An Everlasting Thing
There was no holding Judy back after that. She seized the boy by the
tail of his T-shirt while Danny turned on him.
“I know you, Buck Lester,” he announced. “You ran away from the
orphanage two years ago. What’d you come back for and where’d you find
that lady stick?”
The boy seemed frightened by the question.
“What’s it to you, Danny?” he asked, not looking at Judy or Horace.
“I’ve got a job, and I have to do what my boss tells me.”
“Did your boss tell you to throw that thing in the water?” Judy asked.
“It’s a valuable table leg. Don’t you know the whole table’s over there
in that house?” Judy waved her hand toward the house with the boarded-up
windows.
“That’s my house. My father’s there,” Danny began, but a voice stopped
him.
“No, son, I’m right here,” Mr. Anderson said, coming through the trees.
“I can’t take you home until the police have hauled all that stolen
stuff back to Roulsville where the owners can claim it. But we can go
and see Ma, as you call her in your letters. How would you like it if
she became your real mother and we were a family again?”
Danny hesitated a moment. Then he said, without emotion, “I’d like it
fine.”
They looked at each other then, and the years they had been separated
seemed to evaporate like the morning mist over the pond. With his arm
around his son, George Anderson turned to Judy.
“I guess I owe you an apology,” he began, but she interrupted.
“No, Mr. Anderson. I owe you one. I should have known those thieves had
taken over your house without your permission. Did they come back?”
“They certainly did. I was warned to keep out of the way, but there
wasn’t any shooting. Your husband and the other FBI agent got there just
in time to relieve the Earl, as he calls himself, of his gun. Without it
he was nothing.”
“He’s my boss,” the runaway boy spoke up defiantly.
“_Was_,” Horace said. “He won’t be any more. Why don’t you give me the
whole story? How did you get mixed up in this racket? You’re the boy who
took that green car the other day and came back with a typewriter,
aren’t you?”
“Yeah, the boss wanted one in a hurry. He had some letters to write.”
“And so he told you to go out and steal one?”
“Yeah, that was my job. If he told me to get anything I went out and got
it. I didn’t ask questions. He’d cased that house and spotted some other
stuff he wanted, too, but I didn’t have time to pick it up. The boss
understood. He ain’t a bad guy.”
“Boy, you have a lot to learn,” Horace commented, shaking his head.
It was Danny who retrieved the lady stick, as he called it. He went into
the pond after it before anyone could stop him and came out dripping
wet.
“See, it isn’t hurt much,” he announced, presenting it to Judy. “The
lady’s got a couple of tooth marks in her cheek, and the end where the
leg screws into the table is chewed a little, but we can fix that, can’t
we, Dad?”
“I’m not much good at fixing damaged furniture,” his father confessed.
“The business I had in mind was raising chickens. As soon as we get you
dried out we’ll start making plans. How about it, son? Would you like to
go into partnership with me?”
“I’ll have to ask Ma,” Danny protested. “Let’s go and find her.”
“She won’t be hard to find. The Jewell sisters are expecting her for
tea. I think raising chickens is a wonderful idea,” declared Judy. “Oh!
Here comes Peter.”
Peter had seen Judy from the house where the boards had already been
removed from one window. “It’s safe to come in now,” he told her, “but
I’m glad you weren’t here an hour ago when the Earl drove up. He saw us
and started to run, but we nabbed him and disarmed him. Meantime the boy
in the car with him ran off—”
“But not very far,” Horace interrupted, emerging from the woods with
Buck Lester in tow. “We caught him throwing this in the beaver pond.”
Peter stared at the object they were carrying between them as if he
couldn’t believe his eyes. Then he turned to the boy. “The FBI can use
all the information you can give us,” he began.
“You’re too late, G-man. I already gave it to this newspaper guy,” Buck
informed him. “He’s going to put my picture in the paper—”
“You’re wrong there,” Horace stopped him. “When you grow up a bit you
won’t want that kind of publicity. How old are you?”
“Fifteen,” he replied, “not that it’s any of your business.”
Peter looked him over appraisingly. “That’s good. I think we can still
make something of this boy.”
Danny and his father walked on ahead, going home at last. The others
came more slowly, taking turns carrying the lady table leg. It was badly
in need of refinishing and yet, somehow, when it was placed beside the
other three table legs, Judy liked it best.
“I think I’ll leave that tooth mark in the lady’s face,” she decided.
“It gives her more character. The other three faces are too quiet and
patient, but this one looks as if she’d _lived_. Do you think Dad will
mind?”
“Mind!” exclaimed Horace. “He’ll be delighted.”
Before another week had passed, a great many pieces that belonged to Dr.
Bolton were found. Among them was his fruitwood bench, but that was
located in one of the exclusive shops in Mr. Truitt’s chain. The shop
was over the state line in Wellsville.
Donna Truitt and Hank Lawson, the FBI agent she had dated, were both
invited to Judy’s party. The house was still filled with babies as Judy
and Peter had agreed to keep them until Mr. and Mrs. George Anderson
returned from their honeymoon.
It would be a strange honeymoon, the crowd at the party agreed, as they
had taken Danny with them on a cruise to some romantic island and would
return to turn their house into another orphans’ home, complete with
chicken farm.
“Danny will find plenty of wild things to watch, but I don’t think he’ll
see any beavers on a tropical island,” Peter commented as he handed
around Judy’s beaver pictures. Some of them had appeared in the
_Farringdon Daily Herald_ to illustrate Horace’s news stories. The
picture of the man with the lady’s face had caused a real sensation.
“The mistakes you make are better than the things some people do on
purpose,” declared Holly, whose interest in writing had waned only to
flare up again when her typewriter was returned. Now she was writing
notes to Roger and tearing them up before he saw them.
Judy met Roger for the first time that evening. She could see why Holly
was attracted to him. He had brought his banjo to the party and knew all
the song hits.
“Come on, everybody,” he said. “Sing along with Roger. Have you got the
beat?”
Judy thought of the honeymooners, then back to her own wedding day as
they sang:
“Love’s not a sudden romance
Or the kiss that follows a dance.
Love is forever, an everlasting thing.
Love is a golden ring.”
After the first chorus, the song went on and on, verse after verse. But
Judy was no longer thinking back. She was thinking ahead to her next
mystery, although she had not yet found THE HIDDEN CLUE among the few
things that had been saved from the orphanage fire. Tonight she was glad
to forget the fire and enjoy her party, but something was wrong.
“I haven’t set enough places,” she observed as her friends gathered
around the party table. “There are five places for Donna and Lois and
the others on that side. Horace and Honey are to sit here, Holly and
Roger here, but where is my place?”
“Right beside mine,” declared Peter, coming up behind her with an extra
place setting. “Move over, everybody! Judy was so busy setting places
for everyone else that she forgot her own.”
“Just another little mistake,” Judy explained cheerfully as she began to
cut the cake.
Transcriber’s Notes
--Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public
domain in the country of publication.
--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and
dialect unchanged.
--In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the
HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)
End of Project Gutenberg's The Puzzle in the Pond, by Margaret Sutton