He had been exploring the grove with Honey, who had discovered the hollow tree and pointed out the hole that looked like an open mouth.
“I don’t really know,” Judy confessed. “Your little sister didn’t make herself very clear.”
“She hadn’t better,” Paul said threateningly. “I’ll never tell her any of my secrets after this. What made you spill all that about Mom’s pocketbook, Penny? Those kids said they’d trail the thieves and make them give it back.”
“But they didn’t,” Penny said. “They let the robbers get away.”
“Maybe we can pick up their trail again if you will tell us about it,” Judy suggested. “Were the thieves in a car?”
“Yes,” Paul replied. “They came alongside and crowded Mom off the road. She got out to see how much damage she’d done when she hit the bank. That was when they pointed the gun at her and went through all our luggage. They didn’t take anything except her pocketbook. They grabbed it and ran back to their car and drove away. If we can’t get our car started I guess we’ll have to stay here. Uncle Paul will pay for us. He has lots of money,” the boy finished proudly.
“What is your uncle’s whole name, Paul?” asked Judy.
“He’s my great-uncle really. It’s Paul Riker, the same as mine.”
“That’s the man who was robbed! I remember it from the newspaper account,” Judy whispered excitedly to Honey. “Wait till Horace hears about this!”
“I like it here,” announced Penny. “Do you allow children to climb the trees?”
“If they’re careful—”
But they were both off to the hollow tree. Paul started at once to climb it, but Judy saw Penny stop and put her hand inside the hollow place.
“What’s she found?” Honey whispered.
“Maybe she’s discovered the secret of the voice,” Judy whispered back.
“Look!” Penny cried as they both came over to see. “Is this a fairy bed? Do you think fairies live in here? I heard them whispering.”
“Did you hear what they said?”
“No, just whispers.” Penny turned a solemn little face to Judy. “Did you hear them, too?”
“The fairies? Perhaps,” Judy said thoughtfully. “What have you in your hand, Penny?”
Penny was glad to show her. It was a soft little cushion of moss she had picked from inside the tree. There was nothing else to be found in the hollow except bits of decayed wood. Judy put her hand in to see.
“Do you feel anything?” asked Penny.
“Just the moss.”
“Isn’t it soft?” the little girl said, stroking the piece she was holding. “You can pet it like a kitten. It’s a pretty green, too—almost the color of the doll. Please, will you help us find it?”
“Don’t look for it!” the voice from the tree had said. And now a request, equally urgent, had come from a real live little girl: “Please, will you help us find it?”
Once more the strange warning flashed through Judy’s mind. Just what it was she was supposed to find—or not to find—still puzzled her. But she had found the explanation for unearthly things before and could do it again. A little uneasily, she replied that she would do what she could.
It was hard to get a description of the doll. All Penny could tell her was that its hair, its face—everything about it—was green.
“Its clothes, too?” Honey asked.
Penny nodded solemnly.
“Yes, everything. It came from the Land of Oz, I think. My mother read me the story once. Everything was green there, too, and she was a princess.”
“Your doll?” asked Judy.
“She wasn’tmydoll. Sometimes Mommy would let me look at her. She told me her name, too, but I’ve forgotten it.”
“Was it Dorothy?” questioned Honey.
Penny shook her head.
“Ozma?”
“No, that isn’t right, either. Mommy knows it, but you mustn’t tell her I told you.”
“We won’t say a word, will we, Judy?”
“Is that your name?” asked the little girl. “Mine’s Penelope, but people call me Penny for short. May I call you Judy?”
“Yes, you may both call me Judy,” she replied as Paul descended from the tree. “This is Grace Dobbs, but I named her Honey before I knew who she was. Now we’re sisters—”
Penny’s eyes widened.
“Real sisters?”
“Well, I married Honey’s brother Peter. My brother is Horace—”
“Here he comes now with the children’s mother,” Honey interrupted as the convertible came roaring down the road and stopped almost beside them.
“Back so soon?” asked Judy. “The children were telling me—”
“We didn’t tell her anything,” Paul protested, looking frightened.
“The children only said you’ve been having trouble, Mrs. Riker,” Judy explained. “I hope we can be of some help.”
“You’re very kind,” the woman sitting beside Horace said, “but I’m afraid nobody can help me very much. I did have plans, but now everything has changed. I’m so nervous and upset, I don’t even want to talk about it.”
