by Helen Wells
“Let’s get off onto a quieter road,” Aunt Kathy said at the wheel.
“What about North Road?” Cherry asked. “Is it quiet?”
Neither Gwen nor her aunt remembered North Road very well.
“Woodacres is located there,” Cherry reminded them. “It’s near the village of Cranston.”
She reached into the glove compartment, took out the road map, and consulted it by flashlight.
“Sleuthing again,” Gwen teased her.
“We can turn off just up ahead,” Aunt Kathy said. “Which way to Cranston?”
It lay farther out on Long Island than their own village, and was another pretty cluster of suburban homes, schools, and shops. After passing through the village of Cranston, they found themselves driving along shadowy North Road. Houses were few and far between along here.
“Please, could you go a little more slowly?” Cherry asked. “I don’t know whether Woodacres is a house or an estate or a section.”
Aunt Kathy obligingly slowed the car. No sign reading Woodacres came into view, but the sight of the moon and the stars shining above the country road was lovely. Gradually the trees on either side of the road grew more numerous; not another car passed them in this heavily wooded area. Cherry felt a tingle of excitement.
“Let’s see if we can catch a glimpse of a house,” she said. “A large house, I’d suppose, from its name. Look, there’s a stone fence along here! Maybe it belongs to a house.”
Now the car was moving at a crawl. The only sound in the silence was the engine’s purr. Cherry strained forward, peering from one side of the road to the other.
Gwen muttered, “It certainly is quiet and lonesome way out here.”
“Look!” Cherry cried softly. “Do you see lights way back among the trees?”
The road was so dark here, the moonlight so filtered and lost in the woods, that it was hard to see. To help, Aunt Kathy dimmed the headlights as low as possible. She stopped the car, engine idling.
“Way back among the trees,” Cherry insisted.
Aunt Kathy said suddenly, “Yes, I see them.”
“Those are car lights on another road,” said Gwen. “They’re not moving and you don’t hear anything, do you?” Cherry countered. “No, it’s a house, all right.”
“A sizable house, I’d say,” murmured Aunt Kathy.
The house was set far back from the road. It was, moreover, the only house around here. Cherry felt intensely curious. Was this Woodacres? A driveway led into the grounds, but she could not make out any sign, nor any placard with a place name.
“Well?” Gwen demanded. “What do we do next?”
“We might continue driving up North Road,” Cherry said, “and see whether there are any other houses. Or any place called Woodacres.”
Aunt Kathy agreed. “Wouldn’t you like to drive, Cherry?”
As Cherry got out to exchange places, she heard over the engine’s purr the first extraneous sound on this road for ten or fifteen minutes. Someone was whistling, in snatches. A man whistling, she’d guess. He seemed to be on this road, walking somewhere in the stillness and dark. Not very near them—the whistling held her transfixed, although she could not imagine why.
“Cherry?” Gwen prodded her. “What is it?”
“Nothing—just someone whistling. Would you mind waiting a minute?”
Cherry could not identify the tune, but it rang a bell in her memory. Could it be one of the songs the quintet had played at Tom’s place? She had heard so much music the other evening with Tom that all the melodies ran together and blurred in her memory.
“Cherry?” This time it was Aunt Kathy. “Is anything wrong? I’m all gooseflesh.”
“Nothing wrong. I’m coming right away.”
Cherry peered one last time into the shadows ahead. She could not see anyone. The whistling was moving farther away. Then it stopped and all again was silence.
“See if you notice anyone on the road,” Cherry asked her two companions, as she slid into the driver’s seat.
Very slowly they drove further up North Road. Not a soul was to be seen, although moonlight dappled the shadows here and there. Nor was there any other house. Further up the road, the woods thinned out. Houses appeared, in increasing numbers. Then, abruptly, North Road led into a brightly lighted traffic circle. Cherry tried driving beyond the circle but North Road had run its course.
“Well, apparently that house back there was Woodacres,” she said.
“Are you satisfied now, Miss Sleuth?” Gwen teased.
