CHAPTER 12 FLIGHT

As Penny wondered what to do, Detectives Brandon and Fuller leaped from their hiding place behind the cemetery wall. Their car had been secreted in a clump of bushes farther down the road. By pure mischance, the woman in the black veil had seen it as she approached, and fearing treachery, had fled.

“Quick, Dick, or she’ll get away!” Fuller shouted.

Penny did not join in the pursuit. Reentering her car, she waited anxiously. From the crashing of underbrush, she knew the detectives were having difficulty in following the woman. In the dark forest it would be very easy for her to elude the officers.

Three quarters of an hour elapsed before the men returned.

“We lost her,” Detective Brandon reported. “No use searching any longer.”

Sick at heart, Penny drove slowly toward home. Her hopes had been completely dashed. Not only had she failed to contact the mysterious woman, but there now seemed little likelihood of doing so.

“I may receive another telephone message,” she thought, “but I doubt it. That woman probably will be too badly frightened to try to contact me again.”

At the exit of Baldiff Road, Penny headed down the winding hillside highway which she and Louise had followed on the night of the blizzard. The route, although slightly longer, would take her close to the Riverview Yacht Club.

“I’ll go that way and see if my car is still there,” she decided. “Then tomorrow I can have it hauled home and jacked up. I should have looked after the matter long ago.”

The coupe rounded a curve and the road dipped between an avenue of swaying, whispering pines. To the left, shrouded in snow, loomed the old Harrison house. The estate was picturesque in itself, and Mose Johnson’s tale about a ghost had intensified the girl’s interest.

“Wonder who owns the place now?” she speculated. “Probably not any member of the Harrison family, as I believe they were old-timers in Riverview.”

Penny slowed the car to idling speed. Deliberately keeping to the left hand side of the road, she studied with deep interest the long, snow-frosted fence which bounded the grounds. The barrier was an unfriendly one, high and spiked at the top.

Suddenly her attention focused upon a well-beaten path in the snow just inside the fence. The footprints, plainly visible in the bright moonlight, extended the full width of the grounds.

Into Penny’s mind flashed the wild yarn told by Mose Johnson.

“Ghost tracks!” she thought. “At least those prints must have been made by whatever he saw beyond the gate.”

So interested was Penny in the path that for an instant she completely forgot her driving. The front left wheel of the car struck a tiny mound of ice and snow at the road’s edge.

Barely in time to avoid an accident, the girl twisted the steering wheel and brought the car back on the highway.

“Another second and I’d have been in the ditch!” she thought shakily. “If I must look for a ghost, guess I’ll do the job right.”

Penny pulled up, this time at the opposite side of the road. Getting out, she crossed to the iron fence and peered through it. The path which had attracted her attention had been pounded hard by someone who had walked just inside the enclosure.

“Odd!” she reflected. “Maybe Old Mose’s ghost has more substance than I thought.”

Penny glanced toward the big house, dark and majestic in its setting of evergreens. Obviously the place had been closed for the winter. Walks were not shoveled, blinds had been drawn, and no tire tracks led to and from the three-car garage.

“Wonder who or what could have made that path?” she mused. “Certainly not an animal.”

Unable to solve the mystery, Penny turned to re-enter the parked coupe. Before she could cross the road, a light went on in a third floor room of the estate house. Startled, she stared at it. As she watched, it was extinguished.

“Someone must live here!” thought Penny. “Or am I seeing spooks myself?”

For a long while she watched the upper floor of the house. The light did not reappear. At length, wearying of the vigil, she returned to the car.

Penny started the engine and bent down to open the fins of the heater. Straightening, she cast a last, careless glance toward the old estate. Her heart did a flip-flop.

Beyond the iron gate, in the garden area, a white-robed figure slowly paced back and forth!

“My Aunt!” whispered Penny. “Am I seeing things or am I seeing things?”

For a moment she sat very straight, watching. The ghostly figure, white from head to toe, moved with measured steps toward the high gate.

“There aren’t any ghosts,” she encouraged herself. “But if that’s not a spook, it must be someone dressed up like one! And who would play Hallowe’en games on a cold night like this?”