“Then don’t talk about it until you’re rested. Come into the house,” Judy offered, “and I’ll make you a cup of hot tea. There are cookies and chocolate milk for the children—”
“Did you hear that, Penny?” asked Paul. “I’ll race you!”
They were off before their mother could stop them. On the porch they found Blackberry and called back to Judy.
“Is this your cat? Is it all right if we pet him?”
“Ask Blackberry. He’s the one to decide.”
“He likes us,” Paul announced as the others came up onto the porch. They were just in time, as it was beginning to rain. Mrs. Riker hesitated.
“I’m not sure we ought to accept your hospitality,” she said to Judy. “You see, I can’t pay for the rooms until later. My pocketbook was stolen.”
“I know. The children told me.”
“Penny did,” Paul put in quickly. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“That’s all right. I’m glad you understand. I’m not going to report the theft and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention it, either. I don’t want any more trouble—”
“But Mommy, you said—” Penny began.
“Penny,willyou keep still?” her brother exclaimed.
“Let her go on. This interests me.”
Apparently Horace was hearing about the stolen pocketbook for the first time. Judy smiled and invited everybody in. Blackberry politely refused.
“There he goes, off toward the barn!” Paul exclaimed. “Come on, Penny! Let’s follow him.”
Suddenly Judy had an idea.
“Honey, will you take Mrs. Riker inside?” she asked. “I’d like to see what Blackberry’s up to. He’s helped us solve mysteries before. There must be something in the barn he wants to show us.”
“Mice, probably. But go ahead,” Honey told her. “I know where everything is. I’ll have refreshments ready for the rest of us by the time you get back.”
Judy intended to take only a few minutes. But when they reached the barn Penny and Paul wanted to climb to the hayloft. There they found three of the club members, two girls and a boy, apparently searching for something in the hay.
“Hi, there!” Judy greeted them. “Be careful, Black Spots, or someone will rub you out. And if you’ve lost anything, don’t look for it. We’ve been warned.”
Ricky, the club president, looked at her with a baffled expression on his face.
“You are joking?” he said in what Judy considered a charming accent. “The Americans make the jokes I do not understand.”
“There was a big fight,” spoke up Muriel Blade. “The rest of the kids went to Wally’s house, but Anne and me, we stuck by Ricky.”
Anne, the youngest of the club members, was solemnly regarding the two Riker children. She was standing in a shaft of light that came in through a small window overlooking the grove.
“We know them,” she told Judy. “We tried to trail the bad men for them.”
“Did you see the men’s faces?” asked Judy. “What did they look like?”
Interrupting each other as they talked, the children quickly described them. The descriptions fitted. There had been three men, and one of them had a long scar right across his cheek. Paul was certain they were right about that, because he remembered that it had been the scar-faced man who held the gun.
“Did you find out where they went?” Paul asked eagerly.
“No,” Ricky admitted. “But we did find this.”
“Mom’s pocketbook!” yelled both the Riker children as he held it up. “How did you get it back?”
“It was easy,” he said. “They threw it away.”
“Ricky found it in the road,” Anne put in, and Muriel hastily added, “It’s empty. They took out everything that was in it except a lipstick and handkerchief. Oh, yes, and an empty box.”
“Are you sure it’s empty?” asked Penny, reaching for the small blue box they had found in her mother’s pocketbook.
“Quite sure,” Muriel said. “We just looked.”
“Oh,” Penny exclaimed with a disappointed little sigh. “That was the box—”
She stopped at a look from Paul, but Judy almost knew she had been about to say it was the box that had held the green doll. At least, Judy knew now how big it was. Or rather, how small. The box was only about four inches long. Inside was a soft lining of satin and an impression as if something had rested there a long time without being disturbed.
“We’re on the trail of it now, whatever it is,” Judy thought.
Aloud she asked, “Is anybody hungry?”
“We’re starved!” yelled the children in a resounding chorus.
A moment later they were following Judy down the ladder from the hayloft. Outside it was raining harder than ever.
“Come on then, back to the house!” she called. “We’ll have refreshments just the way I planned, but we’ll have to make a dash for them through the rain.”
Judy was halfway to the house with the excited children when they bumped into Horace, who had been out on some mysterious errand of his own. He grinned at them as if he knew a secret. Like Judy and the children, he had been caught in the sudden downpour.
