The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Yellow Phantom

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Yellow PhantomThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Yellow PhantomAuthor: Margaret SuttonRelease date: January 16, 2015 [eBook #47989]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Rick Morris, Rod Crawford,Dave Morgan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Teamat http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YELLOW PHANTOM ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The Yellow PhantomAuthor: Margaret SuttonRelease date: January 16, 2015 [eBook #47989]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Rick Morris, Rod Crawford,Dave Morgan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Teamat http://www.pgdp.net

Title: The Yellow Phantom

Author: Margaret Sutton

Release date: January 16, 2015 [eBook #47989]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Rick Morris, Rod Crawford,Dave Morgan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Teamat http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YELLOW PHANTOM ***

The FamousJUDY BOLTONMystery StoriesByMARGARET SUTTONIn Order of Publication

The FamousJUDY BOLTONMystery Stories

ByMARGARET SUTTON

In Order of Publication

THE VANISHING SHADOWTHE HAUNTED ATTICTHE INVISIBLE CHIMESSEVEN STRANGE CLUESTHE GHOST PARADETHE YELLOW PHANTOMTHE MYSTIC BALLTHE VOICE IN THE SUITCASETHE MYSTERIOUS HALF CATTHE RIDDLE OF THE DOUBLE RINGTHE UNFINISHED HOUSETHE MIDNIGHT VISITORTHE NAME ON THE BRACELETTHE CLUE IN THE PATCHWORK QUILTTHE MARK ON THE MIRRORTHE SECRET OF THE BARRED WINDOWTHE RAINBOW RIDDLETHE LIVING PORTRAITTHE SECRET OF THE MUSICAL TREETHE WARNING ON THE WINDOWTHE CLUE OF THE STONE LANTERNTHE SPIRIT OF FOG ISLANDTHE BLACK CAT’S CLUETHE FORBIDDEN CHESTTHE HAUNTED ROADTHE CLUE IN THE RUINED CASTLETHE TRAIL OF THE GREEN DOLL

THE VANISHING SHADOW

THE HAUNTED ATTIC

THE INVISIBLE CHIMES

SEVEN STRANGE CLUES

THE GHOST PARADE

THE YELLOW PHANTOM

THE MYSTIC BALL

THE VOICE IN THE SUITCASE

THE MYSTERIOUS HALF CAT

THE RIDDLE OF THE DOUBLE RING

THE UNFINISHED HOUSE

THE MIDNIGHT VISITOR

THE NAME ON THE BRACELET

THE CLUE IN THE PATCHWORK QUILT

THE MARK ON THE MIRROR

THE SECRET OF THE BARRED WINDOW

THE RAINBOW RIDDLE

THE LIVING PORTRAIT

THE SECRET OF THE MUSICAL TREE

THE WARNING ON THE WINDOW

THE CLUE OF THE STONE LANTERN

THE SPIRIT OF FOG ISLAND

THE BLACK CAT’S CLUE

THE FORBIDDEN CHEST

THE HAUNTED ROAD

THE CLUE IN THE RUINED CASTLE

THE TRAIL OF THE GREEN DOLL

JUDY GLANCED AT JASPER CROSBY; HE WAS WATCHING HER LIKE A CAT.

The Yellow Phantom

A JUDY BOLTON MYSTERY

THE YELLOWPHANTOM

BYMARGARET SUTTONGROSSET & DUNLAPPUBLISHERS NEW YORK

MARGARET SUTTON

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

GROSSET & DUNLAP, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

To My Mother and Father.

CONTENTS

A MYSTERIOUS TELEGRAM

“Goodbye, Judy! Goodbye, Irene! Don’t like New York so well that you won’t want to come home!”

“Don’t keep them too long, Pauline! Farringdon will be as dead as so many bricks without them. Even the cats will miss Blackberry. Make him wave his paw, Judy!”

“Don’t forget to write!”

“Goodbye, Pauline! Goodbye, Judy! Goodbye, Irene!”

“Goodbye! Goodbye!”

And Peter’s car was off, bearing the last load of campers back to their home town.

