Mandie Collection, The: 4 (55 page)

“He’s awfully big and fierce,” Mandie replied softly. “But we need to find out what’s wrong with him. Maybe we could help.”

“He could be dangerous, Mandie,” Celia whispered.

At that moment the waiter appeared and Mrs. Taft asked what they wanted for breakfast. The young people had found that eggs tasted pretty much the same in all the countries in Europe as they did back home so the order was unanimous for eggs and hot rolls.

When the waiter left, Mrs. Taft told the young people, “Senator Morton and I are going to a reception this morning. I understand there is to be a continuous music presentation in the main drawing room across the hall there, so you all can attend that while we’re gone.”

Mandie and her friends silently looked at one another.

Senator Morton added, “We should return shortly after the noon meal.”

“What kind of music is this going to be?” Mandie asked.

“I believe it will vary from magicians to operatic,” the senator explained as Mrs. Taft looked at him.

“What are we supposed to do about eating at noon?” Jonathan asked.

Mrs. Taft smiled at him and said, “Y’all just eat right here and sign the ticket. The manager will put it on our bill.”

Mandie was not too happy about having to attend this “music presentation,” as her grandmother called it, but at least they didn’t have to go dragging around all day sightseeing. All she really wanted to do was return to the old boat. Maybe the show would end before her grandmother and the senator returned, and she and her friends would have time to go to the wharf again.

As soon as the meal was finished Mrs. Taft and Senator Morton rose.

“It’s time for us to get going,” Mrs. Taft told the young people. “Y’all have about thirty minutes before time for the show, so you can either sit here or go to your rooms till then. If y’all will eat about noontime, then you should be finished by the time we get back. We’ll all do a little sightseeing afterward.”

“Yes, Grandmother,” Mandie said as she and her friends stayed at the table.

“Our carriage should be waiting by now,” Senator Morton told Mrs. Taft as they hurriedly left the room.

Mandie watched them out of sight, then turned to her friends, smiled and said, “What a great idea Grandmother had today!”

“You call sitting through a boring music show a great idea?” Jonathan asked.

“But there’s always intermission at these doings; in fact, several intermissions in some shows,” Mandie reminded him. “And sometimes they’re long enough that we could run down to the old boat and back.”

“Mandie! You wouldn’t!” Celia exclaimed.

“I very carefully noticed that my grandmother never said one word about not leaving the hotel,” Mandie replied.

“And as long as we attend the show, we can do whatever we want during intermissions,” Jonathan added.

“Oh, well!” Celia sighed as she looked at her two friends.

Mandie quickly stood up from the table. “Come on, let’s get our bonnets. And I need something to eat for Snowball.” She hurriedly dumped scraps from their plates onto a linen napkin and rolled it up.

Jonathan went up the steps with the girls as far as the landing and then told them, “I’ll wait right here for you. Don’t be too long.”

“We’ll hurry,” Mandie said as she and Celia rushed down the corridor to their rooms.

Snowball met them at the door with a loud meow. Mandie had forgotten to shut him in the bathroom when she left earlier. The maid had made the beds but hadn’t let the cat escape.

“Thank goodness you’re still here,” Mandie told him as she put the scraps on his plate in the bathroom. He quickly began devouring the food.

Mandie and Celia picked up their bonnets and put them on.

“I’m going to have to take Snowball with me. He hasn’t been outside in so long,” Mandie said, reaching for his red leash and harness on the bureau.

“Do you mean in the drawing room with us, Mandie?” Celia asked.

“I guess I’ll have to,” Mandie said as she stooped and fastened the
harness on her cat, who was now licking his paws. “If he misbehaves I can take him out.”

Mandie picked up her kitten and the girls rejoined Jonathan on the landing. By the time they got downstairs, the drawing room was filling up with a variety of people to see the show. The young people took seats on the back row near the door.

“We can get out faster from back here,” Mandie told her friends. “Besides, I may have to take Snowball out if he doesn’t want to sit in my lap.”

Snowball stood up in Mandie’s lap and looked around the room. When the music started he finally curled up to sleep. Mandie kept her hand on his back to be sure he didn’t suddenly jump down and run off.

