The Third Girl Detective

by Margaret Sutton

  Pauline stared. “The woman who sent that telegram? Who on earth is she and where did you find out?”

  “In the classified telephone directory,” Judy confessed. “She’s Dale Meredith’s literary agent, though why he should pick such a crotchety old woman to sell his stories is beyond me. I thought, at first, she was going to bite my head off. But she found out she couldn’t frighten me so she decided to hire me. When she calms down a bit she’ll probably let Irene help her, too.”

  “Imagine!” Irene exclaimed, still bubbling with enthusiasm, “our own spending money and an opportunity to meet the most interesting people—”

  “You mean Dale Meredith?”

  Did Judy imagine it or was there the smallest trace of bitterness in Pauline’s voice?

  “Well, perhaps I do,” Irene replied.

  CHAPTER VI

  THE NEW YELLOW GOWN

  In spite of the opportunity presented, a whole week passed by without a sign of the handsome young author. Judy’s suggestion that Irene might help in the office had been flatly ignored, but she was still hoping that Emily Grimshaw would change her mind. In the meantime Irene occupied herself with Dale Meredith’s books and Pauline’s piano.

  Little by little Judy became accustomed to her employer’s eccentricities, and meeting unusual people was an everyday occurrence. Jasper Crosby, of all the people she met, was the only one who seemed to resent her presence in the office. He came in, bringing an old shoe box stuffed with more poetry by the author of Golden Girl. The box was poked full of tiny holes. Judy’s curiosity got the better of her and she asked the reason.

  “So the verses can breathe, simpleton,” he replied. Then he turned to Emily Grimshaw, “What’s the idea of this upstart in your office? Getting old, eh? Work too much for you?”

  “If you bring in any more of this stuff,” the agent retorted, “it will be too much for both of us. This girl is clever. She’s the only person I ever met who can revise your sister’s poetry as well as I can.”

  Now Jasper Crosby’s hawk eyes were fixed on Judy. He studied her for a moment while she met his gaze unflinchingly.

  “Huh!” he grunted. “Watch your step, now. It takes queer people to revise queer poetry, and, mind you, this stuff has got to sell. Bring it out in book form. Jazz it up! Make it popular, and the public will eat it. That so, cutie?” He gave Judy’s cheek a playful pinch as he turned to leave.

  “The nerve of him!” she expostulated. “He’s the most repulsive person I have ever seen.”

  “Quite so,” the agent agreed. “Quite so and, strange to say, his sister was once the most charming. You can see it yet in some of her verses. I would be more enthusiastic about this book of her collected poems if I had any assurance that the royalties would go to her.”

  “Why won’t they?” Judy asked.

  “Because he tells me that her health is failing. Years ago I was witness to her will, and the entire estate goes to that scoundrel, Jasper Crosby.”

  As Judy busied herself typing and correcting the poetry this thought kept recurring to her mind. Nevertheless, the work itself fascinated her. She conceived the idea of grouping the verses with a sub-title for each group. Miss Grimshaw beamed her pleasure.

  “A fine idea, Miss Bolton, a really constructive idea. It will take considerable time but don’t try to hurry. Better keep the manuscripts on your own desk and have the thing done right.”

  “Could I take them home?” Judy ventured the question and immediately wished she had not asked it.

  The agent’s eyes snapped. “Indeed not! Don’t you realize, young lady, that original manuscripts are sometimes very valuable? This poet is well known, and plenty of people would be glad to buy them or, what’s worse, steal them.”

  Judy had not considered this. It had simply occurred to her that Irene might help arrange the poems. She liked to hear her read in her low, musical voice. She would make the poems live and catch hidden meanings between the lines. Judy tried to explain all this to her employer. She felt that she must excuse her own thoughtlessness.

  “Well, if you are so anxious to have your friend help you, bring her here,” the old lady said with a sudden show of generosity.

  Irene was thrilled when Judy told her.