Judy Bolton watched them out of sight. They were taking the familiar road, but she and Irene Lang would soon be traveling in the other direction. Pauline Faulkner had invited them for a visit, including Judy’s cat in the invitation, and they were going back with her to New York.

A long blue bus hove into view, and all three girls hailed it, at first expectantly, then frantically when they saw it was not stopping. It slowed down a few feet ahead of them, but when they attempted to board it the driver eyed Blackberry with disapproval.

“Can’t take the cat unless he’s in a crate.”

“He’s good,” Judy began. “He won’t be any trouble——”

“Can’t help it. Company’s rules.” And he was about to close the door when Judy’s quick idea saved the situation.

“All right, he’sin a crate,” she declared with vigor as she thrust the cat inside her own pretty hatbox. The hats she hastily removed and bundled under one arm.

The driver had to give in. He even grinned a bit sheepishly as the girls took their seats, Pauline and Irene together, “Because,” Judy insisted as she took the seat just behind them, “I have Blackberry.”

The other passengers on the bus were regarding the newcomers with amused interest. A ten-year-old boy brought forth a ball of twine and rolled it playfully in Blackberry’s direction. An old lady made purring noises through her lips. Everyone seemed to be nodding and smiling. Everyone except the serious young man across the aisle. He never turned his head.

Judy nudged the two friends in the seat ahead of her and confided a desire to do something—anything to make him look up.

“Why, Judy,” Irene replied, shocked. “I’ve been watching that man myself and he’s—he’s——”

“Well, what?”

“Almost my ideal.”

“Silly!” Judy laughed. “I’d like to bet he wouldn’t be so ideal if I did something to disturb those precious papers that he’s reading.”

“I dare you!” Pauline said.

Sixteen or not, the dare tempted Judy. It was an easy matter to let Blackberry out of the hatbox in her arms and down into the aisle. The cat’s plumelike tail did the rest.

The man looked up. But, to Judy’s surprise, he looked up with a smile. Irene, all contrition, hastened to apologize.

“No harm done,” he returned good-naturedly and began collecting his scattered papers. Soon he had them rearranged and resumed his reading. There were a great many typewritten sheets of paper, and he seemed to be reading critically, scratching out something here and adding something there.

“You were wrong,” Irene said, turning to Judy. “See how nice he was.”

“I should have known better than to dare a girl like you,” Pauline put in.

“It was horrid of me,” Judy admitted, now almost as interested as Irene in the strange young man. Not because he was Judy’s ideal—a man who wouldn’t notice a cat until its tail bumped into him—but because the papers on his lap might be important. And she had disturbed them.

The man, apparently unaware that the accident had been anybody’s fault, continued reading and correcting. Judy watched her cat carefully until the stack of papers was safely inside his portfolio again.

“That’s finished,” he announced as though speaking to himself. He screwed the top on his fountain pen, placed it in his pocket and then turned to the girls. “Nice scenery, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” Judy replied, laughing, “but you didn’t seem to be paying much attention to it.”

“I’ve been over this road a great many times,” he explained, “and one does tire of scenery, like anything else. Passengers in the bus are different.”

“You mean different from scenery?”

“Yes, and from each other. For instance, you with your ridiculous cat and your golden-haired friend who apologized for you and that small, dark girl are three distinct types.”

Judy regarded him curiously. She had never thought of herself or either of the other girls as “types.” Now she tried to analyze his meaning.

Their lives had certainly been different. Judy and Pauline, although of independent natures, had always felt the security of dependence upon their parents while Irene’s crippled father depended solely upon her. This responsibility made her seem older than her years—older and younger, too. She never could acquire Pauline’s poise or Judy’s fearlessness.

In appearance, too, they were different. Her first vacation had done wonders for Irene Lang. Now her usually pale cheeks glowed with healthy color, and her eyes were a deeper, happier blue. Two weeks of sunshine had tanned her skin and brought out all the gold in her hair.

Pauline, too, had acquired a becoming tan which made her hair look darker than ever and contrasted strangely with her keen, light blue eyes.

The sun had not been quite so kind to Judy. It had discovered a few faint freckles on her nose and given her hair a decided reddish cast. But Judy didn’t mind. Camp life had been exciting—boating, swimming and, as a climax, a thrilling ride in Arthur Farringdon-Pett’s new airplane.