“Come in! Come in!” Honey invited them. She led them through the living room and into Judy’s spacious kitchen which served as a dining room as well. “Join Blackberry and dry yourselves before the fire. He didn’t wait for an invitation. He scooted in ahead of you. Everything’s ready,” she announced. “Judy made the cookies herself. Try one. They’re delicious.”
Mrs. Riker seemed more willing to talk and joined the children around the table in the kitchen. She could not help exclaiming over the beauty of the room with its huge stone fireplace and beamed ceiling.
“It reminds me of our kitchen when I was a little girl,” she told the children. “I did want you to see it, but now I don’t know what we’ll do.”
“Maybe we can help,” Judy offered again.
But Mrs. Riker protested that she had been too kind already.
“I don’t deserve anybody’s kindness,” she added. “My troubles are all my own fault.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Judy objected. “If your pocketbook was stolen from you I would say the thieves were to blame. Do you mind if I tell Peter—”
“Your husband?” Mrs. Riker inquired.
“We help him solve mysteries,” Ricky began, but at a look from Judy, he suddenly fell silent.
“I’m afraid, instead of helping to solve them, you’re making them today,” declared Horace. “You didn’t hear any trees talking, did you, Ricky?”
“Me?” Ricky asked in surprise. “You are making jokes again?”
Muriel turned to Horace wide-eyed through the glasses that always seemed too large for her small face.
“I heard the trees talking,” she said. “I wasn’t going to say anything about it, because I didn’t think you’d believe me. They told us to run—”
“And so,” little Anne put in solemnly, “we ran back along the shortcut and Ricky caught up with us, and all three of us met Penny and Paul and ran after the bad men. Is the magician one of them?”
“I wish I knew,” declared Judy. “There’s a whole lot I wish I knew.”
“I don’t want to meet him,” Anne finished. “He can make things disappear.”
“So can I,” Horace chuckled, helping himself to another cookie.
He passed the cookies around and they rapidly disappeared from the plate. Afterwards there was silence. Each one seemed busy with his own thoughts, even Blackberry on his rug before the fireplace.
Judy liked her big kitchen. It was a good place for thoughts. Usually they were pleasant ones inspired by the view from the picture window. Judy had placed the table in front of it so that she and Peter could look out on the trees that bordered Dry Brook while they were eating. They had been lovely in the summer and early fall. But now with the rain beating against the bare branches, there was something eerie about them.
“The trees are still whispering,” Penny said to Anne, whose other name turned out to be Black. It seemed a misnomer to Judy since Anne was a tiny blonde. The little girl shivered as she watched the trees.
“Look at that big one with its arms spread out over the barn. It scares me,” she confided to Penny. “That was the tree that told us to run.”
“When did it tell you?” asked Horace, overhearing Anne’s remark.
He had what Judy called that “eager beaver” look in his eye. “I may as well warn you, Mrs. Riker,” she said, “that my brother is a newspaper reporter. He’s good at finding out things.”
“AndImay as well warn you,” Horace retorted, “that my sister is known as quite a detective. She’s good at finding out things, too.”
“Secrets?” asked Penny.
“You’d be surprised,” Honey said with a reassuring smile, for the little girl seemed suddenly frightened, “how many she’s kept and is still keeping.”
“More than even you know,” declared Judy.
“Are you keeping a secret about the talking trees?” asked Muriel. “Was it the magician? Magicians can do anything.”
“Was it a trick, Horace?” asked Judy. “Ventriloquism, maybe?”
She thought he might have guessed the answer. But he only shook his head and said, “A trick of the wind, perhaps.”
“It could have been magic,” Muriel insisted.
“It could have been anything!” exclaimed Honey, giving up. “A magic trick or the wind or fairies or the voice of a doll—”
“The one we’re supposed to find!” Judy broke in excitedly, forgetting her promise of secrecy. “That may be it, Honey! If we find the doll we may find out what the voice is, too. May I tell Peter about it?” she whispered to Penny. “He may be able to help us find it.”
“Find what? I didn’t tell you anything,” the little girl said loud enough for the others to hear. “I was just making it up.”
“Of course she was,” Paul agreed. “Penny is always making up things. Who ever heard of a green doll?”
Judy didn’t for a minute believe Penny had made up the story she had told her. The empty box proved there had been something of value in her mother’s pocketbook. But it was obvious the little girl was afraid to talk about it except when she and Judy were alone.
