The Penny Parker Megapack: 15 Complete Novels (228 page)

“Lorinda might have crept close to the cottage and whispered the warning,” Penny said thoughtfully,“but I doubt it very much.”

“Lorinda?”

“Mrs. Rhett’s daughter. She tried to prevent me investigating the cottage before you arrived.”

“Then she may have followed us here.”

“The whispering voice didn’t sound like hers,”Penny insisted. “No, I can’t believe it was Lorinda.”

Salt started back toward the cottage. “Whoever it was, let’s not be bluffed out, Penny. We’ll see what’s inside the wooden chest.”

The cottage door was closed. To the photographer’s annoyance, it refused to open even when he thrust his weight against it.

“Now what?” he demanded. “Did you close the door when you came out, Penny?”

“Not that I recall. The wind must have blown it shut.”

“Wind? What wind? Look at the trees.”

Scarcely a leaf was stirring.

“Then I’m afraid it must have been the jungle ghost,” Penny said with a nervous giggle. She glanced at her wrist watch. “Salt, it’s getting late. We must go.”

“Not yet,” retorted Salt grimly.

Again he circled the thatched cottage, with Penny tagging none too happily at his heels. As they saw the window, they both paused.

“Why, it’s closed now!” Penny gasped. “How did we leave it?”

“Open. The cottage door may have blown shut by itself and locked with a spring catch, but this window is a horse of a different color. It couldn’t have closed by itself.”

“Who could have lowered it? How was it done without our knowledge?”

Salt had no explanation. Lifting Penny so that she could peer inside the room again, he asked her what she could see.

“Not a sign of anyone. But it’s so dark—”

“See anything now?” Salt demanded impatiently as her voice trailed off.

“The cocoanut shell lamp! It’s no longer burning!”

“Sure?”

“I couldn’t see better if I wore bifocals! The room is dark.”

“An experience like this shouldn’t happen to a dog,” muttered Salt. “We’ll find out what’s behind it! Raise the window and in we go.”

Penny tugged at the sill. “Locked,” she reported. “From the inside.”

Disgusted, Salt allowed her to drop lightly to the ground. “Wait until I find a rock,” he instructed. “We’ll get in!”

Penny caught his arm. “No, Salt! We’ve already overstepped our rights. We mustn’t damage the Rhett property.”

“Well, someone is making a monkey of us,” the photographer grumbled. “It burns me up!”

“There’s more to it than meets the eyes, Salt. Even the atmosphere of this place is sinister.”

“You say that, and yet you’re willing to turn your back on an unsolved mystery? How times have changed!”

“Well—” Penny wavered, for it was true she loved mystery and adventure. But she finished in a firm voice: “We were sent here to get a story and picture for the
Star
! We’ll miss the Green Streak edition if we don’t get back to the office
pronto
.”

She thrust her wrist watch beneath Salt’s nose. He looked at the moving hands and muttered: “Jeepers! We’ve got just thirty-five minutes to catch our deadline! Let’s go!”

Hurriedly, they went up the path toward the mansion and the road. As they approached the house, the rear door swung open and Lorinda came out on the flagstone terrace.

“There she is now!” Penny murmured in an undertone. “I don’t believe she could have been the one who whispered the warning at the cottage! It must have been someone else.”

“Is she the Rhett girl?” Salt demanded, starting to adjust his camera. “Maybe I can get a shot of her after all.”

Lorinda came directly toward the pair, but she raised a hand squarely in front of her face as she saw that Salt meant to take her picture.

“Please don’t!” she pleaded. “I can’t pose. I only came to ask you to leave. Mother is so upset. The telephone is ringing constantly, and we expect the police any minute.”

Lorinda obviously was on the verge of tears. Salt lowered his camera.

“I do want to help you,” Lorinda hastened on. “That’s why I am giving you this. Mother doesn’t know about it, and she will be furious.”

Into Penny’s hand, she thrust a small but clear photograph of a middle-aged man who wore glasses. His left cheek was marred by a jagged though not particularly disfiguring scar.

“Your stepfather!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, this is the only picture we have of him. He never liked to have his photograph taken. If you use it, please take good care of the original and see that we get it back.”

“Oh, we will!” Penny promised. “This photograph should help in tracing Mr. Rhett.”

“Please go now,” Lorinda urged again. She glanced uneasily down the path toward the thatched-roof cottage, but if she knew what had transpired there, she gave no sign.

Elated to have obtained the photograph, Penny and Salt hastened on to the parked press car. Starting the car with a jerk, Salt followed the winding river road.

Penny cast a glance over her shoulder. Through the trees she could see only the roof-top of the thatched cottage in the clearing.

The estate was bounded by a wooden rail fence, in many places fortified with dense, tall shrubbery. The fall weather had tinted many of the bushes scarlet, yellow or bronze. Gazing toward a patch of particularly brilliant-colored leaves, Penny detected movement behind them.

For a fleeting instant she thought she had seen a large, shaggy dog. Then she became certain it was a man who crouched behind the screen of leaves.

“Salt!” she exclaimed sharply. “Look at those bushes!”

The photographer slowed the car, turning his head.

“What about ’em, Penny?”

“Someone is hiding there behind the fence! Perhaps it’s the person who whispered a warning at the thatched cottage!”

“Oh, it’s just a shadow,” Salt began, only to change his mind. “You’re right! Someone is crouching there!”

So suddenly that Penny was thrown sideways, the photographer swerved the car to the curb. He swung the door open.

“What are you going to do?” Penny demanded.

The photographer did not take time to reply. Already he was out of the car, running toward the hedge.

