The Yellow Phantom

by Margaret Sutton

  CHAPTER XX

  THE SCENT OF ROSES

  Neither Peter nor Dale stopped to count the cost of taxicabs thatnight. The driver hesitated only a moment. Their request that he makethe fastest possible time to the distant Brooklyn police station wasnot a usual one. Knowing that it must be urgent, the driver made goodhis promise and soon they were speeding across Manhattan Bridge,through side streets in reckless haste and then down the long stretchof boulevard. Judy leaned out of the window and searched the sceneahead for a trace of anything familiar.

  Ocean Parkway, lined with its modern dwelling houses and new apartmentbuildings was as unlike Gravesend Avenue as anything could be. Still,the two were only a few blocks apart. The driver turned his cab down aside street, sure of his bearings; and Judy, watching, saw the suddenchange. The boulevard with its lights and stream of traffic, then queerold Parkville, a village forgotten while Brooklyn grew up around it.

  The police station looked all the more imposing in this setting. Twoyoung policemen were already there, waiting beside the high desk andtalking with the captain.

  Sarah Glenn’s house was only a short distance away, and together theywalked it. Soon they were turning down the unpaved end of the streetthat bordered the railroad cut.

  “There it is!” Judy shivered a little and drew her coat closer as shepointed.

  The house was dark and silent. The windows were black—black with anunfathomable blackness that must be within. Peter sensed Judy’s fearfor he took her arm and guided her as they came up the broken walk.

  On the steps Dale stopped and picked up a white flower.

  “What can it mean?” Pauline whispered. “How would a rose get here?”

  He shook his head. “It’s beyond me. What’s this?” He fingered alavender ribbon that was still attached to the door.

  “Looks as if there’d been a funeral here,” one of the police officersobserved.

  Both girls stood trembling as he banged and pounded on the door andthen shouted a threat to the still house.

  “Nobody home,” he turned and said. “Do you think it’s necessary toforce our way in?”

  “More than ever,” Judy replied. “We _must_ see what’s in the tower!”

  “Okay! Give me a hand, partner, and we’ll smash the door.”

  Underneath the porch they found a beam which would serve their purpose.Peter and Dale helped the policemen, and soon the heavy door gave wayand crashed into the empty house. A sickening, musty smell combinedwith the heady odor of flowers greeted them as they stepped inside.

  “A funeral all right!” the policeman reiterated. “Get the perfume,don’t you? But everything’s cleared up—except....” He and Judy hadseen it at the same time but the policeman was the first to pick it up.“... this card.”

  “Let me see it.”

  Obligingly he handed it to the girl. She turned it over in her hand andpassed it on to Dale. It read:

  _With deepest sympathy_ _Emily Grimshaw_

  “Do you know the party?” the other officer asked.

  “My employer,” Judy replied simply.

  The question in her mind, however, was less easily answered. Was EmilyGrimshaw’s absence from her office explainable by this death? Whosedeath? If Emily Grimshaw had sent flowers certainly she must know.

  The policemen were busy searching the house, and Judy and her threecompanions followed them. The rooms upstairs, like those on the firstfloor, were empty of furniture. But the tower room was found to openfrom a third floor bedroom. To their surprise, this room was completelyfurnished, even to bed coverings and pillows. A little kitchen adjoinedit and there were evidences that food had recently been cooked there.An extra cot was made up in the hall.

  So the poet and her brother had lived in their immense house andoccupied only two rooms! Or three? They had yet to explore the tower.Peter Dobbs tried the door and found it locked.

  “We’ll have to break this one, too,” the policemen said, and Daleoffered to get the beam.

  Pauline’s hand kept him. “Wait a minute,” she pleaded. “It’s a shame tospoil the door and maybe this key will fit.”

  She took a queer brass key from her hand bag. Judy and Peter franklystared. The policemen, though obviously doubting its usefulness,consented to try it. To their astonishment, it turned.

  “Where did you find that key?” Dale questioned.

  “In the pocket of Irene’s brown suit. I put it in my own hand bag forsafe-keeping.”

  “Rather suspected it fitted something, didn’t you?” he saidsarcastically. “Well, to me it doesn’t prove a thing.”

  “It does to me,” Judy put in, “although not what you think. This musthave been Joy Holiday’s room when she was a child! And if Irene had thekey surely Joy Holiday is related to her—perhaps her own mother!”

