“That’s a good idea of yours,” Dale told Judy just before she left to go to the office. “Have a nice long talk with Her Majesty and I’ll meet you at noon to see what she says. In the meantime I’ll make some more inquiries at the bookstore and of people in the neighborhood.”
“Oh, and you might tell them at the police station that we gave a wrong description of Irene’s clothes,” Pauline called out to them. She had just been to the closet for her hat and school books and had discovered Irene’s brown suit hanging there. Only the yellow dress and jacket were missing from her wardrobe.
“It was the same yellow dress that she wore to the dance,” Judy explained.
“And she wore it that day I discovered you in the office,” Dale remembered. “She certainly looked like the heroine of our popular song then. Do you suppose there is a chance that Golden Girl was written for her?”
Both girls laughed. “Dale Meredith! How absurd! It was written twenty years ago.”
But when Emily Grimshaw heard of Irene’s disappearance and made a similar suggestion Judy took it more seriously. She strained her ears to hear every word the agent said as she rocked back and forth in her swivel chair. Apparently she was talking to herself—something about the spirit world and Joy’s song over the radio.
“Yes,” she went on in a louder tone, “those poems were written for Joy, every last one of them, and she sat right on that sofa while I read Golden Girl aloud. That was twenty years ago. Then all of a sudden I see her again after I think she’s dead—same starry eyes, same golden hair, everything the same, even to her dress. Then her mother’s poems turn up missing——”
“So the poet was Joy Holiday’s mother!” Judy interrupted to exclaim.
“Bless you, yes,” her employer returned. “I thought you knew. She went stark crazy. Set fire to her own house and tried to burn herself alive.”
“Who did? The poet? How terrible!” Judy cried, starting from her chair. “Why, it seems impossible that I’ve been correcting a crazy woman’s verses without even knowing it. Tower of flame, indeed! So that’s what she meant!”
Emily Grimshaw laughed dryly. “Don’t ask me what she meant! I’m no authority on crazy people. The asylum’s the place for them, and, if it weren’t for that mercenary brother of hers, Sarah Glenn would be there yet. He arranged for her release and managed to get himself appointed as her guardian. Handles all of her finances, you see, and takes care of the estate. The poet’s pretty much of a recluse. I haven’t seen her for years.”
This was beginning to sound more like sense. Hopefully, Judy ventured, “But you have seen her daughter?”
“Seen her! Seen her!” she cried. “That’s just it. I see her in my dreams. Ordinarily people don’t see spirits and that’s why it gave me such a turn the other day. And Joy did come back! Her mother said so in the last poem she ever wrote. Jasper brought it in only this morning.”
“He did!” Judy exclaimed. “What did you tell him about the missing poetry?”
“Nothing. And I intend to tell him nothing. If it becomes necessary to tell anyone we’ll tell the poet herself. Her address is on this envelope. Keep it, Miss Bolton, you may need it. The poem I mentioned is on the other side.”
Judy turned it over and read:
She shivered. “Spooky, isn’t it? And,” she added, “like all of her poems, utterly impossible.”
“Hmmm, you think so—now. But you’ll see. You’ll see.” And the old lady kept on nodding her head as if the gods had given her an uncanny second-sight.
As far as Judy was concerned, the conversation closed right there. She had learned nothing of importance. In fact, she had learned nothing at all except that her employer believed in spirits. Someone, twenty years ago, had probably looked like Irene. But that wouldn’t help find Irene now.
At noon Judy gave Dale and Pauline what little information she had over sandwiches and coffee in a near-by restaurant. Joy Holiday, she told them, disappeared twenty years ago; and Emily Grimshaw’s only reason for acting strangely was because she believed Irene to be her ghost.
“If that’s the case,” Dale declared, “we’re simply wasting time questioning her. Irene’s father might know something real.”
Judy agreed. They telegraphed him at once:
The answer came back early that same afternoon:
Relief flooded Judy’s face. She waved the telegram excitedly and was on the point of telling the news to Emily Grimshaw. Then she decided that she had better not—not yet, at any rate. The papers were still missing even if Irene was safe. It would be better to clear her chum of all suspicion as quickly as possible.
Freed of a measure of worry and suspense, Judy’s mind eagerly took up the story of Joy Holiday’s strange disappearance. Now that she felt sure it had nothing to do with Irene she could view the tale dispassionately and take it for what it was worth. Still holding to Dale Meredith’s theory that valuable clues might be found in the poetry, she questioned Emily Grimshaw.
