_The Famous_ JUDY BOLTON _Mystery Stories_
By MARGARET SUTTON
_In Order of Publication_
THE VANISHING SHADOW
THE HAUNTED ATTIC
THE INVISIBLE CHIMES
SEVEN STRANGE CLUES
THE GHOST PARADE
THE YELLOW PHANTOM
THE MYSTIC BALL
THE VOICE IN THE SUITCASE
THE MYSTERIOUS HALF CAT
THE RIDDLE OF THE DOUBLE RING
THE UNFINISHED HOUSE
THE MIDNIGHT VISITOR
THE NAME ON THE BRACELET
THE CLUE IN THE PATCHWORK QUILT
THE MARK ON THE MIRROR
THE SECRET OF THE BARRED WINDOW
THE RAINBOW RIDDLE
THE LIVING PORTRAIT
THE SECRET OF THE MUSICAL TREE
THE WARNING ON THE WINDOW
THE CLUE OF THE STONE LANTERN
THE SPIRIT OF FOG ISLAND
THE BLACK CAT’S CLUE
THE FORBIDDEN CHEST
THE HAUNTED ROAD
THE CLUE IN THE RUINED CASTLE
THE TRAIL OF THE GREEN DOLL
THE HAUNTED FOUNTAIN
THE CLUE OF THE BROKEN WING
THE PHANTOM FRIEND
[Illustration: “The film will not be shown again!” Mr. Lenz said]
_A Judy Bolton Mystery_
THE PHANTOM
FRIEND
By
_Margaret Sutton_
Grosset & Dunlap
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
© GROSSET & DUNLAP, INC. 1959
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_To_
Alice Thorne
_Understanding Editor
and Real Friend_
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Empty Chair 1
II Clarissa Valentine 8
III Tour Thirteen 15
IV Strange Questions 22
V Impossible Answers 30
VI An Unfortunate Gift 37
VII A Hidden Danger 43
VIII The Witch’s Curse 51
IX Into the Mist 59
X The Wrong Direction 66
XI On the Train 73
XII A Night of Terror 80
XIII Before Daylight 88
XIV Serious Trouble 94
XV The Wrong Girl 101
XVI The Name on the Calendar 107
XVII A Wanted Thief 113
XVIII Thieves of the Mind 118
XIX Uncovering the Facts 125
XX Identified 130
XXI Explained 136
XXII Real Phantoms 143
XXIII A Curious Letter 149
XXIV Trapped! 155
XXV Real Friends 161
XXVI Talking Pillows 169
The Phantom Friend
CHAPTER I
The Empty Chair
“I’ve had enough,” exclaimed Irene Meredith, ducking to protect her face
from a biting wind that was blowing across the skating area at Radio
City. “Wouldn’t you like to go inside now, Judy? It’s really too cold to
enjoy ice skating.”
“It _is_ cold,” Judy agreed. “What a difference from the way it was in
the summer! They had chairs out here then, and there were flowered
umbrellas over the tables. But with the big Christmas tree up, Radio
City is still beautiful in spite of the cold. Don’t you wish—”
Judy did not finish the sentence.
“What’s the matter with you two?” Pauline Faulkner demanded as she
stopped short, almost colliding with Judy and Irene. “You can’t just
stop skating and gaze at the sights. Other people will bump into you.
There, I knew it!”
“Watch it!” someone called out just too late.
Florence Garner, the fourth member of the skating party, turned sharply
on her skates and went sprawling. But she was soon picking herself up.
“Are you hurt, Flo?” Irene asked solicitously.
“We’re sorry,” Judy added. “We didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I’m upset in more ways than one,” Florence replied as the four girls
skated off the ice. “Nothing is turning out the way I planned it.
Pauline said—”
“Never mind what I said,” Judy’s dark-haired friend interrupted. “We’ll
discuss it at lunch.”
Ten minutes later the rented skates had been returned, and the four
girls were sitting around a table in a nearby restaurant. The waiter
served steaming hot soup.
“This will warm us up,” Irene commented over her soup plate. “Remember,
Judy, I promised you we’d skate by the golden statue the next time you
came to New York, and now we’ve done it.”
“It was fun, but watching your television show will be the real treat,”
Judy told her. “When do you have to be at the studio for rehearsal?”
“Not until two. There’s lots of time.” Irene looked at the girl she had
first known as Judy Bolton. She herself had been Irene Lang then, a
timid little mill worker with a secret ambition to become a singer. Now,
although her ambition had been realized and she was also a happy young
wife and mother, she still looked to Judy for advice.
“I have a big decision to make,” Irene confessed. “If you were in my
place, Judy, you’d know what to do. I don’t want your little namesake to
think of her mommy as one of the ‘naughty’ people on television. That’s
what she calls the people who do the commercials. We even have a little
song we sing about it. Dale and I made it up to amuse little Judy. Of
course, I’d never dare use it on my show,” Irene added with a laugh.
“The sponsor would never get over it.”
“Sing it, Irene,” Judy urged her.
“Right here?” The Golden Girl of TV and radio looked about the
restaurant as if she had been asked to commit a crime. “I couldn’t!”