They joked about their expedition into the dark, but Cherry thought the jokes sounded forced. As for herself, the whistler’s notes repeated themselves insistently in her mind. Unluckily the whole tune refused to come back to her. Cherry concentrated so much on recapturing the melody that Aunt Kathy had to say, “Watch where you’re driving, dear.”
“What are you humming?” Gwen asked.
“I? I didn’t know I was humming.” If the man had only whistled the tune clear through, she wouldn’t have this maddening recollection of only wisps of it. “Gwen? Aunt Kathy? Can you recall the tune that man was whistling?”
Gwen hadn’t paid attention to the whistler. Aunt Kathy had, and whistled for Cherry what she thought she had heard.
“Or am I confusing it with that new waltz that’s so popular?”
“I guess I’m the one who’s confused,” Cherry said.
On reaching home, they found it was nearly eleven o’clock. All three of them were sleepy.
Half an hour later Cherry tucked herself in, but sleep had fled. The broken tune was playing over and over in her mind like a cracked phonograph record. “Perhaps if I whistle it aloud, the complete melody will come back to me. A waltz, Aunt Kathy said.”
She whistled softly, and to her astonishment the notes shifted of their own accord from a waltz rhythm into another rhythm, slower, more measured—why, it was a minuet!
Shaken, Cherry switched on the bedside lamp and sat up. The melody was the minuet of Mrs. Julian’s music box! That was what the man on North Road had been whistling! It could not be mere coincidence that someone near Otto Galleries was whistling that tune. What did it mean?
“It could mean a great deal,” Cherry realized, “or it could mean absolutely nothing—just be a coincidence.”
Nevertheless, she was so disturbed that she considered tiptoeing downstairs and telephoning Tom Reese about this enigmatic evening.
“Oh, bother! Tom goes away every weekend. I can’t reach him until the weekend is over. And Mrs. Julian, too, is out of town.”
The question would have to wait. Anyway, did she or didn’t she have anything worth telling?
CHAPTER X
Where the Melody Led
WHEN CHERRY ARRIVED AT THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT on Monday at two P.M., to work on the late shift until nine P.M., she found her assistant excited.
“What’s happened here this morning, Gladys? If it was urgent, why didn’t you phone me?”
“It didn’t happen in the medical department, Miss Ames, but it happened on this floor and the whole store’s buzzing about it! It’s only a rumor, but it’s all very strange!”
“Don’t keep me in suspense,” Cherry said. “Come on in while I change into my uniform.”
“Well, Miss Ames, it seems that music box of Mrs. Julian’s is—not exactly missing, but misplaced. Though how it could be misplaced, goodness knows! And after those two other thefts—”
Cherry’s fingers froze on the buttons of her white uniform. She asked Gladys who had reported that the music box was misplaced.
“The rumor says that Mr. Dance reported it.”
Cherry did not like the sound of all this. Misplaced? That was hard to believe after what she had heard on the road leading to Woodacres—to the Otto Galleries. Mr. Otto himself had handled the music box last Tuesday afternoon, at the special exhibit and lecture.
“Gladys, when was the music box last seen?”
“I don�
�t know. Nobody seems to know.”
“Or maybe somebody does know. Let’s skip that. Did you hear when Mr. Dance reported that the music box was misplaced?”
“Saturday evening, late, after you’d left the store at five, Miss Ames! I hear he said he didn’t realize at first that it was misplaced.”
“Hmm. Wonder why it took Mr. Dance from Tuesday afternoon until late Saturday to discover and report that the music box couldn’t be found,” Cherry said half to herself.
“It looks like a third theft, doesn’t it, Miss Ames?”
“I’m afraid it could be that. Thanks for telling me, Gladys. Do you want to man the desk while I put on my white shoes and stockings? Then you’re free to go to lunch.”
The first thing Cherry did, after attending to routine duties for an hour, and then two patients, was to go next door and ask for Mr. Reese. The secretary, Miss Josephson, eyed Cherry with unblinking owl-like calm.
