The Yellow Phantom A Judy Bolton Mystery

“Goodbye, Judy! Goodbye, Irene! Don’t like New York so well that you won’t want to come home!”

“Don’t keep them too long, Pauline! Farringdon will be as dead as so many bricks without them. Even the cats will miss Blackberry. Make him wave his paw, Judy!”

“Don’t forget to write!”

“Goodbye, Pauline! Goodbye, Judy! Goodbye, Irene!”

“Goodbye! Goodbye!”

And Peter’s car was off, bearing the last load of campers back to their home town.

Judy Bolton watched them out of sight. They were taking the familiar road, but she and Irene Lang would soon be traveling in the other direction. Pauline Faulkner had invited them for a visit, including Judy’s cat in the invitation, and they were going back with her to New York.

A long blue bus hove into view, and all three girls hailed it, at first expectantly, then frantically when they saw it was not stopping. It slowed down a few feet ahead of them, but when they attempted to board it the driver eyed Blackberry with disapproval.

“Can’t take the cat unless he’s in a crate.”

“He’s good,” Judy began. “He won’t be any trouble——”

“Can’t help it. Company’s rules.” And he was about to close the door when Judy’s quick idea saved the situation.

“All right, he’s in a crate,” she declared with vigor as she thrust the cat inside her own pretty hatbox. The hats she hastily removed and bundled under one arm.

The driver had to give in. He even grinned a bit sheepishly as the girls took their seats, Pauline and Irene together, “Because,” Judy insisted as she took the seat just behind them, “I have Blackberry.”

The other passengers on the bus were regarding the newcomers with amused interest. A ten-year-old boy brought forth a ball of twine and rolled it playfully in Blackberry’s direction. An old lady made purring noises through her lips. Everyone seemed to be nodding and smiling. Everyone except the serious young man across the aisle. He never turned his head.

Judy nudged the two friends in the seat ahead of her and confided a desire to do something—anything to make him look up.

“Why, Judy,” Irene replied, shocked. “I’ve been watching that man myself and he’s—he’s——”

“Well, what?”

“Almost my ideal.”

“Silly!” Judy laughed. “I’d like to bet he wouldn’t be so ideal if I did something to disturb those precious papers that he’s reading.”

“I dare you!” Pauline said.

Sixteen or not, the dare tempted Judy. It was an easy matter to let Blackberry out of the hatbox in her arms and down into the aisle. The cat’s plumelike tail did the rest.

The man looked up. But, to Judy’s surprise, he looked up with a smile. Irene, all contrition, hastened to apologize.

“No harm done,” he returned good-naturedly and began collecting his scattered papers. Soon he had them rearranged and resumed his reading. There were a great many typewritten sheets of paper, and he seemed to be reading critically, scratching out something here and adding something there.

“You were wrong,” Irene said, turning to Judy. “See how nice he was.”

“I should have known better than to dare a girl like you,” Pauline put in.

“It was horrid of me,” Judy admitted, now almost as interested as Irene in the strange young man. Not because he was Judy’s ideal—a man who wouldn’t notice a cat until its tail bumped into him—but because the papers on his lap might be important. And she had disturbed them.

The man, apparently unaware that the accident had been anybody’s fault, continued reading and correcting. Judy watched her cat carefully until the stack of papers was safely inside his portfolio again.

“That’s finished,” he announced as though speaking to himself. He screwed the top on his fountain pen, placed it in his pocket and then turned to the girls. “Nice scenery, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” Judy replied, laughing, “but you didn’t seem to be paying much attention to it.”

“I’ve been over this road a great many times,” he explained, “and one does tire of scenery, like anything else. Passengers in the bus are different.”

“You mean different from scenery?”

“Yes, and from each other. For instance, you with your ridiculous cat and your golden-haired friend who apologized for you and that small, dark girl are three distinct types.”

Judy regarded him curiously. She had never thought of herself or either of the other girls as “types.” Now she tried to analyze his meaning.

Their lives had certainly been different. Judy and Pauline, although of independent natures, had always felt the security of dependence upon their parents while Irene’s crippled father depended solely upon her. This responsibility made her seem older than her years—older and younger, too. She never could acquire Pauline’s poise or Judy’s fearlessness.

In appearance, too, they were different. Her first vacation had done wonders for Irene Lang. Now her usually pale cheeks glowed with healthy color, and her eyes were a deeper, happier blue. Two weeks of sunshine had tanned her skin and brought out all the gold in her hair.

Pauline, too, had acquired a becoming tan which made her hair look darker than ever and contrasted strangely with her keen, light blue eyes.

The sun had not been quite so kind to Judy. It had discovered a few faint freckles on her nose and given her hair a decided reddish cast. But Judy didn’t mind. Camp life had been exciting—boating, swimming and, as a climax, a thrilling ride in Arthur Farringdon-Pett’s new airplane.

The young man beside Judy was a little like Arthur in appearance—tall, good-looking but altogether too grown-up and serious. Judy liked boys to make jokes now and then, even tease the way her brother, Horace, did. Peter teased her, too.

“Queer,” she thought, “to miss being teased.”

This stranger seemed to like serious-minded people and presently changed the conversation to books and music, always favorite topics with Irene. Then Judy spoke about the work that he was doing but learned nothing except that “finished” in his case meant that he had succeeded in putting his papers back in their original sequence.