The Yellow Phantom

by Margaret Sutton

  CHAPTER II

  IRENE’S DISCOVERY

  A taxi soon brought the girls to the door of Dr. Faulkner’s nineteenthcentury stone house. The stoop had been torn down and replaced by amodern entrance hall, but the high ceilings and winding stairways wereas impressive as ever.

  Drinking in the fascination of it, Judy and Irene followed the man,Oliver, who carried their bags right up to the third floor wherePauline had a sitting room and a smaller bedroom all to herself. Theformer was furnished with a desk, sofa, easy chairs, numerous shadedlamps, a piano and a radio.

  Here the man left them with a curt, “’Ere you are.”

  “And it’s good to have you, my dears,” the more sociable housekeeperwelcomed them. Soon she was bustling around the room setting their bagsin order. She offered to help unpack.

  “Never mind that now, Mary,” Pauline told her. “We’re dead tired and Ican lend them some of my things for tonight.”

  “Then I’ll fix up the double bed in the next room for your guests andleave you to yourselves,” the kind old lady said.

  As soon as she had closed the door Judy lifted her cat out of thehatbox. With a grateful noise, halfway between a purr and a yowl,Blackberry leaped to the floor and began, at once, to explore the rooms.

  “His padded feet were made for soft carpets,” Judy said fondly.

  “How do you suppose he’d like gravel?” Pauline asked.

  “Oh, he’d love it!” Judy exclaimed. “You know our cellar floor iscovered with gravel, and he sleeps down there.”

  “Is this gravel in the cellar?” Irene asked, beginning to get an attackof shivers.

  Pauline laughed. “Goodness, no! It’s on the roof garden.” She walkedacross the room and flung open a door. “Nothing shivery about that, isthere?”

  “Nothing except the thought of standing on the top of one of those tallbuildings,” Irene said, gazing upward as she followed Pauline.

  The view fascinated Judy. Looking out across lower New York, she founda new world of gray buildings and flickering lights. In the otherdirection the Empire State Building loomed like a sentinel.

  “I never dreamed New York was like this,” she breathed.

  “It grows on a person,” Pauline declared. “I would never want to livein any other city. No matter how bored or how annoyed I may be duringthe day, at night I can always come up here and feel the thrill ofhaving all this for a home.”

  “I wish I had a home I could feel that way about,” Irene sighed.

  The garden was too alluring for the girls to want to leave it. EvenBlackberry had settled himself in a bed of geraniums. These and otherplants in enormous boxes bordered the complete inclosure. Inside werewicker chairs, a table and a hammock hung between two posts.

  “This is where I do all my studying,” Pauline said, “and you two girlsmay come up here and read if you like while I’m at school.”

  “At school?” Judy repeated, dazed until she thought of something thatshe should have considered before accepting Pauline’s invitation. Ofcourse Pauline would be in school. She hadn’t been given a holiday asthe girls in Farringdon had when their school burned down. Judy andIrene would be left to entertain themselves all day unless Dr. Faulknerhad some plans for them. Judy wondered where he was.

  After they had gone inside again, that is, all of them exceptBlackberry who seemed to have adopted the roof garden as a permanenthome, she became curious enough to ask.

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Pauline said in surprise. “Father is away. Amedical conference in Europe. He’s always going somewhere like that,but he’ll be home in two or three weeks.”

  “Then we’ll be alone for three weeks?” Irene asked, dismayed.

  “Why not?” Pauline returned indifferently. “There’s nothing to beafraid of with servants in the house.”

  But Irene was not used to servants. Ever since her father becamedisabled she had waited on herself and kept their shabby little housein apple-pie order. The house was closed now and their few good piecesof furniture put in storage. All summer long there would not be anyrent problems or any cooking. Then, when fall came, she and her fatherwould find a new home. Where it would be or how they would pay for itworried Irene when she thought about it. She tried not to think becauseDr. Bolton had told her she needed a rest. Her father, a patient of thedoctor’s, was undergoing treatments at the Farringdon Sanitarium. Thetreatments were being given according to Dr. Bolton’s directions butnot by him as Judy’s home, too, was closed for the summer. Her parentshad not intended to stay away more than a week or two, but influenzahad swept the town where they were visiting. Naturally, the doctorstayed and his wife with him. Judy’s brother, a reporter and student ofjournalism, had gone to live in the college dormitory.

  Thus it was that both girls knew they could not return to Farringdon nomatter how homesick they might be. They had the cat for comfort andthey had each other. Ever since Irene had come to work in Dr. Bolton’soffice these two had been like sisters. Lois, Lorraine, Betty, Marge,Pauline—all of them were friends. But Irene and Honey, the other girlwho had shared Judy’s home, were closer than that. Judy felt with them.She felt with Irene the longing of the other girl for something to holdfast to—a substantial home that could not be taken away at every whimof the landlord, just enough money so that she could afford to look herbest and the security of some strong person to depend upon.