The three young people became so interested in the magician’s tricks during the first part of the show they were surprised when intermission was announced.

“Please return in thirty minutes, ladies and gentlemen,” the man on the stage was saying. “You will find tea in the parlor.”

“Thirty minutes! Let’s hurry!” Mandie said, quickly jumping up. They dashed out the doorway ahead of the crowd and on outside to the avenue.

They raced down the street to the wharf and to the old boat, ignoring the stares of passersby. Mandie carried Snowball with one arm and held up her long skirt with the other.

Finally standing on the pier, they looked at the old boat. Mandie asked Celia to hold Snowball while she and Jonathan pulled the rope out from under the floor where they had hidden it. They quickly straightened it out and tied it around the post on the pier.

“Are you coming with us this time?” Mandie asked Celia.

“No, maybe later. I’ll just stay here and hold Snowball for you,” Celia said.

“Thanks,” Mandie replied.

Jonathan went first across the rope to the old boat and Mandie followed. They quietly stepped over the side of the boat and crept up to the window of the cabin. The man was still lying on the bunk inside and he looked as though he might be asleep.

Mandie and Jonathan stepped back from the window and whispered to each other.

“What should we do now?” Mandie asked in a soft voice.

“I don’t think we ought to wake him up,” Jonathan replied in a hushed voice. “He would be awfully mean if we did.”

Suddenly there was a noise at the side of the boat. Mandie slipped far enough around the corner of the cabin to look. She jumped back and told Jonathan, “Someone is coming!”

Together they slid behind some old cans and timber and watched. A short dark man was climbing on board from a rope ladder hanging over the side. As they held their breath and looked, the man pushed open the door to the cabin and went inside. He was carrying a large package, which he placed on a shelf near the bed.

Mandie stood up enough to try to see better, but she was afraid she would be seen so she darted back down.

“You have to leave this boat, Alex,” they heard the man say in British English.

Then the big man yelled at the other man, “Get off my boat!”

The short man yelled back at Alex, “You can’t solve any problems holing up on this broken-down boat. Come with me.”

“I cannot leave this boat and you know it,” Alex loudly told him. “I am guilty!”

“You are not guilty,” the other man tried to convince him. “Come with me.”

“I know that I am guilty,” Alex insisted. “And you know it, too. Now get off my boat and don’t come back!”

“All right, Alex. I will go but I will come back,” the other man said.

Mandie and Jonathan shrank behind the trash pile as the dark man came out of the cabin. Mandie got a good look at him then as he used the rope ladder to go down the side of the boat.

“He’s the man who had the painting!” Mandie whispered excitedly in Jonathan’s ear.

Jonathan looked but didn’t reply.

As soon as the man was out of sight, the two ran to see how he had managed to come up by the rope ladder. They looked down and saw him stepping off the ladder that was hanging from the floor of the pier. He quickly walked away down the walkway.

Mandie suddenly realized Celia was nowhere in sight. “Where is Celia?” she exclaimed. “I don’t see her!”

“Let’s go see,” Jonathan said, leading the way to the rope ladder.

The two followed what the man had done and came up on the pier. Mandie straightened up and looked around. Then she saw Celia way down another walkway that branched off from the main pier. Mandie waved to her and Celia, carrying Snowball, hurried toward them.

“Did you see that man?” Mandie quickly asked Celia as she caught up with her and Jonathan.

“Yes, I did. That’s why I went way down there. I didn’t know who he was, and there I was all alone on the pier, so I picked up Snowball and walked away,” Celia explained as she handed the kitten to Mandie.

“I’m pretty sure he’s the man we saw in the hotel with the painting,” Mandie told her. She related the conversation that she and Jonathan had overheard between the two men. “The man on the boat is guilty of something, so they must both be crooks of some kind.”

“I sure am glad I walked away from him, then,” Celia said, with a gasp.

“Which way did he go? Did you notice?” Mandie asked as she looked around.

“No. I didn’t want to look at him or draw his attention,” Celia said.

“I know which way we’d better go,” Jonathan said. “Intermission is probably over by now.”

“I hope not!” Mandie exclaimed as she held on to Snowball and they all hurried back toward the hotel.

