“I,” SAID A LIGHT, CLEAR VOICE, “AM A MOUNTAINEER! And I know who you are.”
Cherry jumped. “Yes, I’m going to be camp nurse.” She smiled at a pretty blond girl of about eleven who stood in the train aisle. “You don’t look much like a mountaineer to me,” she added, laughing.
“Confidentially, I’m Sue Howard, and there’s the rest of the Mountaineers—my cabin mates, I mean. ‘Mountaineers’ is our unit name.” The girl waved to a group in the seats further up the aisle. Then she sat down beside Cherry in the temporarily vacant seat. “We’re all dying to meet you, Miss Ames.”
Cherry held out her hand—a cool, strong, immaculate nurse’s hand. “How do you do, Sue Howard? How did you know my name?”
“We heard about you from Aunt Bet and Uncle Bob.”
Aunt Bet and Uncle B. B. Wright were the directors of Camp Blue Water for girls and its brother camp, Thunder Cliff.
Cherry had met Mr. and Mrs. Wright through a neighbor when she had been at home in Hilton, Illinois, for an Easter visit with her family. The neighbor, Mrs. Pritchett, who lived three houses down the tree-shaded block, had known all four Ameses for years and could remember Cherry and Charlie in their twin baby carriage.
“Someone who likes children and who likes the outdoors,” the Wrights had said, “is the kind of nurse we want,” and Cherry certainly qualified. Her mother felt, and Cherry agreed, that this job would be a good change of pace from her recent nursing work in a big city department store. Besides, she’d always enjoyed working with children.
Interviews in New York followed. Dr. Robert Lowell, the camp physician, and his wife (who was a nurse herself) both approved Cherry’s qualifications—and liked her. The Wrights did, too.
So here she was on the last Saturday in June, her luggage holding a summer’s supply of nursing equipment and crisp white uniforms, riding into the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania in a train jammed with lively campers.
Sue went on, “I hope you don’t think I—well, sounded awfully forward, Miss Ames, speaking to you like that, but I’m an old camper, you see. So’s all my cabin, except Katy Osborn. She’s new.” Sue’s forehead wrinkled when she said Katy’s name, as if she were doubtful or baffled. “I thought maybe we could be a great help to you. I mean, show you around and explain how we do things at Camp Blue Water.”
“Thanks ever so much. It would be a help. And I’d love to meet the other Mountaineers.”
“Oh, good!” Sue said. “‘I’ll bring them over—”
As Sue left, Aunt Bet came down the aisle. She was a sympathetic young woman with a smile like a sunburst.
“Hello, Cherry, has anyone brought you sandwiches and milk yet?”
The camp director said that they just had a basket lunch on the train for the two-hundred-odd girls, their counselors, and the boys and young men counselors belonging to the boys’ camp—Thunder Cliff.
“It gets too complicated to do more than that,” Mrs. Wright said, “but supper at camp will make up for it. My husband went ahead with the service staff last week. They’ll have everything ready for us.” Aunt Bet smiled at three very small girls who were entertaining themselves by making faces. She turned back to Cherry. “Three of our Midgets. Have you met many of our girls yet?”
“I’m in the process, Mrs. Wright. They’re a fine group, aren’t they? I’m really looking forward to spending the summer with them.”
“Wait until you see the girls in action,” Aunt Bet said proudly.
“They seem to be plenty active right now,” Cherry said, laughing. “I’ve already helped Dr. Lowell treat a skinned knee and hiccups. And, oh yes, I refereed a fast spelling bee. Loved it. I hope I’ll do lots more than nursing.”
“Of course you will. I think the girls are going to love you, Cherry. Anyone who looks as pretty as you do—” and Aunt Bet rose, with an extra smile for Cherry’s rosy brunette good looks. A counselor at the end of the car was beckoning, and Aunt Bet went toward her.
That was the girls’ head counselor, Kay Rogers, down there with Aunt Bet, Cherry remembered. She had met Kay a few days ago at the Wrights’ apartment, at a staff meeting. Cherry had met most of the counselors for both camps then. She recalled that day as a friendly confusion of faces, voices, handshakes, and instructions.
