CHAPTER XVIII

_Return_

Both Mr. and Mrs. Gay looked up disconsolately as the green car approached. Suddenly their expressions of listlessness changed to incredulity--then to rapture. Mary Louise was home!

In another second the girl had flown up the steps and was hugging both parents at once. Mrs. Gay could only gasp in her happiness. It was Mr. Gay who asked his daughter whether she was unhurt and unharmed.

"I'm fine!" returned Mary Louise joyfully. "And, oh, so happy!"

"Darling!" murmured her mother, her voice choked with emotion.

"Now praise these wonderful boys," insisted the girl. "My rescuers."

Max and Norman tried to look modest and to wave aside their accomplishment with a gesture. But Mr. Gay seized their hands in a fervor of gratitude.

"I can't find words to tell you what it means to us!" he said. "You two boys have succeeded where four professional detectives failed. It's--it's marvelous."

"Oh, it wasn't anything at all, except persistence on our part," explained Max. "The real credit goes to Mary Lou. It was a swell idea she had."

"What idea?" demanded Mr. Gay.

"Signaling for help. With semaphore flags--just as we all used to do in the Scouts."

"But where were you, Mary Lou?" asked her father. "Sit down and tell us all about it."

"First tell me whether you're hungry," put in her mother.

"No, not specially," replied Mary Louise. "They fed us pretty well at the insane asylum."

It was fun to watch her parents' startled expressions at this announcement--fun now that the experience was all over.

"Insane asylum!" they both repeated in horror. And then for the first time they noticed her blue calico dress.

Mary Louise nodded and proceeded to tell her story. Briefly and quickly, for she remembered that she wanted to catch the two criminals.

"Has Mr. Frazier run away too?" she inquired, when she had finished.

"No, he's over at his hotel," replied Mr. Gay. "I saw him this morning."

"You must arrest him, Daddy!" cried the girl. "He was the cause of the three fires at Shady Nook. I know it!"

"But how do you know, Mary Lou?" asked her father. "What proof have you?"

"I overheard him and Tom Adams talking in the hotel garage. They didn't actually mention fires, but I'm sure they meant them. I have their conversation down in my notebook. I left it in my desk. It's probably still there."

"Suppose," suggested Mr. Gay, "that you tell us the story of your suspicions--and clues--from the beginning."

"While I'm getting lunch," added Mrs. Gay.

Mary Louise ran into her bedroom and found the little notebook. "I'll just change my dress," she called laughingly, "and be with you in a minute.... But tell me where Jane and Freckles are."

"Out hunting for you. With Silky!" was the reply.

A couple of minutes later she returned to the porch, looking more like herself in her own modern clothing. She sat down on the swing and opened her notebook.

"I first suspected Tom Adams the day after Flicks' Inn burned down," she began. "All of the people of Shady Nook were over on the little island that night on a picnic, and Hattie Adams told me she expected to have Tom take her. But he wasn't anywhere to be found. And the boys saw a big fellow in the woods who answered his description.

"But I sort of gave up the idea of his being guilty when I heard he had lost some work by Flicks' Inn burning down. It threw me off the track for a while; I really suspected his feeble-minded sister Rebecca.

"Then the Smiths' house caught fire, and Rebecca gave us a warning--so I suspected her all the more. Finding that pack of Cliff's cards in the can of water didn't prove a thing to me. I never believed he was guilty."

"It was absurd to arrest him," commented Mr. Gay. "The blundering idiot who caused it----"

Mary Louise's laugh ran out merrily.

"You and Jane will have to get together, Dad," she said. "You agree so perfectly about David McCall!"

"Never did care for the fellow," her father muttered. "Give me men with brains--and sense!" He looked admiringly at Max and Norman. "But get on with the story, Mary Lou."

"It was the day after the Smiths' fire that I really seriously suspected Tom Adams," she continued. "I trailed him to the store at Four Corners and found him gambling. He told a man that he'd pay him a hundred dollars, which he expected to collect immediately. And that set me thinking."

"Why?" inquired Max.

"Because a farmhand doesn't earn a hundred dollars so easily, especially from tightwads like Frazier. Everybody knows that man pays miserable wages.... Then, besides that, I overheard Tom Adams explaining a card trick, and that fact made me guess that he had gotten hold of one of Cliff's decks of cards and either accidentally or purposely dropped them at the Smiths'."

Mr. Gay nodded approvingly. He loved to watch the logical working of his daughter's mind.

"So I began to put two and two together," she went on. "Somebody was paying Tom a lot of money--lots more than a hundred dollars, I learned--for doing something. What, I asked myself, could the job be except setting those houses on fire? And who wanted them burned down except Frazier, or possibly Horace Ditmar, who, as you know, is an architect?"

"So you narrowed your suspects down to two people--besides Tom Adams?" inquired Mr. Gay admiringly.