“Why?” Judy asked herself. “What is she afraid of?”
The trees were frightening, but Penny claimed she had heard nothing but whispers from them. Had a voice really told Muriel and Anne to run? Judy questioned them some more, and they still insisted the voice had come right out of that hollow tree.
“It has a mouth,” Muriel said, “and arms that it waves in the wind. It’s alive, Judy. We’re afraid to go home for fear it will catch us.”
“That I would like to see,” declared Horace, and everybody laughed.
But Muriel really believed the magician had been there.
“He’s going to be at Wally’s house. He could make a tree talk if he wanted to,” she insisted.
“Maybe he could trick you into thinking he could,” Horace admitted. “Somebody is playing tricks, that’s for certain. It may be this magician.”
“I’m afraid of him,” Anne confessed. “Wally says he will pick me to disappear because I’m the littlest—”
“You won’t be if I join the club,” Penny spoke up. “Could I, Mommy?”
“We’ll see,” she replied. “Who is this magician?”
“We don’t know his name,” Ricky said. “Even Wally doesn’t know it. The Dran boys will introduce him.”
“He’s going to do tricks for us if we sell enough tickets,” Muriel put in. “I don’t want to sell them. Wally said I couldn’t keep the money—”
“Of course not. It goes into the club treasury, probably. By the way, who is the treasurer?” Horace wanted to know.
“I was,” Muriel said with a pout, “but they’re going to have an election, so I guess I won’t be any more.”
“Today?” asked Judy.
“Yes, but I won’t go. Wally said they’d elect all new officers—”
“Wait a minute,” Horace stopped her. “It isn’t all up to Wally. If this is an election they’ll need your votes. I think you kids are making a big mistake. You ought to be at that meeting. I’ll take you there if you say the word.”
“May we go too?” asked Penny.
Paul objected before their mother could answer. “I’d rather go on to Uncle Paul’s house this afternoon,” he said. “Is the car fixed, Mom? Can’t we get started?”
She looked at Horace and both of them sighed.
“It’s in a garage in Roulsville,” Horace said. “I had to push it all the way there. I’m afraid it’s pretty much of a mess. But I leave the whole problem to you, Judy.”
“Well,” said Judy, “you want to interview the caretaker, Horace. Penny wants to attend the election and Mrs. Riker and Paul want to visit her uncle. Wouldn’t it be simpler if we just went to all three places and killed two birds with one stone? Or do I mean three birds?”
“What do you say, Mrs. Riker?” Horace asked.
There wasn’t very much Mrs. Riker could say except yes, and yet she hesitated as if she dreaded the visit and wished to put it off as long as she could.
“Don’t let your great-uncle Paul frighten you,” she warned the children. “Remember, he’s used to having his own way. You must do whatever he says.”
“We will!” they chorused.
Blackberry wanted to go along. He had a favorite spot on top of the back seat by the rear window of Peter’s car. Now he found a similar place in Horace’s convertible, and the children scrambled in after him.
“This car needs a good washing. The rain won’t stop us,” Horace announced cheerfully as they started off.
He seemed a little too cheerful, but Judy knew his motives. More than ever now he wanted to get the other half of the robbery story. Nobody had mentioned it to Mrs. Riker. Unless she had seen a paper or heard the news on the radio, she still didn’t know that in the absence of the uncle she was about to visit, he had been robbed of valuable art treasures. Why hadn’t Horace told her about it, Judy wondered. Did he think he would find out more if he kept quiet? If those men had questioned her before the robbery it might make sense. But afterwards—
“The magician could have been one of those men who stopped here,” she said aloud, as Horace pulled up to remove the sign from the post by the main road. “I’d like to meet him and find out for sure.”
“You may have the opportunity very soon,” Horace said as he gave the sign a last tug and then threw it in the rear compartment of his car.
“Be careful,” Honey warned him. “The paint isn’t dry.”
“Neither am I,” he complained as he returned to the driver’s seat.
Soon they reached the home of Wally Brown, a chubby blond boy who showed them to the downstairs recreation room.
“The magician is here to pick the children he wants in his act. Would you kids like to meet him?” he asked.
Honey and Mrs. Riker had remained in the car, but Penny and Paul had come in with Judy and Horace. Their yes was so enthusiastic that Judy held her ears. The club members were in time for the election. The first part of the meeting, Wally explained, had been taken up with plans for the magic show.
