Bells in the Fog: Mysterious Shadows in the Storm Fog

By E. B. Butler

The fog rolling in with the storm brings a mystery the Bell children must follow into adventure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781682225264

Book preview

Sunset

1. The Firefly

Three children were sitting astride a low concrete wall looking off over the steely-blue waters of Lake Ontario. Below the wall, the Salmon River ran dark and sluggish, only quickening its pace at the narrow mouth before it emptied its murky water into the lake in a series of swirling eddies. On the land side of the wall lay a narrow sandy road and across the road rose the rambling, gray-shingled building of the Lighthouse Inn, where half a dozen elderly ladies in large brimmed hats and sunglasses rocked on the porch as they seemed to do every fair-weather afternoon between three and five o’clock.

Nine year-old Timmy Bell amused himself by squinting out over the lake and whistling merrily through the hole where his upper front teeth did not quite come together. The tune of Sailing, Sailing over the Bounding Main issued from him with a shrill, happy, little piping sound that went with the blue sky, the blue water and the hot, sunny day.

His sister, Lanny Bell, three years older than Timmy and a whole head taller, sat just behind him and busied herself stripping the leaves from a small branch in her hand. She let the leaves fall into the river one at a time, so that she could watch them float, first slowly, then suddenly faster, then round and round, until whirling into one of the eddies, each leaf in turn was sucked under and disappeared.

Look at that, Rudge, she called to her older brother over her shoulder. They go right down each time and that’s the end of them.

There’s the meanest undertow in that spot of anywhere along the shore. That’s why Dad always insists we swim up the beach and never near the mouth of the river. The tow is bad here, and it goes quite a ways out into the lake, Rudge commented, not lifting his tousled brown head from his attempts to untangle an old piece of fishing line he had picked up on the beach during the walk from their cottage to Lighthouse Point. Any such tangle of knots challenged him, but good line was hard to come by.

There’s a boat coming in, announced Timmy, making a binocular of his hands the better to see into the sun.

Where? demanded his sister.

There-about opposite the third cottage.

Lanny looked over her brother’s shoulder toward the row of cottages that curved away to the left along a wide sandy beach on the other side of the river. On their side of the river the beach continued north and a small rowboat was making its way down the lakefront propelled by its one occupant, who appeared, at the distance, to be a very small person who was not very skillful with oars, for the little craft was leaving a zigzag course, first in, then out. In time, it proved to be a small boy, who negotiated the narrow mouth of the river with difficulty. Eventually, he beached the boat on the stretch of sand in front of the Lighthouse Inn. As he leaped ashore, they could see that he might be nine or ten years old, though small for that, with a sharp little face and a mop of sun-bleached sandy hair, which hung low over his forehead and gave him the appearance of a bright-eyed terrier.

With the legs of his too-large dungarees flapping, he padded across the road on bare feet and up the steps of the Inn, where he disappeared through the door marked Store at the end of the porch. By the time he was out of sight, the persistent little motion of the river tugging at the improperly beached boat had so loosened it from the shore that it seemed in danger of floating away into the lake.

Hey! He’s going to lose it if he doesn’t watch out, declared Timmy.

He jumped off the wall into the road, trotted along to where the wall ended and the beach began, and jumped down onto the sand, where he grabbed the retreating boat by its bow and gave it a good haul up onto firm ground. Then he fished around under the bow seat. Finding a small block of concrete attached to a painter, the customary local type of anchor, he placed it inshore as far as the rope would allow.

That’s better, he said, as he came back to his perch on the wall, rubbing the sand off his hands.

Good eye, said Rudge.

He can’t know very much anyhow, observed Lanny contemptuously, anybody that leaves their oars trailing in the water.

Never saw him before, did you? Rudge asked, lifting his head from the tangled fishing line to watch the object of their discussion as he came out of the store carrying a bag that he set down on the porch.

Not that I can remember, Lanny answered. I don't think he belongs to any of the cottages.

The boy then transferred the contents of the bag, two quarts of milk and two loaves of bread, into a pack basket and started down the broad steps toward his boat.

The boy appeared puzzled when he found that someone had beached his boat for him and put out the anchor. He placed the basket on the bottom of the boat and looked nervously around. Rudge made a megaphone of his hands.

Hey! he called. Better not go away and leave your boat hangin’ on the edge of the sand right there. The sand drops off real fast right along there. The river can pull it off and they drift out easy that way.

The boy went to the edge of the sand and looked at the way the water darkened very close to the beach. He looked back, and after he had located Rudge on the wall, he yelled, OK, thanks! and waved his hand.

He picked up his block anchor, placed it carefully in the bow, and after a couple of good shoves, got clear of the shallow part. Once out in the current, he settled himself on the seat with the basket between his feet. The river current helped him until he was well out into the lake, finally becoming a dot off to the north and getting smaller every minute.

