LIKE A FAIRY TALE
Her nerves taxed to the breaking point, Judy gave up searching for the
day and went to the office. Emily Grimshaw was not there but she had
left a message:
_Will be away for a time and leave you in charge._
“Me in charge!” Judy exclaimed. She couldn’t imagine herself conducting
Emily Grimshaw’s business sensibly. “I’ll just close up for the day,”
she decided in exasperation. Leaving a notice to that effect at the
hotel desk, she locked the office and started for Dr. Faulkner’s house.
In the entrance hall she was met by an anxious group of faces. Dale’s,
Pauline’s—and Peter’s.
“Judy!” he cried, and then when her only answer was a choked sob,
again, “Judy!”
“Oh, Peter! You’ll help?”
“That’s why I’m here. We telephoned _every_where. We thought you’d
never come.”
“Where on earth were you?” Dale asked.
“Hunting for Irene,” Judy explained brokenly. “I—I followed up a clue.
I thought I knew where Irene was and I went out there to get her to—to
bring her home and surprise you, but she wasn’t there.”
“Wasn’t _where_?”
“Where I thought she was ... the most awful place just off Gravesend
Avenue out in old Parkville. The—the house has a tower, just like the
tower in Sarah Glenn’s poems. It’s burned halfway up and—and—and——”
“And what, Judy? Don’t act so frightened.”
“There was something in the tower,” she blurted out, “something
yellow——”
“Probably a yellow dog or some such ordinary thing,” Pauline
interrupted.
“Oh, but it wasn’t! I saw it as plainly as anything, and it looked like
a woman in a yellow robe, only she was too tall and too thin to be
real. Then I looked again and she was gone but I could still feel her
watching me. It was awful! I didn’t think there could be a tower of
flame or a ghost, but there they were!” Judy leaned back against the
closed door and threw both hands outward in a gesture of bewilderment.
“And I always thought I was a practical person. I always trusted my own
head—and eyes.”
Impulsively, Peter caught her hands in his. His voice was husky. “I
still trust them, Judy. Tell me everything,” he pleaded. “I know you
must have had a good reason for thinking that Irene might be in this
queer old house. Why did you?”
“Because Irene looks so much like the poet’s daughter, Joy Holiday. I
thought they might be related. Mr. Lang spoke of Irene’s relatives. He
told her to look them up. But the poet is crazy! Anything might happen!”
“And yet you went there alone!” Peter exclaimed. “Don’t you realize
that whatever happened to Irene might have happened to you?”
“I did realize it—when I got there,” Judy faltered. “I—I guess I
wasn’t very brave to run away, but nobody seemed to live in the house.
It looked—empty.”
“Then, of course, Irene couldn’t be there,” Pauline concluded.
“Oh, but they might have moved—_and taken her with them_!” Judy turned
to Peter, a new fear in her eyes. “You know about law. Tell me, if
Irene is related to Sarah Glenn wouldn’t she inherit some of her
property?”
“That depends upon the will,” he replied. “If she made a will before
she went insane——”
“She did!” Judy interrupted. “She willed the property to her daughter
and, in the event of her death, it was to go to her brother, Jasper
Crosby. He’s a crook and a scoundrel,” she declared, “worse than
Slippery McQuirk or any of Vine Thompson’s gang, if I’m any judge of
character. You see, if Irene is related to the poet through Joy
Holiday, how convenient it would be for him to have her out of the way?”
“You mean that Joy Holiday might have been Irene’s mother?”
“She couldn’t have been,” Pauline spoke up. “Joy Holiday has been dead
for twenty years.”
“Supposedly! Her mother never did believe the body was hers, and even
Emily Grimshaw says it didn’t look like her.”
“Where’d they get the body?” Peter asked.
“Jasper Crosby went to the morgue and got it. He identified it as
Joy’s, and people paid no attention to his sister’s objections because
they knew she was insane.”
“Then this girl, Joy Holiday, is legally dead. But if we can prove that
there has been a fraud....”
“What fraud?” Dale questioned. “You don’t mean to tell us that this
Jasper Crosby may have falsely identified some unknown girl’s body in
order to inherit his sister’s property?”
“That’s exactly what I was trying to say. I don’t know anything about
Irene’s mother and neither does she. Mr. Lang only remembered the name,
Annie, and that, as well as Joy, may have been only a nickname.” Judy
turned to Peter. “I know how you felt when your parents were a mystery.
Well, wouldn’t Irene feel the same way? Her father gave away some
family history in his letter, and Irene was more impressed than we know
by Emily Grimshaw’s collapse. Remember, I wrote you about it, Peter?
She wanted to find out about her mother——”
“Then she did take the poetry,” Pauline put in.
“Yes,” Judy agreed. “I’m afraid she did. It’s a terrible thing not to
know the truth about one’s parents, and Irene must have taken the
poetry to help her find that horrible house that seems to have
swallowed her up.”
“She said she didn’t,” Dale maintained.
Judy felt suddenly ashamed that his trust in Irene should be greater
than hers. But if, distrusting her, Judy found her, then she could be
glad of her disbelief.
“There is another possibility,” she ventured and made her voice sound
more hopeful than she felt. “There is the possibility that Irene may be
safe in the poet’s house.”
“That sounds more plausible,” Dale agreed, “but you said the house was
empty.”
“I said it _looked_ empty, except for that unearthly thing in the
tower. But, now that I think of it, something alive must have been
there to pull the shades. Do you suppose,” Judy asked in a tremulous
whisper, “that somebody could be locked there like Joy Holiday was when
she vanished?”
“It sounds like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? But not,” Peter added
gravely, “if Irene is in the tower. Judy, we must do something—and do
it quickly.”
It did not take him long to decide what that something would be. “We’ll
get a policeman to go with us,” he declared. “The police have a right
to force their way into a house if nobody answers.”
“Without a search warrant?” questioned Pauline.
“That’s the dickens of it,” Dale fumed. “There’s sure to be some red
tape attached to it and loss of time may mean—loss of Irene. We’ve got
to convince the police that this is a matter of life and death!”
A taxi was the quickest means of getting to the police station. It took
considerable explaining, however, to convince officials that the case
was urgent. The fact that the owner of the house was known to be insane
and that Irene might be held there against her will proved to be the
strongest argument in favor of the search warrant they requested. But
it could not be served until the following day.
“You have to go before a magistrate,” Lieutenant Collins explained,
“and night warrants are allowed only in cases where persons or property
are positively known to be in the place to be searched. However, there
are several ways of getting around that. If a felony has been
committed, as in the present case, we don’t need a warrant.”
“What felony?” Judy asked.
“Great guns!” he exclaimed. “Don’t you call kidnaping a felony? If the
girl’s held there against her will it’s a plain case of kidnaping!”
Judy hadn’t thought of that. Kidnapers and killers were almost
synonymous in her mind and the thought was terrifying.
Lieutenant Collins wasted no further time but called the Parkville
Precinct, and two policemen were detailed to meet Judy, Pauline, Dale
and Peter and accompany them to the house with the crumbling tower.
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