The Haunted Fountain

by Margaret Sutton

  CHAPTER III

  A Strange Encounter

  Lorraine was not too enthusiastic about the proposed trip to the Brandtestate. Finally she agreed to it under one condition. They were not todrive all the way to the house which, she said, was just over thehilltop. They were to park the car where no one would see it and followthe path to the fountain.

  “But suppose we can’t find the path?” asked Judy.

  “You’ll remember it, won’t you?”

  Judy thought she would, but she wasn’t too sure. She and Lois bothargued that it would be better to inquire at the house. Lois knew HelenBrandt slightly.

  “She’d be glad to show us around. This way it looks as if we’replanning a crime,” Lois said as they started off in the blue car shewas driving.

  It was a neat little car, not too conspicuous, and easy to park inout-of-the-way places. Judy laughed and said if they did find thefountain she thought she’d wish for one exactly like it.

  “Well, you know what your grandmother said about wishes, don’t you?”Lorraine asked. “If you let people know about them instead of mutteringthem to yourself most of them aren’t so impossible.”

  “Quite true,” Judy agreed. “I’ll let Peter know about this one. He’s mySanta Claus, and it will soon be Christmas. Maybe I should have wornthe fur coat he gave me last year.”

  “Your reversible’s better in case it rains. It’s too warm for snow. Wepicked a perfect day for this trip,” Lois continued, guiding the cararound curves as it climbed the steep hill beyond Dry Brook Hollow.

  The trip was a short one. In twenty minutes they had covered thedistance that had seemed such a long way to Judy when she was riding inher grandfather’s wagon.

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, “and I’ve just about figuredout how it happened. I didn’t think my grandparents knew the Brandtswell enough to pay them a visit, though. We must have looked queerdriving up to a beautiful estate in Grandpa’s old farm wagon. I doremember that Grandma had some hooked rugs to deliver. But that stilldoesn’t explain what happened afterwards. When I woke up in the hammockI was alone in the garden. Horse, wagon, grandparents—all haddisappeared.”

  “How could they?” asked Lois.

  “Anyway,” Lorraine began, “you had a chance to see how beautifuleverything was before—”

  Again she broke off as if there were something she wanted to tell butdidn’t quite dare.

  “Before what?” questioned Judy.

  “Oh, nothing. Forget I said anything about it. You were telling us howyou woke up in the hammock, but you never did explain how you got backhome,” Lorraine reminded her.

  “Didn’t I?” asked Judy. “I’d forgotten a lot of it, but it’s beginningto come back now. I do remember driving home along this road. You see,I thought my grandparents had left me in the garden for a surprise andwould return for me. I told you I was all alone. There wasn’t a housein sight.”

  “The Brandt house is just over the top of this next hill,” Lois put in.

  “I know. You told me that. Now I know why I couldn’t see it. All Icould see was a windowless old tower and a path leading in thatdirection. Naturally, I followed it. There’s something about a path inthe woods that always tempts me.”

  “We know that, Judy. Honey told us all about your latest mystery. Youfollowed a trail or something.”

  “Well, this trail led out of the rose garden where the hammock was andthen through an archway,” Judy continued. “All sorts of little cupidsand gnomes peered out at me from unexpected places. I was actuallyscared by the time I reached the old tower. There wasn’t time toexplore it. Just then I heard the rumble of my grandfather’s wagon andknew he was driving off without me.”

  “He was!” Judy’s friends both chorused in surprise, and Lois asked,“Why would he do a thing like that?”

  “I think now it was just to tease me. He did stop and wait for me aftera while,” Judy remembered. “The rugs were gone. Grandma must havedelivered them, but I didn’t ask where. If she made them for Mrs.Brandt they may still be there.”

  “I wouldn’t depend on it,” Lorraine said as they turned up the narrowroad to the Brandt estate.

  “Watch out!” Judy suddenly exclaimed. “There’s another car coming.”

  As Lois swerved to avoid the oncoming car, Lorraine ducked her head.She kept herself hidden behind Judy until the car had passed. The mandriving it was a stranger to Judy, but she would remember his hypnotic,dark eyes and swarthy complexion for a long time. The soft brown hat hewas wearing covered most of his hair.