CHAPTER 9

JERRY ENTERS THE CASE

As Salt ran toward him, the man who crouched behind the bushes began to move stealthily away. From the car Penny could not see his face which was screened by dense foliage.

“Salt, he’s getting away!” she shouted.

Salt climbed over the fence. His clothing got snagged and by the time he had freed himself and struggled through a tangle of vines and bushes, the man he pursued had completely disappeared.

“Which way did he go, Penny?” he called.

“I lost sight of him after he ducked into a clump of shrubbery,” she replied regretfully. “It’s useless to try to find him now.”

Salt came back to the car, and starting the engine, drove on.

“You didn’t see who it was?” Penny asked hopefully.

“No, I think it was a man. Maybe the Rhett’s gardener or a tramp.”

“Whoever it was, I’m sure he stood there watching us drive away from the grounds,” Penny declared.

Until the car was far down the street, she alertly watched the Rhett grounds. However, the one who had crouched by the fence now was well hidden and on guard. Not a movement of the bushes betrayed his presence.

As the Rhett mansion was lost completely from view, Penny’s thoughts came back to the story which she must write. Nervously she glanced at her wrist watch.

“What’s the bad news?” Salt asked, stepping hard on the gasoline pedal.

“Twenty-five minutes until deadline. Can you make it?”

Salt’s lips compressed into a grim line and he concentrated on his driving, avoiding heavy traffic and red lights as they approached the center of town.

They came at last to the big stone building downtown which housed the
Riverview Star
. As Salt pulled up at the curb, Penny leaped out and ran inside. Without waiting for an elevator, she darted up the stairs to the busy newsroom.

Editor DeWitt was talking on a telephone, and, all about him, reporters were tapping typewriters at a furious pace.

Editor DeWitt held his hand over the phone mouthpiece and fixed Penny with a gloomy eye. “Time you got here,” he observed. “Anything new? Did you get the pictures?”

Penny produced the photograph of Mr. Rhett which the editor studied an instant, then tossed to his assistant, with a terse: “Make it a one column—rush!”

Knowing that with a deadline practically at hand Mr. DeWitt was in no mood for a lengthy tale, Penny told him only such facts as were pertinent to Mr. Rhett’s disappearance.

“So the family won’t talk?” DeWitt growled. “Well, play up that angle. We’ve already set up everything you gave us over the phone. Make this an add and get it right out.”

Penny nodded and slid into a chair behind the nearest typewriter. An “add” she knew, was an addition to a story already set up in type. It was easier to write than a “lead” which contained the main facts of all that had happened, but even so, she would be hard pressed to make the deadline.

For a moment she concentrated, but the noises of the room distracted her somewhat. Editor DeWitt was barking into the telephone again; a reporter on her left side was clicking a pencil against the desk; the short-wave radio blared a police call; and across the room someone bellowed: “Copy boy!”

Then Penny began to write, and the noises blanked out, until she was aware only of the moving ribbon of words on the copy paper. She had written perhaps four paragraphs when DeWitt ordered tersely: “Give me a take.”

Without looking up, Penny nodded, wrote a few more words, then jerked the copy from her machine. A boy snatched it from her hand and carried it to DeWitt, who read it rapidly. Pencilling a few minor corrections, he shot it to the copy desk.

Meanwhile, with another sheet of paper rolled in her machine, Penny was grinding out more of the story. Words flowed easily now, and she scarcely paused to think.

DeWitt called for more copy. Again she ripped it from the roller and gave it to the boy.

After the third “take,” DeWitt called: “That’s enough. Make her ‘30.’”

Penny understood the term. It signified the end of the story, and usually when reporters had completed an article, they wrote the figure at the bottom of the copy sheet.

Finishing the sentence she had started, she gave the last of her story to the boy, and settling back, took a deep breath. DeWitt’s chair was empty. He had gone to the composing room, leaving his assistant to handle the final copy that came through before the presses rolled.

Penny knew that the last page she had written probably would not make the edition, but it did not matter. She had crammed all the important and most interesting of her information into the first part of the story. In any event, everything she had written would be used in the second edition, the Three Star, which followed the Green Streak by two hours. The final edition rolled from the presses later in the evening and was known as the Blue Streak.

A well-built, good looking reporter with a pencil tucked behind one ear, walked over to the desk.

“Big day, Penny?” he inquired affectionately.

Jerry Livingston, who rated as the
Star
’s best reporter, also stood at the very top of Penny’s long list of friends.

With Jerry, Penny always felt comfortable and at ease. Now she found herself telling him about the Rhett case, omitting few details of what had occurred in the thatched roof cottage. It took longer to relate all the events than Penny realized, for, before she had finished the story, the Green Streak edition was up, and a boy was distributing papers about the office. Penny reached eagerly for one, noting instantly that her article appeared in good position on the front page.

“Wonder who wrote the lead?” she asked. “You, Jerry?”

“Guilty,” he laughed. “Any mistakes?”

Penny could find none. It was a perfect rewrite, based upon facts she had telephoned to the office after leaving the bank. The story had a professional swing she could not have achieved. Her own “add” went into it very smoothly, however, so that few persons reading the account ever would guess two reporters had contributed to the writing.

Mr. DeWitt had returned from the composing room, and with a relaxed air settled down to enjoy a cigarette. Now that the edition was rolling off the press, he no longer seemed nervous or irritable.

Presently he waved his hand toward Penny who went over to see what he wanted.

“This Rhett story is likely to develop into something,” he said. “I’ll want double coverage, so I’m assigning Jerry to help you. He’ll handle the police angle.”

Penny nodded, secretly glad it was Jerry who had been directed to help her instead of another reporter. Police work, particularly the checking of routine reports, was vitally important but uninteresting. She was pleased to escape it.