Patty and Jo, Detectives

    Pat and Jo Faraday are 16 year old twin orphans. For the past 8 years they have lived at Miss Langdon's School for Young Ladies. As the arrival of Christmas comes close the twins receive a letter from their mysterious guardian, Welton Duer, who was their father's best friend and who they have yet to meet. He is writing to ask them to spend the holiday with him at Harker's Cove in Michigan. The girls excitedly accept and jump on a train to Harker's Cove.

    The train arrives in a desolate area of wilderness. After waiting in the cold and being scrutinized by the station master a car arrives to pick them up. It is driven by Yamoto, a Japanese man working for Mr. Duer. On the way to Duer's home Yamoto informs the girls that Mr. Duer has been called away and shan't return during their visit. The girls feel suspicious of this and their suspicion grows after meeting Miss Gruber, the nervous housekeeper. Yamoto and Gruber remain elusive over questions of Mr. Duer and when Pat sees Yamoto dragging a locked trunk from Mr. Duer's study, a room they've been forbidden to enter, she grows suspicious these servants have murder their guardian and his corpse has been hidden in the trunk.

    However we're not kept in suspense long as the story switches over to Yamoto who is bringing the trunk to a cabin in the woods where Welton Duer is staying. He hasn't been murdered nor has he been called out of town, he's simply a woman hater and the thought of sharing his house with two women was too much for him so he's exiled himself to the cabin out in the snowy woods. 

    When Welton's friend and neighbor, college age Dick Prentiss, visits Welton explains that he had begin to feel he wasn't doing enough for his wards and thus invited them but immediately regretted it. Dick is excited by the twins presence and makes their acquaintance at once. He invites them to go chop down a Christmas tree; Jo accepts but Pat begs off claiming to have a headache. Really she just wants a chance to sneak into the woods and find the mysterious trunk. 

    She journeys far into the woods but loses her way when it starts storming. Turning back she becomes even more lost and after trekking for an unknown but extensive amount of time she finds she has been walking in circles. Just as she collapses from exhaustion and cold someone grabs her, it's Welton Duer. He takes her back to the cabin where he warms her up with blankets and soup. At first she believes him to be an escaped convict she had heard about, a story which he goes along with to keep his identity hidden, but Pat quickly figures out who he really is. She decides to let him play pretend for the time being. 

    During this time Jo and Dick have been in a different part of the woods cutting down a Christmas tree. Jo becomes angry at Dick after he mocks Pat's theory that Duer could have been murdered. This leads Jo to refuse to move from where the tree is going to fall and Dick refuses to chop it in a different direction which results in the tree falling on Jo and her ankle becoming injured. Dick carries her to a cabin, a different cabin some miles from Duer's, and they're surprised to find a mysterious someone has been living in it, more surprised to find that mysterious someone has been peeping on them through the window.

 

    Several days later the twins are enjoying the holiday festivities at the Prentiss house. Among the other guests there is Mavis Martin, a 30 year old woman with the vivaciousness of a teenage girl, and Tommy, one of Dicks friends who takes a liking to Pat. While at the Prentiss Pat tells Jo about Welton Deurs presence in the cabin and decides that they must sneak out to the cabin during that evening and bring him back to the party. After a little comedic scene where Dick and Tommy mix up Pat and Jo while dancing the girls are able to sneak out the back door and into the darkness of the winter night, excited to confront their guardian. 

    Unfortunately at that moment their guardian is arriving at the front door dressed as Santa Claus, a little scheme that Dick put together so that Welton could interact with his wards without any pressure. While "Santa" is handing out presents he becomes startled to see one labeled for Mavis Martin. He asks to give her the present while alone so they go into the library and it's reveled that Mavis Martin is a woman from his past. They had had a falling out many year before which is what cause Welton to become a woman hater. However they immediately have a reconciliation, Welton informs her of his plan to adopt the twins, and Mavis proposes to him. They're just about to kiss when Dick burst into the library to say the twins are missing.