“Mr. Reese won’t be able to see you—or anybody—this afternoon, Miss Ames. Trouble’s poppin’ in our Philadelphia store and he’s tied up on a long-distance call.”
“Then will you put me down for an appointment for tomorrow, please? Thanks, Miss Josephson.”
The next day seemed to Cherry an eternity of minor nursing chores, routine records, and those necessary delays, eating and sleeping, before the hour for her appointment with Tom Reese rolled around.
They met, at her request, in his office for greater privacy. Today Tom looked hard pressed, not at all like the carefree young man of a few evenings past.
“Hello,” Cherry. What can I do for you?” He pulled up a chair for her, and grinned. “Wow, what a time we’ve been having! I may have to run down to Philadelphia and straighten out a procedural tangle. Hope not—enough to do here. How are you, anyway?”
“Good, thanks, except that I’m troubled about Mrs. Julian’s music box.”
“Come to the point.”
“As if you’d let anyone hem and haw! All right, I think the music box has been stolen, not misplaced.”
“Me, too. That’s off the record, Cherry, because nothing definite has been learned yet. The store detectives and also the insurance company’s men are turning the store inside out. And they’ve been questioning Dance. But nothing definite has turned up so far.”
“And do the detectives still suspect Mrs. Julian about the Ming vase, even though her music box has been taken?”
“Misplaced,” Tom corrected her, but his voice was ironical. “Yes, they still suspect Mrs. Julian. I gather that’s because their investigators haven’t as yet been able to turn up any other suspect—for the highboy theft, either.”
“I still think she’s incapable of stealing,” Cherry said stubbornly.
Tom sighed and shrugged. He glanced sidelong at his wrist watch, then looked guilty as Cherry caught him at it.
“I know I’m taking up valuable time,” she said. “Tom, just when was the music box stolen or misplaced?”
“That’s the crux of the question.”
Quickly he summed up what facts he knew. The music box was last seen by several persons a week ago this afternoon, when Mr. Otto lectured and held it up to view. Cherry mentioned that the music box had been passed around among the audience.
“It might have vanished at that point,” Tom conceded. “But don’t you think Mrs. Julian would have wondered where it was? Don’t you think Miss Lamb and old Heller, and the store detectives on special duty that afternoon, all had their eyes fixed on it while the music box circulated?”
Cherry nodded. “It must have come back to the lecturer’s table.”
“And that was in full view of the audience.”
The lecturer’s table flashed into Cherry’s mind’s eye, with the porcelain plates and the Georgian silver and Mr. Otto’s large brief case upon it as Otto talked. Then she focused on Tom again, and came back to the present.
“Tom, something you said just now—what was it? Oh, yes, why didn’t Mrs. Julian wonder where her music box was?”
“Well, of course, it may not have been misplaced or stolen until Thursday or Friday or Saturday, after she left on her trip.”
A comment of Mrs. Julian’s returned to Cherry with unexpected force. She repeated to Tom Reese how the woman had described Mr. Dance’s system of putting certain wanted items away in the closet, to whet a customer’s interest into actual buying.
“Does he? That’s clever merchandising,” Tom commented. “Dance said that he had locked it in the closet late Tuesday afternoon, but I assumed that was for safekeeping—not a merchandising gimmick.”
“Well, maybe the music box was put in the closet then,” Cherry said thoughtfully. “Mrs. Julian seemed to think so. But what I want to know is why Dance didn’t discover until Saturday that it was misplaced?”
“Theoretically, it could have been an honest oversight,” Tom replied. “He said that he looked for the music box Saturday afternoon, couldn’t find it, ransacked the entire antiques department, still couldn’t find it. So Saturday evening he reported that it was misplaced.”
“But why,” Cherry asked, “did Mr. Dance consider it misplaced rather than missing or stolen?”
“He said he had locked the closet after the lecture on Tuesday, and only he has the key. The detectives examined the closet lock. It hadn’t been picked, and they didn’t find any fingerprints.”
“Well, what do the detectives think of Dance in the face of such a story?”
