Bertha Angel agreed with her emphatically: “Of course we did, little one, and we intend to keep it up. Being sleuths won’t in any way keep us from doing good deeds.”
“But what is there to be sleuthing about in this sleepy little town of Sunnyside?” Geraldine wanted to know. “And why do you want to do it if there is?”
“O, we don’t really,” Rose told her. “It’s sort of like taking a dare. The boys have a club which they call ‘C. D. C.,’ and they’re terribly secret about it. They have a mysterious meeting-place, and since we girls aren’t allowed to roam about nights unless our brothers are along to protect us, we never can find out where they meet. We sort of thought it might be in the old Walsley ruin on the East Lake Road. That’s why we asked them to take us there Saturday after that robbery. We thought if that was their secret meeting-place, they would have it fitted up like a clubroom some way, and then of course they wouldn’t want us to visit it. But when they said ‘sure thing,’ they’d take us if we wanted to go, why then we were convinced that’s not where they hold their secret meetings.”
Peggy interrupted with: “Maybe you were convinced, old dear, but I was not. You say we can’t go up the East Lake Road at night when the boys hold their meetings. Of course we can’t, but what’s to hinder us from going up there alone some time in the daylight. If that old man who killed himself haunts the place at all, it wouldn’t be while the sun is shining.”
“Ugh!” Gerry said with a shudder. “Now I believe you are sleuths. Wanting to visit a haunted house! But tell me, what kind of a club is the ‘C. D. C.’?”
“It’s a detective club, and we, that is, Merry, figured out, by putting two and two together, that it means ‘Conan Doyle Club.’ Jack shut her in a closet one day, and before she could let him know she was there, she heard enough to know that he and his friends have tried to find some mystery to solve in Sunnyside, and have decided that there isn’t one, and so they take turns making up mysteries. They read them at these secret meetings and let the others try to figure out clues.”
“Is that why you girls started to be sleuths?” Gerry wanted to know.
Bertha nodded. “Merry heard one of the boys say that an uncle of his in New York, who is a lawyer, had written about a famous girl detective, and the others scoffed at the very idea. They said they couldn’t imagine girls ever solving a mystery, not if they were all like girls in Sunnyside. So, you see, that was sort of a dare, and we made up our mind we would find a mystery and solve it, and then crow about it; but the joke is, we haven’t found a mystery!”
Merry continued with: “Peggy and Doris were a committee of two to find one, and they were to make their report last Saturday, but——”
“But nothing,” Peg interrupted, “you know we were so busy planning that impromptu skating party out at the Drexel Lodge we didn’t have time to call a meeting.”