Guilt of the Brass Thieves - Mildred Augustine Wirt (most popular novels TXT) 📗

buckets of ashes and boxes of papers and trash. A clothes line was hung with stockings and silk underwear.

Penny poked into several of the boxes and barrels. All were empty. Then her gaze focused upon another door, which apparently led into a fruit or storage room. It was padlocked.

“The brass is locked in there!” she thought, her heart sinking. “The lantern too! How stupid of me not to expect it.”

Without tools, Penny could not hope to break into the locked room. There was only one thing to do. She must get away from the house, and bring the police!

Starting up the stairs, she stopped short. An outside door had slammed. In the room above she heard footsteps, but no voices.

Frightened, Penny remained motionless on the basement stairs. She could hear Ma Harper tramping about, evidently in search of her, for the woman muttered angrily to herself.

“I don’t dare stay here,” the girl thought. “I’ll have to make a dash for it.”

Penny reasoned that in reentering the house, Ma Harper probably had left the front door unlocked. What had become of the two men she did not know, but she would have to take a chance on their whereabouts.

Noiselessly, she crept up the stairs to the kitchen door, opening it a tiny crack. Though she could not see Ma, footsteps told her that the woman had stepped out onto the balcony overlooking the river.

“This will be as good a chance as I may get,” she reasoned.

The door squeaked as she opened it wide enough to slip through. Unnerved by the sound, Penny moved swiftly across the kitchen to the living room.

“So there you are!” cried Ma Harper from the balcony.

Penny threw caution to the winds. Darting across the room, she jerked at the outside door. It opened, but on the porch, facing her, stood Sweeper Joe and Clark Clayton!

CHAPTER
18
OVER THE BALCONY

Panic-stricken, Penny’s first thought was to try to dart past the men. But she realized that to do so would be impossible. Warned by Ma Harper’s excited cries, they had moved into position to completely block her path.

“Stop that girl!” shouted Ma Harper, bearing down, upon her from the direction of the river balcony. “She’s from the police and sent here to get evidence!”

Whirling around, Penny ran back toward the kitchen, with the woman in pursuit. She did not waste time testing the rear door, for she already knew it to be locked.

However, opening from the kitchen was another closed door which appeared to give exit. With no time to debate, Penny jerked it open and darted inside.

Instantly, she saw that she had made a serious mistake. She had entered a small washroom and had trapped herself. And Ma Harper was practically upon her.

Penny did the only possible thing. She slammed the door and turned the key in the lock. For a moment at least, she was beyond reach.

“I’ve really trapped myself now!” she thought, recapturing her breath. “What a mess! If I had used my head this wouldn’t have happened.”

Penny sat down on the edge of the bathtub to think. Already Ma Harper was pounding and thumping on the flimsy wooden door panel. The door rattled on its hinges.

“You open up or I’ll break down the door!” the woman shouted furiously. “You hear me?”

Penny did not answer. There was no escape from the washroom for it had no window. The tub upon which she sat was ringed with dirt, evidently having seen no use in many weeks. Above her head stretched a short clothesline upon which hung a row of Ma Harper’s stockings.

“You let me in!” Ma Harper shouted again. “If I ever lay hands on you, you’ll pay for this!”

The threat left Penny entirely unmoved. She had no intention of opening the door, no matter what the woman might say or do.

Realizing that her tactics were gaining nothing, Ma tried another approach.

“Please let me in,” she coaxed in a falsely sweet voice. “We won’t hurt you. If you come out now, we’ll let you go home just as you want to do.”

Penny was not to be so easily taken in. She remained silent.

Ma Harper lost her temper completely then. She kicked at the door and shouted for the two men.

“Joe! Clark! Come and help me get this brat out of here!”

Penny, certain that her moments of freedom were limited, heard the two men approach. A heavy body heaved itself against the door, but still the lock held.

“I don’t want my door smashed,” she heard Ma Harper whine. “Can’t you get a screwdriver and take off the hinges? There ain’t no other key in the house.”

The reply of the men was inaudible, but Penny heard their retreating footsteps. The door knob kept rattling, so she decided Ma Harper had been left there to keep watch.

“This probably is my only chance to escape!” Penny reasoned. “I might unlock the door and take a chance on overpowering Ma Harper. But she’s a strong woman!”

Her roving gaze fastened upon the line of drying stockings, and suddenly she had an idea! Jerking one of the stockings down, she seized a thick bar of soap from the dish above the bathtub, and crammed it deep into the toe of the stocking.

“This will make a superb weapon!” she thought gleefully. “Almost as good as a blackjack!”

Taking a firm grip on the stocking, Penny swung it several times to be certain of its possibilities. Then she was ready.

Quickly she unlocked the door and stepped back.

For a moment nothing happened. Then Ma Harper pushed it open, just as she had expected.

“Now I’ll get you!” she screamed, springing at Penny.

Penny kept the stocking behind her back. “I hate to do this,” she thought, “but she’s asking for it!”

