“I don’t see how,” replied Judy. “The tower has no windows.”
“There may be a stairway inside. Look!” Lois suddenly exclaimed. “There’s a broken statue.”
It was a cupid-like figure with the head broken off at the neck. Judy didn’t see it until Lois pointed it out. There it lay beside the marble base that had once supported it. A little farther along the path its head grinned up from a thicket. Lorraine saw it first and uttered a piercing scream.
“Sh!” Judy warned her. “You don’t want Roger Banning and his heavyweight friend to follow us, do you? It’s only a piece of that broken statue.”
“I know. I guess I’m nervous,” Lorraine confessed.
“There’s no need to be,” Lois put in. “You can see this part of the estate is deserted. Lots of old showplaces like this are going to pieces. We may find they were telling the truth about there not being any fountain. People just don’t go to the expense of keeping up these big estates.”
Judy didn’t think this was true of the Brandts. Everyone knew Mr. Brandt had made millions with his chain of department stores. He might employ a caretaker for the estate in his absence, but she didn’t really think he would lease it.
“Except, of course, to friends,” she added.
“The Bannings could have been friends. It’s their friends who worry me,” Lorraine admitted.
“That one we met in the car when you hid your face?” Lois questioned. “You were afraid of him. I could see that.”
“I just didn’t want him to recognize me,” Lorraine said, and quickly changed the subject.
They had reached the rose trellis, now bare of roses. It, too, had been broken. A bird bath Judy remembered leaned at an angle. She found a tree with a hook in the trunk and cried out excitedly, “This is the hook that held one end of the hammock. Now I know exactly how I walked to reach the fountain. I should think you could hear it from here. I did then.”
She stood for a moment listening and then walked on, growing more puzzled by the minute. Lois and Lorraine followed. It was a strange walk. Everything was familiar and yet oddly different. Not a sound could be heard except the crunch of their own footsteps along the path toward the fountain.
“Where is it?” Lorraine whispered. “It was here.”
“Yes, it was,” agreed Lois, “but that was in the summer. It’s winter now. Maybe they turned it off for fear the pipes would freeze or something.”
“That must be it. I can see the circle of cement,” announced Judy. “There should be steps going up to it. We can explore what used to be the fountain. We may find a clue to my old mystery!”
CHAPTER VI
A Diamond Clue
“A clue, did you say? Now we’re looking for clues,” Lois said with a laugh as she followed Judy toward what they now felt almost sure was the broken and deserted fountain.
“It’s a shame, isn’t it?” asked Judy. “It used to be so beautiful.”
“You remember it in the summer,” Lois reminded her again. “Now it’s winter. Things naturally change with the changing seasons.”
“Not this much,” Judy objected. “It isn’t the same at all. There should be steps—”
“There are!” Lois interrupted.
Lorraine found them and almost bumped into one of the stone lions beside them. He seemed to have a startled expression on his face.
“You should have said, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Lion!’” Lois teased her.
“This is the fountain all right,” declared Judy. “Those stone lions used to have water spurting out of their mouths. Now there’s nothing but a rusty old water pipe.”
“So that’s what gives Mr. Lion such a startled expression?” Lois cocked her head to one side and made a face at the statue.
“Is that Mrs. Lion on the other side?” asked Judy. “They look exactly alike. There should be eight of them guarding the four flights of steps leading up to the pool. I remember running up and down those steps and meeting all the lions. Shall we do it again?”
“Let’s!” cried Lois, seizing Judy’s hand.
“Wait!” urged Lorraine. “Stop acting like children. I think there’s still a little water in the main fountain, and if there is, I intend to make my wish.”
“So we’re acting like children?”
Lois looked at Judy and giggled, but Lorraine was serious. She walked sedately up the steps to the circular pool and peered over the edge.
“You can’t wish,” Judy called, “unless you shed a tear. The spirit said so.”
“The spirit is gone, and so is most of the water,” declared Lois.
