But the lady, whose breath came so quickly and who looked so eagerly into Jannet’s eyes, did not follow them to the picture. “If the picture is that of your mother, dear child, then I am your mother, for that is my picture and this is the room that was mine. Oh, how cruel, my dear, that we have had to do without each other all these years!”
Jannet’s arms went around her mother’s neck as her mother clasped her, gently, yet possessively, and the sweetest feeling of rest came to Jannet, though her throat choked some way, and she felt her mother catching her breath and trying to control herself. Then her mother sat down on the bed beside her, holding Jannet off a moment to look at her again. “I believe that this is heaven and we are both ghosts,” said Jannet, half smiling and winking hard.
“Not a bit of it,” said the other Jannet. “We are both as real as can be, though we shall be real enough there some day, I hope. Your mouth has a look of your father—O Jannet! The tragedy of it!”
“Don’t cry, Mother! I have so much to tell you—”
“And I so much to ask. Have you been here all these years?”
“Oh, no—just a few weeks. Uncle Pieter found me, and oh, we must tell Uncle Pieter right away, because he feels so terribly about things he has just found out, how you must have written and telegraphed to him and he never got the telegrams and letters!”
Jannet’s mother looked at her in surprise. Her face had sobered at the mention of her brother, but now she gave close attention to what Jannet went on to explain. “I should have come,” she said, “instead of depending on messages. But I was so ill.”
A little knock drew their attention to the opening into the secret stairway, for Jannet senior had not touched the spring which would replace the panel. There stood Uncle Pieter, but everything was so surprising that this did not seem unnatural.
“Pardon me, Jannet,” he said, “for following you. I was sleepless, and as I was taking a turn about the gardens I saw strangers, to all appearances, entering the house. I came to see what it meant, but by the time you reached the attic I knew who it was. I sat in the secret chamber to wait for your surprise!”
Uncle Pieter was hesitating at the opening, but with a few steps his sister had reached him and extended her hand. Tears were in her eyes as she said, “I am glad, Pieter, that what I have thought all these years is not true, and oh, how glad I am that you found this little girl for me! But I am in a daze just now. Can we have a talk? Where has the child been, and what can you both tell me about my husband?”
“None of us can sleep, Jannet, till it is explained. I will call old P’lina. She will want to be in this, and can make us some coffee. Get dressed, Jannet Junior, and bring your mother to the library.”
How wonderful to have a pretty, young mother, that helped her into her clothes, kissed soundly the face that glowed from the application of rose soap and water, and selected a pair of shoes for her from the closet! But she was going to do things for her mother—mostly.
They heard Mr. Van Meter rapping at Paulina’s door and heard his rapid stride as he left the house, leaving it all alight as he went through the corridors on the way to the library. Paulina, all astonished and more speechless than usual, came out of her room in time to meet Mrs. Eldon and Jannet as they started for the library. But Paulina held her mother’s hand tightly, Jannet noticed, as they walked along the corridor together. “Where’ve you been all this time Miss Jannet?” Paulina finally asked.
“In Europe, P’lina, studying, singing and giving some lessons myself. I’ll tell you all about it very soon.”
Mr. Van Meter was pacing up and down the library, as they could hear when they approached the open door. “Why, Pieter, you have made a lovely place of this!” his sister exclaimed, taking the chair he drew up for her.
“Do you think so? Wait till you see all the old treasures I have furbished up and put around in the old house. You will stay with us, I hope. But I know how overcome you must feel to find this child, and I will tell first all that we have to explain, with Jannet’s help.”
Quietly they all sat in the comfortable library chairs, Jannet scarcely able to take her eyes from her mother, while her uncle told all that they knew, soberly saying that his wife could “scarcely have been herself” when she intercepted the messages. With a serious face, Mrs. Eldon listened to the account.
One pleasant little interlude occurred when Mr. Van Meter said that Jannet had not yet heard how he found her. “You would never guess it, my child,” he said, and reached into his desk for a booklet tied with gay ribbons.
