The Vanishing Comrade: A Mystery Story for Girls

by Ethel Cook Eliot

Elsie’s father was a thief! How would it feel to have your father a thief and in prison and everybody knowing it? Kate had never known a father, so she found it difficult to put herself in Elsie’s place. But suppose it were her mother? Oh, supposing that was too painful, and certainly it wasn’t like that for Elsie. Perhaps Elsie cared as little for her father as she had for her mother. (Kate had never recovered from the horrid shock of that disclosure.) She certainly never mentioned him. But she was not allowed to mention him. What had Aunt Katherine’s letter said on that point? “Nick’s name is not mentioned here, either by Elsie or the servants,”—something like that. But imagine consenting to forget your father for any one! No, of course Elsie had no such devotion for her father as Kate’s for her mother. Not likely. No use to try to compare, then. Besides, the mere notion was altogether too painful.

Let’s begin at the beginning, though. Why had Elsie bought bread and eggs and lettuce and nuts which she surely had no use for herself; and why had she been so urgent that Kate should buy more to-day? Surely she didn’t expect to take such perishable things with her in her flight from Aunt Katherine’s house! There had been no sign of eatables when Kate unpacked the runaway’s suitcase last night. Oh! An idea! Had Elsie planned to run away only as far as the orchard house, and was the food supply stored there? Was that the mystery about the orchard house? Had she discovered a secret room or something and was planning to live in it like a hermit without any one’s knowing? Kate built up quite a plot around that idea. It would be exciting and fascinating to live right under your guardian’s nose while that guardian was scouring the country for you. But in spite of the possibilities of this story-like mystery, Kate finally let it go as an explanation. It was too far-fetched.

A better solution! Had Nick, her father, escaped from prison? Elsie was shielding him, perhaps. Why, of course, she was hiding him in the orchard house. Kate’s heart began to hammer. Stupid, not to have thought of that at once, just the minute Jack told her about Elsie’s father being a thief. All the food had been for him. The book she couldn’t afford to buy, too! She had wanted it for him. How very simple it all was! And they were going to escape together. They would escape into Canada or somewhere. No, vague memories of something called “extradition papers” came to mind. They would simply hide themselves in the crowds of some big city. They would vanish. Oh, well, from the very first Elsie had been a vanishing comrade. When she ran away with her father she would vanish for good.

Now, how did the detective work into this solution of the puzzle? Suddenly there was a snag. If Nick had escaped from prison, wouldn’t state detectives be on his trail? Mr. O’Brien, Aunt Katherine had told her, was a private detective. And if Nick had really escaped from prison surely Aunt Katherine would not in any way be concerned in finding him. That would be simply a matter for the police.

Kate turned her eyes uneasily to the open door, almost expecting to see a plain-clothes man spying upon her from the rain out there. But there was only the drenched garden and beyond, the orchard, wreathed in a haze of wet weather.

One more snag: surely if Nick had escaped from prison it would have got into the papers, and someone in Oakdale have seen it. Then Jack would know, and he had not even hinted at such a thing.

But now for the most important consideration of all: the stranger in the garden who had given her the note for Elsie last night? Who was he, and where did he come in? The reasonable answer was that he was Nick himself, Elsie’s father, the thief, the man who had stolen from his own benefactress. But Kate did not harbour this idea for the fraction of a second. That voice was not the voice of such a one, and such a one would hardly be quoting from “The King of the Fairies.”

Deep down in her heart, deep beyond reason, Kate had connected that stranger in the garden with what Elsie had said about fairies in the orchard house. This man himself, who had given her the note, was a human being, of course, She didn’t go so far as to think him unearthly; but he might very well know about those fairies who “were in it somehow.” He seemed a person who would indeed be likely to know. Kate was ready to connect that stranger with any mystery so long as it was a pleasant mystery. With an unpleasant mystery—never. His note had told Elsie not to run away; Elsie herself had said so. But he had known that she meant to run away. That was apparent. Where had he come from out of the wind last night?

What of that light she had seen in the orchard house her first night here? Those three open windows? That closing door in the second story—closing as though a knob had been turned?

Oh, there were just too many things to think of and to fit in. The shortest cut to clearing up some of the mystery and giving her mother a starting point to work from with Elsie when she should get here at five o’clock to-night was to explore the orchard house now, right away. There was her heart whacking at her sides again! Yes, but she must do it, escaped convict or not. That was the first step to be taken. She had the end of the string—Jack Denton had given her that—the orchard house came next, made the first knot to be untangled.