Soon they were all under the magician’s spell. They had been asked to close their eyes and make a wish just before he appeared on the stage.
“Close your eyes quick,” a strange little girl whispered to Penny. “He’s going to make our wishes come true.”
Presently the magician stood before them on a stage that was still in the process of being constructed. He was quite an ordinary-looking man, but there was something about his voice that seemed to give him authority.
“Have you all made your wishes?” he asked. “Perhaps I can’t make all of them come true, but I shall certainly do my best.”
“Make mine come true now, please, Mr. Magician, because we have to go,” Penny pleaded.
“Open your eyes, little girl. All of you open your eyes. Did I forget to tell you?”
Several children laughed, but Penny let out a startled and long-drawn-out “Ooooo!” as her eyes snapped open.
The children were crowding so close, Judy couldn’t see what trick the magician was doing. But he was not one of the men she had seen in the car. She doubted if she had ever seen him before.
“Come on, children!” she whispered. “Your mother and Honey are waiting in the car. We all want to get started.”
Penny backed out, unable to take her eyes away from the stage. One of the boys had wished for a puppy, and the magician was pulling it right out of a hat.
Penny and Paul stared at him as if he had performed a miracle instead of a simple magic trick. Whispers of, “He’s magic all right. He can bring anything to life,” went on between them. When they were back in the car the children told their mother Muriel was right. Magicians could do anything.
“That’s a house I intend to haunt,” announced Horace as they drove away. “Maybe I can give their magic show a little publicity. There’s room down there for quite a crowd and I certainly intend to be in it.”
“So do I,” declared Judy. “I wouldn’t miss it.”
“What about us?” asked Penny and Paul.
“We’ll see,” their mother promised.
Excited squeals and whispers came from the back seat. Everything was suddenly magic, even the rain. It was really coming down now. The children could hardly see the ruins of the big dam as they passed it. Judy said something about it, but they were no longer interested in anything but the magic that now had them in its spell.
Judy and Mrs. Riker and the children were all in the back seat. It had grown a little uncomfortable with Penny and Paul bouncing from one window to the other and finding magic in everything.
Both children now took it for granted that the magician had made the trees talk. The matter was all settled in their minds, but not in Judy’s.
“There are two kinds of magic,” she told them. “I like the natural kind best. Even that voice you’re talking about could have been the wind. Sometimes it does make a funny moaning noise when the trees are bare and the branches swing against each other.”
“Now, Judy, you know it wasn’t,” Honey objected from her place in front beside Horace. “The wind wasn’t blowing as hard as it is now, and these trees aren’t talking—”
“So they aren’t!” Horace commented as if the whole thing was nothing but a big joke.
They were driving through a thickly wooded section. A rabbit ran across the road, and the children squealed and nearly let Blackberry leap out of the car after it. Then Paul said something about how clever the magician had been to make a puppy jump out of his hat.
“I didn’t get my wish yet,” Paul added, “but I can wait for it.”
“I got mine,” Penny whispered, “but I’m not telling what it was.”
Still deeper in the woods they came suddenly into a cleared place where a number of deer had taken shelter under a big pine tree. They stood motionless for a moment and then vanished into a thicket.
“That’s what I mean about natural magic,” Judy pointed out. “Those deer vanished under their own power—no tricks!”
“I never saw deer except in the zoo,” Paul said gravely. “I’ll bet that magician couldn’t make a deer jump out of his hat.”
“You’re funny,” giggled Penny.
She and Paul were city children. Judy was seeing sights that were commonplace to her through their wondering eyes. If they did return with her, she’d have to let them ride Ginger and watch as she milked Daisy. That would seem like magic to them.
“The talking tree was magic,” Penny insisted. “Anne says it told her and Muriel to run, but I only heard it whisper. If I listen again, maybe it will tell me a secret.”
“I heard nothing but the wind,” Paul said. “Is this the road to Uncle Paul’s house? It doesn’t look like a millionaire’s estate.”
“It hasn’t been very well cared for,” Mrs. Riker agreed. “You used to be able to see the top of the house from here. And where’s the gate?”
“I just drove through it,” Horace replied. “It was standing wide open.”
“Uncle Paul never allowed it to be left open. Something must be wrong,” Mrs. Riker exclaimed.
“Something is wrong!” exclaimed Judy. “That forest fire did spread. The grounds are all burned over. What a shame!”
