CHAPTER XVII

My own golden girl. There is one, only oneWho has eyes like the stars and hair like the sun.In your new yellow gown you’re a dream of delight.You have danced in my heart on bright slippers tonight ...

My own golden girl. There is one, only one

Who has eyes like the stars and hair like the sun.

In your new yellow gown you’re a dream of delight.

You have danced in my heart on bright slippers tonight ...

Judy bowed her head and tears smarted in her eyes.

“Irene’s description,” Dale said fiercely. He shut off the radio and did not turn it on again until the ten minutes were up.

Gongs sounded and then the announcer’s voice, very cold and matter-of-fact, read through the list of missing persons. Irene’s name came last:

MISSING SINCE JUNE TWENTIETH: IRENE LANGOF FARRINGDON, PENNSYLVANIA; VISITING AT120 GRAMERCY PARK, NEW YORK CITY. SEVENTEENYEARS OLD; HEIGHT: 5 FEET, 4 INCHES;WEIGHT: 110 POUNDS; BLUE EYES; FAIR HAIR;WEARING A YELLOW DRESS AND JACKET, NOHAT, HIGH HEELED GOLD PUMPS AND CARRYINGA BROWN HAND BAG.

MISSING SINCE JUNE TWENTIETH: IRENE LANG

OF FARRINGDON, PENNSYLVANIA; VISITING AT

120 GRAMERCY PARK, NEW YORK CITY. SEVENTEEN

YEARS OLD; HEIGHT: 5 FEET, 4 INCHES;

WEIGHT: 110 POUNDS; BLUE EYES; FAIR HAIR;

WEARING A YELLOW DRESS AND JACKET, NO

HAT, HIGH HEELED GOLD PUMPS AND CARRYING

A BROWN HAND BAG.

That was all. In a few seconds it was over and Judy was left with the sick feeling that no one had heard.

In the living room of their little apartment two hundred miles away, Mrs. Dobbs settled herself in a comfortable rocker ready to relax and listen to the radio. Mrs. Dobbs loved music. Usually she listened to the old-time melodies but there was something especially appealing about the popular song that Kate South was singing. She called to her grandson.

“Come here, Peter, and listen.”

The tall youth entered the room and stretched himself in a chair.

“Gee, Grandma! It makes a fellow feel lonesome. Why the dickens do you suppose Judy had to spend her vacation so far away from folks who care about her?”

“She’s with Irene,” Mrs. Dobbs replied, “and from what I hear, Pauline Faulkner has taken a great liking to both of them. Honey was saying only this morning that she wished she’d been invited, too.”

“I’m glad she wasn’t,” Peter returned with vigor. “At least I have a little to say about what my sister is and isn’t going to do. Where is she now?”

“Out with Horace. He’s been taking her out alone since Irene went away——”

But Mrs. Dobbs stopped speaking as Peter held up his hand. The music had played out and neither of them had been paying much attention to the announcements that followed until the name, Irene Lang, broke upon their senses. Missing, was she?

Peter gave a low whistle of surprise and then jumped to his feet.

“Where are you going?” his grandmother cried.

“Going to get the car,” he flung over his shoulder. “Judy will be needing me.”

In the hallway he bumped into Horace and Honey just returning from a short walk through town.

“Where’s the fire?” Horace greeted him. “If there’s something exciting going on I want to hear about it. The paper’s starving for news.”

“Irene Lang has disappeared!” Peter gave out the “news” so suddenly that Horace was dumbfounded for a moment.

“And I’m going to New York to help Judy,” he added. “She’s apt to go too far with her flare for detecting. You might as well come, too. Maybe the paper will finance the trip if we bring back a big scoop——”

“Sa-ay!” Horace broke in. “Don’t forget it’s Irene Lang who is missing. News or no news, nothing goes into the paper that isn’t on the level.”

“Don’t I know it!” Peter replied. “Irene wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t on the level and there’s Judy to consider, too.”

“I want to help,” Honey spoke up. “Won’t you let me come with you?”

Horace looked at her and shook his head. The trip wouldn’t be a very safe one with Peter in his present mood and his car capable of a speed exceeding sixty.

“Then can’t we do something here?” she begged. “Can’t we go and see Irene’s father? Maybe he knows where she went.”

“Gosh!” Horace exclaimed. “That’s a real idea, Honey. You’ll be as good as Judy if you keep on using those little gray cells of yours. Goodbye, Peter! We’re off for the sanitarium.”