“They are inclined to look on him as one of those artistic, impractical people who are a bit absent-minded. Pierce thinks the music box is only misplaced and will turn up sooner or later. Thinks Dance carefully put it away and has forgotten where.”
“But do you believe that’s what happened?”
“I did at first, but talking to you has given me an entirely new perspective on the whole matter, especially so far as Dance is concerned. He’s shrewd as a hawk and it’s difficult to believe that he wouldn’t have noticed that the music box wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Unless, of course, it wasn’t taken until shortly before he looked for it on Saturday. But that still doesn’t account for the lack of fingerprints, does it?”
Cherry didn’t answer Tom’s question. Instead, she countered with one of her own.
“And isn’t it rather strange that Dance suddenly decided to send Mrs. Julian on her first buying trip last week? If she had been here, she might have inquired about the music box. Do you think it all ties in?”
“It could, but we need facts, Cherry—hard, cold facts.” Tom went on to say that he was considering whether to write Mrs. Julian about the missing music box.
“Bad news can wait, and Mrs. Julian has enough worries already,” Cherry said.
“All right. No letter.”
This time it was Cherry who glanced at her wrist watch. She stood up to go.
“I just hope,” she said, “that before Mrs. Julian comes back, we’ll have solved the thefts and cleared her. I hope we’ll have recovered her music box by then, poor woman.”
“I’m not optimistic,” Tom said. “Do you have something more on your mind? Don’t rush off. Let’s spend another five minutes and thresh this thing out.”
Cherry said, “Thanks,” and sat down again. She had wanted to tell Tom Reese about the whistler on the road to Woodacres, whistling a few bars of the telltale minuet. Yet here in broad daylight, in a business office, the incident seemed thin and dubious. What was there to tell? The person whistling could have heard the melody when Mr. Otto played the music box last Tuesday afternoon for the audience, and half memorized the tune. Even if the whistler were Otto, the explanation could be that simple. Tom might laugh if she told him such a slight, dreamlike thing.
“Well? You’re awfully quiet, Cherry.”
“Tom, do you know whether Mr. Otto was in the store Saturday, when the theft either occurred or was discovered?”
“So far as I know, he wasn’t,” Tom said. “The detectives checked back on wh
o was in and out of the antiques department on Saturday. I saw their list. Of course even Pierce isn’t infallible—but he sure is dogged.”
“The one who’s so set against Mrs. Julian,” Cherry murmured. “I wish you’d tell this Detective Pierce about an incident between Dance and Otto—”
She recounted to Tom how agitated Mr. Dance had become when Otto telephoned him at the store, particularly when one of the staff answered the phone.
Tom didn’t comment, but he nodded and made a note.
They talked a bit about the cleverness of the thief or thieves, whoever they were, for in each of the three thefts, the thieves had used a different technique. The tiny Ming vase had disappeared off a counter practically under Mrs. Julian’s very eyes. The immense highboy had been stolen by a clever trick. And now the music box was rather belatedly reported misplaced.
“I’d think it fair to deduce,” Tom said, “that one or more of the thieves is a bona fide art expert. On the highboy theft, at least, I’d guess more than one person was in on it. It certainly is beginning to look as if someone inside the antiques department—” His telephone rang. Tom leaned toward it.… “This call is probably from Philadelphia. We’ll talk some more later, Cherry.… Hello, Reese speaking.… Yes, go ahead.”
Cherry rose, waved, and left his office.
At five Gladys left for the day. Cherry would remain on duty until nine. After a flurry of activity between six and seven, she had a lull in which to send for a sandwich and do some thinking.
It might be a good idea to talk with Mr. Dance and hear directly from him this “misplaced” story. The antiques department could not be very busy, now that it was nearly nine P.M. Cherry crossed the corridor, figuring she could keep an eye on the medical department for a few minutes from here.
Miss Janet Lamb came up to her. Cherry inquired whether Mr. Dance was there this evening.
“Why, no, Miss Ames, he hasn’t been in the store all day. That happens sometimes when he’s out buying. Do you want me to tell Mr. Dance you were looking for him? Did you wish to see him about anything special?”