Mandie Collection, The: 8 (46 page)

Mandie had always been able to figure out mysteries, and she was not going to let this one go unsolved.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE WAY IT ENDED

For several days nothing mysterious happened. Patricia Saylors sent a message that she had made an appointment to take Mandie and Celia to visit her friends Mr. and Mrs. Margalosa, who said they had ghosts in their house, if the girls were still interested in going.

Mandie discussed the invitation with Senator Morton and Mrs. Taft at the noontime meal that day. She showed the neatly written note to them and asked, “Would it be all right if Celia and I went?”

“I don’t personally know Mr. and Mrs. Margalosa, who own the enormous mansion on the other side of town, but I have heard they claim to have ghosts inhabiting the dwelling with them,” Senator Morton said with a smile. “Of course, I do know the Saylors family, where we took you two to visit.”

“I really think you should have an adult along with you, Amanda,” Mrs. Taft said.

“But, Grandmother, Patricia and her brother Edward will pick us up and then bring us home,” Mandie protested.

“I could send Lolly with them if you would like,” the senator told Mrs. Taft.

Before she could reply, Mandie shook her head and said, “No, please, Grandmother. We are old enough. We don’t need anyone to go with us. Please, Grandmother.”

“Well, I suppose it will be all right, provided you go straight there and back, mind you,” Mrs. Taft reluctantly agreed.

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, Grandmother,” Mandie said, smiling at Celia.

Mandie was excited as they drove to the Margalosas’ mansion, but Celia was a little frightened to be visiting a house where ghosts were said to live. Mrs. Margalosa was an elderly woman dressed in complete black.

“Please come in,” Mrs. Margalosa greeted them at the front door. She stepped back and motioned them into a wide, long, dark hallway. “And how are you, Miss Patricia and Mr. Edward?”

They all exchanged greetings, standing there in the hallway. Mrs. Margalosa pointed to a young man at the other end of the hallway. “That is my son, Antonio.”

Mandie noticed the son did not speak but quickly disappeared through a doorway back there.

Mrs. Margalosa took them into the parlor where her husband was reading. After she introduced him, they all sat down. Mr. Margalosa had only nodded in their direction.

“Please tell Mandie and Celia about your ghost,” Patricia said.

Mrs. Margalosa looked at the two girls, frowned, and said, “We’ve been trying to locate him to see what he looks like, but all we get is a steady tapping, and we haven’t been able to track that down to its location. But this ghost does make noises sometimes in the middle of the night, which was upsetting until we became used to it. Now we pay it no never mind.”

“So you haven’t really seen a ghost, then?” Mandie repeated. “Then how do y’all know it is a ghost?”

Mrs. Margalosa looked at her and smiled. “Because we can’t find it. Therefore, it must be invisible, which I understand most ghosts are.”

“And is it always in the middle of the night when you hear this ghost?” Mandie asked.

“Yes, we’ve been here nigh on to two years, and we haven’t heard it in the daytime at all,” the woman said.

“Oh shucks!” Mandie exclaimed. “Then we won’t be able to hear it since it’s daytime right now.”

“You are welcome to come at night, but it’s usually late at night that we hear it,” Mrs. Margalosa told her.

“We’ll have to get permission,” Mandie told her.

The four young people prepared to leave. Mrs. Margalosa accompanied them to the front door. They stood in the hallway near the open double doors to the parlor.

“I’m sorry, Mandie.” Patricia said. “I didn’t realize the ghost can be heard only at night.”

“All ghosts creep around in the night,” Edward, her brother, teased.

“Then let’s get going,” Celia suggested.

Mrs. Margalosa opened the heavy front door while the young people stood there saying good-bye and then stepped outside. Suddenly there was a
tap-tapping
sound from somewhere back in the house.

“Listen!” Mandie cried, turning back.

“Thank you for coming,” Mrs. Margalosa said and quickly closed the door in their faces.

The young people looked at one another.

“Did y’all hear that?” Mandie asked.

“Yes,” the others agreed.

“Must have been the ghost protesting because we were poking into his business,” Edward said with a laugh.

“Do you think we could get back inside the house?” Mandie asked Patricia.

“No,” Patricia replied. “You saw Mrs. Margalosa close the door in a hurry. I don’t believe she wants anyone investigating her ghost.”