  “I feel as if this is a real occasion and I ought to dress up for it,” she declared. “A package came this morning from Farringdon, and I’ve been suspecting all the time that it’s a new dress. My birthday isn’t for another week, but do you think Dad would mind if I opened my present now?”

  Without waiting for a reply, Irene ran to get the box her father had labeled, For My Little Girl’s Seventeenth Birthday. When she pulled off the wrappings the folds of a shimmering yellow satin dress fell into her hands. She stood up, holding it for Judy and Pauline to admire.

  “Gorgeous!” Judy exclaimed. “Look at the puffed sleeves and high waistline! Why, it’s the very newest thing!”

  “But it’s a party dress,” Pauline objected. “Really, it’s not at all the thing to wear in Emily Grimshaw’s office.”

  “For once,” Irene announced, “I’m going to wear exactly what I want to wear whether it’s proper or not.”

  Judy smiled at her independence. She had often felt that way herself. After all, what difference did it make? And Irene was breathtakingly lovely in the new dress. She stood before the long mirror in Pauline’s room while Judy pinned her hair in soft, bright curls at the back of her neck. Then she walked back a little distance, surveying the effect.

  “You’re beautiful!” Judy exclaimed. “That dress fits in with your complexion as though you were part of a picture. You’re prettier than Lois or Honey or Lorraine. Don’t you think so, Pauline?”

  She admitted it.

  “Prettier than Lorraine?” Irene repeated wonderingly. Lorraine Lee had always considered herself the prettiest girl in Farringdon and dressed accordingly, while Irene’s faded blues and browns had never flattered her. But in the new yellow dress she was transformed. There was a tiny jacket to go with it, also of yellow but more delicately golden, matching slippers and, in the very bottom of the box, a gold locket. Irene, delighting in her own recklessness, wore them all the next morning.

  CHAPTER VII

  EMILY GRIMSHAW SEES THINGS

  Emily Grimshaw often came in late, but as Judy had her own key this affected her work very little. In fact, she usually accomplished more when alone. Thus she was not surprised to find the office vacant when she and Irene arrived.

  “It’s every bit as queer as you said it was,” Irene whispered as they unlocked the door and she examined the brass knocker. “She must trust you, Judy.” She smiled into her friend’s honest gray eyes. “And who wouldn’t?”

  The girls seated themselves at either end of the long sofa in Emily Grimshaw’s office. With the pile of handwritten poetry between them it was easier to help each other decide into which group certain verses belonged.

  “Some of them are rather horrible,” Judy remarked as she hunted through the pile. “I’ll sort out the worst ones, and you can read the others.”

  “Oh, no! Let me read the horrible ones,” Irene begged.

  Judy laughed. “Everyone to his own notions. I don’t mind, if you feel like giving yourself the shivers.”

  There was a long table just back of the sofa, and it came in handy for the completed groups of papers. Judy removed a vase of flowers and a few books and made a clear place for the different piles.

  “Golden Girl goes at the top of the list,” she remarked, as she took a yellowed slip of paper in her hand. “Miss Grimshaw says it’s valuable.”

  “Is it the song?”

  “It is,” Judy replied. “This poet wrote it. Imagine! And then turns to such morbid things as that one I fixed up; you remember, about the tower of flame?”

  She broke off suddenly as the telephone on Emily
Grimshaw’s desk jangled imperiously.

  Both girls were buried in papers, and the telephone rang a second time before Judy was free to answer it.

  “The switchboard operator says it’s Dale Meredith!”

  She turned away from the mouthpiece and gave out this information in an excited whisper. Irene let a few of the papers slide to the floor.

  “Oh, Judy,” she cried, “our scheme did work after all!”

  Judy’s answer was a glance of triumph, but her voice over the wire sounded very businesslike.

  “Tell him to come up and wait. Miss Grimshaw will be in shortly.”

  In the moment before he mounted the stairs Irene had time to smooth her hair and powder her nose. Then she picked up the fallen papers and was about to place them on the table.

