The Penny Parker Megapack: 15 Complete Novels (27 page)

Dinner was served at six. Afterwards, the guests sat before the crackling log fire and bored each other with tales of their skiing prowess. A few of the more enterprising ones waxed their skis in preparation for the next day’s sport.

“Any newspapers tonight?” inquired a business man of Mrs. Downey. “Or is this another one of the blank days?”

“Jake brought New York papers from the village,” replied the hotel woman. “They are on the table.”

“Blank days?” questioned Francine, looking up from a magazine she had been reading.

“Mr. Glasser calls them that when he doesn’t get the daily stock market report,” explained Mrs. Downey, smiling at her guest.

“And don’t the newspapers always arrive?” questioned Francine.

“Not always. Lately the service has been very poor.”

“I’d rather be deprived of a meal than my paper,” growled Mr. Glasser. “What annoys me is that the guests at the Fergus hotel always get their papers. I wish someone would explain it to me.”

“And I wish someone would explain it to
me
,” murmured Mrs. Downey, retreating to the kitchen.

In the morning Penny decided to ski down to the village for a jar of cold cream. The snow was crusted and fast but she felt no terror of the trail which curved sharply through the evergreens. Her balance was better, and this time she had no intention of impaling herself on Peter Jasko’s barbed wire fence.

Seldom checking her speed, she hurtled along the ribbon of trail. Racing on to the sharp turn, she shifted her weight and swung her body at precisely the right instant. The slope stretched on past rows of tall trees, towering like sentinels along the snow-swept ridges. Presently it flattened out into an open valley. Penny sailed past a house, a barn, and gradually slowed up until she came to a low hillock overlooking the village.

Recapturing her breath, Penny took off her skis and walked on into Pine Top. She made a few purchases at the drug store and then impulsively entered the telegraph office. To her surprise, Francine Sellberg was there ahead of her.

“How late is your office open?” the reporter was asking the operator.

“Six-thirty,” he replied.

“And if one has a rush message to send after that hour?”

“Well, you can get me at my house,” the man answered. “I live over behind the Albert’s Filling Station.”

“Thank you,” responded Francine, flashing Penny a mocking smile. “I may have an important story to send to my paper any hour. I wanted to be sure there would be no delay in getting it off.”

Penny waited until the reporter had left the office and then said apologetically:

“I don’t suppose you’ve received any message for me?”

“We always telephone as soon as anything comes in,” the man replied. “But wait! You’re Penelope Parker, aren’t you?”

“In my more serious moments. Otherwise, just plain Penny.”

“I do have something for you, then. A message came in a few minutes ago. I’ve been too busy to telephone it to the lodge.”

He handed Penny a sheet of paper which she read eagerly. As she anticipated, it was from her father, and with his usual disregard for economy he had not bothered to omit words.

“Glad to learn you arrived safely at Pine Top,” he had wired. “Your information about H. M. is astonishing, if true. Are you sure it is the same man? Keep your eye on him, and report to me if you learn anything worth while. I am held here by important developments, but will try to come to Pine Top for Christmas.”

Penny read the message twice, scowling at the sentence:“Are you sure it is the same man?” It was clear to her that her father did not have a great deal of faith in her identification. And obviously, he did not believe that anything could be gained by making a special trip to Pine Top to see the hotel man.

Thrusting the paper into the pocket of her jacket she went out into the cold.

“No one seems to rate my detective work very highly,” she complained to herself. “But when Dad gets my letter telling him about the Green Door he may take a different attitude!”

Skis slung over her shoulder, she began the weary climb back to the Downey lodge. Before Penny had walked very far she saw that she was overtaking a man on the narrow trail ahead of her. Observing that it was Ralph Fergus, she immediately slowed her steps.

The hotel man did not turn his head to glance back. He kept walking slower and slower as if in deep thought, and after a time he reached absently into his pocket for a letter.

As he pulled it out, another piece of pale gray paper fluttered to the ground. Fergus did not notice that he had lost anything. The wind caught the paper and blew it down the slope toward Penny.

“Oh, Mr. Fergus!” she called. “You dropped something!”

The wind hurled her words back at her. Realizing that she could not make the man hear, Penny quickened her pace. After a short chase she rescued the paper when it caught on the thorns of a snow-caked bush.

At first glance Penny thought she had gone to trouble for no purpose. The paper seemed to be blank. But as she turned it over she saw a single line of jumbled letters:

YL GFZKY GLULFFLS

“What can this be?” Penny thought in amazement. “Nothing, I guess.”

She crumpled the paper and tossed it away. But as it skittered and bounced like a tumble weed down the trail, she suddenly changed her mind and darted after it again. Carefully straightening out the page she examined it a second time.

“This looks like copy paper used in a newspaper office,” she told herself. “But there is no newspaper in Pine Top, I wonder—?”

The conviction came to Penny that the jumbled letters might be in code. Her pulse leaped at the thought. If only she were able to decipher it!

“I’ll take this to the lodge and work on it,” she decided quickly. “Who knows? It may be just the key I need to unlock this strange affair of the Green Door!”

CHAPTER 9

A CALL FOR HELP

All that afternoon and far into the evening Penny devoted to her assigned task, trying to make sense out of the jumbled sentence of typewriting. She used first one method and then another, but she could not decode the brief message. She had moments when she even doubted that it was a code. At last, completely disgusted, she threw down her pencil and put the paper away in a bureau drawer.

“I never was meant to be a cryptographer or whatever you call those brainy fellows who unravel ciphers and things!” she grumbled. “Maybe the trouble with me is that I’m not bright.”

Switching off the lamp, Penny rolled up the shade, and stood for a moment gazing down into the dark valley. Far below she could see lights glowing in the Fergus hotel, mysterious and challenging.