As Ma reached out to seize her, she swung the stocking. The encased cake of soap cut a neat arc through the air and clipped the woman sharply on the head.

More startled than hurt, she stumbled backwards and collapsed into the bathtub.

Pausing only long enough to see that Ma was not really injured, Penny made a dash for safety. But her escape was cut off.

Sweeper Joe and Clayton the gateman were just entering the front door of the living room, armed with tools to use in taking down the washroom door.

Seeing Penny, they again blocked the exit. Desperate, she ran in the only possible direction—to the balcony overlooking the river.

The docks were directly beneath the house, and waves lapped the posts of the two-story porch. It was at least a fifteen-foot drop and the water was shallow. But Penny had no time to calculate the risk.

Leaping to the railing of the balcony, she poised there an instant, staring down at the rocks plainly visible in the still water.

Then, as Sweeper Joe reached out to grasp her by the shoulder, she jumped.

She struck the water head foremost in a shallow dive which wrenched her back but kept her from striking the river bottom. Brushing wet hair from her eyes, she began to stroke. Her shoes were heavy as lead and impeded her.

The force of Penny’s dive had carried her many feet from shore into deep water, and the river current swept her farther away from the docks. Weighted down by the shoes, she knew she did not have sufficient strength to swim to shore with them on.

Burying her face in the water, she doubled up, and groping down, untied them, one at a time.

“Those were good shoes,” she thought with regret as she kicked them off and saw them settle into the river.

Penny struck out with smooth crawl strokes for the nearby pier. Her skirt kept wrapping itself about her legs. Unwilling to discard it, she tucked it high about her waist which made swimming much easier.

Reaching the pier, she was pulling herself out onto it, when Ma Harper and the two men came running out of the house to intercept her.

“Oh! Oh!” thought Penny. “It’s not going to be as easy as I assumed.”

Joe ran out on the pier, while Ma and the other man separated, one starting upstream and the other down. No matter which way she turned, Penny saw that her escape would be cut off.

The river was wide, the current swift. Although an excellent swimmer, she had no desire to attempt such a contest of endurance. But there seemed no other way.

Deliberately pushing off from the pier, she swam directly away from shore, After a dozen strokes she rolled over on her back for a moment to see what was happening. Ma Harper had shouted to Joe, and the words carried plainly over the water.

“Take after her in the boat! We don’t dare let her get away now! She knows too much!”

Penny had forgotten the motorboat tied up at the pier. Now as she saw Joe and Clark Clayton run toward it, her heart sank.

Though the race seemed hopeless, she flopped over onto her face again, and swam with all her strength. Going with the current, her feet churned the water behind her.

Several times, the men tried without success to start the motorboat engine. Penny grew hopeful. Then she heard the blast as the motor caught, and knew that in just a minute the men would overtake her.

Frantically, she glanced about for help. Already late afternoon, there were no fishing boats on the river. Save for Ma Harper, who stood ready to seize her should she try to swim in to the beach, no other persons were visible on either shore. The River Queen apparently was at the far end of her run, hidden beyond the bend.

A hundred yards away, in shallow water, lay a large patch of tall river grass and cat-tails. Seeing it, Penny took new hope. The area was large enough to offer a temporary refuge if she could reach it! Not only would the dense mat of high grass protect her from view, but a boat would not be able to follow.

Starting to swim again, she put everything she had into each stroke. It would be pinch and go to reach the grass patch! Aware of her intention, Sweeper Joe and Clark Clayton had changed course, hoping to intercept her.

CHAPTER
19
FLIGHT

The high water grass loomed up and Penny’s feet struck a muddy bottom. With the boat almost upon her, she plunged into the morass. The water came to armpit level. Pushing aside the thick stalks which wrapped themselves about her arms and body, she waded far into the patch before she paused.

Hidden by the dense growth, she could not at first see the pursuing boat. She knew, however, that it had halted at the edge of the patch, for the motor had been cut off.

And after awhile she heard voices, low spoken, but nevertheless clear, for the slightest sound carried over water.

“She’s over there somewhere in the center of the patch!” one of the men muttered. “I could tell where she went by the way the grass moved. Shall we let her go?”

“No, we got to get her or she’ll tell everything she knows to old man Gandiss and the police!” the other answered.

With the motor shut off, the two men then took out paddles, and began to force the boat through the jungle of grass. Observing that they were coming straight toward her, Penny noiselessly waded on, taking every precaution not to move the stalks unnecessarily. Noting the direction of the wind, she went with it, hoping that any movement of the grass would appear to be caused by the stiff breeze.

But she hoped in vain. For suddenly Joe the Sweeper shouted hoarsely:

“There she is! Over there!” He pointed with his paddle blade.

The men pushed the boat on, smashing the grass ahead of them. In despair, Penny saw that wherever she went she was leaving a trail of trampled, broken grass behind her.

No longer trying to