Boxcar Children 54 - Hurricane Mystery Read online

  The Hurricane Mystery

  GERTRUDE CHANDLER WARNER

  Illustrated by Charles Tang

  ALBERT WHITMAN & Company, Chicago

  Contents

  CHAPTER

  1 Hurricanes and Pirates

  2 Lost and Found

  3 A Paper Chase

  4 A Terrible Fight

  5 Hoofbeats of History

  6 Gold Coins and Iron Bars

  7 Who’s There

  8 The Mysterious Stranger

  9 A Treasure Trap

  10 Stop, Thief

  11 The Hurricane Gate

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  Hurricanes and Pirates

  Do you think we’ll see any pirates?” asked Benny Alden. He pressed his face against the window of the taxi and peered out at the drawbridge that was raised in front of them.

  “Oh, Benny!” said his sister Jessie. She was twelve, six years older than Benny. “Of course not. No pirates live in Charleston!”

  “Where do they live?” asked Benny. A fishing boat, hung with nets, slid through the narrow channel of marshy water beneath the bridge. The drawbridge began to close.

  “Pirates lived a long, long time ago, Benny,” said fourteen-year-old Henry Alden. “There are no pirates now.”

  Benny looked disappointed. He said stubbornly, “I’m going to be a pirate when I grow up anyway. I’ll have a big ship, and Watch and I will make people walk the plank!”

  The other Aldens laughed at that. Watch Alden, a small black and white terrier curled on Henry’s lap, barked.

  Then ten-year-old Violet, always gentle and kind, said, “Benny, you wouldn’t make anybody really walk the plank. Would you?”

  “Maybe not,” said Benny. “I guess I can’t be a real pirate after all. But I still wish I could see one.”

  Suddenly the taxi driver spoke. “And even if you don’t see any pirates, young man, you might see a pirate’s treasure.”

  Benny bounced up and down in excitement. “Really?”

  “You never know,” said the cab driver. “After all, the legends and stories all say that pirates used to stop on Sullivans Island. The famous writer Edgar Allan Poe even wrote a story about finding pirate gold buried there! The library on Sullivans Island is named after him: the Edgar Allan Poe Library.”

  After the drawbridge closed, they crossed the bridge to Sullivans Island, a small island off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. The Alden children and their grandfather were on their way to visit Mrs. Ellen Ashleigh, who lived in one of the big old houses on the island. A hurricane had recently blown through Charleston, and right across Sullivans Island. Benny forgot about pirates when he saw what the hurricane had done.

  “How fast does the wind from a hurricane blow?” asked Benny, staring at a house that had no roof at all.

  “Hurricanes are the strongest of all the storms,” answered Grandfather Alden. “The winds can blow a hundred and fifty miles an hour or more.”

  “It blew the water from the ocean right across this island,” said the cab driver. “It filled all the houses with water and mud.”

  “Look at that boat!” exclaimed Jessie. The hurricane had left a boat behind on the middle of the island, right in the center of the road.

  “Yep,” said the cab driver, carefully driving his car around the boat. “This was one of the worst hurricanes yet. It blew whole houses away. Cars and boats, too. But we’ll rebuild. We’ve never let a hurricane defeat us yet!”

  He pulled the cab to a stop in front of a large two story silvery gray house with a wide front porch. Instead of corners at each end, it had round rooms on both the first and second floor, like towers.

  Shutters framed the windows. Some of them were closed, with boards nailed across them. Railings were missing from the porch. A tree had fallen in the yard. Boards had been ripped from the porch itself. And there were no front steps! But someone had already been cleaning up. A pile of branches was heaped neatly in one side of the yard.

  “Oh, dear,” said Violet. “Did the hurricane do all that?”

  “Don’t worry, Violet. We can fix it,” said Henry confidently.

  “Yes,” agreed Jessie. “After all, that’s why we’re here — to help Mrs. Ashleigh fix her house.”

  “Good luck,” said the cab driver as the Aldens got out of the cab. He winked at Benny. “And good luck finding that pirate’s treasure!” he added.

