Chapter XIV: Together

Judy and Peter set out early the next morning to take the “ghost picture,” as they both called it, to Farringdon and leave it for the experts to figure out. Judy kept the original print. New prints would be made from the film. They would be flashed on a screen both before and after being separated. Peter would see them, but Judy knew she would not be included in the secret work of identifying the unknown man. It was enough to be included in Peter’s plans for the day.

“Officially, we’re supposed to question Danny. We’ll stop at the orphanage first and then drive on to the beaver dam.” Peter began making plans. “Meantime the experts will be unscrambling that picture—”

“And I’ll be taking a few more,” Judy broke in. “This time I intend to see what I’m taking.”

It was a bright, sunny day. The ride out of Dry Brook Hollow over the hills and down again into Farringdon was pleasant and uneventful. The little city hadn’t changed the way Roulsville had. There was a new high school because the old one had burned, and a new post office simply because it was needed. The library was the same red brick building Judy had learned to love when she went to the old high school in Farringdon. It didn’t have any glass cases for displays—just rows and rows of books. Judy stopped in to browse among them while Peter took the film of the “ghost picture” to the FBI Resident Agency across the street.

“Hi, Judy! This is like old times,” someone greeted her as she walked between the rows of books.

It was Lois Farringdon-Pett but, instead of being with Lorraine as she always used to be, her new friend Donna Truitt was with her.

“We’re looking for decorating ideas,” Lois confided. “Donna’s family’s bought one of those Victorian houses on Grove Street, and it has to be furnished with period pieces.”

“Oh, we have things, but not the _right_ things,” Donna put in. “We’ve moved around too much. My father’s business keeps him on the move, but he says this time we’re in Farringdon to stay.”

“You lived here before, didn’t you?” Judy questioned. “Where Mr. Sammis’ antique shop is now?”

She knew the answer. But Donna wouldn’t admit that she had ever lived in the poorer section of North Farringdon or that Mr. Sammis had bought what used to be the Truitt house.

“We lived in Ulysses before we moved here,” she insisted. “Of course, I know the shop you mean. I stopped there to look at some of his antiques.”

“He has some nice things,” Judy admitted, “but his shop is so crowded it’s hard to find them. Some of his furniture has been broken and then mended, and some of it is warped. I don’t think any of it would be right for one of those Grove Street houses.”

“He has other stuff, Judy,” Lois told her. “That shop you visited isn’t his only place of business.”

“Do you know where his other shops are?” Judy questioned.

Lois shook her head. Donna claimed not to know either, but, from the way she pulled Lois away, Judy felt she was avoiding further questions. When Judy was in the car again she mentioned it to Peter.

“Donna Truitt won’t avoid the questions Hank Lawson asks her on their date tonight,” declared Peter. “He’s going to question Sammis, too. It’s better if he doesn’t suspect you have any interest in anything he has to sell, or in any of his other shops. We’ll find them without arousing his suspicions.”

Judy understood what Peter meant. They passed the sheared-off house without slowing down, Judy in the front seat beside Peter and Blackberry in his usual place next to the back window. The cat seemed to be enjoying the scenery as, one after another, the small towns along the way were reached and passed.

At the watershed Peter stopped long enough to point out the far-off river valleys that lost themselves among the blue hills.

“Back there,” he said, indicating a wooded slope beyond the little town named Gold, “is the head of the Allegheny. If we took that road to the right we’d cross a branch of the Susquehanna, and just ahead, before we get to the orphanage, is a bridge over the Genessee. Confusing, isn’t it?”

“Wonderful is the word,” declared Judy. “I mean that three great river systems originate within a few miles of each other right here in our own Pennsylvania hills.”

She knew that the furniture the beavers had built into their dam couldn’t have floated upstream and been transported overland by beavers. People must have transported it before the beavers found it.

“But where was it all this time?” Judy wondered.

“We’ll find out,” Peter promised after talking over Judy’s theory. “It must have been stored or dumped somewhere near the beaver dam.”

“Maybe Danny will know,” Judy suggested.

“What Danny knows and what he’s willing to tell are two different stories,” declared Peter. “He may be playing detective himself. On the other hand, he may be trying to protect someone—”

“His father?” Judy questioned. “At first I thought that might be his father in the picture.”

“It might be.” Peter planned to question Danny about it, but when they stopped at the orphanage they were told that the boy was off again on one of his expeditions.

“He never tells me where he’s going, but he knows that I know he always goes to the beaver dam,” the matron confided.

“Are you sure?” asked Judy. “If he used to live in that house with the boarded-up windows he might go there.”

Meta Hanley shook her head. “I don’t think so. The house is locked. Danny told me himself that he wished he could get in. All the Andersons’ things are stored there. George Anderson is supposed to return and make a home for Danny, but he never comes.”

“Do you know why?” asked Peter.

“He’s working. Danny showed me a letter from him,” one of the orphans spoke up. There were always little groups of them standing around, listening.

“It had a Canadian stamp on it,” another orphan volunteered.

“Yes,” the matron agreed. “Danny’s father is working in Canada. He writes to him regularly, but Danny never shows me the letters. A ten-year-old has a right to some privacy. His mother, as you know, is dead.”

“We know.” Judy agreed with Meta Hanley about Danny’s right to privacy, and yet she felt sure the matron must be curious.

“You’ll have to ask Danny,” was all she could say.

Judy couldn’t help wondering how Miss Hanley really felt about Danny’s father. Afterwards, in the car, Judy and Peter talked over the old romance. Could something unexpected have happened to prevent George Anderson from keeping his appointment at the beaver dam?

“Meta told me she expected him to bring her wedding ring. He never brought it,” declared Judy, “and only a few months afterwards she read in the paper that he was married to the girl who became Danny’s mother. They lived in the house she had thought would be hers. There it is!” she broke off to exclaim as the house with the boarded-up windows came in sight. “Doesn’t it look lonely?”

Peter stopped the car. “Lonely, perhaps, but not deserted. You can see where a truck has been driven into the garage just recently. For all I know, it’s still there.”

“Let’s explore the place and find out!” Judy said eagerly.

Blackberry seemed eager to do some exploring, too. Before Judy could stop him, the cat was out of the car and off in the direction of the mysterious house. In a moment, he had disappeared.

“Here, kitty! Kitty! Kitty!” Peter called, but the cat did not reappear.

“He never comes unless he thinks you have food,” Judy reminded him. “Cats aren’t like dogs. They’re independent and adventurous, and I don’t blame Blackberry one bit. I wouldn’t come, either, if you called me away from a mystery, and I think he’s found one inside that house. How do you suppose he got in?”

“Let’s find out,” Peter suggested.

Judy followed him around to the back of the house where a sagging porch seemed to have been partly destroyed by beavers. Now she could hear Blackberry inside the house. Or was that Blackberry? If it was, he was playing with something that made a rolling sound along the floor.

“Maybe he’s found a spool. You’ll never get him out of there if he’s found something to play with,” Peter predicted.

“He had to get in there some way. If we can find an opening—”

Judy stopped with her sentence half finished because, in almost the same moment, she and Peter had found it. The back door was locked, but there beside it was a small hole gnawed by beavers. It was large enough for a cat or a beaver to squeeze through, but not for a person.

“It’s large enough for a table leg, too!” Judy exclaimed, bending to measure the space with her hand. “Peter, _this_ must be where the beavers found all that furniture they built into their dam, but what’s this?”

Reaching in a little farther, Judy’s fingers closed over the small, round object Blackberry had been rolling on the floor.