“Why do you call the girl Joy Holiday when her mother’s name was Glenn?”
“That’s only a pen name.” The agent explained. “Not any prettier than Holiday, is it? But when she had her first poems published Sarah was so anxious to please the publishers that she agreed to use a name that was short enough to be printed across the back of that thin little book. Humph! And now the publishers are just as anxious to please her!”
“What happened to her husband?” Judy asked after a pause.
“Dick Holiday? He left her shortly after their baby was born. Said he’d married a wife, not a nursemaid, and she insisted upon giving all of her time to Joy. When the child finally made a few friends among young folks her own age her mother, in a fit of jealous rage, locked her in the tower.”
“What tower?” Judy asked, growing more and more interested.
“It’s a circular tower built onto Sarah’s house. Joy’s room was on the third floor and there’s where her mother locked her up. She wanted Joy all to herself. That’s what I call mothering a girl to death. Though how Joy died is still something of a puzzle to me.”
“Why? What happened to her?”
Emily Grimshaw’s expression changed. The lines in her forehead deepened. “I told you she disappeared, vanished completely, just like you say this friend of yours vanished. Some folks think she jumped from a window. How ever it happened, Jasper Crosby identified a body in the morgue as hers. They had a funeral over it and buried it, but her mother declares to this day it wasn’t Joy. It didn’t look like her. That girl was too beautiful to die and Sarah thinks she floats around bodily, mind you. No doubt you gathered that much from reading the poetry.”
“Oh,” Judy exclaimed. “That....”
“Yes, that. But I doubt it.” She shook her head gravely and regarded Judy with a fixed stare. “Yes, I very much doubt it. Joy Holiday must be dead. Otherwise her spirit wouldn’t be coming back to haunt the earth. But what I’ve done that she should haunt me, the good Lord knows!”
“Published the poetry, perhaps,” Judy suggested wickedly. If Irene’s disappearance hadn’t been such a serious matter she would have laughed at the old lady’s superstitions.
On the way home Judy tried to figure out why Irene had failed to get in touch with her. That Blackberry had chewed up her note as well as the yellow flower petals seemed likely until she talked it over with Pauline.
“A cat chew up paper?” the other girl sniffed. “Why, Judy, only goats do that.”
“I know, but Blackberry is an unusual cat. I thought he might——”
“Well, he wouldn’t,” Pauline interrupted. “You know, yourself, Irene is sometimes thoughtless. She probably didn’t leave any note. She never breathed a word about those relatives either, and I think she must have had some reason for not wanting us to know where she was going.”
Judy nodded, unconvinced. Irene wasn’t that sort. The relatives in Brooklyn might have been a surprise to her also. Judy remembered distinctly Irene’s assertion that she didn’t know a soul in the city. Her father must have revealed some family history in his letter. Oh, why did telegrams need to be so brief?
Vaguely uneasy about the whole affair, Judy showed the telegram to Dale when he called later in the evening. As he read it his face beamed.
“What more do you want?” he cried. “She’s safe! It’s all of Heaven to know that much.”
In a little while everything would be explained. Irene hadn’t intended to worry them. And Dale was right. They should forget everything else and simply be thankful that she was safe.
For a week Judy went about the daily office routine cheered by the hope that Irene would soon come back. After that doubts began to crowd in. Dale had been calling regularly, helping Pauline entertain even if there remained only one guest to pilot through the never-ending wonders of the world’s greatest city. One evening when he called to take them to dinner Judy confided her fears to him.
“I don’t trust that telegram,” she said in a low voice. “If Irene really is safe why hasn’t she written to tell us where she is?”
“I’ve been wondering about that for a week,” Dale replied. “Suppose we send another telegram.”
“And have it answered as briefly as the last one? No,” Judy declared emphatically. “I’m going to find out what has happened if it costs my week’s salary in nickels. Where’s the nearest phone booth?”
Dale pointed out a cigar store at the next corner and escorted her to it. Together she and Pauline assembled quite a pile of coins and Judy dropped her first nickel in the slot. It was a relief to hear a nurse’s voice, finally, at the other end of the wire.
“Farringdon Sanitarium?” she asked. “Is Mr. Lang well enough to come to the phone?”
