Chapter IX: More Puzzles

Judy was trying to think of an answer to her brother’s question when she noticed the headlights of another car just over the hilltop. It was the last hill before they came down into Dry Brook Hollow.

“It’s the Beetle!” she exclaimed as it slowed down and came to a standstill close by Horace’s car. Judy was surprised to see Blackberry in his usual place next to the back window. Peter was driving.

Judy was out of Horace’s car in a flash.

“Here I am, Peter! Were you looking for me?” she asked, running toward him.

“That,” declared Peter, “is the understatement of the year. I practically searched the whole woods.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t wait. Were you all alone?” Judy asked anxiously.

“Not at first,” Peter replied. “There were two of us in the official car, but the other agent left as soon as I spotted the Beetle. He didn’t think I’d have any trouble finding you, but he was wrong. I was about to wake the Jewell sisters and question them when I discovered that woods road and decided we’d missed each other and Horace had driven you home.”

“So you drove all the way back only to find nobody there,” Judy anticipated.

“Nobody but a hungry cat. Red had been there, as usual, to take care of the barn chores, but he forgot Blackberry. He jumped in the car and went along to help me hunt,” Peter continued. “We were on our way back to the beaver dam.”

“Were you there before? Did you see the beavers?” Holly questioned from Horace’s car.

Peter said he hadn’t been looking for beavers. He was looking for Judy.

“I’ll take Holly home,” Horace volunteered. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Sis, unless you’ve changed your mind about going back to visit your lady.”

“I haven’t. Want to come with us, Holly?” Judy asked.

“I wish I could,” she replied, “but I promised Ruth I’d baby sit while she does some shopping in Roulsville. She’ll take your films if you want her to. There’s a place right next to the library where you get fast service. I’ll look for old calendars and cards among Uncle David’s things if you want me to.”

“I do. I’d be glad to have anything you can find. Day after tomorrow you can help me arrange the exhibit. Will the films be ready by then?” Judy wondered.

Holly felt sure they would. “I can’t wait to hear what you and Horace find out about that lady. Maybe she won’t look so spooky in the daytime.”

“More likely she won’t be there at all,” Horace said as they drove away.

“What was all this about a spooky lady?” Peter asked curiously, as he turned the Beetle around.

Judy told him. It sounded still more unbelievable in the telling. As soon as they reached the house Peter brought out a map to show her how impossible it was for any of the furniture that had been washed away in the Roulsville flood to be carried anywhere near the beaver dam.

“You see how these rivers flow. Dry Brook empties into Roulsville Run, really the first fork of the Sinnamehoning—”

“But the Sinnamehoning has a lot of forks,” Judy protested, studying the map.

“True,” Peter admitted, “but none of them are anywhere near the beaver dam. Anything washed down by the flood would have ended up south of Roulsville, not away to the north. Are you quite sure of what you saw?”

“It certainly looked like the leg of our lady table,” declared Judy, “but I won’t be really sure until I see it by daylight. Horace wouldn’t believe me, either, but he did agree to go back there with me tomorrow. I wish you could come with us, Peter. There’s an orphanage just over the hill, and if that boy is still missing—”

“What boy?” asked Peter. “You didn’t tell me anything about a missing boy.”

“His name is Danny. That’s all I know. We were asked to watch for him on our way home.”

“I’ll check and see if he returned. Unofficially, of course. I’ll be in the neighborhood.”

“So will I,” declared Judy.

Peter advised her to wait until another day when he could go with her, but she promised to be careful.

“I won’t fall in the pond, if that’s what you’re afraid of,” she told him. “I’ll just walk out there on the beaver dam and make sure of what I saw.”

Finally Peter was persuaded. In the morning he drove Judy to Farringdon. She was in the Post Office looking at the faces of the men wanted by the FBI when Horace walked in and greeted her.

“I thought I’d find you here,” he remarked dryly. “See anyone you know?”