“All the better for exploring. I would like to see what’s over there. Do you think I can make it?” asked Judy.
“You can try,” Lois told her. “We’ll follow you if you don’t get your feet wet.”
“I won’t. I wore my rubbers. Anyway, there’s a thin coating of ice over what little water there is left in the pool. I’ll just skate over to the center fountain and have a look.”
It was not quite as easy as it sounded. Judy had some difficulty climbing over the edge of the pool and sliding down into its nearly dry bottom. The ice turned out to be nothing but melting slush from an earlier snowfall. She waded through it to the smaller circle of cement immediately surrounding the pedestal which was ornamented with cupids. At their feet she found a pool that had not been drained. A cap that looked like the nozzle of a watering pot covered another rusty waterpipe that seemed to be clogged with dead leaves. Judy peered into a cave behind the cupids, trying to see what was there.
“What have you found?” called Lois, seeing something in Judy’s hand.
“A sprinkler, I guess. There’s a cave that seems to go down underneath the fountain. I can’t see anything in it but rusty pipes. Could the spirit voice have come from there?”
“It seems logical, doesn’t it?”
“You sound like Peter,” laughed Judy. “There’s nothing logical about a spirit that lives in a fountain. I’m a little disappointed that it’s all so ordinary, now. Maybe we shouldn’t have come.”
“Let’s go then,” Lorraine suggested. “I can’t wish if there isn’t any water—”
“There is a little. I don’t know why it wouldn’t work just as well, especially if you shed a tear.”
“I can’t turn my tears on and off like a faucet,” Lorraine objected. “Couldn’t we throw in a coin or something?”
“People toss coins in wishing wells. Shall we try it?” asked Lois.
“Come on over and try it if you think it will do any good,” Judy invited them.
“It does seem a shame to throw perfectly good money away. Would a penny do?” Lois asked after she had helped Lorraine across. “I suppose you have to feel enchanted.”
“I did.” Judy stopped and listened. “Do you hear anything? Maybe the voice will still speak to us if we’re perfectly quiet.”
“Out of a dry fountain? Oh, Judy!” Lorraine cried. “I did so want to wish. It’s the only thing left to do.”
“Why?” asked Lois.
“That’s what everybody keeps asking,” Lorraine replied in a rush of sudden emotion. “Why? Why? And I keep asking myself the same question. Maybe it was silly of me to think I could wish away a problem as serious as this, but I have to do something. I can’t go on like this, holding it all back and pretending—”
“Then don’t hold it back. Tell us, dear!” Judy urged her.
“Oh, if only I could! If only I could cry my heart out and tell you everything!” sobbed Lorraine.
And suddenly, as she leaned over the little pool that was left around the fountain she did shed a tear that splashed in the water and made ripples all around the spot where it fell.
“Wish! Wish!” Judy and Lois cried both together.
They were so excited that they heard only part
of what Lorraine whispered into the fountain.
“…it wasn’t Arthur,” the wish ended and then, as the ripples vanished, Lorraine sobbed, “Oh, but it was! It was! How can I keep on loving him if I can’t trust him? Judy, could you love Peter if—if you thought he was a—a cheat? Could you?”
“I wouldn’t think it—even with proof. I mean it,” declared Judy. “I’ve learned my lesson. Once I did doubt him, and then when I found out what was really happening I was so ashamed. No matter what happened now, I’d keep on trusting him because I love him, and loving him because I trust him. The two go together—”
Suddenly Judy stopped speaking. She had been idly dabbling her hand in the pool as she talked. Now she felt something small and hard at the bottom. “Like a small gravel stone,” she thought as she took it between her thumb and forefinger to examine it.
“Have you found another clue?” asked Lois. “What is it this time?”
“It looks—like a diamond!” gasped Judy. “But it can’t be. What would a diamond be doing in an old deserted fountain?”
“It could be a piece of ice,” Lorraine ventured.