“Oh, yes indeed,” the voice replied. “Just a moment and I will call him. He is taking a walk around the grounds.”
“He’s taking a walk,” Judy turned and whispered. “Won’t Irene be glad to hear he’s out of his wheeled chair?”
Then Mr. Lang’s voice, wonderfully clear, asked who was calling.
“It’s Judy. I called about Irene.”
“About Irene!” Instantly the voice changed. Judy could tell that her fears were well founded.
“Yes, yes. About Irene. She’s still missing. Who are her relatives in Brooklyn?”
“Why, I—I dunno,” the old man faltered.
“You don’t know! But you said not to worry. She was with relatives....”
“Didn’t I say as she might be?”
“Then you didn’t know where she was?” Judy demanded.
“N-no, not for sure. She’d have a purty hard time findin’ abody from jest the looks of their house. But she does have relatives—if they ain’t dead.”
“Her mother’s relatives?”
“Yes, my poor Annie’s folks. I told her about them in a letter, but I get all muddled up on the names. Can’t seem to remember. It’s queer how anything like that slips a man’s mind. Can’t you help me, Judy?” he begged. “Ain’t there anything you can do?”
“There’s everything. Why, we would have turned New York inside out looking for her if it hadn’t been for that telegram——”
Dale touched her arm. “Go easy, Judy. Her father’s upset, too. Better hang up, and we’ll report it to the police again.”
At the same time Mr. Lang was saying, “I’ll manage it somehow. The nurses ain’t strong enough to keep me here when my little girl is lost.”
Through tear-dimmed eyes, Judy fumbled for the pile of coins, put the few that were left back in her pocketbook and stumbled out of the store with Dale and Pauline.
“All this to go through again,” she moaned, “and after we believed she was safe!”
Then she looked up and saw Dale’s sober face and resolved to be brave herself.
“We’re going to the police station, aren’t we?” she asked. “We’ll tell them it was a mistake—that report that she was with relatives—and perhaps, if we hurry, there will still be time for a police broadcast of Irene’s description over the radio tonight!”
“There must be time,” Dale said between set lips. “And then what?”
“And then,” Judy declared, “we’re going to take paper and pencil and write down every possible thing that could have happened to Irene. After that we’re going to begin with the most plausible and follow up every clue. We’ll call in the police where necessary but we are the ones to do the brain work. We are the ones who care.”
Lieutenant Collins was a big man with a ruddy face and blue eyes that smiled kindly over his massive desk. Like Chief Kelly at home he inspired confidence, and Judy felt relieved to be talking with him instead of the young sergeant they had found at the police station before. With now and then an additional bit of information from Dale and Pauline, she retold the story of Irene’s mysterious disappearance. Then she explained Mr. Lang’s subsequent telegram leading them to suppose Irene was safe and, finally, the discovery that Mr. Lang had merely described a house in Brooklyn.
“You see, he lives in a small town. He didn’t realize that such a description would be of no use to Irene here. And now,” Judy finished, “we seem to be right back where we started from—without a clue.”
By this time quite a group of officers and young detectives had gathered around the lieutenant’s desk.
“It’s beginning to look like an interesting case,” one of them remarked with a smug satisfaction that caused Dale to glare at him. Irene was no case! She was a flesh-and-blood girl—lost, alone. He did not think of the many instances in his own stories where the detective had made similar remarks. It never occurred to him that here was real experience on which to build his imaginative tales. No one had told him that the one thing his stories lacked was an intensity of feeling gained only by living through an actual tragedy.
Judy thought of it. It seemed irrelevant, almost disloyal to Irene to think of fiction and Dale’s future just then. But if they found Irene, Dale’s future might be hers. How wonderful! And after those high-hat girls in Farringdon had snubbed her so! It would be almost a triumph for Judy, too—that is, if they could only find Irene and give this Cinderella story a chance to come true.
The printed form Judy had previously filled in was still on file in the police records. This was checked up and once more turned over to the Detective Bureau. The description, Lieutenant Collins promised, would be telephoned to the Bureau of Missing Persons and broadcast over the radio at seven-thirty.
Dale looked at his watch. Only an hour and the whole country would be hearing about Irene’s disappearance. Surely someone had seen her, and whoever it was couldn’t forget the golden dress and slippers.
“Girls don’t vanish,” Judy declared as they turned to leave.