“Backing out, eh?” Peter gibed him.

“Backing out, nothing! If we learn anything important,” Horace declared, “we can beat your car in Arthur’s airplane.”

THE ONLY ANSWER

And yet Judy felt that no one had heard, that it was all up to her. Even Dale Meredith seemed not to be helping, and Pauline.... How much did Pauline care? Neither of them had attempted to follow Judy’s suggestion that they write down every possible clue. Instead they talked—talked until midnight, almost—when she was trying so hard to think.

Then Mary came in. Mary usually came in when Pauline stayed up too late. The cocoa that she served was a signal for Dale to leave and the girls to retire.

Pauline drank her cocoa quickly and walked with him to the door. When it closed behind him she still stood there, her head pressed against the panels.

“You’re tired,” Judy told her. “I’ll take this cocoa into my room and let you sleep.”

“Aren’t you going to drink it?”

Judy shook her head. “Not with Irene gone. It would make me sleepy too, and I’ve simply got to think.”

Alone in her room she tried to turn herself into an abstract thing, a mental machine that could think without feeling. In her heart she could not believe Irene had taken the poetry, but in her mind she knew that it must be so.

Didn’t Irene want the poems because they described a house? Even the address might have been among the conglomeration of papers. When her father suggested that she visit relatives in Brooklyn he had described a house also. Perhaps the two descriptions were the same. Perhaps the relative she sought was Sarah Glenn! For surely it was more than coincidence that Irene looked so much like the poet’s daughter, Joy Holiday. Could she have been an aunt? No, because Sarah Glenn had only the one child. A distant cousin? Hardly. Then there was only one conclusion left: Joy Holiday might have been Irene’s own mother!

Could Irene have put two and two together, just as Judy was doing, and gone to the poet’s house the day she disappeared? No doubt, if she did, she planned to be back again before either Judy or Pauline returned. Something had prevented her!

That something might have been Jasper Crosby, cruel, scheming, mercenary creature that he was. Or it might have been poor, demented Sarah Glenn. She might have locked Irene in the tower the way she had once locked her own daughter away from her friends. There was no telling what a crazy woman might do!

An hour later Judy still sat on her bed, trying to decide what to do. Her cocoa, on a forgotten corner of the dresser, had crusted over like cold paste. She rose, walked across the room, tasted the cold drink and set down the cup. She must come to some decision! Irene might be living through a nightmare of torture in that horrible house Sarah Glenn had described in her poems.

In the next room Pauline was sleeping soundly. Judy could wake her, ask her advice. Downstairs the telephone waited ready to help her. She could call Lieutenant Collins at the police station and tell her findings to him. She could telephone Mr. Lang again and ask him more questions—worry him more. She could call the young author, Dale Meredith.

Yes, she could call Dale and tell him that the insane poet might be Irene’s grandmother; that the scheming miser, Jasper Crosby, might be her uncle and that Irene, herself, had probably stolen the poetry to help locate them. What a shock that would be to the young author who had idolized Irene and called her his Golden Girl. Judy hadn’t the heart to disillusion him although her own spirit was heavy with the hurt of it all.

She wouldn’t notify the police either. Irene must not be subjected to an unkind cross fire of questions when, or if, she did return. Judy would find Irene herself and let her explain. Suppose she had stolen the poetry? What did it matter? Judy was learning not to expect perfection in people. She would love Irene all the more, forgiving her. And if Irene had stolen the poetry she could give it back quietly, and Judy could explain things to Emily Grimshaw. Dale need never be told.

Judy wouldn’t have done that much to shield herself. She could.... Oh, now she knew she could stand shock, excitement, tragedy. But it wouldn’t do to have people blaming Irene.

That night Judy buried her head in the pillows waiting, wide-eyed, for morning. Morning would tell. She knew that work was slack at the office and that Emily Grimshaw often did not come in until afternoon. She would take the morning off and go ... she consulted the bit of paper with the poet’s latest verse on one side and her address scribbled on the other. She got up out of bed to take it from her pocketbook and study it. The street apparently had no name.

One blk. past Parkville, just off Gravesend Avenue.

IN THE TOWER WINDOW

Morning dawned cold and misty. Judy fumbled through the closet hunting for an umbrella, and her trembling fingers touched Irene’s clothes. They lingered lovingly in the folds of each well remembered dress.