  “What’s the matter with you two?” asked Lois when the car had passed.“Aren’t you a little old for playing hide and seek?”

  “I wasn’t—playing. Let’s not go up there,” Lorraine begged. “I don’tthink the Brandts live there any more.”

  “Maybe not, but we can pretend we think they do, can’t we?” Judyreplied a little uncertainly.

  She was beginning to suspect that Lorraine knew more about the Brandtestate than she was telling.

  Lois kept on driving along the narrow, gravelly road. Soon there weremore evergreens and a hedge of rhododendrons to be seen. They lookedvery green next to the leafless trees in the woods beyond. The sky wasgray with white clouds being driven across it by the wind.

  “There’s the tower!” Lorraine exclaimed. “I can see it over to theleft. It looks like something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, doesn’t it?”

  “It looks grim all right,” agreed Judy. “I wonder what it is.”

  “I suppose it’s nothing but an old water tower. It would be fun toexplore it, though,” Lois said. “But if there are new people livinghere they’ll never give us permission.”

  “We might explore it without permission,” Judy suggested daringly.“Come on!” she urged her friends as Lois parked the car in a clearedplace beside the road. “Who’s going to stop us? And who wants toexplore a gloomy old tower, anyway? Let’s look for the fountain.”

  “Do you think we should?” Lorraine asked. “It won’t be enchanted. Itold you—”

  “You told us very little,” Lois reminded her. “If you know anythingabout the people who live here now, I think you ought to let us know.Otherwise, I’m afraid we won’t be very welcome.”

  “I don’t think they’ll welcome us, anyway. I do know who they are,”Lorraine admitted. “You remember Roger Banning from school, don’t you?I’ve seen him around here. His family must have acquired sudden wealth,or else he’s just working on the estate.”

  “Then you’ve been here lately? Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Lois. “Wealways used to go places together.”

  “It wasn’t important,” Lorraine replied evasively. “I was just out fora drive.”

  “You plutocrats!” laughed Judy. “Each with a car of your own. You’renot interested in Roger Banning, are you, Lois? I’m sure you can dobetter than that. I did know him slightly, but not from school. Theboys and girls were separated and went to different high schools by thetime we moved to Farringdon. I remember his pal, Dick Hartwell, a lotbetter. He was in our young people’s group at church.”

  “Sh!” Lois cautioned her. “Nice people no longer mention DickHartwell’s name. He’s doing time.”

  “For what?” asked Judy.

  Like Peter, her FBI husband, she preferred facts to gossip.

  “Forgery, I guess. He stole some checkbooks from his father’s desk andforged the names of a lot of important business people. I think heforged some legal documents, too. Anyway, he went to the FederalPenitentiary. It was all in the papers,” Lorraine told her.

  Now Judy did remember. It was something she would have preferred toforget. She liked to think she was a good judge of character, and shehad taken Dick Hartwell for a quiet, refined boy who would never stoopto crime.

  “I don’t see what all this has to do with the fountain,” Lois saidimpatiently. “Are we going to look for it, or aren’t we?”

>   “Of course we are. That’s what we came for. I just like to know what atiger looks like before he springs at me,” Judy explained.

  “You seem to think there’s danger in this expedition of ours, don’tyou?” asked Lorraine.

  “I don’t know what to think. You’re the one who seems to know theanswers, but you’re not telling. Hiding your face back there gave youaway. You’ve seen that character who drove down this road and, for somereason, you were afraid he would see you. Why, Lorraine? Why didn’t youwant to be recognized?”

  Lorraine hesitated a moment and then replied evasively, “People don’tgenerally enter private estates without an invitation. That’s all.”

  “I’d better turn the car around,” Lois decided, “in case we have toleave in a hurry. I don’t expect we’ll encounter any tigers, but we maybe accused of trespassing.”

  “I’m sure we will be,” announced Judy as two dark-coated figures strodedown the road toward them. “You drove right by a NO TRESPASSING sign,and this isn’t a welcoming committee coming to meet us!”

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