CHAPTER 16 A PUZZLING SOLUTION

Penny pocketed the button and then with Sara went outside the building to look for additional clues. The girls found only a multitude of footprints in the snow beneath the two windows, for the tool house stood beside a direct path to the nursery slopes.

“We’ve learned everything we’re going to,” declared Sara. “Penny, I do wish you would get into the house and take your bath. You’re limping worse every minute.”

“All right, I’ll go. I do feel miserable.”

“Perhaps you ought to have a doctor.”

Penny laughed in amusement. “I’ll be brake man on the bob-sled tomorrow as usual.”

“You’ll be lucky if you’re able to crawl out of bed. Anyway, I doubt if I’ll be able to come myself.”

“Your grandfather?” asked Penny quickly.

“Yes, he’s getting suspicious. I’ll have to be more careful.”

“Why don’t you tell him the truth? It’s really not fair to deceive him. He’s bound to learn the truth sooner or later.”

“I’m afraid to tell him,” Sara said with a little shiver. “When grandfather is angry you can’t reason with him. I’ll have to run now. I’m later than usual.”

Penny watched her friend go and then hobbled into the lodge. News of the accident had preceded her, and Mrs. Downey met her at the door. She was deeply troubled until she ascertained for herself that the girl had not been seriously injured.

“I was afraid something like this would happen,” Mrs. Downey murmured self accusingly. “You know now why I wasn’t very enthusiastic about using the bob-sled run.”

Penny decided not to tell Mrs. Downey until later how the mishap had occurred. She was feeling too miserable to do much talking, and she knew the truth would only add to the woman’s worries.

“I can’t say I’m so thrilled about it myself at the moment,” she declared with a grimace. “I feel as stiff as if I were mounted on a mummy board!”

Mrs. Downey drew a tub of hot water, but it required all of Penny’s athletic prowess to get herself in and out of it. Her right arm was swollen and painful to lift. The skin on one side of her body from hip to ankle had been severely scraped and bruised. She could turn her neck only with difficulty.

“I do think I should call a doctor from the village,” Mrs. Downey declared as she aided the girl into bed.

“Please, don’t,” pleaded Penny. “I’ll be as frisky as ever by tomorrow.”

Mrs. Downey lowered the shades and went away. Left alone, Penny tried to go to sleep, but she was too uncomfortable. Every time she shifted to a new position wracking pains shot through her body.

“If this isn’t the worst break,” she thought, sinking deep into gloom. “I’ll be crippled for several days at least. No skiing, no bob-sledding. And while I’m lying here on my bed of pain, Francine will learn all about the Green Room.”

After awhile the warmth of the bed overcame Penny and she slept. She awakened to find Mrs. Downey standing beside her, a tray in her hand.

“I shouldn’t have disturbed you,” the woman apologized, “but you’ve been sleeping so long. And you’ve had nothing to eat.”

“I could do with a little luncheon,” mumbled Penny drowsily. “You didn’t need to bother bringing it upstairs.”

“This is dinner, not luncheon,” corrected Mrs. Downey.

Penny rolled over and painfully pulled herself to a sitting posture.

“Then I must have slept hours! What time is it?”

“Five-thirty. Do you feel better, Penny?”

“I think I do. From my eyebrows up anyway.”

While Penny ate her dinner, Mrs. Downey sat beside her and chatted.

“At least there’s nothing wrong with my appetite,” the girl laughed, rapidly emptying the dishes. “At home Mrs. Weems says I eat like a wolf. Oh, by the way, any mail?”

“None for you.”

Penny’s face clouded. “It’s funny no one writes me. Don’t you think I might at least get an advertising circular?”

“Well, Christmas is coming,” Mrs. Downey said reasonably. “The holiday season always is such a busy time. Folks have their shopping to do.”

“Not Dad. Usually he just calls up the Personal Shopper at Hobson’s store and says: ‘She’s five-feet three, size twelve and likes bright colors. Send out something done up in gift wrapping and charge to my account.’” Penny sighed drearily. “Then after Christmas I have to take it back and ask for an exchange.”

“Have you ever tried giving your father a list?” suggested Mrs. Downey, smiling at the description.

“Often. He nearly always ignores it.”

“What did you ask him for this year?”

“Only a new automobile.”

“Only! My goodness, aren’t your tastes rather expensive?”

“Oh, he won’t give it to me,” replied Penny. “I’ll probably get a sweater with pink and blue stripes or some dead merchandise the store couldn’t pawn off on anyone except an unsuspecting father.”

Mrs. Downey laughed as she picked up the tray.

“I hope your father will be able to get to Pine Top for Christmas.”

“So do I,” agreed Penny, frowning. “I thought when I wired him that Harvey Maxwell was here he would come right away.”

