Mandie Collection, The: 4 (30 page)

“I sure wish we could find the entrance to the tower,” Mandie commented. “Why don’t we go upstairs and look around that room in the servants’ quarters again?”

“Well, since we don’t have anything else to do, I suppose we could,” Jonathan agreed.

“We’d better watch out for Helga. She won’t like it if she catches us in that part of the house,” Celia reminded them.

But there didn’t seem to be anyone anywhere in the house. They quietly went up the stairs and down the hallways into the servants’ quarters.

Mandie walked up to the door of the room they had been in before and put her hand on the doorknob. She listened, but couldn’t hear a sound inside the room. Slowly she turned the knob and pushed the door open. There was no one inside.

The first thing she noticed was that someone had straightened the curtain and pulled it together. They had left it pulled back. “The curtain. Someone has been in here,” Mandie remarked as she went to the window and pushed the curtain back. She looked out and gasped. “Look! There are the Bagatelles down there at that cottage again.”

Her friends crowded close to look out. It looked as though the strangers were trying different keys in the lock of the front door in an effort to get it open.

“Do you suppose they could have their luggage hidden in that cottage?” Mandie asked. But she realized how absurd that would be and said, “No, that couldn’t be, because they would have a key or some way to open the door.”

“Let’s go back outside and watch them,” Jonathan suggested.

The three hurried quietly through the house and into the yard. They hid behind shrubbery to watch the Bagatelles trying to get the door to the cottage open. Mandie held Snowball in her arms to keep him from interfering as he had the last time.

The couple talked in low voices, but the girls couldn’t understand anything they were saying because it was in French. Jonathan whispered, “I can’t hear well enough to translate.”

The couple finally gave up. The man put the keys in his pocket and they walked back toward the house while Mandie and her friends watched from behind the bushes.

As soon as the Bagatelles were out of sight, Mandie said, “Come on. Let’s see if anything’s different.” She led the way to the front door of the cottage.

“I don’t see anything different,” Jonathan said, looking around.

“There is something about this cottage that interests the Bagatelles,” Mandie muttered as she looked around.

“They always seem to be trying to get inside,” Celia remarked.

“We know the Bagatelles’ photographic equipment wasn’t in their suite,” Jonathan said. “Maybe they have it locked up in here.”

“But remember,” said Mandie, “if they locked something up in this cottage they would have a key to unlock the door, wouldn’t they? It looked to me like the man had a handful of keys and was trying each one to get the door unlocked.”

“Is there no back door?” Celia asked.

The three looked at each other and Mandie laughed. “We haven’t even looked for another door. Come on.” She led the way around the cottage.

The back of the house was hidden with thick shrubbery. They squeezed through it and Mandie exclaimed, “Celia, there is another door.” A crossbar on the outside held it shut.

“Let’s see if it’ll open,” Mandie said, trying to lift the bar.

Jonathan and Celia helped. But when they got the bar off and tried the door, they found it securely locked. They replaced the bar and tried
peeping through the back windows, but curtains kept them from seeing anything inside.

“If that doesn’t beat all!” Mandie exclaimed. “It sure is locked up tight for an empty house.”

As they walked around the cottage, Eckart came down the path. They had not felt comfortable asking Eckart about anything since he wouldn’t tell them what he knew about the tower. Nevertheless, he stopped and spoke. “I hope you are enjoying your visit here,” he said politely as he looked from one to the other.

“Yes, we are, Eckart,” Mandie told him. “We were just curious about this cottage. You told us it was vacant, didn’t you?”

“Yes, it is, miss,” Eckart replied. “It has not been occupied since the Thalers came here.”

“It’s all locked up. Do you have a key for it? We’d like to see inside,” Mandie told him.

“No, only Hedgewick has keys. You could ask her,” Eckart said.

Mandie thanked him and he went on his way.

“I don’t think I want to go ask Mrs. Hedgewick to unlock this cottage for us, do you?” Mandie asked her friends.

“No, she’d probably be awfully suspicious of us and she’d outright refuse,” Jonathan said.

“Well, I suppose we could go back to the house and see where the Bagatelles went,” Mandie decided.

