_The Famous_ JUDY BOLTON _Mystery Stories_
By MARGARET SUTTON
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
THE DISCOVERY AT THE DRAGON’S MOUTH
THE WHISPERED WATCHWORD
THE SECRET QUEST
THE PUZZLE IN THE POND
[Illustration: _Reaching in, Judy’s fingers closed on a small, round
object._]
_A Judy Bolton Mystery_
THE PUZZLE
IN THE POND
By
_Margaret Sutton_
Grosset & Dunlap
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
© GROSSET & DUNLAP, INC. 1963
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_To the Students_
Past, Present _and_ Future
_In My Creative Writing Classes_
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I A Stolen Typewriter 1
II Help for Holly 9
III A Rude Shopkeeper 15
IV A Mysterious Truck 23
V Another Green Car 31
VI The Woods Road 37
VII At the Beaver Dam 43
VIII An Impossible Discovery 50
IX More Puzzles 58
X “My Name Is Danny” 66
XI A Born Crusader 72
XII At the Library 79
XIII What the Pictures Revealed 86
XIV Together 93
XV A Band of Gold 100
XVI Danny’s Confession 107
XVII Fire! 114
XVIII Questions and Answers 121
XIX Homes for the Homeless 125
XX Was It All a Mistake? 132
XXI The Key to a Mystery 138
XXII Promised 144
XXIII Identified 150
XXIV Discovered 157
XXV An Everlasting Thing 164
The Puzzle in the Pond
CHAPTER I
A Stolen Typewriter
“Here’s something Miss Pringle can use!”
Judy ran her fingers over the tiny, embossed Reward of Merit card as if
she couldn’t bear to part with it even for the short time it would be on
exhibit at the Roulsville library.
“Mrs. Wheatley is still Miss Pringle to you, isn’t she?” asked Peter
Dobbs, smiling at his young wife as she knelt beside the open drawer of
the old chest where her grandmother’s keepsakes were stored.
“I do think of her as Miss Pringle,” confessed Judy, “and she probably
thinks of me as that noisy Judy Bolton. Prim Miss Pringle is what I used
to call her. She left everything in such perfect order, it’s hard for me
to believe she and Bob Wheatley lived in our house for two whole months.
We won’t ever rent it again, will we, Peter?”
“You’re not asking me to promise we won’t, are you?” he countered. “You
know how I feel about promises.”
“You’re right, too,” declared Judy, reaching into the drawer for another
one of Grandmother Smeed’s treasured keepsakes. “Here’s a sewing card
worked in cross-stitch. It says: ‘Promise Little. Do Much.’ Do you think
it would do for the September exhibit?”
“I should think so,” Peter replied thoughtfully. “A maxim like that
would do for any time of the year. Does the library plan to exhibit a
few of these things each month?”
“Yes, but just for the school year. Miss Pringle—I mean Mrs. Wheatley
says she wants me to arrange them in that little glass case near the
library door. These reward-of-merit cards used to be given out at school
when Grandma was a little girl. The other card was a sewing lesson.
‘Promise little. Do much,’” Judy repeated, “but how much can a person do
in a day? Maybe I won’t try to sort all these treasures this morning.”
“You’ve made a good start. I wish I could stay and help you. I always
liked treasure hunting,” Peter confessed, “but Uncle Sam expects me to
hunt criminals today. We’ll be using an official car, so I’ll leave the
Beetle for you to transport your exhibit to the library if you do get it
ready. ’Bye, Angel. See you at six.”
“You hope,” Judy added as he bent to kiss her.
Peter’s time was not his own. Working out of the Resident FBI Agency in
the Farringdon Post Office, he might be sent anywhere in the territory.
His assignment now was to round up the Joe Mott gang. Judy knew that
much, although his work was confidential. It was also dangerous. Each
time he left the house she breathed a little prayer for his safe return.
“Take care,” was what she usually said, but in her heart the words
meant, “Take care of our future. Let all our dreams for our married life
in this house come true.”
The house had been willed to Judy by her grandmother, and it was so
sturdy and well built that she felt sure it would stand there on the
slope overlooking Dry Brook as long as the hills themselves.
Peter had left the stair door open, and soon Judy heard Blackberry
padding up to keep her company. He looked around, the way cats will, and
then came into the storeroom to see what Judy was doing.
“Hi, Blackberry! You can’t play with these things,” she told him as she
continued sorting and arranging the cards that were to be exhibited at
the library. The theme for September would be school. She found a few
Hallowe’en things and a Columbus Day card which she put aside for
October. There were turkeys and prayers of Thanksgiving for November, a
pile of Christmas things for December, and a stack of old calendars for
January. The stack grew higher and higher.
“I do believe Grandma saved a calendar for every year. This is
wonderful,” Judy said to herself. “I’ll find some recent calendars and
complete the collection. It will be just perfect for the January
exhibit.”
