“In the attic. Go up and look them over if you can stand the heat.”
Judy went, not to look over the old magazines so much as to escape to a place where she could have a good cry. It was the summer before her fifteenth birthday. In another year she would have outgrown her childish resentment of her parents’ vacation or be grown up enough to ask them to let her have a vacation of her own. In another year she would be summering among the beautiful Thousand Islands and solving a mystery to be known as the Ghost Parade.
“A whole parade of ghosts,” Lois would be telling her, “and you solved everything.”
But then she didn’t even know Lois. She had no idea so many thrilling adventures awaited her. There seemed to be nothing—nothing—and so the tears came and spilled over on one of the magazines. As Judy wiped it away she noticed that it had fallen on a picture of a fountain.
“A fountain with tears for water. How strange!” she remembered saying aloud.
Judy had never seen a real fountain. The thrill of walking up to the door of the palatial Farringdon-Pett mansion was still ahead of her. On the lawn a fountain still caught and held rainbows like those she was to see on her honeymoon at Niagara Falls. But all that was in the future. If anyone had told the freckled-faced, pigtailed girl that she would one day marry Peter Dobbs, she would have laughed in their faces.
“That tease!”
For then she knew Peter only as an older boy who used to tease her and call her carrot-top until one day she yelled back at him, “Carrot-tops are green and so are you!”
Peter was to win Judy’s heart when he gave her a kitten and suggested the name Blackberry for him. The kitten was now a dignified family cat. But the summer Judy found the picture of a fountain and spilled tears on it she had no kitten. She had nothing, she confessed, not even a friend. It had helped to pretend the fountain in the picture was filled with all the tears lonely girls like herself had ever cried.
“But that would make it enchanted!” she had suddenly exclaimed. “If I could find it I’d wish—”
A step had sounded on the stairs. Judy remembered it distinctly. She had turned to see her grandmother and to hear her say in her usual abrupt fashion, “Enchanted fountain, indeed! If you let people know your wishes instead of muttering them to yourself, most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Were they?” asked Lois.
She and Lorraine had listened to this much of what Judy was telling them without interruption.
“That’s the unsolved mystery,” Judy replied. “There weren’t any of them impossible.”
And she went on to tell them how, the very next day, her grandparents had taken her to a fountain exactly like the one in the picture. It was in the center of a deep, circular pool with steps leading up to it. Beside the steps were smaller fountains with the water spurting from the mouths of stone lions. Judy had stared at them a moment and then climbed the steps to the pool.
“Am I dreaming?” she remembered saying aloud. “Is this beautiful fountain real?”
A voice had answered, although she could see no one.
“Make your wishes, Judy. Wish wisely. If you shed a tear in the fountain your wishes will surely come true.”
“A tear?” Judy had asked. “How can I shed a tear when I’m happy? This is a wonderful place.”
“Shed a tear in the fountain and your wishes will surely come true,” the voice had repeated.
“But what is there to cry about?”
“You found plenty to cry about back at your grandmother’s house,” the mysterious voice had reminded her. “Weren’t you crying on my picture up there in the attic?”
“Then you—you are the fountain!” Judy remembered exclaiming. “But a fountain doesn’t speak. It doesn’t have a voice.”
“Wish wisely,” the voice from the fountain had said in a mysterious whisper.
CHAPTER II
If Wishes Came True
“Did you?” Lois interrupted the story to ask excitedly. “Oh, Judy! Don’t keep us in suspense any longer. What did you wish?”
“Patience,” Judy said with a smile. “I’m coming to that.”
First, she told her friends, she had to think of a wise wish. There had been so much she wanted in those early days before the flood. Dora Scott had been her best friend in Roulsville, but she had moved away.
“You see,” she explained, “I made the mistake of having just one best friend. There wasn’t anybody in Dry Brook Hollow. I remember thinking of how lonely I was and how I wished for a friend or a sister, and suddenly a tear splashed in the water. It made little ripples. I thought I had to wish quickly before they vanished, and so I began naming the things I wanted as fast as I could. I’m not sure they were wise wishes. They seem rather selfish to me, now. I wasn’t thinking of anybody but me, Judy Bolton, and what I wanted. It wasn’t until after I began to think of others that my wishes started to come true.”
“But what were they?” Lois insisted.
Lorraine seemed unusually quiet and thoughtful. Judy did not notice the fear in her eyes as she replied airily, “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I wished for lots of friends and a sister, and I wished I could marry a G-man and solve a lot of mysteries and that’s as far as I got when the ripples vanished. I thought the spell was broken and so I didn’t wish for anything more.”
“Wasn’t there anything more you wanted?” Lois asked.
“Of course,” replied Judy. “There were lots more things. I wanted to go places, of course, and keep pets, and have a nice home, and—”
“And your wishes all came true!”
“Every one of them,” Judy agreed, “even the one about the sister. You see, it wasn’t a baby sister I wanted. It was a sister near my own age. That seemed impossible at the time, but the future did hold a sister for me.”
“It held one for me, too,” Lois said, squeezing Lorraine’s hand under the table. “Don’t you think sisters should tell each other their problems, Judy?”