“Why, that’s our annual ‘Stars and Stripes,’” cried Jannet, recognizing it at once.
“The same,” said her uncle. “One of our guests left it here in my library and I idly picked it up one evening. Glancing through it, my eye fell on your picture first, then on your name, and I read your history at once.” Mr. Van Meter smiled as he handed the open book to his sister.
“Is this ‘Who’s Who,’ my daughter?” lightly asked Jannet’s mother, taking the book and looking at the account on the page of photographs reproduced with a short account of each pupil.
“It is of our school, Mother, and those girls are all in my class.” Wasn’t it great that her mother had a sense of humor and was smiling over the booklet? But she began to read the account of her own child aloud:
“‘Janet Eldon is one of the fixed stars in the firmament of our Alma Mater, and her brilliancy is of the first magnitude. She is the daughter of Douglas Eldon and has her Scotch Janet from his mother’s side of the house. Janet came originally from the Buckeye state, but claims Philadelphia as her real home. She sings and plays and enjoys our wild rides about Fairmount Park—’”
Here Mrs. Eldon stopped. “No wonder that you looked Jannet up when you read that. It was providential!”
Mrs. Eldon’s story supplied the rest of the explanation. She had returned from the hospital, after wondering why her husband did not continue his visits there, and realizing that he must be sick, to find some one else in their little apartment and her trunks packed and stored. The woman in charge was shocked and startled upon seeing her, having been told that she had not lived through her illness. “Douglas must have been delirious then,” said Mrs. Eldon. “The poor boy was taking his baby to his mother, he told the woman, and when she asked if she should pack up the things he ‘thanked her kindly’ and paid her, she said.
“Then I telegraphed and wrote, frantically. No word came from anyone. I see now that Mother Eldon was in a strange place, at the hospital, and probably had not yet arranged to have her mail forwarded, if she was only in the midst of her moving. She was seeing that my baby was pulled through, and very likely the final burial of my poor Douglas was postponed, for I even found the name of the minister of their old church and wrote to him about it. If he ever wrote to me, I was gone by that time. Meanwhile I had traced another young father who had been traveling about the same time with a sick baby that died. Kind people had buried the little one, and the father had wandered from the hospital in the night and found a grave in the river.” Mrs. Eldon did not add to the sober look on Jannet’s face by telling her that for years flowers had been placed at Easter upon a tiny grave in the far West.
“I was ill again, and then friends that I had known in New York chanced upon me in Los Angeles. They urged an ocean voyage to strengthen me. It was Hawaii, then the East and then Europe and music and I have been in America only a few weeks, coming to arrange for engagements.”
“O Mother! I shall hear you sing!”
“And you shall sing yourself, perhaps.”
“No, Jannet is going to be a missionary,” smiled Uncle Pieter. “So she told me.”
But Mrs. Eldon only patted Jannet’s hand and told her that it was a noble purpose. “We shall see about the future, my child, but I shall accept your invitation to stay here, Pieter, for the present. I am not real sure but all this i
s a dream.”
Coffee, sandwiches and some of Daphne’s latest triumph in the line of white cake and frosting were brought in by old P’lina’s capable hands, so glad to serve the older Jannet once more; and while they refreshed themselves Jannet told her mother many things about her school and her dearest friends, Miss Hilliard, Miss Marcy and Lina in particular. “We must invite them all to come here as soon as school is out,” said Uncle Pieter. “Miss Hilliard is Jannet’s guardian and there will be things to arrange. I tried to trace what had become of what would have been Jannet’s little fortune, but without success, of course.”
“I had turned everything into available funds,” said Mrs. Eldon, “but there is still enough for us both.”
There was a nap for them all after the little lunch. Then came the exciting morrow, with breakfast and the surprise of Cousin Andy, Cousin Di and Jan, and later the visit of Mr. and Mrs. Murray, Mrs. Eldon’s friends. Jannet almost shivered to think how nearly she had missed seeing her mother, as the circumstances of the delay and of her hesitation were related. Mr. and Mrs. Murray, whom Jannet senior called Francis and Lydia, warned her against giving up her profession and told the glowing Jannet junior about her mother’s beautiful voice.
