Puzzle in Purple

When Connie Blair goes to art school she enters an

exciting new world in which glamour and mystery mingle.

Connie expects to meet unusual and colorful personalities,

and she is not disappointed. But she hasn’t bargained for a

skeleton named Adam who turns up in a purple cloak at the

midwinter fancy dress ball and leaves his signature scrawled

across the ceiling!

From that moment on, tension mounts in the stately old

Philadelphia mansion that houses the art school. Who is

back of the debacle of the masked ball? Eric Payson, the

shy, sensitive young painter whose mural was the only one

not defaced? Roby Woodward, irresistible young dilettante

who despises Eric for his ability? Fritz Bachman, sharp

faced and sardonic, and determined to win the Fairchild

Prize by fair means or foul? Sensing the impending

catastrophe that later dwarfs the episode of the ball, Connie

tries feverishly to fit into place the scattered pieces of the

puzzle. How she accomplishes this, and what she sees when

the picture finally becomes clear is told in a thrilling

mystery story set against the fascinating background of art

school.

The CONNIE BLAIR Mystery Stories

The Clue in Blue

The Riddle in Red

Puzzle in Purple

The Secret of Black Cat Gulch

The Green Island Mystery

The Ghost Wore White

The Yellow Warning

The Gray Menace

The Brown Satchel Mystery

Peril in Pink

The Silver Secret

The Mystery of the Ruby Queens

A CONNIE BLAIR MYSTERY

Puzzle in Purple

By

BETSY ALLEN

Grosset & Dunlap

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

© 1948 BY GROSSET & DUNLAP, INC.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

1. The Student and the Skeleton 1

2. Missing: A Purple Cloak 15

3. The Fairy Tale Ball 27

4. Sabotage! 39

5. Hospital Interlude 53

6. The House on Queen Street 65

7. Something Really Evil? 76

8. In Eric’s Locker 86

9. X Marks a Pattern 98

10. “The Criminal Will BE Found!” 111

11. Miss Charlotte’s Will 121

12. Return Visit 134

13. Through the Broken Grating 142

14. The Knife 156

15. Connie Takes a Chance 168

16. Reunion in Meadowbrook 181

1

CHAPTER 1

The Student and the Skeleton

To Connie Blair the art school looked impressive,

even forbidding. It loomed, a grime-streaked stone

mansion, behind a high iron fence, a relic of the

mauve decade in downtown Philadelphia.

“This the School of Design, miss?”

A voice spoke at Connie’s shoulder in the early

dark and she turned, her taffy-colored hair swinging

on her shoulders.

“Y—yes. I believe so.”

“Oke.” The truckman who had spoken picked up

a long, coffin-shaped box and half pulled it, half

carried it to the gate, which he backed into and held

open for Connie.

“You comin’ in?”

Connie nodded. She felt a little shy, as she had

the first morning at Reid and Renshaw’s, the

advertising agency where she worked. She was

standing on the threshold of another new experience,

2

and she wanted to take her time.

But she politely walked across the cement

courtyard with the deliveryman and let him tell her

how much he disliked working late. After all, he

couldn’t know that this was her very first night at art

school, and that she really was much too early,

because excitement had lent wings to her feet.

The massive door, threaded with grillwork,

swung open on oiled hinges, and the truck driver

heaved his cumbersome package into the vestibule

and pushed it from there into a huge, dim entrance

hall. Connie knew that she was entering the former

Fairchild mansion, yet she hadn’t expected anything

quite so grand.

The driver, unimpressed, stopped and pushed

back his cap. “Nobody home,” he muttered, then

shouted, “Hey!”

Connie jumped as the call echoed and re-echoed

in the empty hall.

“Scare ya?” asked the deliveryman, chuckling.

But before Connie had time to answer, a gray-haired

man opened the door of an anteroom on one side of

the entrance door.

“Bring him in here,” said the man in the doorway

after a glance at the package.

Him? Connie blinked and frowned, not quite

believing her ears.

But the deliveryman was already dragging his

3

package forward. “Gotta have a signature for this,”

he bawled.

“I’ll sign,” the older man said briefly. “I’m the

superintendent here.” Then he turned to Connie.

“Anything I can do for you?”

“Oh—yes,” Connie breathed. “But I’ll wait until

you’re finished.” She felt a little abashed at having

bumped right into the superintendent himself, and

she eyed the man more carefully as he signed the

slip.

He had good hands, long-fingered, but they

looked misused, not like the hands of an artist. There

was dirt under the fingernails, and his shirt cuffs

didn’t seem quite clean. Meanwhile a strange

conversation was taking place.

“This slip says to check condition while you

wait,” the superintendent said.

The deliveryman sighed and muttered something

like “Cripes!” Definitely annoyed, he added, “Well,

get a move on, then.”

Connie was shocked. She expected an explosion,

but the superintendent simply gave the fellow a cold

stare from his narrowed, steel-gray eyes and said,

“You’re tellin’ who?”

More puzzled than ever, Connie waited while he

leisurely untied the cord that bound the box, which

was standing upended and which was decorated with

two big red-bordered labels marked “Fragile” and

4

“Top.”

Finally the two men edged the cover off, and

inside Connie saw a great mass of white tissue paper

bound round and round, in the shape of a human

figure, with green twine.

The truck driver suddenly caught a glimpse of her

incredulous face and began to laugh. “It’s a

skeleton, miss,” he explained.

“A skeleton?”

“They use them in anatomy classes,” the

superintendent added for her benefit.

The truck driver, who probably had never heard

of anatomy, said, “Sure, and are they some

expensive babes!”

Meanwhile the superintendent was unwinding

yard after yard of the green twine, rolling it, as he

did so, into a methodical ball. Connie watched with

interest, amused now at her own naïveté. Gradually

the tissue began to float down, falling away from the

frame to the floor. First the cavernous skull stood

revealed, then the shoulder bones and the dangling

cartilaginous framework of the arms.

In spite of herself a shudder of repulsion swept

Connie, and this increased the truck driver’s

amusement. Indicating the skeleton with a jerk of his

thumb, he said, “He’s a good-natured guy. He won’t

bite cha.”

Nevertheless Connie was glad that the street door

5

opened just then to admit another student, a tall boy

in his late teens, who wore a pork-pie hat at a jaunty

and self-confident angle on his dark hair.

The boy’s merry eyes darted from the skeleton in

the office doorway to Connie and he whistled softly.

“Pretty cute,” he said.

Misunderstanding, the superintendent muttered,

“Yeh?” and added, “No parts missing, either,” to the

deliveryman, who pulled the visor of his cap down

and said, “Okay, then. I’ll get goin’.”

The boy, meanwhile, approached Connie. “I’m

Roby Woodward,” he introduced himself. “You’re

new here.”

“Very new,” Connie admitted. “I haven’t even

registered. I’ve just been waiting for the

superintendent—” Her voice trailed off.

For some reason Roby Woodward laughed. “You

mean Mr. White? You don’t want to see him. You

want to see Mr. Jenkins.” He took her by the arm

authoritatively and led her toward a door across the

hall. “Mr. White’s the building superintendent,” he

bent to whisper. “A sort of glorified janitor.”

“Oh!” Connie hoped that Mr. White couldn’t

hear. She glanced back toward the little office, but

the gray-haired man was just putting his ball of

twine into a desk drawer, oblivious to their

conversation. “I’m terribly stupid, I guess.”

“You’re not stupid at all,” contradicted Roby

6

gallantly. “I’ll introduce you to Mr. Jenkins, if you

like.”

Connie thanked him with her eyes, and nodded. It

always made things easier to have the way paved. In

the next half-hour of preliminaries her thoughts kept

turning back to him. He certainly was attractive-

looking.

Meanwhile, however, she answered questions.

She told Mr. Jenkins that she had come to

Philadelphia only recently, from her home town of

Meadowbrook, and that she was a receptionist in an

advertising agency, and that she hoped someday to

do art work and write copy.

“Both?” Mr. Jenkins smiled.

Connie nodded. “I know it’s a large order. I’ve

got to begin at the beginning in art school first.”

Then she told him how she happened to be able to

take this night course, and how much she

appreciated Miss Marville’s gift of her tuition, for

her help in solving the mystery of The Riddle in Red.

Mr. Jenkins took her on a tour through the fine old

building which housed the school, and showed her

the various classrooms and the little store where she

could purchase charcoal and paper for her first

assignment, which would be drawing from classic

plaster casts.

In the second-floor hall they came upon a group

of students who were gathered around Mr. White

7

and the skeleton which had matriculated with

Connie. Roby Woodward was in the group, and he

hailed her when Mr. Jenkins excused himself and

left the new girl alone.

“Here’s your side-kick,” he said. “He followed

you upstairs.”

There was a general laugh, and Connie grinned

unself-consciously. “Rattling his bones all the way, I

suppose?” she asked. Rather timidly she moved

toward the group. They looked so jolly, young

people in their late teens or early twenties, with

drawing boards or stretched canvases tucked under

their arms. This was art school as she had imagined

it, informal and colorful. The skeleton, even, had

lost his gruesomeness, now that he was the center of

a crowd.

A slender boy with bright blue eyes and a face as

sharp as a knife took a couple of steps forward and

the end of his paintbrush clicked against the

skeleton’s ribs as his mouth moved in soundless

count.

Somebody chuckled. “He’s got the same number

you have, Fritz,” another student said.

But Fritz moved around the skeleton without

replying and began counting again. “No, he hasn’t,”

he said in a minute. “He has thirteen ribs on one side

and twelve on the other.”

There was a whoop of laughter from the group

8

and Roby called, “We’ll have to call him Adam, I

guess.”

Another boy moved forward, amusement glinting

in his candid gray eyes. “At that rate, we’ll have to

make sure he has the proper number of fingers and

toes,” he suggested, reaching for the intricately

wired bones of one fleshless hand.

Connie could see that the boy’s own fingers were

stubby but expressive, and her glance moved up to

the young man’s square shoulders and to the broad,

intelligent forehead, crowned by a cap of close-

cropped light hair.

“Drop that!”

She wasn’t prepared for Mr. White’s reaction to

the student’s gesture. Others in the group had been

toying with the skeleton and he hadn’t reprimanded

them. But now the superintendent hoisted Adam by

the waist and moved on with him. The group began

to break up as Fritz shrugged and said, “Well, for

Pete’s sake, Eric, what have you been doing?

Putting arsenic in Mr. White’s tea?”

For some reason this engendered a laugh, though

Connie didn’t quite like the way Fritz raised his

eyebrows when he made the joke. Why doesn’t he

like Eric, she wondered briefly? Somehow the spirit

of camaraderie had disappeared from the group.

Eric, puzzlement creasing his forehead, looked

after the superintendent without animosity. “Maybe

9

it’s just a rule,” he said, in the manner of a person

who has encountered many rules and is accustomed

to respect them. Then, about to turn away, he saw

Connie standing alone.

For a moment he said nothing, but Connie was

acutely conscious that his gray eyes were measuring

her with admiration. It wasn’t a boy-meets-girl look;

it was the impersonal admiration of an artist. Then,

suddenly, as though he realized he might be seeming

rude, the boy’s expression changed.

“Hello,” he said, almost shyly. Then he repeated

words Roby Woodward had used earlier in the

evening. “You’re new here.”

Connie smiled, trying to put him at ease. “Yes, I

am,” she said. She knew that the art school wasn’t

large, and that any student entering at mid-term

would be remarked.

“You’d make an even better Rapunzel than

Sandra,” he said thoughtfully, cocking his head

slightly to one side. Then, in a tone that apologized

for being ambiguous, he added, “I’m doing a panel

for the fancy dress ball. I’d like you to see it, if you

could stop by the studio sometime.” Then, as though

he were surprised at his own invitation, he jerked his

head in a nod of good-bye and hurried off.

Studio. Connie puzzled over the word as she went

to the classroom to which she had been directed by

Mr. Jenkins. Did Eric mean a studio of his own or a

10

part of this building? She’d have to find out.

But for the next two hours she was so completely

absorbed in making a charcoal drawing of the head

of Hermes, reproduced in plaster from the famous

original by Praxiteles, that the subject didn’t cross

her mind. Light and shade absorbed her, along with

the contour of the firm Greek head, the set of the

chin, the strict proportion of the nose.

“I’m going to work,” Connie promised herself,

far from pleased with the progress of her first

sketch. “I’m going to work as I’ve never worked

before.” But the time sped so rapidly that it didn’t

really seem like work. It had always been that way

during art class in high school. It had seemed the

shortest period of all.

For the rest of that first evening Connie saw

nothing of either Eric or Roby Woodward. She did

discover, however, that they were both advanced

students, in the graduating class of the school, and

that Roby, besides this superior status, had another

claim to fame. He was chairman of the coming Fairy

Tale Ball.

One of her own classmates vouchsafed this

information, a short girl with pinkish curls who

approached Connie as she was putting away her

drawing board.

“I’m selling tickets for the ball,” she said, and

quoted prices. “Outside guests are invited. Would

11

you like to buy any?”

“I don’t know.” Connie hesitated. “This is my

first night here. Could I let you know later?”

“Oh, sure.” The little girl didn’t appear rebuffed.

“It isn’t for two weeks, anyway.” Then she said, “I

saw you talking to Roby Woodward in the hall. He’s

chairman, you know. Isn’t he simply super, don’t

you think?”

Connie was a trifle nonplused at such kittenish

enthusiasm. She smiled and said, “He’s very good-

looking, but not quite as handsome as Hermes,

here.”

“Oh, Hermes!” The girl dismissed all Greek gods

with a toss of her curly head. “Roby Woodward is

the most popular boy in school.”

Connie chuckled about the remark all the way

back to her Aunt Bet’s apartment, which was a four-

block walk from the school. She was glad she

wasn’t living alone in Philadelphia but had the

companionship of her young and attractive aunt to

look forward to in the evenings, and she shared her

amusement with Elizabeth Easton the minute she

reached home.

“I was thinking I might ask Kit to come down for

the week end of the ball,” Connie added after a

while. She missed her twin sister more than she

liked to admit. Kit was at home running their dad’s

hardware business during his illness of many

12

months, but the clerks, Connie thought, could take

care of things for one day.

“That would be a fine idea,” Aunt Bet agreed.

“One of us could bunk in the living room on the

couch.”

“I could,” Connie said at once. “I can sleep

anywhere.” She began to plan. “Maybe I shouldn’t

put the cart before the horse,” she cautioned herself.

“I haven’t even got a date.”

Two evenings later, however, she began to hope

that detail might be remedied. Connie again was

early for her art class, and on the steps leading to the

second floor she met the blond young man called

Eric, whose last name she had not yet heard.

“Hello,” she said cheerfully.

The boy smiled, shyness mingling with obvious

pleasure at seeing her. “I’ve been hoping—” he said

with a rush, then hesitated, a trifle abashed.

“Yes?” Connie tried to help him out.

“I’ve been hoping you’d stop by the studio.” He

stopped again.

“But where is the studio?” Connie asked matter-

of-factly.

“Right upstairs, over the ballroom. The room with

the skylight. Didn’t you know?”

Connie smiled and shook her head. “I’m new

here,” she told him. “Just as you said.”

“Come on. I’ll show you.”

13

Eric, on his way downstairs, turned and started to

retrace his steps. Connie, by his side, thought that

there was something about this lad that was rather

endearing. He was like a clumsy puppy who wants

to make friends but doesn’t quite understand the

technique.

She tried to help him out. “I hadn’t forgotten

about your Rapunzel,” she said. “You said you were

doing a—a panel?”

“Yes. Twelve of us are doing big paintings of

fairy tale characters for ballroom decoration,” Eric

explained. “And Sandra Scott has been posing for

me in Miss Charlotte’s purple cloak. It’s a

wonderful cloak, lined with squirrel belly. Just the

thing, really. And Sandra makes a good model, with

her long, blond braids. Only her expression isn’t

right. She hasn’t the ingenuousness—” He broke off

and regarded Connie quizzically. “I wonder if you’ll

know what I mean.”

Connie wondered too, rather astonished at this

turn of the conversation. The minute Eric started to

talk about his work he seemed a different person,

intense, full of urgency. They had climbed a short

flight of steps into a back hall, and Eric was pushing

open a door into a big studio.

“There.”

Standing on the threshold, Connie said, “Oh!” It

wasn’t a word, really. It was a breath let out slowly.

14

Directly opposite her, suspended from the wall with

tacks, stood Eric’s partially completed panel, a life-

size painting, in brilliant show-card color, of a girl

with long, blond braids, leaning from a tower

window, and around her shoulders and trailing over

the sill was a purple cloak.

Connie didn’t see the other panels which lined the

walls. She saw only the Rapunzel, and she walked

toward it slowly, remembering again the

enchantment of the old fairy tale. “It’s lovely,” she

breathed.

“You really like it?”

“Oh, I do!”

Then the spell was broken by a querulous voice,

and Connie whirled to see the model herself

standing in the doorway she had just entered.

“Eric,” said Sandra, “something’s happened to

the purple cloak. I put it in my locker, and now it

isn’t there.” She sounded extremely annoyed. “It

simply isn’t there!”

15

CHAPTER 2

Missing: A Purple Cloak

“Not there? But it must be!” Consternation lifted

Eric’s voice.

“It isn’t.”

“You’re sure you put it in your locker?”

“Positive.” Sandra’s voice was crisp.

Crisp, Connie thought, and surprisingly out of

character with the medieval costume she wore, a

flowing dress, braided around the low neck, and

girdled in gold. But she was beautiful as she stood

there arguing with Eric, beautiful in an arrogant way

that Connie knew she herself could never achieve.

Yet she understood what the young artist meant

about Sandra’s expression. She looked too

sophisticated for the fairy tale heroine, not

ingenuous enough.

“Golly,” Eric was saying, seeming more boyish

than ever. “That’s Miss Charlotte’s cape. I wouldn’t

want anything to happen to it. I mean it’s just a loan,

16

you know.”

“I know.” Sandra’s voice sounded weary, almost

unsympathetic. “But it really isn’t my

responsibility.” She glanced from Eric to Connie,

without much change of expression. “I don’t believe

we’ve met.”

“Oh. I beg your pardon. Sandra Scott—” Then

Eric looked at Connie and flushed in

embarrassment.

“Connie Blair,” Connie supplied, and came

forward with a smile. “I’ve just been admiring Eric’s

painting.” She used the boy’s first name because she

didn’t know his last. “You make a marvelous

model.”

“Thank you.” Sandra thawed slightly, pleased

with the compliment. “Posing can get to be a bore,

though. It takes so much time!”

Eric looked disturbed. “Sandra’s been awfully

generous,” he said to Connie. “She has been coming

half an hour early, nearly every night.”

Connie wondered whether Sandra came out of

generosity or out of vanity. She probably knew that

her portrait would cause quite a stir.

“About the cloak,” Eric continued. “We might

ask Mr. White—”

“I’ll go ask him,” Sandra offered and then added,

“I want to see Roby Woodward, anyway, and I

know he has an appointment with Mr. White to see

17

about lights for the ball.”

“All right,” Eric murmured. After Sandra had left

the room he turned to Connie a little helplessly. “I

can’t understand—-,” he began, then he seemed to

see her afresh. “I wish you could pose for the face in

my panel,” he told her with the disarming frankness

which supplanted his shyness when he talked about

his work. “You’d be just right.”

Connie laughed. “Don’t tell Sandra that,” she

cautioned him. “She’ll walk out on you. Any girl

would.”

“I don’t believe you would.”

Connie wondered. “I might!”

“Connie Blair,” Eric said slowly. “That’s a nice

name. Forthright. No, I don’t believe you would.”

Connie wanted to change the subject. “Who is

Miss Charlotte?” she asked, living up to Eric’s

judgment of her.

A shadow crossed the boy’s face. “A very sweet

little lady I’ve known ever since I was knee-high to

a grasshopper,” he said. “She lives just around the

corner from here, in Queen Street. You’d like her, I

think, and I think she’d like you.”

It seemed an odd thing to say, but Connie was

discovering that this young artist said little that was

routine. “Queen Street is darling, isn’t it? All those

little houses and the brick sidewalks. Like

something out of a painting of old Philadelphia. It

18

must be fun to live there.”

A voice behind Connie said, “Oh, I beg your

pardon. I didn’t mean to interrupt.” She turned to see

Fritz, the boy who had counted the skeleton’s ribs,

standing in the doorway.

Eric unaccountably flushed. “You’re not

interrupting anything, Fritz,” he said. “Come on in.”

Then, to Connie, he added. “Fritz is doing a panel

you must see—’The Emperor’s New Clothes.’ ” He

gestured to the opposite wall and Connie turned to

laugh out loud at a very amusing painting.

It brought the famous Andersen fairy tale vividly

to life. The Emperor, attended by henchmen in full

regalia and sheltered by a canopy rich in crimson

fringe, was marching with crown and scepter,

ludicrously unaware that he was appearing in his

shirt-tails.

“It’s marvelous! It’s so funny!” Connie chortled,

but she knew as she spoke that it was even more

than funny. It was—what was the word Ken Cooper,

one of the artists at the agency, sometimes used?

Connie remembered suddenly. “It’s really slick.”

Fritz bowed from the waist. “Thank you.”

“You’d make a marvelous advertising artist,”

Connie praised him.

“I hope,” Fritz admitted. “That’s my aim.”

Connie turned back to Eric’s painting. They were

utterly different, the two panels. She knew she was

19

seeing, on the one hand, the brisk style of a

commercial artist, and on the other, the tender touch

of a painter. Though she appreciated Fritz’s talent,

she liked Eric’s panel better. She wished she could

tell him so.

“I’d better go now,” she said inadequately. “I

hope you find the cloak.”

“I hope so too,” Eric said fervently as he walked

to the stairs with her. “It would be hard to fake the

color—it’s a purple with a lot of crimson in it—if

you know what I mean.”

Connie nodded. “It must be very dramatic.”

“It is! Miss Charlotte had it made in Paris, she

was telling me. Years ago. It’s hard to imagine her

wearing it, now.”

Sandra Scott came running up the stairs toward

them, holding her full skirt up with both hands. “Mr.

White doesn’t know a thing about the cape,” she

announced breathlessly. “And, Eric, Roby says

you’re positively not allowed to let anybody but

members of the decorating committee into the

studio.” She glanced at Connie. “He says that was

announced.”

Eric bit his lip. “I forgot.” Then he brightened.

“But Connie won’t talk about the panels, will you,

Connie?”

“Of course not!” Connie smiled, faintly amused

at all the to-do and secrecy connected with plans for

20

the ball. Since she had been working for Reid and

Renshaw, she felt that she had left such school-day

complications behind her. And now here she was,

back in the midst of it all again!

Yet art school was far different from high school

in many ways. For one thing, most of the students

were more mature. Some of the first-year pupils

were college graduates. Many held daytime jobs

more important than her own. Fortunately, too, most

of the young men and women she had met were very

sincere in their striving for an art education. Their

eyes were on the future and they hadn’t come to art

school to waste time.

Interrupting such serious thoughts came Roby

Woodward’s voice. “I’d pay a pretty penny—” he

offered.

Connie responded to his teasing tone.

“I was thinking,” she fibbed, “that now I’d

probably be black-listed.”

Roby looked puzzled. “For why?”

“For being caught out of bounds.”

“Oh, you’re the girl Eric Payson had in the

studio! Fie and for shame!”

“No shame at all,” Connie shot back. “Eric just

forgot it was forbidden ground. After all, such

secrecy does seem a little childish, don’t you think?”

For an instant Roby stiffened; then he relaxed and

shrugged. “Have you ever been to an art school

21

ball?” he asked her in return.

“No,” Connie admitted. Then she laughed and

said, “Touché!” and turned into the door of her

classroom before Roby had time to say more.

It was two evenings later that Connie met Eric

Payson again. On her way home from the office she

stopped in at an art supply store on Walnut Street

and there was Eric, at the counter, buying big jars of

show-card color in purple and vermilion.

“Hello,” Connie greeted him. “Did Sandra find

the cloak?”

“Not yet.” Eric looked troubled. “I’m going to

have to try to fake the color after all.”

They walked together, down to the corner in the

waning winter light. Eric seemed unusually quiet

and thoughtful, his shyness accentuated by this

unexpected encounter. Connie didn’t press him into

conversation. As the red light changed to green she

prepared to turn down Sixteenth Street.

“I leave you here,” she said. “ ’Bye.”

“Wait a minute.” Eric’s tone was abrupt.

“Connie, I’d like to ask you something. You don’t

have to give me an answer now, but I wish you’d

think it over. Will you let me take you to the ball?”

It was far from a gracefully spoken invitation, and

before Connie had time to catch her breath the boy

was gone, dodging downtown between traffic, as

though he had gathered his courage, then spent it in

22

a rush that had alarmed him into flight.

Connie smiled to herself as she crossed the street.

Eric certainly didn’t seem to know much about girls.

She thought it was flattering to be invited to go to

the big art school party with an upperclassman. She

wondered whether Aunt Bet would feel that she

should know a little more about Eric before she

accepted. Well, that would be easy. She could ask

some discreet questions at school.

Leaping this minor hurdle, Connie began to plan.

At her first opportunity she’d mention to Eric the

thought that Kit might come for the week end. She

could get Kit a date with Ken Cooper, a young artist

employed at Reid and Renshaw, and the four of

them could go together. That is, if Eric was

agreeable—and Connie thought he would be. Aloud

Connie said, “It’ll be such fun!”

