Automobiles -- Juvenile fiction; Detective and mystery stories; Girls -- Societies and clubs -- Juvenile fiction
"Oh, my, but yes. That is why it is worth so much. The drawers cannot
all be found. It is like a safe--"
Cora was sure this was the long-lost table. Oh, if she could only
induce the man to let her take it.
The price, she was positive, was far beyond that offered by the other
customer, but that did not matter.
"You had better let me have this," she said. "I will take it right
along and save express. Then make one for the other party, if he ever
comes back."
The shopkeeper shrugged his shoulders--if he only would talk, thought
Cora.
Cora counted out fifty dollars. The man watched her greedily. It was
twenty-five dollars more than he had bargained to sell the table for.
Why should he lose so much?
"May I have it?" pressed Cora.
"Well, I never before did that but he should have left a deposit," said
the man.
Quicker than the girl dreamed she could do it, Cora paid the man,
actually grabbed the table herself and ran out of the shop with it and
thrust it into the front of the Whirlwind among the flowers, cranked up
her car and darted off.
Her face was so white that she frightened Gertrude. "Don't ask any
questions, dear," she said to the latter. "I must meet Clip. She has
gone for a detective."
Just around the corner came Clip, and with her an officer in plain
clothes. Cora swung in to the curb.
"I have it! I have it!" she exclaimed to Clip. "Is this the officer?"
she asked. "And have you told him the book was stolen?"
"Oh, don't worry about the details, miss," replied the officer. "We
have that thing to do every day. These fellows take anything they can
get, and that being the book of a cripple, I will take chances on
getting it. You may be asked to explain fully, later."
"Oh, thank you so much!" cried Cora, almost overcome. "To think we may
bring both the table and the book home to Wren!"
What followed seemed like a dream to Cora. Of course she knew that it
was Rob Roland who had ordered the table and Sid Wilcox who had
returned the book. As the Whirlwind passed the little hotel on the
road to Chelton Cora actually brushed against Rob Roland's car--and she
had the table hidden amid the flowers in the Whirlwind!
In Clip's hands was grasped the promise book--Wren should have both.
Poor, afflicted little Wren!
Straight to the private sanitarium they went--these two motor girls.
Miss Brown helped carry the table up to Wren's bedside.
At the sight of it Wren uttered a scream--then the shock did what
medical skill often fails to do. Wren Salvey sprang out of bed,
touched a spring in the table and a drawer jerked open.
"There!" she shrieked, holding up a paper. "The will!" Then she fell
back--exhausted.
"The shock has done it," said Miss Brown as Clip helped put the girl on
the bed and Cora looked frightened. "It has broken the knot that tied
her muscles. She will be cured."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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