The Secret at the Seashore Page 4

  “We did!” Dorothy’s blue eyes sparkled with glee. “Dinah prepared a picnic for us.”

  “How wonderful!” Nan exclaimed.

  Dorothy went for a box she had hidden in the cart. “If you boys will build a fire, we can toast some marshmallows for dessert,” she said.

  While Bert, Hal, and Freddie made a little circle of stones with piled driftwood inside, the girls found long sticks to use for toasting forks. Then, when the sandwiches had been eaten, the children gathered around the fire.

  “Mmm, this is dreamy!” Nan murmured later, popping a crispy-brown marshmallow into her mouth.

  Freddie and Flossie had bad luck. Each dropped four marshmallows off the sticks before eating them. Some fell into the fire, the others onto the sand.

  “They’re meanies,” declared Flossie.

  Finally the twins learned to hold the sticks level until they could put the marshmallows into their mouths. In no time at all the package was gone.

  “Let’s hunt for clams now,” Dorothy proposed. Following her instructions, the children walked along slowly near the water. Each time they spotted an air hole they quickly scooped up the wet sand around it. If there was a clam or a mussel in the handful they would drop it into the pail which Dorothy had brought. Soon the bucket was almost full.

  “Maybe Dinah will make us some chowder for supper,” Nan suggested. “I love chowder.”

  “I’m going to find some shells,” Freddie announced. “Do you want to help me, Flossie?”

  The small twins walked along the beach, stooping now and then to pick up a particularly pretty shell. The pockets of their shorts were soon chock-full.

  “If I can find enough of these little horns, I’m going to make a necklace,” Flossie said holding up a tiny purplish shell which ended in a sharp point

  She skipped along for a few minutes. Then she called out, “I’ve found an oyster!”

  Hal ran over to her. “You’re lucky. There aren’t many oysters around here. Would you like me to open it for you?”

  “Yes, please, I want to see the inside.” Flossie handed the oyster to Hal, who drew a penknife from his pocket. The mollusk was hard to open. Several times Hal’s knife slipped off the edge. But finally he got the point between the two lips and pried open the shelL

  Flossie took the oyster and peered at it. Then she exclaimed, “Look, there’s a little bead in it!”

  “Let me see!” Nan took the oyster from her sister and examined it. A small white spot lay in the middle of the gray muscle.

  “Flossie,” Nan said, “you’ve found a pearl!”

  All the children gathered around to admire Flossie’s find. Then they began to look for more oysters. But no one had any luck, and finally they gave up.

  “Let’s look for driftwood to take home,” Hal proposed.

  He and Bert went up the beach. “I see a net!” Bert called presently, running toward a pile of wood and rocks.

  With Hal’s help he disentangled the large piece of seine which had evidently drifted in from the fishing grounds offshore.

  “That’s a good net,” Hal said as he examined it. “Why don’t you hang it in your room at home? I found one last summer and have it in my room. It looks great.”

  “Maybe I will,” Bert agreed with enthusiasm. “Every time I look at it, I’ll think of Ocean Cliff.”

  The boys folded up the net as well as they could, gathered pieces of driftwood, and carried them over to the cart. Freddie and Flossie were already there storing their collection of shells on the floor under the seats.

  “How about going swimming?” Bert said to his little brother and sister. They agreed at once. Hurriedly pulling off their sandals, they ran down to the water’s edge.

  Nan stood watching intently something she had seen in the water.

  “What are you looking at?” Bert asked her.

  “I’m watching that brown bottle out there,” his twin replied. “It’s been drifting in closer to shore all the while I’ve been standing here.”

  As she spoke the bottle rolled up onto the sand on the crest of a little wave. Nan stooped and picked it up.

  “Why, there’s a paper inside!” she cried out excitedly.

  CHAPTER VII

  MESSAGE FROM THE SEA

  “A PAPER!” Bert exclaimed. “Maybe it’s a secret message! Let’s open the bottle!”

  The other children crowded around. Hal took the bottle and turned it in his hands. “The cork is sealed in,” he said. “Shall we break the glass?”

