Bobs, a Girl Detective Part 16

Roberta thought a moment, then looked up brightly. "I believe I do. At least I know a Hungarian. His name is Mr. Hardinian and he is doing social welfare work. He speaks perfect English, however, and may have been born in this country. Suppose we go over to his clubhouse and interview him."

Then, as she rose, she added: "You will like Mr. Hardinian. He has such beautiful eyes."

Ralph laughed as he also arose. "Is that a girl's reason for liking a man?" he inquired. Then he added, "Would I were a Hungarian that I might have interesting eyes. As it is, mine are the plain, unromantic American variety."

Roberta smiled at her new friend, but what she said showed that her thought was far from the subject: "Before we go, I want to be sure that my sister, Gwen, is comfortable."

Gwendolyn was sleeping so quietly that Roberta believed she would not awaken before Lena May's return, and so, beckoning the lad to follow, she left the house, closing the door softly. Ralph turned and looked back at the upper windows of the rooms that were not occupied, as he inquired: "Do you have a hunch that the old mansion holds the clue we are seeking?"

Roberta's reply was: "Only the ghost of Marilyn knows."

When the two partner-detectives were in the small, luxurious car, and going very slowly, because of the congested traffic down First Avenue, Ralph said: "Tell me a little about your sisters and yourself that I may feel better acquainted." And so, briefly, Roberta told the story of their coming to the East Side to live.

"I say, Miss Vandergrift, that certainly was hard luck, losing the fine old place that your family had supposed was its own for so many generations." Then the lad added with sincere admiration: "You girls certainly are trumps! I'm mighty glad I met you, and I hope you'll be glad, too, some day."

"Why, Mr. Caldwaller-Cory, I'm glad right this very moment," Roberta a.s.sured him in so impersonal a manner that the lad did not feel greatly flattered. Indeed, he was rather pleased that this was so. Being the son of a famous judge, possessed of good looks, charming manners and all the money he wished to spend, Ralph had been greatly sought after by the fond mothers of the girls in his set, if not by the maidens themselves, and it seemed rather an interesting change to meet a girl whose interest in him was not personal.

After a silent moment in which the lad's entire attention had been centered on extricating his small auto from a crush of trucks, vegetable-laden push-carts and foreign pedestrians, he turned and smiled at his companion. "Let's turn over to Central Park now," he suggested.

"It's a little round about, I'll agree, but it will be pleasanter riding."

It was decidedly out of their way, but a glance at her wrist watch a.s.sured Roberta that Lena May would have returned to be with Gwen by that time, and so she was in no especial hurry.

How beautiful the park seemed after the thronged noisy East Side with its mingled odors from tobacco, fish markets, and general squalor.

"There, now we can talk," Ralph said as he drove slowly along one of the winding avenues under a canopy formed by wide-spreading trees. "What shall it be about?"

"You," Roberta replied. "Tell me about yourself."

"There isn't much to tell," the lad began. "My brother Desmond and I grew up in a happy home. During the winter months we attended a boys' school up the Hudson, and each summer vacation we traveled with our parents. We have been about everywhere, I do believe. Desmond and I were all in all to each other. We were twins. Perhaps that was why we seemed to love each other even more than brothers usually do. I did not feel the need of any other boy companion, and when at last we entered college we were permitted to be roommates. In our Soph.o.m.ore year, Desmond died, and I didn't much care what happened after that. It seemed as though I never could room with another chap; but at last the dormitories were so crowded that I had to take a fellow in. That was two years ago, and today d.i.c.k De Laney is as close to me as Desmond was, almost, not quite, of course. No one will ever be that. But, I tell you, Miss Vandergrift, d.i.c.k is a fine chap, clear through to the core. I'd bank on d.i.c.k's doing the honorable thing, come what might. I'm a year older than he is, and he won't finish until June, then he's coming on here to little old New York and spend a month with me. I say, Miss Vandergrift, I'd like to have you meet him."

Roberta smiled. "I've been waiting for you to come to a period that I might tell you that d.i.c.k De Laney and I were playmates when we wore pinafores. You see, they were our next-door neighbors." Bobs said this in so matter-of-fact a tone that Ralph did not think for one moment that this could be the girl his pal had once told him that he loved and hoped to win.

If only Ralph had realized this, much so might have been saved for one of them.

CHAPTER XXIII.

PARTNER-DETECTIVES

It was five-thirty when the partner-detectives left the quiet park, where long shadows were lying on the gra.s.s and where birds were calling softly from one rustling tree to another.

"It seems like a different world, doesn't it?" Bobs said, as she smiled in her friendliest way at the lad at the wheel. She had felt a real tenderness for her companion since he had told her about Desmond, and she was glad that an old friend of hers had been a comfort to him.

"It does, indeed," he declared with a last glance back at the park. "I like trees better than I do many people. We have some wonderful old elms around our summer home in the Orange Hills. When my mother returns I shall ask her to invite you four girls to one of her week-ends, or to one that she will plan just for me, after d.i.c.k comes."