The Saylors young people dropped Mandie and Celia back at the senator’s house with a promise to see if they could find another place where ghosts lived.

Mandie and Celia went up the outside steps to their room. Mandie had left Snowball closed up and planned to take him out for a walk. There was no sign of anyone else around.

Mandie opened the door to their bedroom and looked around for her white cat. “Snowball, where are you?” she called.

“I don’t believe he’s here,” Celia commented as she helped look.

Suddenly there was a loud noise that sounded like meows and scratching.

“Where is he?” Mandie asked quickly. “The wardrobe. He must be inside the wardrobe.” She ran to open the doors to the piece of
furniture. Snowball jumped out and ran across the room, meowing and licking his claws.

“How did he get in there?” Celia asked, coming to look.

Mandie surveyed the contents of the wardrobe and said, “Celia, there’s something behind our clothes.” She quickly began removing the clothes on hangers, and Celia helped.

At last they could see the interior of the wardrobe. On the back side there was a small opening, like a door, standing open. Mandie quickly investigated and gasped at Celia, “There’s a wireless inside the wall of the wardrobe. Look!”

“Mandie, I wouldn’t touch anything! Senator Morton ought to be told so he can examine whatever it is,” Celia cautioned her.

“We didn’t imagine things. That was a wireless we heard when we were under the bed,” Mandie said. “I wonder what it’s doing in there.”

“Mandie, let’s get Senator Morton,” Celia insisted.

Closing the wardrobe door, Mandie turned and quickly left the room with Celia right behind her. They finally located the senator and Mrs. Taft in the parlor. The girls rushed into the room.

“Senator Morton, there’s a wireless in our wardrobe!” Mandie told him breathlessly. “And we—”

“A wireless?” Mrs. Taft interrupted.

“A wireless?” the senator repeated. He rose quickly and added, “Would you young ladies please show me what you are talking about?”

Mandie and Celia led the way up the stairs and to their room. Senator Morton followed with Mrs. Taft. The girls rushed across the room to their wardrobe and flung open the doors.

“In there! In that secret panel at the back,” Mandie told him as she moved so he could look inside.

“Where, Miss Amanda? I don’t see anything like that,” Senator Morton replied.

Mandie and Celia both crowded forward to look into the wardrobe. The wireless was gone! The secret compartment was empty.

“It was here, Senator Morton. I saw it with my own two eyes,” Mandie insisted.

“I did, too,” Celia added.

“Then what happened to it?” Senator Morton asked, bending inside
the piece of furniture to examine the compartment. “I don’t see any sign of it.”

“Somebody must have heard us when we found it, or when we told you,” Mandie said. “But it really and truly was there. We both saw it. And we also heard it the other day.” She explained about crawling under the bed that day.

Mrs. Taft looked at Senator Morton and said, “You must have some dishonest people around here.”

Then Mandie remembered hearing the sound at Mrs. Margalosa’s house and told the senator about that.

“Seems there’s a lot going on around here,” the senator said thoughtfully. “Don’t you young ladies worry about this. I’ll look into everything and take care of it.”

Mandie could see the senator did not intend discussing any suspicions with her, or giving any explanations if he was aware of the setup. He and Mrs. Taft went back to the parlor. The girls went outside to walk Snowball around the garden.

“Senator Morton didn’t seem very interested in the fact that someone had put a wireless in that wardrobe, did he?” Mandie remarked as she held on to Snowball’s red leash.

“He might not have believed us, Mandie,” Celia told her.

“I think he believed us, but that he also knew about it,” Mandie said.

“Knew about it?” Celia repeated.

“Yes, it must have been some kind of setup he had for some reason or other,” Mandie said thoughtfully.

“Do you mean you think it was Senator Morton who has been coming in our room and going into the wardrobe to use that wireless?” Celia asked.

“Maybe,” Mandie replied. Snowball jumped after a butterfly in a bush and almost jerked the leash out of her hand. “Snowball, leave that pretty butterfly alone.” She tightened her grip to pull him back. “Anyhow, I am going to watch Juan every minute that I can. He may be the one. After all, he is pretending he can’t speak or hear.”

Although the girls were on the lookout for Juan after that, they didn’t see him again for two days. They were again in the yard when he suddenly rushed through the shrubbery from the carriage house in the
backyard and into the back door of the house. They tried to follow, but he was too quick, and they were unable to tell where he had gone.

