A Strange Encounter
Lorraine was not too enthusiastic about the proposed trip to the Brandt
estate. Finally she agreed to it under one condition. They were not to
drive all the way to the house which, she said, was just over the
hilltop. They were to park the car where no one would see it and follow
the 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 both
argued that it would be better to inquire at the house. Lois knew Helen
Brandt slightly.
“She’d be glad to show us around. This way it looks as if we’re
planning a crime,” Lois said as they started off in the blue car she
was driving.
It was a neat little car, not too conspicuous, and easy to park in
out-of-the-way places. Judy laughed and said if they did find the
fountain 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 muttering
them to yourself most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Quite true,” Judy agreed. “I’ll let Peter know about this one. He’s my
Santa Claus, and it will soon be Christmas. Maybe I should have worn
the fur coat he gave me last year.”
“Your reversible’s better in case it rains. It’s too warm for snow. We
picked a perfect day for this trip,” Lois continued, guiding the car
around curves as it climbed the steep hill beyond Dry Brook Hollow.
The trip was a short one. In twenty minutes they had covered the
distance that had seemed such a long way to Judy when she was riding in
her grandfather’s wagon.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, “and I’ve just about figured
out how it happened. I didn’t think my grandparents knew the Brandts
well enough to pay them a visit, though. We must have looked queer
driving up to a beautiful estate in Grandpa’s old farm wagon. I do
remember that Grandma had some hooked rugs to deliver. But that still
doesn’t explain what happened afterwards. When I woke up in the hammock
I was alone in the garden. Horse, wagon, grandparents—all had
disappeared.”
“How could they?” asked Lois.
“Anyway,” Lorraine began, “you had a chance to see how beautiful
everything was before—”
Again she broke off as if there were something she wanted to tell but
didn’t quite dare.
“Before what?” questioned Judy.
“Oh, nothing. Forget I said anything about it. You were telling us how
you woke up in the hammock, but you never did explain how you got back
home,” Lorraine reminded her.
“Didn’t I?” asked Judy. “I’d forgotten a lot of it, but it’s beginning
to 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 and
would return for me. I told you I was all alone. There wasn’t a house
in 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 I
could see was a windowless old tower and a path leading in that
direction. Naturally, I followed it. There’s something about a path in
the woods that always tempts me.”
“We know that, Judy. Honey told us all about your latest mystery. You
followed a trail or something.”
“Well, this trail led out of the rose garden where the hammock was and
then through an archway,” Judy continued. “All sorts of little cupids
and gnomes peered out at me from unexpected places. I was actually
scared by the time I reached the old tower. There wasn’t time to
explore it. Just then I heard the rumble of my grandfather’s wagon and
knew 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 after
a while,” Judy remembered. “The rugs were gone. Grandma must have
delivered 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 narrow
road 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 man
driving 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 he
was 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’t
think the Brandts live there any more.”
“Maybe not, but we can pretend we think they do, can’t we?” Judy
replied a little uncertainly.
She was beginning to suspect that Lorraine knew more about the Brandt
estate than she was telling.
Lois kept on driving along the narrow, gravelly road. Soon there were
more evergreens and a hedge of rhododendrons to be seen. They looked
very green next to the leafless trees in the woods beyond. The sky was
gray with white clouds being driven across it by the wind.
“There’s the tower!” Lorraine exclaimed. “I can see it over to the
left. 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 to
explore it, though,” Lois said. “But if there are new people living
here 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 cleared
place beside the road. “Who’s going to stop us? And who wants to
explore a gloomy old tower, anyway? Let’s look for the fountain.”
“Do you think we should?” Lorraine asked. “It won’t be enchanted. I
told you—”
“You told us very little,” Lois reminded her. “If you know anything
about 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. “We
always used to go places together.”
“It wasn’t important,” Lorraine replied evasively. “I was just out for
a drive.”
“You plutocrats!” laughed Judy. “Each with a car of your own. You’re
not interested in Roger Banning, are you, Lois? I’m sure you can do
better than that. I did know him slightly, but not from school. The
boys and girls were separated and went to different high schools by the
time we moved to Farringdon. I remember his pal, Dick Hartwell, a lot
better. He was in our young people’s group at church.”
“Sh!” Lois cautioned her. “Nice people no longer mention Dick
Hartwell’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 and
forged the names of a lot of important business people. I think he
forged some legal documents, too. Anyway, he went to the Federal
Penitentiary. It was all in the papers,” Lorraine told her.
Now Judy did remember. It was something she would have preferred to
forget. She liked to think she was a good judge of character, and she
had taken Dick Hartwell for a quiet, refined boy who would never stoop
to crime.
“I don’t see what all this has to do with the fountain,” Lois said
impatiently. “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 a
tiger looks like before he springs at me,” Judy explained.
“You seem to think there’s danger in this expedition of ours, don’t
you?” asked Lorraine.
“I don’t know what to think. You’re the one who seems to know the
answers, but you’re not telling. Hiding your face back there gave you
away. You’ve seen that character who drove down this road and, for some
reason, you were afraid he would see you. Why, Lorraine? Why didn’t you
want to be recognized?”
Lorraine hesitated a moment and then replied evasively, “People don’t
generally enter private estates without an invitation. That’s all.”
“I’d better turn the car around,” Lois decided, “in case we have to
leave in a hurry. I don’t expect we’ll encounter any tigers, but we may
be accused of trespassing.”
“I’m sure we will be,” announced Judy as two dark-coated figures strode
down the road toward them. “You drove right by a NO TRESPASSING sign,
and this isn’t a welcoming committee coming to meet us!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------