“Irene! Irene!” she thought. “I don’t care what you’ve done if only I can bring you back.”

In the adjoining room Pauline was still asleep. How cruel of her to sleep! No one was up except Blackberry, out there on the roof garden. Feeling that she must say goodbye to somebody, Judy whispered it to him.

It was too early for the throng of office workers to be abroad when Judy stepped out on the wet pavement and turned toward the subway entrance. The tall buildings in lower New York were little more than shadows, and the clock in the Metropolitan Tower was veiled in mist. Ghostly halos were around all the street lamps, and dampness seemed to have settled heavily over everything.

Judy felt it. The only comforting thing about the trip was the fact that she would be riding on the subway alone for the first time. She paid her fare, asked a few directions, and soon was seated in an express train bound for Brooklyn.

She pressed her forehead against the window as the train came onto Manhattan Bridge and started its trip over the East River. Freighters steamed down toward the ocean and up again. Everything looked gray.

As she watched, Judy’s hopes sank lower and lower. She began to realize that it was not the part of wisdom to go on her dangerous errand to the poet’s house alone. What would she say if Jasper Crosby opened the door? Would her experience with eccentric Emily Grimshaw help her to cope with the insane hallucinations of Sarah Glenn? Would she dare demand to know what had happened to Irene when a possibility existed that they had never seen her? Suppose they asked for the missing poetry. If she lied to defend Irene her nervousness might betray her. Judy knew that her chances offinding her chum were slim, very slim. Like the shining tracks behind her they seemed to lessen as the train sped on.

At Ninth Avenue she changed to the Culver Line. Up came the train, out of the tunnel, and the wet gray walls at the side of the tracks grew lower and lower. Soon they were clear of the ground and Judy realized that this was the elevated. Only four more stations! She looked around, eager for her first glimpse of Brooklyn, but what she saw caused her to shudder.

“Ugh! A graveyard.”

It stretched on and on, a grim sight on that dreary morning. Even after the white stones were left behind vacant lots and empty buildings made the scene look almost as cheerless.

At the fourth stop Judy got off and went down to the street. It was silly, but the thought came to her that if ever spirits walked abroad they would walk along Gravesend Avenue.

Consulting the slip of paper, she counted blocks as she passed them and watched for Parkville Avenue. She knew the old-fashioned street at once from the quaint houses that lined it. Then came the Long Island Railroad cut with a long line of box cars passing under Gravesend Avenue in a slow-moving procession.

She paused. Could the alley beyond be the street she sought? No wonder they hadn’t named it anything. Why, it wasn’t even paved! It seemed little more than a trail through vacant lots. She hesitated, looked ahead and caught her breath in a quick, terrified gasp. Then she stared, open-mouthed. There was something sinister about the huge, gray frame building that loomed in her path. The gnarled old trees surrounding it seemed almost alive, and the wind whistling through their branches sounded like a warning. But it was the tower, not the house itself, that caused Judy to gasp. The whole lower part of it was burned away and in the tower window something thin and yellow moved back and forth behind the curtains. It looked like an elongated ghost!

Judy rubbed her eyes and looked again. This time the tower was dark with the even blackness of drawn shades behind closed windows.

An unreasonable fear took possession of the watching girl. She felt that she had seen something not there in material substance. Stanza after stanza of Sarah Glenn’s poetry forced itself upon her consciousness, and it all fitted this house—the yellow ghost in the window, the crumbling tower.

Suddenly Judy realized that she was standing stock-still in the middle of the muddy unpaved street, moving her lips and making no sound. She was doing the same thing that Emily Grimshaw had done when Dale Meredith said she was crazy. Oh! She must get control of herself, take herself in hand.

“If the house can frighten me like this,” she thought, “what wouldn’t it do to Irene?”

Bracing her slim shoulders and mustering all her courage, Judy marched up on the porch and felt for the bell. Finding none, she rapped with her bare knuckles. The sound of her rap sent an echo reverberating through the walls of the still house.

Judy waited. She waited a long time before she dared rap again. The house seemed to be inhabited only by the echo she had heard and the phantom that had vanished from the tower window.

Still nobody answered. Judy tried the door and found it locked. Then she peered through the lower windows and saw at once that the house was empty of furniture.

“Nobody lives here,” she told herself and then she told herself the same thing all over again so that it would surely seem true. “Nobody ever does live in empty houses.”

And yet she had the strangest feeling that she was being watched!

