Mark suggested, and

swung down from the dock into the shallow water

again. “I’ll be trotting along now, or my quahogs

will cook in the sun instead of the chowder pot.”

Slowly, Connie walked back across the strip of

marshland on the wooden footpath. Mark certainly

seemed like a strange boy, yet at the same time there

was something definitely appealing about him.

Appealing and rather lonely. Connie shivered under

the summer sun. She was certainly glad she hadn’t

been raised by a guardian.

Tom, when he came sauntering across the lawn at

noon to throw himself down in a garden chair and

share sandwiches and milk and a great bowl of fresh

raspberries with his two pretty cousins, was

completely agreeable to Mark’s proposition.

Connie and Kit changed from shorts to cool

cotton dresses, and Tom bathed and dressed, then

drove them in the Blair car to Mark’s uncle’s home,

a gloomy brownstone and clapboard dwelling,

which, like the pleasant Ridgeway house, had a lawn

sloping down to the bay. One house was just visible

from the other, and Connie decided that it was no

wonder that Mark, needing young companionship,

61

had become friendly with her cousin Tom. She

wondered how long they had known each other, and

how intimately. She must remember to ask Tom

what it was that made Mark so adamant about

refusing to go to college. She must find out, too,

whether the uncle was really the ogre Mark made

him sound. But right now there was no opportunity

for any such investigation, so with happy good will

Connie set out to enjoy their tour.

The Cliff Walk was quite different from what the

girls had imagined. Its greatest charm, Connie

decided as they walked along the narrow footpath

which wound and curved, dipped and climbed along

the sea, was that no ugly modern fabrication broke

its spell. On the right, along a four-mile ocean front,

were green lawns and gardens, exotic shrubs, and

the astonishing, palatial architecture of the great

Newport villas. On the left was the dashing surf,

eternally attacking and retreating.

“I feel like Alice in Wonderland after she fell

down the rabbit hole,” Kit murmured as they passed

a fantastic feudal castle.

“And think of it, you’re only seeing the back

yard!” Connie cried.

She was so spontaneous that the boys thoroughly

enjoyed acting as guides, and Tom and Mark vied

with each other in rolling famous names on their

tongues, then laughed at the expression on Connie’s

62

face.

At cozy little Belmont Beach they rested, then

walked on to the picturesque Chinese Tea House at

the cliff’s edge, on an estate aptly named The

Marble Palace. Down they went into a spooky

tunnel which ducked under the house, then up again

to blink their eyes in the sunlight and gaze at another

sweeping view of seascape and millionaires’ estates.

“This stuff,” Tom said, waving his hand

inclusively toward the great houses, “makes Eagle

Rock look like small potatoes, doesn’t it?”

At the name Eagle Rock Mark stiffened, and Tom

glanced his way sharply, then gave a short chuckle.

“Sorry, old boy. I was forgetting your middle name

is Butterworth.”

“Butterworth?” Connie repeated.

“Oh, the relationship isn’t especially close.” Mark

seemed anxious to discount it. “As a matter of fact„

I’ve never been particularly proud of my connection

with the family. Even if they were rich as Croesus at

one time.”

Kit looked surprised, because she hadn’t been

present at the breakfast table when Uncle Pete had

sketched the Butterworth background for Connie.

She stood twirling the big metal disk that hung from

a gold bracelet on her wrist. Her nickname was

etched across it in her own handwriting. Connie

always wore a similar bracelet and they jokingly

63

called them their identification tags.

The metal glinted in the sun, and Mark glanced at

it, then bent to examine it, seeming to welcome a

chance to change the subject. “Clever!” he said.

Suddenly Connie gave a little cry. “My bracelet!

It’s gone!”

“You haven’t had it on all day,” Kit told her

quietly. “I wondered why.”

“But I had it on last night!”

The twins looked at each other, thinking back.

“When we left—yes, you did. But not when we

came home.”

“Good grief!” Connie murmured. “I must have

dropped it somewhere at Eagle Rock.”

64

CHAPTER 6

The Clue in the Library

The minute the words were out of her mouth Connie

realized that Mark would have to be taken into their

confidence. She wanted to find the bracelet before

anyone else found it, and that meant wasting no

time.

Of course there was the possibility that she had

lost it in her headlong plunge through the thicket of

green that concealed the rocky steps, but she had a

fairly definite hunch that she hadn’t had the bracelet

on her arm then. It would have caught on bushes and

brambles as she tried to brake her descent, and she

would have been aware of it.

With the name “Connie” scrawled boldly across

the flat metal disk, she didn’t relish the thought of it

being found anywhere within the house. Besides,

she really valued the bracelet. Exchanged by the

twins at Christmas time, the keepsakes had real

sentimental value for both Connie and Kit.

65

So, with complete forthrightness, Connie told

Mark the story of their twilight expedition. “There’s

only one chance in a dozen I would have dropped it

inside that bedroom window,” she said as she

finished. “It’s probably on one of the balconies or

even on the beach.”

“Or in the boat,” Mark suggested.

“Or in the bay,” Tom added discouragingly.

“Anyway,” Connie proposed as they retraced

their steps toward the spot where they had parked

the car, “let’s stop and look. We’ll have plenty of

time.”

Mark didn’t try to dissuade them, but he did

shake his head over Connie’s story. “For three

people who are practically adult, you sure acted like

a bunch of crazy kids,” he said.

“Maybe we were influenced by Randy.” Tom

flushed, embarrassed.

“Or maybe not. Do you ever outgrow the desire

to explore an abandoned house?” Connie asked

sincerely. “I don’t think I ever will.”

Kit smiled. “If there isn’t a mystery lying around

handy, just trust Connie to go dig up one.”

“Mystery?” Mark asked. “You don’t really

believe—in the clear light of day—that you actually

saw this—er—ghostly figure?”

“I know we did,” Connie insisted.

“Tom?” Mark looked to his friend to deny such

66

arrant foolishness.

Tom was in between two fires. “We saw

something,” he admitted. “But I’ll be darned if I

know what.”

“In any event,” Connie said, “let’s get over to

Eagle Rock as soon as possible. And I’ll make a

bargain with you!” She chuckled slyly. “If I find my

bracelet I’ll promise to give up the ghost.”

Because Mark was practically a member of the

family, according to Kit, who set great store by

names, she felt less like a trespasser when the

quartet turned boldly into the crumbling drive in the

Blair car. This time Connie parked right under the

porte-cochere, and they were at no special pains to

be quiet as they got out and shut the doors.

But somehow the air of mystery clinging around

the strange old house made them lower their voices

as they searched the balconies, and by the time they

reached the bedroom window through which they

had climbed the night before, they were talking

instinctively in whispers.

Tom tried the sash, but it was easy to see that the

window had been locked on the inside. “Here’s a

fine point,” he murmured. “Can a ghost throw a

window catch?”

Connie giggled, because she knew all their ghost

talk was just so much horseplay. She was quite

certain that their “haunt” was completely mortal,

67

and that he or she must have returned to the room

last light after they had sailed away from the cove.

The sunlight was still so bright that it was

impossible to see whether the bracelet lay on the

floor within the dim room. Tom and Mark both

considered it unlikely, and proposed that they search

the path to the beach. But though they went

carefully over the ground, which seemed far less

hazardous in the daylight, they found nothing.

“It’s too bad, Connie,” Tom said sympathetically,

“but we may as well go home. Maybe we’ll discover

the bracelet somewhere in the boat.”

But Connie was not so easily dissuaded. She

intended to leave no stone unturned. And to tell the

exact truth, she was assailed by a growing desire to

get back inside the house.

As they walked back toward the porte-cochere

she came to a sudden decision. Touching Tom’s

elbow, she said softly, “I’d really like to have a look

in that bedroom. It would be a shame to have

somebody pick up the bracelet.”

“Particularly,” Kit mentioned, “somebody like the

police.”

Mark looked startled. “The police wouldn’t

ever—” Then he stopped.

Connie hoped that she was looking especially

appealing. “I think we’d better confess to something,

Kit.”

68

Kit groaned.

“What?” asked Tom, and his voice was

unexpectedly stern.

“We know another way to get in the house.”

“How?”

“Through a pantry window. It’s really Randy’s

secret, so you must promise not to tell.”

Connie looked from Tom to Mark with a smile

that begged their co-operation in this innocent

conspiracy, but when she saw the expression in

Mark’s eyes she quickly sobered. He was looking at

her as though she had given away a state secret, not

just let them in on a childish discovery. His blazing

blue eyes were narrowed with mistrust and

something very like fear.

“So let’s have just one final look!” Connie

begged Tom while she wondered what prompted

Mark’s dismay. “We won’t hurt a thing, and it won’t

take five minutes. Come on!”

With flying feet she led them around to the bay

side of the house and down to the lower level where

the window to the pantry still opened with ease.

Inside, they blinked for a moment to adjust their

eyes to the light, then started through the kitchen to

the stairs.

Then, just as on the previous day when they had

crept into the house with Randy, Connie stopped and

inhaled. Again there seemed to float on the air a

69

curious fragrance, stronger than the mustiness of the

kitchen, tantalizing, incredibly fresh.

“Kit!” Connie cried in sudden excitement. “She’s

changed her odeur! That isn’t lily of the valley. Not

today!”

“You’re right,” Kit agreed in astonishment. “It’s

something else. Something I can’t quite define.”

“More like millefleurs.”

“What are you talking about, for Pete’s sake?”

Tom asked as though his twin cousins had gone

abruptly mad.

“Can’t you smell perfume?” Connie asked. She

took another deep breath.

Tom sniffed the air like a bird dog, and so did

Mark, but they shook their heads. “It just smells like

any closed house to me,” Tom said.

And as she climbed the stairs to the main hall

Connie began to doubt the authority of her own

senses, because the scent seemed to fade with every

step she took. If it hadn’t been for Kit she would

have been tempted to believe that she had allowed

her imagination to run wild.

It was Tom’s first view of the interior of Eagle

Rock and he was as impressed as Connie and Kit

had been. “Whew!” he whistled. “What a place this

must have been!” He turned to Mark. “Did you ever

come here much?”

“Mark shook his head. “We were the poor

70

relations. I was only in the house once, so far as I

can remember, and that was the day Mrs.

Butterworth told me about the legacy.”

Connie couldn’t help but wonder whether Mark

had actually inherited any of the Butterworth

money, but politeness forbade asking such a blunt

question. Tom, apparently, knew what it was all

about, because he nodded casually. She promised

herself to have a future conversation with her cousin

about this interesting subject, but right now Connie

wanted to go on upstairs.

Mark, however, became suddenly interested in

showing Tom the library, which he claimed to be the

only room he remembered. Waxing enthusiastic—

and even, Connie thought, a little nervous—the

young man described the room in the days of its

glory, before the damask draperies had fallen to

shreds and before the thousands of books that once

lined the shelves had been auctioned off to the

highest bidder.

Tom rummaged through the pile of books on the

floor while Mark talked, glancing at the outmoded

titles idly. Most of them, as Connie knew, were

novels by once-fashionable authors who had long

since been forgotten. Then she saw her cousin stop

and smile, and she walked over to glance over his

shoulder. “The Very Nature of Sin,” he read aloud.

It was the very book that she had happened upon.

71

But was it? No, the volume she had picked up the

other day lay where she had left it on one of the

bookcase shelves. She walked over just to make

certain and picked it up, an identical volume to the

one Tom held in his hand.

“This is curious. Why should there be two of

them?” Connie showed it to him.

“Maybe there was a minister in the family.” Tom

opened it to the flyleaf. But no Butterworth had

written this book. A Rev. Alexander P. Simpson was

the author.

“Here’s another just like it,” Kit announced.

“And another!” Tom bent and picked up a fourth

companion volume. “Why should the Butterworths

have been interested in making a collection of

identical books?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.” Connie began

riffling through the brittle, yellowed pages covered

with small print. It was easy to see that the book

contained a series of sermons written in the

flamboyant, evangelistic style of the nineties. “Sold

Out . . . The Lord’s Razor . . . Why Are Satan and

Sin Permitted?” The titles were printed in a running

head.

Quite impersonally, Mark offered a suggestion.

“I’ll bet some preacher took a crack at one of the

Butterworths. That’s what I’ll bet! Wouldn’t that be

a reason to buy up a group of books, just to get the

72

last of them off the market? At least it sounds to me

like the sort of thing old Mrs. Butterworth would

have done.”

“That’s an idea!” Connie began to scan the pages

more carefully, forgetting for the moment her errand

to the upper floor.

“Say, listen to this.” Tom went closer to the

windows and began to read in the better light.

“ ‘Go up among the finest residences of this

watering place, and on one doorplate you will find

the name of the mightiest in iniquity. A long

procession of money-grabbing monsters has

defamed this house, and now there is a new one

among us. A demon incarnate. Not a smuggler of

slaves like his forefather but a smuggler

nevertheless. I do not blame you for asking me the

throbbing, burning, resounding, appalling question

of my text, Wherefore do the wicked live?

“ ‘Arbored and parterred clear to the water’s

brink, built on rock by five hundred sweating

artisans of money made in such nefarious ways that

it would make Satan himself shudder, this house is

bound to fall. To fall, I tell you! For that rock shall

be as the shifting sands. One day God will say,

“Come down by the way of a miserable death, and

the name of this house shall disappear from the

world forever!” ’ ”

“Gosh, that’s putting it pretty strong!” muttered

73

Mark. “It sounds as though he were preaching

against the Butterworths all right, but I didn’t know

any of my rich relatives were really scoundrels.”

Connie had heard only one word. “Smugglers,”

she said. “Now what do you suppose they could

have smuggled in the gay nineties? The rumrunners

came later, didn’t they?”

Tom had an answer for her question. “Lace,” he

said. “Imported lace was very fashionable then, and

very expensive. At least that’s what I’ve heard Dad

say.”

“This would have been a perfect spot to run it in

by boat,” Mark admitted.

“But it would have been a bit of a job to unload

cargo here, wouldn’t it? After all, the beach is pretty

public.”

“Maybe they had an underground entrance,” Kit

proposed thoughtfully.

“A smugglers’ cave!” Connie’s eyes brightened.

“Wouldn’t it be exciting to find one under an old

house like this? Just for fun, let’s look.”

She fully expected the rest to disparage such a

proposition, but the idea caught Tom’s interest.

“You never can tell. It might be possible that this

was the real reason for building Eagle Rock. I’ve

thought any number of times it was a rather strange

location for such a sumptuous house.”

“Strange?” asked Kit.

74

“Well, they must have had to do a lot of blasting,

before they could have built it. And why hang the

place right out over the water, this way?”

Even Mark’s interest was sparked now. “What’s

under that kitchen we came through?” he wondered

aloud. “There must be some sort of lower level, or

else solid rock.”

“Maybe wine cellars,” Kit suggested.

“Maybe. But since we’re here, and the

Butterworth reputation has already been dragged

through the mire by our friend Reverend Simpson, I

can’t see that it would hurt to have a look.”

“Wait a minute. We have a flashlight in the car!”

Kit crawled through the window and went off to get

it while the others started to explore the kitchen in

the gloom.

All of the doors led to perfectly logical places,

closets, storerooms, or dumb-waiters connected with

the dining room above. But when Kit trained her

flash on the walls, Connie began tapping them

hopefully.

“Now wait a minute, Mrs. Sherlock Holmes,”

Tom teased her. “These walls are stone.”

“Then let’s look for a secret door,” Connie

suggested, and with a sudden inspiration went over

to a tier of built-in shelves that started at floor level

and reached to well above her head. Kit followed

with her flash, training its beam across each shelf in

75

turn, then up one side, across the top, and down the

other.

Midway to the bottom Connie cried, “Look!” and

reached up to touch a worn handhold just visible on

the dulled paint of the trim. She pulled, and to the

astonishment of the other three the whole tier of

shelves, creaking and groaning at this unexpected

disturbance, swung slowly into the room.

76

CHAPTER 7

The Cave

Cobwebs hung like lace from the back of the

concealed door and water dripped with a

monotonous regularity somewhere below. Even

Connie recoiled, startled, and gave a little cry of

astonishment as the shelves swung forward in their

slow arc, protesting like a person in pain. The dank

odor of a long-unused underground passage swept

into the room, and smells of rotting timbers and

dead fish seemed to mingle with the fragrance of

which the twins had been conscious on entering the

house.

“For Pete’s sake!” Tom was the first to express

verbal surprise. He turned to Connie. “How did you

ever guess—?”

Connie, a little alarmed by her own discovery,

said, “You could see the handhold. Look here.”

Once more Kit flashed her light on the right-hand

edge of the shelves and together the four young

77

people examined the half-concealed means of entry.

“By golly, I think we’ve stumbled on something,”

Tom said.