“Oh, but they do,” Pauline cried. “Joy Holiday vanished right out of a locked room. And when they found her she was dead.”
None of them spoke after that. Automatically they went back to the house and climbed up the three long flights of stairs. Blackberry greeted them as they opened the door, but Judy had no heart for romping with him.
“Go away!” she said, pushing him gently out of the way. “Cats can’t understand human troubles.”
But instead of minding her, he rubbed his silky head against her ankles. His soft, crackly purr seemed to say: “Cats do understand human troubles. What you need is someone who loves you to sympathize.”
Tears came to Judy’s eyes. She thought of her father and mother struggling with an epidemic of influenza when they had wanted a vacation. She thought of her brother, Horace. She thought of Peter and Honey and their two dear grandparents, of Arthur who had once helped hunt for Lorraine Lee in his airplane. How she missed them all! How she needed them! Oh, why had she and Irene ever left Farringdon at all? To find adventure, she supposed. Now she felt sick to death of adventure and only wanted all her friends together the way they used to be. Irene, even the pale overworked Irene, would be better than this awful uncertainty.
Walking over to the radio, Judy stood watching Dale as he fumbled with the dials. In ten more minutes the police alarms would be on the air.
“A little more to the left if you want the city station,” Pauline directed from her chair beside the desk. He turned the dials and, loud and clear, a familiar dance tune broke upon their senses. It was Golden Girl and a well-known radio artist, Kate South, was singing in an emotional, contralto voice:
Judy bowed her head and tears smarted in her eyes.
“Irene’s description,” Dale said fiercely. He shut off the radio and did not turn it on again until the ten minutes were up.
Gongs sounded and then the announcer’s voice, very cold and matter-of-fact, read through the list of missing persons. Irene’s name came last:
That was all. In a few seconds it was over and Judy was left with the sick feeling that no one had heard.
In the living room of their little apartment two hundred miles away, Mrs. Dobbs settled herself in a comfortable rocker ready to relax and listen to the radio. Mrs. Dobbs loved music. Usually she listened to the old-time melodies but there was something especially appealing about the popular song that Kate South was singing. She called to her grandson.
“Come here, Peter, and listen.”
The tall youth entered the room and stretched himself in a chair.
“Gee, Grandma! It makes a fellow feel lonesome. Why the dickens do you suppose Judy had to spend her vacation so far away from folks who care about her?”
“She’s with Irene,” Mrs. Dobbs replied, “and from what I hear, Pauline Faulkner has taken a great liking to both of them. Honey was saying only this morning that she wished she’d been invited, too.”
“I’m glad she wasn’t,” Peter returned with vigor. “At least I have a little to say about what my sister is and isn’t going to do. Where is she now?”
“Out with Horace. He’s been taking her out alone since Irene went away——”
But Mrs. Dobbs stopped speaking as Peter held up his hand. The music had played out and neither of them had been paying much attention to the announcements that followed until the name, Irene Lang, broke upon their senses. Missing, was she?
Peter gave a low whistle of surprise and then jumped to his feet.
“Where are you going?” his grandmother cried.
“Going to get the car,” he flung over his shoulder. “Judy will be needing me.”
In the hallway he bumped into Horace and Honey just returning from a short walk through town.
“Where’s the fire?” Horace greeted him. “If there’s something exciting going on I want to hear about it. The paper’s starving for news.”
“Irene Lang has disappeared!” Peter gave out the “news” so suddenly that Horace was dumbfounded for a moment.
“And I’m going to New York to help Judy,” he added. “She’s apt to go too far with her flare for detecting. You might as well come, too. Maybe the paper will finance the trip if we bring back a big scoop——”
“Sa-ay!” Horace broke in. “Don’t forget it’s Irene Lang who is missing. News or no news, nothing goes into the paper that isn’t on the level.”
“Don’t I know it!” Peter replied. “Irene wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t on the level and there’s Judy to consider, too.”
“I want to help,” Honey spoke up. “Won’t you let me come with you?”
Horace looked at her and shook his head. The trip wouldn’t be a very safe one with Peter in his present mood and his car capable of a speed exceeding sixty.
“Then can’t we do something here?” she begged. “Can’t we go and see Irene’s father? Maybe he knows where she went.”
“Gosh!” Horace exclaimed. “That’s a real idea, Honey. You’ll be as good as Judy if you keep on using those little gray cells of yours. Goodbye, Peter! We’re off for the sanitarium.”
