“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.