Her nerves taxed to the breaking point, Judy gave up searching for the day and went to the office. Emily Grimshaw was not there but she had left a message:

Will be away for a time and leave you in charge.

“Me in charge!” Judy exclaimed. She couldn’t imagine herself conducting Emily Grimshaw’s business sensibly. “I’ll just close up for the day,” she decided in exasperation. Leaving a notice to that effect at the hotel desk, she locked the office and started for Dr. Faulkner’s house.

In the entrance hall she was met by an anxious group of faces. Dale’s, Pauline’s—and Peter’s.

“Judy!” he cried, and then when her only answer was a choked sob, again, “Judy!”

“Oh, Peter! You’ll help?”

“That’s why I’m here. We telephoned everywhere. We thought you’d never come.”

“Where on earth were you?” Dale asked.

“Hunting for Irene,” Judy explained brokenly. “I—I followed up a clue. I thought I knew where Irene was and I went out there to get her to—to bring her home and surprise you, but she wasn’t there.”

“Wasn’t where?”

“Where I thought she was ... the most awful place just off Gravesend Avenue out in old Parkville. The—the house has a tower, just like the tower in Sarah Glenn’s poems. It’s burned halfway up and—and—and——”

“And what, Judy? Don’t act so frightened.”

“There was something in the tower,” she blurted out, “something yellow——”

“Probably a yellow dog or some such ordinary thing,” Pauline interrupted.

“Oh, but it wasn’t! I saw it as plainly as anything, and it looked like a woman in a yellow robe, only she was too tall and too thin to be real. Then I looked again and she was gone but I could still feel her watching me. It was awful! I didn’t think there could be a tower of flame or a ghost, but there they were!” Judy leaned back against the closed door and threw both hands outward in a gesture of bewilderment.

“And I always thought I was a practical person. I always trusted my own head—and eyes.”

Impulsively, Peter caught her hands in his. His voice was husky. “I still trust them, Judy. Tell me everything,” he pleaded. “I know you must have had a good reason for thinking that Irene might be in this queer old house. Why did you?”

“Because Irene looks so much like the poet’s daughter, Joy Holiday. I thought they might be related. Mr. Lang spoke of Irene’s relatives. He told her to look them up. But the poet is crazy! Anything might happen!”

“And yet you went there alone!” Peter exclaimed. “Don’t you realize that whatever happened to Irene might have happened to you?”

“I did realize it—when I got there,” Judy faltered. “I—I guess I wasn’t very brave to run away, but nobody seemed to live in the house. It looked—empty.”

“Then, of course, Irene couldn’t be there,” Pauline concluded.

“Oh, but they might have moved—and taken her with them!” Judy turned to Peter, a new fear in her eyes. “You know about law. Tell me, if Irene is related to Sarah Glenn wouldn’t she inherit some of her property?”

“That depends upon the will,” he replied. “If she made a will before she went insane——”

“She did!” Judy interrupted. “She willed the property to her daughter and, in the event of her death, it was to go to her brother, Jasper Crosby. He’s a crook and a scoundrel,” she declared, “worse than Slippery McQuirk or any of Vine Thompson’s gang, if I’m any judge of character. You see, if Irene is related to the poet through Joy Holiday, how convenient it would be for him to have her out of the way?”

“You mean that Joy Holiday might have been Irene’s mother?”

“She couldn’t have been,” Pauline spoke up. “Joy Holiday has been dead for twenty years.”

“Supposedly! Her mother never did believe the body was hers, and even Emily Grimshaw says it didn’t look like her.”

“Where’d they get the body?” Peter asked.

“Jasper Crosby went to the morgue and got it. He identified it as Joy’s, and people paid no attention to his sister’s objections because they knew she was insane.”

“Then this girl, Joy Holiday, is legally dead. But if we can prove that there has been a fraud....”

“What fraud?” Dale questioned. “You don’t mean to tell us that this Jasper Crosby may have falsely identified some unknown girl’s body in order to inherit his sister’s property?”

“That’s exactly what I was trying to say. I don’t know anything about Irene’s mother and neither does she. Mr. Lang only remembered the name, Annie, and that, as well as Joy, may have been only a nickname.” Judy turned to Peter. “I know how you felt when your parents were a mystery. Well, wouldn’t Irene feel the same way? Her father gave away some family history in his letter, and Irene was more impressed than we know by Emily Grimshaw’s collapse. Remember, I wrote you about it, Peter? She wanted to find out about her mother——”

“Then she did take the poetry,” Pauline put in.

“Yes,” Judy agreed. “I’m afraid she did. It’s a terrible thing not to know the truth about one’s parents, and Irene must have taken the poetry to help her find that horrible house that seems to have swallowed her up.”

“She said she didn’t,” Dale maintained.

Judy felt suddenly ashamed that his trust in Irene should be greater than hers. But if, distrusting her, Judy found her, then she could be glad of her disbelief.

“There is another possibility,” she ventured and made her voice sound more hopeful than she felt. “There is the possibility that Irene may be safe in the poet’s house.”

“That sounds more plausible,” Dale agreed, “but you said the house was empty.”

“I said it looked empty, except for that unearthly thing in the tower. But, now that I think of it, something alive must have been there to pull the shades. Do you suppose,” Judy asked in a tremulous whisper, “that somebody could be locked there like Joy Holiday was when she vanished?”

“It sounds like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? But not,” Peter added gravely, “if Irene is in the tower. Judy, we must do something—and do it quickly.”

It did not take him long to decide what that something would be. “We’ll get a policeman to go with us,” he declared. “The police have a right to force their way into a house if nobody answers.”

“Without a search warrant?” questioned Pauline.

“That’s the dickens of it,” Dale fumed. “There’s sure to be some red tape attached to it and loss of time may mean—loss of Irene. We’ve got to convince the police that this is a matter of life and death!”

A taxi was the quickest means of getting to the police station. It took considerable explaining, however, to convince officials that the case was urgent. The fact that the owner of the house was known to be insane and that Irene might be held there against her will proved to be the strongest argument in favor of the search warrant they requested. But it could not be served until the following day.

“You have to go before a magistrate,” Lieutenant Collins explained, “and night warrants are allowed only in cases where persons or property are positively known to be in the place to be searched. However, there are several ways of getting around that. If a felony has been committed, as in the present case, we don’t need a warrant.”

“What felony?” Judy asked.

“Great guns!” he exclaimed. “Don’t you call kidnaping a felony? If the girl’s held there against her will it’s a plain case of kidnaping!”

Judy hadn’t thought of that. Kidnapers and killers were almost synonymous in her mind and the thought was terrifying.

Lieutenant Collins wasted no further time but called the Parkville Precinct, and two policemen were detailed to meet Judy, Pauline, Dale and Peter and accompany them to the house with the crumbling tower.