CHAPTER 11 THE WOODEN DOLL

Mr. Parker studied the bank secretary and his wife with more interest. But he said mildly:

“I see nothing especially significant in Potts coming here, Penny. The club is public.”

“It’s expensive too. The cover charge is two dollars, and you can’t touch a dinner for less than another four! How can Potts afford to pay such prices?”

“He may earn a good salary working for Mr. Rhett—probably does. Anyway, folks don’t always spend their money wisely, even if they have very little of it.”

Potts and his wife swept past the Parker table without noticing Penny or her father. A trifle self-consciously, as if unaccustomed to appearing in such places, they sat down and studied the menu with concentrated interest.

Penny tried but could not keep her eyes from the pair.

“Dad, I wonder if Potts has any more information about Mr. Rhett’s disappearance,” she presently remarked. “I have a notion to go over there and ask him.”

Mr. Parker nodded absently, so Penny started across the room. She was only midway to Potts’ table, when the bank secretary raised his eyes and saw her approaching.

A startled, almost dismayed expression came upon his face. He spoke hurriedly to his wife. She looked puzzled, but both arose and walked quickly toward the exit.

Penny started to follow, then thought better of it.

“Mr. Potts knows I’m a reporter,” she reflected. “Probably he doesn’t care to be annoyed by having to answer questions. On the other hand, is it possible he doesn’t want to be recognized in this night club?”

Mr. and Mrs. Potts obtained their wraps at the checkroom and left the building. Somewhat crestfallen, Penny returned to her own table to find her father chatting with acquaintances.

Under the circumstance, she had no opportunity to speak of Mr. Potts’ queer behavior. Soon, dinners were brought and after that the floor show began.

Not wishing to keep his daughter out late, Mr. Parker insisted that they leave in the middle of the entertainment. However, the drive home gave Penny time to tell him about the bank secretary. The incident did not seem to impress her father greatly.

“If I were you I wouldn’t pester Potts too much,” he advised. “He probably doesn’t enjoy being the center of public attention.”

Penny slept late the next morning, and because it was Sunday, did not visit the Star office. The paper that day was voluminous. But in going through it she could find no new facts about the Rhett case. No word had been received from the missing banker; there had been no ransom demand received; and neither had Albert Potts nor Mrs. Rhett shed the slightest light on what might have become of him.

After breakfast, Penny telephoned Jerry Livingston to inquire if he had heard from the Cherry Street landlady.

“Not a word,” he reported. “I dropped back there late last night, but the man we’re looking for apparently never returned.”

Disappointed that the case had reached a dead end, Penny next telephoned the Rhett home. No one answered.

“I’m certain someone is there,” she thought. “Mrs. Rhett probably has given orders not to answer the phone.”

At a loss to know what to do, Penny spent the morning at home, had dinner, then went down the street to see Louise Sidell. However, her chum had gone to visit an aunt for the day.

“What miserable luck!” Penny muttered. “No one with whom I can talk over the Rhett case! Nothing to do!”

Suddenly it dawned upon her, that she might call on Albert Potts at his home, and perhaps induce him to reveal a few helpful facts about the missing banker.

From a telephone book she obtained the secretary’s address. Thirty minutes later found her standing before a modest cottage on Berdan Avenue. In response to her knock, the same woman Penny had seen the previous night at the Gay Nineties, came to the door. Now she looked very plain and frowsy in a messy housedress, and her hair hung in untidy streamers.

The woman stared at Penny without recognition.

“Is Mr. Potts here?” the girl inquired.

“No, he’s not,” Mrs. Potts answered without cordiality, her voice coarse and unattractive. “Anything I can do?”

“I wanted to talk to him. Will he return soon?” Penny moved inside the door.

“When he goes off, I never know when he’ll get back. He went to the bank, I guess.”

“On Sunday?”

“Al’s had a lot of work lately. I tell him he ought to let up. He’s getting so jumpy he doesn’t sleep at nights. Just tosses and keeps me awake.”