Temporarily, all remembrance of the reason for

which they had re-entered Eagle Rock fled from

Connie’s mind. The discovery of the moment

overshadowed the importance of the search for the

lost bracelet. She was almost dancing with eagerness

as Kit walked over and flashed her light into the

dark rectangle behind the shelves.

Curving stone steps, cracked and sandy, led

sharply downward. No foot had recently trod them,

or at least no footprints remained to tell the tale.

Connie’s quick eyes made sure of this at once.

Mark, who had seemed so nervous and ill at ease

on first entering the house, seemed suddenly to lose

his former hesitancy. He stepped over and peered

from behind Connie’s shoulder into the well of

darkness.

“Come on!” he cried, urging them forward. “This

I must see!”

“You lead the way.” Kit, more curious now than

fearful, handed him the flashlight.

Tom called softly, “Be careful. Those steps are

bound to be slippery, and you don’t want to take a

header.”

“You bet I don’t,” Mark agreed. “Concussions are

no fun.”

78

“Nor are broken arms,” said Connie out of

childhood experience.

Slowly, keeping away from contact with the

slimy walls, Mark began to make his way

downward. The steps curved like the stairs to a

tower, spiraling dizzily. One after another came

Connie, Kit, and Tom.

Connie was reminded of a time when she and Kit,

as children, had been taken to an amusement pier in

Atlantic City by a well-meaning relative. Along with

seeing themselves grotesquely distorted in trick

mirrors, taking a breathless ride on a fast slide, and

indulging in a number of other zany diversions, they

had been enticed to the House of Horrors, apparently

designed to shatter childish nerves. Great blasts of

air blew their skirts around their necks, ghostly

hands reached out and grabbed them, voices

muttered or shrieked like banshees in their ears.

Connie, always an imaginative child, had emerged

shaken, but Kit had come out unruffled. She thought

it was foolish but far from terrifying. Eminently

practical and matter-of-fact, Kit was not a girl to be

duped by the mysterious and unlikely. She retained

this characteristic today.

So, of the four of them, Kit was the least

perturbed. Her mild disapproval of entering the

house at all had dwindled to the disappearing point

when she discovered that Mark had a certain

79

connection with the family. The middle name of

Butterworth acted like a charm. It seemed to give

him a certain right to be here—even a duty to

investigate the mysterious happenings at Eagle

Rock.

Slowly, carefully, instinctively talking in

whispers, the four felt their way from step to step.

One slip from Tom and the rest would have pitched

forward like a string of upended dominoes.

“Be careful back there!” cautioned Mark.

“I wish we’d worn sneakers,” murmured Kit.

“So do I,” Connie whispered back. She was

stirred by an excitement she had felt often before.

There was no thrill, for her, quite as great as the

thrill of walking into the unknown.

“I read a whodunit once,” Tom was saying behind

her, “about a cave under an old house. It was an

underground swimming pool, really, and an elevator

led down from the upper floors. Wonderful place for

a murder, don’t you think?”

“Murder?” Connie shivered.

In front of her Kit turned her head. “Oh, Connie,

don’t be silly! Tom’s just teasing you.”

Mark, more quickly than the rest had expected,

came to a level stone floor and turned his light so

that the twins and Tom could see a little better.

“The end of the rabbit hole,” he announced.

Connie chuckled at the allusion. “Alice wasn’t a

80

bit hurt,” she said. “But where’s the long passage

and the white rabbit?”

Mark flashed his light upward on the rough stone

walls of a square underground chamber from which

the steps curved upward. On one side was an arched

doorway through which a little daylight filtered.

“Say,” Tom suggested, thinking aloud, “maybe

there’s an entrance from here to the beach.”

Mark led them through the arch, and now they

distinctly heard the lap of water. At the same time

the strong fishy smell increased so sharply that

Connie held her nose in repugnance.

“Ugh!”

“It is pretty awful, isn’t it?” Kit agreed. “I could

do with some of that lily of the valley now.”

The place they entered had the domed roof of a

rough-hewn cave, and it was far more vast than

anything they could have imagined. From an

entrance at the opposite end came the light of which

they had been conscious—grayish daylight

flickering on water which covered the floor of the

tunnel to an uncertain depth.

“Say!” Mark said.

“What?” asked Tom when he hesitated.

“You could get into this place by boat.”

“It would have to be a pretty small boat,” Kit

murmured.

“The skiff would make it,” Tom told her with

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certainty. “Gosh, I wish we’d discovered this spot

when I was twelve instead of darned near twenty.

Think what a hideaway this would make for a gang

of kids.

Connie looked at her cousin, then back at the

tunnel leading to the bay. “Think what a hideaway it

would make for a gang of smugglers!” she said, her

hands clasped. “Think what probably happened

here, years and years ago!”

“Assuming that the parson was right, you mean?”

Mark asked.

“Assuming that he was right.” Connie nodded her

head. “Suppose that one of the Butterworth clan did

stray from the straight and narrow. Can you think of

a better spot to unload smuggled cargo?”

“It would be pretty neat,” Tom agreed.

“Lace,” Connie said dreamily. “Didn’t you

mention lace, Tom? They could have stored lace

here by the bushel. What were all the expensive

kinds ladies wore in those days?”

“Rose point,” offered Kit. “Valenciennes.”

“Venetian point,” added her twin. “Oh, there

were all sorts. From Belgium and France and Italy.

Wedding dresses in those days cost a mint. It would

have been awfully profitable.”

Tom chuckled at her fanciful reconstruction.

“Thinking of going into business, Connie?”

Mark interrupted their repartee suddenly. “The

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tide’s running out,” he said, as though he had made

an interesting discovery.

Connie’s attention returned to the watery tunnel.

“Yes?”

“I was just thinking that there’s a very good

reason why this cave has probably never been

discovered by a cruising boat. At high tide the

mouth of the tunnel must be completely closed.”

Connie considered. “You could be right.”

Mark trained the flashlight on the stone floor.

“See the high watermark? Right there by your feet.”

He pointed to a fringe of shells and seaweed. “Aside

from a few inches of sloping floor and the little

entry where the stairs go up, this place is flooded at

high tide.”

Tom nodded immediate agreement. These boys,

raised on the bay shore, were quick to see things that

would have escaped recognition by Connie or Kit,

who knew little of the ways of tides and currents.

“And most sailboats only venture close to Eagle

Rock when the tide is fairly full,” he said

thoughtfully. “Otherwise, there’s not enough water

in the cove.”

“That’s right.” Both boys seemed pleased by their

discovery. It exonerated them for having missed the

outside entrance to the cave.

But Connie’s mind was busy with another idea. If

the cave was flooded at certain times there must

83

have been a storeroom. There must have been a

storeroom if smugglers actually had used the cave.

But where?

“May I borrow that flashlight for a minute,

Mark?”

She trained the yellow beam on the stone walls,

circling them slowly, and far on the other side of the

cave she found what she was seeking, a wooden

door set into the stone, gray and indistinct. So much

a part of the wall did it look that a person less

curious might have missed it. But once the flashlight

had found it there seemed no excuse for having

overlooked it at all.

“If this really was a smugglers’ cave, this must be

the door to the storeroom,” Connie said as she went

over to it.

“The hinges probably are rusted tight by now,”

Tom mentioned, following her.

But to the surprise of both, the door gave readily

under Tom’s touch. Prepared to brace his shoulder

against it, he lurched and almost fell.

The room which Connie’s light illumined was

squarish, with rough rock walls. A coil of rope lay in

one corner, beside a rotting sea chest thick with

mildew, and immediately ahead, against the far wall,

were stacked three wooden packing cases that

looked surprisingly new.

It was on these that Connie’s attention

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immediately centered. “Somebody’s been here since

the gay nineties!” she exclaimed.

“You bet they have,” Tom agreed. He walked

with interest toward the boxes and the others

followed him.

“You can almost smell the new wood,” Mark put

in.

“I can’t smell anything but dead fish,” Kit

complained, wrinkling her nose. “I think every fish

head dropped overboard by fishermen this side of

Block Island must have washed into this cave.”

The boys both laughed. It didn’t bother them

particularly, perhaps because it was a familiar if

unpleasant odor. They were looking curiously at the

wooden cases, and more particularly at the top case

of the stack. They noticed that one of the slats had

been pried loose.

“What could these have been used for?” Tom

wondered aloud.

It was Connie who answered the question.

Handing her flashlight back to Mark, she pulled up

the loose slat with one hand and rummaged in the

box with the other, feeling her way through a bed of

sawdust until she touched something smooth and

cool.

It was a small object. A glass? She curled her

fingers around it and tugged.

“A bottle! A glass medicine bottle.” She turned it

85

wonderingly in the light.

“Now what in the dickens—?” Tom was

frowning, puzzled. He looked at Mark.

But Mark shook his head. “You’ve got me,” he

admitted. “These boxes are new, though. I’d lay a

bet on that. The wood is damp. Anything would be

in this place. And so is the sawdust. But it isn’t

discolored. And it smells fresh.”

Tom laughed. “As Randy would say, ‘It smells

period.’ ”

“There could, of course, be something else in the

box.” Connie started to rummage once more, but

only came up with identical bottles. “No, I guess

that’s all.”

“I wish we could open the other boxes,” said

Mark, “but I haven’t even got a penknife.”

“Neither have I,” answered Tom. “Oh, well, there

will be other days. We can come back.” He glanced

at the luminous dial on his wrist watch. “But right

now I think it’s time we were getting along. It’s later

than I thought.”

Now that they knew the way, the ascent to the

kitchen seemed short and far from fearful. Connie

remembered that she had come to the house to look

for her bracelet and insisted that this must be done

before she could leave. But part of her mind was still

occupied with their find in the cave. “I wish we’d

brought along one of those bottles,” she sighed as

86

Tom made ready to swing the shelves back into

place. “Why didn’t I think?”

Tom was more interested in picking up one of the

books of sermons, so that he could go through it at

his leisure, but Mark seemed suddenly anxious to be

quit of the place.

“Come on,” he urged them. “We can do all these

things another time.”

“It won’t take a minute,” Connie promised. “I’ll

just run upstairs and be back in a jiffy.”

“And I’ll go get my book at the same time,” said

Tom.

“Here. Give me the flashlight,” Kit offered. “I’ll

go back and get one of the medicine bottles.”

Kit half expected Mark to refuse to let her go

back to the cave alone. It would have been

gentlemanly of him to have run the errand. But he

just stood in the kitchen irresolute, looking after

Connie, so with a shrug she hurried back down the

stairs. She wasn’t afraid of the dark or of the

slippery steps, but she did feel vaguely annoyed.

What was the matter with Mark, anyway?

Connie, meanwhile, ran quickly across the marble

floor of the vast entrance hall, her heels clicking

sharply. Sun was streaming through the windows

and the house looked very bright in comparison to

the gloom of the cave.

In the upper hall she stopped for a second to wave

87

to Tom, who was making his way to the library

door. “I won’t be a minute,” she called.

But when she reached the bedroom she sought the

door wouldn’t open. She rattled the knob

impatiently. It couldn’t be locked! Why, only last

night the door had stood wide open. Through it she

had seen the disappearing figure in white.

Was there an entrance from an adjoining room?

Connie tried to remember, then ran quickly into the

bedroom on the right. No door connected the two,

however. She checked the room on the left, too, and

was again disappointed. Each bedroom and bath

appeared to be a separate unit in itself.

Annoyed, Connie hurried back downstairs, just in

time to meet Tom sauntering out of the library

unhurriedly, the book of sermons tucked under his

arm.

She told him about the locked door as they went

back toward the kitchen together. “That proves

somebody has been here,” she said as though she

hadn’t been sure of it all the time. “Ghosts don’t

lock doors.”

“Nope. They go through them,” Tom chuckled,

but behind his surface amusement was a certain

seriousness.

“They don’t slam them, either.”

“Nor do they carry candles or flashlights,”

Connie continued. “Not the ghosts I’ve known.”

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She pushed through the swinging door to the

kitchen. Mark was standing close to one of the

barred windows and he whirled to greet them.

“Did you find it?”

“No. The door was locked.”

“Oh.” Mark seemed to relax as he let out his

breath. He looked curiously relieved.

“Where’s Kit?” Tom asked.

“She went back for the medicine bottle you

wanted.” Mark looked at Connie as he spoke.

“Went back to the cave?” Tom’s criticism of his

friend was unspoken but nonetheless sharp. His tone

of voice asked clearly, “Why didn’t you go?”

Connie went to the concealed door and called,

“Kit!”

Her voice echoed and re-echoed in the

passageway.

She waited for a moment, until the sound had

died away, then called again. “Kit! Hurry up!”

But no answering voice came up the dripping

stone stairs. No bright blond head appeared around

the curve of the steps. Nothing answered Connie but

the echo. Then echoing silence. Nothing answered

her at all.

89

CHAPTER 8

A Blow in the Dark

“Kit!”

Connie almost screamed her twin sister’s name,

and terror clutched at her throat.

It was impossible that Kit couldn’t hear her.

Impossible!

Without waiting for Tom, without waiting for

Mark, Connie began to feel her way down the dark

steps. With no light to guide her she slipped and

slid, almost lost her footing, then righted herself

precariously.

She felt Tom’s hand grip her arm—or was it

Mark’s?—but neither of them spoke. Fear sharpened

their caution. They went on silently. Connie’s heart

was beating like a metronome set for quick time.

Kit, Kit, Kit, Kit, Kit. Something had happened,

unbelievably, to Kit. All Connie could remember of

the cave was the water, the murky tunnel to the bay

and the water flowing through it, advancing and

90

retreating with the change of tide.

How deep was the tunnel floor? She had no idea.

Oh, they had been fools, fools!—playing at a child’s

game when danger lurked in the darkness.

Now a dim gray light filtered through the tunnel

to guide them into the cave. Connie could see her

cousin’s face now, strained and tight with alarm.

Mark was just behind them, breathing sharply.

“Wait. I’ll go first,” he whispered, but Tom had

already pushed past Connie and was in the entry-

way.

All three of them were still trying to adjust their

eyes to the gloom. Temporarily blinded by the

blackness of the stair well, it was a moment or more

before they could see at all. Then Connie’s eyes

turned fearfully toward the water. What she

expected to find she did not know.

But the water was black and fathomless. A secret,

no matter how grim, would be safe with it. The

water was no tattletale.

Tom reached for a piece of driftwood which had

been washed into the cave, but it was so rotten that it

fell apart as he picked it up. There was nothing to

use as a bludgeon, nothing. And could one bludgeon

a ghost?

Connie’s mind was a maelstrom of concern. She

felt as though she were living through a feverish

nightmare. She cried her sister’s name silently now.

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Kit, oh, Kit!

Tom was feeling his way along the wall toward

the storeroom, moving with his back along the stone

sides of the cave. The door stood open. Had they left

it open? Connie fought to remember, but she

couldn’t seem to orient her thoughts.

Every second now, to Connie, seemed like an

hour. She recognized the need for Tom’s caution. It

wouldn’t help matters to plunge ahead blindly into

danger. But he was slow—so slow! The lapping of

the water sounded loud and insistent, Mark’s

breathing was as audible as a runner’s, and the

beating of her own heart seemed to Connie like the

thudding beat of a drum.

Tom was hugging the wall close to the half-open

door and his head came out like a turtle’s as he tried

to peer into the black interior of the storeroom. Not a

sound came from inside.

They waited, all three of them, listening. Then a

hazy beam of sunlight, threading its way through the

tunnel’s mouth to reflect for an instant on the water,

caught a glint of gold.

“Kit!”

Connie threw caution to the winds and brushed

past Tom like a quick night moth. She dropped on

her knees just inside the storeroom’s entrance and

gathered her twin’s inert figure into her arms. “Kit!”

Panic swept over her in a drowning wave and with

92

trembling hands she felt for her sister’s heart.

The strong, steady beat was reassuring, but Kit

neither murmured nor moved her head. Connie

shook her ever so slightly. “Kit!”

Tom brought water in his cupped hands and

dashed it over Kit’s face. She shuddered slightly and

moaned.

“Kit, wake up darling, it’s Connie. Kit, it’s

Connie. Are you all right?”

Kit turned her head as Connie brushed back the

damp hair from her face with a gentle, reassuring

touch. She sighed, and raised a hand to the back of

her neck. “It aches,” she murmured after a minute.

“It aches like fury. Mm.”

Then she returned to complete awareness with a

start. “Where am I, anyway?”

“In the cave. Don’t you remember? You came

back for the bottle, Kit.”

“Oh, yes.”

Kit opened her eyes and tried to separate the three

faces looking down at her. Connie’s was the closest.

She couldn’t quite see Mark’s or Tom’s.

“What happened?” the boys asked

simultaneously.

“Did you fall?” Connie’s voice was carefully

hopeful.

“No. No. At least I don’t think so.” Kit was

making an effort to think back to a certain moment.

93

“Somebody hit me. Hit me over the head.”

Connie’s hand felt Kit’s skull, smoothing the fair

hair toward the back of the head.