Jan telephoned the news to Nell and Chick and stopped Jannet in the hall one time to ask her, “How about the fortune that old Grandma Meer told you? I guess that you’ll get the long trip to Europe with your mother, and how about the ‘luck when you are found’?”
Jannet beamed upon her cousin who was so kindly in his sympathy. “I still don’t believe in ‘fortunes,’ and neither do you, Mister Jan, but it is funny how they hit it sometimes, isn’t it?”
It was after two blissful and thrilling days that Jannet thought of the pearls, when her mother opened the desk to write a letter. Jannet had been examining the knot hole in the panels where she had seen the light on one of those exciting nights of which she had been telling her mother; but she came to stand by her mother a moment and a vision of the pearls flashed before her.
“We must share the desk now, Jannet,” said the elder Jannet. “It is a shame to take it partly away from you. Your cousin has been telling me how delighted you were with the room and its furniture.”
“I’d much rather have a mother than a desk,” lovingly said Jannet, “but I must tell you about finding the pearls—and losing them again!”
“What do you mean, child?” Mrs. Eldon laid down her pen and turned to her daughter.
To her astonished mother Jannet related the story and opened the secret drawer by way of illustration. This time the drawer came out most easily, and both Jannets exclaimed in surprise. In their case, as beautiful as ever, the shining pearls lay before them!
“Why Jannet!”
“Mother! There must be something queer about that desk! Take them—quick!”
As if she were afraid that they would vanish before their eyes, Jannet gathered pearls and case and placed them in her mother’s hands. “Oh, you shall wear them the next time you sing!”
Jannet stood looking at her mother, who was turning over the pearls. Then she examined the drawer. “I have an idea, Mother,” she said. “I think that somebody fixed this with a sort of false bottom. I did something before I opened the drawer that time I found them, and I think that I must have done it again when I closed it, or some time before the time, they were gone.
“See this little worn place, with the wood that gives a little? There is a spring under that and it lets down things or brings them up again, perhaps.”
Mrs. Eldon looked doubtfully at Jannet, but Jannet dropped her own fountain pen into the drawer, closed it, and pressed the place to which she had referred. Then she pressed the spring which opened the drawer. No fountain pen was in sight. Again Jannet closed the drawer. Again she pressed the wood. Again she pressed the spring, and the drawer came out. There lay the fountain pen.
“Quod erat demonstrandum!” smiled Jannet senior. “Isn’t that strange? We must have Pieter up here to show us how that is managed.”
“I think now that a piece of wood just shoots in over whatever is there,” said Jannet, “instead of letting them down.” Jannet was examining the drawer again. “See, the drawer is much more shallow when what you put in isn’t there!”
Jannet senior laughed at Jannet junior’s explanation. “You are like your father, Jannet, to want to find it all out yourself. To think of their having been there all these years!”
“I called them ‘Phantom Treasure,’” said Jannet, taking up a white and gleaming strand.
“Like you, they were waiting for me. These are not the greatest treasure I have recovered, my darling child!”
“Well, Mother, it took three ‘ghosts,’ and one angel that descended by the secret stairs, to bring my treasure to me. Let me give you another big hug, to make sure that you are real!”
THE HAUNTED FOUNTAIN, by Margaret Sutton
A Judy Bolton Mystery
CHAPTER I
An Unsolved Mystery
“Tell Judy about it,” begged Lois. “Please, Lorraine, it can’t be as bad as it appears. There isn’t anything that Judy can’t solve.”
Lorraine tilted her head disdainfully. “We’re sisters now. We’re both Farringdon-Petts and should be loyal to each other. But you always did take Judy’s part. She was the one who nearly spoiled our double wedding trying to solve a mystery. I don’t believe she’d understand—understand any better than I do. Everyone has problems, and I’m sure Judy is no exception.”
