Sometime during the night Onoway House was wakened by the sounds of a terrific thunder storm. The girls flew around shutting windows. After a few minutes of driving rain against the window panes the sound changed. It became a sharp clattering. “Hail!” said Sahwah.
“Oh, my young plants!” cried Migwan. “They will be pounded to pieces.”
“Cover them with sheets and blankets!” suggested Nyoda. With their accustomed swiftness of action the Winnebagos snatched up everything in the house that was available for the purpose and ran out into the garden, and spread the covers over the beds in a manner which would keep the tender young plants from being pounded to pieces by the hailstones. Migwan herself ran down to the farthest bed, which was somewhat separated from the others. As she raced to save it from destruction she suddenly ran squarely into someone who was standing in the garden. She had only time to see that it was a man, when, with a muffled exclamation of alarm he disappeared into space. Disappeared is the only word for it. He did not run, he never reached the cover of the bushes; he simply vanished off the face of the earth. One moment he was and the next moment he was not. Much excited, Migwan ran back to the others and told her story, only to be laughed at and told she was seeing things and had lurking men on the brain. The thing was so queer and uncanny that she began to wonder herself if she had been fully awake at the time, and if she might not possibly have dreamed the whole thing.
The morning dawned fresh and fair after the shower, green and gold with the sun on the garden, and Migwan’s delight at finding the tender little plants unharmed, thanks to their timely covering, was inclined to thrust the mysterious goings-on at the empty house the night before into secondary place in her mind. But she was not allowed to forget it, for it was the sole topic of conversation at the breakfast table. Gladys, with her nose buried in the morning paper, suddenly looked up. “Listen to this,” she said, and then began to read: “Another dynamite plot unearthed. Society for the purpose of assassinating men prominent in affairs and dynamiting large buildings discovered in attempt to blow up the Court House. An attempt to blow up the new Court House was frustrated yesterday when George Brown, one of the custodians, saw a man crouching in the engine room and ordered him out. A search revealed the fact that dynamite had been placed on the floor and attached to a fuse. On being arrested the man confessed that he was a member of the famous Venoti gang, operating in the various large cities. The man is being held without bail, but the head of the gang, Dante Venoti, is still at large, and so is his wife, Bella, who aids him in all his activities. No clue to their whereabouts can be found.”
“Do you suppose,” said Gladys, laying the paper down, “that those men we saw last night could belong to that gang? You remember how carefully they carried the keg into the house, as if it contained some explosive. They couldn’t have any business there or they wouldn’t have come at night. And they called the woman in the boat ‘Belle,’ or it might have been ‘Bella.’”
“And that man in the boat was the same one who came here and used the telephone yesterday morning,” said Migwan. “I couldn’t help noticing his foreign accent. He said, ‘We are going to do it on the Centerville Road. There is a river near.’ What are they going to do on the Centerville Road?”
The garden work was neglected while the girls discussed the matter. “And the man we saw coming out of the barn when we came home,” said Sahwah, “he probably had something to do with it, too.”
“And the man I saw in the garden in the middle of the night,” said Migwan.
“If you did see a man,” said Nyoda, somewhat doubtfully. Migwan did not insist upon her story. What was the use, when she had no proof, and the thing had been so uncanny?
They were all moved to real grief over the fact that the delightful Miss Mortimer should have a hand in such a dark business—in fact, was undoubtedly the famous Bella Venoti herself. “I can’t believe it,” said Migwan, “she was so jolly and friendly, and was so charmed with Onoway House.”