She arrived at school that night a trifle late. Aunt

Bet had an evening engagement and Connie had

offered to wash and dry the supper dishes alone. In

the great center hall Roby Woodward and Fritz

Bachman were having a heated argument over

something. Fritz was gesticulating and talking in a

high-keyed voice while Roby stood with his hands

in the pockets of his tweed sport coat, sullen and

glowering.

“They’ve got to be lighted from above, not

below,” Connie heard Fritz say. “Any fool would

23

know that!”

And Roby replied, his deep voice dropping to a

growl, “Who’s running this show, Fritz, you or me?”

Connie tried to edge past them silently and get

upstairs to her second-floor classroom. But Fritz

suddenly whirled and stamped away, and Roby

caught at the sleeve of her coat, his voice returning

to its normal lighthearted level effortlessly.

“Hi, beautiful! Got a sec?”

“I’m awfully late,” Connie said, glancing up at

the clock on the landing.

“What I’ve got to say won’t take long.” Roby

grinned down at her. “Got a date for the ball?”

“Well, I—” Connie began.

“I’d be proud to take you!” Arrogant, half-

clowning, Roby bowed from the waist. “If you’ll

dress as Snow White and let me go as your Prince,

that is.”

“But—”

“No buts,” said Roby firmly. “This is my party.

Please?”

It was small wonder, Connie thought, as she

looked up into Roby’s dark, mischievous eyes, that

he was the most popular boy in school. He knew just

how far to carry his audacity before he capitulated

with a word like “Please?”

Connie knew, too, that it was a real honor to be

asked by the chairman of the ball. For a new girl,

24

like herself, it was an enviable invitation. Gossip

had reached her that Sandra Scott was usually Roby

Woodward’s girl at school parties. Up until now—

Yet she forced herself to shake her head, because

Eric had asked her first, and because she found his

very awkwardness, somehow, more appealing than

Roby’s self-confident charm. “I’m sorry—”

Roby frowned. “Now, look here. Take my word

for it. You’ll be a perfect Snow White. With that

hair—”

“It isn’t that,” Connie gasped. “It’s that I can’t go

with you, Roby. I’m sorry. But I had another

invitation first.”

The tall boy’s eyes darkened. “Whose?”

Connie was so surprised by the direct question

that it didn’t occur to her to dissemble. “Eric Payson

asked me to go with him.”

For an instant Roby’s eyes narrowed. Then he

laughed and, tucking his arm through Connie’s, led

her on up the stairs. “Don’t tell me! Our Eric got up

enough spunk to ask a gal for a date?”

Connie didn’t like his tone of voice. “What’s

wrong with that?” she shot back.

“I’m just amused.” But Roby didn’t sound

amused. “I’ll take care of Eric, beautiful. You’re

going to the ball with me.”

Suddenly Connie was furious. She jerked away

from Roby and on one of the rare occasions in her

25

life, anger made her voice quiver. “Oh, no, I’m not!”

she said. “I’m going to the ball with Eric, Roby, and

that’s that.”

Sharpening her charcoal a few minutes later,

Connie rubbed the stick against the sandpaper so

hard that it broke. She was still astonished and angry

at Roby’s presumption. Who did he think he was?

“Who is Roby Woodward, anyway?” She put the

question a little differently to the short girl with

pinkish-red curls who had been trying to interest her

in some tickets to the ball.

The girl’s eyes widened. “Roby Woodward?

Why, he’s the son of the man who owns Republic

Plastics. Gard Woodward—you’ve heard of him.

They live in a big house up above Rittenhouse

Square.”

Connie had heard of Republic Plastics. It was one

of Reid and Renshaw’s advertising accounts.

“The Woodwards are supposed to be wonderful

people,” Connie’s classmate continued as she

hitched her chair closer to her drawing board. “Very

public-spirited and all. And Mr. Woodward has been

just wonderful to Eric Payson, you know.”

“No, I don’t know,” Connie said, remembering

the animosity that had glinted for a second in Roby’s

eyes when she had told him that Eric was taking her

to the ball.

“Well, I can’t see any harm in telling you.

26

Everybody in school knows that Eric is sort of—

what’s the word for it?—Mr. Woodward’s protégé.”

“Eric?” Connie was truly surprised.

The girl nodded. “He works in Mr. Woodward’s

factory, and he boards at his house. It was Mr.

Woodward who helped him get a scholarship here at

school. Mr. Woodward and Miss Charlotte, of

course. From what I hear, it really looks to me as if

he’s poaching on Roby’s preserve.”

“Students!” The voice of the instructor cut into

the conversation. “You have a difficult problem this

evening, and there really isn’t time for idle talk.”

Connie blushed, and murmured an apology,

ashamed of being caught gossiping. She settled

down to work in earnest, but her curiosity was

whetted. She wanted to know more about the rivalry

which apparently existed between Eric and Roby.

Well, at the Fairy Tale Ball, she decided, she

might have an opportunity to ask a subtle question

or two.

27

CHAPTER 3

The Fairy Tale Ball

It was all arranged! Kit was coming to Philadelphia

for the week end of the ball, and Ken Cooper was

going to make the fourth in the party with Connie

and Eric.

In an extravagant telephone call to

Meadowbrook, Connie and her twin made plans.

“Mother says we can have that bolt of white plush

that has been up in the attic for so many years,” Kit

said. “How about going as identical Snow Queens?

Don’t you think that might be fun?”

“Marvelous!” Connie agreed. “But who’ll make

our costumes?”

“I’ll cut them out, and Mother says she’ll run

them up on the sewing machine.”

“Tell her from me she’s an angel,” Connie cried.

“I’ll make the crowns!”

Eric was agreeable to anything Connie suggested.

He seemed proud and pleased that he was to be her

28

escort but otherwise was a little detached. Connie

knew that he was working hard on the panel, which

was still unfinished, and therefore excused him. Part

of his difficulties, she knew, arose from the fact that

the purple cloak still had not been found.

Roby Woodward was very busy these days.

Besides final arrangements for the ball, he was

working with Fritz, Eric, and a girl named Beth

Chandler on an exhibition of paintings to be hung in

the great hall. Connie thought privately that they

formed an odd committee, because it was becoming

more and more apparent to her that there was intense

rivalry between the three boys, a rivalry of which

Fritz and Roby were acutely conscious but which

Eric seemed to discount.

One morning Roby turned up at the agency where

Connie worked, and his surprise when he saw her

behind the receptionist’s desk was so overwhelming

that it made her laugh.

“I didn’t know you worked here,” he blurted out.

“I do,” Connie told him, smiling. She was glad to

be able to break the ice that had incrusted their

relationship since the night when she had so bluntly

turned down his invitation to the ball. “And what

may I do for you, sir?”

“I’m here to see the art director, Mr.—?”

“Mr. Canfield,” Connie prompted. Her eyes

began to twinkle. “Are you thinking of selling him

29

some art work?”

“Heaven forbid!” Roby ejaculated as though he

were scandalized, and Connie laughed again,

because she knew that Roby’s reputation at school

was built more on his ability as an organizer than his

aptitude with brush or pencil. “Reid and Renshaw is

loaning us an exhibition for the Fairy Tale Ball. Or

hadn’t you heard?”

It was Connie’s turn to be surprised. “Nary a

word,” she told him. Then her eyes widened. “You

don’t mean—the Tarabochia series?”

Roby nodded. “I do indeed.”

“But they’re worth a fortune!” The Tarabochia

paintings, large and impressive oils of scenes from

“Hansel and Gretel,” “Snow White,” “Sleeping

Beauty” and other fairy tales famed in song, had

been made for a nationally known recording

company’s anniversary campaign, and were valued

at five thousand dollars apiece.

Roby grinned and nodded again. “Your Mr.

Canfield is a loyal alumnus of the School of Design.

That’s the only reason we’re getting the loan

exhibition,” he said.

“Goodness,” Connie breathed, “I hope nothing

happens to them.”

Roby was confident. “Nothing will.” He added, “I

think we are in luck, though. They make a

wonderful theme to build the masked ball around.”

30

Then, as though mention of the ball reminded him

that he was not on especially friendly terms with

Connie, he said abruptly, “Will you please tell Mr.

Canfield I’m here?”

Connie plugged in the call. “Mr. Woodward to

see you, Mr. Canfield.”

“Mr. Gard Woodward?”

“No,” Connie said. “His son.” She turned to

Roby. “He’ll be right out.”

Roby looked at her quizzically. “How did you

know my father’s name?” But before she could

reply the art director strode into the reception room.

“ ’Morning, Roby,” he said in friendly fashion.

“Come right along in.”

Connie was so busy at the switchboard when

Roby again came through the reception room that

she had time to do no more than wave a brief good-

bye. She wondered whether he worked, as she had

been told Eric did, at Republic Plastic. It was hard to

imagine Roby Woodward working very hard at

anything—except, perhaps, plans for a party which

he could organize and direct.

Then Connie chided herself, fearing that she

might be unfair. After all, she didn’t know Roby

well enough to pass judgment.

The next few days passed with whirlwind speed.

Connie was busy both at the agency and at school,

where only the classes for beginning students

31

seemed to retain a modicum of organization. The

older students seemed to be concerned primarily

with plans for their big party. The ballroom doors

were kept closed, and Connie heard via Eric that the

last of the panels had been finished and hung. The

walls of the big central hall were cleared for the loan

exhibition, and students who were not working on

the various party committees ran busily around

collecting costume accouterments and being very

secretive about their plans for disguise.

On Thursday, the night before the ball, Connie

awoke and lay sleepless from sheer excitement.

Moon whiteness lay like linen on the roof outside

Aunt Bet’s bedroom, and far away a siren screamed,

punctuating the night. Connie shivered and hugged

herself, beneath the down puff. Tomorrow Kit

would come, and tomorrow night they would dance

in an enchanted setting that would do credit to the

Brothers Grimm.

“Until our shoes are full of holes, like the slippers

of the Twelve Dancing Princesses,” she murmured

to herself. “My, but it’s fun to be young!”

When Connie hurried home from work the next

day Kit had already arrived. She threw her arms

around her twin and cried, “Wait until you see our

costumes! They’re simply divine.”

They were indeed. Kit and her mother had

outdone themselves, sewing rhinestones around the

32

low necks to give the costumes sparkle, and lining

the short flared skirts with the ice-blue satin of an

old evening gown.

Connie had made intricate crowns from gilt-

wrapped wire, and had purchased two dainty white

masks. “Nobody will be able to tell us apart!” she

said gleefully as she stood with her sister before the

mirror. “Not even Eric or Ken, I’ll bet.”

After a hasty supper, the girls made a ceremony

of dressing, arranging their hair in identical style and

even using the same lipstick, so that there would be

no discrepancy in shade.

Elizabeth Easton watched them in affectionate

amusement. “Look,” she said as she wandered from

the bedroom to the living room, where she was

nursing a feeble fire, “even the weather is co-

operating. It’s beginning to snow!”

By the time the boys arrived the rooftops were

white and the ground was fast being covered. It was

a mild, gentle snowfall, the flakes drifting down like

flecks of whipped cream, unhurried by any wind.

Ken came as the Steadfast Tin Soldier, looking very

earnest and rather dapper in his uniform. He looked

in astonishment from Connie to Kit, whom he had

never met, and said immediately, “I give up!”

The girls both laughed. “Better not tell either of

us anything you don’t want the other to know,”

Connie warned him.

33

“Don’t worry. I won’t!”

Eric, with his fair Scandinavian coloring, had

assembled an unusual costume. He was dressed as

the North Wind, from Andersen’s “Garden of

Paradise,” and he wore ski pants, a bearskin jacket

and an old sealskin gunning cap pulled down over

his ears. Around his waist was an embroidered belt,

for color, but Aunt Bet insisted that the really

ingenious part of his disguise was his beard,

fashioned by Eric himself of plastic icicles, which

tinkled with an eerie sound when he moved.

“Don’t go near the fire!” Connie warned him

gaily. “You’ll get chilblains.”

Eric apparently knew his fairy tale, because his

eyes crinkled with amusement and he replied at

once, “Chilblains! Why, they’re my greatest delight.

What sort of feeble creature are you?”

“Careful!” Elizabeth Easton warned, a finger

raised. “The Snow Queen, if I remember correctly,

can strike ice to your heart with a single kiss.”

Everyone laughed at her nonsense, and then there

was the usual flurry of leave-taking, the girls

donning boots and long coats, because they thought

it would be fun to walk the few blocks from Aunt

Bet’s apartment to the school. The snow had driven

most of the city folk indoors, so they had the street

largely to themselves. Only an occasional hurrying

man or woman stared briefly at their strange

34

costumes—Ken’s visored hat, Eric’s cap and the

girls’ crowns, shining beneath wrapped scarves.

“Halloween in January!” Kit murmured, and

Connie cried, “Isn’t it fun?”

Ken, although he was older than the other three,

seemed to catch just the right spirit of gaiety, and

Connie was glad that she had asked him to

accompany Kit. Eric was rather too quiet, as though,

after his one effort at the apartment, he were too shy

to enter into the play. A stranger, Connie was afraid,

would think him sullen, and she did her best to draw

the boy out.

“I can’t wait to have Kit see your panel,” she told

him. “I’m sure it’s the best of the lot.”

Eric shrugged. “Roby apparently doesn’t think so.

He gave it a poor position.” Then he said abruptly,

“Miss Charlotte will be here. She’s a patroness. I

haven’t had the nerve to tell her about the purple

cloak.”

Behind them, before Connie had time to reply,

Kit said, “But this doesn’t look like a school

building.”

“It used to be a private home,” Eric told her,

turning. “Wait till you see the ballroom! It’s quite

something. It’s fun to imagine the parties that must

have been given there.”

Kit was impressed, not only with Eric’s

description of the ballroom, but with the big, stone-

35

paved entrance hall, hung now with the brilliant

Tarabochia oils and swarming with fairy tale

characters, masked and chattering like a hundred

magpies.

It was like walking into a scene out of an

operetta, Connie decided, standing still for a

moment and absorbing the color of the imaginary

stage set. Cinderellas, Bluebeards, Big Claus and

Little Claus—she could pick them out with ease.

Some of the costumes were quaint and clever, others

truly magnificent, and, like a knight in shining

armor, through the group strode Roby Woodward,

wearing a plumed hat and because of his position as

chairman of the ball, disdaining a mask.

Only a few of the guests were in dinner clothes.

Connie could see one or two older women,

apparently chaperons, and their escorts, who had not

dressed in costume. Then her eyes caught sight of a

familiar younger face above a black tie. Fritz

Bachman! It was like him, Connie thought, to

disdain a disguise. Kid stuff, he’d call it.

“Come on, Connie. Stop dreaming.” Eric, smiling

gently, was at her elbow, ready to propel her toward

the girls’ cloakroom. With Kit by her side she went

in to take off her long coat and her boots.

“Let’s pretend you’re me and I’m you!” Connie

whispered to her twin as they came back to the hall

together.

36

Kit, always ready for a lark, agreed, and when

Ken and Eric came toward them she walked over to

Eric. “Look at the Puss in Boots,” she said “Isn’t he

wonderful?”

But Eric was looking at her. “In this crowd,

Connie,” he said, “you and your sister look more

alike than ever. You’ll fool them all.”

More than one eye was turned toward the

identical Snow Queens, but Roby Woodward

recalled the crowd’s attention when he stood on the

broad steps to the second floor and announced that

the ball would be opened by a grand march. He and

Sandra, who wore her Rapunzel costume, were

ready to lead, and the couples assembled behind

them, waiting for the doors of the ballroom to be

thrown open.

Kit, forgetting that she was pretending to be

Connie, whispered to Eric, “Who’s the boy dressed

as Prince Charming? He’s handsome enough for the

role, which is rare.”

Eric stared at his companion for a moment in

astonishment. “Why, you know Roby!” Then he

recognized the hoax the girls were playing, and

made a great show of exchanging partners with Ken.

“You’d better tag your girl,” Ken warned him.

“These two aren’t to be trusted.”

“What would be the use?” Eric asked. “They’d

only exchange tags.”

37

“We used to have a lot of fun on Halloween when

we were kids,” Connie told him. “Only Mother and

Dad could tell us apart.”

“I can believe it,” Ken said. The resemblance

between the twins was truly astonishing. Even their

voices had the same timbre. Only their laughter was

different, Connie’s light and gay, Kit’s more throaty

and chuckling. He made a mental note to remember

that.

Because of the position in which they found

themselves when the line of march assembled,

Connie and her party were close behind Roby and

Sandra, who glanced at the group curiously but

without recognition.

Eric, after a few minutes, began to fidget. “I wish

they’d hurry,” he said in an undertone, “and get this

over with.”

“Don’t you like the grand march?” Connie asked

him.

“I never like to feel conspicuous.”

“I always think it’s fun, sort of—gala.” She

couldn’t understand his nervous restlessness, until

she remembered he might have an artist’s

exaggerated concern over the success of his panel.

Then her attention swerved to Roby, who had

turned the great brass key with a flourish, and who

now had his hands on the knobs of the carved

double doors. A ripple of excitement stirred the

38

waiting couples as, with a sweeping gesture, he

threw them open.

Then Sandra Scott started back with a scream.

Connie gasped, and clutched Eric’s arm.

In the center of the ballroom floor, lit by a

spotlight shining upward at the grisly figure, stood

the skeleton which had matriculated with Connie,

draped grotesquely in Miss Charlotte’s purple cloak.

For a moment Connie was conscious of nothing

but the light shining with gruesome brilliance

through the empty sockets of the eyes. Then her own

eyes lifted to the dim walls of the ballroom and she

f.aw that the long, colorful panels that decorated the

hall were scarred and defiled by great crosses of

purple paint!

39

CHAPTER 4

Sabotage!

Shocked silence lay on the revelers for a long

second. Then it was cut like a soft cake by the thin,

knifelike voice of a diminutive, white-haired lady

who had broken away from the group of chaperons

and come to peer under Roby’s shoulder through the

door.

“Good gracious, that’s my purple cloak!”

Eric took an impulsive step forward, then

stopped, for Miss Charlotte’s eyes had left the

draped skeleton and were scanning the walls.

“Roby,” she said incisively, “I consider this a very

poor sort of practical joke. Vandalism is never

funny.”

Roby Woodward had lost his usual aplomb in the

minute that had passed. “Well, good grief, Aunt

Charlotte—” Connie heard him say. “You don’t

think I—”

But the straight-backed little lady had turned

40

away, and as Roby spread his hands in a helpless

gesture all the lights in the ballroom clicked on and

the orchestra, hidden behind palms in a balcony,

began to play.

Connie saw Roby gesture to the second couple in

line and say something softly. Then he drew Sandra

out of the head position and started across the floor

toward the skeleton at the same time that the

building superintendent, Mr. White, hurried from

another direction.

It was the work of a few seconds to remove the

offending figure, and meanwhile a nervous spate of

talk broke out among the party guests, its tempo

heightened by the music. Connie caught sight of

Fritz Bachman, looking at the walls in supercilious

contempt, and then her eye was caught by something

she had missed before.

Of all the fairy tale panels, the one of Rapunzel,

leaning from her high tower to let down her braids

to the old witch, was the only one which had been

left untouched.

Connie’s glance jerked to Eric, and she saw that

he had remarked it too. He was looking at his panel,

brilliant and effective, and Connie thought for a

second she could read a certain pleasure in his eyes.

Then his expression became undecipherable, and he

fell into step to the music without speaking, his lips

set in a thin line.

41

Now she realized that more than one student was

gesticulating toward the unscarred panel. Eric, she

thought, must be thankful for his temporary

disguise. It was such a strange thing! Had the vandal

been interrupted in the act? It looked too obvious for

such a conclusion. And the purple cloak—the lost

purple cloak. For whose nefarious purpose had it

been discovered and used?

“How anyone could do such a contemptible

thing!” Connie murmured as the two leading couples

started down the ballroom four abreast. She could

see Mr. Jenkins with the little group of chaperons,

huddled in conversation. Then Roby Woodward

joined them and a decision was apparently reached,

because when the march ended Roby, standing on

the steps to the balcony, clapped his hands.

His poise was restored. He was his usual urbane

self. “We didn’t expect a skeleton in our midst to

greet you!” he called. “We usually keep our

skeletons in a closet.” He waited for the responsive

ripple of laughter he knew he’d get.

“Nor did we expect”—he made a sweeping

gesture toward the panels which lined the walls—

“for ‘X’ to mark the spots where so many beautiful

bodies of fairy tale heroes and heroines are found.

We didn’t know it was Mischief Night, but then

anything can happen at a Fairy Tale Ball!”

He paused, then shook a finger, and said, half

42

playfully, half seriously, “But mark my words, the

villain will be brought to justice. Mr. Jenkins has

promised us that. And, meanwhile, please don’t let

this incident spoil your evening.” He turned to the

orchestra, barely visible through the palms, and

called out, “On with the ball!”

“Leave it to Roby Woodward,” Connie heard a

student in the blackface of a chimney sweep say.

“He’ll pull the fat out of the fire if anyone can.”

The girl with him nodded. “He’s certainly

smooth. But I’ll bet Jenkins is boiling mad, and I

don’t blame him. It’s a crying shame to have all

those panels ruined.”

Connie thought it was a crying shame too, and

she was even more disturbed because she heard

frequent whispered comments on the glaring fact

that Eric Payson’s contribution was untouched.

Coupled with praise of Roby’s tact and finesse, this

was the subject which dominated the conversation of

partners she chanced to get in the Paul Jones which

preceded the giving out of costume prizes and the

unmasking.

With one exchange Connie found her hand in

Roby’s, and he swept her into his arms with a

flattering smile. But Connie wasn’t interested in

compliments as much as she was interested in

discussing the happenings of the night.

Letting him guess her identity she asked, “Who

43

could have done such a thing, Roby? How could it

have happened? Was the ballroom unlocked?”

Roby shook his head. “I locked it myself and had

the key in my pocket.”

“The balcony door?”

“That was locked too, Mr. White says. It opens

off the studio upstairs, you know. That’s the way he

let the orchestra in. Because of the palm screen and

the fact that we had planned to keep the room

darkened until the first bars of music, the musicians

never suspected what was up. Jenkins is really in a

snit. He says the student who did the job will be

expelled.”

Connie’s sense of justice told her that this was

only right, but Roby’s next remark made her gasp.

“Better be more careful of the company you keep,

after this.”

Before she had a chance to reply, the whistle

blew again and Roby was gone from her, lost in the

pattern of the dance. Yet as she forced a social smile

she shivered. Roby must really hate Eric, to say a

thing like that. If he meant what she thought he

meant, that is. And what other interpretation could

she draw?

Sandra Scott, as Rapunzel, won first prize for the

best girl’s costume, and the Snow Queens, as a pair,

won second. After the unmasking, Connie and Kit

found themselves the center of more attention than

44

they had bargained for. They were such identical

twins that not a single one of their partners could

honestly tell them apart, and to dance with each of

the Snow Queens in turn and hazard a guess became

a gay and amusing game.

Finally Connie appealed to Eric. “I’m breathless!

I can’t dance another step.”

“Come on over and I’ll introduce you to Miss

Charlotte,” Eric suggested. “It’s time I went and

tried to make my peace.”

“Did I hear Roby Woodward call her ‘aunt’?”

Connie asked him as they dodged across the floor.

“Yes. She’s his aunt. Didn’t you know?”

Then they were in front of the seated chaperons,

and Eric was pausing before the erect little lady in a

lavender dinner dress.

“Miss Charlotte, may I present Miss Connie

Blair?”

The introduction was so stiff, so ceremoniously

correct, that it sounded strange on the lips of as

young a man as Eric, and Connie wondered, as she

had wondered more than once, where he had

received such formal training.

Miss Charlotte put out a fragile, thin-fingered

hand, on which a cluster of diamonds flashed with

white brilliance. “My dear! I’ve been admiring your

costume. But have I been seeing double, perhaps?”

Connie laughed. “My twin sister is a guest here

45

tonight, and we thought it would be fun to dress

alike.”

“Oh, I see!” Miss Charlotte pretended to sound

relieved. “I’m sure you must be having an amusing

time.”

Then she turned to Eric. “I have missed you,” she

said rather sharply. Yet as she spoke Connie thought

she detected a hurt expression in her faded blue

eyes.

Eric looked ill at ease. “I know,” he said, without

meeting her glance. “I’ve been terribly busy—at the

factory—and here.”

“I can’t say—though your panel is very

handsome—that otherwise I admire the use that has

been made of my purple cloak.”

Eric raised his head slowly. “I’m terribly sorry,

Miss Charlotte,” he said, and to Connie he sounded

completely sincere. “It was really because of the

cloak that I didn’t come to call on you. It

disappeared from Sandra Scott’s locker a couple of

weeks ago, and I just couldn’t bear to tell you it had

been lost.”

Connie saw the elderly woman and the young

man search each other’s eyes. “So?” Miss Charlotte

said, as though she were thinking. Then she added in

a kindlier tone, “Never shirk responsibility, Eric. It

concerns me to think that you could ever be afraid of

me.”

46

“Oh, but that wasn’t it!” In a rarely impulsive

gesture Eric stooped and covered Miss Charlotte’s

clasped hands with his own. “I just didn’t want to

hurt you—and I knew you treasured that cloak.”

Miss Charlotte turned to Connie and her face had

regained its serenity. “I had it made in Paris,” she

said, “twenty years ago.”