LIKE A FAIRY TALE

Her nerves taxed to the breaking point, Judy gave up searching for the day and went to the office. Emily Grimshaw was not there but she had left a message:

Will be away for a time and leave you in charge.

“Me in charge!” Judy exclaimed. She couldn’t imagine herself conducting Emily Grimshaw’s business sensibly. “I’ll just close up for the day,” she decided in exasperation. Leaving a notice to that effect at the hotel desk, she locked the office and started for Dr. Faulkner’s house.

In the entrance hall she was met by an anxious group of faces. Dale’s, Pauline’s—and Peter’s.

“Judy!” he cried, and then when her only answer was a choked sob, again, “Judy!”

“Oh, Peter! You’ll help?”

“That’s why I’m here. We telephonedeverywhere. We thought you’d never come.”

“Where on earth were you?” Dale asked.

“Hunting for Irene,” Judy explained brokenly. “I—I followed up a clue. I thought I knew where Irene was and I went out there to get her to—to bring her home and surprise you, but she wasn’t there.”

“Wasn’twhere?”

“Where I thought she was ... the most awful place just off Gravesend Avenue out in old Parkville. The—the house has a tower, just like the tower in Sarah Glenn’s poems. It’s burned halfway up and—and—and——”

“And what, Judy? Don’t act so frightened.”

“There was something in the tower,” she blurted out, “something yellow——”

“Probably a yellow dog or some such ordinary thing,” Pauline interrupted.

“Oh, but it wasn’t! I saw it as plainly as anything, and it looked like a woman in a yellow robe, only she was too tall and too thin to be real. Then I looked again and she was gone but I could still feel her watching me. It was awful! I didn’t think there could be a tower of flame or a ghost, but there they were!” Judy leaned back against the closed door and threw both hands outward in a gesture of bewilderment.

“And I always thought I was a practical person. I always trusted my own head—and eyes.”

Impulsively, Peter caught her hands in his. His voice was husky. “I still trust them, Judy. Tell me everything,” he pleaded. “I know you must have had a good reason for thinking that Irene might be in this queer old house. Why did you?”

“Because Irene looks so much like the poet’s daughter, Joy Holiday. I thought they might be related. Mr. Lang spoke of Irene’s relatives. He told her to look them up. But the poet is crazy! Anything might happen!”

“And yet you went there alone!” Peter exclaimed. “Don’t you realize that whatever happened to Irene might have happened to you?”

“I did realize it—when I got there,” Judy faltered. “I—I guess I wasn’t very brave to run away, but nobody seemed to live in the house. It looked—empty.”

“Then, of course, Irene couldn’t be there,” Pauline concluded.

“Oh, but they might have moved—and taken her with them!” Judy turned to Peter, a new fear in her eyes. “You know about law. Tell me, if Irene is related to Sarah Glenn wouldn’t she inherit some of her property?”

“That depends upon the will,” he replied. “If she made a will before she went insane——”

“She did!” Judy interrupted. “She willed the property to her daughter and, in the event of her death, it was to go to her brother, Jasper Crosby. He’s a crook and a scoundrel,” she declared, “worse than Slippery McQuirk or any of Vine Thompson’s gang, if I’m any judge of character. You see, if Irene is related to the poet through Joy Holiday, how convenient it would be for him to have her out of the way?”

“You mean that Joy Holiday might have been Irene’s mother?”

“She couldn’t have been,” Pauline spoke up. “Joy Holiday has been dead for twenty years.”

“Supposedly! Her mother never did believe the body was hers, and even Emily Grimshaw says it didn’t look like her.”

“Where’d they get the body?” Peter asked.

“Jasper Crosby went to the morgue and got it. He identified it as Joy’s, and people paid no attention to his sister’s objections because they knew she was insane.”

“Then this girl, Joy Holiday, is legally dead. But if we can prove that there has been a fraud....”

“What fraud?” Dale questioned. “You don’t mean to tell us that this Jasper Crosby may have falsely identified some unknown girl’s body in order to inherit his sister’s property?”

“That’s exactly what I was trying to say. I don’t know anything about Irene’s mother and neither does she. Mr. Lang only remembered the name, Annie, and that, as well as Joy, may have been only a nickname.” Judy turned to Peter. “I know how you felt when your parents were a mystery. Well, wouldn’t Irene feel the same way? Her father gave away some family history in his letter, and Irene was more impressed than we know by Emily Grimshaw’s collapse. Remember, I wrote you about it, Peter? She wanted to find out about her mother——”

“Then she did take the poetry,” Pauline put in.

