The Third Girl Detective

by Margaret Sutton

  “No! No!” Judy protested. “We must be civil to her. There’s some black coffee on the stove. That may sober her up a bit, and after all we did want to see her.”

  “Then let’s get Irene out of the room.”

  “You take her out on the roof garden, Dale,” Judy begged. “I’m used to being alone with Miss Grimshaw.”

  He protested at first but when he saw that the black coffee was doing its work he finally slipped quietly out of the door, an arm about Irene’s waist.

  “What’s the trouble?” Horace whispered. He and Arthur couldn’t understand Emily Grimshaw’s grievance.

  “Too much excitement,” Judy stated briefly. “She was at the poet’s funeral and thinks Irene is her mother’s ghost. We’ll be able to reason with her after a bit.”

  “But what does she mean about the poetry?” Horace insisted.

  Judy, however, would say nothing more. She turned her attention to the old lady now, endeavoring to engage her in a sensible conversation. “So you were at the funeral, Miss Grimshaw. I wondered why you hadn’t come in to the office. When did Sarah Glenn die?”

  “Lord knows!” Emily Grimshaw answered. “But I went out there to pay my respects to the dead. Heard about it through friends. And there was that—that—that—”

  Her voice trailed off in a groan. She was pointing again but this time not at Irene but at the vacant spot where the girl had stood.

  “Good Lord! She’s gone again.”

  “She went out quietly,” Judy explained. “Dale Meredith was with her. They’ll be back.”

  “They’d better be,” the irate woman answered. “Those poems had better be back too or I’ll know the reason why. Ghost or no ghost, that girl can’t get away with stealing—”

  “Your poems are here,” Judy interrupted, her voice quiet but firm. She lifted the stack of papers from the desk, and before Emily Grimshaw could get her breath, she had deposited them in the startled old lady’s lap. “Now,” she continued, “after you finish another cup of this nice strong coffee, I’ll call Dale and the girl back into the room and all of us can hear her story.”

  “You mean Joy Holiday?”

  “I mean the girl you call Joy Holiday. The real Joy Holiday is dead. You see, she didn’t vanish as you thought she did. She climbed down from the tower window and eloped with her lover. This girl is her daughter and she was wearing her mother’s yellow dress the day you saw her.”

  Emily Grimshaw sat forward in her chair and passed her hand across her eyes.

  “Say that again. It didn’t—register.”

  Judy laughed. She could see that her employer was coming back to her senses.

  “You tell her, Horace.” She motioned to her brother who had been sitting beside the table with Pauline and Arthur, listening.

  Joy Holiday’s story was a real romance, however badly told. But Horace Bolton, the reporter, made the tale so vivid that the five who heard it lived the adventure all over again. Whatever else it did, it cleared Emily Grimshaw’s clouded brain and brought the old, practical look back into her eyes.

  Arthur wound up by telling of his search by air for Irene’s distracted father. Now, if only Irene could explain about the poetry, they had nothing to fear.

  Opening the door quietly, Judy beckoned to the two figures who sat in the hammock. As Dale stood up, outlined against the sky, it reminded her of that first night that she and Pauline had found them there and they had been invited to that never-to-be-forgotten dance on the hotel roof garden. She caught Irene’s hand as she entered the door. Impulsively she kissed her.

  “Tell us about it now, dear,” she murmured. “The boys and I will understand and I’m sure Pauline will too. And if Emily Grimshaw gets another queer spell we’ll send her packing with her precious poetry. We have what we want—you.”

  The agent looked up as Irene entered the room. She stared for a moment as if the girl’s golden beauty fascinated her. Then she passed one hand across her forehead, smoothing out the furrows that twenty years had left there. The light of understanding came into her eyes.

  “You are…you are the image of your mother,” she said at last. “While you live Joy Holiday will never be dead.”

  “‘Death cannot touch the halo of your hair,’” Judy quoted dreamily. “After all, it is a beautiful thought, Irene. There’s nothing uncanny about that kind of a spirit.”