The young man beside Judy was a little like Arthur in appearance—tall, good-looking but altogether too grown-up and serious. Judy liked boys to make jokes now and then, even tease the way her brother, Horace, did. Peter teased her, too.

“Queer,” she thought, “to miss being teased.”

This stranger seemed to like serious-minded people and presently changed the conversation to books and music, always favorite topics with Irene. Then Judy spoke about the work that he was doing but learned nothing except that “finished” in his case meant that he had succeeded in putting his papers back in their original sequence.

“And if you girls were all of the same type,” he added, “I doubt if I would have forgiven you your prank.”

“I guess he doesn’t care for my type,” Judy whispered to the other two girls a little later.

“Mine either,” Pauline returned with a laugh. “At least he wouldn’t if he knew I dared you.”

“Do you suppose,” Irene asked naïvely, “that he cares for my type?”

She looked very pathetic as she said that, and Judy, remembering Irene’s misfortunes, slid into the seat beside her and put a loving arm about her shoulder.

“I care for your type,” she said. “So why worry about what a stranger thinks?”

“I’m not,” Irene said, belying her answer with a wistful look in the stranger’s direction. He was still absorbed in the mountain of typewritten pages that he held on his knee. It seemed that his work, whatever it was, engrossed him completely. He was again making corrections and additions with his pen. Judy noticed a yellow slip of paper on the seat beside him and called the other girls’ attention to it.

“It looks like a telegram,” she whispered, “and he keeps referring to it.”

“Telegrams are usually bad news,” Irene replied.

The young man sat a little distance away from them and, to all appearances, had forgotten their existence. Girl-like, they discussed him, imagining him as everything from a politician to a cub reporter, finally deciding that, since he lived in Greenwich Village, he must be an artist. Irene said she liked to think of him as talented. A dreamer, she would have called him, if it had not been for his practical interest in the business at hand—those papers and that telegram.

It was dark by the time they reached New York. The passengers were restless and eager to be out of the bus. The young man hastilycrammed his typewritten work into his portfolio and Judy noticed, just as the bus stopped, that he had forgotten the telegram. She and Irene both made a dive for it with the unfortunate result that when they stood up again each of them held a torn half of the yellow slip.

“Just our luck!” exclaimed Irene. “Now we can’t return it to him. Anyway, he’s gone.”

“We could piece it together,” Pauline suggested, promptly suiting her actions to her words. When the two jagged edges were fitted against each other, this is what the astonished girls read:

DALE MEREDITHPLEASANT VALLEY PACUT ART SHOP ROBBERY STOP FIFTY THOUSANDIS PLENTY STOP ONE MAN MURDERED INTERESTSRANDALL STOP DISCUSS TERMS MONDAYEMILY GRIMSHAW

DALE MEREDITH

PLEASANT VALLEY PA

CUT ART SHOP ROBBERY STOP FIFTY THOUSAND

IS PLENTY STOP ONE MAN MURDERED INTERESTS

RANDALL STOP DISCUSS TERMS MONDAY

EMILY GRIMSHAW

Irene was the first to finish reading.

“Good heavens! What wouldheknow about robbery and murder?” she exclaimed, staring first at the telegram in Pauline’s hand and then at the empty seat across the aisle.

“Why, nothing that I can think of. He didn’t seem like a crook. The telegram may be in code,” Pauline mused as she handed the torn pieces to Judy. “I like his name—Dale Meredith.”

“So do I. But Emily Grimshaw——”

“All out! Last stop!” the bus driver was calling. “Take care of that cat,” he said with a chuckle as he helped the girls with their suitcases.

They were still wondering about the strange telegram as they made their way through the crowd on Thirty-fourth Street.

IRENE’S DISCOVERY

A taxi soon brought the girls to the door of Dr. Faulkner’s nineteenth century stone house. The stoop had been torn down and replaced by a modern entrance hall, but the high ceilings and winding stairways were as impressive as ever.

