The Secret of the Sand Castle (7 page)

“It’s going to be a
big
house,” she announced, emphasizing the word with her shovel as she started to dig.

“Not too big, I hope.” A horrible thought hit Judy. “We aren’t digging away the foundation of the Sand Castle, are we?”

“What’s f’dation?” little Judy wanted to know.

“Foundation. That means whatever holds the house up,” Judy explained.

Little Judy laughed. “Mommy said it was held up by posts. ’Member?”

But Judy was remembering something else. She was thinking of Hazel Barton and how she had said there wasn’t a trace of their little cottage after the storm. It had been flattened and buried in the sand.

63

“WHAT is it, Judy? What have you found?” Judy wasn’t sure which of the three girls asked the question. They had returned from making their telephone call to find Judy tugging away at something she had discovered under the Sand Castle. One more tug and it was out.

“There!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “It’s just what I thought it was. A window frame!”

“So what’s so wonderful about that?” asked Pauline skeptically. “It’s nothing but old wood.

Wouldn’t it be easier to pick up driftwood along the beach?”

“But don’t you see? A window frame could be part of a house. A buried house! If the hurricane, somehow, washed it under the Sand Castle—”

“Now wait a minute, Judy,” Irene stopped her. “If you’re trying to tell us you’ve uncovered a window frame from one of those cottages lost in the hurri-64

cane—”

“That’s exactly what she’s trying to tell you,” Flo interrupted. “Isn’t it exciting? We’re stuck here all night, anyway. Maybe longer if we can’t find anyone to rent us a boat. We’ll walk to Ocean Beach tomorrow, but today there’s time for digging.”

“Not you, too!” exclaimed Pauline. “Are you both nuts? This sand is all that holds up the Sand Castle.”

“No, it’s held up by posts. Here’s one of them.” Judy pointed it out with her shovel.

The post seemed strong enough. Irene, a little more fearful now, tapped it to make sure it hadn’t been eaten away by termites. “Judy’s right,” she conceded. “I guess that woman in black never thought of digging under the Sand Castle.”

“I’m rather sorry Judy thought of it,” Pauline said. “Now she’ll never be satisfied until she finds something. I don’t think there’s a thing down here except junk like this.”

She picked up a piece of tarnished metal to demonstrate her point and, to her surprise, found that it was silver with letters imprinted on it. BAR . .

. was all the girls were able to make out, but Judy felt sure that, when the silver had been cleaned, the rest of the word would spell out the name of the woman she had met on the bus.

“This was her house. Now I’m sure of it!” she exclaimed standing up so suddenly that she bumped 65

her head on the floor of the cottage. The excavation was not quite deep enough to allow any of them except little Judy to stand upright.

“Whose house?” Flo wanted to know.

“Hazel Barton’s, your Aunt Hazel if you’d only admit it. She said her house was gone without a trace, but here it is buried under the Sand Castle. I’m sure it must be her house,” Judy went on excitedly.

“Can’t you see it, girls? This was the nameplate they must have had over the doorbell.”

“Was she the woman in black, Judy?”

“I don’t think so. But someone has been digging here just lately, and it can’t be the oldest sister, Agnes. She’s supposed to have died of a broken heart because her husband was sent to prison. But maybe she married him on the rebound, when she couldn’t have Henry Barton. Maybe Henry picked Hazel himself. I know it must have been a good marriage. She spoke so lovingly of him.”

“You see,” Irene said, turning to Flo, “not all the Terrys were cold-hearted. This was a love match.”

“That’s not the way that carpenter told it. He didn’t mention any buried jewels. Do you think we might still find them?”

Irene’s uncertain nod only added to Flo’s excitement. She persuaded little Judy to exchange her shovel for a clam shell and joined in the treasure hunt. She and Judy, equally excited, worked away 66

for five minutes or so before finding anything. Then Flo spied something bright and nearly cut herself on a piece of glass that had sparkled like a diamond under Judy’s flashlight.