A few persons had been outstanding, among them the boys’ head counselor, Reed Champion. Cherry hoped to become better acquainted with the likable young man.
And now, this bright morning, a crowd of young figures flitted around her. The older girls exchanging snapshots were Seniors. The eleven-to-thirteen group, Cherry knew, were called the Intermediates, and they were the peppiest ones. Juniors—the eight to tenners—and the Midgets—the littlest ones—made up the other age groups.
“Well, here we are, Miss Ames,” Sue announced, coming back up the aisle, five or six more young faces looming up behind her. “You said you wanted to meet the Mountaineers.”
“I do! But first, I’d like you all to call me Cherry.”
“Oh, thanks. We were going to, anyway, pretty soon,” Sue said. Then, changing the subject with no preliminaries at all, she asked, “Miss Ames, I mean Miss Cherry, did you ever nurse a criminal?”
“Don’t go asking silly questions,” said a plump little girl. “I’m Mary Alice Burton, Miss Ames, since some people don’t perform introductions. Such as my old friend Sue.”
“I’m Ding, that’s short for Margery Page.” This girl had cropped hair and an impish smile. “Did you ever nurse a criminal? We have a serious reason for asking.”
Before Cherry could answer, Sue made a point of formal introductions.
“Dot and Dee Smith. They’re twins, though you’d never believe it, except for looking exactly alike.”
Dot and Dee had reddish hair, and were alike as two freckles. “Stale old joke,” the taller twin protested.
“I have a twin brother,” Cherry said with a grin, “but people can tell us apart.”
Sue and Ding whooped with laughter. The Smith sisters looked delighted, and Mary Alice chuckled.
“The reason people can tell Charlie and me apart,” Cherry said, deadpan, “is because my twin is blond and I’m dark.”
She thought for a moment of her brother, and her parents, and their comfortable gray frame house in Hilton. Except for that very good visit with them at Easter, she’d scarcely seen her family for months. Why had she chosen to spend the summer away from them? Cherry felt a pang of homesickness.
“Why, I’m as bad as any other new camper,” Cherry thought. That reminded her of Sue’s earlier remark.
“Sue, didn’t you say there’s a new girl in your cabin this summer? Where’s Katy?”
There was a brief silence. Then Sue said politely that perhaps Katy would decide to join them later.
“Is she in hiding? Nothing criminal, I hope,” Cherry teased.
Sue was flustered. She picked up a newspaper.
“Speaking of criminals, Miss Cherry, and we were, before—would you please look at this article?”
Lil Baker, one of the counselors, called to Cherry, “Don’t let my girls pester you with that newspaper story. They’re mad for mysteries.”
“So am I,” said Cherry. “Let’s see what’s so interesting.” As Sue handed her the newspaper, Cherry asked, “What’s so special here?”
“Well, the man they suspect did it—” Sue hesitated. “A few people think they’ve seen him passing through the towns near our camp.”
“A mystery on our own doorstep!” Cherry exclaimed.
“Could be. Please hurry up and read it, Miss Cherry,” she said, pointing to a headline:
As she read the news article Cherry noticed that the twins wandered away, and then Mary Alice murmured, “Excuse me,” and left. Presently Ding scampered off, but Sue waited doggedly beside Cherry. So it was Sue who was the mystery hound.
“What do you think?” Sue asked.
“Let me finish the whole article first.”
The case was one Cherry had read about, but now an unexpected new angle had cropped up. Two weeks ago a lone man had robbed a loan company in New York City. He had entered unobtrusively late on a rainy Friday afternoon when the loan company office was crowded. He must have known that Friday the fourteenth (the date nearest the fifteenth) was the semimonthly date on which people came to pay off their loans—a day when a great deal of cash was being received in the loan office.