“Ouch!” protested Kit, although her sister’s touch

was feather-light.

At the same instant Connie whistled softly. “I’ll

say they did!”

Tom became suddenly alert. “Let’s get out of

here,” he said quickly. “Where’s the flash? Mark,

see if you can find the flashlight. She may have

dropped it as she fell.” He kept on issuing orders.

“Try to sit up, Kit. Here, let me help you. Now let’s

see if you can stand.”

With Connie on one side and Tom on the other,

Kit got to her feet. “O-oh, my head is spinning,” she

complained, and swayed a little as they supported

her and turned her toward the door.

Mark, groping along the floor, located the

flashlight near the wooden packing boxes. He tried

it, but the bulb had apparently broken when it fell.

So the four of them retraced their steps in the

darkness, helping Kit as much as they could, and it

was with considerable relief that they once more

reached the kitchen and closed the secret door

behind them, shutting out the dank, fishy odor of the

cave.

Quickly they climbed through the window to the

balcony, closing it behind them. Never had sunlight

94

and fresh air seemed so good. All four of them

gulped great breaths of it, and a little color began to

return to Kit’s pale face.

Out on the bay there was all the activity of a

typical summer afternoon. Sails skated before the

breeze, a schooner moved majestically toward the

channel, and fishing boats returned from a day

outside. In the cove below, a couple of youngsters

were clamming along shore, and a man was

adjusting the line which connected a skiff to an

anchored boat. Everything was so bright and merry

that Kit’s accident seemed unreal and incredible.

Only the very real bump on her head, egg-shaped

and throbbing, convinced them that they hadn’t

dreamed the events of the past fifteen minutes.

“I’ll go get the car started.” Tom was solicitous

and worried. “You come along more slowly. Take it

easy, Kit.”

Kit herself wasn’t anxious to hurry things, but she

did wish she were home in bed. She willingly

accepted the support of Mark’s arm.

As they crossed the marble terrace Tom opened

the door. The motor was already running, but it

stopped with a choking sound as Connie helped Kit

into the back. Tom started it again, put it in gear, but

before they had gone five yards it had stopped once

more.

“What’s the matter with this thing?” Tom asked.

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He was in no mood for further mishaps.

“I don’t know,” Connie said from the rear seat.

“Of all times—!”

“It won’t start, or rather, it starts and then stops,”

Tom explained unnecessarily. He pressed the starter

for a third time, impatient and vexed.

Mark, who was just climbing in beside him,

glanced at the dashboard. “It could be,” he said

wryly, “that we’re out of gas.”

Connie sat forward in quick concern and looked

at the gasoline gauge. “Good grief!” she murmured.

“I forgot!”

She bit her lip and her eyes were large with

contrition. “I meant to get gas on the way to the

Cliff Walk.” She hesitated, then added in

considerable astonishment. “Goodness, doesn’t that

seem ages and ages ago?”

Tom smiled briefly and nodded, but he was really

concerned because of Kit. “There’s no bus

transportation along this road, and it would take a

good long time to get back to town for a gallon of

gas, even if Mark and I were lucky enough to pick

up a lift.” He seemed to be thinking out loud.

Trying to be a good sport, Kit murmured, “Don’t

worry about me. I’ll be all right.” But her head was

throbbing and she leaned back against the seat and

shut her eyes.

Connie put a hand over her sister’s and tried to

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think what the quickest way out of this new

difficulty might be. If only they had come by boat

and not by car! It was only a short sail from the cove

to the Ridgeways’ dock.

Apparently Tom and she were both thinking the

same thing, because her cousin suddenly snapped

his fingers. “Wait a minute! Wasn’t that the Bo’sun

down on the bay, Mark? I bet he’d give us a lift, and

I could drive Dad’s car back with gasoline when he

gets home for dinner.”

“If he’s still there—” Mark was already out of the

car. “Wait a minute. I’ll run back and see.”

He sprinted across the terrace to the semicircular

balcony and ran along it to the bay side of the house.

Connie could hear him calling, then heard an

answering hail. In another minute he was back. “The

Bo’sun will pick us up in the skiff,” he announced

happily. “Come on!”

Tom pulled the car keys out of the ignition switch

and pocketed them, picked up the book of sermons,

then on second thought tucked it into the glove

compartment and locked it. Connie and Kit had

already started toward the path to the beach with

Mark and he caught up with them quickly.

“How’s your head now, Kit?” he asked.

Kit said, “It doesn’t feel like mine.” She balanced

it carefully, as though she had a stiff neck.

“It doesn’t look like yours, either,” admitted

97

Connie.

Kit’s hair was still wet and matted from the water

Tom had unceremoniously but sensibly dashed over

her face and head. Her dress was damp and stained

from her fall, and her face and arms were streaked

with dirt. Connie didn’t realize, at the moment, that

she looked little better. She had sat on the wet floor

of the cave with Kit’s head cradled in her lap,

regardless of the consequences, and her skirt was far

from immaculate.

Tom took Kit’s hand and helped her carefully

from step to step down the rocky incline. “Easy

now. No hurry.” He was gentle and patient.

Mark had hurried on ahead, and was helping the

Bo’sun beach his boat. From the hilly path Connie

could hear them calling back and forth. It occurred

to her suddenly that they would be expected to

explain their disheveled appearance. The boys

looked all right, but both she and Kit showed

unmistakable signs of a mishap she didn’t care to

explain.

“Wait a minute,” she whispered when they were

halfway down the cliff but still screened from the

beach by the natural arch of vines and shrubbery.

“We can’t appear in public looking like this.” She

took a comb, a handkerchief, and a compact from

her summer handbag and did her best to comb Kit’s

tangled hair and wipe the dirt streaks from her face

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and arms.

Kit had to grit her teeth to keep from crying out

every time Connie brought the comb near the lump

at the back of her head. “Don’t I look good enough

now?” she asked finally.

“You look better, but you don’t look good.”

Connie inspected her critically. “Now wait until I do

a little doctoring on myself.”

Tom stood by shaking his head. “You look all

right, but your dresses are a sight,” he said with

masculine forthrightness.

Connie glanced down at Kit’s muddy skirt, then

at her own. “Yes, they certainly are. How can we

explain without really explaining?”

“You might say you slipped and fell.”

“Where? Where is there mud today, on such a

beautiful afternoon?” Then she looked down at the

mossy stone under her feet and at the others that fell

away below her to the beach. “I have it!”

“Have what?”

But Connie put a finger to her lips and grinned

impishly. “Wait till you see me put on an act. If only

Mark doesn’t give me away we’ll be all right.”

Suddenly, to the equal astonishment of both Tom

and Kit, her laughter trilled on the clear summer air.

“It is slippery, isn’t it!” she cried in apparent

amusement, mingled with mild alarm. Her voice

carried easily to the beach.

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“Oh!” she screamed. “Oops!” Then she laughed

again, as though she couldn’t help herself. “I am

sorry, Kit! Oh, your dress! I’m as clumsy as a

springer spaniel puppy. Wait till Aunt Helen sees us!

She’ll send us both back home.”

With an exaggerated wink Connie turned and

grinned up at Kit and Tom. Then, still talking, she

burst through the screen of underbrush to the beach.

Mark and the distinguished-looking, gray-haired

man whom Connie had seen one day from a distance

were standing at the water’s edge looking toward

her. Mark’s mouth was open in an expression of

astonishment, and for a moment Connie doubted the

success of her stunt, because even the Bo’sun looked

surprised.

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CHAPTER 9

Meet the Bo’sun

Connie’s smile was touched with genuine

embarrassment. “We really must apologize for the

condition of our dresses,” she said, speaking for

herself and for Kit too, after Mark had introduced

the twins to Mr. Meredith. She glanced over her

shoulder. “The rocks are pretty slippery.” Without

telling an actual falsehood, she hoped that this

would take care of the case.

Mr. Meredith, however, seemed scarcely to be

listening. He glanced from Connie to Kit in

astonishment, as though he found it hard to believe

his own eyes.

But the girls were used to this sort of thing. They

knew that their resemblance was so striking that it

was sometimes confusing to their friends as well as

to strangers. It was to be expected that this new

acquaintance would remark upon the point.

Tom, now that they had reached the beach, was

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anxious to get Kit home with as little delay as

possible. He knew that her apparent flush of health

was deceptive, and saw that her eyes were glazed

with pain.

Connie and Mark, too, knew that Kit must have a

splitting headache. Whoever had struck her down in

the dark cavern under the house must be fairly

strong. They made sure that she had the most

comfortable seat in Mr. Meredith’s trim white

fishing boat, and they tried to relieve her of taking

part in the conversation, which was necessarily

rather forced.

Mr. Meredith had a manner which Connie, in

speaking of it to Kit later, called “gallant.” He

rowed them out to the powerboat in the skiff with

the strong arms of a seafaring man, but his voice

was cultured and his theatrical Vandyke beard was

precisely trimmed.

For a charter boatman he seemed, to Connie, an

anachronism. If it hadn’t been for her concern over

Kit, she would have enjoyed trying to draw him out.

He must have had an interesting past. But as it

happened Mr. Meredith did the major part of the

talking. He appeared genuinely disturbed that the

young people had been hanging around the old

Butterworth place.

Addressing himself to Tom, after the motorboat

had been started on its course to the Ridgeway dock,

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he asked a forthright question. “If I may be so bold,

what were you doing at Eagle Rock, anyway?”

“Oh, just looking around. It’s an interesting old

relic, don’t you think?” Tom was deliberately

evasive.

Mr. Meredith turned to Connie with a shrug. “Do

you find it so, Miss Blair?”

“Oh, yes,” Connie agreed, hoping that her cousin

would not be led into admitting that they had found

a way inside. “The view from the cliff is simply

magnificent.”

“Isn’t it!” Mark agreed.

He seemed particularly jovial, quite unlike

himself, and it occurred to Connie for the first time

that he hadn’t shown nearly as much solicitude as

Tom about Kit’s accident. About Kit’s attack, rather.

Why mince words, even in thought? And why

hadn’t Mark been the one to go back for the bottle,

anyway? Why had he permitted Kit to go stumbling

off alone down those steep stairs? Connie’s mind

buzzed with queries. For that matter, where had

Mark been when Kit was assaulted? Why, he could

even—

“I beg your pardon?” Mr. Meredith had been

talking to her and Connie had been so engrossed in

her own racing thoughts that she hadn’t heard.

“I just mentioned that Eagle Rock isn’t what I

consider an especially healthy place for a picnic.”

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“Oh, we weren’t picnicking,” replied Connie

before she could quite collect her wits.

“No? Well, that’s just as well. But you were

trespassing.” Mr. Meredith’s smile was smooth, but

he might have been reprimanding a group of

troublesome children.

“Trespassing? I can’t see why anyone would care

whether we wandered around and looked the place

over,” Tom said rather sharply. “It’s falling to rack

and ruin, anyway.”

Mr. Meredith steered expertly past a bobbing

buoy, then tipped his hat at another boatman. He

sighed a trifle wearily. “The police might care.”

“Police?” Mark repeated the word.

Mr. Meredith looked surprised. “Didn’t you know

that the police have been guarding the house rather

closely?”

“But why?” asked Tom.

The Bo’sun shrugged. “I really don’t know their

reasons. I just happened to be asked to report anyone

I saw hanging around.”

“Oh.” Tom tried to sound relieved. “Well, I take

it you wouldn’t report us,” he said with a grin that

barely concealed a certain anxiety.

The Bo’sun seemed to consider. “No,” he said

slowly. “Not this time.”

“Oh, come now!” Mark sounded really annoyed,

but Mr. Meredith looked at him sternly, as though he

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considered him impertinent.

“My dear young man,” he said, “your business at

Eagle Rock may have been mere child’s play, but

apparently the police have their reasons for wishing

trespassers reported. As an adult and a responsible

person, I shall feel it my duty to report even you if I

should apprehend you there again.”

The speech was so grandiose that Connie almost

giggled. Surely he must be teasing! But there was a

steely glint in the Bo’sun’s eyes that told her he

meant every word he said.

Mark looked properly squelched, but once Mr.

Meredith had made his point he seemed to relax and

become considerably more affable. He asked Connie

and Kit if they were enjoying their visit, and

mentioned to Tom that he had a large catch of tinker

mackerel aboard, some of which he would like Mrs.

Ridgeway to accept as a gift.

“Thank you. I think Mother would appreciate

them.” Tom was polite.

“I’m afraid I have no extra container aboard—”

the Bo’sun began.

“There will probably be a bucket in the skiff tied

up to our dock.”

“Fine, fine.”

A few minutes later the Bo’sun cut the motor and

pulled up at the dock expertly, holding the boat

away from the pilings with one strong brown arm.

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Mark leaped out and gave a hand to the girls while

Tom pulled in the Ridgeway skiff and got the

bucket. Mark started to walk Kit slowly up to the

house but Connie waited for Mr. Meredith to fill the

pail with small, shining fish from a box under the

cockpit.

“That’s plenty, Mr. Meredith. Thanks a lot,” her

cousin said when the bucket was three-quarters full.

“And thanks again for picking us up.” Connie

added her acknowledgement of the Bo’sun’s

courtesy to Kit’s and Mark’s previous expressions of

gratitude.

“Any time, any time.” Mr. Meredith did more

than touch his cap. He swept it off and bowed before

he turned back to start his engine.

“An interesting man,” Tom muttered in Connie’s

ear as he walked behind her along the narrow board

footpath across the marsh. “A really astonishing

guy.”

“He certainly is,” Connie agreed heartily. “For a

charter boatman he talks like a perfect gentleman.”

“Very upper-upper,” Tom agreed.

“He also,” added Connie a trifle resentfully,

“talks a little like a schoolmaster. What is it to him

whether we go exploring at Eagle Rock?” She

turned her head and looked back at her cousin.

Tom’s eyes grew sober and thoughtful. “He may

have reasons we don’t know about. Maybe we’ve

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been acting like a bunch of foolish kids, you know,

walking into a situation too big for us to handle. He

may be just trying to protect us. And after what

happened today I’m inclined to take his advice and

stay away from that joint.”

“We have to go back for the car,” Connie

reminded him.

“Well, that! What I mean is that I’m not for

climbing in any more windows. Dad would throw a

fit if we should tangle with the cops!”

This reminded Connie that they would have to

dream up some explanation of Kit’s injury to present

to Uncle Pete and Aunt Helen if they didn’t want to

confess the full story. And this she was loathe to do

Because she didn’t want to incur the Ridgeways’

disapproval. She didn’t want to be told in so many

words that she was forbidden to return to Eagle

Rock again.

Breaking from a walk into a jog trot, she caught

up with Mark and Kit. “Don’t let’s mention the cave

and everything,” she suggested to her sister.

“There’s no use getting everybody all upset.”

“What will we say?” Kit wanted to know. She

didn’t like any kind of deception.

“We can say you fell. That will be the truth.”

“Part of the truth,” Kit agreed.

“Enough for now,” Connie urged. “Later, if

necessary, we can tell the whole story, but right now

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what is there to tell? That you were attacked by a

ghost?”

Connie tried to pretend to Mark that she was

taking the accident lightly, but actually she was

watching his reaction. She had begun to have some

doubts about Mark. . . .

Kit was feeling too wretched to argue. Sitting

quietly in the boat, her head hadn’t throbbed so

wildly, but the walk across the marsh had joggled

her until her whole skull ached with an

overwhelming insistence and she could think of

nothing but getting into bed.

She was white as a sheet when she finally reached

the house and went in at the back door. Aunt Helen,

cutting cookies in the kitchen, took one look at her

and cried, “What happened?”

“I had a bad fall.”

“Feel the back of her head,” suggested Connie. “I

think she’d better lie down.”

“At once,” Aunt Helen agreed. “You get her to

bed, Connie, and I’ll call the doctor. Keep her flat on

her back. No pillows. We don’t want to take any

chances with a possible concussion.”

“Concussion?” The word chilled Connie. She

hadn’t anticipated such a serious possibility. With

almost maternal gentleness she helped Kit get

undressed and into pajamas, then turned back the

bed and drew the shades against the late afternoon

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sun.

Down in the garden, on a trestle table the family

used for outdoor suppers, Tom was cleaning

mackerel, whistling as he worked. It wasn’t an

especially happy whistle, but rather a musical

accompaniment for his thoughts. Randy was

gathering wood for a fire in the outdoor fireplace,

bringing it around from the stack near the kitchen

door. Every once in a while he would stop and speak

to Tom, and Connie felt sure that he was suspicious

concerning Kit’s accident. She would have bet,

dollars to doughnuts, that he was trying to find out

whether they had been back to Eagle Rock.

Kit lay on the bed with her eyes shut, and Connie

stood at the window for a long time, thinking. Then

she heard a car pull up before the house, and heard

the sound of the front-door knocker. A few minutes

later a pleasant-faced, homely little man came into

the bedroom with a professional black satchel in his

hand. Mrs. Ridgeway accompanied him, but Connie

stayed at the foot of the bed while he examined Kit.