It was dark under the cottage. Outside it had started to rain. The sky was overcast and great drops of rain were pelting down on the Sand Castle, but underneath it the sand was dry. It also gave the girls protection from the rising wind.

“It is cozy down here,” Irene admitted, “but how safe is it?”

“How safe is it anywhere on this island during a storm?” Pauline questioned.

The girls had just made it to the telephone before it started to rain. They hadn’t been able to reach Dale, but Pauline had called home and explained their predicament to her father.

“He’s going to call both our offices in the morning,” she had reassured Flo.

Dr. Faulkner would also call Dale and tell him the girls were stranded on the island. Surely, in a day or two, some way would be found to take them over to the mainland. Meantime there was the excitement of digging deeper and deeper into the sand and occasionally finding something that might or might not be a treasure.

Judy did not notice how late it was growing until Irene decided it was time for little Judy to have her 67

supper and go to bed. The child rebelled at first.

“I want to dig, too. I want to find the jewels.”

“Sweetheart, it’s no use,” Irene told her. “You have found a few things to play with and if that was a window frame Judy uncovered there must be more pieces of broken glass in the sand. I don’t want you to cut yourself.”

“I won’t, Mommy. I’ll dig with this clam shell.

Look-ee!” she squealed as a small piece of chain came to light. “Here’s a collar for Jet Blackberry.

Who’s going to feed him, Mommy?”

Jet Blackberry was the kitten Judy had given her little namesake so that she would have a Blackberry, too. He was a patient kitten, allowing his little mistress to dress him in doll clothes, and she dearly loved him.

“Daddy will feed your kitten, Precious,” Irene told her.

“But if he isn’t home?”

That was a problem. Another objection little Judy voiced was that she had no doll to take to bed with her. Then she thought of Lady Luck.

“May I take her to bed with me, Mommy? May I sleep in the tower room?”

When Irene said she might, little Judy seemed glad enough to abandon her digging, but she had one more question.

“Will the lighthouse wink at me?” 68

Irene laughed. “I think so. It’s dark enough. We had a lot of fun with the lighthouse last summer, didn’t we?”

“We counted seven,” little Judy said mysteriously, “and there it was.”

“What did she mean?” Flo asked after Irene had left, shielding little Judy from the elements with her own raincoat. Pauline had followed, leaving Flo and Judy alone.

“I don’t know,” replied Judy. “I’m still trying to figure out a lot of things. I came here hoping to see that lawyer before I looked at the property on Fire Island. Now I’m here and I’m not even sure what to investigate. There are names, of course—Agnes, Hazel, and Edith. She was Roxy’s stepmother. You never met my cousin Roxy, did you, Flo?”

“No, but Irene says she looks like you. She isn’t a Terry, anyway—”

“Her half brother and sisters are. You’d like them. The little boy is named Terry.”

“Maybe I would like to meet them,” Flo said, pausing a moment in her digging to peer at Judy in the dim light. “Does Roxy like mysteries?”

“If she does, she’d better hang onto her twenty-fourth, or whatever it is, of this land. I’ll bet she doesn’t know there are two houses buried in it and maybe jewels besides. Hazel Barton’s house must have been the one nearest the ocean,” Judy 69

concluded.

“No, that was Uncle Paul’s. He wasn’t really my uncle,” Flo explained quickly. “He just married Aunt Agnes. Their name is Purdy and there’s a son, and a granddaughter they call Aggie. I never saw any of them except Aunt Agnes and she was dead.”

“Don’t talk that way, Flo. You don’t meet dead people—I hope. It’s spooky enough down here when it’s raining. Maybe we ought to go up. My arms are getting tired,” Judy confessed; “and I don’t suppose there’s a chance in a million that we’d really find anything of value—”

“Depends on what you value,” Flo interrupted.

“Hear that noise upstairs?”

Judy listened to the
bump, bump, bump a bump
for a moment before she said, “That’s nothing but little Judy bouncing that ball she found when she first started to dig down here.”