Drinking in the fascination of it, Judy and Irene followed the man, Oliver, who carried their bags right up to the third floor where Pauline had a sitting room and a smaller bedroom all to herself. The former was furnished with a desk, sofa, easy chairs, numerous shaded lamps, a piano and a radio.

Here the man left them with a curt, “’Ere you are.”

“And it’s good to have you, my dears,” the more sociable housekeeper welcomed them. Soon she was bustling around the room setting their bags in order. She offered to help unpack.

“Never mind that now, Mary,” Pauline told her. “We’re dead tired and I can lend them some of my things for tonight.”

“Then I’ll fix up the double bed in the next room for your guests and leave you to yourselves,” the kind old lady said.

As soon as she had closed the door Judy lifted her cat out of the hatbox. With a grateful noise, halfway between a purr and a yowl, Blackberry leaped to the floor and began, at once, to explore the rooms.

“His padded feet were made for soft carpets,” Judy said fondly.

“How do you suppose he’d like gravel?” Pauline asked.

“Oh, he’d love it!” Judy exclaimed. “You know our cellar floor is covered with gravel, and he sleeps down there.”

“Is this gravel in the cellar?” Irene asked, beginning to get an attack of shivers.

Pauline laughed. “Goodness, no! It’s on the roof garden.” She walked across the room and flung open a door. “Nothing shivery about that, is there?”

“Nothing except the thought of standing on the top of one of those tall buildings,” Irene said, gazing upward as she followed Pauline.

The view fascinated Judy. Looking out across lower New York, she found a new world of gray buildings and flickering lights. In the other direction the Empire State Building loomed like a sentinel.

“I never dreamed New York was like this,” she breathed.

“It grows on a person,” Pauline declared. “I would never want to live in any other city. No matter how bored or how annoyed I may be during the day, at night I can always come up here and feel the thrill of having all this for a home.”

“I wish I had a home I could feel that way about,” Irene sighed.

The garden was too alluring for the girls to want to leave it. Even Blackberry had settled himself in a bed of geraniums. These and other plants in enormous boxes bordered the complete inclosure. Inside were wicker chairs, a table and a hammock hung between two posts.

“This is where I do all my studying,” Pauline said, “and you two girls may come up here and read if you like while I’m at school.”

“At school?” Judy repeated, dazed until she thought of something that she should have considered before accepting Pauline’s invitation. Of course Pauline would be in school. She hadn’t been given a holiday as the girls in Farringdon had when their school burned down. Judy and Irene would be left to entertain themselves all day unless Dr. Faulkner had some plans for them. Judy wondered where he was.

After they had gone inside again, that is, all of them except Blackberry who seemed to have adopted the roof garden as a permanent home, she became curious enough to ask.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Pauline said in surprise. “Father is away. A medical conference in Europe. He’s always going somewhere like that, but he’ll be home in two or three weeks.”

“Then we’ll be alone for three weeks?” Irene asked, dismayed.

“Why not?” Pauline returned indifferently. “There’s nothing to be afraid of with servants in the house.”

But Irene was not used to servants. Ever since her father became disabled she had waited on herself and kept their shabby little house in apple-pie order. The house was closed now and their few good pieces of furniture put in storage. All summer long there would not be anyrent problems or any cooking. Then, when fall came, she and her father would find a new home. Where it would be or how they would pay for it worried Irene when she thought about it. She tried not to think because Dr. Bolton had told her she needed a rest. Her father, a patient of the doctor’s, was undergoing treatments at the Farringdon Sanitarium. The treatments were being given according to Dr. Bolton’s directions but not by him as Judy’s home, too, was closed for the summer. Her parents had not intended to stay away more than a week or two, but influenza had swept the town where they were visiting. Naturally, the doctor stayed and his wife with him. Judy’s brother, a reporter and student of journalism, had gone to live in the college dormitory.

Thus it was that both girls knew they could not return to Farringdon no matter how homesick they might be. They had the cat for comfort and they had each other. Ever since Irene had come to work in Dr. Bolton’s office these two had been like sisters. Lois, Lorraine, Betty, Marge, Pauline—all of them werefriends. But Irene and Honey, the other girl who had shared Judy’s home, were closer than that. Judy felt with them. She felt with Irene the longing of the other girl for something to hold fast to—a substantial home that could not be taken away at every whim of the landlord, just enough money so that she could afford to look her best and the security of some strong person to depend upon.