  “Never mind the work now. I’ll straighten things,” Judy told her. “You just sit there and look pretty when Dale Meredith comes in.”

  The handsome young author greeted them with a surprised whistle. “Whoever expected to find you here!” he exclaimed, smiling first at Judy who stood beside the open door and then at Irene. “Why, the place looks like a palace with the princess enthroned on the sofa. What’s happened to Her Royal Highness?”

  “You mean Miss Grimshaw?” Judy asked, laughing. “She will be in presently.”

  “Not too ‘presently,’ I hope,” Dale replied, seating himself beside Irene. “Before we talk business I want to hear what happened to you girls. I’ve been scolding myself ever since for not finding out your names. The truth of the matter is, I was so dog-goned interested in that Art Shop Robbery—”

  “The title of your new book?” Judy ventured, and his nod told her that she had reasoned correctly.

  “You see, it was a rush order,” he went on to explain. “There seems to be a big demand for mystery stories. Most people like to imagine themselves as sleuths or big time detectives. I do, myself. The trouble is, there aren’t enough mysteries in real life to supply the demand for plots, and what there are make tales too gruesome to be good reading.”

  “You do write gruesome stories then?” Irene asked anxiously.

  He studied her face for a moment before he answered. “That depends on your definition of the word. I never make it a point to dwell on the details of a murder. Suffice it to tell under what circumstances the body was found—”

  “Don’t talk about it, please! You sound so cold and matter-of-fact, as if you didn’t feel it at all. Your flying stories are so different!”

  “They were written from first-hand knowledge,” he explained. “I had a pilot’s license and flew with a friend of mine across the continent. There was story material and plenty of it!” He went on for fifteen minutes discussing his experiences with the girls.

  Dale Meredith had a knack of telling stories so that the listeners lived his adventures with him. Judy and Irene sat enthralled. They were both imagining themselves scrambling out of a wrecked plane in their own Allegheny Mountains when the door opened, and in walked Emily Grimshaw! Dale and Judy both greeted her, but when Irene looked up and smiled the old lady started back as if she had seen a ghost. Judy, thinking she must be ill, helped her into a chair.

  “Is there anything I can do?” she asked solicitously.

  “There’s a bottle.” Emily Grimshaw made a gesture with her hand. “Pour me out a bit. I need a stimulant. I must be getting old. Good lord! I must be seeing things!”

  She took the glass that Judy held out to her and swallowed the contents in three great gulps, then rubbed her eyes and looked at Irene again.

  “Guess the stuff is too strong,” she muttered and slumped in her chair.

  Irene clutched Dale’s arm. “She isn’t going to die?” she asked in a panicky whisper.

  More than a little bewildered, the young man reassured her and suggested that she wait downstairs in the lobby.

  “She seems to have affected Miss Grimshaw strangely,” he explained to Judy later.

  “Yes, and Irene can’t stand too much excitement,” she returned. “You didn’t know, but for the past three years she’s been working almost day and night, taking care of her crippled father. She’d be doing it yet if my dad hadn’t arranged to have him cared for in a sanitarium. It’s better for him and better for Irene. Her mother is dead.”

  “Poor kid! No wonder she thought something dreadful had happened to Her Majesty.”

  Judy had gone for a pitcher of water and stood beside her employer’s chair dampening her handkerchief and rubbing her forehead. That seemed to have little effect, but when Dale attempted to move her to the sofa the old lady promptly opened her eyes and protested violently. She staggered back to her chair and sat there staring at the spot where Irene had sat. Then she sighed heavily. “Old fool that I am—seeing things.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE MISSING POEMS

  The agent’s collapse had unnerved Judy more than a little, and it was some time before she settled herself to her work. Dale had left but not before promising to see Irene safely home.

  “She probably won’t want to come near the office again,” Judy thought. “Poor Irene! I wonder what made Emily Grimshaw act up and scare her so.”

  But this was no time for deductions, Judy knew, when so much work remained to be done—twice as much now. And there was no use sitting in comfort on the sofa, either. Alone, she could group the poems better at her own desk.

