Penny could force herself to no greater effort. Breathless, she reached the gearhouse and groped frantically under the door. Had Th.o.r.n.y failed to hide the key there? No, her fingers seized upon it.

Trembling with excitement, she turned it in the lock. The door of the gearhouse swung open. Now could she remember how to lower the bridge? Any mistake would be costly, for by this time she could hear the cruiser racing down the river at full speed. If only it were light enough so that she could see the gears!

She pulled a lever and her heart leaped as the motor responded with a pleasant purr. The power was on!

"Now to lower the bridge!" thought Penny. "But which lever is the right one? I'm not sure."

With a prayer in her heart she grasped the one closest at hand and eased it forward. There was a grinding of gears as the tall cantilevers began to move. They were coming down, but oh, so slowly!

"Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!" Penny whispered, as if her words could speed the bridge on its journey.

The white cruiser drove onward at full speed. Lower came the bridge.

Penny held her breath, knowing it would be a matter of inches whether or not the boat would clear. The man at the wheel, aware of the danger, did not swerve from his course.

The bridge settled into place. As the crash came, Penny closed her eyes.

"_I did it! I've stopped them!_" she thought, and sagged weakly against the gear house.

CHAPTER 25 _VICTORY FOR PENNY_

Minutes later Penny was still leaning limply against the building when a car drove up to the bridge. Her father, Salt, and a bevy of policemen and government representatives sprang out and ran to her side.

"Penny, what happened?" Mr. Parker clasped his daughter in his arms.

"You're soaking wet! Didn't we hear gunfire as we turned in here?"

Penny waved her hand weakly toward the river below.

"There's your story, Dad. Pictures galore. Boat smashes into dangerous drawbridge. Police pursue and shoot it out with desperadoes, taking what's left of 'em into custody. I'm afraid to look."

"And what were you doing while all this was going on?" demanded her father.

"Me? I was just waiting for the drawbridge to go down."

Mr. Parker, Salt, and the policemen he had brought to the scene, rushed to the edge of the bridge. A police boat had drawn up beside the badly listing cruiser, and three men prisoners and a girl were being taken off.

"How bad is it?" Penny called anxiously.

"All captured alive," answered her father. "Salt, get that camera of yours into action! Where's Jerry? He would be missing at a time like this! What happened anyhow? Can't someone tell me?"

Penny had fully recovered the power of speech, and with a most flattering audience, she recounted her adventures.

"Excuse me just a minute," she interrupted herself.

Turning her back, she pulled a sodden photograph from the front of her dress and handed it to her father.

"This picture is in pretty bad shape," she said, "but it's clue number one. You see, it's a photograph of Miss Kippenberg, and on the back is written, 'To Father, with all my love.' I found the picture this afternoon in Room 381 at the Colonial Hotel."

"Then you've located Kippenberg?" one of the G men demanded.

"I have. He's been masquerading as the Kippenberg gardener, coming back here no doubt to witness the marriage of his daughter."

"We'll arrest him right away," said the government man, turning to leave.

"Thanks for the tip."

"I am confident Miss Kippenberg and her mother had nothing to do with Grant Atherwald's disappearance," Penny went on. "Aaron Dietz plotted the whole affair himself. I guess he must have learned about Kippenberg's cache of gold while he worked for the man. He believed that Grant Atherwald shared the secret and could tell where the money was hidden."

"You've located the gold, too, I suppose," Mr. Parker remarked whimsically.

"No, Dad, I slipped up there. I thought the gold was in a secret vault under the alligator pool, but I was wrong. I don't know where it is."

"We'll let the G men solve that mystery when they take Kippenberg into custody," replied her father. "Our work is cut out for us now. We'll find Jerry, talk with young Atherwald, and rout Miss Kippenberg and her mother out of bed for an exclusive interview."

"And this time I am sure they'll answer questions," declared Penny.

During the next hour the "story" was taken entirely from her hands.

Jerry, her father and Salt, knew exactly how to gather every fact of interest to the readers of the _Star_. Sylvia Kippenberg, overjoyed to find her fiance alive, posed for pictures with him, and answered all questions save those which concerned her father.

Not until a telephone call came from the Colonial Hotel, saying that Mr.

Kippenberg had been taken into custody, would either Sylvia or her mother admit that the man had posed as the gardener.

"Very well, it is true," Mrs. Kippenberg acknowledged at last. "James has been trying to avoid government men for over a year. Wishing to return for Sylvia's wedding, he disguised himself as a gardener. Then after Grant's disappearance, he remained here trying to help."

"And it was your husband who managed to get rid of the alligator?" Penny interposed.

"Yes, we were afraid police might ask embarra.s.sing questions. James disposed of it to a zoo late yesterday afternoon."

"And the cache of gold under the lily pool," said Mr. Parker. "What became of that?"

"There is no gold."

"None at all?"

"None."

"And there never was any?" questioned Penny incredulously. "Then why was the vault ever built?"

"Tell her the truth, Mother," Sylvia urged. "She deserves to know.

Anyway, it can do Father no harm now."

"At one time my husband did have a considerable supply of gold," Mrs.

Kippenberg admitted. "Since he could not trust a bank he constructed his own vault under the pool and placed the alligator there as a precaution against prying persons."

"My father really did nothing so very wrong," Sylvia broke in. "The gold was bought with his own money. If he chose to sell it later at a profit it was his own affair."

"Not in the opinion of the government," Mr. Parker said with a smile. "He held the gold illegally. So your father disposed of it?"