“Yes,” Judy agreed. “I’m afraid she did. It’s a terrible thing not to know the truth about one’s parents, and Irene must have taken the poetry to help her find that horrible house that seems to have swallowed her up.”

“She said she didn’t,” Dale maintained.

Judy felt suddenly ashamed that his trust in Irene should be greater than hers. But if, distrusting her, Judy found her, then she could be glad of her disbelief.

“There is another possibility,” she ventured and made her voice sound more hopeful than she felt. “There is the possibility that Irene may be safe in the poet’s house.”

“That sounds more plausible,” Dale agreed, “but you said the house was empty.”

“I said itlookedempty, except for that unearthly thing in the tower. But, now that I think of it, something alive must have been there to pull the shades. Do you suppose,” Judy asked in a tremulous whisper, “that somebody could be locked there like Joy Holiday was when she vanished?”

“It sounds like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? But not,” Peter added gravely, “if Irene is in the tower. Judy, we must do something—and do it quickly.”

It did not take him long to decide what that something would be. “We’ll get a policeman to go with us,” he declared. “The police have a right to force their way into a house if nobody answers.”

“Without a search warrant?” questioned Pauline.

“That’s the dickens of it,” Dale fumed. “There’s sure to be some red tape attached to it and loss of time may mean—loss of Irene. We’ve got to convince the police that this is a matter of life and death!”

A taxi was the quickest means of getting to the police station. It took considerable explaining, however, to convince officials that the case was urgent. The fact that the owner of the house was known to be insane and that Irene might be held there against her will proved to be the strongest argument in favor of the search warrant they requested. But it could not be served until the following day.

“You have to go before a magistrate,” Lieutenant Collins explained, “and night warrants are allowed only in cases where persons or property are positively known to be in the place to be searched. However, there are several ways of getting around that. If a felony has been committed, as in the present case, we don’t need a warrant.”

“What felony?” Judy asked.

“Great guns!” he exclaimed. “Don’t you call kidnaping a felony? If the girl’s held there against her will it’s a plain case of kidnaping!”

Judy hadn’t thought of that. Kidnapers and killers were almost synonymous in her mind and the thought was terrifying.

Lieutenant Collins wasted no further time but called the Parkville Precinct, and two policemen were detailed to meet Judy, Pauline, Dale and Peter and accompany them to the house with the crumbling tower.

THE SCENT OF ROSES

Neither Peter nor Dale stopped to count the cost of taxicabs that night. The driver hesitated only a moment. Their request that he make the fastest possible time to the distant Brooklyn police station was not a usual one. Knowing that it must be urgent, the driver made good his promise and soon they were speeding across Manhattan Bridge, through side streets in reckless haste and then down the long stretch of boulevard. Judy leaned out of the window and searched the scene ahead for a trace of anything familiar.

Ocean Parkway, lined with its modern dwelling houses and new apartment buildings was as unlike Gravesend Avenue as anything could be. Still, the two were only a few blocks apart. The driver turned his cab down a side street, sure of his bearings; and Judy, watching, saw the sudden change. The boulevard with its lights and stream of traffic, then queer old Parkville, a village forgotten while Brooklyn grew up around it.

The police station looked all the more imposing in this setting. Two young policemen were already there, waiting beside the high desk and talking with the captain.

Sarah Glenn’s house was only a short distance away, and together they walked it. Soon they were turning down the unpaved end of the street that bordered the railroad cut.

“There it is!” Judy shivered a little and drew her coat closer as she pointed.

The house was dark and silent. The windows were black—black with an unfathomable blackness that must be within. Peter sensed Judy’s fear for he took her arm and guided her as they came up the broken walk.

On the steps Dale stopped and picked up a white flower.

“What can it mean?” Pauline whispered. “How would a rose get here?”

He shook his head. “It’s beyond me. What’s this?” He fingered a lavender ribbon that was still attached to the door.

“Looks as if there’d been a funeral here,” one of the police officers observed.

Both girls stood trembling as he banged and pounded on the door and then shouted a threat to the still house.

“Nobody home,” he turned and said. “Do you think it’s necessary to force our way in?”

“More than ever,” Judy replied. “Wemustsee what’s in the tower!”

“Okay! Give me a hand, partner, and we’ll smash the door.”

