The Missing Jade
Peter gave a long, low whistle of surprise. Then he asked Judy exactly
where she had found the little idol.
She told him and added, “It isn’t quite the way Penny described it. This
looks more like a hunter than a doll.”
“It may be a clue when we start hunting for the rest of the jade
collection,” declared Peter. “Have you any more clues as good as this
one?”
Judy laughed. “I’m afraid not, but it won’t do any harm to list the
clues I do have.”
“First of all,” Peter said, “is that tourist sign. I’ll never understand
how you get these sudden impulses, but it certainly led Mrs. Riker and
the children to the right place.”
“That’s true,” Judy admitted, and sighed. “Naturally they were looking
forward to meeting their uncle. It must have been a terrible shock to
them to find his house destroyed.”
“What about their other uncle?” asked Peter. “Doesn’t he have a house?”
“I don’t know,” Judy replied. “Helen wouldn’t let the children talk
about him. Penny acted as if she’d never heard of him before. It was the
old uncle they were expecting to visit, not the young one.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“I’m not sure of anything,” confessed Judy. “There’s a big secret of
some kind. Helen’s trained Paul to keep it, but not Penny. The trouble
is, I don’t think Penny knows all of it. And she has such an
imagination! I actually feel sorry for her, the way they stop her every
time she wants to talk. But it may be necessary. Helen Riker may be in
danger.”
“What about you?” asked Peter. “You’ve really handed yourself a problem,
sweetheart. If she’s in danger, I’m afraid you are, too.”
“I know, Peter.” Impulsively she kissed away the worried frown on his
forehead, nearly stabbing him with the pencil she was holding. “But why
should I be any safer than you are?” she asked. “You’re nearly always in
danger—”
“From pencils? Only when I’m with you,” he returned, laughing.
“Actually, pencils are about the only weapons I’ll be using for the next
few weeks. Most of the time I will be sitting at an office desk doing
very undangerous routine work.”
“You weren’t today,” she reminded him. “You were fighting forest fires.”
“Today,” he said, “was a little unusual. But let’s talk about your day.
I want to get the facts straightened out in my mind.”
“My day?” Judy questioned, thinking back. “For me it always begins when
I first open my eyes and say to myself, ‘Here is another mystery to
solve.’ Every day _is_ a mystery, Peter, because you never know one
minute what wonderful, beautiful, or even terrible thing will happen the
next. That’s what makes life so exciting and—and wonderful.”
“It takes a pretty wonderful person to see it that way,” declared Peter.
“You’re wonderful, too,” she told him. “How foolish I was to worry for
fear you might not understand. You see, we put up the tourist sign
before Horace came with the news of the robbery. At first it was just
for fun. We didn’t really think anyone would stop. And then, just after
we put up the sign, those three men came along. They didn’t drive down
our road. Maybe it looked too steep or something. They just parked their
car by the mailbox and started to explore the grounds and ask questions.
One of the men asked about the house, but I told him it wasn’t for sale.
It’s _our_ house, Peter. Nothing in the world could make me want to sell
it.”
“But it is a little lonesome, is that it?”
“A little,” she admitted, “when you’re at work. But today Honey was with
me, and then of course Helen and the children came. Oh!” she exclaimed
suddenly.
“What now, Angel?”
“An idea I had. Penny did say something about getting into trouble when
you didn’t tell things,” Judy remembered. “She was talking about her
mother. And then she said, ‘I’d never, never steal anything after what
she told me. Only bad people steal.’ I agreed with her and it seemed to
bother her, and then she said something about it’s being different for
children. What do you suppose she meant by that?”
“Obviously some child she cared about had stolen something. I doubt if
it was Penny herself.”
“Was it Paul?”
“Not if I’m any judge of character,” Peter said. “What else can you
remember?”
“A lot of things. I’ll write them down. There were still more clues in
the paper if we only had it. I think Helen must have taken it upstairs
with her.”
“We don’t need it,” Peter told her. “I’m familiar with every word in it.
You see, our office released the news. Horace didn’t tell you, but he
got it from me.”
“He did? Then you know more about it than he does! Can you tell me who
the thieves were?” Judy asked. “Was it the caretaker?”
“Possibly, although it was he who reported the robbery.”
“And what about the jade collection? If this green doll was part of
it—Peter! It must have been. But why was Helen taking it there unless—”
Judy kept interrupting herself as more ideas flashed through her brain.
Then, suddenly, she knew.
“It was!” she exclaimed. “I remember it now! It said in the paper that a
priceless Oriental jade collection had been stolen—”
“Was believed to have been stolen,” Peter corrected her. “It makes quite
a difference.”
“Not in what I’m trying to say,” she continued. “I don’t remember it
word for word, but it went on to say that the valuable jade pieces had
been collected during Paul Riker’s travels through the Far East. They
were little statues of gods and goddesses! I had forgotten that until
this very minute. And there was something else about their value being
even greater if they were matched pairs. Does that mean there’s a
goddess for every god? Then, if one happened to be missing, it would be
worth a lot of money, wouldn’t it? And if the burglars knew where it
was, they’d try to steal it, wouldn’t they? And they’d try to find out
about the rest of the collection. Oh, Peter! That was what you meant
when you said you were on the trail of quite a number of green dolls,
wasn’t it? And this one I found may lead us to all the others.”
“It may,” Peter replied soberly. “On the other hand, it may lead us into
more trouble. If Mr. Riker himself dropped it in the vault—”
“I give up,” Judy interrupted. “But this green ‘doll’ is jade, isn’t it,
and it was stolen from Mr. Riker’s collection, don’t you think, Peter?”
“Yes, I do,” Peter agreed, “but if anyone stole it I’m afraid you’re the
guilty one, Angel. You’d better let me have it before it gets you into
more trouble. It may be the mate to the one Mrs. Riker had stolen from
her.”
“Oh dear!” Judy began. “I hadn’t thought of that. I didn’t mean—”
“Of course you didn’t,” Peter reassured her. “I know your motives were
good when you took it, and a great deal of good may come out of it, so
don’t worry.”
“I won’t,” Judy promised, inspiration suddenly erasing all worry from
her mind. “Oh, Peter!” she cried. “I have a wonderful idea. Come up to
the attic with me. There’s something up there I want to show you.”