“It may not be as bad as you think. There seems to be something up ahead,” observed Horace, peering through the windshield. “You can hardly see it for the rain. Or is it smoke that makes everything so hazy?”
“I smell wood burning,” Honey began. But Paul interrupted with a shout.
“That must be the house! I can see the steps going up to it. Oh, please, stop the car and let me run up first and tell Uncle Paul who we are!”
“Wait, Paul, wait!” cried his mother, as Horace pulled up at the side of the road.
But the boy was already out of the car with Penny after him. Blackberry ran ahead of them up the steps at the top of which was a stout oak door with stonework all around it and a tall, grim statue looming up beside the entrance. Suddenly Judy recognized it from a picture she had seen of the Hindu god, Shiva. But before she could tell Paul it was not a house but a vault that he had discovered, he was knocking loudly on the door.
Paul knocked loudly on the doorPaul knocked loudly on the door
Paul knocked loudly on the door
“I don’t really think anyone will answer you,” Judy called. And for some reason it seemed suddenly funny.
“Good heavens!” Honey exclaimed when she saw what it was.
“My sentiments exactly,” agreed Horace. “What a weird place to build a tomb!”
“That’s Shiva, the Destroyer, beside the entrance. And look!” Judy gasped. “There’s been plenty of destruction. You can see that a house once stood over there, but it’s been burned to the ground!”
Everybody piled out of the car to look and exclaim over what had happened. The fire, apparently, had swept down from the national forest, making a path of destruction as far as the vault and no farther. The vault itself had not been touched. It was built into the hillside, and the laurel and ivy growing up and around the statue were as green as ever.
“Even the fire was afraid of that statue,” Honey said with a shiver. “Judy! Judy! Did you hear it—speak?”
“What? The statue?”
“More likely it was a ghost,” declared Horace. “Those children did knock loud enough to wake the dead.”
“Stop it!” Judy scolded him. “Can’t you see you’re frightening them?”
She had overcome her first impulse to laugh at the children’s mistake. Now she wanted to cry for sympathy. They had been so eager to meet their uncle. Now only the blackened ruins of his home were left. Not even a chimney remained standing.
Mrs. Riker was shocked into silence at first. But soon she was trying to tell the children how she remembered the house. She hadn’t seen it for many years, she said. Perhaps it hadn’t been as large as she had pictured it in her imagination. Her main concern now was for the man they had come to visit.
“Can it be he’s dead?” she wondered.
The name on the vault was plain. It was simplyPaul Rikerwith the date of his birth and then a blank. The stone tablet bearing the inscription was just below the figure of Shiva, the Destroyer.
Penny and Paul were gazing up at the statue almost as if it were alive.
“I’m scared,” Penny whispered.
“No wonder,” her brother answered. “I ought to have known better than to run up to an old tomb. It was a dumb mistake.”
“But a logical one,” Judy consoled him. “I might have thought it was a little house myself if I hadn’t recognized that statue from a picture I saw in a magazine. In India there are temples to Shiva, or Siva. I’m not sure of the name.”
“I remember!” cried Penny, brightening up as she thought of it. “It was Sita. Oh, no, that’s the name of the—”
“You know nothing about it,” her mother told her severely. “I know nothing myself except that Mr. Riker was fond of collecting things. It is like him to have a Hindu idol on his tomb. Years ago he was converted, as he called it, to mysticism. I remember some of the things he used to say. He and my husband’s father used to have long conversations about the journey a spirit must take before it reached nirvana, whatever that is. Well, perhaps he has taken it. Life was the journey, Uncle Paul used to say, and death the reward.”
She sighed, and added, “I only hope his nephew hasn’t followed in his footsteps.”
“His nephew?” asked Judy.
“Mom meansmyuncle,” Paul explained. “There’s old Uncle Paul and young Uncle Paul.”
“Perhaps I should have told you about my husband’s brother,” Mrs. Riker continued. “He and my husband were boys when they quarreled—”
“What was that?” Honey whispered suddenly, moving closer to Horace. “Did you hear a footstep?” She shivered and he put his coat around her. The rain seemed to be turning to snow. Unmindful of it, the children continued to gaze up at the statue.
“Did it move?” Judy heard Paul whisper.
“It’s the light, Paul,” his mother said. “It’s really made of cement.”
“The same as sidewalks?”
“I think so. Anyway, it isn’t alive. It didn’t move, and it couldn’t have spoken to us.”