  Just then a tall, graceful woman with short black and silver hair came hurrying out of the house. She stepped carefully off the front porch and held out her hands as she walked up to them. “James Alden,” she said. “I’m so glad to see you. I’m so glad to see all of you!”

  She hugged Mr. Alden and all of the Aldens, even Watch. Then she led the way back to the house. “Watch your step,” she said when they reached the front porch. “The hurricane blew our front steps away. I imagine they are at the bottom of the ocean now!”

  Suddenly Benny started to laugh. “It’s just like the step for our boxcar,” he said. He pointed. Where the front steps had been, Mrs. Ashleigh had put a stump as a temporary step.

  “Your boxcar?” asked Mrs. Ashleigh.

  “We used to live in a boxcar,” said Jessie. “Before Grandfather found us.”

  The Boxcar Children told Mrs. Ashleigh about how, after their parents had died, they had gone to live in an old boxcar in the woods. They didn’t know that their grandfather was looking for them and wanted them to come live with him. When he found them, he’d brought them all to his house in Greenfield. As a surprise, and to make them feel more at home, he’d brought the boxcar, too. He’d put it behind the house and now they could visit it whenever they wanted.

  Hearing the story of the Boxcar Children, Mrs. Ashleigh smiled. “Well, I’m glad my house has a stump for a front step, just like your boxcar does, then,” she said. “It will make you feel more at home.”

  “But soon you’ll have stairs,” said Henry. “Because we’ll fix them for you.”

  Watch gave a little bark and hopped up the stump onto the front porch. He looked over his shoulder at everyone as if to say, Let’s get to work.

  “Okay, boy. Here we come,” said Benny. And the Aldens went inside with Mrs. Ashleigh.

  Inside the house Jessie said, “But there is no furniture! Oh, dear, Mrs. Ashleigh! Did the hurricane blow it all away?”

  Mrs. Ashleigh laughed and shook her head. “No. With the help of my neighbors, I got the furniture moved upstairs before the hurricane hit. Now that things are drying out and I’ve got most of the first floor cleaned up and repainted, I’ve just started moving it back down. We boarded up the windows and the water didn’t get any higher than the first floor. I was one of the lucky people. I didn’t lose much. Except . . .” She stopped and sighed.

  “What?” said Violet, clasping her hands.

  “Well, the hurricane took one very, very valuable thing of mine,” said Mrs. Ashleigh. “The most valuable thing I own. It’s priceless. The Pirate’s Gate.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Lost and Found

  Benny’s eyes grew very round. “The Pirate’s Gate?” he cried. “See? I told you there were pirates!”

  He gave a little skip of excitement. Grandfather put his hand on Benny’s shoulder. “Slow down, Benny. Let’s hear the rest of the story.”

  “But first why don’t y’all get unpacked and settled in your rooms,” suggested Mrs. Ashleigh. “I’ll be in the kitchen and when you are ready, we can have some refreshments and I’ll tell you about the Pirate’s Gate.”

  “Hurry!” Benny said. Then he added, “I’m hungry!” Watch barked in agreem
ent.

  Mrs. Ashleigh showed the Aldens where to go. Then she went back to the kitchen.

  Each of the Aldens had a separate room upstairs in the big house. As they all hurried to unpack, they discovered that Mrs. Ashleigh had put the downstairs furniture in every single room upstairs. Violet found boxes of books and china, and four rugs rolled up in her room. Henry had five chairs, a coffee table, and a giant hanging fern crammed into his. Benny laughed and laughed when he saw that his room was filled with lamps — tall and short, fat and skinny, fancy and plain. Jessie’s room had tables and pillows and pictures in picture frames propped against the wall. Even the halls were lined with furniture and boxes that Mrs. Ashleigh had put upstairs to keep safe from the storm, in case the ocean came into the house.

  “The hurricane made waves as tall as a house,” Violet said in an awed voice.

  “Yes,” said Grandfather Alden, his face serious. “The wind can blow your house away. Or the waves can wash it away. Ellen was lucky her house withstood the hurricane. Some people weren’t so lucky.”

  “We’ll have to help Mrs. Ashleigh move the rest of her furniture back downstairs,” said Henry, as the four of them and Watch made their way back downstairs to the kitchen.

