The Niagara Falls Mystery Read online

  There was another note for the children on the door. Henry tore it open. “It’s from Grandfather. He came back a couple days early. He says to meet him at the Rainbow Inn as soon as we can get there.”

  The children fetched their jackets from the bungalow. The Rainbow Inn was just a few blocks away.

  “There’s Grandfather’s car,” Violet said when they reached the inn.

  “There’s another familiar car.” Jessie pointed to an old brown car nearby. “Is that the McKenzies’ car?”

  “It is,” Violet said, looking in the window of the car. “There’s confetti on the floor. It’s probably from their wedding.” Violet paused. “I sure hope it doesn’t turn out that they took the Lundys’ wallet.”

  “Or the guest book,” Henry added.

  The children found their grandfather right away. He was enjoying a cup of coffee and the afternoon newspaper in the lounge area.

  “There you are,” he said, getting up to hug his four grandchildren. “You got my note. I figured you were out sightseeing around Niagara Falls. Tell me all about it.”

  The children settled themselves on a nearby couch. They told their grandfather everything that had happened while he was gone. It was easy to talk about all the fun things they’d done, like riding on the Aero Car and the Maid of the Mist. But it was harder telling him about the Lasalle cousins.

  Mr. Alden looked upset when he heard the news. “I’m sorry to hear that Will and Michel Lasalle are not getting along. I’d heard Michel was careless when he worked at the shop. I hoped by now he’d grown up a little. Still, I don’t think he’d steal someone’s money. And certainly not his grandfather’s valuable Prince of Wales guest book.”

  The lounge area was getting busy. The children had to speak louder to be heard.

  Jessie was at the far end of the couch. She raised her voice so Mr. Alden could hear her. “We think the McKenzies may have taken the wallet, Grandfather. They knew where it was. Right after it was missing, they seemed to have a lot of money. We saw them at the tower restaurant. They’re even staying here.”

  Jessie felt Henry tap her arm.

  “Shhh,” Henry said. “The McKenzies were sitting right behind us. I think they overheard us talking about them.”

  When the children looked up, they saw the McKenzies rush from the lounge. The young couple stopped at the front desk, grabbed two suitcases, and left.

  “Can we follow them, Grandfather?” Henry asked. “I have a feeling they know all about the wallet. And maybe about the guest book, too.”

  Mr. Alden was out of his chair in no time. The McKenzies’ car was just pulling out when the Aldens got into their own car. Mr. Alden followed the brown car down the street and onto the Niagara Parkway. He drove a couple of car lengths behind them.

  “They’re turning onto Peace Bridge,” Jessie said a few minutes later. “What if they’re leaving Canada?”

  Mr. Alden pulled over next to a long line of cars waiting to pass at the customs booth on the American side.

  “I’m going to get a customs officer,” Henry said. “Then the McKenzies will have to stop.”

  After Mr. Alden stopped, Henry went off to the customs booth. The other children got out of the car and walked over to the McKenzies’ car.

  Jessie knocked on the window. The McKenzies didn’t roll it down or even look at the Aldens.

  “We need to talk to you,” Jessie said through the glass. “Just to ask a couple of things. Please talk to us.”

  Violet tugged on Jessie’s sleeve. “Look what’s lying on the backseat.”

  Jessie took a look. A large brown envelope lay on the backseat. On the front of the envelope, Jessie saw the Lundys’ name and address printed in big black letters.

  A minute later the customs officer arrived. He waved over the McKenzies’ car. Now they had to roll down the car window.

  “I understand you might have some stolen property,” the officer said to the McKenzies.

  Robert McKenzie looked pale. He picked up the envelope from the backseat and handed it to the customs officer. “The wallet in this envelope was missing but not stolen. Check inside. You’ll find all the Lundys’ money and identification cards. We were going to mail this to the owners.”

  “Sure, sure,” the customs man said. “Well, I can’t arrest you, since everything seems to be here. But I’ll take this wallet now and get in touch with the owners myself. We want Niagara Falls visitors to know that folks here are honest.”

  “We are honest, just not too careful,” Sally McKenzie said. “When the Lundys didn’t come back for their wallet right away, I decided to take it to the police station. But I misplaced the wallet on the way. Honest.”

  Was Sally McKenzie telling the truth?

  “Nobody knew us in Niagara Falls,” she went on. “I was afraid we’d be accused of stealing the wallet and the guest book, too. I tried to keep these children away until I found the wallet, which I did. It had fallen underneath the seat of my car. It’s been here the whole time.”

  The customs man turned to the children. “Does this sound possible?”

  The children wanted to say yes, but they couldn’t.

  “I don’t like to mind your business,” Jessie began, “but where did you get the money for the restaurant, and the horse and buggy, and the Rainbow Inn?”

  Robert McKenzie answered that question. “Our old boss back in the States finally sent us our check. Since we were still on our honeymoon, we decided to spend the money on a few more nights in the inn and a nice dinner out.”

  The Aldens didn’t know what to say next.

  “We knew how bad it would look to everyone,” he continued, “so we left Will a note that we were leaving. When we overheard you saying you thought we were thieves, we decided to leave Niagara Falls right away.”

  Sally McKenzie looked at the Aldens. “Why are you children smiling all of a sudden?” she asked.

  Sure enough, the four children were smiling.

  Violet was often shy, but not now. “We’re just happy you got the money to continue your honeymoon after all.”

