At the Library
The next morning, Judy was at Holly’s door soon after Peter left with
Hank Lawton in the official FBI car. The library exhibit was ready, and
she hoped her pictures would be ready, too.
“Want to come with me to Roulsville?” she asked Holly the minute the
door was opened. Ruth, as usual, was busy with the baby. He was walking
now, and making noises that sounded like words.
“Do I!” the younger girl exclaimed. “But wait, I have some more stuff
for the exhibit. May I help arrange it in the glass case?”
“Of course. Bring your sweater. It’s a little chilly this morning,” Judy
said, “and tell your sister you’re off for the day.”
“You deserve to be after staying home with Bobby all day yesterday.
Don’t forget your letter,” Ruth advised as Holly hurried off.
“It’s to my other sister. The letter, I mean,” Holly explained. “I asked
about my typewriter. I know Doris didn’t take it, but I felt better
asking. It’s funny, but I feel closer to my sisters when they’re away
and I just write letters. That’s the way it was for so many years.”
“I know.” Holly and her sisters had been separated after their parents
died, each living with a different relative. It would take time for them
to become fully acquainted with each other. “You don’t feel closer to me
when I’m away, do you?” Judy asked to change the subject into more
cheerful channels.
Holly giggled. “Of course not. I feel closer to you when I’m helping you
solve a mystery. Did you find out about that thing you saw in the pond?”
They were walking along the shortcut between her house and Judy’s. A
chill was in the air. Judy shivered.
“You mean the lady table leg? What about it?”
“That’s what I’m asking _you_. But I can see you didn’t find out very
much,” Holly concluded.
“No, I’m afraid I didn’t,” admitted Judy, “but Peter intends to question
Hugh Sammis today. He may find out a great deal. He went with another
agent in an official car and left the Beetle for me. Put your things in
it, and I’ll get mine. Then, on the way to Roulsville, I’ll tell you all
about it.”
First she told Holly about the lady table leg and how it had vanished by
the time Peter got to the dam. “It’s a funny thing,” she continued, “but
Horace and I both saw it. He was going to pull it out of the water, and
then Danny warned him not to touch it.”
“Who’s Danny?” Holly asked. “Do I know him?”
“You’ve heard about him,” Judy reminded her. “He’s the orphan Meta
Hanley told us about. Remember?”
“Now I do,” Holly answered. “She said he liked to watch the beavers. Was
he there at the beaver dam?”
“He certainly was. When we first heard him Horace thought I was throwing
my voice. Imagine! Then he jumped down from a tree where he was hiding
and told us who he was. Horace called him a wood sprite. He’s such a
strange little boy.”
“Everything you’ve told me so far is pretty strange,” agreed Holly. “Did
you take him back to the orphanage?”
“Under protest. He wanted to stay and play watchman for the beavers.”
Holly laughed. Then she saw that Judy was serious and asked, “Why would
he want to do that?”
“He had a reason,” Judy replied, “because someone must have removed that
table leg minutes after we left. When Peter looked for it he found a
broken place in the beaver dam and no lady—”
“It was an apparition,” declared Holly. “I don’t believe it was there in
the first place. Horace is right. It couldn’t have washed down from the
Roulsville flood.”
“But Horace saw it, too,” Judy objected.
“Are you sure?” Holly was not convinced. “Imagination plays strange
tricks on people.”
Judy knew that. Often, passing the broken dam in the valley above
Roulsville, she seemed to see the devastated town as she saw it right
after the flood. Today a mist hung over the valley. It was raining by
the time they reached Roulsville. Judy spread a newspaper over the box
containing the things for the exhibit and, together, she and Holly
dashed through the rain into the library.
Maud Wheatley, the librarian who had rented Judy’s house earlier in the
summer, looked a little startled. Then she saw it wasn’t noisy children
rushing into the library, and her expression changed.
“Oh, it’s you, Judy, and your friend, Holly Potter. Put the things right
down here on the table,” she directed. “The case is empty. You may
arrange them any way you wish.”