“Backing out, eh?” Peter gibed him.
“Backing out, nothing! If we learn anything important,” Horace declared, “we can beat your car in Arthur’s airplane.”
And yet Judy felt that no one had heard, that it was all up to her. Even Dale Meredith seemed not to be helping, and Pauline.... How much did Pauline care? Neither of them had attempted to follow Judy’s suggestion that they write down every possible clue. Instead they talked—talked until midnight, almost—when she was trying so hard to think.
Then Mary came in. Mary usually came in when Pauline stayed up too late. The cocoa that she served was a signal for Dale to leave and the girls to retire.
Pauline drank her cocoa quickly and walked with him to the door. When it closed behind him she still stood there, her head pressed against the panels.
“You’re tired,” Judy told her. “I’ll take this cocoa into my room and let you sleep.”
“Aren’t you going to drink it?”
Judy shook her head. “Not with Irene gone. It would make me sleepy too, and I’ve simply got to think.”
Alone in her room she tried to turn herself into an abstract thing, a mental machine that could think without feeling. In her heart she could not believe Irene had taken the poetry, but in her mind she knew that it must be so.
Didn’t Irene want the poems because they described a house? Even the address might have been among the conglomeration of papers. When her father suggested that she visit relatives in Brooklyn he had described a house also. Perhaps the two descriptions were the same. Perhaps the relative she sought was Sarah Glenn! For surely it was more than coincidence that Irene looked so much like the poet’s daughter, Joy Holiday. Could she have been an aunt? No, because Sarah Glenn had only the one child. A distant cousin? Hardly. Then there was only one conclusion left: Joy Holiday might have been Irene’s own mother!
Could Irene have put two and two together, just as Judy was doing, and gone to the poet’s house the day she disappeared? No doubt, if she did, she planned to be back again before either Judy or Pauline returned. Something had prevented her!
That something might have been Jasper Crosby, cruel, scheming, mercenary creature that he was. Or it might have been poor, demented Sarah Glenn. She might have locked Irene in the tower the way she had once locked her own daughter away from her friends. There was no telling what a crazy woman might do!
An hour later Judy still sat on her bed, trying to decide what to do. Her cocoa, on a forgotten corner of the dresser, had crusted over like cold paste. She rose, walked across the room, tasted the cold drink and set down the cup. She must come to some decision! Irene might be living through a nightmare of torture in that horrible house Sarah Glenn had described in her poems.
In the next room Pauline was sleeping soundly. Judy could wake her, ask her advice. Downstairs the telephone waited ready to help her. She could call Lieutenant Collins at the police station and tell her findings to him. She could telephone Mr. Lang again and ask him more questions—worry him more. She could call the young author, Dale Meredith.
Yes, she could call Dale and tell him that the insane poet might be Irene’s grandmother; that the scheming miser, Jasper Crosby, might be her uncle and that Irene, herself, had probably stolen the poetry to help locate them. What a shock that would be to the young author who had idolized Irene and called her his Golden Girl. Judy hadn’t the heart to disillusion him although her own spirit was heavy with the hurt of it all.
She wouldn’t notify the police either. Irene must not be subjected to an unkind cross fire of questions when, or if, she did return. Judy would find Irene herself and let her explain. Suppose she had stolen the poetry? What did it matter? Judy was learning not to expect perfection in people. She would love Irene all the more, forgiving her. And if Irene had stolen the poetry she could give it back quietly, and Judy could explain things to Emily Grimshaw. Dale need never be told.
Judy wouldn’t have done that much to shield herself. She could.... Oh, now she knew she could stand shock, excitement, tragedy. But it wouldn’t do to have people blaming Irene.
That night Judy buried her head in the pillows waiting, wide-eyed, for morning. Morning would tell. She knew that work was slack at the office and that Emily Grimshaw often did not come in until afternoon. She would take the morning off and go ... she consulted the bit of paper with the poet’s latest verse on one side and her address scribbled on the other. She got up out of bed to take it from her pocketbook and study it. The street apparently had no name.
One blk. past Parkville, just off Gravesend Avenue.
Morning dawned cold and misty. Judy fumbled through the closet hunting for an umbrella, and her trembling fingers touched Irene’s clothes. They lingered lovingly in the folds of each well remembered dress.
“Irene! Irene!” she thought. “I don’t care what you’ve done if only I can bring you back.”