  “Will your school last long?” Irene was asking the dark-haired girl.

  “Not long enough,” Pauline sighed, revealing the fact that she too hadtroubles.

  “Then you’ll be free?” Irene went on, unmindful of the sigh. “We can goplaces together? You’ll have time to show us around.”

  Pauline shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t talk about time to me. Time willbe my middle name after I graduate. There isn’t a single thing I reallywant to do, least of all stay at home all day. College is a bore unlessyou’re planning a career. What do you intend to do when you’re throughschool?”

  “I hadn’t planned,” Irene said, “except that I want time to read and goahead with my music. Of course I’ll keep house somewhere for Dad. Itwill be so nice to have him well again, and I love keeping house.”

  “What about your work for my father?” Judy asked.

  Irene’s eyes became troubled. “He doesn’t really need me any more. Iknow now, Judy, that you just made that position for me. It was lovelyof you, but I—I’d just as soon not go back where I’m not needed. Yourfather trusts too many people ever to get rich and he could use thatmoney he’s been paying me.”

  “Don’t feel that way about it,” Judy begged.

  Irene’s feelings, however, could not easily be changed, and with bothgirls having such grave worries the problem bid fair to be too great aone for even Judy to solve. Solving problems, she hoped, wouldeventually be her career for she planned to become a regular detectivewith a star under her coat. Now she confided this ambition to the othertwo girls.

  “A detective!” Pauline gasped. “Why, Judy, only men are detectives. Canyou imagine anyone taking a mere girl on the police force?”

  “Chief Kelly, back home, would take her this very minute if sheapplied,” Irene declared.

  Pauline nodded, easily convinced. This practical, black-haired,blue-eyed girl had helped Judy solve two mysteries and knew that shehad talent. But Pauline didn’t want to meet crooks. She didn’t want tobe bothered with sick or feeble-minded people and often felt thankfulthat her father, a brain specialist, had his offices elsewhere. Paulinewanted to meet cultured people who were also interesting.

  “People, like that man we met on the bus,” she said, “who read and candiscuss books intelligently. I’d hate to think of his being mixed up inanything crooked.”

  “You can’t _make_ me believe that he was,” Irene put in with a vigorquite rare for her. “Couldn’t you just see in his eyes that he wasreal?”

  “I didn’t look in his eyes,” Judy retu
rned with a laugh, “but you canbe sure I’ll never be satisfied until we find out what that mysterioustelegram meant.”

  In the days that followed Judy learned that the mere mention of thestranger’s name, Dale Meredith, would cause either girl to ceaseworrying about a home or about a career, as the case might be.

  “It’s almost magical,” she said to herself and had to admit that thespell was also upon her. Perhaps a dozen times a day she would puzzleover the torn papers in her pocketbook. But then, it was Judy’s natureto puzzle over things. It was for that reason that she usually chosedetective stories whenever she sat down with a book. That hammock upthere on the roof garden was an invitation to read, and soon Judy andIrene had finished all the suitable stories in Dr. Faulkner’s library.They had seen a few shows, gazed at a great many tall buildings, andfound New York, generally, less thrilling from the street than it hadbeen from the roof garden.

  Pauline sensed this and worried about entertaining her guests. “Howwould you like to go and see Grant’s Tomb today?” she suggested.

  “For Heaven’s sake, think of something a little more exciting thanthat,” Judy exclaimed thoughtlessly. “I’d rather find a librarysomewhere and then lie and read something in the hammock.”

  “So would I,” agreed Irene, relieved that Judy hadn’t wanted to see thetomb.

  “Well, if a library’s all you want,” Pauline said, “why not walk alongwith me and I’ll show you one on my way to school.”

  “A big one?” Judy asked.

  “No, just a small one. In fact, it’s only a bookshop with a circulatinglibrary for its customers.”

  Judy sighed. It would seem nice to see something small for a change.She never recognized this library at all until they were almost insidethe door. Then her eyes shone.

  What an interesting place it was! On the counters were quaint gifts andnovelties as well as books. The salesladies all wore smocks, likeartists, and had the courtesy to leave the girls alone. Pauline had tohurry on to school but left Judy and Irene to browse. Before long theyhad discovered a sign reading MYSTERY AND ADVENTURE. That was what Judyliked. Rows and rows of new books, like soldiers, marched along theshelves.

  “What a lot of flying stories,” Irene said, absently removing one ofthem from its place.

  “And murder mysteries,” Judy added. “It’s always a temptation to readthem. _Murders in Castle Stein_....”

  She started back as her eye caught the author’s name.

  It was Dale Meredith!

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