Holly was a real help with her artistic ideas. The souvenir booklet and
the old textbooks were arranged toward the back of the case with the
smaller Reward of Merit cards scattered in front. Judy had brought a
ball of yarn and a long needle to go with the sewing cards, and Holly
had contributed her great grandmother’s sampler in its antique frame.
“It will be safe here, won’t it?” she asked anxiously when they were
ready to leave.
“Perfectly safe. The case will be locked. This is a beautiful exhibit,”
the librarian declared. “I knew those treasures in your attic would make
a fine display, Judy, but this is even better than I expected. It amazes
me that a young girl like you should be so interested in family
keepsakes.”
“It may be because we lost so many family keepsakes in the flood.
Everything went except what few things we had stored at Grandma’s,” Judy
told her. “Your home was washed away, too, wasn’t it?”
“Only the porch. It’s still known as the Pringle house,” she replied,
“although no Pringles live there any more. When we went back after the
flood the rooms were empty of everything valuable. I remember how bare
the mantel looked without the old pine clock and the chalkware lambs—”
“The chalkware lambs?” Judy questioned.
“Yes, do you remember them?”
“I don’t think I ever visited your family when you lived in that house,”
Judy admitted, “but I did see some chalkware lambs in a shop up in North
Farringdon.”
“They’re not uncommon. Whoever looted the house left us nothing but a
few chairs, a bare table, and a kitchen stove. And the piano, but that
was water-soaked and ruined. We sold the house and rented a furnished
apartment in New York. My brother was married that year, so there was
just Mother and me. She died soon afterwards. Losing everything was just
too much for her,” the librarian finished.
“You never found out who did all that looting, did you?” Judy asked.
She knew the answer. It seemed to distress Mrs. Wheatley to talk about
her former home. Like many of the people who used to live in Roulsville,
she had moved away only to come back.
“We’re buying one of the new houses and gradually furnishing it with
antiques,” she confided. “Bob can’t understand why I want them, but I
guess I treasure old things for the same reason you do, Judy. Thank you
for sharing your treasures with the children who come to the library.
You, too, Holly. The sampler is yours, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it belonged to my great grandmother, Felicity Kane. Judy helped me
find out who she was. I can help her with the October exhibit, too,”
Holly offered. “There’s a map of the world among my uncle’s things. It’s
the way people imagined it in the time of Columbus with pictures of sea
monsters near what they thought was the edge of the world.”
“Lovely! Lovely!” Mrs. Wheatley exclaimed. “We’ve come a long way since
then, haven’t we?”
“Full circle,” Holly said. “Then we were afraid of sea monsters. Now
it’s each other.”
When the girls were outside the library Judy asked, “Why did you say
we’re afraid of each other?”
“Because we are,” Holly answered. “I don’t mean you and me, of course.
We’re friends. But you know yourself there are people who live by
stealing and cheating and misrepresenting what they have to sell. Take
that Mr. Sammis with his chalkware lambs. Where do you think he got
them?”
“I’ve been wondering about that,” Judy admitted.
“Do you think some of that stuff in his shop could have been loot from
the Roulsville flood?”
“Possibly. Though I should think he would have sold it all by now,” Judy
added, “unless he waited for fear of being caught.”
“Maybe he’s waiting to sell my typewriter, too. Oh, Judy! Wouldn’t it be
wonderful if you and I could discover what he’s up to?” Holly exclaimed,
fairly skipping in her excitement.
They were on their way to pick up the films. It had stopped raining, but
there was still a chill in the air. Summer was ending as it had begun,
with Judy on the trail of another mystery. Would the pictures she had
taken help solve it, or would they add more pieces to the puzzle? Judy
knew the answer the moment she opened the yellow envelope that said,
“Here are your color prints.”
“Holly!” she exclaimed, nearly dropping the pictures as she held them
out for her friend to see. “I thought I was photographing beavers in the
dark, but look what I took!”