Mandie Collection, The: 4 (51 page)

The girls quietly walked down the corridor to the door of Jonathan’s room. As Mandie lifted her fist to knock, the girls were surprised by

Jonathan opening the door. Mandie felt him looking at her eyes, which she realized must be red from all that crying. She dropped her head.

“I knew you two would be along soon,” Jonathan told them in a whisper. “Come on.” He started quietly down the corridor.

“Where are you going?” Mandie hurried to catch up.

“Down to the wharf, of course,” the boy said, with his mischievous grin. “Isn’t that where you wanted to go?”

Mandie was surprised at his taking the lead. She was usually the one who decided matters of what, where and when, and how and why sometimes.

“Yes, but...” Mandie replied hesitantly. She had not really planned on leaving the hotel without her grandmother’s permission.

“Mandie, we shouldn’t,” Celia warned her.

“Well, I’m going with or without you two. I would have already gone down there but I was waiting for you,” Jonathan said and began briskly walking on down the hallway.

“Wait,” Mandie called softly. She quickly followed him. Glancing backward she asked, “Celia, are you coming?”

“I suppose so if you are,” Celia said, trailing behind her friend.

Mandie felt her heart fill with guilt at what she was doing. Her grandmother would be furious if she found the girls missing. But then maybe they could solve the mystery of the sounds coming from the old boat, and someone might be helped in the process. Besides, her grandmother was already angry with her. And though she tried to ignore it, she knew she was still angry with her grandmother.

“Come on,” Jonathan called to the girls. He waited at the top of the steps going down into the lobby.

Mandie and Celia caught up with Jonathan, and the three hurried down the stairs and out the huge front door of the hotel. Once outside Mandie breathed a sigh of relief. No one had seemed to notice them.

“Jonathan, we’d better make hay while we can,” Mandie urged. “I have a feeling we’re going to be missed.”

Jonathan grinned mischievously at Mandie and asked, “Make hay? What does that mean? We’re in a city, not in a hayfield somewhere.” He stopped in front of the girls.

“Oh, Jonathan, come on, let’s get going. You know what I mean,” Mandie replied with a sigh as she rushed on down the sidewalk.

“No, I really don’t,” the boy insisted as he followed.

Mandie gave him a suspicious look and walked on.

Celia explained. “What she means is, we’d better hurry while we can.”

“That’s right, Jonathan Guyer. We’d better get a move on,” Mandie told him as she started toward the wharf.

“Talking about foreign languages, I do believe you have your own foreign language,” Jonathan teased.

Mandie stopped to look at him. “Are we going to the wharf or not?” she asked.

“Of course we are,” Jonathan said. “Come on.”

As the three walked on, Mandie said, “I’ll remember to pick at what you say, too.”

Celia slowed her steps to ask, “Are we going in the right direction? I thought that boat was down another street. I don’t remember being on this one.”

Mandie and Jonathan also stopped and looked around.

“You’re right, Celia,” Mandie agreed. “I think we came one street too far.”

“Then all we have to do is go back one block and go down the next street,” Jonathan said as he turned back the way they had come.

The three walked several blocks, trying different streets, before Mandie finally spotted the vendor with the cart where they had stopped the day before.

“Now I know where we are,” Mandie said with a sigh of relief.

“Yes,” Celia agreed.

“And we should go that way,” Jonathan said, pointing.

By the time they finally came within sight of the boat, Mandie realized they had wasted a lot of time trying to find it. She was worried that her grandmother would come to their rooms and find them gone. And she would not only be upset with Mandie but would be worried since she wouldn’t know where they were in this strange city.

“We’ve got to hurry,” Mandie urged her friends as she lifted her long skirts and ran the rest of the way to the pier. Celia and Jonathan followed.

They stopped near the end of the pier and looked at the old boat rocking in the shallow water.

“All right, Jonathan, how did you figure to get on the boat?” Mandie asked.

Jonathan picked up some pieces of old timber lying at the edge of the pier and carried them to the end of the boardwalk.

“Like this,” he said, stacking up the wood. “Then we get some more and keep adding to it until we’ve made an extension that will reach to the edge of the boat.”

“I’m not sure that would be safe,” Mandie said, surveying what he was doing. “Won’t the wood all tumble off the end of the pier and into the water when we step on it?”

