“Come on, Lorraine,” urged Lois. “We were only joking. You know there’s really no such thing as a haunted fountain. And perhaps they really have torn it down.”

“I haven’t been here since that day I came with my grandparents, but we won’t find out by just standing here,” declared Judy. “I think those men had some reason for telling us the fountain didn’t exist, and I mean to find out what it was. I should have brought Blackberry along. He was my excuse for exploring the ruined castle. I was supposed to be looking for my cat.”

“What did you do with him?” Lois questioned.

“Blackberry?” Judy gave a little gasp. “I am careless! I do believe I left him shut in the attic, but Peter will rescue him when he comes home.”

“We may need him to rescue us if those men find out what we’re up to. What time do you expect him?” Lorraine wanted to know.

“He said he might be late and suggested that I spend the night with Mother and Dad,” replied Judy. “I didn’t ask him why. You know Peter doesn’t want me to get myself involved in any of his cases. I don’t even know what sort of assignments he has any more. The Bureau is so secret about it.”

“Well, we can be secret about this investigation, too. How do we know those men aren’t criminals hiding out here while the Brandts are away?” asked Lois.

“Roger Banning isn’t a criminal,” Lorraine objected.

“His pal, Dick Hartwell, was. Remember?”

“Wasn’t there something in the paper about him being out on parole?” asked Lorraine. “I don’t think we should label him a criminal if he is. Probably he has a good job and is no more inclined toward crime than we are. After all, we are trespassing.”

“I don’t care if we are,” Lois said recklessly as they trudged on.

It seemed a long way uphill to the part of the estate where Judy felt sure the path branched off and led toward the fountain.

“Watch for it! We don’t want to miss it. Maybe we ought to look for it on the other side of that hedge,” she suggested.

“How can we?” asked Lois.

“We’ll go back to where the hedge begins,” declared Judy. “It’s the only way.”

“We’ll be all afternoon finding it,” complained Lorraine. “Maybe the fountain isn’t haunted, but it is creepy here in the woods. You know, Judy, I’ve missed most of your shivery adventures. I wouldn’t be so interested in this one if it didn’t directly concern me.”

Judy didn’t see how, but she was curious. She waited until they were well concealed behind the hedge. It was safer, just in case someone did drive up the road. Then she turned to Lorraine and said as casually as she could, “That’s so. Lois did say you had a problem. What is it, Lorraine? Don’t you want to tell me about it?”

Apparently she didn’t. Nobody spoke for a minute. Then Lois said, “She won’t even tell me. I just know something is wrong from the way she acts.”

“I didn’t say anything was,” Lorraine protested.

“You did say something about not being able to trust Arthur,” Judy reminded her. “Do you still want to turn back the clock so that things will be the way they were before you quarreled?”

“We didn’t quarrel,” Lorraine retorted quickly.

“Maybe you should,” Judy began. “Peter and I do occasionally. Dad says it’s good for us. He says it clears the air, and we do love each other all the more after we make up. If you’d tell Arthur about this problem—”

“Please,” Lorraine stopped her. “Can’t you see the way it is? If I could tell him or anyone else about it, then it wouldn’t be a problem. I just want to believe in things the way I did when I was a little girl. I mean impossible things like wishes coming true.”

“But they do come true if you work at it. Mine did,” Judy reassured her.

Lorraine started to say something more, but broke off suddenly as Lois stumbled into what she felt sure must be the path.

“You were right, Judy!” she cried excitedly. “They’ve concealed it on purpose. We couldn’t possibly have seen it from the road. There isn’t a break in the hedge.”

The path didn’t look very much as Judy remembered it, but she agreed that it might not have been used recently.

“Anyway,” she said, “it’s going in the right direction. We should pass the tower and then come to a rock garden with statues—what’s this?”

A fence with barbed wire running from post to post was directly across the path.

“Shall we crawl under it?” asked Lois.

“We might climb over it,” Judy suggested. “The wires seem loose. I’ll hold them down.”

“Wait! They’re electric!”

The warning from Lois came just too late. Without noticing the white insulators attached to it, Judy had put her hand on the top wire. Quickly she drew back with a sharp cry of pain.

“Don’t touch those wires!” she warned Lorraine. “I guess they mean that sign back there. This fence is charged with electricity. It gave me quite a shock.”

“I burned my hand—almost,” Lois corrected herself as she looked and saw no burn. “It felt like it, but I guess those wires aren’t really deadly.”

“I hope not.” Lorraine turned to Judy and asked a little plaintively, “What do we do now?”

“I have an idea,” Judy replied, looking around for a forked stick. When she had found one of just the right size she was able to hold back the wires without receiving any more electric shocks. As soon as Lois and Lorraine had crawled under the fence, she gave them the stick to hold for her.

“Now,” she announced, standing erect and brushing herself off, “we’re really on forbidden ground.”

All three girls followed the path beyond the fence. White statues, like white ghosts, loomed up in unexpected places. Over to the left was the tower. Lois glanced at it and then shivered.

“It gives me the creeps,” she confessed. “Do you think somebody could be up there watching us?”

“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!”