“Something did.”
Judy looked suspiciously at Horace. Had he learned to throw his voice? That could be the answer to the talking trees as well—except that Horace hadn’t been there.
“Oh dear!” thought Judy. “I’m off on the wrong trail again.”
“Let’s go,” Honey suggested. “I’m cold.”
But Horace had an idea.
“The caretaker’s cottage must be back down the road. I think we passed it without seeing it. Maybe he can explain it.”
“What is there to explain?” asked Mrs. Riker sadly, starting down the steps. “Tombs aren’t built for the living.”
“Sometimes they are. Sometimes people prefer to choose their own monuments while they’re still alive, and it looks as if that’s the way your uncle felt about it. There’s no death date under his name,” Horace observed. “I think the vault is empty.”
Judy hoped it was.
“Come on, let’s go back to the car,” Honey urged. “If a voice spoke to us now, I really would run.”
“The children thought they heard one,” Judy called after her teasingly.
“It scared us,” Penny confessed. “We thought it was Uncle Paul’s ghost. It said, ‘Go away.’”
“You know, dead people do come back,” Paul put in gravely. “It’s magic, I think. We know, on account of Daddy.”
“We saw him,” Penny added.
“When was this?” asked Judy.
“Just a little while ago,” Penny said serenely, and she and Paul ran down the steps to join their mother and Honey in the car.
Judy would have questioned them further, but now as she idly tried the heavy oaken door of the vault, to her amazement, she found it unlocked.
“What have we here?” she exclaimed as she swung the door open upon a concrete floor surrounded by four stone walls. In one swift movement she stooped and picked up a tiny green object that lay on the bare concrete.
“Isthisthe green doll Penny was talking about?” Judy wondered.
“Could be,” Horace said. “The thieves may be planning on storing the loot from other robberies here. Let me have a look at it.”
“Later,” Judy whispered, slipping the little green object into her pocket. “There’s something strange going on around here, and I need time to think about it.”
She swung the heavy door closed. Open, it would be a temptation to small boys and girls who, like herself, were fond of shivery adventures.
“Come on,” Horace urged her. “The vault is empty, and you’re just scaring yourself and getting all wet standing there. I want to interview that caretaker and find out what’s up.”
“I doubt if you will,” Judy said, turning reluctantly to follow him down the long steps back to the car.
The vault, somehow, had a strange attraction for her as it did for Blackberry. The cat was climbing around it, exploring the statue, and the roof, and Judy longed to join him. If the bushes weren’t so wet she knew she could scramble up there, too.
“We’ll come back, won’t we, Horace?” Judy asked.
“It depends on what the caretaker has to say. The sky’s cleared a little and I can see the top of his cottage. We did pass it,” he observed. “The fire didn’t touch it or the trees around it.”
“I hope it’s warm inside,” Judy said. “The air is getting colder by the minute.”
Judy found the caretaker’s cottage cold in more ways than one. They had approached it eagerly. It did seem the logical place to inquire about the mysterious Mr. Paul Riker.
“We’ll question the caretaker,” Horace declared. “He’ll tell us plenty.”
But would he? At first the wizened little old man who came to the door of the cottage refused to admit them.
“I’ve had enough people here,” he barked. “Go away!”
“I’m Paul Riker,” little Paul piped up unexpectedly. “You have to let us in.”
“Well, I’ll be hanged,” the caretaker said, “if you don’t sound just like your uncle Paul. So I have to let you in, eh?”
“Paul! Be quiet,” Mrs. Riker admonished the boy. “I am Mrs. Philip Riker,” she told the caretaker. “Do you know where I can reach Mr. Paul Riker?”
“I’m Abner Post,” the caretaker said, and added reluctantly, “Come in, Mrs. Riker.”
Judy and Horace introduced themselves and got a cold stare for their trouble. Abner Post led them into his kitchen which was at the front of the house, and they were offered straight-backed chairs.
The kitchen, Judy noticed, was a little like her own. It had a fireplace in it, but there was no fire. The house seemed without warmth or comfort.
“So you’ve come to find out what’s become of Mr. Riker, have you?” the caretaker said to Mrs. Riker after she had told him about seeing the vault. “Well, there’s plenty would like to know. Some of the neighbors hereabouts say he’s dead and his ghost walks up and down them steps at midnight. But I ain’t seen it.”