DALE’S HEROINE
Two weeks later Dale Meredith came into Emily Grimshaw’s office and
under his arm he carried a new book manuscript. It was the day that
Pauline took over Judy’s position—with her father’s consent. Dr.
Faulkner was home now, as busy and professional as ever. But he had not
been too busy to listen to the smallest detail of Irene’s remarkable
story. She wanted his advice as a brain specialist. Was it fair with
insanity in the family——
Dr. Faulkner had not let her finish the sentence. Of course it was
fair. Sarah Glenn had once been a patient of his and he declared that
she was only slightly eccentric—not insane until her brother had
driven her to it.
“And don’t you know that this type of insanity cannot be inherited?” he
had asked Irene. “There’s no need to worry your pretty head about that.
Under the same conditions, perhaps. But those conditions cannot exist
with Jasper Crosby in prison. And do quit calling him Uncle Jasper.
He’s no blood relation, only a stepbrother, and Glenn was really your
grandmother’s maiden name.”
“Oh, Father, if you had only been home before!” Pauline had exclaimed.
The doctor had smiled that rare smile of his. “Dr. Bolton’s daughter
did wonders without me,” he had said.
Then Pauline knew that her father would not object to Judy’s plans for
her. He hadn’t wanted her to work before. Now it pleased him to know
she was filling Judy’s position.
* * * * *
“You’ve been working hard, Dale,” Pauline said, glancing up from the
manuscript he had just given her. She was seated at her new desk,
looking very professional.
Judy stood beside the table straightening out a few of her things as
she wanted to leave the office in perfect order.
But Dale Meredith expected these girls to show more than a professional
interest in his story. He had put his heart into it—and his experience.
Judy smiled. “Is it another detective story?”
“It’s the greatest detective story you’ll ever read. The detective is a
sixteen-year-old girl.”
“Sounds interesting. What does she look like?”
For answer Dale walked over to the little mirror where Judy usually
stood to arrange her hat. He took it down from the wall and held it so
that Judy’s bright hair and clear gray eyes were reflected in its
surface.
“There! That’s my detective. Irene is the heroine. She has the original
manuscript reading it now. Our whole future depends on what she thinks
of the ending.”
“Really, Dale? Is it as serious as that?”
“It was serious enough for me to invest in this. Do you think she’ll
like it?”
He took from his pocket a tiny square box. Opening it, he displayed a
ring that would, had Judy known it, play an important part in another
mystery that she was to solve. It was a beautiful thing. Beautiful
chiefly because it was so simple, just a solitaire set in a gold band
and decorated with almost invisible orange blossoms.
“I even had it engraved,” he said and then blushed, a thing Judy had
never known Dale Meredith to do before.
“I don’t know why I’m showing it to you girls,” he said. “Perhaps I
shouldn’t. She might rather show it herself.”
Snapping shut the lid, he put it hastily back in his pocket. He stood
as if waiting for something.
“I’ll be almost afraid to read your story if it’s all true, Dale,” Judy
said. “It will be so much like—like—” She floundered for a word.
“Like spying on me?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, it isn’t all true—only the important part. You’ll both read it,
won’t you?”
“Of course we’ll read it. That’s what we’re being paid for, isn’t it,
Pauline?”
The book was a revelation. Dale had made a murder mystery out of the
very thing that had happened to Irene. Jasper Crosby’s scheme to wreck
the tower had worked in the story, killing the grandmother instead of
Irene. The names were different. But for that Judy saw herself moving
through the pages of his story, playing the part of the clever girl
detective. She saw Pauline’s faults depicted. All the petty jealousies
she had felt were revealed, used to cast suspicion upon her and then
excused, baring the real girl underneath. The Golden Girl of Dale’s
story was Irene in her mother’s dress. Dale, himself, was the narrator
and the suspense, the worry and, finally, the romance of the story were
things he had felt and written with feeling. Judy found a new and
lovelier Irene in Dale’s description of her. She marveled that he
understood every one of them so well. The boys came, appropriately, at
the end and, through it all, the spark of humor was the literary agent.
