The Game of Secrets
Horace made good time coming home. He was really driving too fast, Judy
thought, but she didn’t say anything. She was too busy thinking about
the caretaker, who had stood watching them sullenly as they drove away.
“Horace,” she said suddenly, “either that man _was_ involved in the
robbery, or else he was away at the time and is trying to keep it
secret.”
“It’s no good trying to keep secrets like that,” Honey said. “I tried it
once, and it didn’t work. I only got myself tangled in a web of lies. It
was when I told the truth that everything came clear.”
“I’m glad you said that,” declared Judy. “I think the truth would solve
most of our problems. Don’t you, Mrs. Riker?”
“Nothing,” she replied, “will solve my problems now. I wish I had never
come back. At least I could have kept the memory of the place the way it
used to be.”
“Was it such a pleasant memory?”
“Well, no,” she admitted. “It was anything but pleasant except for one
happy summer. That summer stood out so clearly in my memory that it made
me forget all the dreary hours that followed. It all comes back to me
now. The house was filled with heavy, carved furniture. There was one
chair with snakes curling over the back. You couldn’t sit in it. A
statue sat there. You had to be quiet when you went near it. There were
so many statues! But I think I remember the quiet most of all. I wasn’t
allowed to interrupt if anyone spoke, but nobody ever said anything much
except, ‘Don’t touch!’ And there were so many beautiful things I wanted
to touch. Now where are they?”
“At least they didn’t go up in smoke when the house burned,” Horace
pointed out.
“It is a strange thing,” agreed Judy. “The thieves didn’t know they were
saving them. Your uncle should be grateful.”
Mrs. Riker smiled, as if the thought of his gratitude amused her. Then
she said, “What really distresses me is the condition of the caretaker’s
cottage. You wouldn’t think it to look at it now, but that kitchen was
once almost as pleasant as yours, Judy, if I may call you that. Do call
me Helen.”
Honey turned around and smiled at Judy, remembering a secret between
them. She had been called Helen for a little while before Judy found out
that her real name was Grace Dobbs and that she was Peter’s sister.
“You like that name, don’t you?” Honey asked.
“Yes, and I like Helen Riker,” Judy declared warmly. “I think we are
going to be good friends.”
“I hope so. I’m like Uncle Paul,” Mrs. Riker admitted. “I need friends
as I never needed them before. My husband is dead, as you must have
guessed. He was a reckless driver, especially when he was alone. He was
killed in an accident.”
“What was that?” asked Horace, cutting down on his speed.
“You heard it. You might take it as a warning,” Judy told him. “You have
plenty of time to write up this story. The _Herald_ doesn’t go to press
until tomorrow morning. ‘Slow down and live,’ as the road signs say.”
“Thanks, I will,” he replied. “I was just trying to get you home in time
for supper.”
“I’ll get supper better if I’m all in one piece. I haven’t decided what
we’ll have, but you’re all invited,” Judy told them.
But Horace said he had other plans—which included Honey.
“Anyway,” Judy said, “we want you and the children to stay, Helen.”
Mrs. Riker smiled as if the use of her first name cemented their
friendship. She was a beautiful woman when she forgot to be worried and
frightened. Judy guessed she was still in her early thirties.
“You must have married very young,” she commented a little later.
“Too young,” Helen Riker replied. “I hadn’t learned to do my own
thinking.”
What did she mean? Apparently she still didn’t want to think about her
problems, but the children did. Penny seemed bursting with things she
wanted to say. They had passed the dam and were just coming to the place
where the North Hollow road turned off at an angle, when the little girl
suddenly cried out, “Here’s where we were when the bad men went off with
Mommy’s pocketbook.”
“Did they go down that road?” asked Horace.
“No,” said Paul. “They drove off down the main road. That’s where we met
those kids who are having the magic show. But Wally Brown wasn’t with
the kids who found Mom’s pocketbook—”
“Maybe he didn’t want them to look for it! Maybe it was his voice we
heard!” exclaimed Judy.
“It’s a good theory and basically sound,” Horace pointed out, “but your
timing’s wrong. The voice said ‘Don’t look for it!’ _before_ Mrs. Riker
lost her pocketbook—not afterwards. I figure the robbery happened in a
matter of minutes after those men left you.”
“I don’t understand it,” Honey put in. “It was in the paper this
morning.”
“Horace is talking about the theft of the pocketbook, not the big
robbery. But I have a feeling they’re related in some way,” Judy said
thoughtfully.
“Maybe one is the uncle of the other,” Horace teased her. “Seriously,”
he continued, “I agree that there may be some connection. If this
magician had been with them—”
“He isn’t a robber,” Penny interrupted. “I know he isn’t. His magic is
real. You’ll see at the magic show. We can go to it, now that we’re
coming back to live with you, can’t we, Judy?”
“What’s this?” Horace asked in surprise. “So you’re going to live with
Judy, are you? Don’t you think Peter may have something to say about
that?”
“He didn’t even know about the tourist sign,” Judy confessed. “We put it
up this morning as a sort of a lark. We might have trapped the robbers,
but it looks as if we caught the victims instead.”
“You may have caught them both. The robbers who stole my pocketbook
asked if I knew where Uncle Paul’s jade collection is,” Mrs. Riker
confessed, “but if the house was robbed two days ago, they’d have been
there already.”
“That would be a story: ‘THIEVES OVERLOOK VALUABLE JADE COLLECTION,’”
Horace commented.
“But did they?” Judy asked. “My theory is that they only overlooked one
piece—”
She stopped suddenly, deciding not to mention the tiny green object in
her pocket until she had shown it to Peter and discussed the whole thing
with him. Quickly she changed the subject to ask, “Could the police have
known about the fire when they gave you the news of the robbery,
Horace?”
“Who knows?” he replied. “Everybody seems to be playing the game of
secrets. The theft of your pocketbook should have been reported, Mrs.
Riker. You’re protecting the thieves when you hold back information from
the police.”
“Oh dear!” she said, becoming suddenly flustered. “I didn’t mean to do
that. I suppose they should know what happened, but please keep my name
out of it. I don’t want to become involved. Maybe you could tell them I
have my pocketbook back—”
“Empty,” Horace reminded her.
“They didn’t want it,” Penny spoke up. “They only wanted what was
inside.”
“What _was_ inside?” asked Judy, hoping her new friend had taken Honey’s
little speech about truth-telling to heart.
[Illustration: “There’s a light inside,” observed Honey]
“Not much,” Mrs. Riker replied quickly. “I only had a few dollars left,
just about enough to get us to Uncle Paul’s. There was nothing else of
any consequence.”
“No green doll?” Judy wanted to ask. But would Helen Riker admit it?
They were nearly home now, but the game of secrets was not over. Even
Horace acted as if he knew one.
“What does consequence mean?” Penny was asking.
“The dictionary says it’s the natural result of an act,” Judy began.
She had read the dictionary once in order to win a spelling bee, and
often quoted definitions from it.
“I didn’t mean it that way. I’m so confused I don’t know what I mean,”
Mrs. Riker confessed. “I didn’t tell those horrible men where anything
was. I couldn’t have. I didn’t know!”
“They must have overlooked something or they wouldn’t have stopped you.
How did they know who you were?” asked Judy.
“A voice from the trees told them, no doubt,” Horace said dryly.
Her brother was joking, Judy knew. But he had certainly found out
something. They were just passing the tree that had “talked,” but there
was no voice from it now. The rain had turned to snow which clung to the
branches, frosting them with white. The house had a white roof.
“There’s a light inside,” observed Honey as Horace drove up the snowy
slope to stop before the door.