Underneath the porch they found a beam which would serve their purpose. Peter and Dale helped the policemen, and soon the heavy door gave way and crashed into the empty house. A sickening, musty smell combined with the heady odor of flowers greeted them as they stepped inside.

“A funeral all right!” the policeman reiterated. “Get the perfume, don’t you? But everything’s cleared up—except....” He and Judy had seen it at the same time but the policeman was the first to pick it up. “... this card.”

“Let me see it.”

Obligingly he handed it to the girl. She turned it over in her hand and passed it on to Dale. It read:

With deepest sympathyEmily Grimshaw

With deepest sympathy

Emily Grimshaw

“Do you know the party?” the other officer asked.

“My employer,” Judy replied simply.

The question in her mind, however, was less easily answered. Was Emily Grimshaw’s absence from her office explainable by this death? Whose death? If Emily Grimshaw had sent flowers certainly she must know.

The policemen were busy searching the house, and Judy and her three companions followed them. The rooms upstairs, like those on the first floor, were empty of furniture. But the tower room was found to open from a third floor bedroom. To their surprise, this room was completely furnished, even to bed coverings and pillows. A little kitchen adjoined it and there were evidences that food had recently been cooked there. An extra cot was made up in the hall.

So the poet and her brother had lived in their immense house and occupied only two rooms! Or three? They had yet to explore the tower. Peter Dobbs tried the door and found it locked.

“We’ll have to break this one, too,” the policemen said, and Dale offered to get the beam.

Pauline’s hand kept him. “Wait a minute,” she pleaded. “It’s a shame to spoil the door and maybe this key will fit.”

She took a queer brass key from her hand bag. Judy and Peter frankly stared. The policemen, though obviously doubting its usefulness, consented to try it. To their astonishment, it turned.

“Where did you find that key?” Dale questioned.

“In the pocket of Irene’s brown suit. I put it in my own hand bag for safe-keeping.”

“Rather suspected it fitted something, didn’t you?” he said sarcastically. “Well, to me it doesn’t prove a thing.”

“It does to me,” Judy put in, “although not what you think. This must have been Joy Holiday’s room when she was a child! And if Irene had the key surely Joy Holiday is related to her—perhaps her own mother!”

“It sounds like pretty sound figuring to me,”’ Peter agreed, flashing a look of boyish admiration in Judy’s direction.

Then, as the door swung open, they followed the policemen into the tower. Peter pushed a button and the light revealed a circular room with a gay panorama of nursery rhyme characters frolicking across the wall.

Upon closer inspection, however, the room was seen to be six-sided with shelves built into two of its corners. On one of these dolls and expensive toys were neatly arranged. Books and games for a somewhat older girl adorned the other shelf.

A curtained wardrobe concealed another corner, while a white cot bed, all freshly made, occupied the corner at the left of the door. The two remaining corners were cleverly camouflaged by concave mirrors with uneven distorting surfaces, such as are sometimes seen in amusement park funny houses. In spite of Judy’s anxiety, she could not suppress a smile when the two policemen walked by them.

So this was the room where the poet had locked Joy Holiday! Did she think those silly mirrors and a roomful of books and toys could make up for a lack of freedom? Judy, who had always been allowed to choose what friends she liked, could easily see why the poet’s daughter had wanted to run away—or vanish as people said she had done. How strange it all wasand how thrilling to be standing in the very room where Irene’s mother had stood twenty years before!

“It’s so quiet and peaceful here,” Judy said. “Nothing very terrible could have happened in this pretty room.”

She had momentarily forgotten that the whole lower structure of it had been burned away, that she had seen a tall yellow specter peering out of its window.

Peter, however, remembered the fantastic story Judy had told him. It did not surprise the young law student that no one was in the tower. He and the two policemen immediately set about looking for clues to Irene’s whereabouts. But it was not until Dale drew back the wardrobe curtain and they found her yellow dress and jacket hanging there that they became truly alarmed. Now they knew, past any doubt, that Irene had visited her grandmother’s house. There had been a funeral! Even if it had been Sarah Glenn’s, Irene might have been with her when she died. Alone with a crazy woman ... timid little Irene!

It was a sober moment for all of them.

“That girl’s been held captive all right,” one of the policemen said in a voice more troubled than one would expect of an officer of the law. “It looks as if we’ve found the evidence right here.”