“Will your school last long?” Irene was asking the dark-haired girl.

“Not long enough,” Pauline sighed, revealing the fact that she too had troubles.

“Then you’ll be free?” Irene went on, unmindful of the sigh. “We can go places together? You’ll have time to show us around.”

Pauline shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t talk about time to me. Time will be my middle name after I graduate. There isn’t a single thing I really want to do, least of all stay at home all day. College is a bore unless you’re planning a career. What do you intend to do when you’re through school?”

“I hadn’t planned,” Irene said, “except that I want time to read and go ahead with my music. Of course I’ll keep house somewhere for Dad. It will be so nice to have him well again, and I love keeping house.”

“What about your work for my father?” Judy asked.

Irene’s eyes became troubled. “He doesn’t really need me any more. I know now, Judy, that you just made that position for me. It was lovely of you, but I—I’d just as soon not go back where I’m not needed. Your father trusts too many people ever to get rich and he could use that money he’s been paying me.”

“Don’t feel that way about it,” Judy begged.

Irene’s feelings, however, could not easily be changed, and with both girls having such grave worries the problem bid fair to be too great a one for even Judy to solve. Solving problems, she hoped, would eventually be her career for she planned to become a regular detective with a star under her coat. Now she confided this ambition to the other two girls.

“A detective!” Pauline gasped. “Why, Judy, only men are detectives. Can you imagine anyone taking a mere girl on the police force?”

“Chief Kelly, back home, would take her this very minute if she applied,” Irene declared.

Pauline nodded, easily convinced. This practical, black-haired, blue-eyed girl had helped Judy solve two mysteries and knew that she had talent. But Pauline didn’t want to meet crooks. She didn’t want to be bothered with sick or feeble-minded people and often felt thankful that her father, a brain specialist, had his offices elsewhere. Pauline wanted to meet cultured people who were also interesting.

“People, like that man we met on the bus,” she said, “who read and can discuss books intelligently. I’d hate to think of his being mixed up in anything crooked.”

“You can’tmakeme believe that he was,” Irene put in with a vigor quite rare for her. “Couldn’t you just see in his eyes that he was real?”

“I didn’t look in his eyes,” Judy returned with a laugh, “but you can be sure I’ll never be satisfied until we find out what that mysterious telegram meant.”

In the days that followed Judy learned that the mere mention of the stranger’s name, Dale Meredith, would cause either girl to cease worrying about a home or about a career, as the case might be.

“It’s almost magical,” she said to herself and had to admit that the spell was also upon her. Perhaps a dozen times a day she would puzzle over the torn papers in her pocketbook. But then, it was Judy’s nature to puzzle over things. It was for that reason that she usually chose detective stories whenever she sat down with a book. That hammock up there on the roof garden was an invitation to read, and soon Judy and Irene had finished all the suitable stories in Dr. Faulkner’s library. They had seen a few shows, gazed at a great many tall buildings, and found New York, generally, less thrilling from the street than it had been from the roof garden.

Pauline sensed this and worried about entertaining her guests. “How would you like to go and see Grant’s Tomb today?” she suggested.

“For Heaven’s sake, think of something a little more exciting than that,” Judy exclaimed thoughtlessly. “I’d rather find a library somewhere and then lie and read something in the hammock.”

“So would I,” agreed Irene, relieved that Judy hadn’t wanted to see the tomb.

“Well, if a library’s all you want,” Pauline said, “why not walk along with me and I’ll show you one on my way to school.”

“A big one?” Judy asked.

“No, just a small one. In fact, it’s only a bookshop with a circulating library for its customers.”

Judy sighed. It would seem nice to see something small for a change. She never recognized this library at all until they were almost inside the door. Then her eyes shone.

What an interesting place it was! On the counters were quaint gifts and novelties as well as books. The salesladies all wore smocks, like artists, and had the courtesy to leave the girls alone. Pauline had to hurry on to school but left Judy and Irene to browse. Before long they had discovered a sign reading MYSTERY AND ADVENTURE. That was what Judy liked. Rows and rows of new books, like soldiers, marched along the shelves.