    The girls have made it to the cabin after trekking through the cold, dark forest and find a light burning inside but no Welton Duer. The place is a mess and a dirty old hat is laying around. The girls clean up while they wait and when Duer still has not returned they begin to feel uncomfortable in the gloomy dark silence. Pat then notices the mysterious trunk and decides this is their chance to finally investigate it. While the girls are stooped over the trunk they hear the creak of the door and embarrassed to be caught by Welton snooping through his things they hesitantly turn around. They come face to face with, not their guardian, but the muzzle of a gun being held by a disheveled, cross looking man. They quickly identify him as the escape convict. He has been enjoying the cabin and it's food with Welton gone for the evening. He orders Jo to approach for him to "get a look at" and when she doesn't he roughly drags her by the wrist. Pat tries to help her but he shoves her violently back. The two girls attack him together which makes him mad enough to decide to kill them. Just as he draws his gun Yamoto appears searching for the girls. He knocks the gun from the convicts hand and fights him skillfully with jujitsu however the convicts is able to reclaim his gun and just as it seems all is lost Duer, Dick, and Mavis appear. Duer shoots out the light with his gun and takes advantage of the dark to wrestles the convict down (even though a bright fire was burning in the fire place?). They then tie him up and get him to town with Yamoto receiving the reward money for his capture. 

    A few days later Welton, or Welty as everyone now calls him, Mavis, Dick, and the twins all go for a skate and picnic at the lake and Welton and Mavis inform the girls of their plans to marry and adopt them. Everyone is happy and the girls head back to school to finish the term.

    When everyone has returned from the winter holidays the Faraday girls host a tea in their dorm, served in the fine China Mrs. Prentiss gave them for Christmas, and share of their adventures. Their friend Liz suggest they write up their story and enter it into a short story competition currently being held. The girls do this and at the end of the school year find they have won first prize of $500. However Liz, who we're suddenly told needs money, has not won anything for her story so the girls and Mrs. Prentiss, who along with Dick and one of his school mates have all come to attend the girls' graduation ceremony, come up with a plan. 

    The $500 is given to Mrs. Prentiss and under her name she donates it to the school to be given as an award for the first honors student who, of course, is Liz. At the graduation ceremony a new award, the Service Award, is given to Pat and Jo along with $500 scholarship from an Anonymous donor. The girls get another surprise when they see Welty and Mavis who flew in from the west coast just to see the girls graduate. Everyone is happy, everyone is loved, they embrace, and we reach the end.

- For some reason Mavis Martin reminds me of Paulette Goddard.

- The convict remarks that Duer keeps the girls "in red up for him". I had never heard this phrase before and had to look it up, to "red up" means to clean up so he thinks Duer has them come clean the cabin.

- The first time I read this book I felt like the way the convict told Jo to come closer for him to "get a look" at her as well as him saying no one can hear her screams made it seem like he was going to sexually assault her, which would be an interesting bit of realism and really made the situation more fearful. However on this reading I'm not sure how to interpret it.

- The whole "Welton is a woman hater because of Mavis" is just so dumb. I know this book is old but that's just such an outdated concept for a book. I feel like fear of being a good parent would have made more sense.

- My copy of this book is from the 1940's and I thought that made it very interesting to have a Japanese character. Yamoto is, unfortunately, a Japanese stereotype but he also is a good character. He's kind, understanding, and brave and knows how to handle Welton Duer. At one point it's even stated that Welton loves Yamoto which I found cute, and he also plans to make sure he is taken care of in his old age. But when I looked it up I found this book was originally published in 1933 which makes more sense. 

- Pat jumps to the conclusion that Welton has been murdered very quickly and I feel like it's way too much of a leap. Jo thinks the theory makes sense only because she is very tired after their long trip to the cabin but in the morning finds the idea silly.

    Overall the book is ok. I think the setup with the convict was interesting. He's mentioned twice before the climax of the story but you don't think much about it until later, I like that as it keeps from giving the story away. I think the last chapter about the girls returning to school wasn't very pertinent but it wasn't too bad. Lastly I want to mention the cover art which was done by an unknown artist. It's simple but very lovely.

    There's another book in this series; Patty and Jo and the Case of the Toy Drummer. I plan on reading it sometime in the future and I'm very interested in seeing if it involves the girls traveling with Welton and Mavis as is discussed in this book.