“Yes, I know,” said Connie softly. She felt that

she was looking at a daguerreotype for an instant.

Then Miss Charlotte spoke again.

“I think a lot of this young man,” she said

forcefully. “He’s going to be a great artist

someday.”

“I’m sure he is,” Connie murmured politely and

quite honestly, because from what she had seen of

student work she recognized that Eric had real

talent.

“If he doesn’t get into trouble,” Miss Charlotte

added.

“Trouble?” Eric repeated a few moments later, as

he led Connie back to the dance floor. “Now what

did she mean by that?”

Connie couldn’t tell him, but as Miss Charlotte

had spoken a cold wind seemed to blow across her

shoulders. She had a presentiment—”a hunch” her

father always called it—that not everyone held Eric

in such high regard as did the little lady in lavender.

She wondered whether he were equipped to cope

47

with jealousy and greed and suspicion. She had an

idea he might need more worldly qualities, in time

to come, than he now appeared to possess.

Then she shrugged off the mood of morbid

conjecture and looked around to find Kit. She saw

her across the floor, dancing with Roby Woodward,

and suspected from the intimate way in which Roby

was talking, with his head bent toward Kit’s ear, that

he had mistaken her twin for herself.

Just to test the theory she persuaded Eric to lead

her in their direction. “I think this is a wonderful

party, Connie,” she called. When no surprise crossed

Roby’s face she knew she had been right. Kit

winked at her solemnly over her partner’s shoulder,

and Eric smiled as Connie winked solemnly back.

I must remember, Connie thought as they danced

away, to ask her what Roby was talking so seriously

about. If he’s been undermining Eric and thinks I’m

taking it—

But then Ken Cooper cut in, and her train of

thought was lost. “It’s a marvelous party, isn’t it?”

he asked. “The macabre touch doesn’t seem to have

spoiled anybody’s fun.”

“No, indeed.” But as Connie agreed with him she

wondered. If the malicious vandalism was an inside

job, as it certainly must have been, somebody in the

room must be pretty uncomfortable right now.

An hour later the melancholy strains of “Good

48

Night, Ladies,” slowed the pace of the dancers and

brought the ball to a close. Miss Charlotte, Connie

noticed, had already left, along with some of the

older chaperons. Only the younger teachers and Mr.

Jenkins remained to see that the party ended more

smoothly than it had begun.

In the girls’ dressing room tired Cinderellas and

Red Riding Hoods pulled on galoshes and bundled

themselves into wraps.

“It’s still snowing,” somebody announced. “It’s

getting really deep. We should have hired a sleigh!”

Kit had lost one of her boots, and in the crush was

making poor work of finding it. Connie tried to help,

but with no immediate success.

“I’ll tell the boys we’ll be a while. They must be

waiting,” she said after ten minutes of fruitless

search. “As this place empties, it will turn up.”

It did, but by the time Kit had unearthed it from a

dark corner under the long dressing table most of the

party guests had left the building and Mr. White was

standing by the big entrance door, waiting wearily to

lock up.

He followed Connie and her party out to the

steps, which had been cleared of snow during the

evening and were now covered by only a light film.

“Real blizzard we’re having!” he said

conversationally.

Connie agreed. The sidewalks, unshoveled in the

49

midnight hours, were hidden beneath six inches of

snow.

“You got far to go?”

“Only a few blocks. Around the corner and up

Locust Street.”

“Do you think we should try to get a taxi?” Eric

asked.

“Oh, no! Let’s walk. It’ll be fun!” Kit was a

country girl.

“The side gate’s open, if you want to go out that

way,” suggested Mr. White. “Save you a few steps.”

Connie thought, fleetingly, that no adult ever

seems to understand that young people don’t mind

extra steps. Often they even welcome them. But she

didn’t want to offend the superintendent. “Thank

you!” she called.

Her arm in Eric’s, she started across the snowy

courtyard. The big white flakes, drifting down,

settled on her forehead, her nose, her lips. Suddenly

she felt like a child again, playful and free, anxious

to run through the powdery whiteness and laugh and

shout.

Impulsively, she broke away from Eric and

touched him lightly on the arm. “Last tag!” she

called, and was off, snaking quickly through the

snow.

Eric followed, more heavily.

“The Snow Queen has wings!” Ken called from

50

behind. “You’ll never catch her.”

“Won’t I? You wait!” Eric quickened his pace

and Connie took a quick look over her shoulder,

laughing.

Then, without warning, there was a sharp snap, as

of a twig breaking, and Eric was on his knees in the

snow, a mixture of surprise and pain on his face.

“Eric! Are you hurt?” Connie was by the boy’s

side in an instant, along with Ken, who tried to help

him to his feet.

“I don’t think so.” Then Eric cried, “Ouch!

Wait!” and sank back to a sitting position. “It’s my

leg.”

“Careful, Ken. There’s a hole there,” Kit warned

from behind, and Ken kicked away the snow to

disclose a broken grating.

“There should have been a warning light on this.”

Connie looked back toward the art school’s steps,

where Mr. White was still standing, hands in

pockets, looking toward them. With the light from

the hall behind him, his face was in the shadow, and

he must not have suspected an accident, because he

made no move toward them.

“Want to try standing again?” Ken asked Eric.

Connie could see that the young artist’s face was

white, his lips taut with pain. “I don’t think I can,

doggone it,” he said, trying to be a good sport. “I

broke my left arm once. It feels the same way.”

51

Connie hesitated only an instant longer, then

hurried back toward the building. “Mr. White,” she

called through cupped hands, “can you come here a

minute? We’ve had an accident.”

Mr. White didn’t seem unduly concerned. He

came toward the group at a fairly leisurely pace. But

Roby Woodward, one of the last to leave, left

Sandra and hurried across the snow toward the

group.

“What’s happened here?”

“I think,” Connie told him, “that Eric has broken

his leg. He stumbled on a broken grating.” Suddenly

she was sorry for her lightheartedness. “It might not

have happened if I’d been acting my age.”

“It wasn’t your fault at all,” Eric called to her, as

Ken and Roby made a basket of their hands and

helped him to get a grip on their necks.

“He’ll need a doctor,” Ken said, “but at this time

of night—”

“Better call a hospital,” Roby suggested sensibly.

“Get them to send an ambulance.”

“Golly, I’m not about to die. That seems like—”

Eric started, but Roby interrupted.

“You shut up.”

Connie wished Roby wouldn’t be so gruff, but

she ran to call the hospital he suggested, knowing

that it was the wise thing to do. When she got back

to the steps, Roby had everything organized. Ken

52

was going to the hospital with Eric and he, Roby,

was going to take the three girls home.

Connie would have arranged things differently.

“Don’t you think—” she started.

But the siren of the hospital ambulance, sounding

in the distance, interrupted whatever suggestion she

might have made.

53

CHAPTER 5

Hospital Interlude

In the first pink flush of dawn Connie talked with

the hospital for the third time.

“I want to inquire about Mr. Eric Payson. He was

brought in shortly after midnight with what looked

to be a broken leg.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A broken leg.” Connie tried not to shout. She

didn’t want to awaken Aunt Bet, because she knew

that Saturdays at the store were always especially

busy, and Aunt Bet needed her full quota of sleep.

Huddled in her bathrobe by the living-room

telephone, Connie experienced the chill, lonely

trepidation that always seems to go hand in hand

with unaccustomed activity at night. She rubbed the

skin under one eye with a nervous forefinger. She

was very sleepy and more than a little cold.

“Who?”

Connie repeated, making her voice very distinct.

54

“Mr. Payson. Eric Payson. P-a-y-s—no, S as in

Samuel, -o-n.”

“Oh. Just a minute please. I’ll connect you with

Second Floor.”

Connie waited, wishing she didn’t have such a

sense of responsibility for the accident. If only she

hadn’t started to play that silly game— If only she

had gone to the hospital in the ambulance with

Eric— If only—

“You are inquiring about Mr. Payson?” This was

no sleepy switchboard operator. This was a nurse’s

brisk voice.

“Yes. Please.”

“He had a simple fracture of the left fibula. Dr.

Anderson set the bone, and the patient is sleeping

quietly in Ward Three.”

“Will he be in the hospital tomorrow?” Connie

asked.

“Probably. But not longer than a few days.”

“May he have visitors?”

“From two to four,” said the nurse briskly.

“Thank you very much.” Even as she said the

words she heard the click of the receiver at the other

end of the line.

Connie slept. Her concern assuaged, she slept so

soundly that she didn’t hear her aunt tiptoe through

the living room and leave for the department store

where she worked as a stylist. Kit aroused her about

55

ten in the morning, saying, “Come on, Connie.

Wake up! I have orange juice and coffee and

scrambled eggs all ready to eat.”

Five minutes later the twins were seated opposite

each other at the table in the window alcove, happily

munching on toast and orange marmalade. Connie

told Kit about her conversation with the hospital and

her sister was as relieved as she.

“I do think we should go see Eric this afternoon,”

Connie suggested.

“I do too.” Kit was immediately agreeable. “We

could take him some magazines or something.”

“That’s a good idea.”

So, laden with new magazines and a box of

candy, which was an afterthought of Connie’s, the

girls started out for the hospital through streets that

were rapidly being cleared of snow. The hospital

was a full mile from Aunt Bet’s apartment, but

because the air was brisk and the sun was bright on

their heads, they decided to walk.

Kit brought Connie up to date on all the family

news. Their father, who had been in bed for four

months following a heart attack, was feeling a great

deal stronger and was even planning to come down

to the store for an hour or two each day. The

window displays Connie had designed were

boosting sales at Blair’s Hardware Store and Kit

confessed that she really would hate to leave the

56

business she had entered so inadvertently. Toby, the

twins’ younger brother, was full of Scout lore and

Scout doings.

“His latest hobby, and is he riding it!” Kit said.

“And Mother?”

“Fine, as usual. Sewing for the church on top of

everything else.”

The only member of the family unaccounted for

was Ruggles, the red cocker spaniel, and Connie

also had to know about him.

“Mother has a new campaign. ‘Keep-Ruggles-

off-the-furniture.’ ” Kit laughed. “Toby says it’s her

theme song, but it isn’t making much of a hit.”

The girls walked along in silence for a few

minutes, then began to discuss the happenings of the

previous night.

“You certainly got more excitement than I’d

bargained for,” Connie told her twin ruefully. “Not

all of it pleasant.”

“I didn’t mind. It was interesting,” Kit said. Then

she added, as though she were puzzled, “Roby

Woodward certainly doesn’t like Eric, does he? I

wonder why?”

“Eric lives at the Woodwards’,” Connie told her.

“He’s a sort of protégé of Roby’s dad. He’s brighter

than Roby, at art work anyway, and I suppose

there’s a sort of natural jealousy there.”

“Still, I think it’s strange that Roby let Ken go to

57

the hospital with Eric instead of going himself. Ken

had never even met Eric before last night.”

Connie nodded. “I know. I didn’t like that either.

Roby’s spoiled and selfish. I think he just did the

thing that was more pleasant for him.”

Kit’s eyebrows drew together. “Connie, you don’t

think”—she said after a minute “—you don’t think

that Roby might hate Eric so much that he’d want to

frame him?”

“Frame him?” Connie was shocked.

“I mean Roby had a golden opportunity to set the

scene in the ballroom—and make it look as though

Eric might be guilty, because his panel was the only

one untouched.”

“And run the risk of ruining his own party?

Because it was Roby’s party, you know. He was

chairman of the ball. Oh, no, Kit! I can’t think—”

“But who would do such a mean and vicious

thing?”

“I don’t know,” Connie said in a troubled voice.

“I can’t imagine.”

“You certainly don’t suspect Eric?”

“No, I don’t suspect Eric,” Connie said slowly.

Yet she knew from experience how important it was

to keep an open mind. “But I don’t really know very

much about any of the crowd at school,” she told her

sister. “I’ve been there such a short time. There are a

lot of things I’d like to find out.”

58

“Such as?”

“I’d like to know something about Eric’s family.

I’ve never heard him mention them. I’d like to know

how Miss Charlotte feels about Roby. He’s her

nephew, you see. And I’d like to know whether Fritz

Bachman’s blasé manner is just a pose, or whether

he really has a mean streak—” Her voice trailed off

and she added, just above a whisper, “Oh, Kit, I

don’t like to be suspicious of people. I don’t like it

at all!”

It was on the tip of Kit’s tongue to tell Connie

something—something that Roby had told her when

they had been dancing together last night. But she

felt, suddenly, that her twin was becoming over-

concerned about the affair at school, and she didn’t

want to add fuel, at this particular moment, to an

already hot fire. The story would keep.

“It’s time to change the subject,” she said briskly.

“It’s too beautiful a day to brood.”

They were approaching the hospital, anyway, and

a few minutes later, tiptoeing along its antiseptic

corridors, they sought out Ward 3.

The nurse on duty announced that Mr. Payson

already had two visitors, and that only three were

allowed to visit a patient at one time.

“You go in, Connie,” Kit said immediately. “I’ll

wait in the anteroom.”

Connie started to protest, thought better of it, and

59

followed the nurse’s starched back, while Kit went

into the near-by sun porch and picked up a

magazine.

Seated at Eric’s bed was a middle-aged woman in

a beaver coat and a stocky, square-shouldered man

whose black hair was salted with gray. Connie

approached rather timidly, but when Eric saw her he

put out his hand and a smile broke over his face.

“Connie! It was swell of you to come!”

In bed, Eric looked younger than usual, his blond

hair rumpled, his cheeks a little flushed. He turned

quickly from the girl to the older couple. “I’d like

you to know Mr. and Mrs. Woodward. Connie

Blair.”

Mrs. Woodward nodded and murmured a polite

“Good afternoon,” but Mr. Woodward came around

the foot of the bed and put out a big, capable hand.

“So you’re the young lady who caused Eric’s

downfall?” he boomed.

“Quite literally, I’m afraid,” Connie admitted

with a rueful grin.

Mr. Woodward patted Connie’s shoulder. “Don’t

you worry about that. Eric’s going to be right as rain

in a couple of weeks.”

“It’ll take a little longer than that, I’m afraid,”

Eric said with concern darkening his eyes. “But as

soon as I get a walking cast I ought to be able to go

back to work.”

60

“Great Scott, boy, forget the factory!” Mr.

Woodward said with a wave of his hand. “Nobody’s

indispensable, you know. Not even me!”

“But will they keep me here until I can get

around? I wouldn’t want to be a trouble to you, Mrs.

Woodward.”

Gard Woodward was apparently in the habit of

replying for his wife. “You stop fretting. You’ll be

no trouble to anybody.” Then he glanced at his

watch. “Got to get going, Emily. All right?”

Mrs. Woodward drew her beaver coat about her.

“All right,” she acquiesced, and smiled at Connie.

“You know my son, Roby, too, I understand?” she

said as she arose.

“Oh, yes, indeed. Everybody at school knows

Roby,” Connie replied with a complimentary nod.

“But not for his application, I’ll vow,” grumbled

Mr. Woodward. “Roby didn’t even show up at the

shop this morning, Em. Where was he? Don’t tell

me. I know. Stayed in bed till noon.” He turned to

Eric again and inquired sharply, “Has he been to see

you yet?”

“No, but he’ll get here, sir,” Eric said with

confidence.

In an aside to Connie, Emily Woodward

murmured, “Card’s too hard on the boy.”

Connie was relieved when they finally left the

ward. She gave Eric the candy and magazines and

61

told him that Kit was waiting in the anteroom. “I’ll

run out and get her,” she said.

It was not only with Kit, but with Miss Charlotte

also, that Connie returned. Today the elderly little

lady looked more than ever like a miniature or a

daguerreotype, dressed as she was in a longish gray

coat with a squirrel collar, and wearing a matching

squirrel hat and muff.

“Gard called me,” she told Eric at once, and from

the way her birdlike glance swept the room Connie

doubted that she had ever been in a hospital ward

before. “Are you going to be comfortable here?”

“Yes, indeed,” Eric assured her. “And it’s only a

simple fracture, Miss Charlotte. It isn’t really serious

at all.”

Connie seated Miss Charlotte in the chair Mrs.

Woodward had just vacated while Kit greeted Eric

brightly. “That’s quite a handsome cast,” she said,

“but entirely too pristine and new-looking. What

you need to give it real style are a few autographs.”

Eric snapped his fingers. “Never occurred to me.

Got a pen?”

“I have one,” offered Miss Charlotte, and looked

on in smiling puzzlement while Connie and Kit

signed their names.

“It’s a fashion, Miss Charlotte,” Connie

explained, understanding her perplexity. “Or maybe

I should say a fad.”

62

Miss Charlotte was a good sport. “Then I should

sign, too, I think.” And she did just that, to Eric’s

shy amusement.

“Thank you very much,” he said, raising himself

on an elbow to inspect the result.

When Connie’s wrist watch showed ten minutes

to four she suggested to Kit that they leave. “I’ll be

out again,” she promised Eric. “I’ll leave you my

office telephone number. Get the nurse to give me a

call if there’s anything I can bring.”

Then she turned to Miss Charlotte and said her

good-byes. “It was so nice to have a chance to really

talk to you,” she said.

“But it has been too brief,” Miss Charlotte replied

graciously. “Why don’t you bring your sister to call

on me. Have tea with me tomorrow, perhaps.”

Connie glanced at Kit and read acceptance in her

eyes. “I think that would be lovely,” she said.

“At four?”

“Splendid.” Kit was taking the six o’clock back to

Meadowbrook. There would just be time.

“I’ll expect you, then.” Miss Charlotte nodded

and smiled as they turned away to leave the room.

“That will be fun!” murmured Connie in an

undertone as soon as they had reached the corridor.

“Eric says she has a perfectly charming house.”

“She’s a sweet little person. Like something out

of Lavender and Old Lace.”

63

“But I suspect there’s a vein of iron in her

character,” Connie replied. “Have you noticed the

set to her chin?”

“Hey! You’re going the wrong way!” Roby

Woodward’s laughing voice stopped them as the

girls turned from the corridor into the main lobby.

“Oh, no, we aren’t,” Connie told him. “We’ve

been to see Eric, and we’re on our way home.”

Roby glanced over his shoulder at the clock

above the entrance door. “Wait five minutes and I’ll

drive you uptown,” he said. “Four o’clock is finis

around here, I understand.”

Connie hesitated, and Roby was off down the

corridor at something close to a sprint, giving her no

chance to refuse. She shrugged as she looked after

him. “Guess we’d better wait,” she said with a wry

smile.

Roby was as prompt as his promise. “Aunt

Charlotte’s no respecter of hospital rules,” he said as

he joined the girls. “I offered her a ride, but she said

she didn’t intend to leave for fifteen minutes yet.”

Connie glanced at Kit. “What did I tell you about

that jaw?” she chuckled.

The car to which Roby ushered them was a low,

black convertible, obviously a late model. He held

the door gallantly for Connie and Kit, then rounded

the car and slid his long legs under the wheel.

“There,” he said as he started the ignition. “My

64

Boy Scout deed for the day!”

“Helping us into the car?”

“No. Going to see the fair-haired boy.”

“Why did you come if you didn’t want to?”

Connie asked.

Roby shrugged. “Expected of me and all that. Pop

would raise Rome if I neglected the favorite child.”

His infectious grin flashed, and he seemed to be

sorry he’d opened the subject. “Don’t mind me. I

just get a little sick of teachers’ pets. Between Dad

and Mother and Aunt Charlotte and the art school

staff—well, you know how it is.” He chuckled, as

though to himself. “I’ve got one person on my side

though. Uncle Francis doesn’t think he’s so hot.”

“Who’s—?” Connie began, but Roby interrupted.

“Let’s quit talking about Eric, now, and talk

about you.”

65

CHAPTER 6

The House on Queen Street

The street where Miss Charlotte lived was tucked

away from Philadelphia traffic and hidden beneath

the towering bulk of office buildings. Like the old

Fairchild mansion which housed the art school, it

was a relic of more leisurely days.

Once, Connie suspected, the brick-paved little

street had been very fashionable, and now it was

becoming fashionable again, in a vaguely Bohemian

way. The brick facades of the houses were being

repainted by new owners in shades of gray and soft

pink and even black. Marble steps were scrubbed

and iron railings were freshened. It had become

smart as well as quaint. In downtown Philadelphia it

was a charming place to live.

“Oh, it is delightful, isn’t it!” Kit, turning into

Queen Street from the main thoroughfare, glanced

about her in pleased surprise.

“I especially like the trees,” Connie said,

66

gesturing toward the branches of four Norway

maples, black against the snow. “There are so many

little streets like this in Philadelphia, streets people

who don’t know the city never even see.”

“By the way,” Kit asked her twin, “what is Miss

Charlotte’s last name?”

“I don’t even know,” Connie admitted in some

surprise. “It could be Woodward, I suppose, but

everybody just calls her ‘Miss Charlotte.’ Eric even

introduced her that way.”

“It fits her.” Kit smiled. “I’ll just call her that.”

Connie was beginning to look at the numbers of

the houses they were passing. “It must be across the

street, and up a way,” she said. “Number Twenty-

three.”

“Let me guess!” Kit cried. She narrowed her eyes

against the sun. “I’ll vote for the red brick.”

“I will too,” Connie agreed. It was the most

elegant little house on the street, the old brick pink

with age, the shutters black, the door boasting a

decorative fanlight. A brass knocker gleamed in the

sunshine, and the black iron handrail which ended in

a spiral at the foot of the steps was surmounted by a

brass finial. Serene, sheltered and livable, though

situated in the very heart of town, it seemed a

symbol of a more dignified way of life.

“We’re right!” Connie cried when she could read

the number. “Look, Kit, at the shadow pattern the

67

handrail makes in the snow.” The artist in her was

speaking, and she paused admiringly before she ran

up the steps and lifted the old brass knocker,

scorning the recessed bell.

A maid, conventionally garbed in Sunday black,

opened the door and admitted them to a narrow hall

from which double doors led to the living room or

parlor, as it must once have been called. In a basket

on the fireplace hearth a bed of cannel coal was

glowing, and from a tall wing chair beside the fire

Miss Charlotte arose to greet them, looking more

fragile than ever in pale-gray silk.

“Will you take the girls upstairs, Anna,” Miss

Charlotte said after she had greeted them. “You may

put your wraps in the guest room,” she added,

turning to Connie, and ended with quaint formality,

“if you please.”

Connie and Kit followed the maid and became

more enchanted by the house with every step they

took. Furnished entirely in antiques, which were

waxed to a warm glow, it had both style and

aristocratic charm.

The girls laid their coats on a canopied bed with

slender, fluted posts, and inspected their hair before

a Queen Anne mirror which could have been a

museum piece.

“No wonder Eric adores this house,” Connie

breathed. “There’s something about the lines of

68

really fine old furniture—”

“And the feel of the wood,” Kit added softly as

they walked together down the stairs.

“We’ve been admiring your home,” Connie told

Miss Charlotte with disarming frankness. “It’s

perfectly beautiful.”

“I love it!” Miss Charlotte smiled from her wing

chair. “Everything in it has a special meaning for

me.” Her glance strayed around the firelit room,

from the faded pastels of the fine old Aubusson

carpet to the inlaid walnut tables and the long, lined

draperies of mauve damask which shut out the

street.

The whole room was done in shades of purple

and gray, with the sharp contrast of a bowl of yellow

daffodils lighting the alcove where a secretary-desk

stood.

“Do you ever think of people in terms of color?”

Connie asked her hostess suddenly. “I mean—

certain colors just fit certain people, the way

lavender fits you.”

Miss Charlotte’s laugh was like the tinkle of a

thin silver bell. “It’s interesting,” she said, “that Eric

once said the same thing to me, when I first knew

him, as a little boy.” Her mind seemed to be

retracing the years, and Connie knew that her

visitors were momentarily forgotten. She waited,

and after a minute Miss Charlotte continued. “

69

‘You’re a lavender kind of lady,’ he said.”

“Where does Eric live? I mean, where is his

family?” Connie gathered courage to ask.

“Family? Eric has no family,” said Miss Charlotte

as Anna entered with a large silver tray of tea things.

“He was raised in an orphanage. Didn’t you know?”

“No, I didn’t. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

Connie was shocked and her confusion was explicit

in her words.

“There’s no secret about it, my dear,” Miss

Charlotte said. “I used to do some social-service

work, and it took me into several of our city

institutions. Eric was a sensitive child, and we struck

up quite a friendship. I found him an extremely

appealing little boy.”

Connie could imagine that Eric had been just that,

shy and rather wistful, for all his sturdy good looks.

“I used to bring him home with me, once in a

while, for lunch or supper, when he was only about

nine years old,” Miss Charlotte continued. “You’ve

never seen a child so responsive to beauty. The way

he used to go up to a piece of furniture and let his

fingers trail over the wood—” She sat a little

straighter, her own hands touching the tea tray

descriptively. “I tried not to be sentimental, but you

can imagine that the atmosphere of an orphanage is

often a little—utilitarian.”

Connie could well imagine, and she nodded

70

sympathetically, as did Kit.

“Sugar?” Miss Charlotte asked her. “And lemon

or cream?”

“Sugar and lemon, please.” Connie wished that

the serving of the tea, in flowered Limoges cups,

had not created a distraction. She wanted to know

more about Eric. With every word Miss Charlotte

spoke he was becoming more interesting.