“I don’t think so,” Jonathan said, straightening up to look at the wood.

“I think it will,” Celia said.

“Let’s heap it all up and then try it,” Jonathan said, quickly gathering up more scattered timber and placing it with the first pile.

“You know I can’t swim, Jonathan,” Mandie said, backing off. “I’m not about to try it. You go ahead if you want to, not me.”

“All right then, I will,” Jonathan said. He finally had a network of boards that formed an extension to the pier by jutting out over the water.

“Get back, Celia,” Mandie warned. “Jonathan is going to fall in, and when he does he’s going to make a big splash.” She moved farther back and Celia followed.

“If the thing caves in, the boards are near enough to the boat that I can grab the edge of it to keep from falling into the water,” Jonathan said, looking at what he had made.

“Well, hurry up, Jonathan. We’ve got to get back to the hotel,” Mandie told him.

“Hold your breath, girls,” Jonathan said as he slowly stepped on the pile of boards.

Mandie and Celia silently watched as he slowly put one foot in front of the other. He didn’t seem to be scared, but the boards wobbled now and then. Finally he got near the outer end of the pile of old lumber.

“Ha, ha! It worked!” Jonathan called to them as he laughed and looked back. The loose boards suddenly flew out from under his feet, and he went flying in the air beyond the end of the pier. He grabbed for the side of the boat but couldn’t quite reach it.

Mandie and Celia watched as he made a big splash in the water, just as Mandie had predicted.

Mandie laughed and called to him, “I told you so!” She knew

Jonathan was considered an excellent swimmer, but she ran forward to be sure he got out of the water all right. He was clinging to the post under where she stood, and as she watched he began climbing upward, with water pouring from his wet clothes.

Celia moved closer and when Jonathan finally grasped the boards beneath their feet, the girls bent to give him a hand as he tumbled upon the pier. He sat there looking up at them as water continued to flow from his clothes.

Grinning he said, “Guess it didn’t work.”

“It certainly didn’t,” Celia said, shaking drops of water from her long skirt.

“I’ll say it didn’t,” Mandie agreed. “Jonathan, can’t you squeeze out some of the water so you can walk? We’ve got to get back to the hotel.”

Jonathan struggled to his feet, his wet clothing clinging to him. He took off his jacket and tried wringing it out.

“I’ll help,” Mandie offered as she caught one end of the garment and helped him twist it.

“Y’all are going to ruin his jacket for good,” Celia told them as she watched.

“Here, I’ll just roll it up and carry it,” Jonathan said, bundling up the jacket. He stomped his feet, then sat down and took his shoes off and poured the water out. “All right,” he said, standing up, “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

They couldn’t walk very fast because Jonathan was weighted down with the wet clothes and soggy shoes. The girls kept away from him because he continued to splatter water.

“Why don’t you girls go ahead? I’ll be along shortly,” Jonathan suggested. “My feet just won’t go any faster.”

“I think we’d better all stay together,” Mandie said. “You know, I was just thinking. We didn’t hear any noise from that old boat a while ago, did we?”

Jonathan looked at her. “You’re right. I don’t remember hearing a thing.”

“Neither did I,” Celia added as the three continued up the street.

“Maybe whoever it was, or whatever it was, is not in the boat anymore,” Mandie suggested.

“Or they heard us outside and were quiet,” Jonathan said.

Mandie just happened to glance back as they went along. She stopped abruptly and said, “Look! Isn’t that the man we saw in the hotel with the painting?” She pointed to a man in dark clothes who was going in the direction from which they had come.

“Where did he come from? He didn’t pass us, I’m sure,” Jonathan said as he watched the man.

“Maybe he came out of one of the shops along this street after we passed it,” Celia suggested as she, too, stared at the man.

“Come on. Let’s see where he is going,” Mandie said, excitedly rushing off back down the street they had come up.

“Wait for me!” Jonathan called to her as he bent and removed his soggy shoes, then picked them up and ran after Mandie.

Celia hesitated between Mandie and Jonathan and finally hurried with Jonathan to catch up with Mandie.

“I hope he doesn’t see us,” Mandie said as she and her friends slowed down a short distance behind the man. “Isn’t he the same one we saw in the hotel?”