He stood examining the folds of her yellow dress. It appeared to have been hanging in the wardrobe for some time. Other clothes were there, too, but the full skirts and puffed sleeves were in the style of twenty years ago. On a shelf above them were two or three queer little hats, all decked out with feathers and flowers. Irene would have laughed at them. She would have tried them on and posed before the comical mirrors. Judy wondered if she had done that.

Someone, apparently, had tried on one of the aprons. It was a simple gingham affair such as girls used to wear to protect dainty dresses, and it had been thrown carelessly over a chair. When Judy made a move to hang it up she was warned to leave everything exactly as it was.

“If this turns out to be a murder case,” one of the policemen said, “this bedroom may contain important evidence.” He turned to Dale who still held the rose he had found on thesteps. “That flower proves that the funeral must have been held today. It’s still sweet,” he continued, making a grimace as he sniffed it. “We’ll get together all the facts on the case and have the place watched. If this man, Jasper Crosby, returns tonight there’ll be a policeman here to nab him. A general alarm will be dispatched to our radio cars, and we’ll find out whose funeral it was, too, and let you know first thing in the morning.”

“Oh, if you only would,” Judy cried gratefully. “Perhaps you can find out from my employer. She’s decided to take a vacation for some unknown reason but you may be able to locate her here.”

She gave them Emily Grimshaw’s home address. Peter Dobbs, who had taken a keen interest in the legal aspect of the case, jotted it down, too. Much to Dale’s discomfiture, he kept talking about Irene.

“If we find her,” he declared, “this may be my big opportunity. She would contest the will, of course, and I might be able to help her then.”

“Ifwe find her,” Dale repeated doubtfully.

Later Peter gave Judy the address and telephone number of the hotel where he was staying. He would be either there or at the police station in case she needed him.

“If I do call you,” Judy promised, with an attempt at lightness, “you may be sure that I’m in trouble because it’s really your place to call me.”

ANOTHER JULIET

No matter what happens the trivialities of life must go on. Food must be cooked and eaten, no matter how dry it tastes. Work must be done. Judy knew that and dragged her tired body out of bed. She dressed and went down into the kitchen where Mary made coffee and brought out the toaster. Pauline had left for school, she said. Would Judy mind the toast herself?

She nodded, staring at the coffeepot and wondering if Irene would ever sit across the breakfast table and drink coffee with her again. She let the toast burn and threw it away. Then she put on a second piece, watched it until it turned golden brown and flipped it over.

The doorbell rang!

Always, when the doorbell rang, there came that sudden exaltation. It might be news of Irene! Peter might have found her! With each new disappointment Judy’s hopes for Irene’s safe return sank lower.

This time it was not Peter. It was Arthur Farringdon-Pett, the young pilot-engineer, who owned his own airplane and had taken Judy for a never-to-be-forgotten ride far above the beautiful St. Lawrence River. Judy’s brother, Horace, stood in the doorway beside him, and both of them looked as if they had not slept for a week. Horace’s usually sleek hair was disordered and Arthur needed a shave. He was the first to speak.

“Any news of Irene?”

“Didn’t you bring any?” she asked. And before they could answer she went on saying how sure she was that they must have news or they wouldn’t have flown all the way to New York. She could tell they had been flying as they were still dressed for it.

“We were in too much of a hurry to bother changing these togs at the hangar where I left the plane,” Arthur explained.

“That’s all right,” Judy murmured, trying to shake off the queer feeling she had that he was some stranger.

“We do have news,” Horace told her finally, “but, I’m sorry to say, it’s not news of Irene.”

“What is it then?”

“News of her mother. We thought it might help you find her. I mean Irene. Her mother, of course, is dead.”

“I knew that,” Judy said. “But she has relatives. I’m sure your news will help me.” Taking their things, she invited the boys to sit down and share her breakfast while they told her. She poured out the extra coffee Mary had made and pushed her brother into a chair. Arthur found his own and soon all three were seated beside the table. The boys explained their delay.

They had expected to arrive a day earlier but when Horace and Honey called at the sanitarium they found that Mr. Lang was gone. Immediately, Horace telephoned Arthur who agreed to help search for him in his plane. It would have been easy to find him if, as they expected, he had taken the straight road for New York. But his crippled legs gave out and, toward evening, they found him helpless in the edge of a deep wood. Here, while they were waiting for the ambulance to take him back to the hospital, Mr. Lang told his story.