“A frozen tear, perhaps,” Lois put in whimsically. “Maybe the tear you shed, Lorraine, turned into a diamond. Maybe there are more diamonds in the pool. Maybe we’ll walk home with our hands full—”
“We’ll walk home dripping wet if we aren’t careful! The fountain is beginning to bubble!” cried Lorraine as she seized her friend’s hand and pulled her away from the water. Judy stood spellbound watching the transformation as if a miracle had taken place. Finally Lois expressed the obvious.
“Someone has turned it on!”
“Someone in the tower,” guessed Judy.
“Or down underneath,” Lorraine whispered. “Judy, I’m scared. This was planned, somehow. I think we’re being watched!”
CHAPTER VII
A Moaning Cry
“This is a real diamond,” declared Judy.
She brought her find over to the edge of the pool to examine it more closely. Then she turned to gaze in wonder at the fountain.
Soon it was not only bubbling. It was sending great sprays of water in all directions—from the center of the high pedestal, from the cupid-like creatures that held it, over the cave behind them and from the mouths of the eight stone lions that guarded the four flights of steps going down from the fountain.
“It’s beautiful!” breathed Judy. Then, in a louder voice, she called to her friends, who were huddled together over by the yew hedge. “See how fast the pool is filling up! Now the little pool where I found the diamond has vanished and everything looks just the way I remember it. Even the cupids look alive now that they’re all wet and shiny.”
“It’s haunted with all sorts of queer noises,” cried Lorraine. “Don’t stand so close to it, Judy. You may get wet.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” she replied, still under the spell of the fountain.
A little of the spray had wet her coat and covered her hair with a mist that made it cling to her forehead in damp, red ringlets. She brushed them back with a laugh and turned again to listen.
“I’m all right. This warm coat protects me,” she began.
“From the water, yes! But are any of us protected from those men back there?” asked Lois.
“We’ve been seen. I know we have!” Lorraine’s voice was almost hysterical. “Somebody saw us and turned on the fountain full force!”
“Look at the way it sparkles and dances as if it were filled with diamonds!” Judy exclaimed. “You two girls may be used to fountains, but I’m not. This one does something to me.”
“Me, too,” Lorraine said with a shiver. “It scares me. Come on away from it, Judy. We ought to be going home.”
Judy, still reluctant to leave, walked around the fountain to where they were. As she came nearer Lois said, “Look at your hand, Judy! You didn’t lose the diamond out of your engagement ring, did you? That could be the diamond you found in the fountain.”
Judy checked quickly, but the diamond in her ring was intact. She had lost it once, but that was another mystery. Now the new prongs held it securely. It was about the size of the stone she had found. Comparing the two as well as she could in the fading daylight, Judy now felt certain of her discovery.
“This is a clue to something,” she declared, tying the diamond she had found in the corner of her handkerchief for safekeeping. “You girls weren’t wearing diamonds, were you?”
“I wasn’t,” Lois replied.
“My ring isn’t a diamond. It’s a ruby,” Lorraine began and then broke off abruptly, hiding her hand.
“But you aren’t wearing it!” Judy exclaimed. “Where is that gorgeous big ruby Arthur gave you, Lorraine? I’ve never seen you without it before.”
“Neither have I. What have you done with it?” asked Lois. “You haven’t lost it, have you?”
“I guess—I must have,” Lorraine explained lamely.
“Where? In the fountain? Then we’ll hunt for it,” declared Judy.
“I’m sure it isn’t in the fountain,” Lorraine said hurriedly. “Besides, it’s growing dark. If we don’t leave now we won’t be able to find the path.”
“But we can’t go without your ring,” Lois protested.
“Of course not,” agreed Judy. “Where do you think you lost it?”
“Maybe it was in the fountain? Oh dear!” Lois lamented. “Now the water is on we won’t be able to look for it. That fountain must attract jewels—”
“Or tears,” Lorraine said, “but it doesn’t matter. We wouldn’t find it there, anyway.”
