CHAPTER I

The Empty Chair

“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 inside now, Judy? It’s really too cold to enjoy ice skating.”

“It _is_ cold,” Judy agreed. “What a difference from the way it was in the summer! They had chairs out here then, and there were flowered umbrellas over the tables. But with the big Christmas tree up, Radio City is still beautiful in spite of the cold. Don’t you wish—”

Judy did not finish the sentence.

“What’s the matter with you two?” Pauline Faulkner demanded as she stopped short, almost colliding with Judy and Irene. “You can’t just stop skating and gaze at the sights. Other people will bump into you. There, I knew it!”

“Watch it!” someone called out just too late.

Florence Garner, the fourth member of the skating party, turned sharply on her skates and went sprawling. But she was soon picking herself up.

“Are you hurt, Flo?” Irene asked solicitously.

“We’re sorry,” Judy added. “We didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m upset in more ways than one,” Florence replied as the four girls skated off the ice. “Nothing is turning out the way I planned it. Pauline said—”

“Never mind what I said,” Judy’s dark-haired friend interrupted. “We’ll discuss it at lunch.”

Ten minutes later the rented skates had been returned, and the four girls were sitting around a table in a nearby restaurant. The waiter served steaming hot soup.

“This will warm us up,” Irene commented over her soup plate. “Remember, Judy, I promised you we’d skate by the golden statue the next time you came to New York, and now we’ve done it.”

“It was fun, but watching your television show will be the real treat,” Judy told her. “When do you have to be at the studio for rehearsal?”

“Not until two. There’s lots of time.” Irene looked at the girl she had first known as Judy Bolton. She herself had been Irene Lang then, a timid little mill worker with a secret ambition to become a singer. Now, although her ambition had been realized and she was also a happy young wife and mother, she still looked to Judy for advice.

“I have a big decision to make,” Irene confessed. “If you were in my place, Judy, you’d know what to do. I don’t want your little namesake to think of her mommy as one of the ‘naughty’ people on television. That’s what she calls the people who do the commercials. We even have a little song we sing about it. Dale and I made it up to amuse little Judy. Of course, I’d never dare use it on my show,” Irene added with a laugh. “The sponsor would never get over it.”

“Sing it, Irene,” Judy urged her.

“Right here?” The Golden Girl of TV and radio looked about the restaurant as if she had been asked to commit a crime. “I couldn’t!”

“You could if you sang it very softly. Come on, I’d like to hear it, too,” Pauline urged.

“Oh, very well,” Irene gave in. “We call it ‘_When I Grow Up_,’ and it goes like this:

“_When I grow up I’ll be a teacher or a hostess on a plane, Or perhaps I’ll be the weather girl and know about the rain. I might sing and play like Mommy on TV or radio, But I wouldn’t do commercials, No, I wouldn’t do commercials, No, I_ wouldn’t _do commercials and interrupt the show_.”

“I don’t like them much either,” agreed Judy after the song was over and she had stopped laughing. “Especially when you see the same thing over and over. It makes a person wonder—”

“Wonder what?” asked Pauline.

Irene laughed. “Judy is always wondering about something,” she explained to Florence Garner. “Her husband, Peter Dobbs, calls her his wonder girl. Peter is—” She paused. “Shall I tell her, Judy?”

“She’ll find out anyway. He’s an FBI agent. It isn’t something you can keep from your friends. Of course,” Judy added, “there are times when it’s better if people don’t know.”

“Criminals, you mean?”

“I mean anybody. Right now Peter is away on an assignment. I don’t even know where he is. But let’s talk about you, Flo,” Judy suggested to change the subject. “Is it all right if I call you by your first name?”

“Of course. I know we just met today, but I feel as if I’d known you always,” the brown-haired girl returned warmly. “Pauline has told me so much about you. I work for an advertising agency on Madison Avenue not far from the office where Emily Grimshaw holds forth.”

Judy laughed. Pauline’s employer was a literary agent who peddled the works of busy authors like Irene’s husband, the detective story writer, Dale Meredith.

“She knows how to get contracts from publishers. Getting advertising accounts isn’t easy, either,” Florence continued. “I’m afraid a good many people share Irene’s feelings about commercials and with reason. You should hear those ad men when they’re in conference.”

“I’ve read about them,” declared Judy. “Is it true that advertising agencies employ psychologists to probe into people’s minds and find out how to make them buy certain products?”

“Of course it’s true.” Pauline, the daughter of a psychiatrist, was indignant about it and said so.

“I don’t see any harm in that,” Flo said defensively. “They push the items they’re paid to put across. Take the golden hair wash people, for instance. It was pure inspiration when they thought of Irene to sponsor their product. Golden Girl—golden hair wash! Can’t you just see it on the TV screen? Their hair wash will sell like crazy—”

“And every girl will be a golden girl. I just can’t agree to it,” Irene interrupted. “I’d have to say I use the stuff when I don’t. My hair is naturally this color.”

“Mine is naturally this color, too. So help me!” put in Judy. “I dyed it once to disguise myself, but never again! Anyway, Peter likes redheads.”

Pauline, a blue-eyed, black-haired beauty, seemed to be studying the others at the table. Each girl had her own distinctive coloring. Irene, with her naturally golden blond hair, wore it in a short bob. “To keep little Judy from pulling it when we romp,” she said.

Judy wore her curly auburn hair in a long bob, while Florence Garner had her brown hair pinned high on her head. It, too, was curly and would have hung in ringlets if she had let it loose.

A fifth chair at the table was vacant. But Judy, suddenly a little homesick, could imagine Peter’s sister sitting there to complete the picture.

“Honey’s hair is darker than yours, Irene,” she spoke up unexpectedly. “I call it honey colored. I hope she never uses that golden hair wash to change it. Honey simply wouldn’t be Honey without her lovely honey-colored hair.”

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Pauline quoted airily. “Honey’s hair is actually just plain dark blond.”

“Our advertising will be directed toward dark blonds. Naturally they want their hair to be golden. Who is Honey, anyway?” asked Flo. “You keep looking at that empty chair as if she were sitting at the table with us.”

“She is—in spirit.” This was Irene. Judy laughed and added, “Honey is Peter’s sister. We all love her, especially my brother, Horace. He’s a newspaper reporter, and she’s supplied him with plenty of news. There was a time when we didn’t know she existed—”

“No wonder!” exclaimed Flo, laughing. “She’s invisible now.”

“Judy is trying to tell you about one of the mysteries she solved,” Pauline explained, “but it’s no use, Judy. There have been so many. Phantoms just follow you around waiting for you to pull off their sheets and show them up for what they are.”

“And what are they?” asked Florence.

“Illusions, usually.” Judy found the word a little difficult to define. “People think they see things that are really something quite different. Or else they’re imaginary—”

“Like our phantom friend in the chair,” Irene interrupted with a laugh. “Shall we ask the waiter to bring an extra order—”

“Are you expecting someone else to join you for lunch?” the waiter paused at the table to ask.

He had overheard only part of the conversation. Judy could hardly stop herself from laughing. She was about to tell him it was only a joke when a commotion at the cashier’s desk drew her attention.

“I gave you a twenty-dollar bill,” a tall girl with a country twang in her voice was insisting. “I know it was a twenty. But you’ve given me change for only a dollar. Where’s the other nineteen dollars?”