Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes | Page 8

of fun over this subject, but don't let your gay spirits cause you to permit any unguarded remarks to escape."
On the train the girls all got out their knitting, and soon their needles were plying merrily away on sleeveless sweaters, socks, helmets, and wristlets for the boys at the front, timing their work by their wrist watches for patriotism honors. True to their resolve, following Miss Ladd's warning lecture, they kept the subject of their mission out of their conversation, and it is probable that no reference to it would have been made during the entire 300-mile journey if something had not happened which forced it keenly to the attention of every one of them.
The train on which they were traveling was a limited and the first stop was fifty miles from Fairberry. A few moments after the train stopped, a telegraph messenger walked into the front entrance of the parlor car and called out:
"Telegram for Miss Harriet Ladd."
The latter arose and received the message, signed the receipt blank, and tore open the envelope. Imagine her astonishment as she read the following:
"Miss Harriet Ladd, parlor car, Pocahontas Limited: Attorney Pierce Langford is on your train, first coach. Bought ticket for Twin Lakes. Small man, squint eyes, smooth face. Watch out for him. Letter follows telegram. Mrs. Hannah Hutchins."
CHAPTER VII.
A DOUBLE-ROOM MYSTERY.
Miss Ladd passed the telegram around among the girls after writing the following explanation at the foot of the message:
"Pierce Langford is the Fairberry attorney that represented scheming relatives of Mrs. Hutchins' late husband, who attempted to force money out of her after the disappearance of the securities belonging to Glen Irving's estate. Leave this matter to me and don't talk about it until we reach Twin Lakes."
Nothing further was said about the incident during the rest of the journey, as requested by Miss Ladd. The girls knitted, rested, chatted, read, and wrote a few postcards or "train letters" to friends. But although there was not a word of conversation among the Camp Fire members relative to the passenger named in Mrs. Hutchins' telegram, yet the subject was not absent from their minds much of the time.
They were being followed! No other construction could be put upon the telegram. But for what purpose? What did the unscrupulous lawyer--that was the way Mrs. Hutchins had once referred to Pierce Langford--have in mind to do? Would he make trouble for them in any way that would place them in an embarrassing position? These girls had had experiences in the last year which were likely to make them apprehensive of almost anything under such circumstances as these.
Warned of the presence on the train of a probable agent of the family that Mrs. Hutchins had under suspicion, the girls were constantly on the alert for some evidence of his interest in them and their movements. And they were rewarded to this extent: In the course of the journey, Langford paid the conductor the extra mileage for parlor car privileges, and as he transferred from the coach, not one of the Flamingoites failed to observe the fact that in personal appearance he answered strikingly the description of the man referred to in the telegram received by Miss Ladd.
The squint-eyed man of mystery, in the coolest and most nonchalant manner, took a seat a short distance in front of the bevy of knitting Camp Fire Girls, unfolded a newspaper and appeared to bury himself in its contents, oblivious to all else about him.
Half an hour later he arose and left the car, passing out toward the rear end of the train. Another half hour elapsed and he did not reappear. Then Katherine Crane and Hazel Edwards put away their knitting and announced that they were going back into the observation car and look over the magazines. They did not communicate to each other their real purpose in making this move, but neither had any doubt as to what was going on in the mind of the other. Marie Crismore looked at them with a little squint of intelligence and said as she arose from her chair:
"I think I'll go, too, for a change."
But this is what she interpolated to herself:
"They're going back there to spy, and I think I'll go and spy, too."
They found Langford in the observation car, apparently asleep in a chair. Katherine, who entered first, declared afterwards that she was positive she saw him close his eyes like a flash and lapse into an appearance of drowsiness, but if she was not in error, his subsequent manner was a very clever simulation of midday slumber. Three or four times in the course of the next hour he shifted his position and half opened his eyes, but drooped back quickly into the most comfortable appearance of somnolent lassitude.
The three girls were certain that all