  “Don’t talk spirits to her,” the agent snapped.

  Her seriousness brought to Judy’s mind the phantom shape she had seen in the tower window. Disregarding her, she asked Irene to tell her about it.

  The girl laughed, that familiar silvery laugh.

  “It frightened me too,” she admitted, “until Uncle Jasper told me it was only a reflection. Then it seemed stupid of me not to have guessed it. He said any sane person would have. But you’re sane, Judy, and you didn’t.”

  “That proves there’s no truth in what he said,” Horace assured her.

  It was a great satisfaction to Irene, knowing that. She sighed and went on explaining about the ghost in the tower.

  “You know, the room is round and there are windows on all sides. Between the windows are mirrors that make the oddest reflections. I must have been standing in the room so that you could see the mirror but not me. I should think you would have been scared to death.”

  “And then you pulled the shades?” Judy anticipated.

  “No, I didn’t. Uncle Jasper did, just before he went down and started taking the props out from under the tower. That must have been after you left.”

  “We saw the mirrors afterwards, too—and your yellow dress. But that was when we searched the house. You were gone by then.”

  “Yes, and Grandma was gone, too. Poor soul! It really made me happy to think she could die in peace, believing that her golden girl still lived. That poem you just quoted, Judy, was written to me. She thought I was immune to death.”

  “Well, people never do die if you look at it that way,” Judy said thoughtfully. “Your mother’s beauty was reborn in you, and you may pass it on to your children and their children—”

  “What about your children?” Arthur asked, smiling quizzically at Judy.

  “Oh, me? I’m too young to be thinking about them. My career comes first. Now I’m sure Chief Kelly will listen to me when I tell him I want to be a detective.”

  They all agreed. No one could doubt that solving mysteries was Judy’s one great talent.

  And yet—the missing poetry was still unexplained.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  WHO TOOK THE MANUSCRIPT?

  All this time Emily Grimshaw had not taken her eyes away from Irene. Now she turned to the others, contrition written in every line of her face.

  “I see it all now,” she murmured. “And I’ve been as big a fool as Sarah Glenn for all she was supposed to be crazy.”

  “Perhaps it was the fault of that tonic you’ve been taking,” Peter suggested, his eyes twinkling wickedly.

  “Piffle!” the old lady snorted. “That’s good stuff, bottled in bond. A wee bit strong, though,” she added, shaking her head, “a wee—bit—strong.”

  Emily Grimshaw had her poetry and rose, a little unsteadily, preparing to leave. It was then that she thought of the purpose of her visit.

  “Young woman,” she demanded of Irene, “if you’re not Joy Holiday, why did you take those manuscripts?”

  “I didn’t take them,” the accused girl answered, regarding her steadily with those starry eyes that had inspired the loveliest line of Golden Girl.

  Judy made an almost inaudible sound of protest. Irene couldn’t keep on denying it. No one would believe her now. She touched her arm and whispered, “Tell her, dear. It’s no good pretending. The rest of us have forgiven you and I’m sure she will too.”

  Irene’s eyes widened. “Forgiven me?
For what, may I ask? Why, I didn’t see that poetry from the moment it was taken until I found it lying on my grandmother’s table.”

  “You expect us to believe that, Irene?” This was Peter’s voice, the voice he would some day use in the court room.

  Dale turned on him. “Of course she does. And I do believe it. Sarah Glenn may have taken her own poetry—”

  “When she was too sick to move out of her house?”

  “Or Jasper Crosby may have sneaked into the office,” Dale went on, disregarding his question. “Irene says she didn’t take the poems and that ends the matter once and forever. If the rest of you want to go on distrusting her it’s none of my affair but I knew all along that Irene was too fine, too wonderful—”

  Irene herself stopped him. Her voice was almost a command. “Leave them alone, Dale. Why shouldn’t they suspect me?”

  “Because you didn’t do it.”

