CHAPTER 4 AN UNWARRANTED ATTACK

“Now will you tell me what I did to deserve a crack like that?” Penny muttered as the door of the boathouse slammed behind Sara Ottman.

“Not a single thing,” Louise answered loyally. “She just rolled out from beneath that boat with a dagger between her teeth!”

“I guess I am a little prig, Lou.”

“You’re no such thing!” Louise grasped her arm and gave her an affectionate squeeze. “Come along and forget it. I never did like Sara Ottman anyhow.”

Penny allowed herself to be led away from the dock, but the older girl’s unkind remarks kept pricking her mind. Although occasionally in the past she had stopped for a few minutes at the Ottman place, she never before had spoken a dozen words to Sara. Nearly all of her business dealings had been with Burt Ottman, a pleasant young man who had painted her father’s sailboat that spring.

“I simply can’t understand it,” Penny mumbled, trudging along the shore with Louise. “The last time I saw Sara she spoke to me politely enough. I must have offended her, but how?”

“Oh, why waste any thought on her?” Louise scoffed.

“Because it bothers me. She mentioned the bridge dynamiting affair. Maybe it was my by-line story in the Star that offended her.”

“What did it say?” Louise inquired curiously. “I didn’t see the morning paper.”

“Neither did I. I gave my story to a rewrite man over the telephone. I meant to read the entire account, but was in a hurry to get over here, so I skipped it.”

“Well, I shouldn’t worry about the matter if I were you.”

“I’m sure the boat used in the dynamiting came from Ottman’s,” Penny declared, thinking aloud. “Perhaps Sara is just out of sorts because she and her brother lost their property.”

Making their way along the mud flats, the girls came at last to the tiny stretch of sand where the sailboat had been beached the previous night. It lay exactly as they had left it, cockpit half filled with water, the tall mast nosed into the loose sand.

“What a mess,” sighed Penny. “Well, the first thing to do is to get the wet sail off. We should have taken care of it last night.”

Before beginning the task, the girls wandered toward the nearby bridge to inspect the damage caused by dynamiting. An armed soldier refused to allow them to approach closer than twenty yards. All traffic had been halted, and a group of engineers could be seen examining the shattered pier.

“Is Mr. Oaks around here?” Penny asked the soldier.

“Oaks? Oh, you mean the bridge watchman. He’s been charged with neglect of duty, and relieved of his job.”

Penny and Louise were sorry to hear the news, feeling that in a way they were responsible for the old fellow having left his post. Unable to learn whether or not the watchman was being detained by police, they returned to the beach to salvage their sailboat.

Without a pump, it was a difficult task to remove the water from the cockpit of “Pop’s Worry.” By rocking the boat back and forth and scooping with an old tin can, the girls finally got most of it out.

“We’ll have to dry the sail somehow or it will mildew,” Penny decided. “The best thing, I think, is to put it on again and sail home.”

Together they righted the boat. As the tall mast flipped out of the sand, Penny caught glimpse of a shiny, blue object.

“Our bottle!” she cried triumphantly, making a dive for it.

“Your bottle,” corrected Louise. “I’m not a bit interested in that silly old thing.”

Nevertheless, as Penny sat down on the deck of “Pop’s Worry” and removed the cork, she edged nearer. By means of a hairpin, the folded sheet of paper contained within was pulled from the narrow neck. Highly elated, Penny spread out the message to read.

“Well, what does it say?” Louise inquired impatiently.

“Oh, so you are interested,” teased Penny.

“Now don’t try to be funny! Read the message.”

Penny stared at the paper in her hand. “It’s rather queer,” she acknowledged. “Listen:

“‘The day of the Great Deluge approaches. If you would be saved from destruction, seek without delay, the shelter of my ark.’”

“If that isn’t nonsense!” Louise exclaimed, peering over her chum’s shoulder. “And the note is signed, ‘Noah.’”

“Someone’s idea of a joke, I suppose,” Penny replied. She tossed the paper away, then reconsidering, retrieved the message and with the bottle, placed it in the cockpit of the boat. “Well, it’s rained a lot this Spring, but I don’t think we’ll have to worry about the Great Deluge.”

“Noah was a Biblical character,” Louise commented thoughtfully. “I remember that when God told him it would rain forty days and forty nights, he built an ark to resist the flood waters. And he took his family in with him and all the animals, two by two.”

“Noah was a bit before our time,” laughed Penny. “Suppose we shove off for home.”

By dint of much physical exertion, the girls pushed “Pop’s Worry” out into the shallow water. Penny, who had removed shoes and stockings, gave a final thrust and leaped lightly aboard. Raising the wet sail, she allowed it to flap loosely in the wind.

“We’ll have everything snug and dry by the time we reach home,” she declared confidently. “Tired, Lou?”

“A little,” admitted her chum, stretching out full length on the deck. “I like to sail but I don’t like to bail! And just think, if you hadn’t been so crazy to get that blue bottle, we’d have spared ourselves a lot of hard work.”

“Well, a fellow never knows. The bottle might have provided the first clue in an absorbing mystery! Who do you suppose wrote such an odd message?”

“How should I know?” yawned Louise. “Probably some prankster.”

Taking a zigzag course, “Pop’s Worry” tacked slowly upstream. Whipped by a brisk wind, the wet sail gradually dried and regained its former shape.

As the boat presently approached Ottman’s dock, both girls turned to gaze in that direction. Sara could be seen moving about on one of the floating platforms, retying several boats which banged at their moorings.

“Better tack,” Louise advised in a low tone. “We don’t want to get too close.”

Penny acted as if she had not heard. She made no move to bring the boat about.

“We’ll end up right at Ottman’s unless you’re careful,” Louise warned. “Or is that what you want to do?”

“I’m thinking about it.” Penny watched Sara with thoughtful eyes.

“Well, if you’ll deliberately go there again, I must say you enjoy being insulted!”

“I’d like to find out why Sara is angry at me. If it’s only a misunderstanding I want to clear it up.”

Louise shook her head sadly but offered no further protest as the boat held to its course. Not until the craft grated gently against one of the floats at Ottman’s did Sara seem to note the girls’ approach. Glancing up from her work, she stared at them, and then deliberately looked away.

“The air’s still chilly,” Penny remarked in an undertone. “Well, we’ll see.”

Making “Pop’s Worry” fast to a spar, she walked across the float to confront Sara.

“Miss Ottman,” she began quietly, “if I’ve done anything to offend you, I wish to apologize.”

Sara turned slowly to face Penny. “You owe me no apology,” she said in a cold voice.

“Then why do you dislike me? I always thought I was welcome around here until today. My father has given you considerable business.”

“I’m sorry I spoke to you the way I did,” Sara replied stiffly and with no warmth. “It was rude of me.”

“But why am I such poison?” Penny persisted. “What have I done?”

“You honestly don’t know?”

“Why, of course not. I shouldn’t be asking if I did.”

Sara stared at Penny as if wondering whether or not to accept her remarks as sincere.

“Do you only write for the papers?” she asked, a slight edge to her voice. “You never read them?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Penny was truly bewildered. “Has this misunderstanding something to do with the bridge dynamiting?”

Sara nodded her head grimly. “It has,” she agreed. “Didn’t you see the morning paper?”

“Why, no.”

“Then wait a minute.” Sara turned and vanished into the boat shed. A moment later she reappeared, carrying a copy of the Star.

“Read that,” she directed, thrusting the black headlines in front of Penny’s eyes. “Now do you understand why I feel that you’re no friend of mine?”