They didn’t find the Bagatelles for the rest of the day, even though they looked for the couple wherever they went.

Disappointed that they seemed no closer to solving the mystery of the tower or the cottage, the young people went to bed that night feeling that they had not accomplished anything more than discovering who was walking through their hallway late at night.

Mandie and Celia were fast asleep that night when Mandie was again awakened by singing. She punched Celia, and said, “I hear singing.”

She quickly jumped out of bed and grabbed her robe.

Celia blinked her eyes, but was out of bed in just a moment putting on her robe. She followed Mandie out into the hallway where Mandie was already knocking on Jonathan’s door.

This time Jonathan heard the first knock. He came to the door fully dressed.

“Listen, there’s that singing!” Mandie whispered.

“I heard it, too,” Jonathan said. “I got dressed so I could take a look. Come on. Let’s investigate.”

“It’s a lot fainter than it has been,” Celia remarked as they tried to figure out what direction to go.

“I think it’s coming from the yard this time,” Mandie said. “Just like Celia said before.” They quietly hurried down the hallway to the top of the main staircase.

No one noticed, but Snowball had followed his mistress. When they went down the steps, he went, too.

Pausing in the front hallway, Mandie said, “It must be coming from behind the house. You notice how faint it is here.”

“Right,” whispered Jonathan.

They stealthily unlocked the front door and stepped outside. As they crept around the house in the darkness, Snowball stayed right with them.

“The tower?” Mandie asked, and they stopped to look up at the tall section of the house.

“No,” Jonathan said, shaking his head.

“The cottage!” Celia whispered.

“Yes, yes,” Mandie and Jonathan said together as the three excitedly rushed toward the vacant cottage.

Sure enough, the singing grew louder as they approached the little house. They stopped right in front of it, hiding behind a shrub in case anyone could see them.

“Someone is inside there singing,” Mandie whispered. Jonathan and Celia nodded, for there was no question about where the beautiful voice was coming from.

The three began to creep closer. But they stopped suddenly when they heard footsteps running toward them. The Bagatelles came hurrying to the cottage and began pounding on the front door. The singing immediately stopped.

The three young people caught their breath in alarm as they watched. Mr. Bagatelle picked up a rock and knocked out a small glass pane in one of the windows.

Mrs. Bagatelle continued knocking and shaking the door.

Mandie gasped as Snowball bounced out of the bushes in front of her and went straight for the Bagatelles. He meowed and beat at the man’s pants legs with his paws.

Mandie screamed as the man tried to kick Snowball. She rushed forward and snatched up her kitten.

“Don’t you dare kick my cat!” she told the man angrily.

The man and woman took one look at Mandie and turned to rush off toward the chalet. But Jonathan put out his foot and tripped the man as the couple came past the bushes where he and Celia were still hiding. The man yelled at Jonathan as he got up and brushed off his clothes.

“That’s what you get for kicking an innocent animal,” Jonathan said to the man in English.

“Just you wait!” the man yelled back as he and the woman continued on toward the house.

Mandie and her friends rushed up to the cottage to investigate. They tried to see through the broken windowpane, but the only thing visible was the inside wall.

Mandie knocked on the door and called out, “I don’t know who you are but we’re your friends. Won’t you please open the door and let us in?”

There was complete silence inside.

“The bad people are gone. We want to help you,” Celia said through the broken windowpane.

“Please open the door,” Jonathan said.

There was no response of any kind. The three young people looked at each other in puzzlement.

“There has to be somebody in there,” Mandie said. “And whoever it is was the person we heard singing.”

“And for some reason the Bagatelles were trying to break in,” Jonathan added.

“Why don’t we go for help? We could get Mrs. Hedgewick to unlock the door,” Celia suggested.

“No, not Mrs. Hedgewick,” Mandie said. “Uncle Ned! He’ll know what to do. I’ll go get him. Y’all stay here and watch to be sure whoever it is doesn’t leave without us seeing them.”

Jonathan and Celia agreed. Mandie put her kitten down so she could run faster. “Snowball, you stay here,” she told him.

She ran off toward the house. Uncle Ned always knew how to solve problems. He would know what to do about whoever was in the cottage.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE TALES EXPLAINED

Mandie knocked hard on Uncle Ned’s door. “Uncle Ned, please come quick! We need you!”