That same night Mandie and Celia were sitting in their window before going to bed and saw Juan below in the front yard.

“Look, that’s Juan down there,” Mandie said. “Let’s go down and watch him.” She raced for the door, and Celia came right behind her.

The moon was shining brightly, and the girls slowed down outside to keep within the shadows of bushes and trees as they made their way toward the spot they had seen Juan.

“There!” Mandie whispered in Celia’s ear, pointing ahead. Juan was standing in the shadows next to the trunk of a large palm tree.

The girls quickly darted behind another tree to watch the man. Almost immediately another figure came up to Juan in the dark. Mandie gasped to herself when she realized it was none other than the strange woman, Miss Lucretia Wham. Her heartbeat quickened as she grasped Celia’s hand and tried to listen. Miss Wham was speaking rapidly to Juan, and he seemed to be hearing what she was saying.

“—Margalosa ... Antonio ...” were about the only words Mandie could make out. Miss Wham was talking about the Margalosas for some reason.

Then Juan straightened up and said plainly, “They have all been taken in by the marshal tonight.”

“Then I will return to Washington tomorrow,” Miss Wham said.

Mandie was itching to run out from her cover and speak to the woman, but for some reason she was afraid to, and she wanted to make sure she heard everything she could.

“I will tell the senator immediately,” Juan replied.

At that moment there was the sound of footsteps near them, and Mandie cautiously looked behind her and saw Lolly rushing through the yard toward Juan. When she looked back at Juan, the strange woman had disappeared and he was alone. He must have seen Lolly approaching because he did not seem surprised that she was there when she came up to him.

“Get your things ready. We leave before daylight tomorrow,” Juan told the girl.

“Then we have accomplished what we came for,” Lolly said in an educated voice, surprising Mandie. The girl must have been posing as a maid and was not really one after all.

“Yes, I am going now to inform the senator. Be ready before the sun comes up,” Juan said, walking toward the house.

“Yes, sir. I’ll be waiting for you,” Lolly said, and she walked off toward the back of the house, where she lived in the upstairs of the carriage house.

Mandie stood there completely confused.
What is going on?
Lolly was not really a maid, and Juan was some kind of partner with her. Could it be that those two had set up the wireless for some crooked reason, and now that Mandie and Celia had discovered it, they had decided to move on out of town?

“Let’s go,” Celia urged Mandie.

“This is strange,” Mandie whispered as she and Celia carefully made their way back to the outside steps.

Once back in their room, the girls tried to figure out the mystery. Mandie sat down near the window to watch below again. Celia began getting ready for bed.

“What do you think that was all about, Mandie?” Celia asked, taking down her nightclothes from the wardrobe.

“Well, to begin with, I believe Senator Morton knew all the time about the wireless,” Mandie replied. “And there must be something going on between Juan and Lolly. And Miss Wham is involved in all this. It sounded to me like the Margalosas are in trouble of some kind.”

“Yes, I agree,” Celia said, putting on her nightclothes and then going over to sit by Mandie. “Aren’t you going to get ready for bed?”

“No, because I want to watch for Lolly and Juan when they meet before daylight like they planned,” Mandie replied. Looking at her friend, she asked, “Did you hear Miss Wham say she was returning to Washington tomorrow?”

“Yes, I did,” Celia replied. “And, Mandie, I figure she is still working for the president or at least for the government, don’t you believe?”

“That is exactly what I thought, too,” Mandie agreed. “But I wonder what it could be about.”

“I see someone else down there, over to the left ... under that huge tree,” Celia told Mandie.

Mandie quickly squinted and leaned out the window. “Yes, there are
two men down there!” she exclaimed. “I am going back downstairs.” She raced for the door.

“Soon as I get my dress back on, I’ll come, too,” Celia called to Mandie as she went out the door.

As Mandie reached the yard, a fire ignited over in the front corner. The bushes and trees seemed to be burning. Mandie kept running toward it to see what was happening. The two men were nowhere in sight, and they had evidently set the fire. Turning back to the house, she started screaming as loudly as she could, “Fire! Fire! Come quick, somebody. Fire!” She ran as fast as her wobbly, frightened legs would take her and almost collided with Juan as she opened the front door. He was rushing outside.