  Irene was silent. She couldn’t say any more because the last she knew of the poems they were in Judy’s hands. It was after all lights were out and they were in bed that she told her.

  “You said never to mind the work; you’d straighten things. And then some one took the poetry out of my hands. Wasn’t it you?”

  “It certainly wasn’t,” Judy declared. “I had just opened the door for Dale Meredith but he wasn’t there yet.”

  “Did you turn your back? Could anyone else have come in?”

  “Why,” Judy exclaimed, “I believe they could have—if they had been very quick.”

  “Uncle Jasper is quick. But why would he take the poetry?”

  Now Judy knew! It was like a heavy load falling from her shoulders. She remembered what Emily Grimshaw had said about his suing her. He had schemed to do it and stolen the poetry himself. Besides, he may have suspected Irene’s identity and been afraid she would find out too much.

  Irene’s eyes sought Judy’s and found in them understanding and sympathy. She had told the truth, and, with Judy to explain, everyone would believe her. But she couldn’t forget that it was Dale Meredith who had believed her without an explanation.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  DALE’S HEROINE

  Two weeks later Dale Meredith came into Emily Grimshaw’s office and under his arm he carried a new book manuscript. It was the day that Pauline took over Judy’s position—with her father’s consent. Dr. Faulkner was home now, as busy and professional as ever. But he had not been too busy to listen to the smallest detail of Irene’s remarkable story. She wanted his advice as a brain specialist. Was it fair with insanity in the family—

  Dr. Faulkner had not let her finish the sentence. Of course it was fair. Sarah Glenn had once been a patient of his and he declared that she was only slightly eccentric—not insane until her brother had driven her to it.

  “And don’t you know that this type of insanity cannot be inherited?” he had asked Irene. “There’s no need to worry your pretty head about that. Under the same conditions, perhaps. But those conditions cannot exist with Jasper Crosby in prison. And do quit calling him Uncle Jasper. He’s no blood relation, only a stepbrother, and Glenn was really your grandmother’s maiden name.”

  “Oh, Father, if you had only been home before!” Pauline had exclaimed.

  The doctor had smiled that rare smile of his. “Dr. Bolton’s daughter did wonders without me,” he had said.

  Then Pauline knew that her father would not object to Judy’s plans for her. He hadn’t wanted her to work before. Now it pleased him to know she was filling Judy’s position.

  “You’ve been working hard, Dale,” Pauline said, glancing up from the manuscript he had just given her. She was seated at her new desk, looking very professional.

  Judy stood beside the table straightening out a few of her things as she wanted to leave the office in perfect order.

  But Dale Meredith expected these girls to show more than a professional interest in his story. He had put his heart into it—and his experience.

  Judy smiled. “Is it another detective story?”

  “It’s the greatest detective story you’ll ever read. The detective is a sixteen-year-old girl.”

  “Sounds interesting. What does she look like?”

  For answer Dale walked over to the little mirror where Judy usually stood to arrange her hat. He took it down from the wall and held it so that Judy’s bright hair and clear gray eyes were reflected in its surface.

  “There! That’s my detective. Irene is the heroine. She has the original manuscript reading it now. Our whole future depends on what she thinks of the ending.”

  “Really, Dale? Is it as serious as that?”

  “It was serious enough for me to invest in this. Do you think she’ll like it?”

  He took from his pocket a tiny square box. Opening it, he displayed a ring that would, had Judy known it, play an important part in another mystery that she was to solve. It was a beautiful thing. Beautiful chiefly because it was so simple, just a solitaire set in a gold band and decorated with almost invisible orange blossoms.

  “I even had it engraved,” he said and then blushed, a thing Judy had never known Dale Meredith to do before.

  “I don’t know why I’m showing it to you girls,” he said. “Perhaps I shouldn’t. She might rather show it herself.”

  Snapping shut the lid, he put it hastily back in his pocket. He stood as if waiting for something.

  “I’ll be almost afraid to read your story if it’s all true, Dale,” Judy said. “It will be so much like—like—” She floundered for a word.