  She lowered the typewriter until a place was clear above it and then went for the pile of manuscripts. She looked on the table back of the sofa, but they were not there.

  “That’s queer,” she thought. “I’m sure we left them right on the corner of that table. I saw Irene when she put Golden Girl back, and it was right on top. But maybe she moved them afterwards.”

  Next Judy looked on the sofa and under all three cushions. She felt beneath the arms, then got down on her hands and knees and looked under the sofa on the floor. She even lifted the rug and looked under that.

  “What are you doing?” Emily Grimshaw inquired, looking up with a scowl.

  “Hunting for something,” Judy answered vaguely. She was not ready to tell her employer that the manuscripts were missing, not after having been told how valuable they were. Perhaps, absent-mindedly she had placed them in one of the drawers of her own desk.

  After another ten minutes of Judy’s frantic searching the agent’s patience was exhausted.

  “Sit down, young lady, and tell me why you are turning my office upside down in this ridiculous fashion. As if I hadn’t enough worries!”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Grimshaw,” Judy replied contritely. “But the poems you gave me—the originals, I mean—they seem to have—disappeared.”

  “Disappeared! Stuff and nonsense!” the old lady snorted. “Like all girls, you’ve been careless, and misplaced them.”

  “I’ve looked everywhere except in your desk, and they couldn’t be there.”

  “They couldn’t, eh? We shall see.”

  Soon the agent had her own desk in worse confusion than Judy’s, but no papers could she find. She poured herself another drink from the bottle and regarded Judy with a wild light in her eyes.

  “Joy Holiday took them! That’s what happened! I knew that girl was here for a reason.”

  After that there was a long silence during which Emily Grimshaw sat moving her lips but making no sound. It was uncanny! Judy longed for five o’clock and freedom from her queer employer.

  No one had entered the office; of that Judy felt sure. The sofa was opposite the door. No one could have passed it and taken the pile of papers from the table without being seen. And no one could enter without a key. The door locked from the inside, and Judy never left the catch off except when Emily Grimshaw was there. That had been her employer’s instructions, and she had followed them to the letter.

  What, then, could she me
an by saying Joy Holiday took the poems? Why had she collapsed the moment Irene looked up at her, and who or what had taken the pile of manuscripts?

  Judy shivered. Would it be stretching the truth to say that some strange, invisible force had been at work in the office that day? Irene, timid, lovable little girl that she was, couldn’t possibly frighten a big capable woman like Emily Grimshaw. She must have seen something else!

  Without meaning to, Judy glanced over her shoulder. Then a thought came to her that seemed all at once amusing. Dale Meredith had said there weren’t enough mysteries in real life. Wait till she told him this one! A writer of detective stories ought to be interested. He might even have a theory, perhaps from his own novels, that would work out a solution.

  Or perhaps Dale knew what had happened to the poetry. He didn’t seem dishonest, but if he refused to show an interest or showed too great an interest.… How was it that people told the guilty party?

  These questions ran through Judy’s mind as she sat before her typewriter. Mysteries intrigued her. But no mystery on earth would be worth the solving if it lessened her trust in people she loved.

  “There has to be some way to get Irene out of this,” she said to herself. “Whatever Emily Grimshaw saw, she mustn’t be allowed to accuse Irene of taking the poetry.”

  Then it occurred to Judy that, ordinarily, she would be under suspicion as well. Instead, Emily Grimshaw suspected someone named Joy Holiday. It sounded like an hallucination.

  When closing time came, Judy walked in the direction of Gramercy Park and arrived at Dr. Faulkner’s house just as Pauline was leaving through a side door.

  “Where are you going?” Judy asked in surprise. Usually Pauline would not be going out just at dinner time.

  “I told Mary I’d not be home,” Pauline replied, “and you had better not be, either. Dale Meredith’s up on the roof garden with Irene, and we would be intruding if we thrust ourselves upon them.”

  “Why? What makes you think that?”