“Why, I seem to have a real talent for stirring up criminal cases,” Mary Louise admitted, “but not for unraveling mysteries.”
“The reason we’re not all better detectives,” commented Bill Crocker, “is that we lose too much valuable time. Let us get busy on the case before us. First, I want to see the old stables—lately used as the garage.”
“This seems like doubling on our tracks,” retorted Josie; “we all know this place so well. But as you insist on crowding yourself into this gang of investigators, we’ll make a brief survey of the premises so you may know the exact situation as well as the rest of us.”
CHAPTER X
MARY LOUISE MAKES A DISCOVERY
That night the air seemed breathless. A storm was threatening, and by eleven o’clock the wind had risen from a gentle sigh to quite a steady roar and was sending great dark clouds scudding across the full golden face of the moon.
Mary Louise felt breathless too, and was strangely unquiet. A storm was brewing in the very heart of her, and she could not understand just why. All she knew was that there was no use trying to sleep as yet. She simply had to think. So, pulling a silken sweater of a soft rose color over her light dinner frock, she dragged her great wicker chair before the window and curled up therein.
All her being was crying out in rebellion at the thought that Danny, her kind, candid, cheery Danny Dexter, could be a forger. As if she were in his presence, she could see the honest, straight-forward glance of his clear, blue eyes, and as she lay in her big chair in her darkened room and watched the wind play havoc in the garden, she suddenly realized that she had at times believed that there was something deeper in his eyes when they rested upon her.
This idea strangely disquieted Mary Louise. She made a remarkably lovely picture as the moon shone full upon her in one of its fleeting moments of freedom. The wind had loosened her soft dark hair and had flung it in little tendrils about her flushed young face, and her lips were parted in the eager recognition of a fact that had suddenly come to her. She knew she believed in and trusted Danny Dexter!
“Oh, what can I do?” she moaned. “Danny, I know you’ve done nothing wrong, but how can I make the others understand? And how can I ask Josie to hunt for someone else; she will hunt down one clue until she knows about it. Oh, dear me!”