CHAPTER I
A MYSTERIOUS TELEGRAM
“Goodbye, Judy! Goodbye, Irene! Don’t like New York so well that youwon’t want to come home!”
“Don’t keep them too long, Pauline! Farringdon will be as dead as somany bricks without them. Even the cats will miss Blackberry. Make himwave 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 theirhome town.
Judy Bolton watched them out of sight. They were taking the familiarroad, but she and Irene Lang would soon be traveling in the otherdirection. Pauline Faulkner had invited them for a visit, includingJudy’s cat in the invitation, and they were going back with her to NewYork.
A long blue bus hove into view, and all three girls hailed it, at firstexpectantly, then frantically when they saw it was not stopping. Itslowed down a few feet ahead of them, but when they attempted to boardit 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 doorwhen Judy’s quick idea saved the situation.
“All right, he’s _in a crate_,” she declared with vigor as she thrustthe cat inside her own pretty hatbox. The hats she hastily removed andbundled under one arm.
The driver had to give in. He even grinned a bit sheepishly as thegirls took their seats, Pauline and Irene together, “Because,” Judyinsisted as she took the seat just behind them, “I have Blackberry.”
The other passengers on the bus were regarding the newcomers withamused interest. A ten-year-old boy brought forth a ball of twine androlled it playfully in Blackberry’s direction. An old lady made purringnoises through her lips. Everyone seemed to be nodding and smiling.Everyone except the serious young man across the aisle. He never turnedhis head.
Judy nudged the two friends in the seat ahead of her and confided adesire to do something—anything to make him look up.
“Why, Judy,” Irene replied, shocked. “I’ve been watching that manmyself 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 Idid 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 letBlackberry out of the hatbox in her arms and down into the aisle. Thecat’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 hisscattered papers. Soon he had them rearranged and resumed his reading.There were a great many typewritten sheets of paper, and he seemed tobe reading critically, scratching out something here and addingsomething 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 putin.
“It was horrid of me,” Judy admitted, now almost as interested as Irenein the strange young man. Not because he was Judy’s ideal—a man whowouldn’t notice a cat until its tail bumped into him—but because thepapers 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 untilthe stack of papers was safely inside his portfolio again.
“That’s finished,” he announced as though speaking to himself. Hescrewed the top on his fountain pen, placed it in his pocket and thenturned to the girls. “Nice scenery, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” Judy replied, laughing, “but you didn’t seem to be payingmuch attention to it.”
“I’ve been over this road a great many times,” he explained, “and onedoes tire of scenery, like anything else. Passengers in the bus aredifferent.”
“You mean different from scenery?”
“Yes, and from each other. For instance, you with your ridiculous catand 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 eitherof the other girls as “types.” Now she tried to analyze his meaning.
Their lives had certainly been different. Judy and Pauline, although ofindependent natures, had always felt the security of dependence upontheir parents while Irene’s crippled father depended solely upon her.This responsibility made her seem older than her years—older andyounger, too. She never could acquire Pauline’s poise or Judy’sfearlessness.
In appearance, too, they were different. Her first vacation had donewonders for Irene Lang. Now her usually pale cheeks glowed with healthycolor, and her eyes were a deeper, happier blue. Two weeks of sunshinehad tanned her skin and brought out all the gold in her hair.
Pauline, too, had acquired a becoming tan which made her hair lookdarker than ever and contrasted strangely with her keen, light blueeyes.
The sun had not been quite so kind to Judy. It had discovered a fewfaint freckles on her nose and given her hair a decided reddish cast.But Judy didn’t mind. Camp life had been exciting—boating, swimmingand, as a climax, a thrilling ride in Arthur Farringdon-Pett’s newairplane.
The young man beside Judy was a little like Arthur in appearance—tall,good-looking but altogether too grown-up and serious. Judy liked boysto 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 presentlychanged the conversation to books and music, always favorite topicswith Irene. Then Judy spoke about the work that he was doing butlearned nothing except that “finished” in his case meant that he hadsucceeded in putting his papers back in their original sequence.
“And if you girls were all of the same type,” he added, “I doubt if Iwould have forgiven you your prank.”
“I guess he doesn’t care for my type,” Judy whispered to the other twogirls a little later.
“Mine either,” Pauline returned with a laugh. “At least he wouldn’t ifhe 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, rememberingIrene’s misfortunes, slid into the seat beside her and put a loving armabout her shoulder.
“I care for your type,” she said. “So why worry about what a strangerthinks?”
“I’m not,” Irene said, belying her answer with a wistful look in thestranger’s direction. He was still absorbed in the mountain oftypewritten pages that he held on his knee. It seemed that his work,whatever it was, engrossed him completely. He was again makingcorrections and additions with his pen. Judy noticed a yellow slip ofpaper on the seat beside him and called the other girls’ attention toit.
“It looks like a telegram,” she whispered, “and he keeps referring toit.”
“Telegrams are usually bad news,” Irene replied.
The young man sat a little distance away from them and, to allappearances, had forgotten their existence. Girl-like, they discussedhim, imagining him as everything from a politician to a cub reporter,finally deciding that, since he lived in Greenwich Village, he must bean 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 practicalinterest in the business at hand—those papers and that telegram.
It was dark by the time they reached New York. The passengers wererestless and eager to be out of the bus. The young
man hastily crammedhis typewritten work into his portfolio and Judy noticed, just as thebus stopped, that he had forgotten the telegram. She and Irene bothmade a dive for it with the unfortunate result that when they stood upagain 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 heractions to her words. When the two jagged edges were fitted againsteach other, this is what the astonished girls read:
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 would _he_ know about robbery and murder?” sheexclaimed, staring first at the telegram in Pauline’s hand and then atthe empty seat across the aisle.
“Why, nothing that I can think of. He didn’t seem like a crook. Thetelegram may be in code,” Pauline mused as she handed the torn piecesto 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 thatcat,” he said with a chuckle as he helped the girls with theirsuitcases.
They were still wondering about the strange telegram as they made theirway through the crowd on Thirty-fourth Street.
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The Yellow Phantom Page 2
