The following day dawned bright and clear and brought a revival of spirit at the Downey lodge. Nevertheless, with the roads open once more, both Francine and Mr. Glasser moved their belongings down to the Fergus hotel. As was to be expected, their departure caused a certain amount of comment by the other guests.
Late in the afternoon Penny offered to ski down to Pine Top for the newspapers. She planned to stop at the Fergus hotel upon her return, hoping to learn a little more about the mysterious Green Room which had intrigued her interest.
Reaching the village, Penny located Benny Smith, but the lad shook his head when she inquired for the daily papers.
“I don’t have any today.”
“But the plane came through! I saw it myself about an hour ago. This makes four days since we’ve had a newspaper at the lodge. What happened?”
The boy glared at Penny almost defiantly. “You can’t blame me. It’s not my fault if they’re not put on the plane.”
“No, of course not. I didn’t mean to suggest that you were at fault. It’s just queer that we miss our papers so often. And we never seem to get the back editions either.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about it,” the boy muttered.
Penny stood watching him slouch off down the street. Something about the lad’s manner made her wonder if he had not lied. She suddenly was convinced that Benny knew more about the missing newspapers than he cared to tell.
“But how would he profit by not receiving them?” she mused. “He would lose sales. It simply doesn’t make sense.”