After Kit had been served she ventured to reopen

the subject. “Eric surely does think the world of you,

Miss Charlotte,” she said.

A cloud seemed to cross the little lady’s eyes. “i

used to think so,” she said. “Now, sometimes, I

wonder.”

Kit, startled, asked bluntly, “Why, what do you

mean?”

The delicate lift of Miss Charlotte’s shoulders

could hardly have been called a shrug. She was

about to reply when a knock sounded on the hall

door and Anna came into the room to announce,

“It’s Mr. Francis, Miss White.”

Connie glanced at her twin. This must be the

Uncle Francis to whom Roby had referred.

“Ask him to come in, Anna,” Miss Charlotte was

saying, “and bring another cup and saucer, please.”

For a fleeting moment Connie didn’t recognize

the tall, gray-haired man who crossed the room. She

knew his face, of course, but she fought to place

71

him.

Then Miss Charlotte said, with her usual gentle

graciousness, “You know my brother, Mr. White,

Connie, of course. Francis, may I present Miss

Katherine Blair?”

Here again was the quaint formality Connie had

remarked in Eric, and she knew that Miss Charlotte

must have had a great influence on his life. As this

thought flitted through her mind, she was watching

Mr. White greet Kit.

“Of course!” she cried impulsively. “You’re the

building superintendent at school!”

The moment the words were out she regretted

them. She could feel Miss White stiffen

instinctively, and Mr. White acknowledged her

recognition with a short, curt nod. Connie hadn’t

intended to be rude. She flushed in embarrassment.

Did Mr. White consider the job too menial for a

gentleman? What sore point had she unwittingly

touched?

Miss Charlotte covered the uncomfortable pause

with a natural gesture. “Sit down, Francis. You’ll

have a cup of tea?” She took the cup and saucer the

maid brought and poured tea for her brother, adding

with more courtesy than warmth, “It’s nice to have

you drop in.”

As Mr. White took the tea Connie again noticed,

as she had noticed on her first night at school, that

72

he had the slender hands of an aristocrat. Then it had

surprised her, but now she recognized the similarity

to Miss Charlotte’s hands. As her grandmother had

often said, “Breeding will tell.”

Yet it was curious to note that Mr. White held the

china teacup awkwardly, as though he had not

often—or perhaps not recently—been included in a

party such as this. He seemed a little uncomfortable

in the presence of the girls, and Connie felt that he

must be in the house for a reason; otherwise he

would have made his excuses and left.

She did her best to be courteous. “It must be a big

job to run such an establishment in winter weather

like this,” she said chattily while Kit and Miss

Charlotte were talking together for a moment. “How

many furnaces are there at the school?”

“Three, besides the ceramic kiln,” said Mr. White

shortly, and turned away.

Now I’ve put my foot in it again! Connie chided

herself. Why don’t I stay off the subject? But then,

with a man who was practically a stranger, what

could she find to talk about?

“Kit and I went out to the hospital to see Eric

Payson yesterday,” she said hopefully. “It certainly

is lucky that he has only a simple fracture. That

could have been a really nasty accident.”

Mr. White’s reply was intercepted by Miss

Charlotte who said, “It seems to me, Francis, that a

73

broken grating like that should be marked by a red

lantern. It’s a very great accident hazard, I’m sure.”

There was a short, constrained silence; then Kit

said brightly, “It certainly was a nice party, at the

school. The incident at the beginning was too bad,

but Roby certainly pulled everybody out of the

doldrums with a great deal of finesse.”

Mr. White grunted in assent. “Roby’s quite a boy.

He’s bound to get to the bottom of this thing. He and

Mr. Jenkins.”

Connie was surprised. Roby hadn’t mentioned the

affair on their ride from the hospital yesterday. She

thought he was the sort of person who was inclined

to let bygones be bygones.

“Don’t you think it might be better,” she asked

timidly, “for everybody just to forget the whole

thing?”

That precipitated quite an argument, in which Mr.

White firmly took the stand that the culprit should

be discovered and brought to justice. Miss Charlotte

looked disturbed. “But who could have done such a

thing?” she murmured, with a slight frown. “It

seems incredible that any student—”

“It must have been a student,” her brother said.

“It was an inside job. It doesn’t look so good for

young Payson, I’d say. He’ll be hauled on the

carpet, you can bet, when he gets around again.”

“Oh, but, Francis, Eric couldn’t have—” She

74

waved one of her slender hands as though the

sentence weren’t even worth the trouble of finishing.

“Yes, he could. You might as well face it,

Charlotte. I’m not saying he did, mind. But he’s

Number One suspect, at least in Mr. Jenkins’s eyes.”

Connie wanted to jump into the conversation with

a hot protest, but she didn’t see how it would help

Eric’s case. Furthermore, Mr. White was just stating

facts as he saw them, she supposed.

“It’s a strange thing, you’ll admit, that young

Payson’s panel was the only one untouched. And the

fact that your purple cloak, that you’d loaned to the

boy, was used—”

“But the cloak was taken from Sandra’s locker a

couple of weeks before the ball!” Connie could be

still no longer.

“And who took it?” Mr. White asked, and Connie

wondered whether it was her imagination that made

his voice sound insinuating. “That’s what we don’t

know. In any event, Charlotte, I’ve brought it back

to you. It’s on a chair in the hall. No use having a

fine, fur-lined cape lying around where nobody

takes the trouble to take care of it. Might as well be

up in your closet, where it belongs.”

“Thank you, Francis.” A definite frown appeared

between Miss Charlotte’s eyes. “It was good of you

to take the trouble.” She seemed suddenly to want to

change the subject, and turned to Kit. “Will you

75

have another of Anna’s little cupcakes, dear?

They’re only bite-size.”

“Thank you. They are delicious. But I’ve been

watching the time, and I really must run. I have a

train to catch, you see.”

“Goodness, Kit! I hadn’t realized that it was

getting so late. Miss Charlotte, it has been lovely!

May I drop in sometime again, to pay a party call?”

“But of course!” Miss Charlotte smiled up into

Connie’s vivid face. “Now run right along. Don’t let

me keep you. Kit, I hope we’ll meet again.”

The twins hurried upstairs, and, nagged by the

march of time, they didn’t linger after they had put

on their wraps. As she ran lightly down to the lower

hail, Connie caught a glimpse of the purple cloak

being whisked away by Anna to a closet under the

stairs.

Somehow, though it was a lovely and dramatic

thing, the sight of the ill-fated cape made her

shudder. She had a feeling that in using it to drape

the skeleton someone had tossed a pebble into a dark

pool. In ever-widening ripples the water it had

disturbed might eventually reach some dim and

frightening shore.

76

CHAPTER 7

Something Really Evil?

So firmly did this idea grip Connie that she found

herself dreaming over the switchboard at Reid and

Renshaw’s the next morning, and in that busy

agency girls, to be popular, kept their minds on their

jobs.

When Connie connected a call for Mr. Renshaw

with one for Miss Cameron and got her lines in a

glorious snarl she came back to earth and the front

office in a hurry, and with a considerable jolt.

Connie prided herself on her efficiency. “I’m sorry,

sir” was a phrase she didn’t often have to use.

With every passing month Connie was becoming

more and more certain that advertising was the

business for her. She liked all its phases, copy, art,

production, and was even beginning to think that

someday it might be lots of fun to learn something

of the radio end of the game.

It pleased her to think that no longer was she

77

considered a routine receptionist. Her duties and

responsibilities were increasing day by day. And

both Mr. Reid and Mr. Renshaw were interested in

the fact that she was going to art school. They

thought that she had an eye for design and color, and

they told her so.

“How’s the double life going?” asked Mr. Reid

this morning, as he came through the reception room

on his way to an outside appointment.

“Fine!” Connie grinned. “I love it.”

“Doesn’t tire you out?”

“No, indeed!”

Mr. Reid shook his head and sighed. “Must be

wonderful to be young,” he muttered with pretended

annoyance, for his own dark hair showed only a

thread of gray.

Ken Cooper sauntered up to Connie’s desk as the

elevator door opened for Mr. Reid. He wagged a

finger at her in admonition. “Mustn’t flirt with the

boss.”

“I wasn’t doing anything of the sort!” Connie was

indignant.

“No?”

“No!”

“All right, but you can’t blame a guy for being

jealous, can you?” Ken stopped teasing abruptly and

said, “I’ll buy you a hamburger and a milk shake for

lunch.”

78

“Thanks, that would be lovely!” smiled Connie

promptly. “I’m stony broke until payday. Spent my

all on art materials last week.”

“They can eat up the pennies,” admitted Ken out

of personal experience. Then his expression

changed, and he looked at Connie sharply. “Say, am

I being a meal ticket? I thought I was loved for

myself alone.”

Until Connie saw the twinkle in his eyes she was

contrite. “Oh, Ken, you know—”

Ken shook his head. “Devious, like all the girls. I

thought you were different, Connie Blair.”

“I am different,” Connie replied promptly. “I’ve

got a mystery, not a man, on my mind.”

Now the young artist really looked disturbed. He

held his head and groaned. “Not again!” he wailed

in a pleading voice. “Please, not again!”

“I’ll tell you about it at lunch,” Connie promised.

“I was afraid of that.”

Connie turned back to her switchboard, which

was beginning to look insistent again. “Now, Ken,

do run along. I’m busy.”

“Sure, you’re busy!” retorted Ken, shuffling off.

“I suppose the art department just loafs.”

Connie smiled at his retreating back. She loved

his nonsense. He and his side-kick in the art

department, Dick Travis, made Reid and Renshaw

not only an interesting but an amusing place to

79

work.

The next hour and a half passed with whirlwind

speed, because the number of callers was far above

average. Connie left her switchboard and desk at last

with a sense of anticipation. It was always nice to

have a luncheon date.

A thaw had melted the remains of the Saturday

storm, but overhead, as she and Ken walked a block

across town to a little luncheon place called the

Hamburg Hearth, the sky was gray with the promise

of more snow. Ken glanced up and, making

conversation, said, “It certainly looks threatening,

doesn’t it?” Connie nodded, and could feel an

involuntary shiver trace its way up her spine.

“Threatening,” she repeated, but she wasn’t

thinking of the sky.

Ken sighed, interpreting her murmur correctly.

“Might as well tell Mr. Cooper all,” he said when

they were seated opposite each other at a postage

stamp-sized table. “What’s humming inside that

busy little brain? But before you tell me, understand

one thing. I’m not climbing to any more third-floor

windows nor am I rescuing any more damsels in

distress nor jimmying any locks. My days as crime-

buster ended with the solving of The Riddle in Red.”

Connie giggled, but she believed him. Ken really

meant what he said. “All right,” she promised, and

with a forefinger traced a cross over her heart.

80

Ken settled back, satisfied. “Okay. Shoot.”

“I think somebody’s trying to frame Eric

Payson,” she said, “and I don’t know why and I

don’t know who—or is it whom?”

“Take your choice,” offered Ken politely. “Your

grammar’s as good as mine.”

“Ken, be serious.”

“Are you talking about the prank at the ball?”

“It was more than a prank, you’ll have to admit.”

“Yes,” said Ken more soberly, “it was.”

“And you don’t think Eric would do such a

thing?”

“I can’t see why. He’s on the quiet side, but he

seems like a good enough gent.”

“Yet everything was arranged so that suspicion

would point his way. I think somebody wants to get

him into trouble, and I don’t think we’ve seen the

end of this thing yet.”

“Now, Connie—”

“There’s Roby Woodward,” Connie was

continuing. “Eric and Roby have never hit it off.

Eric boards with the Woodwards and works in

Republic Plastics. I met Mr. Gard Woodward at the

hospital yesterday and he thinks a lot of Eric. I could

tell.”

“But a man doesn’t throw over his own son for a

stranger, Connie.”

“No-o,” Connie admitted. “But if I were in

81

Roby’s shoes I’d be afraid he might.”

“I suspect Roby’s the spoiled-son-of-a-wealthy-

man type,” admitted Ken. “That little dodge of

getting me to ride to the hospital with Payson, while

he went kiting off with three pretty girls—”

Connie looked at Ken and grinned. “I rather

imagined you weren’t too pleased.” She told him,

then, in detail, about the Woodwards’ conversation

at the hospital, and about Mr. White’s insinuations

at Miss Charlotte’s house on the previous day.

“I wouldn’t take too much stock in White’s talk,”

Ken said. “He sounds to me like a ne’er-do-well

younger brother, who has taken a fancy to Roby

because Roby’s cut from the same piece of cloth.

Maybe Roby did the trick himself—he’d have had

perfect opportunity—and then slipped Uncle Francis

a few bucks to cover for him. There’s a neat theory

for you. How do you like that?”

“Not too much,” Connie said, “but I’ll put it on

file.”

She sipped her milk shake thoughtfully for a

moment, then said, “I’d like to know a little more

about Fritz Bachman.”

“Who’s he?”

“The boy in the dinner jacket. The one who

thought it was all too childish and couldn’t be

bothered to dress in costume.”

Ken grinned. “That’s descriptive. I know him

82

now. The haughtily contemptuous type.”

“He doesn’t like Eric either.”

“My, my! I’m beginning to wonder about Eric

myself!”

A shadow slid across Connie’s eyes, although she

knew Ken was teasing. She mustn’t let prejudice in

Eric’s favor destroy her sense of proportion. “Sandra

Scott was telling me that it’s nip and tuck between

Eric and Fritz as to who will get the Fairchild prize,”

she said.

“Really?” Ken’s eyebrows shot up. He was

obviously impressed. “That’s the big prize, isn’t it?”

“So I understand.” Connie nodded. “It’s the

traveling fellowship willed by the man whose house

is now our school building. They say the

competition for it is really stiff, and an unscrupulous

person might take any means—” She hesitated. “Oh,

I don’t know. I may be very unfair even to suspect

that Fritz might want to beat Eric out for the prize,

by fair means or foul.”

Ken leaned forward. “Look, Connie, why do you

worry your pretty little head? Why make a mountain

out of a molehill? If I were you, I’d just forget the

whole thing.”

“I would, Ken—honestly I would, if I could. But

I have a feeling that there’s something more to all

this than meets the eye.” Connie’s voice dropped to

a mere whisper. “I have a feeling that there’s

83

something really evil stirring in the school.”

Ken snorted and pushed back his chair with the

air of a man who has little faith in woman’s

intuition. “For Pete’s sake, Connie, snap out of it!”

he said. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

He maintained his air of affronted masculinity all

the way back to the office. Connie had to trot to

keep up with his long-legged stride, and when he

left her he said, “Next time I’m going to have lunch

with Medea. It would be more relaxing.”

“Who’s Medea?” Connie was always curious.

“The villainess of a Greek melodrama who

murders her husband and two kids,” Ken hissed.

And on that note he disappeared, tipping his hat with

a roguish grin.

The afternoon, in contrast to the morning,

dragged. The chief executives had luncheon dates

that kept them away until three o’clock and the art

and production departments were both very quiet.

Finally the art director, Mr. Canfield, emerged

from his office yawning openly. “Feels like a

morgue around here,” he said to Connie. “Where is

everybody?”

Connie smiled at him. “Out to lunch.”

“Recovering from the week end, you mean.” He

came over and leaned against the curving reception

desk. “Did young Woodward get that exhibit of

Tarabochias hung down at school?”

84

“Oh, yes! It was up in time for the costume ball

last Friday.”

Mr. Canfield’s hazel eyes grew dreamy.

“Costume ball! Gosh, that takes me back. We had a

Venetian ball once, when I was in school. I can

remember doing a backdrop for the Grand Canal.

The Vendramini Palace. It still has a romantic

sound.” Then, as though he were afraid of seeming

foolishly sentimental, he chuckled and added, “Of

course my costume was terribly original. I went as a

gondolier.”

Connie laughed with him. “Ours was a fairy tale

ball,” she said, “because of the Tarabochia exhibit,

partly. There were beautiful panels of fairy tale

scenes, only—”

“Only what?”

Because Mr. Canfield seemed interested and

more sympathetic than Ken, Connie suddenly found

herself telling him about the unexpected picture

which had greeted the eyes of the party guests on the

opening of the ballroom door. The art director,

gratifyingly, looked troubled.

“A nasty trick if I ever heard of one,” he said.

“Somebody has a perverted sense of humor down

there.” He frowned, and pulled the lobe of one ear in

a gesture Connie had often seen him use when he

was disturbed. “It’s a mighty good thing nobody

tried any funny business with the Tarabochias,” he

85

muttered.

“Oh, no one would dream of touching those!”

Connie assured him confidently. “There isn’t a

student at school who doesn’t realize how marvelous

they are!”

“And valuable,” mused Mr. Canfield. “Twenty-

five thousand on the hoof.” He paused and his eyes

narrowed shrewdly. “Might be just as well to get

them insured. With a kid down there who would pull

a lunatic prank like that—”

86

CHAPTER 8

In Eric’s Locker

While Mr. Canfield was talking to the Reid and

Renshaw insurance representative about a fine arts

floater on the Tarabochias, Connie had a call come

in from the hospital.

“Reid and Renshaw,” she said as usual into the

mouthpiece.

“May I speak to Miss Connie Blair, please.”

“This is Miss Blair.”

“Hi. This is Eric Payson.”

“Eric!” Connie cried. “What are you doing up?”

“I’m not up,” Eric replied. “This is a very modern

hospital. They have plug-in phones in the wards.”

Connie asked how he was feeling, and Eric said,

“Fine, but a little bored. I called to ask you a favor,”

he continued. “Remember, you said—”

“Of course!” Connie returned. “I told you to call

the office if there was anything at all I could do.”

“I’d sort of like to have my sketchbook,” Eric

87

said shyly. “It’s in my locker, but if it’s any

trouble—”

“It won’t be any trouble at all!” Connie said at

once, glad to be of some service. “I could drop in

with it tomorrow evening after school—that is, if it’s

allowed.”

“The night nurse is very nice,” Eric replied. “I

asked her and she said it would be all right—for just

a few minutes.” He sounded, Connie thought, full of

happy anticipation. It was flattering that he should

seem not only anxious to see his sketchbook but also

to see her.

“But where’s your locker key, Eric?” she asked.

“Do you have it with you?”

“No, it’s at the Woodwards’. I thought I’d ask

Roby to bring it along tonight.”

“Fine. That makes it easy. Want any pencils or

crayons?”

“Yes, a few.” Eric described his needs. He

wanted to do the rough drawings for a design project

that was due in one of his classes. “It’s awfully nice

of you, Connie,” he ended. “I hate to ask Roby,

because—” His voice trailed off.

“I understand,” Connie said with an effort not to

seem to understand too much. “And it isn’t nice of

me at all. I practically put you in the hospital. It’s

certainly up to me to see that you’re entertained

while you’re there.”

88

From work that evening Connie went directly to a

Walnut Street cafeteria for dinner. It was a place the

art students frequented, and on nights when Aunt

Bet planned to be out Connie was falling into the

habit of eating there, because usually she found

someone with whom she could sit and chat.

This evening there was a full table of students, all

chattering like magpies about the ball, but there

obviously wasn’t room to squeeze in another chair,

so Connie by-passed them and took her tray to an

empty table some distance away.

She was just shifting her dishes from the tray to

the table when a voice at her shoulder startled her.

“Is the Queen engaged?”

Connie didn’t have to turn to know that it was

Fritz Bachman speaking. It wasn’t what he said; it

was the way he said the words. Another person

might have made of the question a natural,

lighthearted joke, remembering Connie’s party

costume. But Fritz’s tone was insolent, almost

scornful. He was so consciously superior, so anxious

to belittle everyone and everything which did not

meet his strict approval.

“Hello, Fritz.”

Connie’s tone was not exactly warm. With her

mind she felt that she should encourage him,

because only this noon she had told Ken she’d like

to know more about him, but her entire nature

89

rebelled from that tone of voice.

Fritz balanced his tray on the table, unrebuked.

“Am I invited to sit down?”

“If you like.”

“I do like.” Fritz moved a frugal meal from tray

to table. He looked at Connie’s supper. “You’ll be

fat long before you’re forty if you keep on eating

like that,” he offered with a raised eyebrow.

“Do you really think so?”

Connie refused to be prodded into an offended

retort. She suspected that Fritz was defending his

position, that he ate lightly not because he wanted to

watch his waistline but because he had exceedingly

little money to spend.

“Instead of saying mean things to each other, let’s

say nice things,” she suggested with a laugh. “It

might be fun, for a change.”

“All right,” Fritz said glumly, “you begin.”

“I think,” said Connie thoughtfully, “that if I

could draw as well as you do I’d be perfectly happy.

I think, Fritz, that you’re going to be a great success

someday.”

As she said the words, she meant them. She really

believed that Fritz would go far in the world of

commercial art. He had a ruthless determination

about him, a brash, brilliant ability that could carry a

man to the top.

“You do?” With a rising inflection Fritz admitted

90

that Connie had touched his weak point, vanity.

“You really do? Because what I want to do more

than anything else is to be a big-name advertising

artist. None of this art-for-art’s-sake stuff for me. I

want to make a pile of dough and then I want to

make some more.”

“You will,” said Connie shrewdly, but she

shuddered involuntarily. Such crass commercialism

sickened her.

Fritz leaned forward across the table, and it was

as though her praise had suddenly unleashed a pent-

up desire for self-revelation. “I’ve never had a red

cent,” he said, “and neither has my pop. Have you

ever been in the mining towns of West Virginia? Do

you know what it’s like there?”

Connie shook her head silently.

“There’s a place called Cotter’s Run,” Fritz said,

his eyes and his voice hard. “It’s not many miles

from a university town but darned few kids who

grow up there ever get to college.” He bit savagely

into a roll, paused a minute, then went on.

“I was born in a company house, gray and

weather-beaten, with a sagging front porch just like

a dozen others that marched up the same hillside.

Mom papered the walls with newspaper so the coal

dust wouldn’t sift through.” Fritz laughed grimly. “It

was swell.”

Connie could see the picture, and it wasn’t a

91

pretty one.

“I had four brothers and a sister. Two of the boys

got typhoid and died within a week of each other.

You read about things like it in the newspapers,

under headings like, ‘Coal Miners Out on Strike.’

Sure, because their families are undernourished, and

they can’t afford to pay the prices at the company

store. Of course, with the strike on, they really begin

to starve. Then there’s an epidemic—” Fritz stopped

suddenly and passed a hand over his eyes, which

had grown dull with pain. “Why am I telling you

this?”

Connie said, just above a whisper, “I don’t

know—but go on, if it helps.” For the first time she

was seeing tragedy, not arrogance, in the eyes of the

young man opposite her. It was the sort of tragedy

that can dwarf and cripple a boy, that can distort his

aims and his ambitions. She was afraid it had done

this to Fritz.

But the desire to unburden himself had apparently

passed. He shrugged, as though he wanted to shrug

off the memory of squalor. “So I got out of it,” he

said. “It doesn’t matter how. And I’m staying out,

forever.” He pounded the table fiercely. “Forever,

understand? And there’s only one way to do that.

Keep fighting for one Fritz Bachman. Keep shoving.

Keep on making certain that I’m the one—I’m the

one—that gets ahead.”

92

Connie shrank back. The eyes she searched were

dull no longer; they were fanatical, thirsty for

power. They made her afraid.

Fritz seemed to recognize the emotion, for a grin

quirked the corner of his mouth. “Skip it,” he said.

“I’m not trying to scare you. Only sometimes when I

meet a girl like you, who’s always had it soft, and

you fall for a sucker like Payson—the Academy-

exhibit type—I see red.”

“Why do you . . . dislike Eric?” Connie asked.

She had been going to use the word “despise”

because she felt that it was closer to the truth, but

she didn’t want to put Fritz on guard.

The young man opposite her stretched and leaned

back, relaxed as a panther is relaxed, the moment

before he readies himself for a spring. “For one

thing, I suppose I’m jealous,” he admitted. “He’s

picked himself a nice spot under old man

Woodward’s wing. But besides that, I think he’s too

stupid to take advantage of his opportunity. The way

he’s going, he’ll never be a success. Why, he could

pick Republic Plastics right out from under Roby

Woodward’s nose.”

“Maybe,” suggested Connie, “you and Eric mean

different things by ‘success.’ “

“There’s only one way to spell that word,” Fritz

retorted with certainty, “and that’s mine.”

Connie decided abruptly that she’d had enough.

93

She glanced at her watch, pushed back her chair and

stood up. “I’ve got to get to school early,” she

murmured, “because I have an errand to do.” She

was thinking of Eric’s sketchbook, but she didn’t

mention this to Fritz. And she turned and hurried

across the room before he could offer to accompany

her, anxious to be alone, anxious to try to unravel

the tangle of her thoughts.

Outside, it had not yet started to snow, but wind

whipped the city dirt up from the sidewalks and

threw it in Connie’s eyes. This was one of the rare

times when she did not like Philadelphia, when she

would have traded it gladly for Meadowbrook,

where the air was clean and sweet and where the

wind did no more damage than to whip a girl’s skirts

around her knees.

But as she walked along, head tucked down and

eyes narrowed against the swirling dust, Connie

came to a sorrowful conclusion. Fritz could have

done it. Fritz could have played that nasty trick and

be willing to let Eric take the blame. Connie didn’t

know how he could have done it, but she felt

morally certain that he could have held such malice

in his heart.

As she turned the corner by the art school,

Connie’s thoughts were interrupted by a cinder

which became lodged, irretrievably, in her eye. It

was a large cinder, and it cut like a miniature saw

94

into the pupil. By the time she gained the entrance

hall of the school she was wiping away a flow of

sympathetic tears.