When the old man opened the door, he was fully dressed. He looked at Mandie in alarm. “Papoose! What?”

“There’s someone in the cottage and we can’t get her out,” Mandie told him incoherently. She took his hand. “Please come with me.”

The old Indian allowed Mandie to lead him down the stairs and around to the cottage. She practically ran all the way.

Uncle Ned kept asking, “What wrong, Papoose?”

Mandie kept saying, “Wait. You’ll see.”

When they finally got to the cottage, Mandie was out of breath and Jonathan explained to the old man about what the Bagatelles had done and that there was someone inside.

“Maybe someone live here,” Uncle Ned said, as they stood in front of the cottage.

“No, Uncle Ned. Eckart said this cottage was empty,” Mandie told him. “Besides, I forgot to tell you, the singing we heard was coming from inside this house tonight.”

The old Indian looked puzzled. “Cannot break into someone’s house,” he told the young people.

“But nobody lives here,” Mandie argued. “It’s not anybody’s house.”

“House belong Thalers,” Uncle Ned emphatically told her. “Not mine, not yours.”

“I know, Uncle Ned, but the Thalers are not here and someone is in there,” Mandie said. “I know it must be a woman because we heard her singing.”

“Knock,” the old Indian told her.

“We did, but I’ll try it again,” Mandie replied. She lifted her hand and knocked hard on the door.

Everyone listened. There was no sound inside. Snowball jumped up on a railing nearby, took one look at his mistress, and jumped through the broken window. Mandie gasped.

“Now Snowball has got inside!” Mandie said. “How am I going to get him out?” She bent in front of the broken glass and called to him. “Snowball, come back here.”

Jonathan had been listening. Now he spoke up. “There is someone inside, Uncle Ned. Whoever it is won’t answer. Maybe they are ill or hurt or something.”

Uncle Ned looked around. “No way to get in,” he said.

“We haven’t tried the windows,” Jonathan said. “There could be one that’s unlocked.”

They quickly examined the few windows in the house. Every one was securely locked.

Mandie came back to the broken pane and once more called to her kitten. “Snowball, please come here. Kitty, kitty, kitty.”

Suddenly she heard movement inside the cottage. She looked up and saw Snowball being pushed through the broken window.

“Your cat, you take,” said a voice inside.

Everyone crowded around to look as Mandie reached for Snowball. A tiny old woman was handing him up to her.

“Are you all right?” Mandie asked. She took Snowball and tried to look inside. It was dark and there were no lights in the cottage.

“That man and woman tried to catch me. He lost the key. I found it,” the woman explained. “I hide in here and lock the door. He can’t get in.”

“The Bagatelles?” Mandie asked, excitedly. “What did they chase you for?”

“I sing,” the woman said.

“I know. We heard you sing,” Mandie replied. “Do you live in here?”

“No, no, I live on the mountain,” the woman said. “Good night now. I must get some rest.” She moved out of Mandie’s sight.

“Wait, please don’t go,” Mandie said quickly. “Open the door and let us in, please. We want to help you.”

“This is my dressing room. I must get some rest before I go on stage,” the woman mumbled from further back inside the house.

Everyone looked at each other. Who was this woman talking about a dressing room and a stage?

“I don’t think she’s just right,” Jonathan said.

Uncle Ned looked at the young people and said, “Lady live in old times maybe.”

“Old times?” Celia questioned.

“The past,” Mandie said, understanding what the old man meant. “The lady is living in her memories I suppose.”

“How are we going to get her out?” Jonathan asked.

“She said she had to rest before she goes on stage,” Celia said. “Maybe she’ll just come out after she rests.”

“You may be right, Celia,” Mandie said. She bent in front of the broken window and called, “It’s time to go on stage. Are you ready?”

The old lady immediately came back to the window and said, “Yes, dear, I’ll be right there.” She disappeared again.

Everyone waited and watched silently. In a minute they heard a key turn in the lock on the inside. The door was opened and a tiny old woman came out of the cottage wearing an old-fashioned formal gown. Her gray hair hung loose down below her waist.