“Hm,” he said to himself. “Nasty crack, that. Get

caught by a boom?”

Kit dropped her eyes. “I—I fell.”

“That hurt?”

“Yes.”

“That?”

“Not terribly.”

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“Got a pretty bad headache though, haven’t you?”

Kit didn’t trust herself to nod. “I feel as though

the top of my head is coming off.”

The doctor sat back and glanced up at Mrs.

Ridgeway. “No concussion here,” he said to

Connie’s infinite relief. “I’ll give her a sedative,

though, and something to help kill the pain.” He

patted Kit’s hand in a fatherly fashion. “Eat a light

supper and get a good night’s sleep. You’ll be as

right as rain by morning.”

Kit smiled weakly. “It’s hard to believe, just

now.”

But after the doctor had gone she turned on her

side and curled up and fell quickly asleep. Connie

tiptoed out of the room and down to the kitchen to

help her aunt with dinner, wishing that it were

possible for her to change places with Kit. When

anyone she loved was ill she always felt this way.

“If only it could have happened to me!”

Mrs. Ridgeway smiled when her niece voiced this

wish aloud. “Don’t worry, child,” she said. “You

can trust Dr. Matthews. He wouldn’t make a

promise that Kit couldn’t keep.”

So Connie busied herself peeling potatoes, then,

at her aunt’s suggestion, went back to the vegetable

patch at the rear of the Ridgeway property to pick

the first red tomatoes of the season for a salad to

accompany the Bo’sun’s fish.

110

To this spot Randy trailed her. “We’re going to

cook outdoors,” he told her with boyish delight.

“I noticed you building the fire.”

“You changed your dress,” he observed.

“Yes, I did.”

“Is Kit’s head real bad, where she got bopped?”

he went on, obviously enchanted by the accident, for

which he had evolved his own explanation,

regardless of Tom’s attempt to cover up.

“Bopped?” Connie was startled.

Randy looked her straight in the eye. “Now don’t

give me the line Tom’s dishing out,” he said

slangily. “When you fall down you usually hit your

forehead, not the back of your skull. I ought to

know.”

“So?” Connie stalled for time, bending over the

tomato vines.

“So there’s no use trying to kid me. I know where

you’ve been. You’ve been back to Eagle Rock and

you don’t want the family to know.”

He had hit the nail so precisely on the head that

Connie decided that it would be wiser to admit it,

and enlist Randy as an ally, than to try to keep up a

pretense. She dropped a tomato into her basket and

looked at her young cousin squarely.

“That’s right,” she said.

Randy was surprised at the quick success of his

rather blunt strategy. He was silent for a moment,

111

then asked, “What happened?”

“Can I trust you?” Connie wanted to know.

“Trust me? What do you mean?”

“Trust you not to tell.”

“Why, sure!”

“Cross your heart?”

Randy nodded, his eyes shining. “Hope to die!”

Connie was trying to decide just how much to

confess. She wanted to avoid all mention of the

cave, because to a boy Randy’s age such a discovery

would be irresistible. “Well, I’ll tell you,” she said

finally, “we did go back to the Butterworth house.

Because I’ve lost a bracelet and I thought I just

might have dropped it there.”

Randy didn’t care much about bracelets. He

merely grunted, and waited for her to go on.

“I didn’t find the bracelet,” Connie said, “but

while we were there somebody—or something—did

hit Kit on the head.” She dropped her voice to a

whisper. “It knocked her unconscious.”

Randy’s eyes widened, and Connie realized that

she had achieved just the effect for which she had

been striving. He never thought to ask her precisely

how it had happened, or where, but just seized on a

single word.

“Something?” he breathed. “Do you mean maybe

there really is a ghost?”

Fortunately, Connie didn’t have to answer

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Randy’s question, because at that moment Tom

called to her from the driveway.

“Here comes Dad,” he said. “We can drive down

to the gasoline station and then pick up your car.

There’s just enough time to do it before dinner.

Randy will finish picking the tomatoes.”

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CHAPTER 10

Moonlight Sail

The tinker mackerel, broiled over a bed of hot coals

on the outdoor grill, were succulent and tender, as

different from the day-old fish that reached

Meadowbrook, Pennsylvania, as fresh-caught

lobster is from the canned product.

Randy importantly carried a tray up to Kit, who

still looked wan even after a nap, but whose vitality

was gradually returning.

Her young cousin treated her like an injured

princess, and hung around after she had arranged the

bed tray and started to eat the light supper her aunt

had prepared. When he came out to the garden

again, ten minutes later, to eat his own dinner, he

looked just a little deflated, Connie thought. He sat

opposite her at the table and buttered his roast potato

thoughtfully, without making an attempt to catch the

conversational ball.

Sun-ripened strawberries from a neighbor’s patch

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topped off the meal, and after it was over, Connie

helped carry the dishes back to the kitchen. “Come

on, Randy. You dry and I’ll wash,” she invited, and

was surprised at his ready acceptance. Usually,

when there were dishes to be done, he faded into

thin air with all of the finesse of the Eagle Rock

ghost himself.

Or “herself,” Connie corrected herself carefully.

The memory of the perfume tipped the scales in the

direction of a lady-ghost’s favor, yet Kit’s attack

seemed rather unwomanly, to say the least. This was

quite the most baffling of the many mysteries

Connie had encountered. Who or what was haunting

Eagle Rock?

Actually, there wasn’t a single clue to the answer.

There were just a series of unrelated incidents which

all added up to—nothing, really. Connie tried to sort

them out in her mind. First, the light in the window,

a flickering light, moving from place to place. Then,

the flowerlike fragrance, a lady’s perfume,

evanescent but delightful in the closed and

abandoned house. Next, there was the shadowy

figure on the balcony, the window opening and

closing silently in the dusk. Connie remembered the

thrill of their headlong chase, the mysterious music,

and the formless white something which had faded

into the darkness of the stair well, then the door

which had exploded the ghost theory with a

115

resounding bang.

She remembered, too, the conversation she and

her uncle had had about the Butterworths, and she

repeated the question she had asked herself then.

Could there be any relationship between the

Butterworth history and the present turn of events?

The discovery of the underground cave with its

tunnel to the bay seemed to say yes. But still things

didn’t add up. Why the packing boxes of medicine

bottles? Why the attack in the dark? Why the locked

room? Why? Why? Why?

And a new question kept nudging its way into

Connie’s stream of consciousness. Where had Mark

been when Kit was assaulted in the cave? This, of

course, led to a whole stream of minor questions.

Why had he let her go back there alone? What

connection did he have with the whole affair that he

might be keeping secret? His middle name was

Butterworth, after all.

Connie decided, as she was stacking the dishes

and running water into the sink, that she would

make it her business to find out considerably more

about Tom’s moody friend and his peculiar uncle,

for whom no one had a good word to say.

“Connie—”

“Yes?” Connie bounced abruptly back to the

present, and found Randy, dish towel in hand,

standing at her elbow.

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“Connie, you think there’s some funny business

going on at Eagle Rock, don’t you?”

“You bet I do!” Connie admitted readily. Then

she added, with more caution, “But I don’t think it’s

any of our business, really. And I want you to

promise me one thing, Randy Ridgeway.”

“What’s that?”

“I want you to promise that you won’t go back

there, ever again, alone.”

“Aw gee whiz!”

“Yes, I want you to promise. And I want you to

shake on it.” Connie dried her right hand and held it

out.

But Randy was reluctant to make such a bargain.

He frowned and wouldn’t meet his cousin’s eyes.

“If you won’t—” Connie started, then realized

that she didn’t want to make a definite threat, like

telling Randy that she would inform his parents or

go to the police. She realized that she didn’t want to

be placed in a position where she must do either of

these things, because she was already making

nebulous plans to go back to the castle on the rock

herself.

“If I won’t, what?” Randy asked.

“I’ll never tell you anything again,” Connie said

weakly.

Randy realized that his position had been

strengthened. “Will you go back with me?” he

117

asked.

“Maybe.” Connie was deliberately noncommittal.

But Randy felt encouraged. “Maybe” was a great

deal better than the outright “no” he had received

when he had made the same proposition to Kit a

little earlier in the evening.

“Tomorrow?” he prodded.

“I don’t know.”

“We could sneak off,” Randy planned. “Just us

two.”

“If you don’t stop teasing I won’t go at all,”

Connie told him with mock fierceness.

“Aw—”

“I mean it!”

“O.K. O.K.”

Randy subsided and dried the dinner plates

silently, wondering whether the half-promise he had

received was worth the work which he found

himself doing. The phone rang, and he threw down

his towel in an instant, to make a dash for it. The

call was for Tom, however, and he was forced to

return reluctantly to his task. Tom spoke briefly,

then appeared in the kitchen door.

“Tell the folks the clam factory called, will you,

Randy? They’re a guy short on the night shift and

they’ll give me time and a half, so I’m going to

climb out of these clothes and get going.” He

grinned at Connie and rubbed his palm. “Filthy

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lucre!” he muttered appreciatively.

Connie laughed, but she was rather disappointed

that Tom would be gone for the evening. She had

hoped they could wander down to the dock

together—maybe even take a moonlight swim—and

talk a little more about the business at the

Butterworths’. There were questions she wanted to

ask Tom—questions about Mark Eastham—and

Connie always hated to put off until tomorrow

anything that could be accomplished today.

The dishes finished, she went up to look in on

Kit, but found her sister fast asleep, looking relaxed

and very peaceful. Randy, meanwhile, had tuned in

on an hour’s radio program, and was lying stretched

out on the living-room floor, his arms under his

head, listening to a fabricated mystery which didn’t

appeal to Connie nearly as much as the real one so

close at hand.

Tossing a sweater around her shoulders, she

strolled down to the dock alone. Crickets chirped in

the summer evening, and water lapped softly against

the sides of the skiff. The turmoil in Connie’s mind

was at strange odds with the tranquility of the scene.

Out on the bay an outboard motor coughed and

spluttered for a minute, then settled down to a steady

whine. A dog barked in the distance; a girl laughed;

lights winked from the scattered houses. Everything,

on land and water, seemed orderly and contented.

119

Yet Connie couldn’t feel quiet within herself,

couldn’t feel calm. Until this afternoon she had been

able to joke about the perfumed lady at Eagle Rock,

the ghost who wore white and slammed doors in

such an unseemly fashion, but now it was no

laughing matter. She shuddered as she realized how

close Kit had come—how very close!—to being

killed.

At the end of the dock Connie sat down and

leaned against a piling, swinging her legs over the

edge and looking out over the water. The moon was

almost full, and made a path through which an

occasional sailboat drifted like a lazy butterfly.

There was barely enough breeze to sail at all, but it

was an inviting sort of night, soft and quite cool.

Too cool, Connie reminded herself, to have gone

swimming.

She sat for several minutes, letting her thoughts

drift like the sailboats, hoping to have them light on

some point that had hitherto escaped her, hoping—

by not trying too hard—to make some glimmer of

sense out of the happenings at the old Butterworth

house. But she kept feeling that there was so much

she did not know, so much that she had still to

discover, and again and again her thoughts kept

coming back to Mark.

Therefore it was with a start of unassumed

surprise that Connie heard his voice come out of the

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darkness, astonishingly close to her ear. It came

from the water, not from the shore, and she sat up

straight and turned her head with a sharp intake of

breath.

“Sorry. Did I startle you?” Mark spoke from the

cockpit of a tiny sailboat which had crept silently up

to the dock.

“A little.” Connie’s reply was an understatement.

“The moonlight makes a path to your dock. I

could see you from ‘way across the bay.”

“Could you?” Connie couldn’t seem to think of

anything special to say.

Mark let the sail sag so that the breeze ruffled it.

With one hand he clung to a piling. “Did Tom get

your car?”

“Yes. Before dinner.”

“And Kit? Is she all right?”

“She’s asleep,” Connie said shortly.

Mark’s solicitude sounded genuine, but was it?

Connie couldn’t be sure.

The boy seemed to sense her mistrust. He was

silent for a moment, then ventured timidly, “Want to

come for a sail?”

Connie looked askance at the small boat. “Will it

hold two? It isn’t any bigger than a moth.”

Mark chuckled. “That’s what it is.”

“What?” Connie didn’t understand.

“A moth.” He tried to explain. “That’s what this

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type of boat is called.” Then he added, “It will hold

two comfortably.”

“Oh.” Connie made a sudden decision. “Wait till

I let them know at the house,” she said. “I’d like to

come for a sail.”

She ran back across the boardwalk quickly, and

told her Aunt Helen that she was going out with

Mark in his boat. “If that’s all right with you,” she

added politely.

“Certainly it’s all right. Have fun.”

But it wasn’t just for fun that Connie was going

on this particular sail. She intended to use her time

to good advantage, and when she came home she

intended to know a great deal more about Mark

Eastham than she did right now.

Determination was in the set of her firm young

jaw as she hurried back to the dock. Mark

Butterworth Eastham—that was his name. And old

Mrs. Butterworth had left him a legacy—a small

one, perhaps, but still a legacy. This legacy was just

one of the things Connie wanted to know more

about.

But interference came from an unexpected

source. It came in the shape of an enormous tortoise-

shell cat, who was pacing sedately back and forth

across the dock when Connie arrived there. Mark

was talking to the cat as though they were more than

acquaintances, and he laughed when Connie cried,

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“For goodness’ sake, where did he come from?”

“He belongs to my uncle, but he thinks he’s

mine.”

The cat sidled over and rubbed against Connie’s

legs, purring unevenly, as though he were offering

an inducement of some kind. Connie reached down

and stroked him. “What’s his name?”

“Mr. Moto,” Mark replied. “Don’t ask me why.”

“He wasn’t with you in the boat, not when you

arrived.”

“No,” Mark admitted, “but he likes to go sailing.

He tracks me down.”

“I thought cats hated water.”

“Most cats do, but some cats love boats. Live on

them, even.” Mark reached up to help Connie down

from the dock with one hand, while the other still

gripped the piling. “Go on home, Mr. Moto,” he

said.

But the cat stood looking down at them with great

yellow eyes, still pleading in his uneven purr. Then,

as Mark hoisted the sail and the small boat started to

glide swiftly away from the dock, he gave an

unexpected leap and landed squarely, on cushioned

paws, in Connie’s lap.

“We’ll take him back to our dock,” Mark said,

unperturbed. “He’s a rascal.”

Connie let the cat curl up in her lap, and

continued to stroke him idly while Mark told her of

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some of his exploits with all the pride of a pet

owner. “Do you have a dog, too?” Connie wanted to

know, trying to get the conversation away from Mr.

Moto by easy stages.

“No. Uncle Adolph doesn’t like dogs. He doesn’t

like most cats, either, for that matter. In fact, Uncle

Adolph’s a bit of a misanthrope. He doesn’t like

much of anybody.”

Mark sounded so rueful that Connie felt sorry for

him, but she steeled herself against letting her heart

run away with her head. “What’s the matter?” she

asked lightly. “Was he unlucky in love?”

“Something like that,” Mark admitted. “He was

engaged to a girl, once, I understand. A pretty, dark-

haired girl with a pale face and big eyes, to judge

from a snapshot I ran across in an old album.” He

paused, and seemed to be thinking back.

Connie trailed her free hand in the water. “But he

never married her?”

Mark shook his head. “She ran off with another

man. Jilted him for a two-penny violinist. Mrs.

Ridgeway told me that was the story, anyway. Uncle

Adolph has never mentioned a word about the

matter to me.”

Mark ran the boat expertly in toward the dark

hulk of a dock. Far back on shore, Connie could see

a single light in a window. Next to the friendly blaze

that came from the Ridgeway house, it made this

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dwelling look gloomy. “Do only you and your uncle

live here?” she asked.

“It’s where I exist,” Mark replied.

He really is a difficult boy, Connie thought. The

impression she had formed on the first day of their

acquaintance was corroborated. Moody people

bothered her. She wasn’t used to them. They made

her feel scrappy and uncomfortable, even if they did

invoke a certain amount of sympathy.

“Oh, come now!”

“Look, you don’t know my uncle!”

“I’d like to,” Connie said honestly.

Mark, in the act of dumping Mr. Moto

unceremoniously back on his home dock, stopped

and looked down at her. “Say that again.”

“I’d really like to. I don’t believe he can possibly

be as bad as you say.”

“He’s not bad. He’s just unpleasant—and

illogical.”

“Maybe he has reasons.” Connie sounded tart.

A quickened breeze filled their sail just then, and

Mark gave his full attention to the boat for a minute

or two. When he glanced at Connie again it was to

say, “You don’t like me, do you? I wish I knew

why.”

Connie was immediately contrite. “It isn’t that I

don’t like you. It’s just—”

“Just what?” Mark prodded when she hesitated.