“Why, Miss Blair, what’s the matter?”

Superintendent White, catching sight of her from the

door of his office, showed polite concern.

“I’m not crying.” Connie managed a smile. “I’ve

just got a lump of Philadelphia coal in my eye.”

“Try shutting your eyes and blowing your nose.

Sometimes that helps.”

Connie followed directions, with great vigor but

no success. “It won’t budge.”

Mr. White looked around a little helplessly, as

though he were wishing somebody would appear to

take this weeping girl off his hands. But the hall was

empty and silent, so he said finally, “Come on in my

office. I’ll see if I can see anything.”

He sat Connie down in his desk chair and turned

the light so that it shone full in her face. Then he

opened a drawer and took out a clean linen

handkerchief. “Now let me see—”

It wasn’t the work of a moment, nor was Mr.

White’s the technique of a professional, but he

finally stepped back, relieved and triumphant, and

displayed, on the twisted tip of the handkerchief, a

minute speck of black. “There!”

Connie thanked him profusely, and blew her nose

again. She gathered up her bag and gloves from the

95

desk, which was as neat as a pin, and was just

starting across the hall when Roby Woodward came

running down the broad stairs that led to the second

floor, where most of the classrooms and locker

rooms were situated.

“Roby, you’re just the person I want to see!”

Connie cried. “Eric said you’d bring me his locker

key.”

Roby snapped his fingers, and for a fraction of a

second he looked as guilty as a misbehaving pup.

“Doggone it! I forgot.” Then he turned contrite. “I’ll

remember it tomorrow, sure.”

Connie shook her head and made a clicking

sound with her tongue. “Cross your heart and hope

to die?”

Roby grinned down at her, his dark eyes

twinkling, knowing that few girls could resist him.

“Cross my heart.”

So Connie had to be satisfied with that. She

called the hospital in the morning and explained the

situation to Eric, who took the delay philosophically

enough. She didn’t tell Eric that Mr. Jenkins was

really rampant concerning the incident of the ball,

and determined to discover and punish the culprit.

While Eric was in the hospital Connie knew he was

safe, but as soon as he returned to school, he was

bound to be one of the students who would be called

to the dean’s office and questioned concerning the

96

affair of Friday night.

The next evening Roby sauntered into the supply

room while Connie was buying charcoal and

dangled Eric’s locker key pridefully before her eyes.

“Never break a promise to a pretty girl,” he said

gaily.

“Better late than never, you mean,” Connie said

with a smile that should have put him in his place

but didn’t.

She still had ten minutes before the beginning of

her class, so she went at once to Eric’s locker for his

materials. Fritz Bachman, who used the neighboring

locker, was just taking off his coat.

“Looked for you tonight,” he said in a rare

admission that human companionship meant

anything to him. “Where were you?”

“Usually I eat at home,” Connie said briefly.

“Where’s that?”

“At my Aunt Bet’s apartment.” She thought his

prying was rude, but now that she knew something

of the boy’s background, she was loath to hurt his

feelings. As she spoke, she was turning the key

unsuccessfully in the lock. “These things always

stick,” she murmured as she worked

“Here. Maybe I can help.”

Fritz knelt and used the key more adeptly. In a

few seconds he was able to pull the door open. Over

his shoulder Connie saw, on the second shelf of

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Eric’s locker, a large jar of show-card color, nearly

empty. The color positively screamed at Connie.

Purple! Almost intuitively, she wanted to shut the

locker and turn the key again, but Fritz was picking

it up and turning it in his hand with a malicious grin.

“Well, well! What have we here?”

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CHAPTER 9

X Marks a Pattern

As she stood looking down at Fritz, crouched before

Eric’s locker with the jar of paint in his hand,

Connie’s thoughts flashed back to the evening she

had met Eric in the art supply store on Walnut

Street, when he had been buying just such a jar.

Purple and vermilion. She could see the colors

still, vibrant in the fading light, as the double-size

jars had stood together on the counter. Where was

the vermilion now? She glanced again inside the

locker, but all the other jars were small. She bit her

lip and frowned.

Only last evening Mr. Jenkins had posted a notice

on the bulletin board: “Any student discovering

circumstantial evidence which might lead to the

apprehension of the student who played the

unfortunate prank on the night of the ball is morally

bound to report such evidence to the dean’s office.”

Connie could have repeated the admonition word for

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word.

Yet, had she been alone, her instinctive reaction

would have been to shut the locker and get away

from the spot until she could think—until she could

decide just how much this meant.

One thing was apparent to her quick mind. The

amount of color Eric must have used to paint the

purple cloak on his Rapunzel would be far short of

the amount of color emptied from this jar. She could

see, with alarming clarity, the great purple crosses

on the fairy tale panels, crosses daubed on with a

house-painter’s brush, vandalistic and odious.

“I think,” came Fritz Bachman’s jeering voice,

cutting into her reflections, “that Mr. Jenkins will be

very much interested in this.”

“Give it to me!” Connie spoke impulsively,

stretching out her hand for the bottle.

But Fritz pulled his hand back. “Don’t tell me

you’d like to play accessory? Or that you’d risk

being found guilty of suppressing evidence?”

Connie dropped her eyes.

“It is our bounden duty to refer this to a higher

court.” One finger pointed heavenward, but Fritz

sounded far from high-minded. He sounded almost

gleeful, Connie thought.

“But it’s fantastic, utterly fantastic to think—”

Fritz waited. “Yes?”

Connie was ready to clutch at a straw. “Where’s

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the paintbrush that was used?” She peered again into

the locker. “If Eric Payson had had anything to do

with it, the paintbrush would be here!” She felt,

momentarily, as though she had stopped the hole in

the dike with her little finger.

But Fritz laughed shortly, and said in his

irritating, low-pitched voice, “Eric’s stupid, I admit,

but that stupid? I doubt it.”

“Somebody’s been tampering with the lockers,”

Connie cried as a feeble last resort. “Somebody has

a master key. Look, Fritz, don’t you see? The purple

cloak disappeared from Sandra’s locker, didn’t it?

And now this!”

Suddenly Connie clapped a hand over her mouth.

She was remembering something. She was seeing

Roby Woodward on the stairs, last night, snapping

his fingers and telling her he’d forgotten Eric’s key.

Suppose—suppose he hadn’t forgotten it?

“What now, my little pigeon?” came Fritz’s

voice.

Losing her temper, Connie stamped her foot.

“Oh, Fritz, you’re impossible! Stop talking like a

character in a dime novel. If you insist on taking

this—this paint—to Mr. Jenkins, I’m going with

you. I’m not going to wait outside while your

insinuations get Eric into real trouble.”

“Real trouble?” Fritz Bachman’s lip was curled

contemptuously. “What do you call this?”

101

Fortunately, Connie thought, Mr. Jenkins greeted

their find without histrionics. He seemed more

perturbed than irate. “I’ll ask you not to mention this

to the other students,” he said soberly. “It would be

unwise to sully a reputation before the proof is

secure.”

Connie was thankful to him, and she was glad

that Fritz seemed a little disappointed at the outcome

of the interview. But she was profoundly disturbed.

She went into her classroom without her usual high

sense of anticipation, and she found, when she had

set up her drawing board and sharpened her

charcoal, that her hand was shaking. Whether from

nervousness or from alarm, her hand was shaking so

badly that she could hardly draw.

Later, after class, she went to Eric’s locker again

and got out his sketchbook and the other materials

he had requested. When she took the things to him

the next night she couldn’t bear to tell him of Fritz’s

discovery and consequent action. She felt

treacherous, because she believed so firmly that he

was innocent. And yet—?

“What’s happening at school?” Eric asked her.

“Nothing much. I hear that during anatomy class

Adam fell over and broke a rib. He’s the most

unlucky skeleton I ever saw.”

Eric chuckled. “So now I suppose they’ll send

him back to the factory and even him up on both

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sides?”

“I doubt it—until summer vacation anyway. He’s

needed too badly around there.”

“Imagine ending up as a badly needed skeleton!”

Eric chuckled again.

Then he told Connie, with satisfaction, that he

was to be released from the hospital by the week

end. “Wait until you see me rocking into school on

my walking cast!” he bragged. “I’m going back to

work next Monday, if I can possibly make it, and I’ll

try to get back to school the same night.”

“Don’t rush things, Eric,” Connie warned, and a

chill swept over her at the thought that he might

return before he was cleared of the suspicion which

now hung over his name. She didn’t want to see Eric

hurt. She wanted to protect him from people who

were shrewd and ruthless like Fritz Bachman, and

from people who were selfish and callow like Roby.

She thought of Miss Charlotte’s faith in him, and

she wanted to see it justified. He looked so very

vulnerable, lying there in bed.

“Sorry, miss, but I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to

leave now. Visitors are really not allowed after

hours,, you know.” The nurse’s starched voice

reached Connie and she murmured, “Good-bye,

Eric,” and turned reluctantly away.

The rest of the week passed quietly—too quietly,

Connie thought. Things were rather slow at the

103

agency. Mr. Renshaw called it a midwinter slump.

“All the big boys are in Florida or off on some

island cruise,” he grumbled one day to Miss

Cameron in Connie’s hearing. “And we sit around

twiddling our fingers until they decide they’ve

soaked up enough sun.”

There was little enough sun in Philadelphia these

days. The streets were soggy with snow and slush

and the temperature held not the faintest hope of

spring. The world seemed perpetually gray, and

matched Connie’s spirits precisely. The only thing

that ever made her despondent was inaction, and

inaction was something she was having a lot of.

Ungrammatically but descriptively, that was the

way she expressed it to herself. Though she kept her

eyes and ears open, no hint of fresh evidence that

might point to someone other than Eric reached her

ears. If only the paintbrush would turn up—if only

Eric were more popular with the people who

counted—

“Oh, the whole thing’s so childish!” Connie

grumbled to herself.

Even the prank itself had been childish—a silly,

nasty, practical joke that a vicious ten-year-old

might have pulled. But it seemed incredible to

Connie that an art school student in his late teens or

early twenties could have such a perverted sense of

humor. Of all the group Connie knew, only Sandra

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Scott seemed to have been even vaguely amused by

the joke.

Sandra? Connie stopped and repeated the name to

herself, punctuating her thought with a question

mark. Sandra, she had discovered to her dismay, was

really a rather silly girl, for all her Dresden china

prettiness. She seemed absorbed by clothes and boys

and petty jealousies, and the more serious art

students found her shallow and untalented. They

never discussed class problems with her, and she

spent as little time as possible on her assignments,

contrary to the general rule.

Sandra, Connie knew, had been more than

annoyed at the time Roby Woodward had spent with

the “new girl,” as she frequently called her. Whether

she suspected that Roby had asked Connie to the

ball first was impossible to guess. But if Sandra ever

dreamed that she were playing second fiddle—!

Connie could imagine her indignation, her fury, her

determination to get even. Might she have gone so

far as to want to spoil the party of which Roby was

chairman? Connie cocked her head to one side and

frowned.

She frowned because her intelligence said, “No.”

Why, then, would Eric’s panel alone have remained

untouched? This was such an unsatisfactory puzzle.

Some of the pieces were missing and others just

didn’t fit at all.

105

Along with several others of her classmates,

Connie worked out at the Philadelphia Zoo over the

week end, doing quick pencil sketches of various

animals. The monkey house was smelly and the

elephant house was cold, but the tropical birds

needed warmth and sunshine, and it was with them

she spent most of her time, shifting, on Sunday,

from pencil to colored crayon, just for fun.

On Monday night, when Connie brought the

drawings to her instructor, two were accepted for the

weekly “gallery” of student work, and Connie felt as

though she were treading on air, she was so

encouraged by the praise.

Yet Eric and his problems did not fade from her

mind. She loitered in the big lower hall after class,

hoping to meet him, and was rewarded by seeing

him come from Mr. Jenkins’s office and start to

hobble across the hall to the stairs.

Connie started toward him, but when she saw his

white face and set lips she hesitated. She knew only

too well what his session with the dean had brought

forth.

Slowly she turned away, pretending to gaze with

interest at one of the Tarabochia canvases, which

were still on exhibit in the great square hall. She

wished she could help him. She wished she could

comfort him. But Connie felt, rightly, that this was

something that Eric had better work out for himself.

106

Roby Woodward, thumbtacking a notice to the

bulletin board in the alcove, interrupted Connie’s

contemplation. “Gaze long and lovingly,” he

advised. “I’m just posting word that they’re coming

down the end of the week.”

“Oh, are they?” Connie said. “I’ll miss them.”

Roby nodded. “Very handsome. But the Exhibit

Committee’s not going to find them much fun to

pack.”

The Exhibit Committee, as Connie knew,

consisted of Beth Chandler, Roby, Eric and Fritz.

Roby, as usual, was the leading light, chosen more

for his executive ability than for his art appreciation.

The others were the brains of the team. Beth was a

thin, unprepossessing girl with magnificent dark

eyes and a fine Italian sense of color values. She and

Eric, Connie suspected, probably did most of the

actual work.

“They are rather bulky,” Connie agreed. But her

mind wasn’t on this desultory conversation. Her

thoughts were with Eric, dumfounded by the

suspicion cast upon him. She wondered if Mr.

Jenkins had told him the part she had played in

bringing to light the accusatory jar of paint.

How could she ever explain—if this were the

case? How could she make him understand that she

was his friend, that she believed in him?

“Waiting for someone?” Roby asked.

107

“No.” Connie turned away and walked slowly out

of the door and homeward in the darkness. She’d try

to see Eric tomorrow night.

But whether from intent or from accident, Eric

avoided Connie for the rest of the week. She made

every effort to encounter him, even loitering in the

costume room during the “long rest” at midevening,

knowing that he often came there to browse around.

One night, finding herself completely alone there,

she yielded to the impulse to try on a pair of wooden

shoes which had caught her eye, and was parading

back and forth in front of the wall mirror when a

chuckle behind her made her turn. Roby Woodward

was leaning against the doorjamb laughing at her,

and suddenly, his dark eyes twinkling, he stooped

and caught up the slippers she had negligently

kicked off.

“Let’s see how fast you can run in those things!”

he teased, and was gone before she could do more

than cry his name.

Connie clip-clopped to the door with as much

haste as possible, but he had completely

disappeared. “Roby Woodward!” she called after

him. “Come back here!”

But he didn’t return, and Connie eventually had

to shuffle along in the absurd wooden shoes in

search of him. She found him in the hall at the top of

one of Mr. White’s stepladders, chuckling to himself

108

and tying her slippers to a branch of the big

chandelier.

“Practical jokes aren’t funny!” she told him

sternly. “You should have outgrown that sort of kid

stuff.”

Practical jokes!

Connie, who had been half amused, caught her

breath suddenly. Could Roby conceivably have

sabotaged his own party, just to discredit Eric?

“No,” she murmured to herself when she finally had

retrieved her slippers and returned to replace the

wooden shoes on the storeroom shelf. “No, no, no.”

Friday came and went, as did Saturday, and still

Connie hadn’t seen Eric to talk to. She had caught a

fleeting glimpse of him on his way through the

studio door, but that was all. It was on Sunday, as

she walked home from church with her Aunt Bet,

that Connie next saw him, on the street. He had just

alighted from an eastbound trolley car and was

walking jerkily across Spruce Street when Connie

hailed him.

“Eric! Eric Payson!”

But another trolley lunged between Connie and

her quarry, drowning her voice, and Eric, apparently

preoccupied, was half a block away when she caught

sight of him again. “He must be going to the

school,” murmured Connie, noting his direction.

“On a Sunday . . . that’s odd.”

109

She had reason to remember this remark she had

made to her aunt. She had reason to wish she had

never seen Eric that Sunday morning. The

recollection of his square-shouldered figure, moving

with a grotesque, shuffling motion down the

Philadelphia street, was to be something she could

not wipe from her mind. Yet she would have done

so—as she would have cleaned a slate—had that

been possible. For the next day, at the agency, came

the climax of the strange drama in which Connie,

until now, had been playing an extra’s part.

Monday started out as a perfectly ordinary day.

Connie appeared at her desk on time, wearing a new

copper-colored flannel dress that made her hair

shine like spun gold.

There was the usual slow awakening of the office

after the week end, the usual straggling late-comers

among the executives, the usual delivery boys

bearing drawings finished for Monday delivery, the

accustomed gush of mail.

About eleven o’clock a trucking company arrived

with the bulky Tarabochia canvases, returned from

the School of Design, and the driver was instructed

to stack them against the wall of Mr. Canfield’s

office. Connie signed the slip for their delivery,

since Mr. Canfield was out, and forgot all about the

incident until after lunch.

Then she spoke to the art director on his way past

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her desk. “The Tarabochias are back. I signed for

them.”

“Oh, thanks,” mumbled Mr. Canfield. “I’ve got to

unpack them, because General Recording wants

Number Three back for a—”

The closing of his office door shut off the rest of

the sentence, but two minutes later a muffled cry of

horror reached Connie’s ears.

A second later Mr. Canfield’s door was flung

open, and the art director stood against the light

from the windows, gesticulating wildly.

“Connie!” he cried in a choked voice. “Come

here! Look!”

Connie, later, could not remember crossing the

floor to stand by Mr. Canfield in his office doorway,

but she did remember that in a single second her

hands turned to ice. Everything in his call presaged

disaster, yet Connie was still unprepared for the

sight which greeted her stunned eyes.

Against the wall of the office, partially

unwrapped, leaned two of the great, glowing

Tarabochia canvases, slashed in an X pattern, from

corner to corner, by a criminal’s knife.

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CHAPTER 10

“The Criminal Will Be Found!”

For a long moment Connie was so aghast that she

was speechless. Involuntarily her hand rose to cover

her mouth. Then, with a small, hurt cry she ran

forward to drop on her knees in front of the nearer

painting, and she touched the torn edges of the

canvas with infinite compassion and tenderness, as

though she wanted to bind up the wound.

She had felt no worse when, years ago, she had

knelt beside the mutilated body of a beloved family

pet. The paintings were so alive, so vibrant and

warm, that their mutilation was especially

despicable. Connie thought of the days and weeks

and months of labor that had gone into their making,

the long years of training that had educated the mind

to conceive them, the genius that no yardstick could

measure, which was their very soul.

Yet none of this could she put into words. “Oh,

Mr. Canfield!” Inadequately, this was all she could

112

say.

“I—I can’t believe it.” The art director was as

shocked as Connie. He kept staring at the great

gashes as though they must certainly melt together

and mend, setting him free from this nightmare

illusion that the paintings were irretrievably

destroyed.

Connie looked from one to the other of the

unwrapped canvases, identically damaged without

hope of salvation. In a whisper she wondered, “Are

they all like this?”

“We’ll soon see.”

Angry, now, Mr. Canfield tore at the wrappings

on the other paintings, cutting at the cord which

bound them, tearing down the heavy paper that hid

the vandal’s work.

He stood back. “All.”

Then he turned to Connie and asked the very

question that was already ringing in her ears with a

siren’s scream. “Who could have done such a

thing?”

Mutely, Connie shook her head. Her eyes were

full of something more than dismay; they were dark

with sorrow. This, she knew in a flash of

understanding, was what she had feared. Not this act

exactly, but something equally dreadful, something

that would relegate the incident of the ball to the

classification of child’s play. A really criminal act!

113

For it was a crime! The word was on the lips of

every advertising agency employee within an hour.

People tiptoed in and out of Mr. Canfield’s office as

to a funeral, and the eyes of everyone who viewed

the destruction were shocked and sad.

Connie, tied to the switchboard, put through calls

to the art school and to the insurance people. Mr.

Jenkins arrived, with white face and set lips, and

was closeted with Mr. Reid, Mr. Renshaw and Mr.

Canfield for the rest of the afternoon. Insurance

representatives joined the group, and the atmosphere

of the office was grim indeed.

Everyone in the agency was cautioned not to

touch the paintings. Fingerprint tests would be made

by the insurance company investigators. Connie

calculated rapidly. Twenty-five thousand dollars

worth of insurance was probably involved. But the

money seemed less important to Connie, somehow,

than the fact that something which, just yesterday,

had been vibrantly alive, was dead.

Yesterday.

Without willing it, without even wishing it,

Connie’s thoughts flashed back to Eric Payson. If he

had, indeed, been on his way to school, might he

not, in some way, become involved?

Suddenly Connie felt that she had to see Eric. She

had to talk to him before he reached school tonight.

She had to find out for herself, before Mr. Jenkins or

114

Mr. Canfield or the insurance company’s detectives

could reach him, what he had been doing, where he

had been going yesterday morning when she had

seen him on the street.

She spoke into her switchboard operator’s

mouthpiece in a low voice.

“Pennypacker 1483.”

“Republic Plastics,” came the routine response.

“I’d like to speak to Mr. Payson. Can you connect

me with the shop?”

“Factory employees are only allowed emergency

calls,” said the operator on the other end.

Connie’s voice was pitched just above a whisper.

“This is an emergency,” she said.

The minutes were like hours until she heard

Eric’s “Hello.”

“Eric! This is Connie Blair. I’ve got to see you.

It’s important. Can you eat supper with me

somewhere?”

At another time Connie might have wondered

whether this urgency sounded forward, but this

afternoon she was beyond caring. She was beyond

caring, too, that Eric’s voice was puzzled and

uncertain. He named the cafeteria where the school

crowd usually ate, but Connie said, “No, not there!”

“Where, then?”

Frantically, Connie searched her mind for a

hidden place, and finally remembered a little oyster

115

house tucked into an alley behind one of the Market

Street motion-picture theaters. She gave Eric the

name and the address. “Don’t fail me!” she warned.

“You sound as though something was wrong.”

Connie admitted, “Something is.”

Then, because she could see Mr. Reid’s door

opening at the end of the corridor, she said a hasty

goodbye.

Mr. Jenkins was so perturbed when he came

through the reception room on his way out that he

didn’t recognize Connie as one of the art school

students, and this, Connie felt, was just as well. She

didn’t want to be associated any more closely with

the Tarabochia paintings than she already was.

The time from four until five rarely dragged at

Reid and Renshaw’s, as it did in many other offices,

but this afternoon Connie found herself watching the

clock. She had arranged to meet Eric at five-thirty,

and she hurried to the little oyster house, then paced

up and down outside the door for fifteen minutes,

until Eric limped up.

Inside, they both ordered oyster stews and a

salad. Then Connie said abruptly, “I called to you on

the street yesterday, Eric, but you didn’t hear me.

Where were you going?”

For a fraction of a second Eric hesitated. “I was

going to the school,” he said.

Connie leaned forward. She looked at the boy

116

directly, her brown eyes intense. “Can you tell me

why?”

“There—there was something I had to do,” he

replied lamely, without meeting his companion’s

eyes. “Some work I had to make up.”

At best, Connie felt that this was only a half truth.

It wasn’t like Eric—as she understood him—to be

evasive. There was a hard, dry lump in her throat.

Suddenly she knew that she had been wrong in

following the impulse which had led her to call him.

She mustn’t tell him about the destruction of the

Tarabochias. Much as she liked him, she must play

fair with the rest of the students at the School of

Design. Eric Payson must sink or swim on his own.

Yet the very manner in which she pulled her hand

back from the table to her lap told the boy she was

disappointed in him. He looked up at her now, his

expression truculent.

“I was looking for something,” he muttered, as

though Connie had forced him to this admission

against his will.

“Looking—?”

“For a paintbrush, if you must know. For an

ordinary, two-inch paintbrush from a hardware store

or dime store that was used to cross up the panels on

the night of the ball.” Eric waited while the waitress

put a bowl of steaming stew in front of him.

Then, before he could go on, Connie told him

117

something she had been holding back. “I know

about the paint,” she said softly. “Fritz was there

while I was getting your sketchbook. I went along

with him to Mr. Jenkins. There was nothing else I

could do.”

Hurt dismay clouded Eric’s eyes. “You?”

Connie nodded. “I’m sorry, Eric. I truly am!

Can’t you see the position into which I was put?”

Eric looked as though he were trying to

understand. He attacked his soup in silence,

thinking.

“I’ve been trying to see you, but you’ve been

avoiding me.”

“I’ve been avoiding everybody,” Eric confessed.

“I haven’t felt too good about being under suspicion

for a job like that.”

“But surely you can prove that you had nothing to

do with it?” Connie hoped she sounded more

confident than she felt.

“I hope so,” Eric said with a rueful grin. “In the

first place, the paint was a plant. It wasn’t my paint

at all. I’d used up the whole jar trying to get just the

right shade for the purple cloak. It was a purple with

a lot of vermilion in it, remember?”

“I remember.”

“The paint you found was pure spectrum

purple—just as it comes from the store.”

Connie’s eyes brightened. “And?”

118

“The paint with which the panels were daubed

was pure spectrum purple too.”

Connie let out her breath in a sigh of relief.

“You’ve told Mr. Jenkins this?”

“Not yet,” Eric said. “I wanted to take a look for

that paintbrush. Not that I think there’s much hope

that whoever did the job would leave it lying

around.”

“Oh,” cried Connie impulsively, “I wish you’d

told him before—before tonight!”

Eric, grinding two Trenton crackers together

between his palms, looked up. “What’s so important

about tonight?”

But Connie stuck to her recent decision. “I can’t

tell you,” she murmured. “I asked you to come here

to tell you, and then I knew I couldn’t. It wouldn’t

be fair.”