Alone, frankly nervous, Penny had no overpowering desire to investigate the white-robed figure at close range. A large, spreading evergreen half-blocked her view of the gate. She could not see the ghost plainly, but she distinctly heard the rattle of a chain as the apparition tested the lock.

“Real or imaginary, that spook is trying to get out!” Penny thought with a shiver. “If Mose were here now I’d challenge him to a race!”

The white-gowned figure shook the gate chain a second time, then slowly retreated. Penny watched for a moment, before abruptly swinging open the car door. She had decided to investigate.

As she crossed the road, the white figure moved away from her. By the time she reached the gate, it had disappeared around a corner of the house.

“At least Mr. Spook wasn’t carrying his own tombstone!” Penny observed to herself. “Mose exaggerated that part.”

She waited, leaning against the gate post. Within three minutes a light went on in the upper part of the house. For a fleeting instant before the blind was pulled, she saw someone standing in front of an old-fashioned dresser.

“Mr. Ghost seemingly has turned in for the night,” thought Penny. “But is it a he, she, or it?”

Soon the bedroom light was extinguished. Cold and tired, Penny decided that the mystery must remain unsolved. However, as she drove on, she kept thinking about what she had seen. Of one thing she now was certain. The estate was not deserted!

Without stopping at the Yacht Club grounds, Penny made certain that her stripped car and ice boat remained as she last had seen them. Driving on to Riverview, she left Salt’s car at the Star plant, then taxied home to tell Mrs. Weems of her failure at the cemetery.

“Don’t feel badly about it,” the housekeeper comforted. “Surely the woman who telephoned will make another attempt to reach you.”

“I doubt it,” Penny replied gloomily. “She’ll know now that the police are watching for her.”

“This entire affair is so bewildering,” sighed Mrs. Weems. “How could your father have been kidnaped? If what we’ve learned is true, he left the scene of the accident of his own free will.”

“I never was so baffled in my life,” Penny returned, throwing herself on the davenport. “I used to think I was good at solving puzzles. Now I know I’m just plain dumb.”

“Have you thought about employing a private detective?”

“It might be a good idea!” Penny agreed, encouraged. “I’ll see what I can do tomorrow.”

As she started wearily up the stairs to bed, Mrs. Weems called after her to say that Louise Sidell had telephoned earlier in the evening. Penny nodded absently, assuming that her chum had phoned to express sympathy. She did not think of the matter again until the next morning at breakfast. As she was leaving the table, Mrs. Weems came in to report that Louise once more was on the telephone.

“Penny, I can’t tell you how shocked I was to learn about your father,” her chum began breathlessly. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“I’m afraid not, Lou.”

“What are you using for a car? You must need one badly.”

“Salt Sommers let me have his last night. I’ll get along.”

“Penny, I know how you can buy tires!” Louise went on. “In fact, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“How can I buy tires? Rubber is supposed to be scarce.”

“When I was having my hair fixed at the beauty parlor yesterday I heard two women talking!” Louise declared excitedly. “It seems there’s a garage where you can get them if you pull the right strings!”

“Oh! A Black Market place?”

“I suppose that’s what you would call it.”

“I don’t want to get tires illegally,” Penny said. “I’m not interested, Lou.”

“You don’t even care to know the name of the garage?”

“What good would it do?”

“None perhaps, but it might give you a surprise.”

“A surprise?” Penny repeated. She glanced at the clock, impatient because the conversation was being prolonged. A great deal of important work awaited her.

“You don’t want to know the name of the place?” Louise persisted.

“Yes, I do. On second thought, it might be well worth while to find out what I can about Black Market operations in tires.”

The conviction had come suddenly to Penny that all the evidence contained in her father’s lost portfolio must be gathered anew. No word had been received from Jerry Livingston. In the quest for information, she must depend upon her own efforts.

“It’s going to give you a real shock to learn the name of the place,” Louise went on.

“I’m shock proof by this time,” answered Penny. “Let ’er fly.”

But Louise was unwilling to divulge the information over the telephone.

“I don’t dare tell you now,” she replied. “Just sit tight for ten minutes and I’ll deliver my bombshell in person.”