Lanny glanced over her shoulder to where the sand road curved away inland in the direction of the state highway.

I thought Daddy would surely be here by this time, she complained. If it gets much later, there won't be time to take Katie swimming before supper. Maybe we should have gone swimming in the first place.

Probably Dad had a last minute call. Doctors never get to go any place on time, even when they want to, said Rudge. Too bad it had to happen today, though, with Sally and Katie coming with him, he added.

It's nice they're coming for all summer, said Timmy who usually took a bright view of everything. Then missing one afternoon won't matter so much.

It's a shame Rufus couldn't come for all summer too, instead of just two weeks in August, Lanny went on.

Rufus and his sisters, Sally and Katie Collins, were close friends and neighbors of the Bell children. The five Collins children, mother, father and two dogs lived happily squeezed into a little gray frame house on the next street beyond the Bell's garden. Mrs. Collins sewed for the Bells and other neighbors as much of the time as she could spare from her own brood, and the children were the best of friends.

Rufus, the oldest Collins and fourteen just that summer, was already beginning to help out with the family responsibilities. He had a job which kept him busy after school and Saturdays in the winter, and all the time in the summer, except for two weeks of vacation which his mother insisted he must take. Rufus, though the same age as Rudge Bell, seemed the older and more serious of the two.

The previous fall, just at the beginning of school, tragedy had touched the Collinses. Sally, his twelve-year-old sister, while riding on the handlebars of Rufus' bicycle, had been thrown under the wheels of a truck and badly hurt. It was thought at the time that she might not walk again, but modern miracles of bone and nerve surgery had restored the use of her injured leg so that now she could move about almost as freely as any other child her age. However, the months of illness and long, slow recovery left a pale and listless shadow of the carefree, bubbling Sally.

It was a trial for Mrs. Collins to watch Sally, day by day, lying limply on a couch reading, instead of rushing about out of doors with the other children. It worried Rufus too, who felt a tremendous sense of responsibility for the accident, even though the truck driver had been to blame. He kept her supplied with plenty of library books and oranges by the dozens, which he brought home to tempt her appetite.

Plump, patient Katie, younger than Sally by two years, nursed her and fussed over her and spent many a sunny afternoon indoors beside the couch doing puzzles or making scrap-books, or playing an endless games of cards. Lanny Bell used to come too, in the afternoons, bringing all the Bell's old magazines for scrapbooks, and took a hand with school homework and the puzzles and games.

Timmy Bell went over almost every day to take Sally’s little dog on daily walks around the neighborhood, and he coaxed Sally to walk a little bit every day. He carried a chalk and every day he convinced her to walk just one sidewalk divider further than before. Then Sally would turn around and walk back to the Collins front porch.

Rudge, deprived of much of his friend’s companionship, now that Rufus had a job, set up a wood-working shop for himself in the Bell's cellar, the avowed purpose of which was to cut out new jigsaw puzzles for Sally.

Dr. Bell, Sally’s doctor, talked the situation over with Mrs. Bell and prescribed a new and unexpectedly pleasant prescription. Each summer, the moment school was out, he moved his own family up to their cottage at Lighthouse Point on Lake Ontario. This year, when his own children went, Sally would go too. Surely a whole summer of lake breezes and sunshine on the sand would bring back that sparkling vitality in Sally they all missed so much. Sally, however, worried she’d miss her large, devoted family, so her sister, Katie, was also invited for the summer. Warmhearted Mrs. Bell, who felt that no one appreciated Katie quite as much as she did, said that generous Katie was at last to have her reward for all the hours she had watched the two youngest Collins children so that they should not disturb Sally; for all the hours she had helped with meals and dishes and household jobs, so that Mrs. Collins might have time to have time to give to Sally; for all the times she had not gone to the movies on Saturday afternoons with Rudge and Lanny because Sally could not go too.

Mrs. Collins was almost beside herself with joy and relief. That her two little girls would be having a whole summer at the lakeshore was something she would not have dared to ask in her most optimistic prayers. And, better still, Rufus, who worked hard at a stables on a farm, and who needed a little fun once in a while, had been invited to spend his precious two weeks at the cottage with the others. There wasn’t anything in the world that Mrs. Collins wouldn't have done for Dr. and Mrs. Bell to repay them for the happiness they were giving her children.

But Lanny, Rudge and Timmy were even more enthusiastic about the idea than Mrs. Collins. Sally and Katie would have the whole summer to share all the picnics, swimming, fishing and general fun. The very best plans of all were being saved for those two weeks in August when Rufus would be there too.