The man must also have known intimately the layout of the big office, and where the employees would be busy at that hour. For he had boldly walked down a private corridor and into a deserted inside room which held the company’s safe. No one saw him, no one stopped him, since the employees were occupied in the front office with clients. From the safe the man took a large sum of cash. It was only on his way out of the inside room, as he was going down the corridor, that two women employees noticed a man wearing a raincoat and a hat pulled low over his face. But when they tried to stop him—for this area was for employees only—the man pulled a gun.
“Great balls of fire!” he had said, according to the women’s report, “Get in that door and keep still!”
He had pushed them into a washroom, keeping them covered, locked it, and then apparently had made his way through the crowded outer office into the street—just another man in slouch hat and raincoat whom no one had noticed.
The curious thing was that both women had described the man as faceless. They had been able to see a little beneath the pulled-down hatbrim, but the face had been smoothly, horribly featureless. He was slightly below medium height, they reported, but otherwise the bulky, free-swinging raincoat hid his figure completely. The only identifying mark was the man’s use of the phrase, “Great balls of fire!”
What was so provoking about the case, Cherry thought, was that the loan company would release no information about how the man had gotten into the safe, nor would they speculate on the possibility of an inside job. But now, a reporter had extracted from the loan company the fact that one of its cashiers was a man below average height who frequently used the phrase, “Great balls of fire!” The man’s name was Jack Waldron, he was twenty-eight years old, and he had left for his vacation just a few days before the robbery took place.
“It would have been easy enough for him to come back to the office, disguised, like that, and take the money,” Sue said. She had been watching the place where Cherry was reading.
“Easier, I guess, than to attempt the job from the inside. That is,” Cherry said, “if he is the robber.”
“He used the same funny words. Why do you suppose he did such a stupid thing?”
“He may have gotten excited when the women discovered him, and blurted it out. Just a minute more, Sue—”
Cherry continued to read. “This reporter learned today that the cashier, Jack Waldron, has not reported back to work, although his two-week vacation period is now over. Employees of the loan company stated that Mr. Waldron had planned to go on a camping trip during his vacation. A friend who was to have accompanied him was taken sick. Mr. Waldron told his fellow employees that he would go through with his plans, anyway, even though it meant camping alone.”
Sue urged Cherry to read the last paragraph.
“Friends of Jack Waldron expressed concern at his failure to report back to work. He was due back a week ago. Some feel it is possible that Waldron may be lost, or ill and alone in some woods. Others regard this as unlikely, since he is an experienced camper. A few of his friends received picture postcards from him, postmarked June 10 and June 11. (The robbery occurred on June 14, when semimonthly payments were made.) These post cards were mailed from Lanesboro and Pleasant Mountain, small towns in northeastern Pennsylvania. No word has been received from Waldron since June 11.
“Telephone inquiries by this newspaper to these towns elicited the information that a young man who may be Waldron has been seen there. A grocery store owner recalls that the man, carrying a camper’s pack on his back, made a purchase about ten days ago, about June 19 or 20, late in the evening. A hardware merchant made a similar report.
“A description of Waldron has gone out to police in this widespread area. He is about five feet six, weighs approximately 150 pounds, has brown hair, and regular features. No photograph of him is available. Friends at the loan company, where Waldron worked for six months, say that he told them he had been raised in an orphanage, served in the Army, and had been honorably discharged, then worked in various accounting firms and banks. He is unmarried and has no known relatives.”
That was the end of the newspaper article. Sue had been standing on one foot and then the other, until Cherry finished reading.
“Well, what do you think?”
“It certainly sounds as if he had a bleak, lonely life,” Cherry said. “Not that that would excuse an armed robbery—if he really came back to New York from Pennsylvania and did it.”
“Just three hours by train. Everything points to Jack Waldron,” Sue said. “Things couldn’t look much worse for him, could they?”
Cherry pretended to shiver. “I hope we don’t find any armed desperadoes lurking around Camp Blue Water.”
“If we did,” said Aunt Bet, overhearing, “we’d probably put them to work painting the dock. Get your suitcases ready, everybody! We’ll be there in ten minutes!”