Before Penny could ask another question, a boy of ten, who had Albert Potts’ sharp features, came racing across the yard up to the door.

“Has the bicycle come yet, Ma?” he shouted.

“No, it hasn’t, and I wish you’d quit pestering me!” she snapped. “There won’t be any deliveries today.”

To Penny, the woman explained: “My husband bought Eddie a new bicycle and he won’t give us any peace until it comes. Deliveries take such a long time these days. None of the things we bought have come yet.”

Penny did not mean to be inquisitive, but instantly it struck her as unusual that the Potts’ family should be indulging in a sudden orgy of spending. Nor had she forgotten the couple’s hasty departure from the Gay Nineties club.

“Eddie is getting quite a few new things, I take it,” she observed casually.

The woman became more friendly. “Oh, yes, my husband ordered a trapeze set for him, and an electric train. But he bought me a lot too! A new piano and a living room rug. We have a new refrigerator on order, a vacuum cleaner and a bedroom suite!”

“Imagine!” exclaimed Penny. “Your husband must have come into a small fortune.”

“He was given a raise last week at the bank. I don’t know exactly how much, but it must have been a big one, because Al says we’ll have enough now for everything we need.”

“I think I’ve seen you before, Mrs. Potts,” Penny remarked, seeking additional information. “Weren’t you at the Gay Nineties last night?”

“Yes, we were! But we didn’t stay long. Before we had ordered our dinner, my husband remembered an important appointment he had made. We had to leave suddenly. It was awfully disappointing. I never went to a night club before and I wanted to see the show!”

Mrs. Potts paused, obviously waiting for Penny to leave. “I’ll tell my husband you called,” she said. “You didn’t give me your name.”

Edging out of the door, Penny pretended not to hear the latter remark. Calling over her shoulder that she would try to see Mr. Potts at the bank next day, she retreated before the woman could learn her identity.

Walking toward the bus stop, the girl reflected upon what she had learned. The financial good fortune of the Potts’ family was very puzzling. Apparently the bank secretary’s salary had been increased since the disappearance of his employer, Mr. Rhett.

“It seems a queer time to raise the man,” she mused. “If his duties have become so much heavier, I suppose the bank board may have granted a compensating wage increase. But it must have been an enormous one to enable him to buy everything in the stores!”

As Penny waited at the street corner for a home-bound bus, she saw one approaching which was headed for the outlying section near the Rhett estate area. Impulsively, she decided to go there to see Lorinda.

“I may not get into the house,” she thought. “My luck is running badly today. Anyway, I’ll give it a try.”

It was nearly four o’clock by the time Penny alighted from the bus and walked to the Rhett estate. Her heart sank as she noticed that curtains were drawn in nearly all of the front windows of the house.

“No one here,” she thought. “Lorinda and her mother may have left town to escape questioning by reporters and the police.”

Because she had come so far, she knocked on the front door. No one came. Giving it up, she wandered around the house, into the garden.

Curiously she gazed toward the thatched roof cottage, wondering if anyone were there. The whispered warning she and Salt had heard the previous day, remained unexplained. She longed to investigate, yet hesitated to trespass.

As she debated, Penny observed a small column of black smoke rising from amid the shrubbery. Someone apparently had built a bonfire on the beach.

Seeking the steps which led down to the river, Penny presently saw that her guess was correct. A small fire of driftwood had been built on the sands. Lorinda, in slacks and an old sweater, was so engrossed in feeding the flames that she did not hear when her name was called.

Descending the steps, Penny hastened to the beach to join the Rhett girl. Lorinda did not hear the approaching footsteps. Deeply absorbed in what she was doing, she stirred the flames with a stick until they leaped merrily.

Then, from a paper sack she withdrew a queer wooden object which even from the distance Penny could see was a doll. Its body appeared to be tightly wound with scarlet thread.

Lorinda held the doll gingerly in her fingers. She stared at it a moment, shuddered, and then with a gesture of abhorrence, hurled it into the crackling flames.