“Why wouldn’t we? Do you know where you lost it?”
“Did you take it off?”
“Was it loose on your finger?”
Judy and Lois were both firing questions at Lorraine. They were questions that she seemed unable to answer. Finally she admitted that she had removed the ring from her finger on purpose.
“Why?” demanded Lois. “I don’t think that was fair to Arthur.”
“I don’t either,” agreed Judy.
“But I did it for him,” Lorraine protested.
“You did what? Took off your ring? Why?” asked Judy. “How could that help him?”
“I can’t tell you,” Lorraine said stiffly. “Please don’t ask me anything more about it. We’ve all behaved like children today—me with my wishes and you with your pretending. If that is a diamond you found, Judy, it’s no frozen tear.”
“I know,” Judy admitted. “It belongs to someone, I suppose, and we’ll have to report it. I remember how I felt when my diamond was lost. Someone else may be feeling the same way.”
“If we report it,” Lois said, “we’ll have to report the fact that we were trespassing. I’d rather find out who lost it some other way.”
“We could advertise.” Judy brightened at the thought. “We could tell Horace—”
“And have him spread our little adventure all over the front page of the paper. Oh, no, you don’t,” Lorraine objected. “I’ve seen what happened to other stories you told your brother. Besides, I don’t want my father to know. He’s editor, and he’ll look into any story that has my name in it.”
“I didn’t think of that,” Judy admitted. “What I can’t understand, Lorraine, is why you took off your ring—”
“Look,” Lorraine interrupted, “can’t we just forget it? My ring is gone. It’s been gone for several days if you must know. I’ll get it back somehow.”
“How?” asked Judy.
“Wishing, maybe. I don’t know how else.”
“Do you mean someone’s stolen it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, but you implied it.”
Judy soon discovered her questions were leading her nowhere. It was all very confusing. The diamond she had found an
d the ring Lorraine had lost seemed to be clues to something, but she couldn’t figure out what.
“Maybe the fountain will tell us where it is,” Judy was beginning with a laugh when suddenly they all heard a low moan. It seemed to come directly from the fountain.
“Wh-hat was that?” gasped Lois.
Lorraine had turned pale.
“Sh!” Judy cautioned them.
If the fountain had anything to say, she wanted to hear it. A chill came over her as she waited. Lois and Lorraine huddled together, shivering. The moan came a second time and with it the long drawn-out words, “Go-oo a-wa-ay!”
“He doesn’t need to tell me twice. I’m going!” declared Lois. “Come on, Judy! Why are you standing there?”
“I’m not afraid of a voice. If someone is trying to scare us, he will have to think of something more frightening than that. I’m just puzzled. Before, it was a woman—or a girl.”
“What was?” asked Lois and Lorraine both together.
“The voice from the fountain. It wasn’t a man, and it wasn’t moaning. There it is again!”
Thoroughly frightened, Lois and Lorraine rushed ahead of Judy down the path. It was already so dark they had difficulty following it, but the moans that were following them gave wings to their feet. Only Judy was reluctant to leave. She turned to the fountain, as if it were alive, and called, “I’ll be back! I will, too,” she reiterated, catching up with her two friends, who were determined to leave with or without her. “I’ll be back first thing in the morning, and either Horace or Peter or both of them will be with me. I’m not going to let any moaning fountain keep me from finding out what’s going on.”
Lorraine stopped short. They had come to the fence. Now a voice shouted at them from another direction.
“Who’s there? Stop where you are!”
“He’s back!” exclaimed Lorraine, panic-stricken. “That’s the man who passed us in the car! We mustn’t let him stop us!”
“We won’t,” promised Judy, “but I’m afraid we’ll have to stop long enough to protect ourselves from these electric wires. Here’s the stick I used before. I’ll hold them back while you girls crawl under them.”
The Third Girl Detective Page 19