"Yes. And when Adelaide Ditmar got that threat I was positive Frazier was responsible. He wanted the business, and he was doing everything he could to get it. But even then I had no proof."

"So what did you do?" asked Max. "And why did Tom Adams suspect that you knew anything?"

"It was all because of this conversation," answered Mary Louise, opening her notebook. "I overheard it near Frazier's garage, and then I was stupid enough to let them see me. I even told them I was going over to the farm to talk to Hattie."

"That was a mistake," remarked Mr. Gay.

"A mistake I paid for pretty dearly," agreed the girl. "But it's all right now, so it really doesn't matter.... Now let me read you the conversation between Frazier and Tom Adams on the afternoon I was taken away."

Quickly, in the words of the two men, she read to her listeners of Tom's demand for money and Mr. Frazier's reluctant compliance with his claims. When she had finished she looked eagerly at her father.

"Isn't Frazier guilty?" she asked.

"Of course he's guilty," agreed the detective. "But he won't ever admit it. He'll squirm out of it, because we haven't got proof in so many words. He'll say he was talking about something entirely different to Tom Adams."

"But can't he be arrested?" persisted Mary Louise, a note of disappointment creeping into her voice.

"I don't see how--until we find Tom Adams. He'll establish Frazier's guilt, all right. I can't see Adams shouldering the blame alone."

Mary Louise frowned; she hated the idea of the hotelkeeper's freedom, even though it might be only temporary. But suddenly her face lighted up with inspiration.

"I have it!" she cried. "He can be arrested for signing that paper confining me to the insane asylum, can't he, Dad?"

Mr. Gay looked startled.

"What paper?" he demanded.

Mary Louise explained that, since the commitment had to be signed by two relatives of the patient, Mr. Frazier had posed as her cousin. That was enough, Mr. Gay said immediately: all that they needed as evidence was the paper itself. They would drive over to the institution that afternoon and secure it.

Luncheon was indeed a happy meal in the Gay household that day. Although Freckles and Jane did not return, the two boys and Mary Louise kept up a constant banter of laughter and merriment. Mr. and Mrs. Gay were quieter, but a light of rapture shone in their eyes.

Just at the conclusion of the meal Mrs. Hunter and Cliff arrived. Prepared to enter a house of misery and fear, they could not believe their ears as they heard the gayety from within.

"Mary Lou!" cried Cliff incredulously.

"Cliff!" exclaimed the girl, jumping up and running to the screen door. "You're free!"

"And you're home!" returned the young man, seizing both of her hands.

In spite of his arrest, Clifford Hunter was the same care-free young person. In a few minutes he was showing his card tricks to Max and Norman, delighted to find a new audience.

When the whole story had been retold to the Hunters, with the caution that they say nothing of it to Mr. Frazier, Mary Louise and the three boys walked around the little resort to tell everybody there the glad news. Then she and her father and Max took the car and drove to the Adams farm. Mr. Gay thought it would be wise to take old Mr. Adams with them to visit the asylum, and Mary Louise thought it would be interesting to bring Rebecca--just to let Miss Stone and the other attendants meet the real Rebecca Adams!

With Max at the wheel they had no difficulty in finding the asylum. What fun it was, Mary Louise thought, to pass through those iron gates now--knowing that she was safe! Yet instinctively she reached for her father's hand and held it securely as the car proceeded up the long driveway.

The same doctor and the same head nurse came out to receive them as upon Mary Louise's first visit. Mr. Gay displayed his badge at once and explained his errand. The woman nodded and hurried into the office for the paper.

While she was gone, Rebecca Adams, growing restless, stepped out of the car, lugging her heavy water pitcher in her arms. At the same moment Miss Stone, Mary Louise's special nurse, came out of the building.

"Miss Stone, I want you to meet the real Rebecca Adams," said Mary Louise, with a twinkle in her eye.

Rebecca turned eagerly to the nurse.

"Can you show me where there is a well of clear water?" she asked immediately.

"Yes," replied Miss Stone gravely. "Back of the building. We have a fine well."

"Oh!" cried the woman in ecstasy. "At last!" She looked over at her father, and there were tears of earnestness in her eyes. "Let me stay here, Father! This is my home, where I want to live!" Her voice grew more wistful. "A well of clear water!" she repeated. "Please take me to it, kind lady!"

"Perhaps it is for the best," agreed old Mr. Adams. "There's nobody to take good care of Rebecca at home now that her mother's dead and I'm crippled up with rheumatism. She can stay if she wants to."

And so, at her own request, Rebecca Adams took up her life at the quiet institution, and the rest of the party, with the paper which was to be used as evidence against Frazier in their hands, drove back to Shady Nook.

Mary Louise went into her bedroom and put on her prettiest dress, awaiting the arrival of Jane and Freckles and her friends. What a glorious evening it was going to be for them all!