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But Connie didn’t have the heart to tell him, in so

many words, that she felt mistrustful. She shrugged

and said, “Oh, skip it, Mark.”

They sat for a while in silence, staring at the

moon-path on the water, each lost in thought. Then

Mark muttered, “If you think I had anything to do

with that incident this afternoon—”

How could he know that this was precisely what

she was thinking, Connie wondered? How could he

guess? Aloud she asked, “Why would you suspect

such a thing?” Her voice sounded cool and distant,

even to her own ears.

“Because you’re treating me as though I’d

committed a crime,” Mark said frankly. “Just

because my middle name is Butterworth, and

because an old lady happened to leave me five

thousand dollars that won’t even be mine for a

couple of more years is no reason to connect me

irreconcilably with Eagle Rock. And,” he almost

shouted, “it’s no reason why I should want to hit a

perfectly nice girl a knockout blow on the head.”

“No,” Connie admitted, and her voice seemed

very calm and collected by comparison. “No,” she

said again, slowly and thoughtfully. “Perhaps not.”

Then she turned in the boat so that she could see

Mark’s eyes. “But there is something about Eagle

Rock that you haven’t told me. There’s something

that you’re keeping a secret. I’m as sure of it as I’m

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sure that my name is Connie Blair!”

Mark’s glance shifted. He couldn’t meet Connie’s

level, questioning gaze. His smile was sickly when

he said, with thin pretense, “Aren’t you being a little

hysterical about this whole affair?”

“Hysterical?”

“Yes. At first it was a game. Then, this afternoon,

it turned into something pretty serious. I think the

smart thing to do would be to take the Bo’sun’s

advice and stay clear of the place.”

Connie shook her head, and her lips were pressed

firmly together. Then, very flatly, she announced,

“I’m going back.”

“You are not!” Mark’s voice was equally firm.

“Oh?”

“Don’t be a little idiot! Do you want to tangle

with the police?”

“If necessary.”

Mark took a different tack. “Connie, be sensible.

What’s the use of walking smack into trouble?”

“I’m going to find out who hit Kit.”

Mark sighed wearily. “Maybe there wasn’t

anybody. Maybe she ran into the doorjamb in the

dark.”

“You don’t really believe that, Mark Eastham.”

“It’s possible.”

“But not probable,” Connie insisted.

“As probable as any other theory that has been

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advanced.”

Connie didn’t continue the argument. She was a

little ashamed that they had quarreled on such a

beautiful night. For a while she sat very quiet and

withdrawn, looking out over the dark bay toward the

lights of Newport. Why was Mark so anxious to

keep her from going back to Eagle Rock? Just as she

was about to ask him, she checked herself. Mark,

she knew, would dodge with a denial or an indirect

answer.

128

CHAPTER 11

Connie Meets the Guardian

The breeze died at dawn, and the morning was hot

and still, with the temperature climbing persistently.

Kit came down for breakfast, but her aunt shooed

her out of the house to the garden chaise right

afterward, with strict orders that she was to rest and

stay as cool as possible for the entire day.

Pogo went with her, and lay down on the grass by

her side, panting. Connie brought Kit some

magazines, and Randy offered his services, if she

should need them. Then he took his fishing line and

went out in the skiff.

Tom slept. He had worked all night and, Aunt

Helen told Connie, that was very likely to mean that

he would sleep all day. Connie, therefore, tiptoed

around the second floor making beds and putting to

rights the bedroom she shared with her twin.

Her aunt laughed at such caution when she found

what Connie was doing. “Don’t worry about Tom,”

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she said in a perfectly normal tone of voice. “No

mere noise could awaken that boy. He sleeps the

sleep of the clear in conscience!”

“Clear in conscience.” The words made Connie’s

thoughts turn once more to Mark. She remembered

suddenly how relieved he had seemed, yesterday in

Eagle Rock, when she had come back to the kitchen

and announced that the bedroom door was locked. It

was just one more curious thing among a lot of

curious things. “Clear in conscience.” She doubted

that those words would apply to Mark as aptly as to

her cousin Tom.

Yet she regretted their quarrel of the night before.

She realized now that she must have been overtired

and harassed by all the day’s excitement. It wasn’t

like her to bait a person as she had Mark. And it

wasn’t like her to be so mixed up in her feelings—to

like a boy and yet to mistrust him at one and the

same time.

“Aunt Helen?”

“Yes, Connie?”

“Aunt Helen, may I ask you something quite

frankly?”

“Of course, dear.”

“Do you consider Mark Eastham a little—well—

odd?”

“Odd?” Mrs. Ridgeway stopped in the bedroom

doorway. “No. Moody perhaps. Very artistic in

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temperament, of course, and a little self-absorbed.

But not odd.”

“You think he’s—reliable?”

“Why, yes.”

Connie sighed. “Maybe I just don’t understand

him. He seems to me like a peculiar sort of boy.

Doesn’t like his guardian. Doesn’t want to go to

college.” She spread her hands. “How unhappy can

you get?”

Her aunt laughed at the slang expression and

came in to sit down on the edge of one of the twin

beds. “Mark’s relationship with his uncle is rather

unfortunate,” she told Connie. “Adolph Eastham is

on the crotchety side, and Mark needs lots of

sympathy and understanding.”

“Then why doesn’t he want to go to college?”

Connie asked. “At least he’d get out of the house.”

“Because he wants to study music. Hasn’t he told

you? He wants to study at Curtis in Philadelphia or

Juilliard in New York, and the idea of ‘wasting’—as

he calls it—four years in college is something Mark

just can’t face.”

“Well,” Connie said, “for the first time he begins

to make a little sense!”

Her aunt smiled. “Artistic people are often a little

difficult to understand, aren’t they?” she asked, then

excused herself as the telephone rang downstairs.

Connie finished her self-imposed tasks, then went

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out to the lawn and reported to Kit the story of her

moonlight sail with Mark and her subsequent

conversation with her aunt. “What do you make of it

all?” she asked her twin.

Kit shook her head. “I’m as puzzled as you are,

Connie. But I’d like to meet the uncle.”

Connie nodded. “So would I.”

An opportunity came more quickly than she had

expected. When Connie went back to the house her

aunt was standing in the kitchen, looking with

considerable dismay at more than a dozen uncooked

tinker mackerel, left over from the night before.

They were taking up needed space in the

refrigerator, yet she hated to throw them away.

“They’re still perfectly good. I know!” she said.

“I’ll send some of them up the road to the

Griswolds, They have two Persian kittens. And the

rest I’ll send over for Mr. Moto, Adolph Eastham’s

cat.”

“I’ll take them,” Connie offered promptly.

“Oh, no!” Mrs. Ridgeway protested. “I’ll send

Randy. He’s the errand-runner around here.”

“Randy’s off fishing,” Connie said with a grin,

and knew that her aunt would groan.

“Not more fish! I can’t face them. Not today.”

“Please let me go,” Connie begged then, “If I dare

appear before anyone as grim as Mr. Eastham in

these shorts.”

132

“Of course you dare. It will do him good. And

wear your best smile! I want him to see what a

pretty niece I have.”

So, a few minutes later, Connie started off with

two newspaper-wrapped parcels. The first she

dropped at the Griswolds, to whose house Aunt

Helen directed her. Then she continued on around a

curve in the road to the shore-front property of the

Easthams.

The brown shingle house looked tidy but

somehow cheerless, as though it cried for a woman’s

touch. There were shades at the windows, neatly

pulled to even lengths, but no crisp white curtains,

as in the Ridgeway house. And at first glance there

seemed to be no one at all around.

Then Connie saw Mr. Moto. He was sitting on the

porch railing, as still as a statue.

“Hello, Mr. Moto,” she said.

At the sound of his name he gave a brief purr of

recognition and leaped lightly off the railing to meet

her in front of the steps. The manner in which he

rubbed against her legs was definitely ingratiating.

“I believe you smell this fish,” she said.

Mr. Moto’s purr strengthened and Connie

chuckled to herself. Then she leaned down and

stroked him gently before she went up the steps to

ring the bell.

There was no answer. She waited half a minute or

133

so, then rang again, but quite evidently there was no

one at home. Then, just on the chance that Mark

might be down at the dock, she walked around the

¦corner of the house, but she was intercepted quite

suddenly by a tall, gray-haired man with close-set

eyes, who was leaning dependently on a cane.

“How do you do!” Connie gasped. “Are you Mr.

Adolph Eastham?”

“I am.”

He was older than Connie had somehow

expected. He looked to be well into his sixties, and

his shoulders were bent.

“I’m Connie Blair, Mrs. Ridgeway’s niece.”

“Yes?”

Connie felt ill at ease. He certainly didn’t waste

words, this uncle of Mark’s. She began to feel far

more understanding of Tom’s friend than heretofore.

Living with Uncle Adolph, she was quite certain,

would be something of a task.

Not knowing what else to do, Connie smiled. Her

smile was as young as a spring day, her teeth were

even and white, and her eyes crinkled engagingly at

the corners. “I’ve brought some fish for Mr. Moto,”

she explained, and held out the newspaper-wrapped

parcel to Mr. Eastham.

There weren’t many men, from sixteen to

seventy, who could resist Connie’s smile, and

Adolph Eastham, in this respect, was not

134

exceptional. It took a few seconds for his frown,

which Connie had assumed was perpetual, to

dissolve. It took several more seconds for his

features to reorient themselves into something like a

pleasant expression. But finally the objective was

accomplished and Mr. Eastham managed, with

difficulty, to smile back.

“Well, well, well,” he said, and his voice had lost

much of its grumpiness. “I call that extremely nice.”

Connie’s own smile turned into a laugh, but she

did hope that Mr. Eastham wouldn’t guess that she

was laughing at him. To cover her confusion she

said, “They’re tinker mackerel. The Bo’sun—Mr.

Meredith, I mean—gave them to us yesterday.”

“Meredith, eh?” Mr. Eastham took the package in

a hand which looked unusually large and strong for

a man of his years. Connie noticed that the fingers

were long and well-kept. In this respect his uncle’s

hands resembled Mark’s.

“Yes. Do you know him?”

Mr. Eastham nodded. “Comes from a fine old

family, George Meredith does. Never did amount to

much though, himself. When he was a kid the family

had too much money, and when he got older they

didn’t have enough.”

“That sounds as though Mr. Meredith’s life might

make an interesting story,” Connie said

encouragingly.

135

Adolph Eastham looked at her sharply. “You a

writer?” he asked.

“No, not exactly. I’m in the advertising business,

though,” Connie admitted.

“Advertising, hmph?” Mr. Eastham started to

frown again. “Never did think much of advertising,

though I suppose it’s all right for those that like it.

I’m inclined more to the solid side.”

“You’re an engineer, aren’t you?”

“Was. I’m retired.” Then Mark’s uncle eyed

Connie pointedly again. “Who told you?”

“Mark.”

“Mark, eh?” There was indignation in the manner

in which Mr. Eastham pronounced his nephew’s

name. “I suppose he’s been telling you I’m an old

Scrooge, just because I want him to turn out

differently than George Meredith there.” He waved

an impatient hand toward the bay.

Connie’s eyes widened and she looked up at Mr.

Eastham innocently. “Oh, no!”

“Didn’t?” Mr. Eastham looked surprised. “Mark’s

a young fool. Can’t seem to see that a college

education will give him a bedrock foundation

nobody can take away.” He tapped his cane to

emphasize the word “bedrock.”

“But don’t you think people are different? Maybe

college, for Mark would be a waste.”

“Waste?” Mr. Eastham roared. “What are you

136

talking about? If you think trekking off to some big

city with that fiddle of his will be anything but a

waste, young lady, you’re crazy. You’re as crazy as

that addlepated nephew of mine!”

Anger seemed to straighten Mr. Eastham’s back.

He brandished his cane in the air like a sword, but

he didn’t really intimidate Connie. She had suddenly

guessed the reason for Mark’s guardian’s antipathy

to a musical career for his ward. Wasn’t it a violinist

who had run off with Adolph Eastham’s betrothed?

“Once burned, twice shy,” her mother always

said, and Connie smiled gently as she remembered

the adage.

“What are you laughing about?” Mr. Eastham

bellowed, and his frown became deeper than ever.

“N-nothing.” Connie backed away. “I was just

thinking—thinking that I’d better be getting home.”

Belatedly she added, “Say hello to Mark for me,

please. And I hope Mr. Moto enjoys the fish.”

137

CHAPTER 12

A Lone Expedition

At the Ridgeways’ the silence was utter and

complete. Tom was still asleep upstairs, Kit had

dozed off on the garden chaise, and Pogo had

stretched out in a shady spot under the back steps.

A note on the kitchen table read, “Sandwiches in

the refrigerator, Connie. I’ve gone marketing. See

you later.” It was signed “H. R.”

Connie sat on the table, swinging her legs and

munching the sandwiches thoughtfully. She half

wished Kit would wake up, so that she could tell her

about her encounter with Adolph Eastham. Then she

was fired with a sudden, brilliant idea. What better

time was there than now to go back to Eagle Rock—

alone!

Impulsively, she tiptoed upstairs for her car keys.

If she could slip off before anybody could forbid

her, before anybody could discover what she was

about— The riskiness of the procedure never

138

crossed her mind. Connie closed the screen door

quietly behind her and ran soundlessly, in her

rubber-soled sneakers, down the walk.

The car started with agreeable promptness and

Connie pulled quickly out of the drive, blessing the

noiselessness of modern motors. She felt

exhilarated, as though she were starting out on an

exciting private adventure, and she hummed as she

turned into the main road. The run to Eagle Rock

took barely ten minutes, but today Connie took the

extra precaution of parking her car well out of sight

of the pillared gateway. She tucked the keys safely

in the zippered pocket of her shorts and walked up

the road under the arching trees as though she were

not in a hurry to go anywhere at all.

As she neared the entrance to the curving Eagle

Rock drive she grew particularly wary, and chose a

time to slip through the gate and behind a screen of

overgrown shrubbery when there was neither a car

nor a pedestrian visible on the road. Then, rather

than cut back to the weed-grown drive, she walked

through the tall grass behind the shrubbery planting

until she was within sight of the house itself.

Seen between clumps of ilex and rhododendron,

the mansion looked quiet and desolate under the

strong afternoon sun. The day was almost

breathlessly hot, the sort of day on which people

keep glancing at the sky and hoping for a storm.

139

There was a, pressure in the air, a sense of

foreboding that quickened Connie’s heart. For a

moment she hesitated. Should she turn back,

perhaps? Wait until one of the boys could

accompany her? It crossed her mind that it would

have been wise to leave a note, to tell Kit where she

was going. Then the moment of hesitancy was gone.

What was she waiting for?

On feet as quiet as Mr. Moto’s Connie crossed

the marble terrace to the semicircular balcony. The

window with the broken latch was on the lower level

and the steps were on the bay side.

Silently she slipped along from pillar to pillar,

keeping well back in the shadow of the house. Now

she could look out over the cove, could see the ferry

making one of its endless trips, the pleasure boats

going and coming, the gulls and the terns swooping

down out of the brassy sky.

From a rock pile at the mouth of the cove some

youngsters were swimming, their voices cutting the

air, high and shrill. They were disappointed because

the tide wasn’t high enough to suit them. “But it’s

coming in!” Connie could hear a little boy shout.

“It’s coming in!”

There was something so ordinary—so summer-

afternoonish—about the scene that it stilled

Connie’s qualms. She stepped out from behind the

pillar for a moment, then stepped hastily back again

140

as she recognized a white boat at anchor just off the

point.

Mr. Meredith! Had he seen her? Cautiously she

peered out from her hiding place once more. She

had a feeling that he would make good his threat if

he should find any one of them hanging around

Eagle Rock again. Connie remembered distinctly the

steely glint in the Bo’sun’s eyes when he had

promised to report them to the police as trespassers

should he discover them at the Butterworth house

once more.

There was no movement from the boat, and from

this distance, with the sun in her eyes, it was

impossible for Connie to see whether or not the

Bo’sun was on deck. But she renewed her caution

and kept well back against the house as she hurried

down the steps to the lower balcony and around to

the kitchen window which opened with such

tempting ease.

It took only a moment to slip through. Shorts

were so much more convenient than skirts for such

an expedition, Connie thought, as she dropped to the

pantry floor. She sniffed. The “perfumed lady”

apparently hadn’t been here today! She shut the

window cautiously behind her, then on second

thought opened it again. She might as well leave

herself an avenue of quick escape. That decided, she

hurried through the kitchen to the hall.

141

The instant she opened the kitchen door she heard

the music. It floated down from upstairs, thin and

reedlike, but there was no ghostly dissonance about

it today. Connie stood stock-still in the vast

entrance hall and listened. She knew this . . . she

knew it . . . she could almost name it. Ah! She had

it!

“Anitra’s Dance,” she whispered softly to herself.