Then, as they were again on the thronged East Side, the lad said:

"Seventy-sixth Street, beyond Second, you said, didn't you?"

"Yes. There is the Boys' Club House just ahead," Roberta exclaimed. Then as they drew up at the curb, she added: "Good! The door is open and so Mr. Hardinian probably is here."

The young man whom they sought was still there, and as they entered the low wooden temporary structure which covered a vacant lot between two rickety old tenements, they saw him smiling down at a group of excited newsies, who were evidently relating to him some occurrence of their day.

He at once recognized Roberta and made his way toward her, while the boys to whom he had spoken a few words of dismissal departed through a side door, leaving the big room empty.

Bobs held out her hand as she said: "Mr. Hardinian, this is my friend, Mr. Caldwaller-Cory, and we have come, I do believe, on a wild goose chase."

Ralph at once liked the young man with the lithe, wiry build and the dark face that was so wonderfully expressive.

He looked to be about twenty-four years of age, although he might have been even a year or two older. An amused smile accompanied his question: "Miss Vandergrift, am I the wild goose?"

The girl laughed. "That wasn't a very graceful way of stating our errand," she said, "so I will begin again. The truth of the matter is that Mr. Cory and I are amateur detectives."

Again Mr. Hardinian smiled, and, with a swinging gesture that seemed to include the entire place, he said: "Search where you will, but I doubt if you will detect here a hidden wild goose." Then, more seriously, he added: "Come, let us be seated in the library corner, for I am sure that your visit has some real purpose."

Mr. Hardinian listened to the story of the Pensinger mystery, which, as little was really known about it, took but a brief moment to tell. At its conclusion he said: "Did you think. Miss Vandergrift, that I might know something about all this? I truly do not. Although I was born in Hungary, while I was still an infant my parents went to England, where I was educated, and only last year the need of my own people brought me here where so many of them come, believing that they are to find freedom and fortune. But how soon they are disillusioned, for they find poverty, suffering and conditions to which they are unused and with which they know not how to cope. Many of the older ones lose out and their children are left waifs all alone in this great city. I found when I reached here that they needed me most, the homeless boys who, many of them, slept huddled over some grating through which heat came, or in hallways crowded together for warmth, until they were told to move on. And so the first thing that I did was to rent this vacant lot and build a temporary wooden structure. Now with these walls lined with bunks, as you see, I can make many of the boys fairly comfortable at night."

"I say, Mr. Hardinian," Ralph exclaimed, "this is a splendid work that you are doing! I'm coming over some night soon, if I may. I want to see the place in full swing."

"Come whenever you wish," was the reply. And then, as Roberta had risen, the young men did also.

The girl smiled as she said: "Honestly, Mr. Hardinian, I knew in my bones that you would not be able to help us solve the mystery, but you were the only Hungarian with whom I had even the slightest speaking acquaintance, and so we thought that we would tell you the story and, if you ever hear anything that might be a clue, let us know, won't you?"

"Indeed I will, and gladly. Good-bye! Come over Sunday afternoon at four, if you have no other plans. We have a little service then and the boys conduct it entirely."

When they were again in the small car, Ralph was enthusiastic. "I like that chap!" he exclaimed. "I wish detectives could plan to have things turn out the way an author can. If I had the say of it, I'd make Mr.

Hardinian into a descendant of Marilyn Pensinger and then he could inherit all of that fortune and use it for his homeless waifs."

It was after six when the small car stopped in front of the Pensinger mansion, and Ralph declared that since he had a date with his dad, he could not stop to meet the other Vandergrift girls, as he greatly desired.

That night, when Ralph returned from an evening affair which he had attended with his father, he did not retire at once. Instead, he seated himself at his desk and for half an hour his pen scratched rapidly over a large sheet of white paper. He was writing a letter to d.i.c.k De Laney, his close-as-a-brother friend, telling him that at last the only girl in the world had appeared in his life.

"I always told you, old pal, that I'd know the girl who was meant for me the minute that I met her. But I do believe that she is going to be hard to win."

CHAPTER XXIV.

ROMANCE BUDDING

Two weeks have pa.s.sed since the evening upon which Bobs and her new friend, Ralph Caldwaller-Cory, drove together in Central Park and told each other briefly the story of their lives. It does not take interested young people long to become acquainted and these two had many opportunities to be together, for were they not solving the Pensinger mystery, and was it not of paramount importance that the poor defrauded heir of all those idle millions should be found and made happy with his rightful possessions? Of course no other motive prompted Ralph, the rising young lawyer, to seek the companionship of his detective-partner, not only daily but often, in the morning, afternoon and evening.

They had sought clues everywhere in the mansion, but the great old rooms had failed to reveal aught that was concealed. Too, they had long drives in the little red car that its owner called "The Whizz," and these frequently took them far away from the thronged East Side along country roads where, quite undisturbed, they could talk over possible clues and plan ways to follow them.

And all this time Roberta really thought that Ralph's interest in her was impersonal, for the lad dreaded revealing his true feeling until she showed some even remote sign of being interested in him.