The Puzzle in the Pond A Judy Bolton Mystery

“Here’s something Miss Pringle can use!”

Judy ran her fingers over the tiny, embossed Reward of Merit card as if she couldn’t bear to part with it even for the short time it would be on exhibit at the Roulsville library.

“Mrs. Wheatley is still Miss Pringle to you, isn’t she?” asked Peter Dobbs, smiling at his young wife as she knelt beside the open drawer of the old chest where her grandmother’s keepsakes were stored.

“I do think of her as Miss Pringle,” confessed Judy, “and she probably thinks of me as that noisy Judy Bolton. Prim Miss Pringle is what I used to call her. She left everything in such perfect order, it’s hard for me to believe she and Bob Wheatley lived in our house for two whole months. We won’t ever rent it again, will we, Peter?”

“You’re not asking me to promise we won’t, are you?” he countered. “You know how I feel about promises.”

“You’re right, too,” declared Judy, reaching into the drawer for another one of Grandmother Smeed’s treasured keepsakes. “Here’s a sewing card worked in cross-stitch. It says: ‘Promise Little. Do Much.’ Do you think it would do for the September exhibit?”

“I should think so,” Peter replied thoughtfully. “A maxim like that would do for any time of the year. Does the library plan to exhibit a few of these things each month?”

“Yes, but just for the school year. Miss Pringle—I mean Mrs. Wheatley says she wants me to arrange them in that little glass case near the library door. These reward-of-merit cards used to be given out at school when Grandma was a little girl. The other card was a sewing lesson. ‘Promise little. Do much,’” Judy repeated, “but how much can a person do in a day? Maybe I won’t try to sort all these treasures this morning.”

“You’ve made a good start. I wish I could stay and help you. I always liked treasure hunting,” Peter confessed, “but Uncle Sam expects me to hunt criminals today. We’ll be using an official car, so I’ll leave the Beetle for you to transport your exhibit to the library if you do get it ready. ’Bye, Angel. See you at six.”

“You hope,” Judy added as he bent to kiss her.

Peter’s time was not his own. Working out of the Resident FBI Agency in the Farringdon Post Office, he might be sent anywhere in the territory. His assignment now was to round up the Joe Mott gang. Judy knew that much, although his work was confidential. It was also dangerous. Each time he left the house she breathed a little prayer for his safe return.

“Take care,” was what she usually said, but in her heart the words meant, “Take care of our future. Let all our dreams for our married life in this house come true.”

The house had been willed to Judy by her grandmother, and it was so sturdy and well built that she felt sure it would stand there on the slope overlooking Dry Brook as long as the hills themselves.

Peter had left the stair door open, and soon Judy heard Blackberry padding up to keep her company. He looked around, the way cats will, and then came into the storeroom to see what Judy was doing.

“Hi, Blackberry! You can’t play with these things,” she told him as she continued sorting and arranging the cards that were to be exhibited at the library. The theme for September would be school. She found a few Hallowe’en things and a Columbus Day card which she put aside for October. There were turkeys and prayers of Thanksgiving for November, a pile of Christmas things for December, and a stack of old calendars for January. The stack grew higher and higher.

“I do believe Grandma saved a calendar for every year. This is wonderful,” Judy said to herself. “I’ll find some recent calendars and complete the collection. It will be just perfect for the January exhibit.”

The library was new, and the built-in exhibit cases were still empty. Nearly all the buildings in Roulsville were new since the flood that had swept the valley and started Judy on the trail of her first mystery. Her own home had been swept away, and her father, Dr. Bolton, had been obliged to move to Farringdon where he still lived and practiced. Only her grandmother’s house, two miles above the broken dam, had stayed the same.

“Maybe that’s why I love it,” she thought.

And yet she and Peter had made changes. It was a rambling old farmhouse too big for just the two of them so only the downstairs rooms had been changed. Up here in the attic nothing had been disturbed except by Blackberry as he played with the spools in Judy’s sewing room or searched for mice in the other two rooms where her grandmother’s keepsakes were stored. She liked having him for company as she worked. Attics and black cats seemed to go together.

Judy smiled at this thought. She was so absorbed in what she was doing that at first she didn’t hear the front doorbell ringing downstairs. It rang again more insistently, and she gathered Blackberry in her arms and hurried down the two flights of stairs. It wouldn’t do to leave the cat alone among the things she had collected for the exhibit.

“I can’t trust you,” she told him, “even if you are a famous cat.”

Blackberry wore a life-saving medal on his collar, and just recently he had worked for the government, or so Judy insisted, ridding the Capitol Building of mice. But when she opened the door he fled through it to prowl around outside like any ordinary cat.

The cat startled Holly Potter, Judy’s sixteen-year-old neighbor, who had rung the bell. Obviously she had been running at break-neck speed along the shortcut from her house to Judy’s.

“What took you so long? I thought you’d never answer the bell. Quick!” she urged breathlessly. “Maybe we can still head off that green car! There’s a thief in it. He stole my typewriter!”

“Your typewriter?” gasped Judy.

“Yes, the one you gave me for my birthday. Remember when we traded birthdays so mine wouldn’t come on Christmas? I loved that typewriter, and now—”

“We’ll try and get it back,” Judy reassured her. “Come on, Holly!”

They were off down the road in the Beetle before Holly had finished telling Judy which way the green car went. “Try Farringdon,” she suggested. “You could see it from the top of the hill if it went toward Farringdon, couldn’t you?”

“That would depend on how fast he was going, I should think, but we’ll try it,” Judy promised.

She turned left at the main road and sped up the long slope out of Dry Brook Hollow. At the top of the hill the world seemed to end but, instead of driving on into the sky the way it looked as if she might, Judy drove down again with miles and miles of winding road ahead of her. There wasn’t a green car in sight.

“I’m afraid we’ve lost him,” Judy began.

“But I’m sure he went this way,” Holly insisted. “I would have seen him myself if he’d turned toward Roulsville. You know how our road angles off in that direction. Well, I thought if I raced along the shortcut and we took your road maybe we could head him off if he turned toward Farringdon. I have to get my typewriter back. Can’t you drive a little faster?”

“Not without turning the car over. We’ll pick up speed on the straight road. Then, if we can’t find him, we’ll report the stolen typewriter when we get to Farringdon. Did he take anything else?” Judy asked.

“No, just the typewriter.”

“That’s strange.” Judy couldn’t quite picture a thief running into Holly’s house, grabbing her typewriter, and not touching anything else. She had a rare old paperweight and a brand-new tape recorder in the first-floor room she called her study. Either of these things would have been worth more than her typewriter, to say nothing of the valuables stored in what she had once called her forbidden chest.

“There was nothing strange about it,” declared Holly. “He would have taken more if I hadn’t surprised him and called Ruth. She was busy with the baby and didn’t pay any attention. Doris had just left in her car—”

“That’s it!” Judy interrupted. “The thief probably saw your sister Doris leaving and figured you were all out.”

“Well, we weren’t. I was there, and I saw him run out of the house toward a green car. Please drive faster, Judy! I have to get my typewriter back.”

And suddenly, like rain from a clear blue sky, Holly burst into tears. She was crying over more important things than a stolen typewriter, Judy knew. It wasn’t easy living with a married sister whose whole interest centered on her own husband and baby. Holly’s other sister was on her way to a teaching job at some private school in Maine. The girls’ uncle had died while Judy and Peter were in Washington. Holly said she had never felt more lost and alone.

“First it was my parents and then Uncle David. It’s always this way,” she sobbed. “I told my sisters I wouldn’t dare love them. It’s bad luck for me to love anybody. Even the things I love have to be taken.”