Connie smiled. No ghost was playing music from

the Peer Gynt Suite. No ghost was drawing a bow

with such mastery across the strings of this violin!

Connie didn’t wait a minute longer. She knew

now!—knew infallibly who she would find when

she opened the bedroom door.

Quick as a gazelle, and quite as lightly, she raced

up the sweeping stairs. Her sneakers made no sound

as she sped along the hall. If only the door was open.

If only she could catch him in the very act!

But the violinist came to the end of the selection

before Connie reached the door which now stood

ajar. A white-robed figure, back toward her, was

wrapping something in a dust cover over by the bed

when she let herself into the room.

“So it’s you! So it’s been you—all the time.”

There was no smile on Connie’s lips now,

because she was beginning to realize the unpleasant

implications of her discovery. She stood in the

doorway like an avenging angel, her fair hair a halo

142

around her heart-shaped face.

The figure in white whirled, and Mark Eastham’s

startled eyes met hers. He was wearing swimming

trunks, over which he had flung a white terry robe,

and in his trembling hands he still held the violin he

had been wrapping in an old linen pillow slip.

For fully fifteen seconds Mark didn’t speak.

There was a white line of anger around his mouth,

anger and dismay. Then he said, in a tone of voice

which contained a certain rueful humor, “You are

the persistent type, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Connie admitted coolly, “I am.”

It never occurred to her to be afraid of Mark. She

took a couple of steps into the room and put out her

hand. “I suppose you found my bracelet here. Will

you please give it to me?”

Now Mark had the grace to flush. He put his hand

in the pocket of his terry robe and handed Connie

the bauble, which glinted in the sun from the dingy

window. “I would have returned it,” he apologized,

“in time.”

Connie didn’t dispute this, but her eyes were still

cold and accusing. “Would you care to try to explain

yourself?” she asked.

Mark shrugged, and spread his hands so that

Connie noticed again how long and sensitive were

the fingers. “It’s been a good place to practice. I

don’t like being disturbed.”

143

“Can’t you practice at home?”

“No. Uncle Adolph has forbidden it. ‘For my own

good,’ ” Mark mimicked. His eyes were very dark

and stormy, and his voice was almost as cold as

Connie’s.

“How long have you been coming here?” Connie

asked.

“All summer.”

Connie glanced at his costume. “And you—swim

all that distance?” She couldn’t help but sound

surprised.

“It isn’t so far,” Mark told her. “I swim from our

dock to the point, then cut across the point on a

footpath, and the next lap is only about a hundred

yards.”

A hundred yards sounded like a healthy distance

to Connie, who doubted that she could last quite that

long without getting badly winded, but she

recognized that Mark and her cousins, raised

practically on the water, were especially strong

swimmers as a consequence. So she accepted

Mark’s word for it and hurried on to the other

questions she wanted to ask.

“Then it was your light we saw, in the evening?”

“Yes. I carry a flash. Sometimes I stay until after

dark.”

“Aren’t you afraid?” The thought slipped out

spontaneously.

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“Afraid? What is there to be afraid of?

Everybody’s dead and gone.”

Connie shivered slightly. “That’s just it,” she

wanted to say, but she restrained herself and became

the stern inquisitor again.

“What was the point of locking the door?”

“I didn’t want you to start poking around and

discover my fiddle. There’s no way of locking the

closet over there, where I keep it.” Mark gestured to

the coat closet on the other side of the room.

So far, Connie had to admit, his answers had

made sense. He seemed forthright enough, now that

he had, so to speak, been “caught with the goods.”

She could understand the reasons which had led him

to use the abandoned house as a refuge. She could

even understand his inclination to play ghost in the

hope of scaring off intruders. Because Connie had

no doubt that it was Mark’s figure, cloaked in the

terry robe, which she and Tom had seen fading into

the darkness of the stair well. But there was one

thing she didn’t understand, one thing that kept

creeping to the front of her mind with an insistent

push. There was one question she would have to ask

Mark, one final, all-important question. And how,

Connie wondered, did he intend to answer that?

With the instinct of a born detective, she tried to

throw him off his guard. “It all seems a little like

child’s play,” she murmured, “now that the truth is

145

out.”

Mark’s grin was embarrassed. “It does, at that,”

he admitted. “But your gang was getting a kick out

of the game, too.”

“Until yesterday.” Connie rapped out the words.

“Don’t you think it was going a little berserk to

almost kill my sister?”

“What—?”

“Do you think it was sportsmanlike to carry the

game quite that far?”

“I never—”

Connie’s head was high and her brown eyes were

accusing. “I should think you’d be ashamed!”

“Why—”

“Knocking an innocent bystander unconscious!”

Connie stormed. “An innocent bystander, that’s

what Kit was. And you did it just in a silly,

uncontrolled attempt to scare us off the premises for

good and all! Couldn’t you think of a better way, a

way that wouldn’t hurt anybody, a way that

wouldn’t practically give a girl on vacation a

concussion? Is a place to do your practicing

undisturbed worth that?”

“Connie! Listen! You—”

But Connie would not be stopped. By the moment

she was growing more indignant, more scornful.

When she thought of the miserable night Kit had

spent, when she thought of her twin lying curled up

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and defenseless on the garden chaise when she

should have been out having fun, fury welled up and

threatened to choke her.

“Egocentric, that’s what you are! Egocentric and

brutal. Why couldn’t you have hit Tom if you

wanted to hit somebody, instead of a defenseless

girl?”

Without another word Mark walked across the

room and grabbed Connie by the shoulders. He

started to shake her and through clenched teeth he

said just two words. “Be quiet!”

Connie was so startled that she obeyed. She

looked fearlessly, however, into Mark’s eyes, and

they didn’t flinch away from hers.

“Now you listen to me,” he said without shouting.

“I didn’t hit Kit, and I don’t know what did. But get

this straight. I never left that kitchen.”

“Can you prove it?”

“No, I can’t prove it,” Mark said. “But I give you

my word.” His eyes were as steady as the hands

holding Connie’s shoulders. “Maybe, as we said

yesterday, she banged her head on the edge of the

door.”

“You don’t believe that, Mark, and neither do I,”

Connie said quietly, and this time the boy’s glance

dropped.

“It was a criminal thing to do,” she went on, “and

it was done for a reason. For a reason that has

147

something to do with the cave, and with the cases of

medicine bottles we found. I believe that, Mark.”

“You can believe anything you like as long as

you don’t believe I’m the kind of skunk who would

hit a girl in the dark.” Mark dropped his hands and

stepped back a pace.

“I’m taking your word for it,” Connie said

slowly. “And I’m also taking for granted the fact

that you’ll help me find out who made the attack and

why. It’s—it’s an obligation, Mark. A personal

obligation. A duty. Do you understand what I

mean?”

“Sort of.” Mark wasn’t too sure. In his opinion,

he told Connie, they should simply report the matter

to the police.

But Connie argued that, as yet, they had nothing

concrete to report. She wanted to go back to the cave

again, to see whether there was anything they had

overlooked, any clue to the identity of Kit’s assailant

that they might, by chance, have missed.

And, at the same time, Connie wanted to test

Mark.

“I want you to go with me,” she said.

“When?”

“Right now.”

Mark looked around as though he felt trapped. “I

don’t approve of it,” he said. “I don’t approve of it

for one minute. But—oh, well, all right.”

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CHAPTER 13

The Ghost Helps Out

Mark’s reluctance was apparent. Connie knew that

he was going along with her only because he felt

that he had to help her find the person who had

made the brutal attack on Kit if he were completely

to clear himself.

He put his violin carefully away in the closet,

handling the instrument lovingly with gentle,

sensitive hands. She began to realize how much

music meant to Mark, how cruel was his deprivation

when his uncle had forbidden him the right to

practice at home.

In that moment she began to hate Adolph

Eastham for his blind, stubborn, futile attempt to

mold Mark’s life to his own pattern. A man who

could do a thing like that might be capable of

anything! Was it possible that such a man could just

as readily have struck a helpless girl?

It was the first time she had considered Mark’s

149

uncle as a possible suspect, but the idea took hold.

Suppose Adolph Eastham had begun to surmise that

Mark was practicing in secret. Suppose he had

trailed him to Eagle Rock, and knew—through some

means or other—of the cave entrance. Might Kit

have surprised him? Might he have acted in

uncontrolled haste? Possibilities galore began to

float through Connie’s brain like feathers, settling

for a moment here and there, but floating about

again soon to rearrange themselves in other patterns.

“Hurry! Hurry!”

Mark seemed to be walking in slow motion,

stalling for time. Connie hustled him along

impatiently, so absorbed in her own conjectures that

she failed to notice the storm clouds piling up over

the bay.

But Mark had seen them. “We’re going to have a

blow,” he warned, pointing them out. “It might be

smart to wait until another day.”

“Poof! Suppose it does rain? We’ll be dry enough

in the cave. And it may ensure our being alone down

there.”

Connie was in no mood to be deflected from her

purpose. Besides, Mark seemed to her to be a little

overanxious to keep her from going back to the

scene of Kit’s mishap again.

The boy shrugged. “Have it your own way.” His

bare feet followed Connie’s sneakers down the

150

sumptuous stairway which curved to the mosaic-

patterned marble floor of the reception hall.

For a moment Connie relaxed enough to giggle as

she turned and looked up at him. “If we don’t look

silly!” she said. “In a place like this I keep having

the feeling we should be in evening dress, you in

white tie and tails, and I in something glittering and

bouffant.”

“You’d look lovely in white,” Mark told her.

“A compliment!” Connie cried. “I believe it’s the

first compliment you’ve ever paid me.” Reaching

the floor of the hall she dropped a mock curtsy,

holding the cuffs of her shorts daintily with the

finger tips of either hand. “Thank you, sir.”

Mark grinned. “Even in that rig you’ll do,” he

admitted. “Now let’s get going if we’re to beard the

lion in his den. I don’t relish swimming the

Hellespont in one of these summer storms.”

“You won’t have to swim,” Connie promised. “i

Have the car. I’ll drop you off at home on my way

back to the Ridgeways.”

“That’ll certainly confuse Uncle Adolph,” Mark

replied.

The door to the pantry stood open, and Mark

looked at the open window as Connie crossed the

kitchen to the cupboard which opened on the secret

passage to the cave. He knew at once what she had

had in mind. “All ready for a quick getaway, I see.”

151

“Certainly. I’m the cautious type.” Laugh lines

crinkled around Connie’s eyes.

“Cautious!” Mark snorted as she knew he would.

“Got your flash?”

“Right here.”

“Give it to me. I’ll go first.”

The uneven stone steps were slippery and wet,

like the deck of a spray-soaked boat. Drip, drip, drip.

Water fell from the dank roof with monotonous

regularity. For more than a minute Connie felt blind.

She kept blinking her eyes to adjust them to the

darkness. Only the beam of the flashlight ahead cut

through the murk. Down they went, Connie

following close on Mark’s heels. Down, step after

curving step, down.

The cave was as silent as a tomb, the dripping

water and the slap of the advancing tide only

accentuating the feeling of emptiness. As they

gained the comparatively level floor of the entryway

Connie and Mark stood still and listened, but they

seemed to be entirely alone. A misty light came

through the entrance from the bay. It had an ugly,

yellowish cast. No boat would dare venture through

that channel now. If they were alone at the moment,

Connie had complete confidence that they would be

able to conduct their investigation undisturbed

today.

Mark, growing braver, sent the beam of his flash

152

into the corners of the cave. Empty. Then the light

sought the door to the storeroom. It was closed.

It took real courage to cross the cold, clammy

floor of the cave and open it. Connie looked at Mark

and nodded encouragement. Then together they

advanced, step by careful step.

At the door they paused, listening again, but only

silence greeted them. “Keep back,” Mark whispered,

and pushed the door warily inward, guarding Connie

with his arm.

The storeroom was as empty of life as the cave.

Only one thing had changed since their previous

visit. Some sawdust was spilled on the floor and the

slats had been ripped off the top packing box.

Connie crossed to examine the box more closely,

no longer moving with circumspection. As she had

hoped, Mark and she had the cave to themselves.

“Look,” she said, without bothering to whisper.

“A lot of the medicine bottles are gone.”

It was true. The packing box was nearly half

empty. Between yesterday afternoon and today

someone had come and gone. Someone who had

probably entered the tunnel at low tide in a small

boat, for how otherwise could the person have

spirited so many of the bottles away?

“You could get in here with a rowboat, couldn’t

you?”

Mark nodded. “I thought we settled that

153

yesterday. But remember, you can also get in as we

did, from upstairs.”

Connie cocked her head thoughtfully. “Yes, but

the person who struck Kit didn’t come that way.”

“Which would lead you to assume that he always

came through the tunnel?”

“Right.”

“Check. I’ll go along with that theory,” Mark

agreed. “But it doesn’t give us his name.”

“Or her’s.” Connie remembered the perfumed

visitor reluctantly, because she only seemed to

confuse a picture that was already far from clear cut.

Mark began to flash his light methodically over

the storeroom floor, moving it from left to right in

broad strips. The wet stone floor was bare. Then, as

he reached the packing boxes, Connie gave a little

cry and bent to pick up a crumpled piece of paper

about the size of an ordinary envelope.

“Here’s something.”

She started to smooth it out, and Mark flashed his

light directly on it. In its beam they could both see

that it was torn, and that it contained writing in blue

ink which had blurred in the dampness of the cave.

“It looks like French,” Connie started to say, but

the words were scarcely spoken when a detonation

like an explosion made her eardrums ring. She stood

aghast, looking at Mark with eyes full of shocked

alarm.

154

“What’s that?”

She didn’t know what she expected him to say. It

sounded as though someone had set off several

husky sticks of dynamite right above their heads.

But Mark’s expression was unexpectedly

reassuring. “Thunder,” he said, then added, “We’d

better get out of here.”

Connie breathed a sigh of relief, and even gave a

nervous chuckle to excuse her own terror. She gave

one last, lingering look around the storeroom to be

sure she had missed nothing, then followed Mark

bark into the cave proper and shut the door.

The water had risen fast since they had entered

the storeroom. It was lapping within a foot of the

very walls of the cave. And the aperture through

which the sickly yellow light continued to glow had

narrowed. Mark pointed it out. “Look. Another hour

and the tunnel mouth will be completely closed.”

Connie shivered. “All right. I’ve had enough.

Let’s go.”

She skidded across the slippery, sloping floor as a

rising wind whistled through the tunnel with an

eerie, menacing sound.

“And let’s not come back,” Mark said behind her.

“This place gives me the creeps.”

As though to punctuate his sentence, a door

upstairs shut with a resounding bang. Connie

jumped and stopped so short that she could feel

155

Mark’s breath against her cheek. “Good grief! Now

what was that?”

“Spooks and more spooks. I hope you’ve had

your fill of them.” Mark sounded disconcertingly

adult, but Connie knew it was just to cover his own

reaction to the sharp noise.

Then, suddenly, a dreadful thought occurred to

her. She grabbed her companion’s arm in

consternation.

“Mark!” she cried. “Mark, that open window!

You don’t suppose—the wind—”

The same thought had apparently occurred to the

boy. He brushed past her hurriedly and started up

the slimy stairs. No oblong of light shone from the

top. As soon as she reached the turn Connie knew,

indubitably, what had happened.

The cupboard door had slammed shut.

And, as it shut, it had locked.

Mark traced the outline of the door with his

flashlight. There was a rusty keyhole, but they had

no key. He pushed his shoulder against it, uselessly.

He even kicked it, in helpless fury.

Connie said, “Don’t do that, Mark. You’ll only

break your big toe.”

The thin attempt at a joke served to quiet them

both a little. Connie, always at her best in an

emergency, began to think fast.

When Mark said, “We’re trapped, but good!” she

156

shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I have an idea. Come on back to

the cave.”

Following her once more down the treacherous

steps, Mark said, “We’d better make for the

storeroom. The rest of the place will be flooded any

minute now. At least, in there, we can keep dry.”

He had visions of what would happen. By

dinnertime both he and Connie would be missed.

The families would be alarmed because of the storm.

They would go to the police, notify the Coast Guard,

start a search. Eventually, of course, Connie’s car

would be found, and the trail would lead to the

abandoned house if Tom and Kit had not already

suggested the possibility. Then—

But Connie’s hopeful voice interrupted his

gloomy predictions. “Mark! We can still swim for

it!” she cried.

Mark looked toward the tunnel’s mouth, almost

as dark as the water now. It showed only a reduced

semicircle of gray. The incoming tide was swirling

close to their very ankles.

“How strong a swimmer are you?” he asked.

“I’m not bad,” Connie said modestly. “Anyway,

the worst that could happen would be that we’d be

washed back in again.”