“Honey and I always do,” she replied “but then it was different. I didn’t know I would marry Peter or that he would become a G-man, and he didn’t know he had a sister. It is strange, isn’t it? But the strangest thing of all was the fountain itself.”
“Why?” asked Lorraine. “Do you still think it was enchanted?”
Lois laughed at this, but Judy was serious as she answered, “I was still little girl enough to think so at the time. I wandered around, growing very drowsy. Then I found a hammock and climbed into it. I must have gone to sleep, because I remember waking up and wondering if the voice in the fountain had been a dream.”
“A hammock?” Lois questioned. “Are you sure it wasn’t a flying carpet?”
“No, it was a hammock all right,” Judy assured her, laughing. “It was hung between two trees in a beautiful garden all enclosed in rose trellises thick with roses. Did I tell you it was June?”
“All the year around?”
Again Lois laughed. But Lorraine said abruptly, “Let’s not talk about rose gardens in June. It’s a long way from June to December.”
“Do you mean a garden changes? I know,” Judy said, “but I think this one would be beautiful at any time of the year. There were rhododendrons, too, and I don’t know how many different kinds of evergreens. I explored the garden all around the fountain.”
“And then what happened?” Lorraine urged her.
“Yes, yes. Go on,” entreated Lois. “I didn’t dream you’d kept anything that exciting a secret. Why didn’t you try to solve the mystery?”
“I think I would have tried,” Judy admitted, “if I had been older or more experienced. I really should have investigated it more thoroughly and learned the secret of the fountain. But after the ripples went away it didn’t speak to me any more, and I didn’t really think it had heard my wishes. I was still wishing for a friend when I met you,
Lois. It did seem impossible for us to be friends at first, didn’t it? Lorraine was your friend.”
“I did make trouble for you,” Lorraine remembered. “It was all because of my foolish jealousy.”
“It was nothing compared to the trouble caused by the Roulsville flood,” declared Judy. “After that things started happening so fast that I completely forgot about the fountain. Honestly, Lois, I don’t believe I thought about it again until after we moved to Farringdon and I walked up to your door and saw the fountain on your lawn.”
“The Farringdon-Pett puddle, I always called it,” Lois said with a giggle. “I’ve seen lots nicer fountains.”
“You have?” asked Judy. “Then maybe you’ve seen the one I’ve been telling you about. I think the picture of it is still in the attic. Come on up and I’ll show you.”
Lois and Lorraine had finished their dessert while Judy was telling them the story of the fountain. Somehow, she wasn’t hungry for hers. She had tasted it too often while she was making it.
“I’ll leave it for Blackberry,” she decided.
Lois watched in amusement as the cat lapped up the chocolate pudding after Judy had mixed it generously with cream.
“Sometimes,” Judy said fondly, “Blackberry thinks he’s a person. He eats everything we eat, including lettuce. Do you mind if he comes with us, Lorraine? He wants to explore the attic, too.”
“He’ll remember he’s a cat fast enough if there are any mice up there,” Lois said with a giggle.
Leaving the table, they all started upstairs with the cat bounding ahead of them. In modernizing her grandparents’ house to suit her own and Peter’s tastes, Judy had seen to it that the old stair door was removed. But there was still a door closing off the narrower stairs that led to the attic. Blackberry reached it first and yowled for Judy to open it.
“He can read my mind. He always knows where I’m going,” Judy said as the door creaked open and the cat shot through it. A moment later a weird rolling noise came from the floor above.
“Come on. There’s nothing up here to be afraid of,” Judy urged her friends.
“Maybe not, but I’m beginning to get the shivers,” confessed Lois as she followed Judy to the sewing room at the top of the last flight of stairs.
“So am I,” Lorraine admitted. “I’m not superstitious about black cats, but they are creepy. Does Blackberry have to roll spools across the floor?”
“Now he thinks he’s a kitten,” laughed Judy. Pausing at still another door that led to the darker part of the attic, she turned and said mysteriously, “Up here we can all turn back the clock. Does anybody care to explore the past?”
The exploration began enthusiastically with Judy relating still more of what she remembered about the fountain.
“When I told Grandma about it she laughed and said I must have dreamed it. She said if wishes came true that easily she’d be living in a castle. But would she?” Judy wondered. “When I first remember this house she was still burning kerosene lamps like those you see on that high shelf by the window. I think she and Grandpa like the way they lived without any modern conveniences or anything.”
“I think so, too,” Lois agreed, looking around the old attic with a shiver. “It is strange they both died the same winter, isn’t it?”
“Maybe they wanted it that way. Maybe they wished neither of them would outlive the other. If they did wish in the fountain,” Judy went on more thoughtfully, “I’m sure that was one of their wishes. Another could have been to keep the good old days, as Grandma used to call them. That one came true in a way. They did manage to keep a little of the past when they kept all these old things. That’s what I meant about turning back the clock.”
“If wishes came true I’d like to turn it back a little myself,” Lorraine began. “It would be nice if things were the way they used to be when I trusted Arthur—”
“Don’t you trust him now?” Judy asked.