As they reached the drawing room door, the music began and they were lucky enough to find their seats on the back row empty. Mandie put Snowball in her lap as they sat down.

An orchestra on the stage was playing awfully loud music. Mandie, sitting on the end of the row, had leaned across Celia to whisper to Jonathan when she suddenly caught sight of a short dark man at the far end of the row in front of them. He looked like the man who had been at the boat from what she could see of the back of his head. But how could that be? Would that man leave the old boat and then come up here to the hotel and sit down for a concert?

She whispered to her friends and motioned for them to look at the man. “Is that the man we saw on the boat?”

Jonathan and Celia both stared at the back of the man’s head. Jonathan shrugged his shoulders and mouthed, “I don’t know.”

Celia shook her head.

Mandie couldn’t decide, but she continued to watch the man in case he turned around enough to see him full in the face.

Snowball didn’t like the loud music and wanted to move around in his mistress’ lap. When Mandie gave him a pat to sit still, he suddenly jumped down to the floor. Mandie quickly pulled on his leash. This time he didn’t manage to escape. She bent and picked him up and held him tight.

Then she remembered the man. She looked down the row and found he was gone. She glanced through the crowd and couldn’t see him. How did he get out of the room so fast? And why did he leave? Where did he go?

Mandie was furious with Snowball for causing her to lose sight of the man. There was no telling where he had gone.

CHAPTER SEVEN

TROUBLE!

As Mandie gazed about the room in search of the man who had been sitting at the far end of the row in front of her and her friends, the man on the stage was concluding the concert.

“Ladies and gentlemen, due to the indisposition of Aurelia, our soprano who was supposed to perform next, we are obliged to close the performance,” the man told the audience. “Because of an acute sore throat, Aurelia is unable to sing a note, but we hope she will be able to appear later this week. Thank you for coming. We appreciate your patronage.”

“Well, that leaves us free for a good long while before Grandmother and Senator Morton get back,” Mandie said to her friends as they all stood up.

“And I know how you want to spend the time,” Jonathan teased as they turned to leave the room.

Mandie smiled at him. “I’d like to walk around and look for that man who was sitting down the row. He just evaporated really. He was there one moment and the next he was gone.”

“I didn’t see him get up and leave,” Celia said as the three walked over to one side of the corridor to watch the audience coming out of the concert.

“Neither did I,” Jonathan said. “He certainly was fast, whatever way he went.”

“You see, that sounds like a thief. A thief would have to be fast,” Mandie told her friends. “So no one would notice him.”

“Or her,” Jonathan said, grinning. “No one knows whether the thief of that painting was a man or a woman because no one was there when it happened.”

“You’re right,” Celia agreed. “There are women thieves same as men.”

While they were talking they were watching the people mill about in the corridor. Mandie held Snowball in her arms.

“I suppose by the size of the painting and the height that it was hung, a woman could have stolen it. But I think it was a man, and I believe it was the one we saw here in the hotel,” Mandie insisted. “And I am going to keep looking until I find him.”

At that moment the manager came walking down the hallway, and when he saw Mandie and her friends, he stopped to speak to Jonathan.

“We were able to do an excellent cleaning of your wet clothes, and the maid has hung them in your wardrobe,” the tall gray-haired man said. His English had an accent. “We have a wire message at the desk for your Honorable Morton. We would be pleased you tell him.”

“A message for Senator Morton?” Jonathan questioned excitedly. “Sir, could I possibly see the message? Senator Morton will not return until after the noon meal, and the message may be urgent.”

“Of course. Follow me please,” the manager said, leading the way up the corridor and to the front reception room where the desk clerk was stationed.

The manager went behind the desk as the clerk looked at the young people. He took a paper from a pigeonhole and handed it to Jonathan. “Here is the message to which I refer.”

Jonathan took the paper, unfolded it, and read aloud: “ ‘Would be delighted to have Jonathan visit with us. However, we arrived home today and will be going on another assignment tomorrow. Please keep us in touch with your travel locations. Will inform you as soon as we know when we will be home to receive Jonathan. Soon we think....’ And it’s signed by my aunt.” He checked the paper over and then glanced at his friends.