  “Oh, no!” Nan objected. “Let’s take the bottle back and ask Dad or Uncle William to open it.”

  “Here they come now,” Flossie called out. In a few minutes the two fathers arrived. “We thought we’d better see what you children were doing,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “You’ve been away a good many hours.”

  “Did you catch any fish?” Mr. Minturn asked with a grin. “Say, what’s that you’re holding in your hand, Hal?”

  “Nan found a secret bottle!” Flossie cried breathlessly. “Will you open it for us?”

  Uncle William smiled and put out his hand. “Maybe you’ve found one of the bottles that the Hydrographic Office puts into the ocean to map the tides.”

  He looked the bottle over carefully. “I don’t think so, though,” he said. “This one hasn’t been sealed with regular wax. It looks more like chewing gum!”

  “Please open it, Dad!” Dorothy pleaded impatiently.

  Mr. Minturn pulled a penknife from his pocket and began to dig around the edge of the cork. Little pieces of the sealing material dropped to the sand. Finally he put the point of his knife alongside the cork and began to pry it up.

  The children watched, breathless with suspense. “It’s coming!” Flossie cried as the cork began to move upward.

  In another minute the stopper was free. Uncle William handed the bottle to Nan. “There you are!” he said with a smile.

  “Hurry, Nan!” Freddie urged. “What does the paper say?”

  Nan tilted the bottle and tried to shake the paper out. It would not budge. She stuck her slender finger inside and worked a few seconds until she could pull out the roll of white paper. Quickly she opened it.

  “Why, the heading is International Airplane Construction Company!” she said in astonishment.

  “Read what it says, Nan!” Bert begged.

  Carefully Nan read:

  Plane crashed. Got in raft but radio lost. Estimate longitude at 30°, latitude 40°. Anyone finding this please contact IAC.

  “IAC?” Bert spoke up. “I’ll bet that’s International Airplane Construction—the company Captain Weller worked for! What name is signed to it?” Bert asked excitedly.

  Nan passed the paper to him. “I can’t make it out. The initials look like P. J., but the last name is blurred.”

  “I guess some water got in the bottle,” Bert observed. “I can’t read the last name either. Wait a minute—this note could be from Cindy’s father. His first name begins with P—Peter!”

  “I’d suggest you call the factory right away,” Mr. Bobbsey advised.

  The children piled into the cart and hurried home. They clustered around the phone as Nan put in the call. After a few minutes she reached the airplane factory manager and read the note to him.

  There followed a short conversation, then Nan put down the receiver. She looked disappointed.

  “What did he say?” Dorothy asked. “Does he think Captain Weller wrote the note?”

  Nan sighed. “He didn’t say. The man was very nice and thanked me for calling. But he told me they have lots of tricks like this played on them. He did say they’d investigate this bottle message thoroughly and let us know.”

  Nan repeated this to her father and Uncle William when they arrived. Then Bert asked, “What did you mean when you said the Hydrographic Office puts bottles into the ocean, Uncle William?”

  Mr. Minturn explained that the Hydrographic Office of the Navy was interested in studying ocean currents and tid
e shifts. “They get officers of ships to drop bottles overboard during their voyages to all parts of the world. In these bottles are papers giving the name of the vessel and the date and position.

  “Then, when a bottle is washed up on the shore, whoever finds it is asked to send the paper to the Hydrographic Office telling where and when it was found. In this way the office can figure out what tide must have carried the bottle to that spot.”

  “That’s sure interesting!” Bert exclaimed. “Are the bottles all alike?”

  “They’re usually brown because the sun would burn the paper through clear glass. Also the message is written in pencil because ink is apt to dampen and spread.”

  “That’s the reason we couldn’t read the signature in the note I found!” Nan exclaimed. “It wasn’t written with a pencil!”

  Uncle William nodded approvingly. “That’s right, Nan. And also that chewing gum didn’t keep out the moisture so well as regular sealing wax would have!”

  “I sure hope the note wasn’t a trick,” Bert said, “and that the IAC will find that pilot! But we’d better not mention any of this yet to Cindy and Mrs. Weller,” he added, “until we know for sure that the one who wrote the note is Daddy Pete.”