After much discussion, it had been decided that the very weekend school was out, the Bell family and indispensable Cora, the family cook, would go to the cottage to get everything ready: take-down the shutters and put-up the curtains; air out the rooms and make the beds; clear-away the winter's driftwood and tidy-up the beach; doing all the things that had to be done every year before anyone could just sit down and enjoy the lake. The second weekend, when Dr. Bell drove up from the city, he would bring Sally and Katie with him. Then the summer would really begin in earnest.

Now that Saturday had arrived, Rudge, Lanny and Timmy sat on the wall and waited and waited, and waited.

I know what let's do, said Lanny, whose restless disposition meant he was never content long in one spot. Let's walk out to the main road. That way we'll see them sooner and they'll see us sooner and we can ride in with them. She tossed her sleek, brown braids back from her face and took a flying leap off the wall.

Yes, let's do it! Timmy replied, landing in the road beside her with a thump. Timmy was always of the opinion that anything Lanny proposed was a good idea. The two of them started off.

Coming, Rudge?

Rudge took one last tug at the knots in the fish line and reluctantly stuffed the whole tangled mass in his pocket with a sigh. He would rather have sat placidly in the sun unraveling the line. Rudge liked to finish whatever he undertook, but he was an agreeable boy and he set off after the others.

They followed the road where it curved away from the lake, skirted the wide marshy part of the river known as the Pond, and wandered perhaps a mile between sandy fields devoted to truck gardens and small farms. Further inland, the road was no longer sand, but had been tarred and cindered. It was hot and, being sharp in places, was unkind to bare feet, so they took to the grass at the side.

I wish we could have a new boat this year, Lanny remarked as they walked along. The old flat-bottom leaks. And besides it's miserable to row. It's so heavy!

There's the Pup, said Timmy, referring to a miniature flat-bottom skiff less than five feet long and his own private craft. It was called Sea Pup out of deference to the larger boat they had named the Sea Dog.

What would be keen would be something light with an outboard. But Dad looks grim when I mention motors, Rudge grumbled.

Wish we could have bought that sailboat of Foley's when it was for sale last year, Lanny said.

Yeah, but it was too old. Dad said it was in poor condition and not safe at all, countered Rudge.

The Gull is for sale, Timmy suggested hopefully. Jo Heckman at the Inn says it's over in Spree’s boatyard on the Pond right now. Maybe we could buy that.

Well, it won't hurt to ask, said Rudge, but my guess is that Dad isn't thinking of getting any new boat this season.

You never can tell, Lanny argued. Daddy does things rather suddenly sometimes, just when you've given up hope of his ever getting around to it.

Timmy looked cheered by this remark. The Gull was a little white catboat that Timmy had worshiped from afar as many summers back as he could remember. Once he had actually gone out in her and, as far as he was concerned, that had been the high spot of the previous summer.

They arrived at the four corners where the Lighthouse Point Road crossed the state highway, marked on one side by an old small white country school, and on the other by an equally small white church topped by an oddly shaped, pointed spire. There, the children paused and sat on the concrete edge of a culvert to watch for their dad’s car. Traffic on the state road so early in the season was not heavy, but now and then there was a passing car and sometimes a truck. They could see a whole mile clear to the south of them where the road, unwinding toward them from Port Ontario, crossed the Salmon River on an iron-framed bridge.

Presently a car came into view, and as it crossed the bridge Lanny shouted, They're coming at last!

Rudge squinted down the road. I don't think so. That car is too shiny for Dad's and the top is too low.

The car slowed down as though it meant to turn at the cross road and they held their breath wondering. But, when it got a little closer, they saw it wasn't their father’s car at all, but a much newer, sleeker one with plenty of chrome trim. It stopped right opposite them and a man leaned out. He was a sleek man, sleek like the car and with hair as shiny as the black enamel surface of the car’s finish. He had a slick little black mustache too, and a sharp, beak-like nose and a charming smile.

Would you kids know which is the road into McCabe's farm or is this it?

No, sir! Rudge answered politely. This road goes into Lighthouse Point. The road you want is a mile or so further along off to the left. It’s a dirt and sand road. There are three or four farms down that road, but the mailboxes are out on the main highway. You'll see one marked McCabe.

Thanks, the man replied and with a little wave and smile as he pulled slowly away from them. Lanny, absent-mindedly chewing a blade of grass, admired the tires, thinking that the treads looked like the pattern fish bones made if you got hold of the back bone and managed to lift it from the fish in one piece. Rudge had been teaching her the gentle art of deboning fish only the evening before. She watched as the car accelerated and the chrome sparkled in the sun.

When they turned their attention once more in the direction of the bridge, there was another car. This one had a definitely familiar look, but it seemed to have a flat trailer behind it with a boat on it, so it couldn’t be theirs after all. But the closer the car came, the more certain they were that it was their car. With mounting excitement, they jumped up and down beside the