Mandie Collection, The: 4 (63 page)

“What are you planning now, Grandmother?” Mandie eagerly asked as they all stood there.

Before she could answer, Jonathan spoke up. “Senator Morton, there’s a message to you from my aunt and uncle at the desk. It came this morning.”

“I’ll get it,” the senator said, going over to the desk clerk.

“Amanda, before we discuss any plans, let’s all get cleaned up and take a little walk before supper,” Mrs. Taft told her. “We’ve been cooped up all day without any exercise and all that food—I just couldn’t resist it.”

Senator Morton rejoined them with two pieces of paper in his hand. “I also received a wire from your father, Jonathan,” the senator said, extending a piece of paper to the boy. “Read it if you’d like.” Turning to Mrs. Taft he said, “His father would like him to travel on with us. He’s unable to catch up with us right now. And his aunt and uncle are going back out of town again.”

Jonathan read the message and handed it back to the senator. He tried not to look disappointed as he said, “He must have known we haven’t solved the mystery here yet and that Mandie would need my help.”

Mrs. Taft quickly looked at her granddaughter. “Amanda,” she said as she sank into a nearby chair, “what have y’all been up to while we were gone?”

Jonathan grimaced as he realized he had given away their secret. Mandie gave him an exasperated look.

“This man on the old boat down at the far end of the pier is in bad shape, Grandmother. He needs our help,” Mandie said as she leaned toward her grandmother. “The police caught the man who stole the paintings, but he escaped and has been going down to see the man on the boat—”

“Amanda! What on earth are you talking about?” Mrs. Taft interrupted impatiently. She looked at Uncle Ned and asked, “What have they been into now?”

The old Indian shook his head and looked at Mandie. “Papoose must tell you,” he said.

“All right, Amanda, let’s go on up to my room,” Mrs. Taft said, rising from the chair. She told the others, “We’ll meet here again in about thirty minutes, if that’s all right with y’all.”

The others agreed as they all went toward the elevator. Mandie carried her kitten.

Celia looked at Mandie and said, “I’ll take Snowball on up to our rooms for you. And I still have the newspaper.” She waved it at Mandie.

“Thanks, Celia,” Mandie said, handing Snowball to her.

As Mrs. Taft opened the door to her suite and Mandie followed her inside, Mandie was suddenly overcome with emotion. Mrs. Taft sat down nearby as she removed her hat. Mandie ran to kneel before her and hold her hands.

“Grandmother, I’m sorry for the way I’ve acted with you, the argument about my father. Please forgive me. I do really and truly love you,” Mandie said, tears flooding her blue eyes.

To her surprise Mrs. Taft pulled her up onto her lap and hugged her tight. As the lady spoke, Mandie noticed that her voice quivered. “Amanda, I was wrong, too. Please forgive me. I am awfully headstrong sometimes. That’s probably where you get your unpredictable impulses. I love you, too, dear, with all my heart.”

Mandie leaned back to smile at her grandmother and saw tears streaming down her cheeks. Reaching in her pocket Mandie pulled out her handkerchief and said, “Here, Grandmother, you first and then me.” Her voice shook. She reached up and dried her grandmother’s face and then wiped her own eyes.

Mrs. Taft gave her a little push off her lap. “I’m afraid you’ve got too big to hold like that,” she said with a little laugh.

“I know I have. I was about to fall off,” Mandie said with a grin. She sat on the carpet in front of her grandmother’s chair.

“Now that we’ve both forgiven each other, what was this about that man on the boat?” Mrs. Taft asked.

“His name is Alex. He needs our help, Grandmother,” Mandie said, and then she suddenly had a bright idea. “Grandmother, I know how you’ve helped a lot of people, like Violet and Lily on the ship, and Hilda back home, and all the others. Alex is all alone and has no one to help him, or love him. He lost his wife and his little girl in an accident on his boat during a bad storm, and he blames himself for it. And the man who’s been visiting him and taking him food was arrested by the police for stealing the paintings and—”

“Amanda, dear, please start at the beginning. You are not making any sense at all,” Mrs. Taft told her with a slight smile.

“Sorry, Grandmother,” Mandie said, and she related their entire
adventures. She wanted to wipe the slate clean between them, and she didn’t want to hold anything back.