But Mark knew that this was not the worst, and

he suspected that Connie knew it too. If they should

157

escape one trap only to find themselves in another—

“There’s still time!” Connie insisted. She was

already sitting on the cave floor, pulling off her

sneakers and socks. The paper she had picked up

from the storeroom floor was in her pocket, along

with her car keys, and she remembered it just in the

nick of time.

“The paper! Oh, Mark! All the writing will be

washed away.”

“Maybe it isn’t very important, anyway.” Mark

tried to be comforting.

But Connie bit her lip and took it out of her

pocket, pulling the zipper closed again. “There

ought to be some way!”

Her sneakers and her socks were dry. Hastily she

tucked one sock inside the other, making a double-

thick bag. Into this she put the folded paper, then

rolled the socks into a ball she could cram into the

toe of one sneaker. Then she put the sneakers

together, front to front, and tied the bundle with one

of the laces, securing it with a tight knot.

“There.”

“But where do you propose to carry it?” Mark

wanted to know. “Every second we waste is

precious, Connie. Why not just leave the bundle on

the stairs.”

But Connie shook her head. She was wearing a

raffia belt with her shorts and she unbuckled it and

158

pulled it quickly off. Then she handed Mark the

sneakers.

“Here. Hold them on my head.”

“On your head?” But Mark did as he was told,

and watched in amazement, which contained a great

deal of respect, while Connie bound them on with

the raffia belt, knotting it painfully tight under her

chin.

Her eyes glistened with the excitement of

success. “Aha! If it only holds!”

Even if the water dashed over her head, as it well

might if whitecaps ruffled the bay, there was a good

chance that the rubber soles of the sneakers would

protect the canvas uppers and that Connie could

rescue the paper from the socks before they became

soaked. There was a chance, however, that her

efforts would fail, but then there was a chance

involved in everything one did. There was even a

chance that the tide was stronger than she calculated

it would be, and that they’d never get out of the cave

at all.

But to waste valuable time in idle speculation was

foreign to Connie’s temperament. Already she was

wading into the water in her bare feet. Over her

shoulder she said, almost happily, to Mark, “It’s

lucky I’m wearing shorts.”

Mark had to admire Connie’s spirit. The girl had

courage; there was no doubt of it. He was close

159

behind her when the water reached her waist and he

watched her strike out for the tunnel mouth,

swimming with a steady overhand that kept her head

well out of the water.

“I’ll say one thing,” he called after her. “You’ve

got plenty of grit!”

But Connie didn’t answer. She was beginning to

feel the drag of the tide against her shoulders. She

also saw, with some alarm, that the tunnel mouth

was getting smaller and smaller. She would need to

save her breath for the ordeal that lay ahead.

160

CHAPTER 14

Tom Translates

The churning bay, dark and storm-struck, was within

sight through the tunnel opening, but every new

surge of the incoming tide brought the water line

higher. Another ten minutes—five perhaps!—and

the water would reach the very roof, cutting off the

tunnel entirely, cutting off the possibility of entry or

return.

Connie, concentrating on her breathing and on the

steady overhand motion of her arms, didn’t dare

glance over her shoulder to see whether Mark was

close behind her. The balance of the sneakers

seemed to grow increasingly precarious, yet to make

any headway against the tide she couldn’t stop to

tread water and readjust the belt.

Stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke.

Like a coxswain in a racing shell, she kept

prodding herself on with mental directions. Evenly,

evenly, one arm over, then the other. The tunnel

161

mouth was getting closer, closer, closer all the time.

Now the sky, heavy with storm clouds, black and

menacing, was visible through the narrow opening.

Now the tunnel roof was no longer above her head!

But at once a new peril replaced the old. The wild

water threatened to whip her back against the rocks.

Connie had to fight with every ounce of strength

she possessed just to keep her head above the waves.

She seemed to be making no headway at all, and

only power born of stark terror kept her from being

dashed against the jagged stone foundation on which

Eagle Rock was built.

Her breath was shallow now, her resistance

weakened. She tried to will herself to go on but fear

became overwhelming.

“I can’t make it!” she gasped.

Then, at that very instant, Mark was at her side,

his strong arms towing her forward. Another thirty

seconds and they had fought clear of the rocks and

could let the current carry them up on the stony

beach.

Connie pulled herself out of the surf on her hands

and knees, still breathing with difficulty. Then Mark

was raising her by the elbows, steadying her for a

minute, his eyes full of relief.

“Good girl!”

“Thank you! I never could have made it—”

Connie’s heart was in her eyes.

162

“Sure you could. You were doing fine,” Mark

insisted. Then he grinned. “You certainly look

funny,” he said.

In her panic Connie had forgotten the sneakers

strapped to her head. She tugged at the knotted belt

ruefully, managing a weak smile in return.

The canvas uppers were wet, because several of

the choppy waves which speckled the bay had swept

over Connie’s head, but her device had been a

shrewd one. The socks tucked inside were barely

damp. The paper was safe!

Holding the sneakers in one hand, Connie hurried

up the beach at Mark’s side. The rain was pelting

down now, sharp and stinging. The path up to .the

house was slippery, but they managed to scramble to

the top in record time. Then, running, they dashed

for Connie’s car. They were cold, because the

temperature had dropped sharply, but they were so

filled with relief over their escape from the cave that

they laughed together like children as they ran.

“Bet we look silly!” Connie cried. Her soaked

hair clung to her shoulders, and her shirt and shorts

were heavy with water.

“I don’t care how we look, just so we don’t both

catch pneumonia,” Mark called back.

They reached the car, and Connie, with difficulty,

untangled some seaweed from the zipper on her

pocket and opened it to get out her keys.

163

“Lucky you had that zipper,” Mark commented.

Then his eyes twinkled. “Of course, with your

ingenuity, you could always have carried the car

keys in your teeth.”

Connie laughed. “Or put them right in the

sneakers with the socks, if you want to be really

practical.” She opened the door and reached into the

back of the car for her raincoat, which Mark helped

her spread across the seat.

Before they had pulled away from the curb, the

rain began to slacken, and the sun broke hopefully

through a cloud bank, then disappeared again.

“Why don’t you change and then come on over to

the Ridgeways?” Connie suggested. “We’ll get Tom

and Kit to help us decipher our clue.”

“Decipher is scarcely the word, is it?” Mark

teased.

“Translate, then. Do you know any French?”

“Not a syllable. Tom’s your man. He had three

years of high school French, I think.”

“Good!” All of Connie’s usual high spirits began

to return. Their recent danger was forgotten. She

waited impatiently in the car while Mark went into

the house to put on jeans and a T-shirt. Her hair was

already drying in curling tendrils around her face,

and the sun was shining again.

Kit and Tom were sitting in the sun porch when

Connie and Mark arrived. “Sh!” Kit cautioned.

164

“Aunt Helen’s taking a nap upstairs.” Then she gave

a small gasp as she saw Connie’s bedraggled

condition. “Where have you been?”

“You tell them while I get into some dry clothes,”

Connie suggested to Mark.

“Shall I tell them all?”

“You might as well. We’re going to need their

help.”

Ten minutes later, her head swathed in a turkish

towel, Connie reappeared in the sun-porch doorway.

“Now scold me and get it over with,” she told Kit

and Tom with a smile which begged their

forgiveness. “Then let’s see if this piece of paper

makes any sense to you?”

She held out the crumpled, torn slip to Tom, who

spread it out on a table and frowned down at it. “It’s

French all right,” was the first comment he made.

The paper had been torn diagonally from the

center top to the lower right-hand side, so that no

continuity could be expected in the blurred blue

writing. Tom began to pick out the decipherable

words, repeating them aloud.

“Le feu . . . bombe . . . voler . . . dangereux . . .

sans souci . . . aux armes . . . affaire du . . .”

Then he translated the words, one by one, and

Kit, who had gone to the desk for a pencil and paper,

made a list.

165

the fire

bomb

to fly

dangerous

without care

to arms

affair of

“Goodness,” she cried, “it sounds like a plot.

Maybe the cave was used by enemy agents during

the war.”

“The word ‘litre’ appears several times, and some

numbers.”

“Gas for an airplane?” murmured Mark.

“Down at the bottom the ink is so blurred I can’t

make out a three-word phrase,” Tom went on. “Vol

de . . . vol de something, but I don’t know what.”

Kit dutifully made a note of the fact. Then she sat

staring at the paper in her hand. “All of which means

exactly what?”

Nobody had an answer to this question. Tom

passed the scrap of paper to Mark, who looked it

over carefully, then passed it along to Kit. “Sounds

like an intrigue involving airplanes, but why?”

“That’s it. Why?” Connie agreed. “It doesn’t

make sense.”

She was thinking of the boxes of medicine

bottles, trying to find some link between them and

166

this newly discovered paper, between this paper and

the thought that the old smugglers’ cave might again

be in illegal use.

Kit was looking at the torn oblong of paper

thoughtfully. “What’s a ‘litre,’ anyway?”

“It’s a measurement for liquids,” Tom told her.

“Amounts to a little more than our quart.”

“I see.” Kit nodded. She was interested in the

number of times the word was repeated, and at the

numbers accompanying each repetition. Out of her

experience in the Blair hardware business she made

a suggestion.

“It could,” she murmured, “be a bill of sale.”

“It could!” Impatiently, Connie cried, “Let me see

it more closely for a minute, will you, Kit?”

She took the paper over to the window where she

could get the very best light, and her eyes traveled

down the paper rapidly. Against the light the phrase

at the bottom which had baffled Tom was almost

decipherable. Vol de . . .

“Vol de Nuit!” Connie cried.

And as she spoke something clicked in her brain.

Advertising was Connie’s business, and again and

again she had seen that same phrase decorating

sumptuous full-page space in fashion magazines.

“Vol de Nuit. That means night flight,” Tom was

saying, translating. “Sounds like more airplane

lingo.”

167

But Connie cried softly, “No, no, no! It’s the

name of a famous French perfume, one of the most

expensive. And I’ll bet the rest of the list are partial

names of French perfumes too.”

“And that it is a bill of sale,” said Kit flatly.

“That’s right. And that would explain the

medicine bottles,” Connie cried.

Kit nodded slowly, understanding and agreeing,

but the boys looked puzzled. “How?” Mark wanted

to know.

Words tumbled over one another as Connie

hurried to explain. “Suppose the cave is being used

again by smugglers. Suppose they’re bringing in

imported perfume by the litre and rebottling it in

ounce or two-ounce bottles. Wouldn’t that make

sense?”

“Would it?” Tom asked. “Perfumes are a little out

of my line.”

Connie tried to give him a quick education. “Lots

of French perfumes are fantastically priced,” she

explained. “That’s why you read stories of people

returning from abroad who try to smuggle them in

their luggage to escape the duty. I can’t imagine a

better racket for a gang of smugglers than to set up

their own bottling business. Can you?”

“It sounds logical,” Tom admitted. “But aren’t

you just guessing, after all?”

“No, she isn’t guessing.” Kit spoke quietly.

168

“Remember the perfume odor that drifted up into the

kitchen? One day lily of the valley, another day a

sort of millefleurs?” When she asked the latter

question she looked directly at her twin.

Connie nodded. “There is our proof.”

“It’s enough for me,” Mark agreed. “What’s our

next move? Should we go to the police?”

“We should—but would they believe us?” Connie

asked.

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CHAPTER 15

The Capture

For the better part of an hour Connie, along with

Kit, Tom, and Mark, tried to arrive at an answer to

this question. Finally the four young people decided

that the case they had to present was too flimsy.

“I’m. afraid,” Tom said, “the police would just

treat us like a bunch of hysterical kids.”

“What we need,” Mark added, “is a definite

suspect or suspects.”

“What I think we need,” insisted Connie,

pretending to talk like a character in a radio thriller,

“is to trap this guy and then call the cops.”

“Now listen!” Kit protested, knowing her sister’s

penchant for adventure. “If you intend to run smack

into any more danger I’m going to Aunt Helen and

Uncle Pete.”

“We won’t do anything silly,” Connie promised.

“We won’t have to go back to the cave or even into

the house. But it would be exciting to see the thing

170

through. Kit, you know it would!” she wheedled.

“Just what do you mean by ‘seeing the thing

through?” Kit wasn’t to be easily cajoled.

“We could set up a watch,” Connie suggested.

“The four of us. I think we should leave Randy out

of it. He’s too young.”

“Agreed on the last point,” said Tom firmly.

“Sooner or later,” Connie went on, “the smuggler

will give himself away. Bumping into Kit may have

given him a scare, but he’ll come back to the cave.

He’s bound to. And when he does, we’ll be there.”

“Oh, no, we won’t!” Kit disagreed. “And,

incidentally, I do think that ‘bump’ is putting it a

little mildly.”

“I mean we’ll be watching,” Connie explained.

“Are you planning to camp out at Eagle Rock all

day and every day?” Kit asked. “I thought this was a

vacation, not a man hunt.” She sounded thoroughly

aggrieved.

“Of course not! That won’t be necessary. All

we’ll have to do is to be on the lookout when the

tide is right, and that only happens twice every

twenty-four hours.”

“Let’s skip the next couple of days,” Tom

proposed, “and do something innocent and obvious.

If our villain suspects we know a little too much

about Eagle Rock, that should throw him off the

track.”

171

“Innocent and obvious,” Connie repeated with a

sigh. “Yes, I suppose that would be a good idea. But

they’ll be the longest two days we’ll ever spend!”

“Fine! The longer the better. And I, for one,

intend to enjoy them,” promised Kit.

The twins swam. They fished from the skiff with

Randy as official line-baiter. They sailed with Tom.

They sailed with Mark. They avoided the cove with

stanch determination. Even Randy began to forget

the lure of Eagle Rock.

This was helped along by the fact that Mark, on

Connie’s suggestion, explained the ghost story. She

wanted to take no chances that her young cousin or

any of his pals would wander back to the abandoned

house alone. So Mark took Randy into his

confidence on the condition that he promise to stay

clear of the place. Randy was proud to be included

in the secret and shook Mark’s hand on the

agreement.

“You can count on me, fella,” he said as though

Mark were a contemporary. “I won’t breathe a

word.”

With Connie, Randy discussed Mark’s

predicament at length. “I always did think Mr.

Eastham was an old meanie,” he told her. “I wish we

could think of a way to raise some money so Mark

could go away and study music in spite of him.

That’s what I wish!”

172

The suggestion gave Connie an idea, but she

mentioned it to no one, not even to Kit. She was just

as anxious as Randy to see Mark get his heart’s

desire. Having heard him play, she no longer

wondered that he didn’t want to go to college. A

conventional education was not for him. He was a

musician to his very finger tips.

Connie realized that Adolph Eastham’s

misanthropic tendencies probably dated from the

time his fiancée had eloped with her violinist. The

violin, of all instruments, would be the one he hated

most. But the fact that she understood his antipathy

didn’t make Connie feel any sympathy for Mark’s

uncle. She even began to turn over in her mind the

thought that he, through some connection with the

Butterworths, might know of the existence of the

cave under Eagle Rock.

Could Adolph Eastham possibly be the smuggler?

Connie rejected the idea immediately upon asking

herself the question. It was possible, of course, but

not probable. She just couldn’t imagine the dour,

tight-lipped man being interested, even nefariously,

in imported perfumes.

Connie was smart enough to realize that in a case

like this it was useless to try to compile a list of

suspects. Any one of a hundred small boats which

sailed in and out of the cove almost daily might have

the criminal aboard. The chances were that the

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smuggler was someone they had never seen. This

wasn’t the kind of mystery in which her powers of

reasoning and deduction would be called into play.

This case simply called for fast footwork. She hoped

they could all manage to be in the right places at the

right time, discover the identity of the smuggler as

he went into the cave, then let the police know in

time to catch him red-handed.

The turn of the tide did not come at a propitious

hour. It was high at six in the morning and six at

night on the first day on which Connie felt it would

be safe to set up a watch, dead low at noon and at

midnight.

A boat could enter the cave for about two hours

before and after low tide, Mark figured. For a

swimmer there would be a longer period of safety.

“We might as well skip the night watch idea,”

Tom said when they discussed it. “The family would

never go along with any kind of a two A.M. deal.”

“That cuts down our chances by a half then,”

Mark brooded.

But Connie was more optimistic. “I don’t think

our smuggler would risk showing a light at night.

The Coast Guard might come and investigate.

Strange as it may seem, I think broad daylight is his

safest time.”

“Then our best bet is to go all out about picnic

lunches for the next few days,” Tom suggested.

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“Mother won’t think that’s a bit strange.”

“What about your clam factory job?” Mark asked.

“I’ll go in at six in the morning and just work a

five-hour stretch for a while,” Tom decided. “Things

have slowed down a bit over there, anyway.”

Finally, everything was arranged. Ostensibly

going off by car on another sight-seeing trip, Connie

and Kit, Mark and Tom deployed to strategic points

near Eagle Rock.

