Chapter XXV: An Everlasting Thing

There was no holding Judy back after that. She seized the boy by the tail of his T-shirt while Danny turned on him.

“I know you, Buck Lester,” he announced. “You ran away from the orphanage two years ago. What’d you come back for and where’d you find that lady stick?”

The boy seemed frightened by the question.

“What’s it to you, Danny?” he asked, not looking at Judy or Horace. “I’ve got a job, and I have to do what my boss tells me.”

“Did your boss tell you to throw that thing in the water?” Judy asked. “It’s a valuable table leg. Don’t you know the whole table’s over there in that house?” Judy waved her hand toward the house with the boarded-up windows.

“That’s my house. My father’s there,” Danny began, but a voice stopped him.

“No, son, I’m right here,” Mr. Anderson said, coming through the trees. “I can’t take you home until the police have hauled all that stolen stuff back to Roulsville where the owners can claim it. But we can go and see Ma, as you call her in your letters. How would you like it if she became your real mother and we were a family again?”

Danny hesitated a moment. Then he said, without emotion, “I’d like it fine.”

They looked at each other then, and the years they had been separated seemed to evaporate like the morning mist over the pond. With his arm around his son, George Anderson turned to Judy.

“I guess I owe you an apology,” he began, but she interrupted.

“No, Mr. Anderson. I owe you one. I should have known those thieves had taken over your house without your permission. Did they come back?”

“They certainly did. I was warned to keep out of the way, but there wasn’t any shooting. Your husband and the other FBI agent got there just in time to relieve the Earl, as he calls himself, of his gun. Without it he was nothing.”

“He’s my boss,” the runaway boy spoke up defiantly.

“_Was_,” Horace said. “He won’t be any more. Why don’t you give me the whole story? How did you get mixed up in this racket? You’re the boy who took that green car the other day and came back with a typewriter, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, the boss wanted one in a hurry. He had some letters to write.”

“And so he told you to go out and steal one?”

“Yeah, that was my job. If he told me to get anything I went out and got it. I didn’t ask questions. He’d cased that house and spotted some other stuff he wanted, too, but I didn’t have time to pick it up. The boss understood. He ain’t a bad guy.”

“Boy, you have a lot to learn,” Horace commented, shaking his head.

It was Danny who retrieved the lady stick, as he called it. He went into the pond after it before anyone could stop him and came out dripping wet.

“See, it isn’t hurt much,” he announced, presenting it to Judy. “The lady’s got a couple of tooth marks in her cheek, and the end where the leg screws into the table is chewed a little, but we can fix that, can’t we, Dad?”

“I’m not much good at fixing damaged furniture,” his father confessed. “The business I had in mind was raising chickens. As soon as we get you dried out we’ll start making plans. How about it, son? Would you like to go into partnership with me?”

“I’ll have to ask Ma,” Danny protested. “Let’s go and find her.”

“She won’t be hard to find. The Jewell sisters are expecting her for tea. I think raising chickens is a wonderful idea,” declared Judy. “Oh! Here comes Peter.”

Peter had seen Judy from the house where the boards had already been removed from one window. “It’s safe to come in now,” he told her, “but I’m glad you weren’t here an hour ago when the Earl drove up. He saw us and started to run, but we nabbed him and disarmed him. Meantime the boy in the car with him ran off—”

“But not very far,” Horace interrupted, emerging from the woods with Buck Lester in tow. “We caught him throwing this in the beaver pond.”

Peter stared at the object they were carrying between them as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. Then he turned to the boy. “The FBI can use all the information you can give us,” he began.

“You’re too late, G-man. I already gave it to this newspaper guy,” Buck informed him. “He’s going to put my picture in the paper—”

“You’re wrong there,” Horace stopped him. “When you grow up a bit you won’t want that kind of publicity. How old are you?”

“Fifteen,” he replied, “not that it’s any of your business.”

Peter looked him over appraisingly. “That’s good. I think we can still make something of this boy.”

Danny and his father walked on ahead, going home at last. The others came more slowly, taking turns carrying the lady table leg. It was badly in need of refinishing and yet, somehow, when it was placed beside the other three table legs, Judy liked it best.

“I think I’ll leave that tooth mark in the lady’s face,” she decided. “It gives her more character. The other three faces are too quiet and patient, but this one looks as if she’d _lived_. Do you think Dad will mind?”

“Mind!” exclaimed Horace. “He’ll be delighted.”

Before another week had passed, a great many pieces that belonged to Dr. Bolton were found. Among them was his fruitwood bench, but that was located in one of the exclusive shops in Mr. Truitt’s chain. The shop was over the state line in Wellsville.

Donna Truitt and Hank Lawson, the FBI agent she had dated, were both invited to Judy’s party. The house was still filled with babies as Judy and Peter had agreed to keep them until Mr. and Mrs. George Anderson returned from their honeymoon.

It would be a strange honeymoon, the crowd at the party agreed, as they had taken Danny with them on a cruise to some romantic island and would return to turn their house into another orphans’ home, complete with chicken farm.

“Danny will find plenty of wild things to watch, but I don’t think he’ll see any beavers on a tropical island,” Peter commented as he handed around Judy’s beaver pictures. Some of them had appeared in the _Farringdon Daily Herald_ to illustrate Horace’s news stories. The picture of the man with the lady’s face had caused a real sensation.

“The mistakes you make are better than the things some people do on purpose,” declared Holly, whose interest in writing had waned only to flare up again when her typewriter was returned. Now she was writing notes to Roger and tearing them up before he saw them.

Judy met Roger for the first time that evening. She could see why Holly was attracted to him. He had brought his banjo to the party and knew all the song hits.

“Come on, everybody,” he said. “Sing along with Roger. Have you got the beat?”

Judy thought of the honeymooners, then back to her own wedding day as they sang:

“Love’s not a sudden romance
Or the kiss that follows a dance.
Love is forever, an everlasting thing.
Love is a golden ring.”

After the first chorus, the song went on and on, verse after verse. But Judy was no longer thinking back. She was thinking ahead to her next mystery, although she had not yet found THE HIDDEN CLUE among the few things that had been saved from the orphanage fire. Tonight she was glad to forget the fire and enjoy her party, but something was wrong.

“I haven’t set enough places,” she observed as her friends gathered around the party table. “There are five places for Donna and Lois and the others on that side. Horace and Honey are to sit here, Holly and Roger here, but where is my place?”

“Right beside mine,” declared Peter, coming up behind her with an extra place setting. “Move over, everybody! Judy was so busy setting places for everyone else that she forgot her own.”

“Just another little mistake,” Judy explained cheerfully as she began to cut the cake.

Transcriber’s Notes

--Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public
domain in the country of publication.

--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and
dialect unchanged.

--In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the
HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)

End of Project Gutenberg's The Puzzle in the Pond, by Margaret Sutton