Eric, unlike most of the boys she knew, didn’t

press her. Connie finished her supper and they

walked together, slowly, to the school. Eric,

characteristically, didn’t bother to make small talk,

and Connie trudged along in brooding silence, far

from her usual cheerful self.

At the gate she paused and turned to the young

man at her side. “Eric, just remember this. If there’s

anything I can do to help—” Then, knowing that he

must think her overdramatic, she attempted a laugh.

“I mean, I’d like you to feel that I’m your friend.”

119

Eric looked down into Connie’s face, highlighted

by the street lamp on the corner. Very earnestly,

with real feeling, he said, “I do.”

Inside the building, with quick perception,

Connie sensed a subtle change. Two men in dark

suits talked together under the stairs and darted

glances at each student who entered the big front

door. Mr. White bustled around looking busy and

sober and self-righteous, and the door to Mr.

Jenkins’s office, which usually stood ajar, was

closed.

The tension in the atmosphere communicated

itself to the student group, and the talk and laughter

of the classroom seemed to Connie unusually

nervous and high-pitched. Then, when the call came

through from the dean’s office for a general

assembly, a hush settled over the room.

Mr. Jenkins’s face was strained and anxious when

he addressed them, but his voice was stern.

In clipped, precise accents he laid the bones of

the bleak story before the young artists, and a

whisper of shocked dismay swept the group. Connie

sat with her hands clenched in her lap, twisted

slightly in her chair so that she could see Eric

Payson’s face. And what she saw there gave her

comfort and purpose, because he looked as

genuinely horrified as she had felt when she had

viewed the destruction in Mr. Canfield’s office that

120

afternoon.

“The criminal will be found and punished,” Mr.

Jenkins said, “but the blot on this school’s good

name can never be erased.”

A pin could have been heard to drop as he paused

for a long moment, then continued, “To me the

individual who destroys a thing of beauty deserves

to suffer more bitterly than an embezzler or a thief.

This crime cannot be measured in terms of dollars

and cents. It has to do with the soul.”

Connie felt as though she had been holding her

breath for a long time. Her glance flickered from

Eric’s face to Roby Woodward’s. Roby was

frowning, his brows drawn together and his forehead

puckered into knobby bumps.

“Insurance company detectives will call some of

you in for questioning,” the dean was saying. “I

hope, as you value your own innocence, that you

will help them to discover the truth.”

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CHAPTER 11

Miss Charlotte’s Will

“Constance Blair.”

Connie started at the sound of her own name, and

jumped up from the straight chair on which she had

been seated outside Mr. Jenkins’s office.

“Will you come in, please?”

The detective stood in the doorway, his back

against the jamb, to let her pass, and Connie nodded

to him with a slight inclination of her head. At the

dean’s desk sat the second of the two dark-suited

men whom she had remarked in the hallway of the

school earlier that evening. He looked up at her and

said, “Sit there.”

Then, with professional absorption, he studied

some notes on a sheet of paper before him. “You

work for Reid and Renshaw, Miss Blair?” he asked

without looking up.

“Yes.”

“And you started art school at the beginning of

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the term?”

“Yes.”

“How well do you know Eric Payson?”

The question startled her, as did the sharp eyes of

the man, raised suddenly.

“Quite well. I mean, as well as any other student

at school, or better. I—I came to a party with him—

—”

“Have you any reason to believe that there is a

connection between the destruction of the

Tarabochia paintings and the marking up of the

panels at the Fairy Tale Ball?”

This thin, black-eyed man had put his finger on

the question that had been haunting her ever since

afternoon. “No real reason,” she murmured

hesitantly, “except—”

“Except what?”

“In each case the pattern is the same.” Her

forefinger traced a letter on the desk.

The detective nodded. “A giant X.” Then he shot

another surprise question. “Were you in this

building yesterday?”

Connie said, “No.”

“Do you know of any other student who was

here?”

Connie squirmed. “I prefer not to answer that

question,” she said in a barely audible voice.

“I beg your pardon?”

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Connie repeated, and the detective sighed. “We

need your help, Miss Blair,” he said, “and the help

of every innocent student. Perhaps it would make

these questions seem more essential if I told you a

few facts you may not know.”

Connie looked up and met his eyes, waiting.

“The Tarabochias were wrapped on Saturday

afternoon by a student committee.” He glanced

again at the papers on the desk. “Robert Woodward,

Beth Chandler, Eric Payson, Fritz Bachman. This

committee and Mr. White can testify to the fact that

the packages were stacked against the rear wall of

the hall awaiting the call of the trucking company

which delivered them to the Reid and Renshaw

offices Monday. You were there when they arrived,

weren’t you?”

Connie nodded. “Why, yes.”

“And the packages seemed intact?”

“I—I didn’t really look, but I suppose so.”

“Then it is obvious that the mischief was done

between the time the committee wrapped the

paintings and the time of delivery, when they stood

in the hall over the week end. That is why it is

important that you conceal nothing you know.”

“I understand.”

“To your knowledge was any student in this

building yesterday, Miss Blair?” repeated the

detective in a weary voice.

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Connie was thinking rapidly. If I don’t tell them

Eric was here, Mr. White will. They’ll think I’m

concealing something. They’ll be more suspicious

than ever.

She said, in as matter-of-fact voice as she could

muster, “Eric Payson told me he was here.”

There was a very slight lift to the detective’s

eyebrows, and he made a pencil mark on the paper

before him. “There must have been quite a party,”

he said, half to his associate, half to himself. “That

makes three.”

Connie would have given a great deal to have

turned the tables at this point and herself asked a

question, but she didn’t dare. At a nod of dismissal

from the man at the desk she got up and left the

office. On the bench outside, waiting, was Eric, and

it took every bit of self-control Connie possessed not

to warn him. “Don’t try to conceal anything!” she

wanted to shout. “These men aren’t dumb. They’ll

catch you up.” But all she did was to smile

encouragingly in the boy’s direction, then go back to

her class.

Later that evening Connie made a pact with

herself. Standing before the dressing-table mirror in

Aunt Bet’s apartment she determined to find out

“the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”

about the strange happenings at art school. She even

repeated the solemn words aloud.

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And as she did so she remembered a remark Kit

had made the day after the ball, as they had been

walking through the snow toward the hospital. “You

don’t think Roby might want to frame Eric?” her

sister had asked.

Connie was not quite as ready to deride such a

suggestion as she had been that day. Not that she

was sure the guilty person was Roby, but she was

feeling with increasing alarm that something of the

sort might be the case. If not Roby, perhaps Fritz

could be torn by such jealousy that he might have

committed the crime. She could still see the fanatical

light in his eyes as he had told her of his greedy

ambition. She could even hear him—

“Keep fighting for one Fritz Bachman. Keep on

making certain that I’m the one—I’m the one— that

gets ahead.”

There was the coming award of the Fairchild

prize, and Connie knew that Fritz wanted it, at this

moment, more than anything else on earth, because

it marked the first rung on his hypothetical ladder to

success.

“Oh, I don’t know—I don’t know.” Connie

brushed a hand across her tired eyes. Suddenly she

wanted to see Kit, to curl up in bed beside her twin

sister and pour out the whole incredible story of the

happenings at the School of Design. Kit was always

so sympathetic, so ready to listen, so wise.

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“I think I’ll call her up,” Connie decided aloud.

Her aunt wasn’t in yet from an evening engagement,

and the weight of being alone tonight was too

oppressing. Connie went into the living room and

picked up the phone.

It was Kit herself who answered, and she sounded

both surprised and pleased. “I was just going to call

you!” she cried. “It must be telepathy. I’m coming to

Philly tomorrow on a buying trip for the store, and I

wondered if we couldn’t meet for lunch.”

“I should say we can!” Connie cried. “Oh, Kit, I

have so much to talk to you about! I can hardly

wait.”

The following day the two girls lunched at a

restaurant near Connie’s office, and drew many

interested glances from other business people dining

there because they were so identical in height, in

feature, and in the blond fall of hair on their

shoulders. But they were too absorbed in each other

to notice that they were being remarked. Connie

talked “a mile a minute,” as Toby always put it, and

today Kit was listening with such intentness that she

almost forgot to eat.

“The school is in a perfect dither,” Connie

finished. “You can imagine, Kit. Detectives all over

the place. Everybody being questioned. I have no

idea where it will all end up.”

“It looks to me,” said Kit without mincing words,

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“as though somebody would end up in jail.”

A shudder lifted Connie’s shoulder. She looked at

her sister with pain in her eyes. “But, Kit,” she

whispered, “I just can’t believe that any one of those

boys—” She was thinking of the three, Eric, Roby

and Fritz, all of them on the Exhibit Committee, all

of them known well enough by the building

superintendent to be allowed the run of the school.

Kit knew just where her thoughts were leading

her. “You’re absolutely sure, Connie, that it was an

inside job?”

“The detectives are working on that assumption.

It seems to be the only logical one.”

“Of course, fingerprint tests may prove

something,” Kit said.

“They may.” But somehow, Connie didn’t

believe they’d find fingerprints, except possibly

those of the handlers of the pictures—the

deliveryman and perhaps Mr. White. She thought

the person who had destroyed the paintings was too

clever to have left such obvious evidence of his

identity, and she said so.

“The thing that confuses me,” Kit went on, “is

that there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason

for doing such a dreadful thing. Who would want—

—?”

Connie shook her head. “I just don’t know.”

Kit leaned her chin on one hand thoughtfully.

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“Remember the night of the ball?”

“Yes?”

“Roby told me something—it might not have any

bearing—but Roby told me something you ought to

know.”

Connie edged forward on her chair, her dessert

forgotten.

“It was while we were dancing,” Kit continued.

“He thought he was dancing with you. He kept

calling me ‘Connie,’ and I let him, just for fun.”

Connie nodded. She remembered dancing past,

aware of Roby’s confusion, and calling out “Hi,

Connie!” and winking at Kit.

“He was talking about the practical joke—if you

want to call it that—the skeleton and the purple

crosses on the panels.”

“Yes.”

“He said it looked bad for Eric Payson, and he

wasn’t very pleasant about it. He said it would serve

him right if Miss Charlotte cut him out of her will.”

“Out of her will?” Connie was astonished.

“But—?”

Kit looked her twin straight in the eyes. “I was

surprised, too. And I said so. In fact, I think I said

just about what you said to me just now. Roby

shrugged, and gave that sort of one-sided smile—if

he weren’t so attractive you could almost call it a

leer—and said, ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard?’ ”

129

“Go on,” Connie urged.

“Roby said, ‘Miss Charlotte is leaving Eric her

house on Queen Street and all the money that’s left

from her father’s fortune—about eighty thousand

dollars. At least she was, up until tonight.’ “

“Eric?” Connie skipped the innuendo in the final

sentence.

Kit nodded. “Roby said she was convinced that

Eric would be a great artist someday. He said that

she didn’t believe in impersonal charity, and that—

well, I’ll put it the way he put it—’she’s been sold

on the kid ever since he was in knee pants.’ ”

“Did he say anything more?”

Slowly Kit lowered her head. “He said that if

Miss Charlotte thought Eric was capable of doing

anything really nasty or—or dishonest, she’d be

through.”

Connie nodded. “Miss Charlotte is the soul of

integrity,” she said.

“But you don’t really think Eric—”

“No, Kit, I don’t. I like Eric, and because he

seems so forthright, somehow I believe in him. But

suppose the destruction of the Tarabochias and the

incident at the ball can be tied together, and the

blame shifted to Eric?”

Kit’s brown eyes were dark and thoughtful. Her

brows drew together in an uncertain frown. As

though she were talking to herself, she murmured,

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“But Roby isn’t bad. He’s selfish and he’s arrogant

and he’s spoiled, but he isn’t bad. Just because he

might take Eric’s place in Miss Charlotte’s scheme

of things, I can’t think—”

“I can’t either,” Connie said suddenly, and

pushed back her chair. “Kit, there are a lot of

angles,” she remarked as she reached for the check

and pulled on her gloves. “We haven’t explored the

possibilities in Fritz Bachman’s warped mind, and I

don’t even know anything much about Sandra Scott.

Don’t let’s jump to conclusions.”

But during the long afternoon, while Connie

manned the switchboard and the receptionist’s desk

at Reid and Renshaw, it was difficult not to jump to

the pat conclusion that Kit had offered her. It would

be so logical to suspect Roby. It would be such a

neat, tidy way to work out the puzzle. Roby had

reason and Roby had opportunity. Connie began to

wish she could have a talk with Miss Charlotte. She

began to wonder whether Roby had seen his aunt

since the discovery of the Tarabochia slashing. If he

had—

After work, Connie found herself walking, almost

involuntarily, toward the red-brick house on Queen

Street. The winter days were lengthening, and there

was an early evening twilight which spoke of spring.

Icicles hung like fringe to the sloping roof of the

White house, but still it looked sheltered and cozy.

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She hoped that the atmosphere of comfort was more

than skin deep.

Anna opened the door, and let Connie into the

hall grudgingly. The living-room doors were closed,

but behind them Connie could hear voices, and she

hesitated. “If Miss Charlotte is busy—”

The maid said, “She’s been in there with Mr.

Lytton half the afternoon. It’s time they stopped

talkin’ anyway.” She moved toward the door,

mumbling under her breath, “Talk, talk, talk.”

The door opened to reveal the back of a portly

gentleman in a conservative dark-blue suit. “All

right, Miss White,” Connie heard him say, “I’ll get

the papers drawn up by the week end. Do you want

to sign them in my office or here?”

“Here,” Miss Charlotte murmured as though she

were very tired. “And thank you, Charles.”

“Miss Connie Blair to see you, mum.” Anna

pitched her voice high enough to be heard.

There was only a slight hesitation before Miss

Charlotte said, “Thank you, Anna. Show Mr. Lytton

out, please, and ask Miss Blair to come in.”

132

CHAPTER 12

Return Visit

Miss Charlotte rose from the wing chair by the

fireplace and stood with her back to the glowing

coals in the iron basket on the hearth. Not until

Connie was very close to her could she see her eyes,

which were usually the youngest part of her delicate,

lined face. Now they were tired and sad.

“Good afternoon, Connie.” Politeness was a

lifelong habit with Miss Charlotte, but her voice

lacked its bright, hospitable ring.

Connie came forward with her hand outstretched.

She had planned to treat this as a casual social call,

but abruptly she changed her mind. “Oh, Miss

Charlotte, I had to see you!” This was no time to

mince words.

Apparently her hostess appreciated her frankness,

because she signaled to the maid to close the living-

room door. “Sit down, my dear,” she said kindly. “I

suppose I need not ask what is troubling you. I am

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as heartsick about the destruction of those beautiful

paintings as everyone else.”

“Then you know?”

Miss Charlotte nodded. “Mr. Jenkins called me

this morning.” She began pacing up and down in

front of the fire. “It is impossible for me to conceive

how warped and twisted a person’s mind must be

to—to plan such a thing—to deliberately destroy—”

She stopped and spread her hands, palms upward,

eloquently.

Connie nodded, her own eyes clouded. “I know.”

In a voice curiously flat Miss Charlotte said, “I

tried to get in touch with Eric, but they told me at

the plant that he had been called out. Then I called

the school and learned that the detectives have been

questioning him all afternoon.”

“Oh, but Miss Charlotte, that doesn’t mean—!”

Connie couldn’t go on. The news came as too great

a shock.

The little lady passed a hand across her eyes. “I

don’t know, Connie,” she said wearily. “I just don’t

know.” She paused and stared at the fire, then

continued. “I’m getting old, you see. My judgment

may have been failing, for some time, without my

realizing it.”

Connie shook her head. Her hands were clasped

tightly in her lap. “Oh, no!”

But Miss Charlotte looked at her with eyes full of

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concern. “Genius, you know, is often very close to

madness,” she said.

Connie didn’t have an answer. She seemed

devoid of any words at all. She sat in the low chair

facing the hearth and stared into the fire, and after a

while Miss Charlotte began to speak, telling a story

softly.

“I wanted so desperately to believe in Eric,” she

said. “He seemed to me to be everything Francis, my

own younger brother, was not. Francis was always a

disappointment. He ran away from school when he

was fourteen and went to sea. He always had a hand

for machinery, and I suppose he made out well

enough, drifting from port to port, seeing the world

in the way he liked best.”

Suddenly her voice hardened. “But it killed my

father. He died without ever seeing Francis again, or

ever wanting to see him. He was a sensitive man,

and he had always dreamed great dreams for his

son.”

She shrugged delicately. “I suppose, when I first

met Eric, he reminded me of Francis as a boy. There

were fifteen years between us, you see. Francis

always seemed a child to me. And Eric had his

childish sturdiness, his little-boy shyness. But he

had something else too—something more appealing

to me than anything my own brother ever had—Eric

was very sensitive, like my father, and deeply

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artistic, and sincere—at least, I thought he was

sincere.”

“I’m sure he is,” Connie put in.

Miss Charlotte looked at her sharply, and perched

on the edge of the wing chair’s seat. “Don’t fall into

the error of passing hasty judgment, Connie. You

may become as disillusioned as I.”

“But, Miss Charlotte—!”

The little lady lifted a hand. “Eric was always an

odd child. I’ll have to admit that now. He was extra

quiet, but I thought it was a peaceful sort of stillness,

and I liked him for it. He seemed to love coming

here. We seemed to understand each other. Do you

know what I’m trying to say?”

Connie nodded. She knew exactly what Miss

Charlotte wanted to convey. Eric wasn’t run-of-the-

mill, not at all. But in the short time she had known

him, Connie had found him sympathetic and

endearing. He could be moody, like most artists, but

for a woman of Miss Charlotte’s taste and

perception, he must have had unusual appeal.

“Even as a child, there was no doubt of the fact

that Eric had talent, artistically. It was the most

natural thing in the world that I should help him get

a scholarship at art school and a daytime job in

Card’s factory. Later, I thought I might do more. If

he should need to study in Europe, it might be

arranged.”

136

“You’ve been a wonderful friend to him,” Connie

murmured.

Suddenly, with a tightly clenched fist, Miss

Charlotte pounded the small lamp table by her chair.

“And Eric seemed to be justifying the faith I placed

in him! He was honor material, from the beginning.

Mr. Jenkins told me last year he was one of the most

remarkable students who had ever studied at the

school. He said there was no doubt of his future, if

he had the means to continue studying. It was then

that I did what I knew my father would want me to

do.”

Abruptly, Miss Charlotte stopped. Although

Connie already knew that she had made Eric her

heir, she wanted to hear it from Miss Charlotte’s

own lips. She drew in her breath, sharply, but she

didn’t speak.

There was a long pause, during which Miss

Charlotte apparently decided to leave her decision

unspoken. Disconnectedly, she continued, “Gard

seemed to share my affection for the lad, but Roby

never liked him. And they say boys can size up each

other better than—”

“But Roby’s jealous of Eric!” Connie broke in.

“He always has been.”

Miss Charlotte shook her head, as though

unwilling to argue the point.

“Miss Charlotte, Roby’s loafing on the job, down

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at school. He isn’t really trying, and even if he did, I

don’t think he has an artistic bone in his body. He’s

got other abilities, though. He’d be a good salesman

and a good organizer. Mr. Woodward ought to see

that! He’s making his son compete with somebody

like Eric Payson, and it really isn’t fair. Roby hates

Eric, and why? Because Eric’s cutting him out in his

father’s esteem, without really wanting to at all.”

Again Miss Charlotte made the small gesture of

weariness, trailing her fingers across her eyes. “It

isn’t only Roby who dislikes the boy,” she

murmured. “Francis says he is far from popular

among his classmates, down at school. That, in

itself, is some indication that my judgment may have

been wrong.”

Connie dropped her eyes, because what Miss

Charlotte said was close to the truth. Fritz didn’t like

Eric, nor did several of the other boys. But Connie

had always felt that their scorn was rooted in envy.

Eric was different, Eric was brilliant; therefore he

was suspect.

“Then there was the unfortunate prank on the

night of the ball, and the purple paint found in his

locker,” Miss Charlotte continued.

Incensed, Connie jumped up from her chair. “A

half-empty jar of paint that wasn’t even the purple

used to mark up the panels!” Impulsively she

dropped on her knees beside Miss Charlotte’s chair.

138

“Oh, please don’t believe all these things until you

have proof. Something is terribly wrong at school, I

know. Someone is doing these dreadful things, and

that person deserves to be punished. But it isn’t

Eric! I’m sure it isn’t Eric. Won’t you give me a

chance to find out who it can be?”

“A chance?” There was a gentle lift to Miss

Charlotte’s eyebrows. “Do you think you have a

better chance than the insurance company

detectives, Connie? They are men trained to

recognize the curious facets of the criminal mind.”

“But they’ll be swayed by circumstantial

evidence,” Connie said, as though she were thinking

aloud. “And somehow, in this case, I honestly

believe that circumstantial evidence will be wrong.”

She stopped, almost as surprised as Miss

Charlotte at what she had just said. Then she forced

a chuckle. “I don’t know what made me say such a

thing,” she confessed. “My dad used to tease me

about my hunches. I guess it was just one of those.”

But Miss Charlotte was staring back at her

without smiling. The knuckles of her hands were

white as they gripped the chair arms, and she said,

just above a whisper, “Connie, there’s something I

think you ought to know.”

“Yes?” Connie waited, her heart pounding.

“In the fall,” Miss Charlotte said slowly, “I gave

Eric a knife that Francis had brought to me. An

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ordinary seaman’s knife, about this long, in a leather

case. He said he could use it for something at

school—cleaning palettes or something—I’ve

forgotten what. But if they should ever find it among

his things . . .”

Sitting back on the floor and looking up at Miss

Charlotte, Connie now laughed spontaneously. “The

students at school have all sorts of odd knives,” she

reassured her. “You could open a locker at random

and find anything from a bowie to an ordinary

paring knife. I don’t think we’ll have to worry too

much about that.”

The relief in Miss Charlotte’s eyes was so

apparent that Connie could have shouted for joy.

Suddenly she knew that Miss White hadn’t entirely

succumbed to the scandalmongering tales she had

heard about Eric. Miss Charlotte was troubled, and

she mistrusted her own emotional judgment, but she

wasn’t finally convinced that Eric was the criminal

type.

Connie got to her feet and stood looking down at

her hostess, her hands clasped before her in an

attitude of supplication.

“Oh, please, Miss Charlotte, don’t let anyone

persuade you—” She paused. Miss Charlotte was

looking down at her own hands folded in her lap.

The pause became awkward, and at last the lady in

gray raised her head and spoke.

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“Yes, Connie, what were you going to say?”

“Oh, Miss Charlotte,” cried Connie, “I don’t

know how to express what I think and feel so

strongly. Eric loves beauty. He lives for beauty. He

could no more destroy anything beautiful than he

could—than he could—” In a gesture of sincerity

that was so spontaneous and appealing that it

brought tears to the eyes of the elder woman Connie

dropped to her knees beside Miss White’s chair.

Gently Miss Charlotte placed her hand upon the

young girl’s shoulder.

“Connie, I’m going to tell you something very

personal and very confidential. I know that you will

keep my secret. The gentleman you saw when you

came in was Mr. Lytton, my legal advisor. He was

my father’s lawyer, too. I asked him to come to see

me about my will. Some time ago I made a will

leaving everything to Eric. Does this seem strange to

you? It seemed so right to me. He was as dear to me

as my own son could have been. If my father were

living I am sure he would have wanted me to make

Eric my heir.”

Miss Charlotte paused, and for a moment seemed

lost in thought.

In a voice scarcely above a whisper Connie said,

“I knew about Eric, Miss Charlotte. I knew that you

had made him your sole heir.”

Miss White’s face blanched. “What are you

141

saying, Connie?” she whispered. “How could you

know? No one knows but Mr. Lytton.”

Connie flushed. She wished that she had not been

so impulsive. But she had to go on. “Roby told Kit,”

she answered in a voice that trembled. “And Kit told

me. It was the night of the dance.”

Suddenly Miss White rose to her feet. One hand

supported her against the chair and the other

clutched at her throat.

“But nobody knows!” she said hoarsely. “Not

even Eric. It was my secret. I wanted to do it,

without being thanked for it.” Her voice rose

perilously, and she came forward a few tottering

steps. “How could Roby ever have found out?”

142

CHAPTER 13

Through the Broken Grating

The week that followed Connie’s interview with

Miss Charlotte was anything but a satisfactory one.

For that matter, the interview itself had left her mind

filled with confusing thoughts. Had she been too

brash in espousing Eric’s cause? Should she have

kept quiet about Roby Woodward’s careless

revealing of Miss Charlotte’s secret to Kit? And

how had Roby learned of it? Was Miss Charlotte

going to change her will? If not, then why had Mr.

Lytton been there at her request? Was there anything

she could do to restore the old lady’s faltering

confidence in Eric?

Just when she wanted to talk to him badly, Roby

Woodward was laid up with a case of virus-some-

thing-or-other which Sandra Scott described as

being good, old-fashioned grippe. Sandra seemed to

know a lot about Roby these days. She discussed

him and championed him at the slightest

143

provocation, and claimed that he was worried into

sickness by the Tarabochia affair.

Julius Tarabochia, Connie knew, had been told of

the fate of his paintings. It took a committee of three

from Reid and Renshaw to get up courage to call on

the artist at his studio, and the men came back to the

office with relief written large on their faces. George

Renshaw even went so far as to toss his hat in the

air.