Mrs. Taft listened with a frown and a gasp now and then. When Mandie finished she said, “Amanda, Uncle Ned is right. The stolen paintings are the police’s business. And if this man Alex is connected with that, then we need to ask the police to look into—”

“Excuse me, Grandmother, but—” Mandie interrupted.

Mrs. Taft interrupted her. “However, if the man is innocent of any wrongdoing, I’ll be glad to do whatever I can for him. But we must be sure he is not connected with the theft.”

Mandie sighed. “All right, Grandmother. But how are we going to do that?”

Mrs. Taft stood up, smiled, and said, “As you’re always saying, we’ll find a way. Now go get cleaned up so we won’t keep the others waiting.”

Mandie jumped to her feet, quickly planted a kiss on her grandmother’s cheek, and ran for the door. “I’ll be ready in five minutes. I love you.” She was out the door and gone before Mrs. Taft could reply.

Mandie felt lighthearted. She ran into the rooms she shared with Celia and found her friend already putting on clean clothes. Snowball was asleep on the bed.

“Grandmother is going to help us solve our mystery,” Mandie said in a singsong as she ran for the wardrobe to get a clean dress.

Celia whirled around and looked at her friend in surprise.

“Your grandmother? You told her everything?” Celia asked in disbelief.

Mandie smiled and said, “Yes, everything. And she’s going to help us find out whether Alex is a crook or not; and if he isn’t, then she’s going to help him.”

“Help him?” Celia asked.

“With all her money she could help lots and lots of people,” Mandie replied as she pulled off her dress.

“But, Mandie, it isn’t just money Alex needs,” Celia reminded her.

“I know, but Grandmother always thinks in terms of money. So we can let her supply the money and we’ll do the rest, like trying to help him overcome his guilt problem,” Mandie said, rushing into the bathroom to wash up.

When the girls were ready to leave the rooms, Mandie looked at Snowball fast asleep in the middle of her bed. He was probably worn out by all the activity that day.

“Are you taking Snowball?” Celia asked.

“I think I’ll take a chance and let him sleep, but I’ll move him into the bathroom and shut the door,” Mandie said, rushing to put a pillow on the bathroom floor and then returning to take him in there and place him on the pillow. Snowball didn’t even wake up all the way as she picked him up. He opened one blue eye, looked up at his mistress, and slept right on.

“He is tired. He didn’t even protest,” Mandie said as she closed the door.

The girls rushed downstairs to join the others and found they were the first ones there. They sat on a nearby settee, and Mandie glanced at the newspaper she had brought with her.

“This must be an awfully smart man to escape jail so soon after they arrested him,” Mandie remarked, looking at the photo on the front page. “But then I suppose thieves have to be smart like that.”

Jonathan came into the room. “We young ones sure do get around fast, don’t we?” He looked around at other guests of the hotel in the reception room.

“Not really fast. Here come Grandmother and Senator Morton and Uncle Ned now,” Mandie said with a grin.

Mrs. Taft spoke to Mandie. “Uncle Ned and Senator Morton and I have discussed things and have decided you young people should show the senator and me this room with the boxes and the old boat.” She smiled. “Now, let’s go.”

Mandie was surprised, but she smiled at her grandmother as she and her friends led the way. She held on to the newspaper.

When they reached the entrance to the tunnel, the young people paused for the older ones to catch up with them.

“The room with the boxes is in here,” Mandie explained as she opened the door and went inside.

They soon came to the room that opened into the one with the boxes. Mandie opened the first door and found the door to the inner room standing open. As she hurried to inspect the boxes, she could see that nothing had been disturbed. The small painting was still lying where the man had left it when they saw him in the room.

“You see all these rocks? They were packed in straw in the wooden boxes that we broke open there,” Mandie explained to her grandmother. “And this little painting was inside another box we opened.”

Mrs. Taft quickly looked at the painting. “This looks like an original, but I don’t see a signature on it anywhere.” She examined it closely.

“We couldn’t find one either,” Jonathan spoke up.

Mrs. Taft looked at the senator and asked, “Do you have a knife? I believe this frame has been put over the signature.”

Senator Morton didn’t have a knife but Uncle Ned did, and he carefully pried the corner of the frame loose. Mrs. Taft was right. There was a name on the corner of the painting.

