_The Famous_ JUDY BOLTON _Mystery Stories_
By MARGARET SUTTON
_In Order of Publication_
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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
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[Illustration: JUDY GLANCED AT JASPER CROSBY; HE WAS
WATCHING HER LIKE A CAT.
_The Yellow Phantom_]
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=A JUDY BOLTON MYSTERY=
THE YELLOW
PHANTOM
BY
MARGARET SUTTON
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
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COPYRIGHT, 1933, BY
GROSSET & DUNLAP, INC.
_All Rights Reserved_
_Printed in the United States of America_
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_To My Mother and Father._
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I A MYSTERIOUS TELEGRAM 1
II IRENE’S DISCOVERY 11
III A DARING SCHEME 22
IV HOW THE SCHEME WORKED 27
V THE TEST 32
VI THE NEW YELLOW GOWN 40
VII EMILY GRIMSHAW SEES THINGS 46
VIII THE MISSING POEMS 53
IX SUSPICIONS 61
X DEDUCTIONS 67
XI WHILE THE ORCHESTRA PLAYED 72
XII IRENE’S BIRTHDAY 79
XIII WAITING 87
XIV THE IMMORTAL JOY HOLIDAY 93
XV FALSE ASSURANCE 98
XVI OVER THE RADIO 107
XVII THE ONLY ANSWER 116
XVIII IN THE TOWER WINDOW 121
XIX LIKE A FAIRY TALE 127
XX THE SCENT OF ROSES 135
XXI ANOTHER JULIET 145
XXII TRAPPED 154
XXIII TO THE RESCUE 163
XXIV PREMONITION 171
XXV THE HAPPY ENDING 178
XXVI HER MAJESTY ARRIVES 187
XXVII WHO TOOK THE MANUSCRIPT? 198
XXVIII DALE’S HEROINE 202
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CHAPTER I
A MYSTERIOUS TELEGRAM
“Goodbye, Judy! Goodbye, Irene! Don’t like New York so well that you
won’t want to come home!”
“Don’t keep them too long, Pauline! Farringdon will be as dead as so
many bricks without them. Even the cats will miss Blackberry. Make him
wave his paw, Judy!”
“Don’t forget to write!”
“Goodbye, Pauline! Goodbye, Judy! Goodbye, Irene!”
“Goodbye! Goodbye!”
And Peter’s car was off, bearing the last load of campers back to their
home town.
Judy Bolton watched them out of sight. They were taking the familiar
road, but she and Irene Lang would soon be traveling in the other
direction. Pauline Faulkner had invited them for a visit, including
Judy’s cat in the invitation, and they were going back with her to New
York.
A long blue bus hove into view, and all three girls hailed it, at first
expectantly, then frantically when they saw it was not stopping. It
slowed down a few feet ahead of them, but when they attempted to board
it the driver eyed Blackberry with disapproval.
“Can’t take the cat unless he’s in a crate.”
“He’s good,” Judy began. “He won’t be any trouble——”
“Can’t help it. Company’s rules.” And he was about to close the door
when Judy’s quick idea saved the situation.
“All right, he’s _in a crate_,” she declared with vigor as she thrust
the cat inside her own pretty hatbox. The hats she hastily removed and
bundled under one arm.
The driver had to give in. He even grinned a bit sheepishly as the
girls took their seats, Pauline and Irene together, “Because,” Judy
insisted as she took the seat just behind them, “I have Blackberry.”
The other passengers on the bus were regarding the newcomers with
amused interest. A ten-year-old boy brought forth a ball of twine and
rolled it playfully in Blackberry’s direction. An old lady made purring
noises through her lips. Everyone seemed to be nodding and smiling.
Everyone except the serious young man across the aisle. He never turned
his head.
Judy nudged the two friends in the seat ahead of her and confided a
desire to do something—anything to make him look up.
“Why, Judy,” Irene replied, shocked. “I’ve been watching that man
myself and he’s—he’s——”
“Well, what?”
“Almost my ideal.”
“Silly!” Judy laughed. “I’d like to bet he wouldn’t be so ideal if I
did something to disturb those precious papers that he’s reading.”
“I dare you!” Pauline said.
Sixteen or not, the dare tempted Judy. It was an easy matter to let
Blackberry out of the hatbox in her arms and down into the aisle. The
cat’s plumelike tail did the rest.
The man looked up. But, to Judy’s surprise, he looked up with a smile.
Irene, all contrition, hastened to apologize.
“No harm done,” he returned good-naturedly and began collecting his
scattered papers. Soon he had them rearranged and resumed his reading.
There were a great many typewritten sheets of paper, and he seemed to
be reading critically, scratching out something here and adding
something there.
“You were wrong,” Irene said, turning to Judy. “See how nice he was.”
“I should have known better than to dare a girl like you,” Pauline put
in.
“It was horrid of me,” Judy admitted, now almost as interested as Irene
in the strange young man. Not because he was Judy’s ideal—a man who
wouldn’t notice a cat until its tail bumped into him—but because the
papers on his lap might be important. And she had disturbed them.
The man, apparently unaware that the accident had been anybody’s fault,
continued reading and correcting. Judy watched her cat carefully until
the stack of papers was safely inside his portfolio again.