  “It sounds like pretty sound figuring to me,”’ Peter agreed, flashing alook of boyish admiration in Judy’s direction.

  Then, as the door swung open, they followed the policemen into thetower. Peter pushed a button and the light revealed a circular roomwith a gay panorama of nursery rhyme characters frolicking across thewall.

  Upon closer inspection, however, the room was seen to be six-sided withshelves built into two of its corners. On one of these dolls andexpensive toys were neatly arranged. Books and games for a somewhatolder girl adorned the other shelf.

  A curtained wardrobe concealed another corner, while a white cot bed,all freshly made, occupied the corner at the left of the door. The tworemaining corners were cleverly camouflaged by concave mirrors withuneven distorting surfaces, such as are sometimes seen in amusementpark funny houses. In spite of Judy’s anxiety, she could not suppress asmile when the two policemen walked by them.

  So this was the room where the poet had locked Joy Holiday! Did shethink those silly mirrors and a roomful of books and toys could make upfor a lack of freedom? Judy, who had always been allowed to choose whatfriends she liked, could easily see why the poet’s daughter had wantedto run away—or vanish as people said she had done. How strange it allwas and how thrilling to be standing in the very room where Irene’smother had stood twenty years before!

  “It’s so quiet and peaceful here,” Judy said. “Nothing very terriblecould have happened in this pretty room.”

  She had momentarily forgotten that the whole lower structure of it hadbeen burned away, that she had seen a tall yellow specter peering outof its window.

  Peter, however, remembered the fantastic story Judy had told him. Itdid not surprise the young law student that no one was in the tower. Heand the two policemen immediately set about looking for clues toIrene’s whereabouts. But it was not until Dale drew back the wardrobecurtain and they found her yellow dress and jacket hanging there thatthey became truly alarmed. Now they knew, past any doubt, that Irenehad visited her grandmother’s house. There had been a funeral! Even ifit had been Sarah Glenn’s, Irene might have been with her when shedied. Alone with a crazy woman ... timid little Irene!

  It was a sober moment for all of them.

  “That girl’s been held captive all right,” one of the policemen said ina voice more troubled than one would expect of an officer of the law.“It looks as if we’ve found the evidence right here.”

  He stood examining the folds of her yellow dress. It appeared to havebeen hanging in the wardrobe for some time. Other clothes were there,too, but the full skirts and puffed sleeves were in the style of twentyyears ago. On a shelf above them were two or three queer little hats,all decked out with feathers and flowers. Irene would have laughed atthem. She would have tried them on and posed before the comicalmirrors. Judy wondered if she had done that.

  Someone, apparently, had tried on one of the aprons. It was a simplegingham affair such as girls used to wear to protect dainty dresses,and it had been thrown carelessly over a chair. When Judy made a moveto hang it up she was warned to leave everything ex
actly as it was.

  “If this turns out to be a murder case,” one of the policemen said,“this bedroom may contain important evidence.” He turned to Dale whostill held the rose he had found on the steps. “That flower proves thatthe funeral must have been held today. It’s still sweet,” he continued,making a grimace as he sniffed it. “We’ll get together all the facts onthe case and have the place watched. If this man, Jasper Crosby,returns tonight there’ll be a policeman here to nab him. A generalalarm will be dispatched to our radio cars, and we’ll find out whosefuneral it was, too, and let you know first thing in the morning.”

  “Oh, if you only would,” Judy cried gratefully. “Perhaps you can findout from my employer. She’s decided to take a vacation for some unknownreason but you may be able to locate her here.”

  She gave them Emily Grimshaw’s home address. Peter Dobbs, who had takena keen interest in the legal aspect of the case, jotted it down, too.Much to Dale’s discomfiture, he kept talking about Irene.

  “If we find her,” he declared, “this may be my big opportunity. Shewould contest the will, of course, and I might be able to help herthen.”

  “_If_ we find her,” Dale repeated doubtfully.

  Later Peter gave Judy the address and telephone number of the hotelwhere he was staying. He would be either there or at the police stationin case she needed him.

  “If I do call you,” Judy promised, with an attempt at lightness, “youmay be sure that I’m in trouble because it’s really your place to callme.”

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