“That’s exactly what I mean. The ball and that piece of chain she calls a cat’s collar are things of value to little Judy. You place more importance on the nameplate with Aunt Hazel’s name on it. She is my aunt, Judy. I may as well admit it. My mother was the youngest of the Terry girls. She never had anything good to say about her sisters and I—well, I haven’t found anything that means much to me and I’d like to keep on digging until I do.”

“What would you like to find, Flo?” 70

“This!” she exclaimed almost before Judy had finished asking the question.

Eyes shining with the light of discovery, she bent and picked up a dark object that had been buried in the wet sand. It was then that Judy noticed how much rain had been gradually seeping into the tunnel under the Sand Castle.

“I’ll look at it later,” she cried, seizing Flo’s hand. “There’s one thing we both value—our fives— so let’s get out of here while we can!” 71

“WAIT, Judy!”

Flo had lost her footing, but there was no time to wait.

“Pull yourself up on my shovel. Bring your own and let’s get out of here before the storm gets any worse. The rain is pouring in. This tunnel is beginning to look like a river,” declared Judy.

“A well is more like it.”

Flo scrambled out of the hole she called a well and joined Judy at the opening. The wind was blowing in puffs, each so powerful that the girls were almost blown back inside.

“Judy! Flo!” Irene called from the door. “Are you all right?”

“Drenched to the skin, that’s all.” In the moment it had taken them to dash around to the front of the cottage they were thoroughly soaked. The tall grass, whipping against them as 72

they ran, had not helped. The rose vines that gave beauty to the sandy yard in summer had only been something more to hinder their progress. Flo reached the door ahead of Judy. Irene was holding it open.

“Drop those shovels and come in before the wind blows you away,” she invited them. “The radio says its gusting up to forty miles an hour.”

“We know. One of the gusts just hit us. I was afraid it might be another hurricane,” Judy confessed, walking over to the stove to warm herself by the driftwood fire.

“No, it’s just a storm. Small craft warnings are up, but the weather man says it will be clear by tomorrow. Clear and colder,” Irene added with a shiver. “I dread that walk to Ocean Beach. It’s really too far for little Judy in the cold.”

“I’ll stay here with her,” Flo volunteered.

“What on earth kept you girls down under the house so long?” Pauline wanted to know.

“We were digging,” Judy began.

“Yes, and I found this!” Flo opened her hand to display the dark object she had picked up.

“A key!” all three girls exclaimed.

“What do you suppose it opens?” Irene asked after they had taken turns looking at it.

“Could it be a key to the jewel box that was lost in—in hurricane Judy? I mean—Irene, you said a 73

woman in black was digging for jewels and if they were in a box and if this key opens it—”

“And if we find the box—if it exists—we’d still have to give it back,” Pauline put in.

“But if the woman in black is dead,” Flo protested.

“I said it might be just a story,” Irene reminded her. “These things grow in the telling. If she’s still alive—”

“She can’t be if her name is Agnes. Of course, if the carpenter got things a little twisted and it was really Hazel—”

“Wouldn’t anything we dig up belong to the estate, anyway?” Judy questioned.

Little Judy, still happily bouncing her ball, looked up. “No,” she announced. “I won’t let the state have it. This ball is mine.”

Judy laughed and hugged her little namesake.

“I’m sure nobody is going to take your ball away.

Certainly not the state; but finders aren’t always keepers,” she added more seriously, “not if they find things belonging to someone else.”

“An estate isn’t anyone, really,” Flo objected.

“No, it’s several people,” Judy pointed out. “It’s the children of Agnes and her husband, Paul Purdy—”

“How did you find out his name?” Irene asked. “I didn’t tell you.”

74

“No, Flo did.”

“We weren’t allowed to mention it, but here there’s nobody to stop me from talking. Judy was curious and so I told her,” Flo admitted.

“Then there’s Hazel Barton. She’d get a sixth and so would your mother and your Uncle Bert. Wasn’t there another uncle?” Judy asked.

“Uncle Harry. He’s a no-good bachelor, according to my mother. Roxy’s stepmother makes six. She was my aunt Edith. So now you know all the names,” Flo said defiantly.