CHAPTER XXI
A GREAT TO-DO
"Chapman! Stop!" shouted Jessie. "We must tell them!"
The chauffeur wheeled the car in toward the curb and stopped asquickly as he could. But it was some distance past the church and theparsonage.
The girls jumped out and ran back. They saw Dr. Stanley come out onthe porch from his study. He was in his house gown and wore a littleblack cap to cover his bald spot. It was a little on one side and gavethe good clergyman a decidedly rakish appearance.
"Come in here, children! Hurry! It is going to rain," he called in hisfull and mellow voice.
"Oh, Doctor! Doctor!" Jessie gasped. "The fire! The fire!"
"Why, you are not wet. Here come the first drops. You don't need afire."
"Nor you don't need one, Doctor," and Amy began to laugh. "But you'vegot one just the same."
"In the kitchen stove. Is it a joke or a conundrum?" asked thesmiling minister, as the two chums came up under the porch roof justas the first big drops came thudding down.
"Upstairs! The radio!" declared the earnest Jessie. "Don't you knowit's afire?"
"The radio afire?"
"The lightning struck it. Didn't you feel and hear it? The boys musthave left the switch to the receiver open, and the lightning cameright in----"
"Come on!" broke in Amy, who knew the way about the parsonage as wellas she did about her own house. "We saw the smoke pouring out of thewindow," and she darted in and started up the front stairway.
"Why, why!" gasped the good doctor. "I can hardly believe Nell wouldbe so careless."
"Oh, it isn't Nell," Jessie said, following her chum. "It is theboys."
"But she always knows what the boys are up to, and Sally, too,"declared the minister, confident of his capable daughter's oversightof the family.
The girls raced up the two flights. They smelled the smoke strongly asthey mounted the second stairway to the garret. Then they heardvoices.
"They've got it right in the old lumber room, Jess!" panted Amy.
"But why don't they give the alarm?"
"Trying to put it out themselves. We ought to have brought buckets!"
"There is no water on this floor!"
Amy banged open the door of the big room in which they knew, by thearrangement of the outside wires, Bob and Fred must have set up theradio set. Amy plunged in, with Jessie right behind her. The room wasunpleasantly filled with smoke.
"Why don't you put it out?" shrieked Amy, and then began to cough.
"Hullo!" Bob Stanley exclaimed out of the smother. "We want to put itin, not out. Hullo, Jess. You here, too?"
"The fire! The smoke!" gasped Jessie.
"Shucks," said Fred, who was down on his knees poking at something."We can't have the windows open, for the rain is beating this way.We've got to solder this thing. Did you have trouble with yours,Jess?"
"Sweetness and daylight!" groaned a voice behind them.
Dr. Stanley stood in the doorway. He was a heavy man, and mounting thestairs at such a pace tried his temper as well as his wind.
"Is _this_ what started you girls off at such a tearing pace? Why, theboys borrowed that soldering outfit from the plumber. It's allright."
"I am so sorry we annoyed you," said Jessie, contritely.
But Amy had begun to laugh and could say nothing. Only waved her handsweakly and looked at the clergyman, whose cap was much more over hisear than before.
"Right in the middle of Sunday's sermon, young ladies," said theminister, with apparent sternness. "If that sermon is a failure, Amyand Jessie, I shall call on one of you girls--perhaps both of you--tostep up into the pulpit and take my place. Remember that, now!" and hemarched away in apparent dudgeon; but they heard him singing "OnwardChristian Soldiers" before he got to the bottom of the upper flight ofstairs.
"But it certainly was a great to-do," murmured Jessie, as she tried tosee what the boys were doing.
She was able to advise them after a minute. But Amy insisted uponopening one of the windows and so getting more of the smoke out of thelong room.
"You boys don't even know how to make a fire in a fire-pot withoutcreating a disturbance," she said.
Nell came up from the kitchen where she had been consulting the cookabout the meals, and Sally came tagging after her; of course, with acookie in one hand and a rag doll in the other.
"This Sally is nothing but a yawning cavity walking on hollow stilts,"declared Nell, who "fussed" good-naturedly, just as her father did."She is constantly begging from the cook between meals, and her eyesare the biggest things about her when she comes to the table."
"Ain't," said Sally, shaking her curls in denial.
"Ain't what?" asked Jessie.
"Ain't--ain't _if you please_," declared the little girl, revealingthe fact that her sister had tried to train her in politeness.
When the girls stopped laughing--and Sally had finished thecookie--Nell added:
"Aunt Freda came last night to dinner and we had strawberry fool. Cookmakes a delicious one. And Sally could eat her weight of thatdelicacy. When I came to serve the dessert Sally was watching me withher eagle eye and her mouth watering. I spooned out an ordinarydishful, and Sally whispered:
"'Oh, sister! is _that_ all I get?'
"So I told her it was for Aunt Freda, and she gasped:
"'What! All _that_?'"
The boys got the thing they wanted soldered completed about this time,and Bob ran down the back way with the fire-pot. The rain began tolift. As Nell cheerfully said, a patch of blue sky soon appeared inthe west big enough to make a Scotchman a kilt, so they could be surethat it would clear.
Jessie and Amy walked home after seeing the Stanley boys' radio setcompleted. Their minds then naturally reverted to the adventures ofthe morning and what they had heard so mysteriously out of the etherthe evening before. Jessie had warned her chum to say nothing toanybody about the mysterious prisoner and the stock farm over byHarrimay or of their suspicions until she had talked again with Mr.Norwood.
Momsy came home that afternoon from Aunt Ann's, but Mr. Norwood didnot appear. The Court was sitting, and he had several cases whichneeded his entire attention. He often remained away from home severaldays in succession at such times.
"And one of the most important cases is that one he told us about,"Momsy explained. "He is greatly worried about that. If he cannot findthat girl who lived with Mrs. Poole----"
"Oh, Momsy!" exclaimed Jessie, "let us find Daddy and tell him aboutwhat Amy and I heard over the radio. I believe we learned somethingabout Bertha Blair, only we could not find her this morning."
She proceeded to explain the adventure which included the automobiletrip to Harrimay and the Gandy farm. Momsy became excited. It did notreally seem to her to be so; but she agreed that Daddy Norwood oughtto hear about it.
When they tried to get him on the long distance telephone, however,the Court had closed for the day and so had the Norwood law office. Hewas not at his club, and Momsy did not know at which hotel he was tospend the night. There really seemed to be nothing more Jessie coulddo about the lost witness. And yet she feared that this delay ingetting her father's attention would be irreparable.