“I feel as if I’m on the verge of an important discovery, yet nothing happens,” she sighed. “Something unusual is going on here, but what?”

Penny did not believe that Francine knew the answer either. The girl reporter undoubtedly had been sent to Pine Top upon a definite tip from her editor, yet she could not guess the nature of such a tip. It was fairly evident that Francine was after some sort of evidence, but so far she had made no progress in acquiring it.

“We’re both groping in the dark, searching for something we know is here but can’t see,” thought Penny. “And we watch each other like hawks for fear the other fellow will get the jump!”

The Green Door intrigued and puzzled her. While it might mean nothing at all, she could not shake off a feeling that if once she were able to get inside the room she might learn the answer to some of her questions.

Penny had turned over several plans in her mind, none of which suited her. The most obvious thing to do was to try to bribe an employee of the hotel to give her the information she sought. But if she failed, her identity would be disclosed to Ralph Fergus and Harvey Maxwell. It seemed wiser to bide her time and watch.

Penny awoke the next morning to find large flakes of snow piling on the window sills. The storm continued and after breakfast only the most rugged skiers ventured out on the slopes. Francine hugged a hot air register, complaining that there was not enough heat, Many of the other guests, soon exhausting the supply of magazines, became restless.

Luncheon was over when Penny stamped in out of the cold to find Mr. Glasser fretfully pacing to and fro before the fireplace.

“When will the papers come?” he asked Mrs. Downey.

“Jake usually goes down to the village after them about four o’clock. But with this thick weather, the plane may not get in today.”

“It’s in now, Mrs. Downey,” spoke Penny, shaking snow from her red mittens. “I saw it nearly half an hour ago, flying low over the valley.”

“Then the papers must be at Pine Top by this time.”Mrs. Downey hesitated before adding: “I’ll call Jake from his work and ask him to go after them.”

“Let me,” offered Penny quickly.

“In this storm?”

“Oh, I don’t mind. I rather like it.”

“All right, then,” agreed Mrs. Downey in relief. “But don’t get lost, whatever you do. If the trails become snowed over it might be better to stay on the main road.”

“I won’t get lost,” laughed Penny. “If worse comes to worst I always can climb a pine tree and sight the Fergus hotel.”

She dried out her mittens, and putting on an extra sweater beneath her jacket, stepped outside the lodge. The wind had fallen and only a few snowflakes were whirling down. Hearing the faint tingle of bells, Penny turned to gaze toward the road, where a pair of white horses were pulling an empty lumber wagon up the hill.

The driver, hunched over on the seat, was slapping his hands together to keep them warm.

“Why, that looks like Old Whiskers himself,” thought Penny. “It is Peter Jasko.”

The observation served only to remind her of their unpleasant meeting. Since being so discourteously ejected from the Jasko property Penny had not ventured back. Knowing that the old man was away she felt sorely tempted to again visit the locality.

“I guess I ought not to take the time,” she decided regretfully. “Mr. Glasser will be fretting for his paper.”

Making a quick trip down the mountainside, Penny swung into the village. Mrs. Downey had told her that she would be able to get the newspapers at the Pine Top Cafe where a boy named Benny Smith had an agency.

Entering the restaurant, she glanced about but saw no one who was selling papers. Finally, she ventured to ask the proprietor if she had come to the right place.

“This is the right place,” he agreed cheerfully. “Benny went home a little while ago.”

“Then how do I get the papers for Mrs. Downey’s lodge?”

“Guess you’re out of luck,” he replied. “They didn’t come in today.”

“But I saw the plane.”

“The plane got through all right. I don’t know what was wrong. Somehow the papers weren’t put aboard.”

Penny turned away in disappointment. She had made the long trip to the village for no purpose. While she did not mind for herself, she knew that Mr. Glasser and the other guests were likely to be annoyed. After a day of confinement indoors they looked forward to news from the outside world.

“It’s strange the papers didn’t come,” she mused as she started back to the Downey lodge. “This isn’t the first time they’ve failed to arrive either.”

Penny climbed steadily for a time and then sat down on a log to rest a moment. She was not far from the Jasko cabin. By making her own trail through the woods she could reach it in a very few minutes.

A mischievous idea leaped into her mind, fairly teasing to be put into effect. What fun to climb the forbidden barbed wire fence and honeycomb Mr. Jasko’s field with ski tracks! She could visualize his annoyance when he returned home to learn that a mysterious skier had paid him a visit.

“He oughtn’t to be so mean,” she said aloud to justify herself. “It will serve him right for trying to frighten folks with shotguns!”

Penny fastened on her skis and glided off through the woods. She kept her directions straight and soon emerged into a clearing to find herself in view of the Jasko cabin. Drawing near the barbed wire fence she stopped short and stared.

“Why, that old scamp! He really did it!”

A new strand of wire had been added to the fence, making it many inches higher. Penny’s suggestion, offered as a joke, had been acted upon by Peter Jasko. Not even an expert ski jumper could hope to clear the improved barrier. Any person who came unwittingly down the steep slope must take a disastrous tumble at the base of the fence.

“This settles it,” thought Penny grimly. “My conscience is perfectly clear now.”

She rolled under the fence and surveyed the unblemished expanse of snowy field with the eye of a mechanical draftsman.

“I may as well be honest about it and sign my name,” she chuckled.

Starting in at the far corner of the field she made a huge double-edged “P” with her long runners. It took a little ingenuity to figure out an “E” but two “N’s” were fairly easy to execute. She finished “Y” off with a flourish and cocked her head sideways to view her handiwork.

“Not bad, not bad at all,” she congratulated herself. “Only I’ve used up too much space. We’ll have to have a big Penny and a little Parker.”