When Emily Grimshaw came in neither Judy nor Pauline looked up. They
did not hear her enter the room. Finally she stood over them and spoke
in a sharp tone.
“What’s this you’re reading? Didn’t I tell you to get done with your
typewriting first? Letters are important but manuscripts can always
wait to be read.”
“This one can’t,” Judy replied, smiling up at her employer. “This is
Dale Meredith’s new detective story. Irene is the heroine, Pauline one
of the suspects and I am the detective.”
“So! And I suppose I am the criminal.”
Judy startled the old lady by kissing her.
“You are your own sweet self, Miss Grimshaw. It will surprise you what
a lovable person you are. Why don’t you read the book and get
acquainted?”
Turning pages broke the silence in the office all that day. Clients
that came in were hastily dismissed. Other work waited. Dale Meredith
had written life itself in the pages of a book that would make him
famous.
He called for the girls at five o’clock.
“What did you think of it?” He asked when they failed to mention his
work.
“Wonderful!” Pauline breathed.
“And you, Judy?”
“I’m still filled with it,” she replied, “too much to talk. Anyway, I’m
going home and there won’t be time to talk. Irene is going also.”
“Why on earth?”
“Because Peter has promised to take her in his car.”
“He’s been taking her out a good deal lately,” Dale said, his brow
darkening.
“Why shouldn’t he?” Pauline asked. “Peter is a nice boy and Irene needs
somebody to help her plan things.”
“She knows I’d be glad to help her.”
“I’m sure she does. But she needs Peter’s legal advice,” Judy
explained. “He says the chief thing they talk about is what to do with
Sarah Glenn’s house. Irene says she wants to live in it.”
“Alone?” Pauline asked.
“No, with her father. He’s still depending on her and she is so glad to
be able to take care of him the way she’s always wanted to. His room is
to be that big sunny one in the front of the house. There’s room for
Irene’s piano in it and he loves to hear her play. But the tower room
she wants kept just the way her mother had it. Oh, she’s talked of it
so much—even to selecting the kind of flowers she wants in the garden.”
“She told me,” Dale said, but his simple remark set Judy wondering how
much they had told each other. It seemed strange for little Irene to be
having a real romance. She was so young! Too young, Judy would have
thought if she had not realized how much Irene needed the love and
sense of security that a man like Dale Meredith could give her.
Bright-eyed and smiling, Irene looked the part of a heroine when she
met them at the door. Dale promptly took possession of her and, for an
hour, nothing more was heard from either of them except a low murmur of
voices on the roof garden.
In the meantime Arthur had arrived dressed in his flying gear and ready
to take Judy home. She and her cat were both to fly with him in his
open plane.
It was decided that Irene would ride with Horace in Peter’s car and
stay with the Dobbs family while she was in Farringdon. That short stay
was to be more eventful than she knew, for her fortune was to be told
in “The Mystic Ball.” But now she was content to plan for the future
without it. She and Dale fully expected to come back and live in Tower
House, for that was what they had named it.
“We named it that,” Irene said. “Dale and I.”
“It sounds romantic,” Judy answered. “May I come and visit?”
“You certainly may. And you must come for the celebration.”
“You mean the housewarming as soon as you and your father have Tower
House fixed up?”
Irene’s eyes danced. “Oh, no! Dale’s supervising that. I mean
celebrating the success of his new book. I read it today. And it will
be a success,” she said softly. “Thanks to you, Judy, it’s all true,
even the happy ending.”
THE END
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Transcriber's Notes
page 23 - added closing double quote "DISCUSS TERMS MONDAY"
page 44 - joined "breath" and "takingly" across line break
And Irene was breath
takingly lovely in the new dress.
page 88 - added a period at the end of the sentence
"It really would be better to notify the police"
page 117 - added a period at the end of the sentence
"Perhaps the two descriptions were the same"