GRANDDAUGHTER COMES UP MISSING WITH VALUABLE BONDS
Aged Relative in Hospital With Head Wound
Well, our hearts were in our throats, sort of, as we read the astonishing newspaper article. Steven Garber, the article stated, a retired banker, had been mysteriously assaulted in his summer home near Ashton, Illinois. The [[134]]gardener, summoned to the house in the middle of the night by the aged man’s granddaughter, had found his employer in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor, near to death from a vicious head wound. It was known that the attacked financier had been keeping a large sum in Liberty Bonds in the house, and as the bonds had disappeared it was the theory of the police that the valuable certificates had been stolen by the granddaughter, Elizabeth Garber, who was being sought in the belief that she held the key to the mystery of the attempted murder. It was the twelve-year-old granddaughter who had awakened the gardener in his sleeping quarters in a detached garage, begging him to go immediately to the house, where, so he was told, he was needed by his employer. It was upon the gardener’s entrance into the house a few minutes later that the unconscious form on the kitchen floor had been discovered. The granddaughter, carrying a brass box in which it was believed that she had placed the missing Liberty Bonds, had escaped in the night in a rowboat. The police were bending every effort to apprehend her. In the meantime the assaulted grandparent was being cared for in the Ashton hospital. The man’s head wound, the article concluded, was not essentially serious. [[135]]
Having read the article to its completion, we stared at one another in amazement. We knew, of course, who had struck the blow that had sent the grandfather to the floor unconscious. Without a doubt it was the rascally brother. Yet no mention of the brother and his warty-nosed companion was given in the article. It would almost seem that aside from us and the girl and the unconscious man in the hospital that no one knew that the two men had been in the house.
“What are we going to do?” Peg cried, bewildered.
“I think we ought to go back to the island,” Scoop said, as dizzy looking as the other. “The girl should be told of what has happened to her grandfather. Otherwise she may wait at the island for him for several days. Besides, the bonds are in danger. She’ll need our help to get them safely into a bank.”
The danger to the bonds, the leader then explained, lay in the possibility of the rascally uncle getting to the island ahead of us. No doubt the evil-minded one had found out about the bonds before he had struck his brother down; he might even have compelled the helpless brother to disclose the vanished granddaughter’s intended destination. [[136]]
Yes, it was to be a race to see who could get to the island first—and we thrilled in the thought of the probable adventure that lay ahead of us. If we could get our hands on the brass box, we were confident that we would be able to keep any one from getting it away from us. Our great fear lay in the thought that we would get to the island too late.
In the time that we had been excitedly talking back and forth, a uniformed policeman had come onto the canal bridge, stopping to give us a curious questioning eye. Of course he didn’t know our secret, else he would have straightway arrested us. At least that was our frightened thought. And fearful that we might be questioned, we quickly loosened the boat’s tie rope and cranked the engine.
Backing up until we came to a small wide waters on the edge of the town, we turned the scow around, then headed for the island under an open throttle. [[137]]