Unwilling to risk the chance of being seen if they

should station themselves anywhere on the

balconies, Kit and Tom decided to wait in the

shrubbery at the point where the footpath from the

beach emerged. Kit kept the car keys, and the car

itself was parked inconspicuously on a side street a

few blocks away.

Connie and Mark worked their way along the

cliff, screened from the beach by overgrown

shrubbery, until they found a flat rock from which

they could see the entire cove without being seen.

To see the very entrance to the cave was impossible,

because it was hidden by a cleft in the rock.

They had divided the picnic lunch before pairing

off, and after two dull and unproductive hours

Connie and Mark began to munch on sandwiches

without much appetite.

“I suppose it would be asking a little too much of

luck to hope that on this very first day—” Connie

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said, then broke off as the sound of a boat’s motor

cut through the noontime lull on the bay.

Mark got to his knees and squinted through the

screen of shrubbery. Connie, looking over his

shoulder, could see a white fishing boat coming

through the channel and heading, apparently,

directly for the cove. Her heart gave a leap of

excitement, but Mark dashed her hopes a moment

later.

“Just the Bo’sun,” he said, settling back and

picking up a peach. “Darn. I hope he doesn’t decide

to anchor in here. That will kill our chances, but

good.”

“Let’s concentrate,” Connie proposed jokingly.

“Anchor somewhere else, anchor somewhere else,

anchor somewhere else. Sometimes it works.”

Mark laughed at her foolishness. “You know, it’s

a curious thing about the Bo’sun,” he said idly as he

bit into his peach. “He takes fishing parties outside

and everything. Lives his whole life on the water,

you might say. But he told me one day he can’t

swim.”

Connie nodded. “Uncle Pete says lots of sailors

can’t swim. I was surprised at that, too.”

The hum of the boat’s motor was getting louder.

Mark got to his knees again for a better view. “I’m

afraid your concentrating didn’t do much good,” he

said. “Here the old buzzard comes.”

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“Don’t let him see you,” Connie warned. “You

know what he said about reporting us to the police.”

She sat for a while, finishing her lunch in silence,

and reflecting that it was strange that Mr. Meredith

took their trespassing so seriously. She had always

thought of men who lived on the water as easygoing,

not apt to be overconcerned with other people’s

affairs.

Then suddenly her eyes widened, and she put her

sandwich aside without finishing it. Crawling past

Mark to the peephole in the shrubbery, she peered

down at the cove.

“Has he anchored yet?” Mark asked. “If he does

he’s good for the rest of the day. We might as well

give up and go home.”

“He’s dropping his anchor now,” Connie

answered. “But wait a while. There’s no mad rush. i

want to see something.”

Mark picked up another peach and settled back.

“Did I ever mention that you’re certainly the

persistent type?”

“Sh!” Connie cautioned. She was watching the

white boat closely. Mr. Meredith was standing at the

bow, looking out over the bay with field glasses.

After a few minutes he turned and scanned the

shores of the cove, then went below.

“I’m apt to go to sleep,” Mark grumbled. “What

are we waiting for?”

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Connie wasn’t quite ready to tell him. “Sh!” she

cautioned again.

The Bo’sun was back on deck now, but on the far

side of the cabin, so that he was only partially

visible. Then Connie saw the towline to the skiff

begin to shorten as the smaller boat was pulled

alongside. For several minutes the skiff was out of

sight on the port-side of the fishing boat. Then

Connie could hear the sound of oars being fitted into

the oarlocks, and the Bo’sun appeared, rowing

leisurely across the still water of the cove.

Connie grabbed Mark’s arm, shaking him out of a

doze. “Come here and watch!”

“Don’t think anybody can get past the Bo’sun,

because they can’t. He’s got eagle eyes.”

Connie put a finger to her lips. “Just look.”

The little skiff was riding low in the water. Two

heavy planks jutted over the stern seat and a clam

basket, apparently filled, rode in the bow. When he

was almost directly under Connie and Mark’s hiding

place, Mr. Meredith rested on his oars for a moment,

and looked back over the cove at the quiet bay.

Aside from one or two distant sails, there was no

one in sight.

The Bo’sun, apparently satisfied, put his oars in

the water again and rowed on around the

outcropping of rock. Mark’s eyes met Connie’s in

amused disbelief. “Don’t tell me you think—”

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“Wait!” Connie whispered. “Wait and see if he

appears again. He should be back in sight within a

minute or two if he hasn’t gone into the cave.”

A bee droned in the honeysuckle above their

heads. A butterfly fluttered in the sunshine and a

gull, shrieking raucously, dropped like a stone to

capture a fish. But the skiff did not drift back into

sight.

The amusement in Mark’s eyes changed to

questioning wonder, then to astonishment. “Gosh!”

he said. “Well, by gosh!”

“There’s nowhere else he could have gone,”

Connie murmured as though to verify her own

certainty.

“But the Bo’sun of all people! Why he plays

poker with the better part of the police force. He’s in

solid. He’s an established character, if you know

what I mean.”

“I know,” Connie replied. “He’s probably the last

person they’d suspect. But seeing is believing. And

now if you’re convinced we’d better not waste any

time.”

Mark was almost convinced but not quite. He

insisted on dropping down to the beach so that he

could wade out into the water and see around the

rock to the very entrance of the cave. Quiet as a cat

he made his foray, then nodded up at Connie, who

still hid behind the hedge of tangled vines. “You

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stay there. I’ll get Kit and Tom to go for the cops,”

he called softly from directly beneath her. “Just keep

an eye on things until I get back.”

In another minute he had disappeared into the

seemingly impenetrable thicket concealing the path

to the house. Connie, tense with excitement, waited

anxiously. How long would it take to reach Tom and

Kit and tell them the story? Five minutes? Then how

long, in turn, would it take them to reach the car and

drive into Newport to the police station? Traffic was

bound to be heavy at this time of day in the crowded

shopping district. She began to wish they had made

arrangements to phone rather than to report their

discovery in person. But would the police have

credited such a wild story telephoned in by

strangers? Either way there was a definite risk.

Half an hour to three-quarters, Connie decided,

would probably be the best time Kit and Tom could

make to Newport and back, even counting on the

fact that their return would be by police car. She sat

hunched up on the rock, her arms hugging her knees.

Suppose Mr. Meredith finished with his business in

the cave before their return?

There were so many slips they hadn’t considered,

so many threads left untied. For instance, suppose

Kit and Tom failed to have the beach covered while

they led their police escort through the house? Mr.

Meredith would have plenty of time to make a

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getaway through the tunnel after he heard the door

opening at the head of the stairs.

Connie was so busy with her racing thoughts that

for several minutes she wasn’t conscious of a

distant, rhythmic sound like the steady drop of

water. Only it wasn’t water; it was somebody

hammering! And suddenly she realized what the

planks in the skiff were for. Mr. Meredith wasn’t

taking any further chances of being disturbed in his

hide-out. His encounter With Kit had been enough!

He was barring the entrance from the kitchen

cupboard; he was nailing up the door!

Too late to warn Tom and Kit, Connie realized

what would happen. The police would find the

entrance from the house blocked, and the Bo’sun

would have one more opportunity to make good his

escape.

Connie bit her lip impatiently. If there were only

something she could do, some way in which she

could guarantee the success of the Bo’sun’s capture.

Inactivity irked her. She felt as though she were

sitting with folded hands while a house burned down

around her. If there were only something! She

clenched her fist and pounded her knuckles on the

rock.

If he once got back to his boat, Meredith had the

upper hand. It would be easy enough to dump

overboard any incriminating bottles of perfume,

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easy enough to put up a story that would convince

his friends, the police, that the accusations of these

young people were absurd.

Then a daring idea struck Connie with all the

force of a bombshell. The skiff! If she could get the

skiff out of the cave the Bo’sun would be really

trapped. Because Mark had told her, quite

unintentionally, an all-important fact. Mr. Meredith

couldn’t swim.

Action was almost as quick as thought. Connie

wriggled through the sheltering honeysuckle tangle

and swung by its strands to the beach. She pulled off

her sneakers and rolled up the legs of her blue jeans.

An instant later she was in the water, striking out

around the jutting rock toward the tunnel which led

to the cave.

As she swam she considered the risk she was

running, and the steady pounding noise fell like

music on her ears. As long as that pounding kept up

she was comparatively safe, because Mr. Meredith

would still be working at the top of the stairs, but the

minute it stopped she was in deadly danger. And not

even Mark would guess where she had gone!

The jeans were heavy with water, more

cumbersome than shorts. But the tide was in

Connie’s favor. It carried her along quickly, almost

sweeping her into the tunnel entrance. Within a few

minutes she was swimming along the narrow

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passageway, blinking to try to see in the sudden

dark.

Pound, pound, pound. Pause. Pound, pound.

There was the gray outline of the boat, pulled up

on the sloping stone floor of the cave, the oars inside

it. But Connie couldn’t risk making any noise at all.

The scraping of an oar used as a pole or the creak of

an oarlock would be her undoing. She reached for

the towrope and knotted it around her waist, waded

back into the water with her booty gliding silently

along behind her, and started to swim against the

current toward the tunnel’s mouth.

Pound. Pound.

Suddenly, before she had gone five yards, the

hammering stopped. She could hear no sound of

footsteps, but then, she realized in panic, the Bo’sun

would be wearing sneakers like any other boatman.

He would return to the cave completely

unannounced.

The boat was heavy. It dragged. And the

incoming tide was no help now, but a hindrance,

fighting her efforts to swim against it, holding her

back.

Fear gave her new strength. She began to make

some headway. But the blood pounded in her ears

and she wondered, if this time, she were destined to

fail?

Then behind her came a muffled shout of rage

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which echoed and re-echoed against the curving

walls of the tunnel. Connie could hear the splash of

water as the Bo’sun waded angrily toward his

disappearing boat.

He was a strong, quick man. If he made it—!

Connie turned on her back, kicking with all her

might, and gave a mighty tug on the rope.

The skiff came directly at her, and she ducked,

letting the boat pass completely over her head. Then,

as she came up, for one instant of pure terror she

saw the Bo’sun’s vindictive face.

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CHAPTER 16

“All’s Well—”

The morning paper lay on the breakfast table beside

Uncle Pete’s place. Connie was the first one down,

but Mr. Ridgeway followed close on her heels. He

wasn’t surprised to see his niece scanning the

headlines. When she looked up at him her face was

radiant.

“You did it!” she cried. “Oh, you are a darling!

Really you are.” Running around the table, she flung

herself ecstatically into his arms.

Randy came into the room a little truculently. In

the hairbreadth happenings of yesterday, he had had

no share. He looked at the paper spread out on the

table with assumed disinterest, then stopped short

and read a headline aloud.

NEWPORT YOUTH

SEIZES SMUGGLER

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MARK EASTHAM, VIOLINIST,

CAPTURES PERFUME

RACKETEER

“Hey! What’s the idea? When Connie was the

one—?”

Connie put a finger to her lips. “Sh! We want

Mark to get the credit, don’t we, Uncle Pete?”

Mr. Ridgeway smiled affectionately at his pretty

niece and nodded. “She talked me into it, fellow.”

Connie began to read the newspaper story aloud

as Kit and Tom, followed by Aunt Helen bearing a

steaming pot of coffee, took their places at the table.

“ ‘Trapped in an underground cave beneath the

foundations of the abandoned Butterworth mansion by

young Mark Eastham and a group of friends, George

Taylor Meredith, international smuggler, was

apprehended by police yesterday afternoon in one of the

most thrilling captures in local history.

“ ‘Cut off by his own hand from any means of egress,

unable to swim to safety through a tunnel to the bay,

Meredith, who has posed for a number o£ years as a

charter boatman and thus sailed these waters unmolested,

was caught red-handed with thousands of dollars worth

of imported perfume in his possession.

“ ‘The valuable perfume, contained in ordinary quart

cider jugs concealed in a clam basket, was repackaged in

this hideaway in unlabeled ounce and two-ounce

medicine bottles Meredith admitted under police

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questioning. He is believed to have carried on a trade

through fences whose names are as yet unknown,

grossing half a million dollars annually.’ ”

“But there’s not a word about how you risked

your life going in to get the boat,” Kit cried. “After

all, Connie, if it hadn’t been for you he might have

made a complete getaway!”

But Connie just smiled mysteriously. “Wait!

There’s a method in our madness, isn’t there, Uncle

Pete?”

The newspaperman nodded over the rim of his

coffee cup and a conspiratorial grin curled the

corners of his mouth.

“ ‘Meredith, who bears one of the oldest names in the

Narragansett Bay area, might have gone undetected for

years had it not been for the smart detective work of

Mark Eastham, accompanied by 19-year-old Thomas

Ridgeway and his cousins, the Misses Constance and

Catherine Blair of Meadowbrook, Pennsylvania.

“ ‘Mr. Eastham, one of the most talented of our

younger musicians, will receive the reward offered for

information leading to the capture of a member of the

suspected smuggling combine. . . .’ ”

“But he didn’t even go for the cops!” Randy cried

indignantly, able to contain himself no longer. “Kit

and Tom were the ones.”

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“Sh!” his father admonished. “Wait until she has

finished.”

Connie, bright-eyed, read on:

“ ‘The reward consists of one thousand dollars in

cash, and an additional sum is being presented to the

young man by the publishers of this newspaper.’ ”

The older people took this news in silence, but

Randy muttered, “Hey!”

Connie looked across at her uncle and sighed in

delight. “It’s even better than we’d hoped!” Then

she read on:

“ ‘Mr. Eastham, questioned by reporters on what use

he expects to make of the money, at first seemed too

stunned to talk. Modestly he exclaimed, “But it shouldn’t

be mine! It shouldn’t be mine at all.”

“ ‘Later, pressed for an answer, he said that he would

use the reward for further music study, and that he is

planning to go to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia this

fall.’ ”

Connie cried, “Wonderful! That’s just what we

hoped, isn’t it, Uncle Pete?”

Her uncle nodded. “But you’d better finish the

story,” he advised.

Connie turned back to the final sentences.

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“ ‘His refusal to accept the additional prize money

offered by the publishers of this newspaper, was,

however, point-blank. “That must go to my friends,” he

insisted. “They earned it, far more than I.” ’ ”

“Oh, but—!” Connie looked up to see Mark

himself standing in the dining-room doorway. He

had stood listening quietly, but now he crossed the

room in three long strides and caught Connie’s

hands.

“What do you think I am?” he asked. “A

complete and utter heel? I would never have

accepted the reward if it hadn’t been for Mr.

Ridgeway’s insistence. He said you wanted it that

way, because of the music. I can’t thank you—each

of you—enough!” He turned to the others gathered

around the table. “It’s going to mean everything to

me!”

“But we wanted you to have it all!” Connie cried.

“Two thousand dollars would see you through until

you come into the Butterworth legacy. We don’t

need it, Mark, the way you do. Please!”

But Mark, smiling at her with tenderness, shook

his head. “Can you imagine how it makes me feel,

as it is, to take all the credit in print, when you

should have had the major share?” he asked. “When

I saw the way the newspaper story was slanted I was

so shocked I told Uncle Adolph what really

happened—and he agrees with me!” he said in a

189

tone of naive surprise.

“He even broke down and agreed to lend me any

additional money I need before I come into the

legacy,” Mark went on, still speaking in

considerable astonishment. “I guess the article in the

paper sort of made him realize I was really serious

about the violin—and that maybe I was some good

at it, too.”

“Well, hurrah!” Connie said softly.

“So the other thousand dollars is to be divided

equally among the four of you.” Mark looked

around the table at Connie and Kit and Tom and

finally at Randy. His voice broke.

Randy squeaked in amazement. “What did I do?”

Laughter followed the tension, and Connie,

wanting to give Mark a minute to recover his

equilibrium, answered the question.

“You got us interested in Eagle Rock in the first

place, Randy. You and your ghost!”

“You mean I get two hundred and fifty dollars for

that?” The boy was incredulous. “You mean it will

be all mine? Why, that’s enough to buy a boat of my

own!”

Connie looked at Mark. “If you’re sure that’s the

way you want it—?” She still hesitated.

“It’s the only way it can be,” Mark said quietly.

“Now I only feel like half a heel.”

Connie looked around at the friendly, smiling

190

faces. “We should really split it even more ways,”

she proposed, thinking aloud. “Kit got bopped on

the head. That was her contribution, and a painful

one it was, too. Tom went for the police, because he

knew the way. Aunt Helen sustained us with

wonderful picnic lunches. And Uncle Pete handled

the newspaper story so that Mark got the credit and

the reward—to say nothing of softening up Uncle

Adolph!” she added with a grin.

“Aren’t you forgetting the most important thing

of all?” Mark asked. “You swam into the cave and

captured the boat and almost got drowned for your

pains. You’re the real heroine of this detective

story!”

But Connie just laughed and shook her head.

“Pooh!” she murmured. “I don’t drown easily. Like

Mr. Moto, I’ll bet I have nine lives!”

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