“Of course not,” Judy replied with a laugh. “It’s Peter’s job to hunt for these men, not mine.”

“But you would like to help him find them, wouldn’t you, Sis?”

“Well, that depends.” Judy studied the row of faces for a moment, memorizing every feature. Then she pointed to one of three who were wanted for flight to avoid prosecution. “He doesn’t look like a criminal, does he?” she asked.

“None of them do,” declared Horace. “They make it their business not to look like criminals. They don’t want to be caught.”

“They will be.” Judy had boundless faith in Peter and his associates. “The FBI will find them. Look at that artist who works with Honey. He doesn’t know it, but he’s being watched every minute in the hope that he will try and communicate with others of his gang who are still at large. He will, too. Peter says there’s a pattern of behavior most criminals follow. He wasn’t sure we ought to go back to the beaver dam.”

“Why on earth not?” Horace asked in bewilderment.

“He says it may be dangerous. That furniture wasn’t carried all the way from Roulsville by beavers,” declared Judy. “There was some looting after the flood, and I think that’s how the lady table came to be there.”

“I don’t get it,” Horace said.

“Neither do I,” Judy admitted, “but Peter wants you to check with him before you print anything. I may have some pictures for you, too.”

“I doubt it,” Horace answered. “You were too late to snap those beavers we saw.”

“But I had my camera focused on the pond, and I did snap quite a few pictures in the dark. Holly is taking the film to Roulsville today. Tomorrow we’ll see what kind of pictures I took,” Judy promised as she followed her brother out to the street where his coffee-colored convertible was waiting.

A ride in Horace’s car was always exciting. He had the top down so that they seemed to be racing the wind. In almost no time they were passing the sheared-off house where Mr. Sammis bought and sold antiques.

“Some of the furniture in his shop had been left out in the rain,” Judy remembered. “Anyway, he claimed it had, but I’m beginning to wonder. He had a green car in his driveway, but he said it had been parked there all day and, Horace, he accused me of breaking a table that he knocked over himself.”

“Pleasant sort, wasn’t he? Naturally, you didn’t find Holly’s typewriter?”

“No, but that doesn’t prove it wasn’t hidden away somewhere. The shop was so crowded he wouldn’t accept anything more. We left him quarreling with a man named John Beer. Anyway, that was the name lettered on his truck,” Judy finished.

The conversation turned to rivers as they crossed the watershed. Judy was convinced, by now, that the lady table couldn’t have been carried this far north by the flood. She shivered when she thought of that patient face in the water. Would it still be there, or had she only imagined she saw a face?

“Well, here we are,” Horace announced.

Judy had been so absorbed in her own thoughts that she hadn’t noticed the orphanage as they passed it. They had come to the end of the road.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, looking about her in surprise. There was the house with the boarded-up windows, just as Meta Hanley had described it.

“These trees sort of block our way,” Horace remarked as the car squeezed through a narrow space between two evergreens that rained prickly needles. More trees were missed by inches. They reached the beaver dam in a surprisingly short time. Judy was out of the car first.

“Now you’ll see,” she called over her shoulder. “Right here is where we saw the beavers last night, and there!” She pointed, and Horace whistled in surprise.

“Whew-ee!” he breathed. “She’s there all right, and she is the same lady. That beaver dam looks solid. I think, if we go out there together, we can pull her out of the water. You hold me, and I’ll pull.”

“I promised Peter I wouldn’t—” Judy started to object. But Horace was already walking out on the beaver dam.

“We’ve got to do it, Sis. We can’t leave the poor damsel in distress. Just hold me so I won’t fall in.”

There was no stopping him, Judy thought, but he could wait until she had brushed the needles out of her hair.

“Wait!”

Judy turned her head in surprise. She hadn’t spoken. At first she couldn’t tell where the voice came from.

“Don’t touch that lady!” the voice warned again.

It sounded as if the trees themselves were warning Horace. He was so startled that he lost his balance and fell headlong into the pond.