“Whew!” he cried, as he gained the comparative

privacy of the reception room. “He took that like a

jolly good sport.”

“Even the most successful artists can always use

money,” said Mr. Canfield thankfully. “Tarabochia

looked pretty glum until the matter of the insurance

came up.”

The men passed out of Connie’s hearing, but she

could imagine that now it was the insurance

company’s turn to feel pretty glum. Detectives were

still turning up at odd hours at the school, and it was

common gossip that at least three students had been

positively identified as having been in the building

on the Sunday when the crime was committed.

Connie knew the three. Eric, Roby and Fritz.

Fritz, it was rumored, had been characteristically

brazen when questioned, Roby had been frank, and

Eric had been sullen and truculent, far from his

usual candid self.

144

All this came to Connie as hearsay, but it was so

widely reported that it smacked strongly of the truth.

At art school she kept her eyes and ears open, but

no fresh clue seemed to present itself. Fritz

swaggered around the corridors, quite ready to talk

about what he “told the cops,” but behind his air of

braggadocio Connie thought she detected a glimmer

of fear. It would be the finish of Fritz’s elaborately

planned career if he should be convicted of a crime.

Eric came and went like a wraith. On the few

occasions when she encountered him in the hall

Connie noticed that his eyes were sunken with

sleeplessness and that he was losing weight. She

knew that both he and Fritz were supposed to be at

work on their paintings for the Fairchild

competition, and she couldn’t help wondering how

he could conceive anything adequate in his present

mood of resentment. Either the shadow of suspicion

would have to be lifted soon, or he would lose his

excellent chance to win the prize, she felt sure.

On Friday evening, encountering Eric at the door

to the studio, Connie approached him with what

casual friendliness she could muster. “Are you

painting at the zoo tomorrow morning with the rest

of us?” she asked.

Eric shook his head. “I’m working out at the

plant.”

“But I thought the factory was closed on Saturday

145

mornings.”

“It is.”

“Then—?”

“I’m trying to do a sketch of men and machines

for the—for an assignment,” Eric said grudgingly.

He sounded depressed and disturbed.

“Are you really?” Connie tried to sound lightly

interested. “What fun to work there—so nice and

quiet—” She wrinkled her nose. “And less smelly

than the zoo.”

She hoped against hope that Eric would ask her to

join him, but he turned away, and she had to make

the suggestion herself. “I wonder if you’d mind if I

came along? I’m doing an assignment on

composition, and it might be interesting to use

machines instead of animals for a change.”

If Connie’s smile had been less winning Eric

might have been able to say a firm “no.” But as it

happened he shrugged his shoulders and murmured,

“All right.”

It was all Connie wanted—a foot in the door—a

chance to talk to Eric, uninterrupted and alone.

She walked home that night humming happily,

but the next morning Connie appeared very docile

and quiet when she met Eric at the plant. She took

her sketchbook to a stool at some distance from the

spot where Eric had set up his easel, and tried to

decide what to draw.

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The factory, empty now except for the watchman,

had an eerie feel in the gray morning light. The

machines, idle and enormous, were meaningless to

Connie, and she took none of Eric’s interest in the

patterns they made against the cement floor.

“That’s a press,” he told her, pointing to a giant

black beast with open jaws, “and that’s”—pointing

to a smaller satellite—“a molding machine.”

Connie thanked him, and wondered at the

fascination all men seemed to find in such industrial

phenomena. She tried to get interested in the

shadows cast by the molding machine, but her mind

was much busier than her pencil in the next hour.

She wanted to get Eric to talk, and she didn’t know

quite how to manage it. If she were to help him,

she’d have to know everything he knew.

But Eric, squinting up at the great press and

measuring distances with his crayon, was oblivious

to Connie, some distance away. It was well toward

noon when he stopped abruptly and turned toward

her.

“Do me a favor? Stand in for a workman for a

sec. I want to use a figure in this composition.” He

walked forward and showed her. “Right here.”

Connie was quite ready to oblige. She closed her

sketchbook, not wanting Eric to see how desultory

her drawing had been, and took the required

position. Eric worked in silence for a while,

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frowning at both the model and his easel.

Connie was getting a little tired of holding the

pose, and was smitten by an increasing desire to

stretch and yawn, when Eric unexpectedly turned

and threw his sketching crayon viciously across the

room. Then, with an unintelligible expletive, he

leaned back against a factory worktable and covered

his face with his hands.

“Why, Eric!” Connie ran forward impulsively,

but the minute her hand touched the boy’s arm he

shook her off.

“Leave me alone!” he cried. Then, “Look at that

thing!” A finger shaking with rage indicated the

sketch on the stretched canvas. “It’s lousy. Yes, I

said lousy! I can’t paint any more. I can’t even draw.

Oh, if they’d only leave me alone!”

He started to pace up and down the room like a

caged animal, while Connie waited in silence for the

burst of emotion to subside. Her eyes were full of

sympathy when she said at last, “Let me try to help

you, Eric. Talk to me about it. You’ll go crazy,

keeping everything to yourself this way.”

“Crazy!” He shouted the word. “That’s just it.

That’s what they’re trying to prove. They keep at

me—and at me—and at me—with their endless

questions, until I get to thinking maybe they’re right,

that I’ve got a screw loose somewhere and that my

right hand doesn’t know what my left one’s doing.”

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Connie tried to make her smile reassuring.

“You’re no Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Eric. I know

that. But I think somebody’s trying to frame you,

and we’ve got to find out who.”

For the first time a gleam of hope lit Eric’s gray

eyes. He strode toward Connie and grabbed her

hands, pressing them hard. “You really think that?

I’ve thought the same thing, many times. But then I

try to imagine why—what for? And my mind starts

going round and round because it doesn’t make

sense.” He shrugged wearily. “And then I get to

thinking maybe the detectives are on the right track

after all.”

“Stop saying that!” Connie managed to shock the

boy with her vehemence. “You and I are going out

for lunch, and we’re going over this whole mess,

step by step, again. And then we’re going to go into

a little action on our own hook, understand?”

She didn’t know quite what that action would be,

but she wanted to sound confident in order to give

Eric courage. More than anything else in the world,

Connie felt, he needed a friend.

Fifteen minutes later, seated opposite each other

over steaming plates of spaghetti and meat balls in a

little Italian restaurant, Eric told her the essence of

the detectives’ inquiry. Like Connie, the men had

tied together the incident of the masked ball and the

slashing of the Tarabochias, and since Eric was the

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plausible suspect for the first, and lesser, act of

vandalism, they considered him an interesting

possibility for the second. The discrepancy in the

color of the paint found in Eric’s locker and the

color used for Rapunzel’s cloak they seemed to

discount.

“But that’s important!” Connie protested.

“Of course it’s important,” agreed Eric, “but

they’re not artists, they’re detectives. They don’t see

it our way. Purple is purple to them.”

Connie sighed. “If you only had found that dime-

store paintbrush—”

“Even if I had, what would it prove?”

“It might have fingerprints.”

“There were no distinguishable fingerprints found

on the Tarabochias, were there?” Eric asked

astutely. “The person who did the job is too clever to

leave evidence like that around.”

“Unless it were evidence that would incriminate

you,” said Connie slowly, pursuing the train of

thought that had always appealed to her most.

Suddenly she leaned forward. “Eric!”

“Yes?”

“Do you remember Miss Charlotte giving you a

knife—a seaman’s knife—for a present?”

Eric looked at Connie in surprise. “Why, yes.”

“Where is it?”

“In my locker, I suppose. I hadn’t thought of it in

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weeks. How did you know?”

“Never mind. It isn’t important. Miss Charlotte

told me.” Words spilled over each other as Connie’s

busy mind raced ahead. “Eric, I think we ought to

get that knife out of there. I think it might be used to

incriminate you, like the paint.” She felt an uneasy

compulsion. “I think we ought to get it now—

today.”

“Today? But today’s Saturday. There isn’t

anybody at the school—not even Mr. White—on

Saturday afternoons.”

“I know.” Connie’s foot tapped the floor

impatiently, and she caught her lower lip between

her teeth. “But couldn’t we get in, somehow?” She

snapped her fingers as an idea occurred to her.

“There’s that broken grating you stumbled into. I

don’t think it has ever been fixed.”

Eric frowned, feeling none of Connie’s sense of

urgency. “I don’t see—”

But Connie raced on, anxious to enlist his

enthusiasm. “And while we’re there we could have

another look for that paintbrush. You can’t tell. It

just might be stuck away somewhere.”

Eric made objections. It looked like snow again

and if the going got slippery he’d be uneasy,

hampered by his walking cast. But Connie was very

insistent, and in the end he agreed to accompany her

to the school.

151

When they emerged from the little restaurant,

however, he hesitated again. The sky was a dark,

gun-metal gray, promising the storm Eric feared.

The wind tore at the trash in sidewalk ash cans and

whipped Connie’s scarf against her face. It was a

wild day, menacing, no day to set out on ill-advised

adventure.

“I think we’re being silly, Connie. Let’s skip the

whole thing.”

But Connie felt the need of action, any action at

all. She felt baffled and unsure of each step she took,

but at the same time she felt that if she could get to

the scene of the crime some new angle might open

up. Just standing by had gotten Eric and herself

nowhere.

“If you won’t go with me, Eric,” she said, “I’ll

take your locker key and go alone.”

So Eric acquiesced, limping along beside Connie

to the southbound subway and descending to the

dark underground tunnel with its dimly lighted ticket

booth and its roaring, rumbling cars.

The ride suited their mood, and Connie and Eric

emerged a square away from the school feeling as

turbulent as the weather. Connie tried to dispel the

gloom by raising one hand in a mock salute and

laughing, “Horatio Alger. Sink or swim!” but Eric’s

replying smile was thin.

The black sky, the wind and the first fine rain of

152

snow were in their favor, because the street in front

of the school was quite deserted. As a precaution,

Connie went up and boldly rang the bell, but as they

expected there was no answer.

“I think Mr. White generally shoots pool with his

pals on Saturday afternoons,” Eric said.

Connie shook her head. “Miss Charlotte’s

brother! To what are the mighty fallen,” she

murmured, half to herself.

“It’s a shame,” Eric agreed, though he had never

mentioned the subject to Connie before. “I think it

hurts her more than anyone knows. You see, he’s all

she has left in the world.”

“Not quite all!” Connie said to herself, and

renewed her determination to save Eric for Miss

Charlotte if she could.

Meanwhile, they moved together toward the

broken grating, which led to a cellar window

through which coal for the big furnaces was usually

shot. Connie looked to right and to left along the

deserted street; then like a conspirator she

whispered, “All clear.”

Eric tugged at the grating, and placed it to one

side of the rectangular opening. The hinged window

raised easily. “This is too good to last,” he told

Connie. “The cellar door will be bolted from

above.”

“Don’t be a pessimist,” Connie warned with a

153

nervous giggle. “Here. Let me go first. On account

of your leg.”

She let herself through the window with athletic

ease, but Eric didn’t wait for her to help him. He

was right on her heels. Together they slid down a

coal pile, which rumbled and rolled beneath them,

making a terrific racket. Eric, in spite of his

forebodings, was beginning to enjoy himself.

“Quiet!” he warned Connie. “You’ll disturb the

rats.”

“Rats?” Connie’s voice rose to a shrill feminine

squeal before she realized Eric was teasing.

“Sure, there are always rats in these old buildings.

You should know that.”

But Connie, though she couldn’t see his face in

the darkness, heard Eric’s chuckle. “Phooey!” she

said indignantly, and began feeling her way past the

glowing coal furnaces toward the stairs.

“These should lead to the superintendent’s

office,” Eric told her as the steps loomed before

them. “There are back stairs to the ballroom, in case

this door is locked.”

“How do you know so much?” Connie asked in

astonishment.

“Men notice things like that,” Eric told her with a

certain pride. “I’ll bet any boy in school could tell

you as much.”

Connie ran up the steps lightly, and tried the door,

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She didn’t really expect it to open, and when the

knob turned in her hand she looked back in surprise.

“We’re in luck!”

Eric hobbled quickly after her, into gloom

scarcely less intense than the darkness of the cellar.

“With the lights out,” he mentioned, “this isn’t

exactly a cheerful joint.”

“Shall I turn on a light?”

“No, don’t. It could be seen from outside.”

“Let’s get up to the locker room, then. There’s no

use hanging around here.”

They made their way to the square, stone-paved

hall, and up the broad, winding stairs. Eric fumbled

for his key as he limped along, the metal base to his

walking cast clacking with each step.

“I feel as though I were about to rob a bank,”

Connie confessed over her shoulder. “It’s strange

what a sense of guilt a perfectly innocent person can

get.”

“I think I know what you mean,” Eric confessed

with a wry smile. Then he added, “But we’re not

perfectly innocent, you know. We’re housebreakers,

at the very least.”

“Before we’re through, we may be more,” said

Connie grimly. “I want to find that knife.”

With a precise, artist’s hand, Eric fitted the key to

the locker and opened the door. “Here,” he said,

“I’ve got a tool,” and took out of his pocket a pencil

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flashlight which threw a thin beam on the contents.

“Used to use it in my old safecracking days.”

Connie chuckled, appreciating his attempt at

humor, but actually she was feeling a little

apprehensive, as she had been all day.

Eric rummaged around for a few moments, then

began systematically turning things out. “It was

here,” he muttered, frowning. “I’m sure I didn’t take

it home.”

The palms of Connie’s hands felt cold and damp.

“If it isn’t there,” she said finally, “it might be in one

of the other lockers. I wonder if Mr. White has a

master key. I’m going to look!”

She was flying downstairs before Eric could stop

her, and by the time he caught up with her, at the

door of the building superintendent’s office, she was

rummaging through the drawers of the desk.

“Not a thing!” she complained. “Not a key in the

place. He probably keeps a key ring on his watch

chain or something.” Then, suddenly, as she dived

into the bottom drawer, she gave a strange, startled

little cry.

“What—?” Eric started.

For Connie straightened, and an expression of

astonished comprehension dawned in her brown

eyes. In her right hand she held a very small, neat

ball of strong, thin, green twine.

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CHAPTER 14

The Knife

“The skeleton! Adam! It was used to wrap the

skeleton.”

Connie was almost panting with excitement,

because she wasn’t actually seeing the skeleton in

her mind’s eye. She was seeing the Tarabochia

paintings, half unpacked, leaning ingloriously

against the wall of Mr. Canfield’s office, torn and

despoiled. And she was seeing the twine that had

bound the innocent-looking packages—the same

green twine she held in her hand!

Eric looked at her in utter confusion. “What are

you talking about?”

But Connie returned question for question. “You

were on the committee. What cord did you use to tie

up the Tarabochia paintings when you were getting

them ready to be returned?”

“Well, not that stuff.” Eric looked at the twine.

“A lightweight rope we found in the costume room.

157

And, lady, we tied ’em!” he added slangily. “A flea

couldn’t have slipped through one of those knots.”

“That’s just it! Don’t you see? Whoever

unpacked and repacked them was in too much of a

hurry to undo your rope. They cut it off and then

used this string. I can prove it! The paintings and the

wrappings are still in our art director’s office.

They’ve never been moved.”

Eric didn’t seem to share Connie’s excitement.

“So what?” he asked. “Whoever did the job swiped

some twine from Mr. White’s desk. What does that

prove?”

Connie felt a little deflated. To an outsider—even

to Eric—she could see that it wouldn’t really prove

very much. But to Connie herself the discovery

meant everything. Suddenly the pieces of the

intricate puzzle had all fallen neatly into place. She

knew—she knew in her own heart and mind, even

though she couldn’t yet prove it—who the criminal

was!

There was motive. There was opportunity. There

was everything! It had to be that way. It had to be!

“Oh, Eric, don’t you see?” she cried, coming

around the desk. “This is the answer. Let me tell

you! This is the way it must have been.”

But just as she spoke, Eric’s hand, grabbing her

arm apprehensively, silenced Connie. And at the

same instant she heard a key turning in the lock of

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the big front door.

“Hurry! The stairs!”

The instinct of flight was too strong to resist.

Now, of all times, Connie didn’t want to be caught

in an incriminating position. She took Eric’s hand,

pulling him after her, and made for the cellar door.

Eric was far less fleet than his companion,

hampered as he was by the bulky cast, but he shut

the door after himself as quickly and as quietly as

possible, groping his way downward into the

blackness. Above, Connie could hear the tramp of

feet. Her heart was pounding and she was breathing

in quick excitement.

“I bet it’s Mr. White, back to fix the fires. It’s

probably later than we thought,” she whispered.

Eric stopped a second, listening. “Sounds like

more than one man.”

But Connie was hurrying toward the window

through which they had entered, and she didn’t hear

him. “We can get out if we hurry,” she urged.

Then she heard a muffled exclamation behind

her, and looked back, barely able to detect, in the

gloom, that Eric had stopped.

“What’s the matter?”

“I left my coat upstairs.” Eric sounded both

sheepish and alarmed.

“Your coat?”

“My gabardine raincoat. It’s in the locker room,

159

on the bench.”

Connie sighed. “Oh, Eric!”

“For that matter, my locker’s open, and my things

are strewn all around.”

An idea flashed into Connie’s mind. “We might

be able to get up there,” she said, “while Mr. White

is fixing the fires, if that’s what he’s here to do.”

Eric peered into the furnace nearest him. “That’s

what he’s here to do, all right,” he muttered.

“Then let’s try the ballroom door. If it’s open we

can get up the back stairs to the studio and through

there to the locker room. Come on!”

Silently they crept across the labyrinthine cellar

to the other stairs. Silently they ascended. The

ballroom door opened softly at Connie’s touch, but

before they started for the balcony stairs she turned

back to Eric.

“Have you got a handkerchief?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Tie it around the foot with the cast on it, so the

metal walking shoe won’t click on the floor,” she

whispered sensibly.

Eric followed instructions without a murmur, then

together they began the second lap of their perilous

journey.

“Maybe I should have come alone,” Connie

thought, as they hurried along. “I’m so much faster.”

But there was both comfort and a feeling of safety in

160

Eric’s companionship, no matter how false that

sense of security was.

The ballroom was empty and resonant with every

footfall, though Connie and Eric both concentrated

on being as quiet as possible. Not a sound penetrated

from the other parts of the building, yet they knew

with frightening certainty that they were no longer

alone in the big old house.

The ballroom balcony led to the second-floor

studio, where the fairy tale panels had been painted,

and this room Connie and Eric gained without

mishap. But when they opened the studio door,

planning to cut across the upper hall to the locker

room, a voice fell on their ears like a rifle report.

It was Mr. White, calling down the echoing stair

well to someone in the hall below.

“Come up here a minute. There’s something you

ought to see!”

Connie shrank back, fingers to her lips. She

looked at Eric’s face, close to hers, and the light

from the hallway illumined its dismay.

“He’s found the coat!” Connie’s lips moved, but

the whisper was all but inaudible.

Eric’s reply was a muted groan.

Through the crack in the door Connie could see

someone hurrying up the stairs, but the man’s face

was hidden until he passed the landing. Then she

turned back to Eric. “Mr. Jenkins!” she breathed.

161

Eric waited until he heard footsteps turn into the

locker room. “Well,” he whispered, “I guess the

jig’s up. Where do we go from here?”

Connie was trying to think rationally. No matter

what they did now, Eric’s clandestine visit to the

school had been discovered, and he would answer

for it, she knew, by additional hours of grueling

questioning from the insurance company detectives.

They didn’t have anything on Eric, really, but they

were determined to find a whipping boy. Twenty-

five thousand dollars worth of destruction couldn’t

go unpunished, not by a long shot.

There were two courses open to Connie and Eric.

They could march boldly into the locker room or

they could get out the way they had come, and live

to fight another day.

Connie’s open, impetuous nature counseled the

former course, but reason told her that every bit of

time she could gain would count heavily on her side.

“Will you freeze without your topcoat?” she

whispered to Eric.

“No, but—”

“Then let’s get out of here.”

She gave him no time to argue. She was back

across the studio like lightning, and led her

companion quickly down the steps. They were in the

cellar again in a minute and a half, and Eric was

actually panting in the effort to keep up.

162

“Hey, wait a minute!” he whispered to Connie,

who was running ahead of him. “You’re traveling at

the speed of supersonic sound!”

Connie giggled, glad that in spite of everything

Eric hadn’t lost his sense of humor. Then she was

brought up short by a bulky black mass in front of

her.

“The coal bin!” She wailed softly, “Oh, Eric,

we’re bound to make the most awful racket. i

completely forgot the coal!”

There was no doubt about it. Coal would slide

away beneath their feet and come tumbling down on

the cellar floor if they tried to reach the window.

This avenue of escape was effectively—and

completely—cut off.

“Maybe we could get out the front door while

White and Jenkins are plowing around upstairs,”

suggested Eric halfheartedly.

“It’s worth a chance.” Connie was ready to risk

anything now.

“I’d rather be tired than the way I am,” muttered

Eric, breathing laboriously, and prepared to follow

Connie once more up the first flight of steps.

Neither of them bothered, now, to be too

cautious. With fatalistic conviction, they knew that

they would either make their escape, or they would

be caught. Connie opened the door into Mr. White’s

office without hesitation. The overhead light was on,

163

making her eyes smart with its brilliance. She

blinked, trying to adjust her sight after the dark.

Then she stopped short as a man who was lounging

against Mr. White’s desk turned casually, wadded

the paper from the chewing gum he had been

unwrapping into a small ball and fired it into the

waste-basket.

“Hi,” said the insurance company detective,

apparently not in the least surprised. “I thought

you’d be showin’ up soon.”

Eric was dumfounded, but Connie, after her first

momentary astonishment, had to laugh. It was such

a complete anticlimax to their frantic scurrying

through the building, to be apprehended with such

utter nonchalance.

“What’s so funny?” the detective asked, in turn

confused.

Connie bit her lip, but her eyes were still

twinkling. She couldn’t explain, so she just shook

her head.

“If it makes you feel any better, you couldn’t

have gotten out through the grating anyway,” the

detective said, biting off a generous piece of the

gum. “We’ve been casing the joint since two

o’clock.”

Connie looked at Eric. “Well, that’s nice to

know,” she said politely. “Coal can get you awfully

dirty.”

164

“Huh?” said the detective. “Oh, yeh.” He took off

his hat and flung it neatly to the top of Mr. White’s

clothes tree, then listened to the sound of footsteps

hurrying downstairs. “Get ready for the party. Here

they come.”

Mr. Jenkins came into the room first, bearing

Eric’s raincoat. He was followed by Mr. White, who

looked very busy and important, and by the second

detective, who was far less casual and decidedly

more grammatical than his fellow.

The gum-chewing detective jerked a finger in the

direction of Connie and Eric. “Didn’t even have to

whistle. Just come up as nice as you please.”

The three new arrivals were gratifyingly surprised

to see Connie. While Eric stood by in sullen silence,

they all started to fire questions at her at once.

Connie parried their queries as best she could.

She admitted they had entered the building through

the broken grating, admitted that they had been

searching for something in Eric’s locker, but she

stubbornly wouldn’t say what they had been looking

for.

Eric stood it as long as he could. Then he came to

Connie’s rescue. “Talk to me,” he said bluntly,

limping to a position in front of the detective in

charge. “I’m the guy that was looking for

something, not Miss Blair. She just came along for

the ride.”

165

“Oh, she did, did she?” the detective jeered.

“Yes, she did!” Belligerent, Eric stuck out his

chin.

Connie tried to catch his eye, tried to warn him

that this was a technique of questioning designed to

get the witness roiled. But he was concentrating on

the detective, and his hands were clenched at his

sides.

The detective sat back in Mr. White’s desk chair,

apparently determined to be patient. “Then perhaps

you can tell us the object of your search?” he

suggested in a silken tone.

“Yes, I can. And I can also tell you I didn’t find

it. I was looking for a knife.”

At the last second Connie put out her hand, trying

to stop Eric, but the impulsive gesture came too late.

The detective and Mr. Jenkins glanced with shrewd,

quick eyes, from Eric to Connie, and back to the

young man again.

The detective raised his eyebrows. “A knife?” He

paused and asked gently, as though he were

humoring a child, “What kind of a knife?”

In that instant Connie remembered what Miss

Charlotte had said about genius being akin to

madness. They were treating Eric as though he were

feeble-minded or—her eyes widened with horror—

or insane!

But Eric was beyond such analysis. “An ordinary

166

seaman’s knife, if you must know,” he said

truculently. “In a leather case. Somebody must have

taken it. I wish to heck people would leave my

things alone.”

With a short, explicit nod of his head, the seated

detective gestured to his companion, and for the first

time in her life Connie saw a person frisked. Eric

stood for it sullenly, as though he were no longer

surprised at what they might do to him, as though he

didn’t really care.

They found nothing that interested them in his

pockets, but Mr. White glanced toward the raincoat

hanging forgotten on the back of an office chair.

Eric intercepted the glance, as did Connie. “You

won’t find anything there,” muttered the young artist

between his teeth.

Nevertheless the investigating detective slouched

over to the raincoat and picked it up. Mr. Jenkins

watched him as though the whole operation were

distasteful to him, and Mr. White watched with

beady, bright eyes.

