The Secret of the Sand Castle (9 page)

showing herself on purpose?

They were frightened, all except little Judy, who had returned to the kitchen without realizing what a commotion she had started by simply announcing that someone had been sleeping in one of the beds.

“Who was it?” the girls were asking each other.

They were all in the dormitory now, standing around the bed that had been slept in. All at once Flo dashed over to the dresser, pulling out an empty drawer so suddenly that it sent her backwards against the bed.

“Nothing!” she exclaimed. “I thought maybe her clothes would be in there. I’d feel better about it if she wore something—”

“A sheet, perhaps. There’s bedding in this one,” Pauline announced, opening another drawer.

“Seriously, girls, if she lives here she’d have to keep makeup or clothing or
something
around to show that she’s alive,” Judy put in.

“Maybe she isn’t. Maybe those black clothes are all she wears,” Pauline suggested. “There is a broom in the corner.”

“I’m sure she rides it.” Flo was giggling as she said this, but she suddenly sobered. “She may have used that shovel. But would she dig in a long black dress?”

“She must have been digging. You didn’t think we dug out that huge tunnel all by ourselves, did you?” Judy asked.

88

“Honestly,” Pauline confessed, “I didn’t know what to think, but I might have known there’d be a ghost. There always is when
you’re
around.”

“And Judy always shows them up for what they really are,” Irene added loyally.

“I have to catch them first,” Judy replied. “This one, apparently, got away.”

“Maybe it will be back again tonight,” Flo quavered.

Now Flo was calling the intruder
it
as if it were other than human. A knock on the door was all she needed to make her start violently. Judy peered outside and saw the carpenter, Gus Henderson, waiting for the door to open.

“Yes?” she asked cautiously, keeping the chain on the door. It had been there all night. The back door had also been bolted and so had the door to the screened-in porch. How, then, could anyone have entered?

“Sorry, miss. I didn’t mean to scare you,” the carpenter apologized, “but there’s a boat at the dock.

Thought you girls might like to know—”

“The Fair Harbor dock?”

“Yep. Been there all night. Don’t know who owns her.”

“Thanks, Mr. Henderson.” Judy unbolted the door. “Would you like to have coffee with us? We—

we were just about to sit down to breakfast.” 89

“I helped,” little Judy announced. “I cooked the eggs.”

Smoke pouring from the kitchen told Judy they were well cooked.

“I’m afraid they’re—burned,” Irene faltered. “I forgot to turn off the fire when—” She stopped at a look from Judy. The carpenter thanked them but said he had to get back on the job.

Then he walked off toward the row of cottages that faced the beach. The fog had lifted a little, but he still looked unreal as he faded from view. Judy turned to Flo.

“That was really nice of him to tell us about the boat. It was only polite to ask him for coffee.”

“Well, I’m glad he didn’t stay. I wouldn’t have eaten a mouthful. After what he said yesterday—”

“Forget it, Flo, and let’s eat,” Pauline suggested.

“Afterwards we’ll all go down to the dock. Maybe we ought to bring our suitcases and stuff just in case we do get a ride.”

“Do you really think we will?”

Flo asked the question anxiously. The others seemed overjoyed at the idea of leaving the Sand Castle to its ghost or whatever that was. Judy herself felt reluctant. She wasn’t in the habit of running off and leaving a mystery half solved.

“There’s no hurry,” she told them. “No boat would leave in this fog. After breakfast we’ll all go 90

down and see what sort of craft she is and find out who’s her captain. Meantime I think I’ll have a dish of cereal and a cup of coffee.”

“These eggs aren’t burned so badly we can’t eat them. Oh dear!” mourned Irene. “The pan’s ruined and it didn’t even belong to us. I think I’ll stay here and try to clean it up while you girls run down and see if there really is a boat at the dock.”

“No, Irene. This time I’ll stay behind with little Judy. You and Judy and Pauline see about the boat,” Flo insisted.

“What’ll you do if the woman in black comes to the door?” Irene wanted to know.