“You’re right, Lorraine,” announced Judy, coming in to serve dessert to the two friends she had invited for lunch at Peter’s suggestion. “I do have problems, and there are plenty of mysteries I can’t solve.”
“Name one,” charged Lois. “Just mention one single spooky thing you couldn’t explain, and I’ll believe you. I’ve seen you in action, Judy Bolton—”
“Judy Dobbs, remember?”
“Well, you were Judy Bolton when you solved all those mysteries. I met you when the whole valley below the big Roulsville dam was threatened by flood and you solved that—”
“That,” declared Judy, “was my brother Horace, not me. He was the hero without even meaning to be. He was the one who rode through town and warned people that the flood was coming. I was off chasing a shadow.”
“A vanishing shadow,” Lois said with a sigh. “What you did wasn’t easy, Judy.”
“It didn’t need to be as hard as it was,” Judy confessed. “I know now that keeping that promise not to talk about the dam was a great big mistake and could have cost lives. I should have told Arthur.”
“Please,” Lorraine said, a pained expression clouding her pretty face, “let’s not talk about him now.”
“Very well,” Judy agreed. “What shall we talk about?”
“You,” Lois said, “and all the mysteries you’ve solved. Maybe you were mistaken about a thing or two before the flood, but what about the haunted house you moved into? You were the one who tracked down the ghosts in the attic and the cellar and goodness knows where all. You’ve been chasing ghosts ever since I met you, and not one of them did you fail to explain in some sensible, logical fashion.”
“Before I met you,” Judy said, thinking back, “there were plenty of them I couldn’t explain. There was one I used to call the spirit of the fountain, but what she was or how she spoke to me is more than I know. If my grandparents knew, they weren’t telling. And now they’re both dead and I can’t ask them. They left me a lot of unsolved mysteries along with this house. Maybe I’ll find the answers to some of them when I finish sorting Grandma’s things. They’re stored in one end of the attic.”
“Another haunted attic? How thrilling!” exclaimed Lois. “Why don’t you have another ghost party and show up the spooks?”
“I didn’t say the attic was haunted.”
Judy was almost so
rry she had mentioned it. She wasn’t in the mood for digging up old mysteries, but Lois and Lorraine insisted. It all began, she finally told them, the summer before they met. Horace had just started working on the paper. Judy remembered that it was Lorraine’s father, Richard Thornton Lee, who gave him his job with the Farringdon Daily Herald. He had turned in some interesting church news, convincing Mr. Lee that he had in him the makings of a good reporter. And so it was that he spent the summer Judy was remembering in Farringdon where the Farringdon-Petts had their turreted mansion, while she had to suffer the heat and loneliness of Dry Brook Hollow.
Her thoughts were what had made it so hard, she confessed now as she reviewed everything that had happened. She just couldn’t help resenting the fact that her parents left her every summer while they went off on a vacation by themselves. What did they think she would do?
“You’ll have plenty to read,” her father had told her. “I bought you six new books in that mystery series you like. When they’re finished there are plenty of short stories around. Your grandmother never throws anything away. She has magazines she’s saved since your mother was a girl. If you ask for them she’ll let you have the whole stack. I know how you love to read.”
“I do, Dad, but if the magazines are that old—”
Judy had stopped. She had seen her father’s tired eyes and had realized that a busy doctor needed a vacation much more than a schoolgirl who had too little to do. He and Judy’s mother usually went to the beach hotel where they had honeymooned. It was a precious memory. Every summer Dr. Bolton and his wife relived it. And every summer Judy went to stay with her grandmother Smeed, who scolded and fussed and tried to pretend she wasn’t glad to have her.
“You here again?” she had greeted her that summer, and Judy hadn’t noticed her old eyes twinkling behind her glasses. “What do you propose to do with yourself this time?”
“Read,” Judy had told her. “Mom and Dad say you have a whole stack of old magazines—”
The Third Girl Detective Page 16