  “That’s right,” Nan agreed. “We don’t want to give them false hopes.”

  At that moment a newsboy brought the evening paper and handed it to Mr. Bobbsey. The twins’ father glanced idly through it. Then all at once he exclaimed, “They haven’t caught that airline thief after all! The man the police arrested in that distant town wasn’t Albert Garry!”

  Bert jumped up. “I’m going to call Officer Weaver and find out what happened,” he declared.

  He ran into the house. In a few minutes he was talking to the genial policeman. “The paper‘s right,” the officer acknowledged. “That fellow they caught wasn’t Garry although he did look like him. Garry must still be hiding in this area. Our men are watching all the roads.”

  “Officer Weaver,” Bert said, “was the stolen money marked in any way? Could it be identified ?”

  There was silence at the other end of the line for a minute. Then the policeman replied, “It wasn’t marked, but the airline man tells me most of it was in one-hundred-dollar bills.”

  “Wow!” said Bert. “That’s quite a clue!” He thanked the officer and hung up.

  When Bert told the other children what he had learned, Freddie became excited. “Let’s go look for the money,” he suggested. But at that moment Aunt Emily called them all to supper.

  There was no time to follow up the new clue that evening, and at breakfast the next morning Aunt Emily said, “I’d like you children to do something for me.”

  “We’d love to,” Nan replied. “What is it?”

  “Another guest is arriving on the morning train,” Mrs. Minturn said. “Will you drive the cart to the station?”

  “Who’s coming?” Dorothy asked eagerly.

  Her mother shook her head, with a smile. “I’m not going to tell you. It’s a surprise!”

  When it was time to leave, Dorothy and Bert harnessed Doodle and Dandy to the little cart, and the five children started out.

  “Who do you s‘pose is coming?” Flossie wondered.

  “I don’t know,” Dorothy admitted. “But it must be someone we like. Mother always has nice surprises!”

  She drove the cart into the station lot and tied the reins of the two burros to a parking meter.

  “Maybe we should put in two nickels since we have two motors!” Bert suggested with a grin as he put a coin in the meter.

  “Here comes the train!” Freddie cried and ran toward the station.

  The other children followed and watched eagerly as the train came to a halt and the passengers began to get off.

  Suddenly Bert cried, “It’s Harry!”

  Harry Bobbsey grinned and waved as he swung down from the train steps. All the twins greeted him warmly and Dorothy exclaimed, “It’s great to see you again, Harry! Mother wouldn’t tell us who was coming!”

  “She telephoned my mother yesterday and invited me,” Harry explained. “Of course I came right away! Things have been sort of slow on the farm since the Lakeport Bobbseys left!”

  When they reached the Minturn house, the children found Hal Bingham waiting for them. “Mrs. Minturn told me Harry was arriving,” he said, “so I came over to meet him.”

  Aunt Emily invited Hal to lunch. While eating, the twins and Dorothy told Harry about their adventures at Lakeside and the children’s attempts to capture the airline thief.

  “It didn’t take you long to find another mystery,” Harry said. “Maybe I can help you solve this one, too.”

  “You sure can!” Bert agreed. “Let’s see if we can trace those hundred-dollar bills.”

  It was decided that the young detectives would walk into the shopping center and ask questions of various shopkeepers. “There can’t be too many big bills like that around,” Bert reasoned.

  “I think it would be a good idea if Freddie and Flossie stayed here,” Mrs. Bobbsey remarked.

  Freddie looked disappointed for a moment. Then Flossie said, “We can build a fairy castle in the sand, Freddie. It’ll be fun!”

  “Okay,” the little boy agreed reluctantly.

  The first place the older children went to was a drugstore. When Bert asked the proprietor if anyone had changed a hundred-dollar bill there recently, the man grinned. “I haven’t seen a bill like that for so long I wouldn’t know what it looks like!”

  Next, the children went into the hardware store next door. The manager there also said he had not taken in any such large bills. It was the same story in several more shops.