Afterwards she was sorry for the interruption. Lois and Judy both questioned Lorraine, but that was all she would say. Judy wondered, as they searched through the old magazines, what was wrong. Lorraine was of a jealous disposition. Was the green-eyed monster coming between her and her handsome husband, Arthur Farringdon-Pett? Until now they had seemed blissfully happy. But there was no happiness in Lorraine’s face as she gazed at a picture of one of the fountains and then said in a tight little voice, “It is. It’s the very same one.”
“But that’s the picture I’ve been searching for!” Judy said eagerly. “Do you know where it is?”
“I can’t be sure. But if it ever was enchanted, I’m sure it isn’t now. Let’s go,” Lorraine said suddenly to Lois. Judy knew she was suggesting a fast trip home. But, apparently, Lois did not understand it that way. If she did, she pretended not to.
“Where?” she asked. “To the fountain? I’d love to, wouldn’t you, Judy?”
“I certainly would,” Judy replied enthusiastically. “Do you recognize it, too?”
“I think so,” Lois answered after studying a little more closely the picture they had found. “It looks like the fountain on the Brandt estate.”
“The department store Brandts?” Judy questioned. “Then my grandparents must have driven old Fanny all the way to Farringdon.”
“Not quite all the way,” Lorraine objected. “The Brandts own that stretch of woods just before you come into the city. You’ve passed it lots of times.”
“Of course,” agreed Judy. She put the magazine back in its place under the eaves and turned eagerly to her friends. “I do remember a road turning off into the woods and going on uphill,” she told them. “I never thought it led to a house, though. There isn’t even a gate. Could that be the road my grandparents took?”
“Why don’t we take it ourselves and find out?” Lois suggested.
CHAPTER III
A Strange Encounter
Lorraine was not too enthusiastic about the proposed trip to the Brandt estate. Finally she agreed to it under one condition. They were not to drive all the way to the house which, she said, was just over the hilltop. They were to park the car where no one would see it and follow the path to the fountain.
“But suppose we can’t find the path?” asked Judy.
“You’ll remember it, won’t you?”
Judy thought she would, but she wasn’t too sure. She and Lois both argued that it would be better to inquire at the house. Lois knew Helen Brandt slightly.
“She’d be glad to show us around. This way it looks as if we’re planning a crime,” Lois said as they started off in the blue car she was driving.
It was a neat little car, not too conspicuous, and easy to park in out-of-the-way places. Judy laughed and said if they did find the fountain she thought she’d wish for one exactly like it.
“Well, you know what your grandmother said about wishes, don’t you?” Lorraine asked. “If you let people know about them instead of muttering them to yourself most of them aren’t so impossible.”
“Quite true,” Judy agreed. “I’ll let Peter know about this one. He’s my Santa Claus, and it will soon be Christmas. Maybe I should have worn the fur coat he gave me last year.”
“Your reversible’s better in case it rains. It’s too warm for snow. We picked a perfect day for this trip,” Lois continued, guiding the car around curves as it climbed the steep hill beyond Dry Brook Hollow.
The trip was a short one. In twenty minutes they had covered the distance that had seemed such a long way to Judy when she was riding in her grandfather’s wagon.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, “and I’ve just about figured out how it happened. I didn’t think my grandparents knew the Brandts well enough to pay them a visit, though. We must have looked queer driving up to a beautiful estate in Grandpa’s old farm wagon. I do remember that Grandma had some hooked rugs to deliver. But that
still doesn’t explain what happened afterwards. When I woke up in the hammock I was alone in the garden. Horse, wagon, grandparents—all had disappeared.”
“How could they?” asked Lois.
“Anyway,” Lorraine began, “you had a chance to see how beautiful everything was before—”
Again she broke off as if there were something she wanted to tell but didn’t quite dare.
“Before what?” questioned Judy.
“Oh, nothing. Forget I said anything about it. You were telling us how you woke up in the hammock, but you never did explain how you got back home,” Lorraine reminded her.
“Didn’t I?” asked Judy. “I’d forgotten a lot of it, but it’s beginning to come back now. I do remember driving home along this road. You see, I thought my grandparents had left me in the garden for a surprise and would return for me. I told you I was all alone. There wasn’t a house in sight.”
“The Brandt house is just over the top of this next hill,” Lois put in.
“I know. You told me that. Now I know why I couldn’t see it. All I could see was a windowless old tower and a path leading in that direction. Naturally, I followed it. There’s something about a path in the woods that always tempts me.”
“We know that, Judy. Honey told us all about your latest mystery. You followed a trail or something.”
“Well, this trail led out of the rose garden where the hammock was and then through an archway,” Judy continued. “All sorts of little cupids and gnomes peered out at me from unexpected places. I was actually scared by the time I reached the old tower. There wasn’t time to explore it. Just then I heard the rumble of my grandfather’s wagon and knew he was driving off without me.”
“He was!” Judy’s friends both chorused in surprise, and Lois asked, “Why would he do a thing like that?”
“I think now it was just to tease me. He did stop and wait for me after a while,” Judy remembered. “The rugs were gone. Grandma must have delivered them, but I didn’t ask where. If she made them for Mrs. Brandt they may still be there.”
The Third Girl Detective Page 17