“What a lot of flying stories,” Irene said, absently removing one of them from its place.

“And murder mysteries,” Judy added. “It’s always a temptation to read them.Murders in Castle Stein....”

She started back as her eye caught the author’s name.

It was Dale Meredith!

A DARING SCHEME

Thrilled by her discovery, Judy removed the torn pieces of telegram from her purse and began unraveling the mystery, bit by bit. Irene looked on, trembling with excitement.

“‘CUT ART SHOP ROBBERY STOP FIFTY THOUSAND IS PLENTY STOP....’Art Shop Robbery!That sounds like a title! And someone wanted him to cut it to fifty thousand words—just a nice length for a book. That must have been what he was doing on the bus, cutting down the number of words on those typewritten pages.”

“Why, of course,” Irene agreed. “I always knew you were gifted, Judy, but can you explain this?” She pointed.

“‘ONE MAN MURDERED INTERESTS RANDALL....’ Easy as pie! Another title and a publisher.”

Judy tossed her head with a self-satisfied air of importance. Every one of their questions might be answered in the classified directory.

They found a telephone booth near by and a directory on the shelf beside it. Promptly turning to the list of publishing houses, Judy’s finger traveled down one complete page and half of another, but no Randall could she find. With a sigh of disappointment she turned to look again at the telegram:

“DISCUSS TERMS MONDAY”“EMILY GRIMSHAW”

“DISCUSS TERMS MONDAY”

“EMILY GRIMSHAW”

What sort of person was she? A relative? No. Relatives didn’t discuss terms with authors. Wives and sweethearts didn’t either. They might discuss his books, but not terms. Anyway Irene hoped that Dale Meredith had no wife or sweetheart, certainly not a sweetheart with a name like Emily Grimshaw. That name sounded as harsh to the ears as Dale Meredith sounded musical.

Flipping the pages of the directory, Judy came upon the answer to their question:

“AUTHOR’S AGENTS (SeeLiterary Agents).”

“That might be it!”

She turned to the place and, beginning at the top of the page, both girls searched eagerly through the G’s.

“Greenspan, Grier, Grimshaw....”

The name was Emily and the address was a number on Madison Square. Irene was so excited that she declared she could feel her heart thumping under her slip-on sweater.

“I’d give anything to meet him again, Judy! Anything!”

And suddenly Judy wanted to meet him too, not for her own sake but for Irene’s. A bold plan began to take shape in her mind. If she and Irene found positions in Emily Grimshaw’s office Dale Meredith would never know that it had not been a simple coincidence. It would be such fun—this scheming. It would give them something to do and if Judy’s plan worked it might even solve the problem of Pauline’s career.

“Of course Emily Grimshaw may not hire us,” Judy said after she had outlined the scheme and won Irene’s approval. “But, at any rate, it’s worth trying. We won’t need to tell her it’s only for a few weeks when Pauline will be there to step right into the position. I wonder how you get to Madison Square.”

She stopped a policeman to ask him and found it to be within easy walking distance.

“We might as well go now,” Irene agreed.

Perhaps if they thought about it too long they might lose heart and not attempt it.

The literary agent’s office was located in an old hotel on the northeast side of the square. The building looked as if it had been unchanged for a century. In the lobby Judy and Irene paused, surveying the quaint furniture and mural decorations before they mustered enough courage to inquire at the desk for Emily Grimshaw.

“Who’s calling?” the clerk asked tartly.

“Tell her—” Judy hesitated. “Tell her it’s two girls to see her on business.”

The message was relayed over the switchboard and presently the clerk turned and said, “She will see one of you. First stairway to the left. Fourth floor.”

“Only one—” Judy began.

“She always sees one client at a time. The other girl can wait.”

“That’s right. I—I’ll wait,” Irene stammered.

“But you wanted the position——”

“I don’t now. Suppose she asked about experience.”

“You’ve had a little. You stand a better chance than I do.”