“He may have decided it would do no good to contact the man. Knowing Mr. Maxwell I doubt if your father could make any sort of deal with him.”

“If only he would come here he might be able to learn something which would help his case,” Penny declared earnestly. “Maxwell and Fergus are mixed up in some queer business.”

Mrs. Downey smiled tolerantly. While she always listened attentively to Penny’s theories and observations, she had not been greatly excited by her tale of the mysterious Green Room. She knew the two men were unscrupulous in a business way and that they were making every effort to force her to give up the lodge, but she could not bring herself to believe they were involved in more serious affairs. She thought that Penny’s great eagerness to prove Harvey Maxwell’s dishonesty had caused her imagination to run riot.

“Francine Sellberg wouldn’t be at Pine Top if something weren’t in the wind,” Penny went on reflectively. “She followed Ralph Fergus and Maxwell here. And that in itself was rather strange.”

“How do you mean, Penny?”

“Fergus must have been having trouble in managing the hotel or he wouldn’t have gone to Riverview to see Maxwell. What he had to say evidently couldn’t be trusted to a letter or a telegram.”

“Mr. Fergus often absents himself on trips. Now and then he goes to Canada.”

“I wonder why?” asked Penny alertly.

“He and Mr. Maxwell have a hotel there, I’ve heard. I doubt if his trips have any particular significance.”

“Well, at any rate, Fergus brought Maxwell back from Riverview to help him solve some weighty problem. From their talk on the plane, I gathered they were plotting to put you out of business, Mrs. Downey.”

“I think you are right there, Penny.”

“But why should your lodge annoy them? You could never take a large number of guests away from their hotel.”

“Ralph Fergus is trying to buy up the entire mountainside,” Mrs. Downey declared bitterly. “He purchased the site of the old mine, and I can’t see what good it will ever do the hotel.”

“You don’t suppose there’s valuable mineral—”

“No,” Mrs. Downey broke in with an amused laugh. “The mine played out years ago.”

“Has Mr. Fergus tried to buy your lodge?”

“He’s made me two different offers. Both were hardly worth considering. If he comes through with any reasonable proposition I may sell. My future plans depend a great deal upon whether or not Peter Jasko is willing to renew a lease on the ski slopes.”

“When does the lease expire, Mrs. Downey?”

“The end of next month. I’ve asked Mr. Jasko to come and see me as soon as he can. However, I have almost no hope he’ll sign a new lease.”

Mrs. Downey carried the tray to the door. There she paused to inquire: “Anything I can bring you, Penny? A book or a magazine?”

“No, thank you. But you might give me my portable typewriter. I think I’ll write a letter to Dad just to remind him he still has a daughter.”

Pulling a table to the bedside, Mrs. Downey placed the typewriter and paper on it before going away. Penny propped herself up with pillows and rolled a blank sheet into the machine.

At the top of the page she pecked out: “Bulletin.” After the dateline, she began in her best journalistic style, using upper case letters:

“PENNY PARKER, ATTRACTIVE AND TALENTED DAUGHTER OF ANTHONY PARKER, WHILE RIDING THE TAIL OF A RACING BOB-SLED WAS THROWN FOR A TEN YARD LOSS, SUSTAINING NUMEROUS BRUISES. THE PATIENT IS BEARING HER SUFFERING WITH FORTITUDE AND ANTICIPATES BEING IN CIRCULATION BY GLMLFFLS”

Penny stared at the last word she had written. Inadvertently, her fingers had struck the wrong letters. She had intended to write “tomorrow.” With an exclamation of impatience she jerked the paper from the machine.

And then she studied the sentence she had typed with new interest. There was something strangely familiar about the jumbled word, GLMLFFLS.

“It looks a little like that coded message I found!” she thought excitedly.

Forgetting her bruises, Penny rolled out of bed. She struck the floor with a moan of anguish. Hobbling over to the dresser, she found the scrap of paper which she had saved, and brought it back to the bed.

The third word in the message was similar, although not the same as the one she had written by accident. Penny typed them one above the other.

GLMLFFLS

GLULFFLS

“They’re identical except for the third letter,” she mused. “Why, I believe I have it! You simply strike the letter directly below the true one—that is, the one in the next row of keys. And when your true letter is in the bottom row, you strike the corresponding key on the top row. That’s why I wrote an M for a U!”

Penny was certain she had deciphered the third word of the code and that it was the same as she had written unintentionally. Quickly she wrote out the entire jumbled message, and under it her translation.

YL GFZKY GLULFFLS

NO TRAIN TOMORROW

“That’s it!” she chortled, bounding up and down in bed.

And then her elation fled away. A puzzled expression settled over her face.

“I have it, only I haven’t,” she muttered. “What can the message mean? There are no trains at Pine Top—not even a railroad station. This leaves everything in a worse puzzle than before!”