“Moire? Hmmm, I don’t recognize that name as belonging to any artist I’ve ever heard of, but then I haven’t heard of all the artists whose works are worth money,” Mrs. Taft said as she touched the signature with her finger.

“Neither have I,” Senator Morton agreed as he took the painting and inspected it. Then he pushed the frame back together and laid the painting down where they had found it.

“All right now, let’s go on,” Mrs. Taft told the young people.

Mandie led the way to the old boat. She was secretly wondering how her grandmother could ever get up the rope ladders and onto the boat. But as the pier came in sight, she knew that problem was solved. Alex was walking down the pier toward the street.

“There’s Alex!” she said excitedly, pointing to the man in the distance.

“I wonder what made him leave his boat,” Jonathan remarked as they walked on.

Mandie watched as they came closer. She saw Alex come to the end of the pier and then walk to his left. She knew there was a small park in that direction and she figured that was where he was headed. And she was right. He stepped off the street into the grassy section and sat down on a nearby bench.

Mandie dropped back to speak to her grandmother. “Look, that man on the bench over there. That’s Alex. Something has caused him to leave the boat,” she said excitedly.

“Then we’ll go talk to him in the park,” Mrs. Taft said, heading in that direction.

When they approached the man, the adults stayed back until the young people had made him aware of their presence.

“Mister Alex, I’m so glad you came out for a walk,” Mandie said as she advanced toward him. Jonathan and Celia stayed right behind her.

Alex looked surprised and at a loss for words for a moment. Then he asked, “Where is that white kitten?”

“Oh, Snowball was so tired and sleepy, we left him back at the hotel,” Mandie explained as she and her friends came closer.

“And what be you wanting this time?” Alex asked as he glanced back and saw the adults coming in his direction.

Mandie held out the newspaper and said, “I wanted you to see this newspaper, for one thing. That’s your friend’s picture on the front page and—”

Alex took the paper, looked at it, and immediately said in a loud voice, “That is not my friend! Once and for all, that is not my friend!” He threw the paper at Mandie.

“That’s the same man who comes to see you on the boat,” Mandie insisted as she picked up the newspaper.

The adults had stopped to listen. And suddenly Mandie was aware of a policeman standing nearby. She had not seen him come up.

“Is something wrong?” the policeman asked Mandie.

Mandie held the newspaper out to him. “This man on the front page comes to visit this man called Alex here on his boat down there. We’ve seen him several times.”

“We have arrested that man for stealing paintings,” the policeman told her. He looked at Alex. “I do not know anything about this man on the bench.”

“They are friends. When this man you arrested escaped, he came to Alex’s boat. We saw him,” Mandie insisted.

The policeman looked at her in surprise. “The man in the paper there whom we arrested is still in jail. I just left him after an hour of interrogation. He will not tell us what he has done with the paintings, but he is still in jail.”

Mandie and her friends looked at one another, puzzled.

“Well?” she said.

Suddenly Alex stood up. They turned to look at him. The short dark man who had visited him was approaching from the street.

Mandie thought,
Uh-huh, we’ll prove to the policeman that the dark man coming here is the same one
. The officer was also watching the man as he drew nearer.

The short dark man ignored them and went straight to Alex and put an arm around his shoulders. “Oh, Alex, this is in answer to my prayers, to see you out like this.” He sat down as Alex did.

Mandie shook the newspaper at the policeman and said, “You see that man there? He’s the same one whose picture is in the newspaper. Look!”

The policeman glanced at the paper and then at the dark man.

“Miss, you would never make a policeman. Don’t you see the different hairline on this man and the one in the paper? His ears stick out,” he explained to the young people.

The three moved nearer to examine their suspect on the bench. He smiled up at them.

“I am glad to see you again,” the man said. “And isn’t it wonderful that the Lord has spoken to Alex and caused him to come off that wrecked boat?”

“What an incorrect statement, my friend,” Alex said. “It was the beautiful young lady there with the blond hair and blue, blue eyes who persuaded me to reassess my guilt.” He smiled at Mandie.

Mandie gasped. “You mean what I said helped you? Oh, it’s almost too good to believe!” She smiled at him as tears of joy filled her eyes.