  “Yes,” agreed Jessie. “That will be one of our first jobs.”

  In the kitchen, they were glad to see that Mrs. Ashleigh had already moved the table and chairs back downstairs. They sat around the table, and Mrs. Ashleigh served them lemonade and cookies. She gave Watch a bowl of fresh water and Benny gave him a dog biscuit.

  Mrs. Ashleigh looked at Watch. “You’re a very good dog, aren’t you, Watch?”

  Watch wagged his tail.

  “Smart, too,” put in Jessie. She was about to tell Mrs. Ashleigh how Watch had helped solve mysteries, and had even mysteriously disappeared himself once.

  But Benny couldn’t wait any longer.

  “Tell us about the Pirate’s Gate!” Benny burst out. “Do pirates use it?”

  Mrs. Ashleigh shook her head and smiled a little sadly. “No. But a pirate may have built it, Benny.”

  “Who?” asked Benny excitedly.

  “My great-great-great-great-grandfather,” said Mrs. Ashleigh. “His name was Fitzhugh, Forrest Fitzhugh. He came to Charleston when it was a little town at the end of the harbor. No one knew where he came from or how he got so much money, but he was a very wealthy man. He met my great-great-great-great-grandmother, Ellen, and fell in love. They got married and settled in Charleston. As a wedding present he gave her a beautiful house in Charleston, the house where I grew up and where my son lives now. She loved to garden so he designed a special gate for her garden.”

  “Oh, that’s so romantic,” said Violet, her eyes shining.

  “Why is it called the Pirate’s Gate?” asked Jessie.

  “What did the gate look like?” asked Henry.

  Mrs. Ashleigh held up her hand and laughed. “One at a time, okay? It was called the Pirate’s Gate for two reasons. One, many people believed that Mr. Fitzhugh had made his fortune as a pirate before he met Ellen and settled down. So they said when you went to visit Mr. Fitzhugh, you went in by a pirate’s gate. When Mr. Fitzhugh found out about it, he named his house — the house I grew up in, over in Charleston — Pirate’s Gate.”

  “People also said he kept it hidden nearby.” She paused and smiled. “When I was a little girl, I used to dig all over that backyard in Charleston, looking for buried treasure.”

  “What’s the other reason it was called the Pirate’s Gate?” asked Benny impatiently.

  “Well, the gate was made of black wrought iron. It was taller than your brother Henry and it had a ship set right in the middle of it.”

  “A pirate’s ship!” cried Benny.

  “Maybe, Benny. But no one’s ever been able to prove it, and Mr. Fitzhugh never said. He never denied he was a pirate, though. He just laughed and said there was nothing he couldn’t do. They say that was true, too. He could do anything — mend a sail or shoe a horse.

  “Anyway, I brought the gate with me when I moved from Charleston to Sullivans Island after my husband died. This house was our family’s summer house. Our family has spent summer vacations here since before I was born.”

  “And now the gate is gone,” said Violet sadly. She pushed her glass of lemonade away.

  “If only I’d had those old hinges fixed, it might still be here,” said Mrs. Ashleigh. “Maybe it would have been strong enough to outlast the wind and waves of the hurricane.”

  “Maybe it hasn’t gone far,” said Henry. He jumped up. “We could go look for it.”

  “That’s very nice of you, Henry, but I expect that gate is at the bottom of the ocean,” said Mrs. Ashleigh. “Along with my front steps!”

  “It might not be,” said Violet. “And we are good at finding things and solving mysteries. Aren’t we, Grandfather?”

  “That’s true,” said Mr. Alden.

  “Well, it can’t hurt to look,” said Mrs. Ashleigh. “And you’ll get a chance to explore the island. It’s a small island. You can’t get lost, and everybody is very friendly.”

  The Aldens thanked Mrs. Ashleigh for their lemonade and cookies. Then they hurried out of the house to begin to search for the Pirate’s Gate.

  Blue skies arched overhead. The sun shone bright and clear and warm. Everywhere they looked, they saw people cleaning up the mess the hurricane left behind. Some people carried trees and branches and debris to big piles at the edge of the street. Others hammered and sawed and nailed, taking the boards off windows and replacing broken glass. People waved at the children as they walked by.