  “Like spying on me?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, it isn’t all true—only the important part. You’ll both read it, won’t you?”

  “Of course we’ll read it. That’s what we’re being paid for, isn’t it, Pauline?”

  The book was a revelation. Dale had made a murder mystery out of the very thing that had happened to Irene. Jasper Crosby’s scheme to wreck the tower had worked in the story, killing the grandmother instead of Irene. The names were different. But for that Judy saw herself moving through the pages of his story, playing the part of the clever girl detective. She saw Pauline’s faults depicted. All the petty jealousies she had felt were revealed, used to cast suspicion upon her and then excused, baring the real girl underneath. The Golden Girl of Dale’s story was Irene in her mother’s dress. Dale, himself, was the narrator and the suspense, the worry and, finally, the romance of the story were things he had felt and written with feeling. Judy found a new and lovelier Irene in Dale’s description of her. She marveled that he understood every one of them so well. The boys came, appropriately, at the end and, through it all, the spark of humor was the literary agent.

  When Emily Grimshaw came in neither Judy nor Pauline looked up. They did not hear her enter the room. Finally she stood over them and spoke in a sharp tone.

  “What’s this you’re reading? Didn’t I tell you to get done with your typewriting first? Letters are important but manuscripts can always wait to be read.”

  “This one can’t,” Judy replied, smiling up at her employer. “This is Dale Meredith’s new detective story. Irene is the heroine, Pauline one of the suspects and I am the detective.”

  “So! And I suppose I am the criminal.”

  Judy startled the old lady by kissing her.

  “You are your own sweet self, Miss Grimshaw. It will surprise you what a lovable person you are. Why don’t you read the book and get acquainted?”

  Turning pages broke the silence in the office all that day. Clients that came in were hastily dismissed. Other work waited. Dale Meredith had written life itself in the pages of a book that would make him famous.

  He called for the girls at five o’clock.

  “What did you think of it?” He asked when they failed to mention his work.

  “Wonderful
!” Pauline breathed.

  “And you, Judy?”

  “I’m still filled with it,” she replied, “too much to talk. Anyway, I’m going home and there won’t be time to talk. Irene is going also.”

  “Why on earth?”

  “Because Peter has promised to take her in his car.”

  “He’s been taking her out a good deal lately,” Dale said, his brow darkening.

  “Why shouldn’t he?” Pauline asked. “Peter is a nice boy and Irene needs somebody to help her plan things.”

  “She knows I’d be glad to help her.”

  “I’m sure she does. But she needs Peter’s legal advice,” Judy explained. “He says the chief thing they talk about is what to do with Sarah Glenn’s house. Irene says she wants to live in it.”

  “Alone?” Pauline asked.

  “No, with her father. He’s still depending on her and she is so glad to be able to take care of him the way she’s always wanted to. His room is to be that big sunny one in the front of the house. There’s room for Irene’s piano in it and he loves to hear her play. But the tower room she wants kept just the way her mother had it. Oh, she’s talked of it so much—even to selecting the kind of flowers she wants in the garden.”

  “She told me,” Dale said, but his simple remark set Judy wondering how much they had told each other. It seemed strange for little Irene to be having a real romance. She was so young! Too young, Judy would have thought if she had not realized how much Irene needed the love and sense of security that a man like Dale Meredith could give her.

  Bright-eyed and smiling, Irene looked the part of a heroine when she met them at the door. Dale promptly took possession of her and, for an hour, nothing more was heard from either of them except a low murmur of voices on the roof garden.

  In the meantime Arthur had arrived dressed in his flying gear and ready to take Judy home. She and her cat were both to fly with him in his open plane.

  It was decided that Irene would ride with Horace in Peter’s car and stay with the Dobbs family while she was in Farringdon. That short stay was to be more eventful than she knew, for her fortune was to be told in “The Mystic Ball.” But now she was content to plan for the future without it. She and Dale fully expected to come back and live in Tower House, for that was what they had named it.