In the adjoining room Pauline was still asleep. How cruel of her to sleep! No one was up except Blackberry, out there on the roof garden. Feeling that she must say goodbye to somebody, Judy whispered it to him.
It was too early for the throng of office workers to be abroad when Judy stepped out on the wet pavement and turned toward the subway entrance. The tall buildings in lower New York were little more than shadows, and the clock in the Metropolitan Tower was veiled in mist. Ghostly halos were around all the street lamps, and dampness seemed to have settled heavily over everything.
Judy felt it. The only comforting thing about the trip was the fact that she would be riding on the subway alone for the first time. She paid her fare, asked a few directions, and soon was seated in an express train bound for Brooklyn.
She pressed her forehead against the window as the train came onto Manhattan Bridge and started its trip over the East River. Freighters steamed down toward the ocean and up again. Everything looked gray.
As she watched, Judy’s hopes sank lower and lower. She began to realize that it was not the part of wisdom to go on her dangerous errand to the poet’s house alone. What would she say if Jasper Crosby opened the door? Would her experience with eccentric Emily Grimshaw help her to cope with the insane hallucinations of Sarah Glenn? Would she dare demand to know what had happened to Irene when a possibility existed that they had never seen her? Suppose they asked for the missing poetry. If she lied to defend Irene her nervousness might betray her. Judy knew that her chances of finding her chum were slim, very slim. Like the shining tracks behind her they seemed to lessen as the train sped on.
At Ninth Avenue she changed to the Culver Line. Up came the train, out of the tunnel, and the wet gray walls at the side of the tracks grew lower and lower. Soon they were clear of the ground and Judy realized that this was the elevated. Only four more stations! She looked around, eager for her first glimpse of Brooklyn, but what she saw caused her to shudder.
“Ugh! A graveyard.”
It stretched on and on, a grim sight on that dreary morning. Even after the white stones were left behind vacant lots and empty buildings made the scene look almost as cheerless.
At the fourth stop Judy got off and went down to the street. It was silly, but the thought came to her that if ever spirits walked abroad they would walk along Gravesend Avenue.
Consulting the slip of paper, she counted blocks as she passed them and watched for Parkville Avenue. She knew the old-fashioned street at once from the quaint houses that lined it. Then came the Long Island Railroad cut with a long line of box cars passing under Gravesend Avenue in a slow-moving procession.
She paused. Could the alley beyond be the street she sought? No wonder they hadn’t named it anything. Why, it wasn’t even paved! It seemed little more than a trail through vacant lots. She hesitated, looked ahead and caught her breath in a quick, terrified gasp. Then she stared, open-mouthed. There was something sinister about the huge, gray frame building that loomed in her path. The gnarled old trees surrounding it seemed almost alive, and the wind whistling through their branches sounded like a warning. But it was the tower, not the house itself, that caused Judy to gasp. The whole lower part of it was burned away and in the tower window something thin and yellow moved back and forth behind the curtains. It looked like an elongated ghost!
Judy rubbed her eyes and looked again. This time the tower was dark with the even blackness of drawn shades behind closed windows.
An unreasonable fear took possession of the watching girl. She felt that she had seen something not there in material substance. Stanza after stanza of Sarah Glenn’s poetry forced itself upon her consciousness, and it all fitted this house—the yellow ghost in the window, the crumbling tower.
Suddenly Judy realized that she was standing stock-still in the middle of the muddy unpaved street, moving her lips and making no sound. She was doing the same thing that Emily Grimshaw had done when Dale Meredith said she was crazy. Oh! She must get control of herself, take herself in hand.
“If the house can frighten me like this,” she thought, “what wouldn’t it do to Irene?”
Bracing her slim shoulders and mustering all her courage, Judy marched up on the porch and felt for the bell. Finding none, she rapped with her bare knuckles. The sound of her rap sent an echo reverberating through the walls of the still house.
Judy waited. She waited a long time before she dared rap again. The house seemed to be inhabited only by the echo she had heard and the phantom that had vanished from the tower window.
Still nobody answered. Judy tried the door and found it locked. Then she peered through the lower windows and saw at once that the house was empty of furniture.
“Nobody lives here,” she told herself and then she told herself the same thing all over again so that it would surely seem true. “Nobody ever does live in empty houses.”
And yet she had the strangest feeling that she was being watched!