  Seeing all the things the hurricane had blown away, Jessie shook her head. “I’m afraid Mrs. Ashleigh is right. That gate could be at the bottom of the ocean by now.”

  “Oh, no, it’s not,” said Benny. He pointed. “Look,” he said. “There it is!”

  Two women were dragging a gate across the front yard of a house that looked newer and fancier than many of the other houses they’d seen on the island. The gate they were dragging was big and made of iron shaped into bars and scrolls. And it had a ship made of iron set right in the middle of it!

  “Careful!” they heard the shorter of the two women say. She was thin and had short black hair that curled around her pale face. She struggled with the heavy gate. Her khaki pants and ivory-colored sandals were spattered with mud, but she didn’t seem to care. “We don’t want to damage this any more than the hurricane has!”

  “Don’t worry, Jackie, I won’t drop it,” panted the taller of the two women. She was wearing jeans and work boots that were also muddy. Her brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail with a bandanna. She had freckles sprinkled across her sunburned nose.

  “When I say go, lift the gate into the back of my van,” said the first woman. “Ready, set, go!”

  The two women lifted the gate in the air and set it down gently on an old blanket. The shorter woman closed the van. “Thanks, Diana,” she said. “I appreciate your help.” She took keys from her pocket and walked quickly toward the driver’s side,

  The Aldens exchanged glances. What was this woman going to do with Mrs. Ashleigh’s gate?

  “Stop!” shouted Henry. “That’s the Pirate’s Gate. It doesn’t belong to you!”

  CHAPTER 3

  A Paper Chase

  The shorter woman spun around and dropped her car keys.

  The taller woman put her hands on her hips. “Who are you?” she demanded.

  “I’m Henry Alden. These are my sisters, Jessie and Violet, my brother, Benny, and our dog, Watch.” He pointed. “And that is Mrs. Ashleigh’s gate.”

  “How do you know that?” asked the shorter woman.

  Now Jessie put her hands on her own hips. “Mrs. Ashleigh told us,” she said.

  The shorter woman, who’d bent over to pick up her car keys, straightened up. Red spots of color flushed her pale cheeks. “For that matter, how do you know Mrs. Ashleigh?” she asked.
r />   “Our grandfather is a friend of hers,” said Jessie. “We came all the way from Greenfield to help her clean and fix up her house. She told us about the hurricane blowing her gate away.”

  The taller woman suddenly laughed. “You know, I thought that gate looked familiar, didn’t you, Jackie?” To the Aldens, she said, “The hurricane dropped it in Jackie’s backyard. I was helping her put it in the truck.”

  “To take to Ellen Ashleigh,” said Jackie. “I told you that, didn’t I, Diana?”

  “Did you?” Diana scratched her head. “I’ve had so much carpenter work to do lately, since the hurricane, that I feel as if I have a hurricane blowing my thoughts around.” She stuck out her hand. “Hi. I’m Diana Shelby. I’m a neighbor of Mrs. Ashleigh’s.”

  “Me, too,” said Jackie. “I’m Jacqueline James. Everybody calls me Jackie. Sorry if I was a little suspicious. But after a hurricane, all kinds of characters arrive to try to take advantage of people. I guess we’d better hurry and get this gate back to Ellen.”

  “Do you need me to help you take it out of the van?” asked Diana.

  “We’ll help,” volunteered Henry.

  “Fine,” said Diana. “I’d better be getting to my next job. A man at the other end of the island had all the doors blown off his house. I’ve got to put some new ones up for him.” Diana walked over to a battered pickup truck and got in and drove quickly away.

  “Why don’t I give y’all a ride back to Mrs. Ashleigh’s?” suggested Jackie.

  The Aldens thought this was a very good idea.

  “I’ll go the long way around,” Jackie said. “That way, you can see some more of the island.” She drove them down the quiet streets, waving at people as she passed. “Out there is the lighthouse,” she said. She pointed. “And over there is the library.”

  “The Edgar Allan Poe library,” said Jessie.

  “Yes!” answered Jackie, looking surprised that Jessie knew that.

  “We solved a mystery in a library once,” said Henry.