It was twelve o’clock when Judy and Pauline, her head held high, walked into the house. All the lights were on and the radio was going in Pauline’s parlor room, but, as no one was there, they went on through to the roof garden. Irene looked up from the hammock.

“Oh, there you are!” she exclaimed. “Dale and I have been so worried. We couldn’t imagine where you were.”

Pauline noticed the familiar use of his first name and winced. The young author had been sitting beside Irene, and now he rose and stood smiling. Again Pauline felt as if she wanted to run away, but this time it was impossible.

Judy excused their lateness as well as she could without telling them she expected that they would be dancing. Irene soon explained that.

“You missed the most wonderful time,” she said. “Dale was going to take us to a hotel roof garden to dance, but when you didn’t come in we had to wait.”

“You could have left a note,” Pauline replied. “I’m sorry to have spoiled your date.”

“It isn’t spoiled,” Dale returned. “With your consent, we are going tomorrow night.”

“Why with my consent? Irene is old enough to take care of herself.”

“But can’t you see?” he protested. “I want all three of you to come.”

“You can leave me out.”

“Why, Pauline,” Irene exclaimed, “I thought——”

“Never mind what you thought,” Judy interrupted. She knew that Irene had been about to say she thought Pauline wanted to meet interesting people. Then Dale would know she thought him interesting, and that wouldn’t be a very good thing to reveal right then. But Judy spoke more sharply than she realized, and her tone held the smallest hint of suspicion.

Irene’s expressive eyes were dark with reproach. “Judy!” she cried, almost in tears, “Now what have I done to offend you?”

“Nothing, dear. Nothing at all. I’m just tired.”

“You must be tired,” Dale put in. “Who wouldn’t be, after such a hectic day? But why take it out on Irene? She isn’t to blame if Her Majesty makes a grouch of herself.”

“Of course not,” Judy agreed, not quite sure that she spoke the truth. Certainly Irene had had something to do with Emily Grimshaw’s grouch for the old lady had not been herself since the moment she set eyes on the dainty figure in yellow, curled on her sofa in the office that morning.

“You don’t know the half of it,” she went on to explain. “Her Majesty, as you call her, acted queer and talked to herself like a crazy person all day. I didn’t dare speak to her for fear she’d go off in a fit again. She thinks someone, or something, came into the office. Did you ever hear of a person named Joy Holiday?”

“No, never,” Dale replied.

Then Judy turned to Irene. “Did you?”

“You know I didn’t,” she replied in surprise. “Why, Judy, you know everyone I know at home, and I have no friends here except Pauline. Why do you ask?”

“Because Emily Grimshaw thinks someone named Joy Holiday took those poems that were lost.”

“What poems?” asked Pauline.

“The ones Irene and I were reading this morning. Something happened to them. They aren’t anywhere. Of course someone took them, but the strange part of it is, we were the only ones in the office.”

“And you missed them right after Emily Grimshaw had that queer spell and collapsed?” Dale asked.

“Pretty soon afterwards.”

“I thought there was something fishy about that at the time,” he declared, “and I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if the old lady made away with them herself.”

“But why should she? What would be her object in taking poems she expected to publish and then pretending not to know what happened to them?”

“It’s beyond me! Maybe she didn’t. They might have been accidentally brushed off the table when someone passed.”

“In that case they would have been on the floor,” Judy replied.

Dale Meredith was coming to some rapid conclusions, she thought—too rapid to be sincere expressions of his opinion. But what use could a successful young author make of faded manuscripts of melancholy poetry. A plot for a story, perhaps. That was pure inspiration! Those queer old poems might furnish plots for a great many mystery stories if anyone had the patience to figure them out. Ghosts ... towers ... thrills ... shivers ... creeps.... Dale Meredith could do it, too. All he needed was a little time to study the originals. The revised poems with corrections and omissions, Judy could see, wouldn’t do half so well.

But that would be cheating, stealing. No, there was another word for it—plagiarizing. That was it. But Judy had hoped that Dale was too fine a man to stoop to anything like that, even to further the interests of his stories.

“Better to crumble in a tower of flame....”

A line from one of the missing poems, but it did ring true. It was far better that Judy’s plans for both her friends should crumble before the flame that was her passion for finding out the truth.

When she came into the room she had noticed Dale Meredith’s portfolio on top of the radio. It was the same portfolio that he had carried on the bus, the same portfolio that he had taken away with him when he left Emily Grimshaw’s office. Now Judy remembered watching Dale and Irene from the office window as they walked through Madison Square. Irene had carried nothing except her brown hand bag. That was far too small to hold the manuscript. But Dale’s portfolio——Why, even now it bulged with papers that must be inside! Yes, Judy had to face it, Dale Meredith might have taken the poems. They might be inside that very portfolio!

Excusing herself, she went inside. Blackberry followed at her heels.