“I’ll tell her no, thank you, we don’t want any more poisoned apples. Apples, anyone?” she asked, passing the basket.

Nobody seemed to care for sliced apples with the cereal. The eggs weren’t very popular, either. Little Judy finished her breakfast, but Judy and Pauline were too eager to see the boat and Irene insisted she wasn’t hungry.

“Excitement early in the morning always takes away my appetite,” she explained.

“Weren’t the eggs good, Mommy?” little Judy asked anxiously.

“Delicious. You turned off the fire just in time.

I’m proud of you,” Irene declared. “I just wish you hadn’t stirred them.”

91

“I
scrambled
them, Mommy.”

“You stirred in the burned part, Precious, but it was my fault,” Irene told her. “I let them burn.”

“Why, Mommy?” When her mother didn’t answer the little girl persisted, “Was it ’cause that witch woman slept downstairs?”

“She wasn’t a witch, dear.”

“What was she then?”

They were all asking the same question. Judy and Pauline finally managed to break away. Irene refused to leave the Sand Castle because little Judy might be in danger, and Flo insisted on staying with her.

“Hurry back!” she called anxiously from the door, and Judy promised her that they would.

92

JUDY wore her warmest coat with a scarf over her head to protect her from the dampness. Pauline’s fleece-lined raincoat with attached hood proved to be better protection. It was no longer raining, only misting. The wet cold soon penetrated their clothing and made both girls shiver.

“Let’s run to keep warm,” Judy suggested.

The clatter of their shoes on the boardwalk made it sound as if people were running behind them. The cottages they passed looked even more ghostly than they had before, and the twisted scrub pine trees actually seemed to be beckoning to them.

“Wait,” Pauline panted at last, stopping before a boarded-up cottage. “We don’t have to run quite so fast. The island is deserted. There’s nobody behind us—I hope.”

“You felt it, too, didn’t you? I’m sure it was only the echo of our own footsteps, though. We’ve let 93

ourselves imagine all sorts of things. As Irene said, that story of the woman in black has grown in the telling until now we imagine she’s a—a menace,” Judy finished uncertainly.

“Well, what is she? If I had known Flo had so many queer relatives I wouldn’t have come with her,” Pauline declared. “She always seemed such a practical girl. But something has changed her lately.”

“It may be a need to know a few answers. I’d be curious, too, if I had all those aunts and uncles I’d never seen, wouldn’t you?”

“But Judy, she said she’d seen some of them at a funeral. She keeps contradicting herself,” Pauline continued. “At first she said she didn’t know any of their names and now, suddenly, she does. I really wanted to talk with you about it. You saw her aunt Hazel on the bus. She was on her way to New York, wasn’t she?”

“We only rode together as far as Scranton, but I assumed she was going to New York, too,” Judy admitted.

“Was she wearing black?”

“No, I told Flo—”

“That she wasn’t that tall,” Pauline interrupted,

“but you said you only saw her when she was sitting down.”

“I know, but a person can tell.”

94

“A person can change her clothes, too.”

“But not her figure. Really, Pauline, it’s absurd to even suggest that such a warm-hearted, friendly woman as Hazel Barton could possibly be that unearthly woman in black. I saw her at the dock, too. I think she meant to be seen, but not clearly—”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I give up. I’m not sure, myself, what I mean,” confessed Judy. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“For instance?”

“The weather. It seems to be clearing up. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the sun came out before noon.”

“What would surprise you, Judy?”

It was no use. Pauline had a way of keeping at a person until she discovered her innermost thoughts.

“If you really want to know,” Judy began. “It would surprise me a great deal if we found out anything at all. I remember how hard it was to find out anything from Roxy. Even though she kept insisting she wasn’t my cousin, the need to know for sure just wouldn’t let me have any peace . . .” Judy’s voice trailed off. Pauline was no longer listening. Something in the air had distracted her attention.

“Look!” she exclaimed, gazing skyward. “The mist has cleared away and I can see a patch of blue and—yes, it is.”