“That’s finished,” he announced as though speaking to himself. He
screwed the top on his fountain pen, placed it in his pocket and then
turned to the girls. “Nice scenery, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” Judy replied, laughing, “but you didn’t seem to be paying
much attention to it.”
“I’ve been over this road a great many times,” he explained, “and one
does tire of scenery, like anything else. Passengers in the bus are
different.”
“You mean different from scenery?”
“Yes, and from each other. For instance, you with your ridiculous cat
and your golden-haired friend who apologized for you and that small,
dark girl are three distinct types.”
Judy regarded him curiously. She had never thought of herself or either
of the other girls as “types.” Now she tried to analyze his meaning.
Their lives had certainly been different. Judy and Pauline, although of
independent natures, had always felt the security of dependence upon
their parents while Irene’s crippled father depended solely upon her.
This responsibility made her seem older than her years—older and
younger, too. She never could acquire Pauline’s poise or Judy’s
fearlessness.
In appearance, too, they were different. Her first vacation had done
wonders for Irene Lang. Now her usually pale cheeks glowed with healthy
color, and her eyes were a deeper, happier blue. Two weeks of sunshine
had tanned her skin and brought out all the gold in her hair.
Pauline, too, had acquired a becoming tan which made her hair look
darker than ever and contrasted strangely with her keen, light blue
eyes.
The sun had not been quite so kind to Judy. It had discovered a few
faint freckles on her nose and given her hair a decided reddish cast.
But Judy didn’t mind. Camp life had been exciting—boating, swimming
and, as a climax, a thrilling ride in Arthur Farringdon-Pett’s new
airplane.
The young man beside Judy was a little like Arthur in appearance—tall,
good-looking but altogether too grown-up and serious. Judy liked boys
to make jokes now and then, even tease the way her brother, Horace,
did. Peter teased her, too.
“Queer,” she thought, “to miss being teased.”
This stranger seemed to like serious-minded people and presently
changed the conversation to books and music, always favorite topics
with Irene. Then Judy spoke about the work that he was doing but
learned nothing except that “finished” in his case meant that he had
succeeded in putting his papers back in their original sequence.
“And if you girls were all of the same type,” he added, “I doubt if I
would have forgiven you your prank.”
“I guess he doesn’t care for my type,” Judy whispered to the other two
girls a little later.
“Mine either,” Pauline returned with a laugh. “At least he wouldn’t if
he knew I dared you.”
“Do you suppose,” Irene asked naïvely, “that he cares for my type?”
She looked very pathetic as she said that, and Judy, remembering
Irene’s misfortunes, slid into the seat beside her and put a loving arm
about her shoulder.
“I care for your type,” she said. “So why worry about what a stranger
thinks?”
“I’m not,” Irene said, belying her answer with a wistful look in the
stranger’s direction. He was still absorbed in the mountain of
typewritten pages that he held on his knee. It seemed that his work,
whatever it was, engrossed him completely. He was again making
corrections and additions with his pen. Judy noticed a yellow slip of
paper on the seat beside him and called the other girls’ attention to
it.
“It looks like a telegram,” she whispered, “and he keeps referring to
it.”
“Telegrams are usually bad news,” Irene replied.
The young man sat a little distance away from them and, to all
appearances, had forgotten their existence. Girl-like, they discussed
him, imagining him as everything from a politician to a cub reporter,
finally deciding that, since he lived in Greenwich Village, he must be
an artist. Irene said she liked to think of him as talented. A dreamer,
she would have called him, if it had not been for his practical
interest in the business at hand—those papers and that telegram.
It was dark by the time they reached New York. The passengers were
restless and eager to be out of the bus. The young man hastily crammed
his typewritten work into his portfolio and Judy noticed, just as the
bus stopped, that he had forgotten the telegram. She and Irene both
made a dive for it with the unfortunate result that when they stood up
again each of them held a torn half of the yellow slip.
“Just our luck!” exclaimed Irene. “Now we can’t return it to him.
Anyway, he’s gone.”
“We could piece it together,” Pauline suggested, promptly suiting her
actions to her words. When the two jagged edges were fitted against
each other, this is what the astonished girls read:
DALE MEREDITH
PLEASANT VALLEY PA
CUT ART SHOP ROBBERY STOP FIFTY THOUSAND
IS PLENTY STOP ONE MAN MURDERED INTERESTS
RANDALL STOP DISCUSS TERMS MONDAY
EMILY GRIMSHAW
Irene was the first to finish reading.
“Good heavens! What would _he_ know about robbery and murder?” she
exclaimed, staring first at the telegram in Pauline’s hand and then at
the empty seat across the aisle.
“Why, nothing that I can think of. He didn’t seem like a crook. The
telegram may be in code,” Pauline mused as she handed the torn pieces
to Judy. “I like his name—Dale Meredith.”
“So do I. But Emily Grimshaw——”
“All out! Last stop!” the bus driver was calling. “Take care of that
cat,” he said with a chuckle as he helped the girls with their
suitcases.
They were still wondering about the strange telegram as they made their
way through the crowd on Thirty-fourth Street.
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