The library was new, and the built-in exhibit cases were still empty.
Nearly all the buildings in Roulsville were new since the flood that had
swept the valley and started Judy on the trail of her first mystery. Her
own home had been swept away, and her father, Dr. Bolton, had been
obliged to move to Farringdon where he still lived and practiced. Only
her grandmother’s house, two miles above the broken dam, had stayed the
same.
“Maybe that’s why I love it,” she thought.
And yet she and Peter had made changes. It was a rambling old farmhouse
too big for just the two of them so only the downstairs rooms had been
changed. Up here in the attic nothing had been disturbed except by
Blackberry as he played with the spools in Judy’s sewing room or
searched for mice in the other two rooms where her grandmother’s
keepsakes were stored. She liked having him for company as she worked.
Attics and black cats seemed to go together.
Judy smiled at this thought. She was so absorbed in what she was doing
that at first she didn’t hear the front doorbell ringing downstairs. It
rang again more insistently, and she gathered Blackberry in her arms and
hurried down the two flights of stairs. It wouldn’t do to leave the cat
alone among the things she had collected for the exhibit.
“I can’t trust you,” she told him, “even if you are a famous cat.”
Blackberry wore a life-saving medal on his collar, and just recently he
had worked for the government, or so Judy insisted, ridding the Capitol
Building of mice. But when she opened the door he fled through it to
prowl around outside like any ordinary cat.
The cat startled Holly Potter, Judy’s sixteen-year-old neighbor, who had
rung the bell. Obviously she had been running at break-neck speed along
the shortcut from her house to Judy’s.
“What took you so long? I thought you’d never answer the bell. Quick!”
she urged breathlessly. “Maybe we can still head off that green car!
There’s a thief in it. He stole my typewriter!”
“Your typewriter?” gasped Judy.
“Yes, the one you gave me for my birthday. Remember when we traded
birthdays so mine wouldn’t come on Christmas? I loved that typewriter,
and now—”
“We’ll try and get it back,” Judy reassured her. “Come on, Holly!”
They were off down the road in the Beetle before Holly had finished
telling Judy which way the green car went. “Try Farringdon,” she
suggested. “You could see it from the top of the hill if it went toward
Farringdon, couldn’t you?”
“That would depend on how fast he was going, I should think, but we’ll
try it,” Judy promised.
[Illustration: _“Quick!” Holly urged breathlessly._]
She turned left at the main road and sped up the long slope out of Dry
Brook Hollow. At the top of the hill the world seemed to end but,
instead of driving on into the sky the way it looked as if she might,
Judy drove down again with miles and miles of winding road ahead of her.
There wasn’t a green car in sight.
“I’m afraid we’ve lost him,” Judy began.
“But I’m sure he went this way,” Holly insisted. “I would have seen him
myself if he’d turned toward Roulsville. You know how our road angles
off in that direction. Well, I thought if I raced along the shortcut and
we took your road maybe we could head him off if he turned toward
Farringdon. I _have_ to get my typewriter back. Can’t you drive a little
faster?”
“Not without turning the car over. We’ll pick up speed on the straight
road. Then, if we can’t find him, we’ll report the stolen typewriter
when we get to Farringdon. Did he take anything else?” Judy asked.
“No, just the typewriter.”
“That’s strange.” Judy couldn’t quite picture a thief running into
Holly’s house, grabbing her typewriter, and not touching anything else.
She had a rare old paperweight and a brand-new tape recorder in the
first-floor room she called her study. Either of these things would have
been worth more than her typewriter, to say nothing of the valuables
stored in what she had once called her forbidden chest.
“There was nothing strange about it,” declared Holly. “He would have
taken more if I hadn’t surprised him and called Ruth. She was busy with
the baby and didn’t pay any attention. Doris had just left in her car—”
“That’s it!” Judy interrupted. “The thief probably saw your sister Doris
leaving and figured you were all out.”
“Well, we weren’t. I was there, and I saw him run out of the house
toward a green car. Please drive faster, Judy! I have to get my
typewriter back.”
And suddenly, like rain from a clear blue sky, Holly burst into tears.
She was crying over more important things than a stolen typewriter, Judy
knew. It wasn’t easy living with a married sister whose whole interest
centered on her own husband and baby. Holly’s other sister was on her
way to a teaching job at some private school in Maine. The girls’ uncle
had died while Judy and Peter were in Washington. Holly said she had
never felt more lost and alone.
“First it was my parents and then Uncle David. It’s always this way,”
she sobbed. “I told my sisters I wouldn’t dare love them. It’s bad luck
for me to love anybody. Even the _things_ I love have to be taken.”
“We’ll find your typewriter,” Judy resolved as she drove on toward
Farringdon as fast as safety allowed.