When Tom Lang was a young man, only eighteen or twenty, he had worked as a chauffeur for a wealthy family in Brooklyn. The daughter of the house gave parties, a great many of them, and after the parties Tom would drive the whole crowd of young people home. He never paid much attention to them until, one night, a new girl came to a party. She was different from all the others. She had glamour, radiance, all the qualities a man wants in a girl. But the young chauffeur dared not hope that she would have any use for him. She only came to the one party—like a princess in her golden dress and slippers. He took her home and remembered the house. After that he would drive past it, always hoping that she would see him.

And one day she did! She waved to him from the tower window. Finally he understood, from the motion of her hand, that she wanted to come down—and couldn’t. The door locked from the outside, and her tiny key was of no use from within. Clutching it in her hand, she leaned farther and farther out of the tower window.

Just like the princess in Tom’s old fairy book. He would be the brave knight and rescue her. There was a rope in the car. It had been used as a towing rope but would now serve a nobler purpose.

He swung one end of it up to the tower; he saw the slim white hand reach out and grasp it, the lithe body throw itself over the window sill and descend—slowly, slowly. She was almost to the ground when the rope came loose from where she had fastened it.

She fell!

Quick as a flash, Tom Lang caught her in his strong young arms. That same day he made her his bride. She lived just long enough to bear him a little daughter, the image of herself. Heartbroken, Irene’s father had never spoken of her. But he had saved her golden wedding dress and on Irene’s seventeenth birthday sent it to her with a letter explaining his gift and enclosing the key to her tower room. His Annie had been just seventeen.

“Romantic, wasn’t it?” Arthur asked after Horace had told the story as only a reporter could tell it.

Judy, who had listened to it all without making any comment, admitted that it was the most romantic true story she had ever heard.

“But Mr. Lang didn’t give Irene the name or address,” Arthur said thoughtfully. “He only sent the key to her mother’s room because he wanted her to have it as a remembrance. In fact, he told so little in his letter that it seems impossible—unthinkable—that she could have found her grandmother——”

“Unless she found the same description somewhere else,” Judy interrupted.

“Yes, but where?”

“In her grandmother’s poems. She and I read them together.”

Judy did not add that the manuscripts were now missing and that she felt almost certain that Irene had taken them to help locate her relatives. That knowledge was confined to four persons: Pauline, Dale Meredith, Peter and herself.

The fact that Irene’s grandmother wrote poems surprised Arthur. He had heard the popular song,Golden Girl, but had never connected it with Irene, probably, because he had never seen her in her mother’s golden dress.

“And you say the poet’s name is Glenn?”

“It’s really Holiday,” Judy explained. “She wrote under a nom de plume.”

But the boys couldn’t remember ever hearing the name Joy Holiday. Mr. Lang had called his wife simply Annie.

When Judy had finished a complete account of the police search through Sarah Glenn’s house they were more puzzled than ever. But they appeared to be simply puzzled—not alarmed.

“We’ll find out all about it,” Horace promised, “when we find Irene.”

It was good to hear them saying “when.” It gave Judy new courage. She would need courage to get through that day. She told them her plans. First they were to get in touch with the police to learn what they could of the funeral that had been held in Sarah Glenn’s house. Judy then suggested that Horace and Arthur call on Dale Meredith and ask his advice while she spent a few hours in Emily Grimshaw’s office.

“I’ll be of more use there than anywhere else,” she said. “Besides, it’s my job and I’m being paid for it. Irene comes first, of course. But the police are doing all they can, and if Icould see Emily Grimshaw and talk with her—well, I might find out some things that even the police don’t know. We discovered a card on the floor when we searched the poet’s house. It showed that my employer must have attended the funeral.”

Both boys agreed that Emily Grimshaw’s office was the place for Judy. Knowing that there must be stacks of papers for her to read and correct, Judy even consented to their plan that she go to the office at once and await news of Irene there. They would go on to the Parkville police station and telephone her. Peter had gone there and they might meet him.

After giving them explicit directions, Judy walked with them as far as the subway station at Union Square. There they separated, Judy taking the uptown train while the boys boarded an express for Brooklyn.

Horace turned to Arthur and spoke above the roar of the train.

“What puzzles me is how Irene found that house with nothing but a few crazy verses to go by, and I think that Judy knows if only she would tell.”

“She certainly knows something more,” he agreed, “but I’m not worrying. Judy is on the square.”

“I believe she is,” Horace replied, “but what about Irene?”

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