Connie, in her turn, was watching the building

superintendent quizzically. Her active mind was

humming, but for once she felt as though she were

caught in a maze from which there was no exit. It

was incredible but true that right in her very grasp

she had the answer for which the detectives were so

diligently searching. She could speak up now, and

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reconstruct, step by step, what must have happened

on the night of the ball and on that tragic Sunday

when the beautiful Tarabochia paintings had been

ripped to pieces, then repackaged carefully and

bound round and round with green twine. She knew,

as she had known from the instant she pulled the

small ball of twine that remained from the desk

drawer, that her theory was right. But she also knew,

with sick apprehension, that it was only a theory.

They would laugh at her, ridicule her, these

cocksure adults, unless she had incontrovertible

proof.

Proof. Proof. Proof.

The word pounded in Connie’s head. Then

through the curdle of her thoughts cut a voice like a

whip lashing.

“I thought you said, Payson, that you didn’t find

any knife!”

Connie’s head jerked around to see the inquisitor

fling to the desk an object taken from the inside

pocket of Eric’s raincoat—a short, blunt-pointed,

seaman’s knife.

168

CHAPTER 15

Connie Takes a Chance

“There. You see.”

The building superintendent was the first to

speak, as the detective at the desk picked up the

weapon and examined it thoughtfully.

“See what?”

The sharp question, from the man in charge, was

unexpected.

“You can’t get the right of the thing,” mumbled

Mr. White. “Payson always was a queer one.”

Connie stiffened. It was insidious, this

undermining of Eric’s character. And the young man

himself looked so baffled and hurt that he was his

own poorest defense.

Mr. Jenkins came forward kindly and put a hand

on Eric’s shoulder. “Look, boy, if you’ve got

something to tell us, wouldn’t it be better to tell us

straight out?”

But Eric jerked away, resentful of such coddling.

Connie, after the first sharp shock of surprise, knew

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that this knife affair was a plant, as the purple paint

had been a plant, but she also knew that Eric was

becoming steadily more confused and therefore

more helpless.

The detective at the desk, meanwhile, was

examining the knife, turning it between two fingers,

one at the blunt point, the other at the handle. He

brought it closer to his eyes, peering at the juncture

of handle and blade, then delicately extracted what

looked to Connie like a long, thin thread.

There was a sheet of school stationery lying on

Mr. White’s desk and he placed the thread on the

white surface, considering it thoughtfully. Then he

motioned to Mr. Jenkins. “Look at this.”

Mr. Jenkins looked, bending low over the desk.

“What,” asked the detective, “does that look like

to you?”

“It could be,” said Mr. Jenkins, “a thread of

canvas, with particles of paint clinging to it.”

The detective said, “It could indeed.” He folded

the white paper over the evidence, enclosing the

thread in a sort of homemade envelope. “Our

laboratory,” he remarked, “can soon tell.”

“Look,” said Eric wearily, “I don’t suppose it

matters, but I haven’t seen that knife for weeks.”

The detective’s eyes were hard, but his voice still

purred. “Can you remember when you used it last?”

Eric frowned in apparent concentration. Connie

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knew that he was really thinking back, but she also

knew that to the detectives it must look as though he

were stalling.

Finally he said, “I remember using it the

afternoon we packed up the Tarabochias, to cut that

rope. Then I thought Roby took it back upstairs. Oh,

I don’t know—”

“Don’t try to implicate Roby Woodward,”

snapped Mr. White in defense of his nephew.

Only someone completely honest, thought

Connie, looking at Eric in sympathetic dismay,

would have said what Eric just did. Couldn’t the

detectives see that?

“I wasn’t trying to implicate Roby!” Eric looked

shocked. “Roby had nothing to do with this—this

affair. I know that.”

The two insurance company men exchanged

glances, and the one standing beside Eric shifted the

gum in his mouth. “Squirrely,” he muttered, offering

his unvarnished opinion of the suspect. Then he

shook his head languidly.

The other detective sat forward in the desk chair,

which creaked lugubriously under him. “Listen,

young man, we’d save a lot of time if you’d just

break down and tell us how and why you did the

job.”

Connie could see Eric’s face stiffen again, and

she knew he would turn sullen and

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uncommunicative under questioning. Unconsciously

she began to wring her hands, which were cold and

clammy. If there were only something she could say,

something she could do!

Once more she considered shocking them all to

attention with her private theory, but once more she

discarded the idea. The circumstantial evidence

against Eric was all too neat. These men would

never credit the story she could tell.

Then, suddenly, a possibility occurred to her.

There was a bare chance, if she could play the part

of an addled schoolgirl convincingly enough.

Connie was never one to delay. Bursting right

into the middle of the detective’s next question, she

childishly stamped her foot.

“Oh, I think you’re all being too silly!” she cried.

“Suppose it is Eric’s knife. Suppose we did find it in

his locker. What of it?” She avoided Eric’s eyes,

which she knew would be full of hurt and puzzled

indignation, and stepped forward to the desk,

literally grabbing the short-bladed knife from the

detective’s hands.

“Look at this thing!” she continued excitedly,

jabbing at the palm of one hand with the blunt point.

“It won’t even cut my skin, let alone canvas. You

haven’t got a case against Eric. This knife simply

couldn’t have done the job!” In disgust she flung the

tool back on the desk.

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Her outburst did just what she had hoped it would

do. The argument gave the investigators pause. They

looked at each other, a question implicit between

them, and the gum-chewing detective stepped

forward and tested the knife, as Connie had, against

his palm.

“Maybe the young lady has something there,” he

offered, raising an eyebrow.

“Of course I have!” Connie almost screamed,

trying to seem quite beside herself with excitement,

although she had never felt more coolheaded and

calculating. She picked up the knife again and made

half a dozen short little strokes in the air. “You can’t

cut a tough piece of canvas to ribbons with a knife

like that! It hasn’t even any point on it.”

The face of the seated investigator puckered and

he sat back in his chair and scratched his head, when

quite unexpectedly Mr. White snatched the knife

from Connie’s outstretched hand.

“That’s not the way the paintings were cut!” he

shouted at her furiously. “You can’t handle a

seaman’s knife like that. Of course not! You’ve got

to bring it down flat and pull.” Illustrating his

contention he made a giant cross in the air, exactly

in the manner the Tarabochia paintings had been

slashed.

Connie started back in a little cry of surprise and

triumph, covering her mouth with the fingers of one

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hand. Her eyes met the building superintendent’s,

and she saw muddled comprehension slowly

replaced by naked fear and rage. He would have

lunged toward her if one of the men hadn’t caught

his arm. But she was beyond physical fear. She

turned to Mr. Jenkins and the detectives and almost

sobbed in her relief.

“You saw that! You saw what he did. He knew

how the paintings were cut—exactly!—and yet he’s

never seen those slashes. The paintings have been

right in Mr. Canfield’s office all the time.”

Mr. White might still have saved himself, if he

had been canny. If reason had supplanted rage in his

twisted brain, he might have stood back and claimed

that he had been told by Connie herself of the

manner in which the canvases were slashed, or by

one of the insurance company men. But he was

beside himself with fury.

“You—you—!” he shrieked through clenched

teeth, hate in every hissing scream. It took both Mr.

Jenkins and one of the detectives to hold him. The

languid detective, Connie noticed, was far from

languid now.

Now Connie knew she could tell her story and get

a fair hearing. She appealed to the group before her

as to a tribunal, and said, clearly and calmly, “Mr.

White is the guilty person. And I can tell you why

and how.”

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“Go ahead.” The detective at the desk was ready

to listen, as were the rest. Only Francis White

snarled and spluttered ineffectually in his captors’

grasp.

Connie drew a deep breath, and hoped that she

could keep her thoughts unconfused, and present her

case against the building superintendent clearly.

There were still a few missing scraps of information

that would have to be checked, but in her own mind

the structure was strong.

“Mr. White,” she said, keeping her voice low and

controlled, “is the younger brother of Miss Charlotte

White, who is one of the trustees of this school. A

long time ago, when he was a young boy, he ran

away from school and went to sea, becoming a sort

of vagabond and disappointing his family very

severely.” She hesitated. “This all may seem beside

the point, but I’ve got to tell the story in my own

way.”

“Go on,” said the detective.

“Some time later, when she was doing social-

service work in the city, Miss Charlotte met Eric

Payson, who was then a little boy in—in an

orphanage.” Connie glanced at Eric, hoping she

hadn’t hurt him by this allusion to his background.

On the contrary, he nodded to her encouragingly.

“Eric and Miss Charlotte became friends. Even

when he was quite young, Miss Charlotte tells me,

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Eric was very artistic and very sensitive. He used to

come to the little house on Queen Street, where she

lives, more and more often as the years went on, and

I believe he began to replace her brother, from

whom little or nothing had been heard, in her

affections.” Connie tried to explain the kinship of

spirit. “You see, Miss Charlotte is very artistic too.

“Now I have to tell you something you don’t

know.” Connie turned to Eric directly. “And I’m

sorry, because in a way it is a breach of confidence.

Some time ago—I don’t know when—Miss

Charlotte made you her heir.”

“Me?” Eric’s ejaculation was full of

astonishment.

Connie nodded. “I think it must have been after

Mr. White turned up again,” she mused, almost to

herself. “He came back a year or so ago, I believe,

having drifted around the world for a good many

years. I can’t imagine that he was a very appealing

character, but still, he was Miss Charlotte’s brother,

and she helped him to get this job.

“Then somehow—and here again I can’t tell you

how—Mr. White discovered that his sister had made

her will in Eric’s favor, and that he’d been wasting a

good deal of time cottoning up to Miss Charlotte in

the hope that he’d get what was left of the family

fortune on her death. He’d been wasting time, that

is, unless he could get her to change that will and

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reinstate him as her heir.”

Connie couldn’t force herself to look at Francis

White during this explanation. It wasn’t because she

felt pity for him. She didn’t. But he seemed to her

contemptible and too low even for scorn.

“The only way to do this was to discredit Eric in

her eyes. If he could make Miss Charlotte feel that

she had made a mistake in placing such high hopes

in Eric—if he could shake her affection for her

protégé—he’d have a chance.”

The detective at the desk nodded briefly. His eyes

were alert and interested, but Connie felt that he

would withhold judgment until he had heard her

through. “Go on.”

“I don’t know how he started,” Connie confessed,

“but I suspect that it was by dropping little

innuendoes, because I know Miss Charlotte has been

concerned about Eric for some time.

“Then, when Mr. White discovered that his sister

would be a patroness on the night of the ball, he

took great pains to set up that nasty practical joke,

with the purple cloak and the mutilation of the

panels.

“It wasn’t a very clever ruse, because it was a ten-

year-old trick, no prank that an art school student

would conceivably have played.”

Mr. Jenkins nodded slowly, and said, “Miss Blair

has a point there. From the beginning, I never could

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quite see one of our students, no matter how vicious,

setting up the thing that way.”

Connie took another deep breath. “It wasn’t very

clever, either, to leave Eric’s panel untouched. It put

him loo obviously under suspicion, don’t you

think?”

Nobody answered, so she went on. “Meanwhile

Mr. White was courting his sister’s favor on the

double-quick. I was at Miss Charlotte’s house on the

day he returned the purple cloak and insinuated

plainly that Eric was irresponsible and probably

quite wild—mentally, I mean.

“Still, Miss Charlotte didn’t seem to be

completely convinced. Even after the purple paint

was discovered in Eric’s locker—it would have been

so easy for Mr. White to put it there!—she couldn’t

quite credit the boy she knew with such a warped

sense of humor.”

Connie sighed, and clasped her hands childishly

in front of her. This wasn’t easy for her, this

reconstruction of an ugly story, particularly with the

culprit in the room.

“Mr. White must have realized this, and it must

have been right then,” she continued in a voice

trembling with horror and disgust, “that he decided

to mutilate the Tarabochia paintings and somehow

pin the deed on Eric. He must have seen that nothing

short of a real crime would shake Miss Charlotte’s

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faith sufficiently to make her change her will.

“From the beginning I felt that Eric was being

framed, but I kept looking for a motive among the

other students. I honestly never suspected Mr. White

until today.”

“But why today?” the detective asked.

“Just this afternoon,” Connie told him, “in Mr.

White’s desk drawer I found the remains of a big

ball of green twine that had bound Adam, our

skeleton.

The detective at the desk leaned forward and a

knowing glance flashed between him and his

associate.

“Go on!” he told Connie. “What has the twine got

to do with the case?”

“Well, you see it’s this way,” Connie tried to

explain. “Adam and I arrived at school together, and

I watched Mr. White unwrap him and put a great big

ball of twine away in his desk drawer.” She

indicated with cupped hands the size of the ball.

The detective muttered, “Uh-huh.”

“When I happened,” continued Connie, “to find

the twine today, there was only a little tiny ball.”

With thumb and forefinger she drew a circle not

much larger than a marble.

“The twine is green, a special shade of green.

Look! I can show you.” Connie rounded the desk

and tugged at one of the drawers, opening it with a

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squeak and taking out the remainder of the twine.

“It was when I saw this that I remembered

something that hadn’t made an impression on me at

the time. When the Tarabochia paintings were

returned to the advertising agency where I work,

they were wrapped round and round with this same

twine.”

She paused, then added slowly, “And it occurred

to me—all of a sudden—that I’d been overlooking

the one person with both motive and opportunity. It

just had to be Mr. White!”

“A very pretty story,” growled the man himself,

“—pretty fantastic.”

“Not so fantastic,” murmured the detective, with

a quirk of one eyebrow. “We’ve been interested in

the twine that bound the Tarabochias.” But then he

picked up the knife and balanced it in his hand,

looking directly at Connie. “How do you explain

this?”

Connie’s eyes were honest and wide. “You’ll

have to believe me when I say it wasn’t in Eric’s

locker when we went through it this afternoon. I

think Eric is telling the truth when he says he hasn’t

seen it since the day they packed the drawings. He

may have given it to Roby, or he may have just left

it lying around. Or Mr. White may have used his

master key and taken it from Eric’s locker. It must

have been his originally—” She turned quickly.

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“Didn’t you give it to Miss Charlotte, Mr. White?”

“What if I did?” The superintendent didn’t look at

Connie. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

Mr. Jenkins put in a remark. “White could—I’m

not saying he did, mind—but he could have put the

knife in young Payson’s pocket this afternoon. He

was up in the locker room a good two minutes

before he called me. If Miss Blair’s theory proves

correct, he may have been waiting for just such an

opportunity.”

“Exactly!” Connie thanked Mr. Jenkins with her

eyes.

The detective’s head was bent over the desk. He

was making what looked to Connie like doodles on

another piece of school stationery, which he had

pulled toward him.

Silently, the little group awaited the verdict,

Connie prayerfully, Mr. White with malice in his

beady eyes.

Finally the man at the desk looked up at Connie

and nodded. “There are some holes to be plugged,”

he said with forthrightness. “I’ll want to talk to Miss

White and to Roby Woodward and possibly to you

again, Miss Blair. But for the moment I’m satisfied.”

He pushed back his chair harshly, reached for his

hat, jerked his head toward Francis White and spoke

to the other detective.

“We’ll take him along.”

181

CHAPTER 16

Reunion in Meadowbrook

Before a crackling fire, in the Blairs’ comfortable

old house in Meadowbrook, Connie and Kit and Eric

sat on the floor, eating buttered English muffins and

drinking hot cocoa in small, tentative sips.

“When we were little, we always used to have

animal crackers with our cocoa, remember?” Kit

asked Connie with a grin.

“Certainly I remember. I always used to save the

lions till the last.”

Eric Payson chuckled. “What did you save, Kit?”

“The lambs. I’m a lot milder than Connie, you

see.”

Connie wrinkled her nose at her twin. “Don’t

believe her, Eric.”

“But I do believe her!” Eric insisted, glancing at

Connie with unconcealed admiration. “I’ve just seen

you in action.”

“I’d have given a good deal to have been there.”

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Kit put down her cup and changed position so that

she could lie on her stomach and stare at the fire.

Eric and Connie had just told her the story of Mr.

White’s apprehension and she was still bemused by

the strange manner in which the puzzle finally had

been solved.

“I feel sorry for Miss Charlotte,” she murmured

after a while. “Imagine having a brother like that—”

Connie, thinking of her own younger brother—

bubbling, irrepressible Toby—nodded with

understanding. “I don’t think I could have told her,

myself. I’m glad that Mr. Jenkins was the one.”

Then she added, “But, Kit, she was marvelous when

she phoned me. She didn’t mind a bit my telling

about the will. And she was so—so joyous about

Eric.” She glanced at the young artist and smiled.

“Miss Charlotte’s a wonderful person,” Eric said

slowly. “You’ve no idea what she’s done for me.

Not in material things, especially. But in just being

there—in letting me come to her house—in

understanding the way I felt about things. You

see”—he paused, and made a sweeping gesture to

indicate the room in which they were sitting—“I

never had a home like this.”

Quick tears of sympathy stung Connie’s eyelids.

“I think,” she told Kit, “that it means more to Miss

Charlotte to have her faith in Eric restored than to

find that her brother is a criminal. You see, she

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always believed in Eric and she never believed in—

him.”

Then, feeling that they were treading on

dangerously sentimental ground, Connie changed

the subject abruptly. “What I can’t get over, Kit, is

that we ever could have suspected Roby Woodward

or Fritz Bachman. Why, I wandered around for

weeks trying to convince myself that either one or

the other was a thoroughly reprehensible character.”

Kit chuckled. “I voted for Roby, remember?”

Connie nodded. “Roby really helped us out,

without realizing it, by telling you about Miss

Charlotte’s will.”

“How did Roby ever find out?” asked Eric.

“Mr. White told him,” replied Connie promptly.

“Roby was telling me just yesterday that he and his

Uncle Francis, through no wish of his, had been

getting quite clubby since quite a while back. He

said that Mr. White just happened to see the will on

Miss Charlotte’s desk one day, and—being Mr.

White—he promptly read it. Then he must have

realized that Roby could make a fine ally. Mr. White

was certainly shrewd enough to realize that there

was no close affection between his nephew and

Eric.”

“I’ve always been sorry that Roby didn’t like

me,” murmured Eric with a frown. “He’s a good

fellow, really, but his dad’s got him all wrong.”

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Connie, who had been lounging against the legs

of a chair, sat up abruptly. “I know. Eric, we ought

to talk to Mr. Woodward about Roby. He doesn’t

belong in art school, and you and I know it. He

belongs in the sales department at the plant.”

Eric grinned at Kit and indicated Connie with a

jerk of his thumb.

“Little Miss Fixit!”

“I don’t care—”

“Connie, you’re right,” said Eric firmly. “I like to

tease you, but you’re right. We’ll go to Mr.

Woodward as a committee of two.”

Connie’s eyes began to sparkle. “Do you mean it,

Eric? You’re a dear!”

“That,” said Kit, staring into the fire, “takes care

of Roby. Now is there any little thing you’d care to

dream up to do for Fritz Bachman, or doesn’t he

come into the picture at all?”

“He doesn’t, really,” Connie confessed, “at least

not so far as our puzzle in purple is concerned. But

I’m worried about Fritz. He’s a strange boy—so

anxious to prove himself different and superior. You

know, he must have rented that tux he wore to the

ball, and then scrimped on food for a couple of

weeks.”

Kit, so thoroughly normal in her reactions that

she couldn’t understand, said, “But why?”

Eric tried to explain, indirectly. “Fritz and I both

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come from—well, rather stern backgrounds. Except

that I’ve been luckier than Fritz, lots luckier. He’s

never had a person in his life like Miss Charlotte or

Mr. Woodward. He’s had to scrap every inch of the

way.”

“And he’s determined to go on scrapping,”

Connie said.

“I know. I think, too, that I know what Fritz needs

more than anything else in the world.”

“What?” asked Connie.

Very gently Eric said, “Friends.”

Connie dropped her eyes, ashamed that she had

not been as discerning as Eric. Then she looked up

and faced the grave young man squarely.

“I think you’re right,” she said. “Shall we work

on that, too?”

Eric held out his hand and smiled at her. “Shake!”

Kit rolled over and sat up. “Now that you’ve got

your lives planned for the next few months, would

you like some more cocoa? There’s some on the

stove.”

“I would,” said a voice from the door, and Mrs.

Blair, snow spangling her hat and coat, came into

the room. “I’d like some, I mean.”

Eric scrambled to his feet hastily, and the older

woman came over and gave him her hand. “I don’t

have to be introduced,” she said with the warm

hospitality that made her so attractive. “You’re Eric.

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Connie has written me reams about you.”

Connie blushed. “Oh, Mother!” But Eric seemed

pleased.

“It was awfully good of you to let me come for

the week end,” he said to Mrs. Blair.

“We wanted you!”

Connie went over and kissed her mother. “And

we needed a Meadowbrook week end.” She looked

into the hall from which Mrs. Blair had entered the

room. “Where’s Dad?”

“I couldn’t pry him away from the store,” the

twins’ mother said, sighing and smiling

simultaneously.

“Saturday afternoons are his time, you know,” Kit

explained, picking up the old Minton china cocoa

pot that Connie remembered from childhood. “When

the doctor said he could go downtown one afternoon

a week he chose Saturdays, because that’s when all

his cronies drop in.”

“You’ll have to see Blair’s Hardware Store. It’s

quite a place,” Connie told Eric.

Kit chuckled. “Advertising by Blair and Blair.”

“I want to see the store.” Eric turned to Kit.

“Connie tells me you’ve done a marvelous job,

taking over during your father’s illness.”

“I love the business,” Kit confessed. “But I

haven’t been running the show singlehandedly.

Connie’s been my window-display designer. And if

187

you don’t think she’s good, you should see our sales

records.”

“Bragging,” Connie teased. “Always bragging.”

But she was pleased nevertheless.

Mrs. Blair had let Eric take her coat to the hall

and was seated in a barrel-backed chair near the

hearth, toasting her hands and feet. She smiled up at

the young people warmly, and put in a word after

Kit had gone out to the kitchen.

“Maybe you and Eric can dream up some ideas

for spring windows,” she said to Connie. “February

is almost over, and I know Kit has been a little at a

loss—”

Connie bit her lip contritely. “I’ve been letting

her down!” she realized. “With all the excitement in

town—” Then her eyes grew dreamy and she said,

“Spring. Wheelbarrows and garden tools and seed

packets.”

“And fertilizer and mole traps and chicken wire,”

chanted her mother out of long experience.

Eric laughed. “Let’s make it an amusing

window,” he suggested. “Gay and foolish.”

“Like a spring lamb,” Connie crooned. “We

might have lambs for a background. Cut out of

cardboard and painted. Gamboling on the green, sort

of.”

Kit, coming back to the living room in time to

hear the last remarks, cried, “Hey! We’re running a

188

hardware business, not a stock farm.”

But Connie was oblivious to her sister’s protest.

“Let’s do it now, Eric. This week end! We can get it

all ready for Kit before we leave. Because you

know,” she continued with a change of tone, “after

we get back to town we’re not going to have a

minute. You’ll be working on your drawing for the

Fairchild prize, and I—”

What Connie was most concerned with in her full

life she didn’t at that moment say, because Toby and

Ruggles came bursting into the room, both spraying

snow over the rug with blithe disregard for the

amenities. Both the boy and the dog had to be

introduced to Eric, who greeted them cordially, then

came back to the subject they had interrupted.

“You know,” he said to Connie, “I’ve been

thinking that I’d give up my idea of doing a factory

scene for the competition. I’ve got another idea.”

Connie was immediately interested. “What is it?”

Eric’s gray eyes were wide and alight with a

special dream. “I’d like to do a portrait of Miss

Charlotte. Not a conventional portrait of a lady

seated in a chair, but a picture of her in the gray coat

with the little squirrel muff, coming briskly up to the

steps of her house in Queen Street.”

Eric rubbed his hands gently together in

anticipation, and Connie noticed again how square

and workmanlike were the fingers. Stubby, artistic

189

hands.

“That faded pink brick for a background,” the

young artist continued, now talking almost to

himself. “And the black iron railing, with the brass

finials, the polished knocker, the white marble

steps.”

Connie could see the picture—Miss Charlotte as

she should be painted, active and busy, part and

parcel of old Philadelphia and yet, contradictorily,

young in spirit.

“Oh, Eric, do it!” she cried.

Then she turned to her mother. “You must meet

Miss Charlotte,” she told her. “I’ll ask to bring you

co call someday. She’s like something out of a

period movie, and yet she’s the sweetest, brightest

little lady—”

Toby, with the complete oblivion of boyhood to

the importance of adult conversation, cut in, “Say,

Connie, did you know Mom’s a Cub mother?”

“A what?” Connie shrieked with laughter.

“A Cub mother. That’s important. For our Scout

troop. It’s quite a job.”

“It is quite a job,” admitted Mrs. Blair. “And right

now it seems to involve baking a batch of cookies.

So if you young people will excuse me—”

“We have to go down to the store, anyway,”

Connie remembered. “And when we come back

we’ll bring Dad with us.”

190

“Fine!”

“Come on, Eric!” Connie urged happily. “Come

on, Kit.” She pulled her twin to her feet with both

hands, smiling. “Just think!” she cried. “Someday

we’ll be able to say that the internationally famous

artist, Eric Payson, once designed and painted a

window for Blair’s Hardware Store.”

Eric took Connie by the shoulders and gave her a

playful shake, but when she turned and looked up

into his eyes she knew that he enjoyed the

affectionate teasing. And she also knew that there

was more truth than fiction in what she had just said.

Someday they would all be very proud of Eric.

Someday he would be truly great.