  Pretty soon the McKenzies were smiling, too — even Robert.

  “I guess that means we can go back to the Rainbow Inn — and to the shop,” Robert McKenzie said. “I want to tear up the note I left for Will Lasalle. We’ve got a job to finish.”

  Soon Mr. Aldens’ car was on the Niagara River Parkway behind the McKenzies’ car again.

  “Look,” Violet said. “They put their JUST MARRIED sign on the back of their car again.”

  “So they did,” Mr. Alden said.

  * * *

  Everyone arrived at the shop just in time to see Will and Michel Lasalle pull up in front. The two cousins were smiling.

  “I brought Michel along to give us a hand,” Will explained to everyone. “From now on, he’s part of the family business, too. Michel, meet Sally McKenzie. The man unlocking the door to the shop is her husband, Robert. This young couple has been a big help managing things around here.”

  “Hi, there,” Robert said quickly. “I’ll let you inside in just a second.”

  By the time the two cousins stepped into the shop, Robert had crumpled up his good-bye note and turned on the lights.

  “Sally and I will be glad for your help,” Robert told Michel. “The Aldens here are in charge of the display room, but from now on we all work together. No closed doors around here. I have a hunch if we all put our heads together, we can figure out what happened to the guest book.”

  “Look!” Jessie cried when the children entered the display room. “We don’t have to figure out what happened to the guest book. It’s back in the case!”

  Everyone crowded around the glass case. Sure enough, the guest book lay open to the page with the Prince of Wales’s signature.

  Will and Michel looked over the children’s shoulders.

  “It’s on a wooden stand,” Will said. “A wonderful, carved wooden stand. How on earth did that get here?”

>   Only one person could answer that question.

  Angus Drummond stepped from the shadows in the corner. “That stand is older than anything or anyone in this room,” Angus told everyone. “Older than me, even. My great-grandma worked in the old hotel when the Prince of Wales visited there in 1860. She waited on the Prince and his family the whole time they were in Niagara Falls. When the hotel went out of business years later, my pa bought some hotel souvenirs at the auction. The Lasalles got the guest book, but the Drummonds got the stand the guest book was on.”

  Will couldn’t believe it. “That’s fantastic, Angus. I knew both our families were connected to the hotel. But I can’t let you give this stand away. It belongs to your family.”

  Angus took a Navy Island cane and rapped it on the floor. “Who said anything about giving it away, young man? Not me. No, sir. You can borrow the stand for as long as this place stays open. Just make sure everybody knows it came from the Drummonds, that’s all.”

  The Aldens were curious.

  “Why did you take the guest book? And when?” Henry asked.

  Angus tapped the floor with the cane again. “I didn’t take the guest book. I borrowed it to see how it would look on this stand. Will’s grandpa gave me a key to the display room a long time ago. He said I could go in anytime, so I did. But then you kids showed up before I could borrow the guest book. When I saw you, I went right out the front door and to my spot across the street, cool as you please.”

  “So it was you that first day,” Jessie said. “You were quick.”

  “Well, I’ve been climbing the hills around Niagara Falls for a lot of years,” Angus said. “I finally got hold of the guest book the day the McKenzies started work. All I wanted to do was look up some names from the olden days. I couldn’t do that with everybody snooping on me, now, could I? So I borrowed the book. Pretty soon everybody’s gone off their heads about it. The book was safe and sound the whole time.”

  The Aldens just had to know something else.

  “We saw you on a hill near Whirlpool Rapids this morning,” Henry began. “At least we think it was you. What were you doing there?”

  Angus smiled. “Same thing I always do there — visiting my fishing shack in the woods. My shack was a good place to look at the book in peace.”

  Everybody looked relieved.

  “The book is back now,” Will said. “That’s all that matters. And everybody can see the Prince of Wales’s signature even better now that it’s displayed on this stand. Thanks so much, Angus.”

  Benny wasn’t the least bit interested in the guest book now that it was back.

  “Hey, Benny, what are you doing?” Will asked when he saw Benny writing something in a book on the counter.

  “Signing this new guest book, that’s what.”

  The children came over to see what Benny was up to. Everyone laughed when they saw what he had written: Benny Alden was here!

  Angus Drummond laughed. “That’ll be a valuable souvenir a hundred years from now!”

  GERTRUDE CHANDLER WARNER discovered when she was teaching that many readers who like an exciting story could find no books that were both easy and fun to read. She decided to try to meet this need, and her first book, The Boxcar Children, quickly proved she had succeeded.

  Miss Warner drew on her own experiences to write the mystery. As a child she spent hours watching trains go by on the tracks opposite her family home. She often dreamed about what it would be like to set up housekeeping in a caboose or freight car — the situation the Alden children find themselves in.

  When Miss Warner received requests for more adventures involving Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny Alden, she began additional stories. In each, she chose a special setting and introduced unusual or eccentric characters who liked the unpredictable.

  While the mystery element is central to each of Miss Warner’s books, she never thought of them as strictly juvenile mysteries. She liked to stress the Aldens’ independence and resourcefulness and their solid New England devotion to using up and making do. The Aldens go about most of their adventures with as little adult supervision as possible — something else that delights young readers.

  Miss Warner lived in Putnam, Connecticut, until her death in 1979. During her lifetime, she received hundreds of letters from girls and boys telling her how much they liked her books.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1997 by Albert Whitman & Company

  Albert Whitman & Company

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