“You could if you sang it very softly. Come on, I’d like to hear it,
too,” Pauline urged.
“Oh, very well,” Irene gave in. “We call it ‘_When I Grow Up_,’ and it
goes like this:
“_When I grow up I’ll be a teacher or a hostess on a plane,
Or perhaps I’ll be the weather girl and know about the rain.
I might sing and play like Mommy on TV or radio,
But I wouldn’t do commercials,
No, I wouldn’t do commercials,
No, I_ wouldn’t _do commercials and interrupt the show_.”
“I don’t like them much either,” agreed Judy after the song was over and
she had stopped laughing. “Especially when you see the same thing over
and over. It makes a person wonder—”
“Wonder what?” asked Pauline.
Irene laughed. “Judy is always wondering about something,” she explained
to Florence Garner. “Her husband, Peter Dobbs, calls her his wonder
girl. Peter is—” She paused. “Shall I tell her, Judy?”
“She’ll find out anyway. He’s an FBI agent. It isn’t something you can
keep from your friends. Of course,” Judy added, “there are times when
it’s better if people don’t know.”
“Criminals, you mean?”
“I mean anybody. Right now Peter is away on an assignment. I don’t even
know where he is. But let’s talk about you, Flo,” Judy suggested to
change the subject. “Is it all right if I call you by your first name?”
“Of course. I know we just met today, but I feel as if I’d known you
always,” the brown-haired girl returned warmly. “Pauline has told me so
much about you. I work for an advertising agency on Madison Avenue not
far from the office where Emily Grimshaw holds forth.”
Judy laughed. Pauline’s employer was a literary agent who peddled the
works of busy authors like Irene’s husband, the detective story writer,
Dale Meredith.
“She knows how to get contracts from publishers. Getting advertising
accounts isn’t easy, either,” Florence continued. “I’m afraid a good
many people share Irene’s feelings about commercials and with reason.
You should hear those ad men when they’re in conference.”
“I’ve read about them,” declared Judy. “Is it true that advertising
agencies employ psychologists to probe into people’s minds and find out
how to make them buy certain products?”
“Of course it’s true.” Pauline, the daughter of a psychiatrist, was
indignant about it and said so.
“I don’t see any harm in that,” Flo said defensively. “They push the
items they’re paid to put across. Take the golden hair wash people, for
instance. It was pure inspiration when they thought of Irene to sponsor
their product. Golden Girl—golden hair wash! Can’t you just see it on
the TV screen? Their hair wash will sell like crazy—”
“And every girl will be a golden girl. I just can’t agree to it,” Irene
interrupted. “I’d have to say I use the stuff when I don’t. My hair is
naturally this color.”
“Mine is naturally this color, too. So help me!” put in Judy. “I dyed it
once to disguise myself, but never again! Anyway, Peter likes redheads.”
Pauline, a blue-eyed, black-haired beauty, seemed to be studying the
others at the table. Each girl had her own distinctive coloring. Irene,
with her naturally golden blond hair, wore it in a short bob. “To keep
little Judy from pulling it when we romp,” she said.
Judy wore her curly auburn hair in a long bob, while Florence Garner had
her brown hair pinned high on her head. It, too, was curly and would
have hung in ringlets if she had let it loose.
A fifth chair at the table was vacant. But Judy, suddenly a little
homesick, could imagine Peter’s sister sitting there to complete the
picture.
“Honey’s hair is darker than yours, Irene,” she spoke up unexpectedly.
“I call it honey colored. I hope she never uses that golden hair wash to
change it. Honey simply wouldn’t be Honey without her lovely
honey-colored hair.”
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Pauline quoted airily. “Honey’s
hair is actually just plain dark blond.”
“Our advertising will be directed toward dark blonds. Naturally they
want their hair to be golden. Who is Honey, anyway?” asked Flo. “You
keep looking at that empty chair as if she were sitting at the table
with us.”
“She is—in spirit.” This was Irene. Judy laughed and added, “Honey is
Peter’s sister. We all love her, especially my brother, Horace. He’s a
newspaper reporter, and she’s supplied him with plenty of news. There
was a time when we didn’t know she existed—”
“No wonder!” exclaimed Flo, laughing. “She’s invisible now.”
“Judy is trying to tell you about one of the mysteries she solved,”
Pauline explained, “but it’s no use, Judy. There have been so many.
Phantoms just follow you around waiting for you to pull off their sheets
and show them up for what they are.”
“And what are they?” asked Florence.
“Illusions, usually.” Judy found the word a little difficult to define.
“People think they see things that are really something quite different.
Or else they’re imaginary—”
“Like our phantom friend in the chair,” Irene interrupted with a laugh.
“Shall we ask the waiter to bring an extra order—”
“Are you expecting someone else to join you for lunch?” the waiter
paused at the table to ask.
He had overheard only part of the conversation. Judy could hardly stop
herself from laughing. She was about to tell him it was only a joke when
a commotion at the cashier’s desk drew her attention.
“I gave you a twenty-dollar bill,” a tall girl with a country twang in
her voice was insisting. “I know it was a twenty. But you’ve given me
change for only a dollar. Where’s the other nineteen dollars?”