  “We don’t seem to be having much luck,” Nan said in discouragement. “Maybe Albert Garry hasn’t tried to spend any of the money yet.”

  “You’re probably right,” Bert replied. “If we don’t get a clue pretty soon, let’s give it up.”

  The next store where they inquired was a small grocery. There was only one man in sight, and he was busy unloading some cartons and putting cans on a shelf.

  “Be with you in just a minute!” he called. He took the empty carton to the back and then approached the children. “What can I do for you?” he asked pleasantly.

  Bert asked his question about the hundred-dollar bill. “Why, yes,” the grocer said. “A man with one was just in here. He said he didn’t have any smaller bills, and when I couldn’t give him change for the hundred dollars, he walked out.”

  “What did the man look like?” Dorothy asked eagerly.

  “Well—” the grocer thought a moment—“he was sort of short and had light hair.” The man glanced out the window. He pointed toward the street and exclaimed, “There he is now!”

  CHAPTER VIII

  PONY AND BURRO RACE

  “WHERE’S the man with the hundred-dollar bill?” Nan asked excitedly, looking out the store window.

  “That blond fellow going past the record shop,” answered the grocer.

  The children thanked him and ran from the store. Just as they reached the sidewalk, four young girls came along.

  “Hi, Dorothy!”

  “Hi, Hall Where are you going so fast?”

  “Can’t you speak to your friends?”

  The laughing youngsters forced Dorothy and Hal to stop. “Are all of you going to enter the Water Carnival contest at Lakeside Amusement Park?” one of the girls asked.

  “Yes, we plan to,” Dorothy answered, intending to dash on. But her friends blocked the way.

  Quickly she introduced the Bobbseys, then said. “We’re in a terrible hurry. It’s an important errand.”

  Dorothy’s friends said good-by. “We’ll see you all at Lakeside on Sunday!” they called as the others ran down the street.

  “Oh dear!” Dorothy cried, not seeing the blond suspect. “I’m afraid we’ve lost that man!”

  “I was watching him,” said Nan. “He went in that white building at the end of the block.
”

  “That’s the library,” Dorothy told her.

  “Maybe he’s going to hide his loot somewhere inside,” Hal suggested.

  The five children hurried down the street and into the library. “There he is!” Nan whispered.

  A small blond man stood by the desk in the center of the room. As Bert started toward him, the man turned and looked at the children.

  “Good afternoon, Dorothy,” he said. “Are these your Bobbsey cousins?”

  “H-hello, Mr. Crampton,” Dorothy replied. “I—we thought—” Blushing, she turned to the others. “This is Mr. Crampton, a friend of Dad’s.”

  The Bobbseys and Hal acknowledged the introduction. Then, as quickly as possible, they headed for the door again. Once outside, they all burst out laughing.

  “Aren’t we the good detectives, chasing Uncle William’s friend?” Nan giggled.

  “I almost grabbed him before he turned around,” Bert confessed with a chuckle. “Wouldn’t he have been surprised?”

  Hal grinned. “That sure was a false clue.”

  “I guess it’s too late to do any more sleuthing today.” Dorothy sighed. “That was a good idea of yours, Bert, even if it didn’t work out!”

  “We’ll think of something else,” Bert said cheerfully. “We Bobbseys never give up!”

  When Freddie and Flossie heard about the chase after Mr. Crampton, they laughed. The children were still discussing it when Hal telephoned to say that his new canoe had been delivered while he was away.

  “It’s a beauty! I’m calling it the Swan,” he said. “My dad’s going to take me out tomorrow and make sure I know how to manage it. I’ll see you all on Saturday!”

  “Come over early on Saturday,” Dorothy urged. “We’ll have to work on our entry for the Water Carnival.”

  Hal agreed and hung up.

  “Cindy’s coming to spend the day with us tomorrow,” Flossie announced. “Aunt Emily phoned and invited her. Mrs. Weller’s going to bring her in the morning.”

  Freddie and Flossie were waiting eagerly the next day when Mrs. Weller drove up with Cindy.

  “Hurry and put on your bathing suit,” Flossie said. “We’re all going to play on the beach.”