“He looks like the same man,” Jonathan said.

“I wonder what he did with the painting,” Mandie said as they continued following.

At that moment the man hurried down an alleyway between two shops. The young people followed and then paused at the entrance to watch him. There seemed to be shops down the way, and the man looked as though he was searching for one in particular. He stopped to look at the front of each one.

Several people strolling along the sidewalk of the street stared at Jonathan’s appearance. He stared back at them. His clothes were still sopping wet and he was carrying his shoes and jacket.

“Jonathan, you are attracting attention,” Mandie said, smiling at the boy as she looked him over.

Jonathan glanced down at himself. “Didn’t anybody ever see someone wet before?”

Mandie and Celia laughed. And at that moment when they weren’t watching, the man disappeared.

“Where did he go?” Mandie asked as she gazed down the alleyway. “He’s gone!”

“Well!” Jonathan exclaimed.

“He must have gone into one of those shops down that way,” Celia said.

“Let’s go see,” Mandie said, hurrying down the alleyway and stopping to look in the shop near where the man was the last time she saw him. Jonathan and Celia followed.

None of the shops were enclosed in the front. Therefore it was possible to see right inside. The three quickly made their way to the end of the alley, but the man was nowhere to be seen.

“Oh, shucks!” Mandie exclaimed, stomping her foot. “We
would
lose him!”

“We don’t know for sure whether he was the man from the hotel. We never did get close enough to see him straight in the face,” Jonathan reminded her.

“But he looked like the same one,” Mandie insisted. “He had on dark clothes like that man and he seemed to walk the same way.”

“Whether he was or not we’ve lost him, Mandie, and your grandmother will be turning the hotel upside down looking for us,” Celia reminded her.

“Oh, yes, we’d better hurry,” Mandie agreed. The three rushed back toward the hotel. “We’ll catch up with him sooner or later.”

CHAPTER FOUR

THE MAN IN THE PARK

When the young people arrived at the hotel, they found the lobby full of guests wandering around. Mandie stopped just inside the door and whispered to Jonathan, “It must be time for supper.”

“Yes,” he agreed as he tried to slip through the crowd without attracting attention. But the manager saw him as he walked by the desk, and the man wanted to know what had happened.

“Oh, I just got a little wet, nothing serious,” Jonathan told him, weakly smiling as he tried to go on.

“If you will give those wet clothes to the maid, we can clean and dry them for you,” the manager told him.

“Yes, sir, I will,” Jonathan said as he finally got past the desk.

The three hurried for the steps and went up them two at a time. By the time they arrived at their floor they were all panting for breath.

“See you later,” Mandie called to him as she and Celia went toward their rooms and Jonathan continued down the corridor to his.

Mandie rushed up to the door and then paused. “I’m afraid to open the door. Grandmother may be just waiting for me inside,” she whispered to Celia.

“Then I will,” Celia said, stepping forward to push open the door.

As the two looked inside they both sighed with relief when they found the rooms empty.

Mandie heard Snowball howling in the bathroom and rushed to let him out. She removed her bonnet and plopped down on her bed. They had two beds in the huge bedroom in this hotel.

“I think I’m worn out,” Mandie said, lying back on a pillow. “Do you think we have time to take a nap?” She looked at the clock nearby on the table. “It’s twenty minutes after five and Grandmother said to be dressed by seven. I think I’ll take about thirty minutes of winks.” She straightened out to get comfortable.

“I’m afraid I’d oversleep so I’ll just write in my diary while you sleep,” Celia told her as she went to her trunk in the corner and got out her journal. She propped up with the pillows on her bed.

“Ummm,” Mandie replied as she dozed off. Snowball curled up at her feet.

Mandie dreamed of her father. She was living in the log cabin at Charley Gap. Her father, Jim Shaw, was putting up a rail fence around their property. Mandie was following him around and helping with whatever she could. She had been crying.

Jim Shaw took off the big-brimmed hat he was wearing, ran his hand through his curly red hair, and reached to put an arm around Mandie. His blue eyes looked down into hers.

“We must all love one another, my baby,” Jim Shaw said as he squeezed her tight. “And we must forgive. I know it’s hard to live right, but we have to try with all our might.”