95

“Is what?”

“An airplane. Over there beyond those cottages.”

“Lots of airplanes fly over Fire Island. There’s an airport over on the mainland. Didn’t you hear a word I was saying?” Judy asked.

“Some of it. You were telling me about your cousin Roxy and how hard it was to find out anything from her. Well, you two must be alike because it isn’t easy to find out things from you, either. If that woman in black is Roxy’s aunt Hazel—”

“Flo’s aunt Hazel. Oh, I suppose she would be Roxy’s aunt, too,” Judy admitted on second thought.

“She claims all the Terry relatives as hers. You see, she loved her stepmother—”

“She’s dead, too, isn’t she?”

“Yes, but—”

“And her aunt Agnes is dead?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you admit it? If the woman in black isn’t one of the live relatives she has to be one of the dead ones. People do see apparitions. You’ve seen them yourself.”

“But Pauline, I always found out—”

“Then let’s find out about this one. Can’t you see what I’m getting at, Judy? Irene and Flo are afraid of that woman in black and little Judy thinks she’s a witch and I’ve just about convinced you she’s an 96

apparition because you won’t admit, even to yourself, that she could be Hazel Barton.”

“I told you she wasn’t wearing black,” Judy insisted.

“Anybody can change into a black dress,” Pauline pointed out, “and I’m talking about the living. She could have changed her clothes and come over to Fire Island, just as you did, to see if the property was worth anything.”

“She wasn’t on the boat,” Judy began.

“Maybe she came on this boat.”

They could see it now—a gray shape looking more like a miniature battleship than an ordinary cruiser. There was no name on it—only a few identifying numbers that Judy made out as they came nearer.

“It looks like an old Coast Guard boat,” remarked Pauline. “They won’t take us unless it’s an emergency. What’ll we do? Just wait here at the dock until somebody comes?”

“I guess so. We did promise to hurry back, though,” Judy remembered. “Maybe if we boarded her we could find out why she’s here.”

“Would you dare?”

“Why not? We’re not pirates. We’re just two girls looking for a ride over to the mainland. That will be easy enough to explain.”

Pauline doubted this and said so. She was staring 97

upward as if hypnotized.

“What’s the matter?” Judy asked her. “You keep gazing at the sky.”

“It’s that plane. His engine’s missing—”

“Maybe he’s just stunting the way Arthur used to.

It was all a girl’s life was worth to ride in his plane.

Did I ever tell you about the time I had to jump out?

I was terrified until I grabbed the rip cord and my parachute opened. Then I just floated down as lazily as a dandelion seed—”

It was no use trying to tell Pauline about that other mystery she had solved.
The Riddle of the
Double Ring,
she called it in her mind. It had been exciting. Now somebody else was up there in the sky taking chances.

“Arthur used to do tricks, loops and spins like that,” she began again.

“Not like
that!”
Pauline’s voice rose to a shriek.

“He’s coming straight at us!”

“You’re right!” cried Judy, suddenly as terrified as Pauline. “It’s a tailspin. Let’s get out of here!” Saying this, she grabbed Pauline’s hand and pulled her through the tall grass. Both girls scrambled underneath the dock and lay flat on the sand, not knowing what to expect. The boards over their heads shut out their view of the sky and what was happening to the plane.

On, on it came with a deafening roar. Judy could 98

tell by the sound that it was losing altitude with every split second. The sound of running footsteps pounded over their heads just as the crash came.

99

“IT didn’t hit us! Let’s see what happened to it,” Pauline suggested, emerging, white-faced and trembling, from under the dock.

Judy had darted out the instant she heard the crash. She could tell by the sound that the plane had hit water, but now, as her eyes searched the bay, she could see nothing of it.

“Did it sink?” Pauline asked, rubbing her eyes as if she had just awakened from a nightmare.

“No. Oh, look!” cried Judy. “The boat’s going out there to help. That must be the tail of the plane sticking up—”

“Oh, no! Judy, let’s pray for whoever was in that plane.”