The Phantom Friend A Judy Bolton Mystery

“I guess we’ll just have to go home and forget Clarissa,” Pauline said finally after they had searched the whole theater and questioned everybody—technicians as well as actors w...

She was worried about something. Judy could see that. She took the seat Pauline was saving for her. Flo was already seated next to Pauline with Clarissa occupying the chair next...

About a dozen people were waiting at the top of a short flight of stairs. Some of them were watching TV as they waited. Judy and her friends joined them. The set had been tuned...

“Isn’t that the girl who was sitting alone at the next table?” asked Judy. “I noticed her watching you and smiling when you were singing that song, Irene. She seemed to be enjoy...

“Don’t worry about a thing,” she had said when they parted on Sunday. But the words had meant very little. In church, in the restaurant, in front of the bullet-riddled door, on...

Judy wanted to tell the nurse that this was an extreme emergency. But was it? A girl had vanished. Still the fact remained that she might have slipped out of the theater on purp...

She had never seen anything like it before. The picture on the television screen seemed to be closing in on all sides. Instead of Clarissa’s face, an eerie, wavering light dance...

“We’re supposed to be finding out things on this tour,” complained Judy as they stopped to look in on another studio, “but I keep thinking about my hair. I’m like you, Clarissa....

“Come _on_!” Irene interrupted, pulling Judy to her feet just as the train lurched to a stop. People began to get off. Judy saw now that they were all kinds of people—men, women...

The silence that followed Mr. Blake’s announcement was like the moment after lightning strikes, when a clap of thunder is expected. It would come with the whole explanation. But...

“I’ve had enough,” exclaimed Irene Meredith, ducking to protect her face from a biting wind that was blowing across the skating area at Radio City. “Wouldn’t you like to go insi...

The area between the first row of seats and the Golden Girl set was filled with a complicated maze of technical equipment. Judy nearly tripped over a trailing cable on the way t...

“That’s funny. It was forwarded to me from the studio,” Irene said, turning it over in her hand. “My show is on a local channel. I don’t have any fans in Roulsville.”

“It’s like mine,” Honey said. “You sounded so strange over the telephone, Judy, when you asked me not to change the color of my hair. Why were you so afraid?”

Judy knew a moment of panic. When she tried to describe Clarissa all she could remember was her hair. She called it honey colored while Pauline and Flo described it as dark blond.

Judy’s list, when she finally had it completed, was as long as Santa’s list of good boys and girls. That was what she told Peter when she presented it to him.

“Judy, are you well?” Honey’s voice held a note of deep anxiety. She was calling all the way from Farringdon, Judy knew. Judy hadn’t meant to worry her. But how could she explai...

“So these are our suspects?” Judy looked about at the array of machinery in the area just in front of the studio floor. It was the next day. She had come with Irene to rehearsal...

“What next?” asked Judy. Things were happening so fast she could scarcely keep track of them. “I thought you said—talking pillows—before all the excitement began. Oh, Peter, I w...

Just outside the door to Peter’s room, Judy paused, trying to think. Serious trouble! What did Peter mean? Had the man, Lawson, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, discovered his wher...

“Isn’t it spooky?” Pauline whispered, breaking the spell that was upon Judy. The theater was so dark she couldn’t see her friend, but she could hear her voice. She was about to...

“Take it,” she urged the surprised girl. “I don’t know why I bought it in the first place. Irene doesn’t need it. I’m sure she’d never use it. She’d probably think I was out of...

With Judy still at the wheel, the Beetle crawled down the last hill and into the valley that held the small city of Farringdon. They stopped at Dr. Bolton’s house on Grove Stree...

“I did,” she confessed. “I found his name on the back of the church calendar, and Pauline told me where he lived. He was gone, of course. The people in the church don’t know the...

“Not yet. Perhaps there never will be. Peter says she could have slipped out of the theater with no intention of coming back. He’s in the hospital, Flo. I’m so upset!”

“Judy!” The exclamation came from Pauline, very suddenly as if she had just thought of something. “I know what we ought to do. We ought to visit Mr. Lawson. If he really is the...