A visit to the bank disclosed that the safe deposit box had not been touched. In his haste to depart, McDermott had not dared to wait until the bank opened in the mornings Doris’s vacation at Cloudy Cove was nearly ended, but the few days which remained were most pleasantly spent. The young people swam, played tennis, golfed and fished. Doris spent a great deal of time in the company of her uncle and the two became close friends. John Trent lost his self-conscious manner and became almost jovial. He spent money freely, taking his niece and her friends to many shows and entertainments.
“Imagine calling him a miser!” Kitty laughed.
“Why, he’s the most generous man I ever knew.”
At last the day of their departure arrived. Doris and Kitty packed their things, said goodbye to their Cloudy Cove acquaintances, and prepared to entrain for Chilton. Mrs. Mallow was to accompany them, while Dave and Marshmallow planned to spend one more day in Cloudy Cove before starting for home.
Together with John Trent they went to the station to bid Mrs. Mallow and the girls goodbye.
“It certainly has been an exciting vacation,” Kitty declared, as they stood waiting for the train. “I’ll remember it all my life.”
“So shall I,” Mr. Trent smiled, looking at Doris.
Quietly he slipped something into her hand. She gazed down in surprise, as she saw that it was a hundred-dollar bill.
“For your music,” her uncle said. “Just a little token of my appreciation.”
Doris tried to protest, but Mr. Trent refused to listen. As the train rumbled into the station, she thanked him for the gift and kissed him goodbye.
“Do I get one, too?” Dave demanded impudently.
“Please drive carefully going back to Chilton,” Mrs. Mallow warned her son.
Marshmallow was squeezing Kitty’s hand, and did not hear her.
Little did these adventurous young people know what exciting times awaited them as they were obliged to go West soon after their arrival home, as related in the next volume entitled, Doris Force at Raven Rock; Or, Uncovering the Secret Oil Well.
As soon as the girls had taken seats in the train, they raised a window.
“You’re certainly a real detective, Doris,” Marshmallow grinned as the train began to move slowly. “There’s another job waiting for you when you get back to Chilton.”
“What’s that?” Doris called.
“Finding the man who sold me that stolen car!”
DORIS FORCE AT RAVEN ROCK, by Julia K. Duncan
CHAPTER I
An Arrival and a Robbery
Doris Force was hastening down the shaded street toward her home. With bronze curls tossing and deep blue eyes flashing, she was a picture as she waved toward a car which had just pulled up to the curb in front of her home.
“Kitty! Kitty, you dear old thing!”
Doris’s rich soprano voice, raised in excited greeting, was heard by her arriving chum, Kitty Norris.
Turning from the solicitous attentions of a stout youth who was helping her from an automobile, in itself something to look at twice by virtue of its obvious age and gaudy hue, Kitty Norris dashed down the street to meet her friend. The two girls embraced, Doris dropping her precious music roll, the better, as she put it, “to get a good grip on you again, Kitty!”
“I would have been at the station to meet you,” Doris explained, “but my singing teacher did not have a free hour to substitute for mine—and there is no way of telling how long we shall be away in the wild and woolly West. Are you all prepared for our journey? Oh, what a lovely dress, Kitty!” she added admiringly, holding her chum at arm’s length in order to get a better look at her.
The two girls made a picture any artist might admire as they walked toward the house arm in arm, chatting gaily. “Marshmallow” Mallow was no artist, except when it came to composing menus, but he had appreciation enough for an academy of painters as he watched the girls approach, a suitcase in his right fist and a stylish grip-sack in his left.
“I had a real job coaxing Marshmallow to meet you in my place,” Doris laughed as the girls came up to the youth, who had brought Kitty from the station.
“She argued all of two seconds by the clock,” grinned Marshmallow, his chubby face dimpling. “Lead the way, Doris. These bags are heavy. I do believe Kitty has brought an armory of guns to slay redskins with.”
“A little exercise will help you work up an appetite and you won’t have to take your tonic,” Doris said with mock gravity. Even Kitty laughed, for Marshmallow’s ability to eat six full course meals, not including in-between snacks, amounted to pure genius.
Groaning and puffing with vast pretense Marshmallow followed the girls up the flagstone walk to the pleasant house his mother owned, and a part of which she rented to Wardell Force, Doris’s uncle and guardian, for their home.
Before the trio reached the door they were halted by a shout from the street.
A tall, keen-eyed young man, his face bronzed by sun and wind, vaulted the hedge and ran up to join them.
“Hello, everybody! Hello, Kitty! Welcome back to Chilton,” he cried. “Say, but I have great news, Doris!”
“Hello, Dave Chamberlin!” laughed Kitty. “How’s the air these days?”
Dave was an aviation student, already the proud possessor of a private flying license but toiling to amass the experience which would qualify him for a commercial pilot’s certificate. Both girls had been his passengers on flights in borrowed planes which their owners did not hesitate to entrust to the youth, for his skill in the air was as great as Marshmallow’s was with a roast chicken on a plate.
“Great news, Dave?”
Doris prompted the young flyer, who had been grinning wordlessly at her, deep admiration in his eyes.
“Grand and glorious news! It’s a coincidence, and no mistake,” he said, thoughtfully. “You can just cancel those reservations on the train!”
“What’s the matter?” Marshmallow cried, disappointment written all over his face. “Has something turned up so we don’t have to go out West?”
“No, no!” Dave laughed. “But you won’t have to crawl across the continent in any old slow-poke mile-a-minute choo choo! You’re flying!”
“Flying!” chorused the three.
“Yes, ladies and—er, gentleman,” Dave laughed. “Of all the luck! Pete Speary is taking a big trimotor cabin ship to—guess where! No, don’t guess! To Raven Rock!”
“What has that to do with us?” Marshmallow demanded.
“He’ll take us with him!” Dave began to hop around in motions that were a cross between an Indian war-dance and an Irish jig. “He’s taking me as mechanic, and you all as ballast!”
“Yee-ow!”
Marshmallow dropped the luggage and did a dance of his own that shook the porch.
“What is—is anybody hurt? Why, Kitty! How are you?”
The questions came from a pleasant-faced woman with graying hair who suddenly appeared in the doorway.
“What has happened to Marshall? Did a wasp sting him?”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Mallow,” Doris laughed. “Dave just brought us amazing news. A great big cabin plane is leaving Plainfield for Raven Rock, of all places, in a few days, and we are invited to fly West!”
“Fly—all