“Not with your nerve, Judy,” Irene said. “This place gives me the shivers. You’re welcome to go exploring dark halls if you like. I’d rather sit here in the lobby and read Dale Meredith’s book.”

“Oh, so that’s it? Make yourself comfortable,” Judy advised with a laugh. “I may be gone a long, long time.”

“Not if she finds out how old you are.”

“Hush!” Judy reproved. “Don’t I look dignified?”

She tilted her hat a little more to the left and dabbed a powder puff on her nose. The puff happened not to have any powder on it but it gave her a grown-up, courageous feeling. And she was to have a great need of courage in the hour that followed.

HOW THE SCHEME WORKED

The adventure lost some of its thrill with no one to share it. Judy hadn’t an idea in the world how to find the fourth floor as she could see no stairway and no elevator.

Taking a chance, she opened one of several doors. It opened into a closet where cleaning supplies were kept. Judy glanced at the dusty floor and wondered if anybody ever used them.

This was fun! She tried another door and found it locked. But the third door opened into a long hall at the end of which was the stairway.

“A regular labyrinth, this place,” she thought as she climbed. “I wonder if Emily Grimshaw will be as queer as her hotel.”

There were old-fashioned knockers on all the doors, and Judy noticed that no two of them were alike. Emily Grimshaw had her name on the glass door of her suite, and the knockerwas in the shape of a witch hunched over a steaming caldron. Judy lifted it and waited.

“Who’s there?” called a mannish voice from within.

“Judy Bolton. They told me at the desk that you would see me.”

“Come on in, then. Don’t stand there banging the knocker.”

“I beg your pardon,” Judy said meekly as she entered. “I didn’t quite understand.”

“It’s all right. Who sent you?”

“Nobody. I came myself. I found your name in the classified directory.”

“Oh, I see. Another beginner.”

Emily Grimshaw sat back in her swivel chair and scrutinized Judy. She was a large woman dressed in a severely plain brown cloth dress with sensible brown shoes to match. Her iron-gray hair was knotted at the back of her head. In fact, the only mark of distinction about her whole person was the pair of glasses perched on the high bridge of her nose and the wide, black ribbon suspended from them. Although an old woman, her face was not wrinkled. What few lines she had were deep furrows that looked as if they belonged there. Judy could imagine Emily Grimshaw as a middle-aged woman but never as a girl.

The room was, by no means, a typical office. If it had not been for the massive desk littered with papers and the swivel chair it would not have looked like an office at all. Three of the four walls were lined with bookshelves.

“Is this where you do all your work?” Judy asked.

“And why not? It’s a good enough place.”

“Of course,” Judy explained herself quickly. “But I supposed you would have girls working for you. It must keep you busy doing all this yourself.”

“Hmm! It does. I like to be busy.”

Judy took a deep breath. How, she wondered, was she to put her proposition before this queer old woman without seeming impudent. It was the first time in her life she had ever offered her services to anyone except her father.

“You use a typewriter,” she began.

“Look here, young woman,” Emily Grimshaw turned on her suddenly, “if you’re a writer, say so. And if you’ve come here looking for a position——”

“That’s it exactly,” Judy interrupted. “I’m sure I could be of some service to you.”

“What?”

“I might typewrite letters for you.”

“I do that myself. Haven’t the patience to dictate them.”

“Perhaps I could help you read and correct manuscripts,” Judy suggested hopefully.

The agent seemed insulted. “Humph!” she grunted. “Much you know about manuscripts!”

“I may know more than you think,” Judy came back at her. It was hard to be patient with this irritable old lady. Certainly she would never have chosen such an employer if it had not been for the possibility of meeting Dale Meredith again. Irene had taken such a fancy to him.

“Lucky she doesn’t know that,” thought Judy as she watched her fumbling through a stack of papers on her desk. Finally she produced a closely written page of note paper and handed it to the puzzled girl.

“If you know so much about manuscripts,” she charged. “What would you do with a page like that?”

Half hoping that the handwriting was Dale Meredith’s, Judy reached out an eager hand. The agent was watching her like a cat and, as she read, a hush settled over the room. Emily Grimshaw was putting Judy to a test.

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