CHAPTER XI

On the Train

“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 who were still there in the cast. Some had already left, but those who remained could tell them nothing.

“She fainted before,” Judy remembered.

Irene heard, for the first time, how Clarissa had looked into a mirror and seen no reflection. “And then,” Flo went on telling her, “something went wrong with that closed circuit TV set where we were supposed to see our pictures, and she didn’t show. That was when she fainted. We took her to the first aid room and then went back and finished our tour. The TV set was all right. All the rest of us showed. We forgot to ask the guide if she knew what went wrong with it. Clarissa wouldn’t go back there. She was afraid.”

“Of what?” asked Irene.

“That she wasn’t real, I guess. I’m beginning to be afraid of it myself,” Flo admitted. “The doorman said nobody left the show early, and nobody left by the stage entrance except a few people who were in the cast.”

“Francine Dow was one of them, wasn’t she? What about her aunt?” asked Judy. “You said she left with her.”

“That’s right. I forgot about her,” Irene admitted. “She left by the stage entrance, too. I know what you’re thinking, Judy, but she was an old lady. Well, anyway, middle-aged. She was a plump, motherly looking woman with gray hair. I noticed her earlier in the studio audience.”

“When Clarissa was still there?”

“Yes, it was before the show went on the air. I guess Francine had planned to meet her aunt afterwards and go home with her. They probably left in a hurry because Francine wasn’t feeling well and wanted to avoid meeting people. I heard her aunt say something about a week end in the country. We could find out where they went and question them, I suppose, but I’m sure it wouldn’t do any good.”

“It might,” Judy said hopefully. “They might have seen Clarissa.”

“I doubt it,” Pauline replied. “If she deliberately ran off with the money we lent her, she would have made sure she wasn’t seen. Obviously, that’s what happened.”

It did seem obvious.

“We never should have trusted her in the first place,” Pauline went on. “That story she told must have been part of her plan to trick us and make us sorry for her. It isn’t possible for a girl to look in a mirror and see no reflection. Things like that only happen in ghost stories.”

“This is a ghost story,” Flo said in an awed tone, “only it’s happening to us. Maybe she wasn’t real. She didn’t show—”

Pauline turned to her friend. “Flo, you aren’t going to believe—?” she began.

But Irene cut in, “In phantoms? Of course she isn’t. What’s your theory, Judy? You always come up with something.”

“I will,” Judy promised. “Just give me time. It would help if we knew exactly when she disappeared.”

“Wasn’t it just about the time that misty haze covered the set?” Flo questioned. “What was it, anyway, some new kind of vapor to make people vanish?” she asked nervously.

“It was only steam,” Irene reassured her. “I couldn’t see what was going on backstage from where I was standing, but I had a good view of that steam kettle. There was nothing unnatural about it.”

“No?” Flo sounded dubious. “Maybe not, but there was something strange about Clarissa. Vanishing like that—it’s utterly fantastic!”

“I have a few fantastic theories of my own,” Judy admitted. “If she’d had time to use that golden hair wash—”

“What do you think’s in it? Vanishing cream?” Pauline was laughing. Her theory was really the only sensible one, Judy decided. She was eager to talk it over with Peter. He knew so much more about the workings of the criminal mind than she did. There were patterns of behavior. Would Clarissa’s behavior fit one of them? Somehow Judy doubted it.

“I suppose we shouldn’t have trusted her,” she said at last. “Her innocent appearance didn’t fool the cashier in the restaurant. But I’m not sorry if it fooled us. Peter might not agree with me, but I believe in trusting people. Clarissa may be involved in some sort of confidence game. And yet, somehow, I believe she is a friend. I mean a real one.”

“You’re a real friend to her, Judy.” Irene shook her head. “It’s beyond me. I suppose she’ll go home, wherever her home is, and we’ll never see her again. It was an experience, anyway.”

Judy found she couldn’t dismiss it that lightly. Too many experiences had crowded in to make her vacation in New York not at all what she had anticipated. First there had been her discovery that Tower House was no longer standing. It appeared to have vanished but, in reality, it had only been torn down to make room for a new apartment building. Irene and Dale were now living in a more modern house farther out on Long Island.

Weird things had happened in Tower House as they had in Judy’s own home both before and after her marriage to Peter Dobbs. She would never forget the time she saw the transparent figure floating about in her garden. Blackberry, her cat, had provided the clue to that mystery as well as to the latest one she and Peter had solved. Always there had been a solution. The only real ghosts, Judy had discovered, were such things as suspicion and fear. Some fear could be haunting Clarissa.

“She must be somewhere,” Judy said as they left the theater. They took a taxi, not without misgivings.

“Don’t ask the driver to hurry,” Flo warned them. “The streets are still slippery. Remember what happened to the woman with the red hair.”

“Like mine,” Judy recalled thoughtfully, “only not as natural looking. We don’t know what happened to her. I’d like to meet her and ask her a few questions. I wonder if she has regained consciousness.”

“I’ll call the hospital tomorrow and find out,” Pauline promised. “Drop me off first, please,” she told the driver. “Then the others want to drive on to Penn Station.”

“That’s where we take the Long Island Railroad,” Irene explained. “Flo goes home by train, too, but on a different line.”

Judy found the railroad station confusing. People were hurrying this way and that. There was an upper level and a lower level and ever so many turns before they reached a crowded section of the station where Flo bade them good-by and left them to join another line of people. It seemed to Judy that half the city must be commuting to Long Island by train.

“I like to watch all the different faces, don’t you?” she whispered to Irene. “Clarissa could be in this crowd—”

Presently a man in uniform opened a gate, and the crowd surged through. Judy and Irene found seats on the train, but not together. A man, concealed by his open newspaper, occupied the place next to the window. All the seats were soon filled, and the train started on its way. Irene, who was sitting just behind Judy, tapped her shoulder.

“We can’t talk much. The train is making too much noise,” she said above the creaks and rattles.

“That’s all right. I’m a little tired, anyway,” Judy confessed. “It’s been a long day.”

“Why don’t you lean back and close your eyes?” Irene suggested. “I will, too. It’s an hour’s ride—” A yawn came, interrupting the sentence.

“I won’t sleep,” Judy told herself when she saw that Irene was resting. “I’ll have to keep my eyes open to watch for our station.”

The conductor, she discovered a little later, was calling the stations. She roused herself to listen, dozing between stops. But it was only her conscious mind that slept. The thoughts she could control were at rest, but other thoughts came unbidden. _My hair is dull. My hair is drab._ But those were Clarissa’s thoughts! They rushed on with the train. _Dull! Drab! Dull! Drab!_—faster and faster.

As the unwanted thoughts pounded in Judy’s head the train swayed, first this way and then that way. A frail old lady making her way down the aisle changed suddenly to a young girl with golden hair. Judy stared at her. Then she looked at the girl sitting beside her and saw that she, too, had golden hair. Her face was blank like the face of a department-store dummy. _It was a man before! He had been reading a newspaper!_ How had the strange transformation taken place? Had it happened this way to Clarissa?

Behind Judy sat another girl with a blank face and golden hair. Another one was in front and still another across the aisle. The train, moving backwards now, seemed full of golden-haired girls with identical faces. Judy’s thoughts, too, were moving in a reverse direction. Now she was at the station backing through the gates. All the golden-haired people surged forward, pressing closer and closer until she could scarcely breathe. She tried to call to them in protest. At last, as if from a great distance, she heard her own voice whispering Irene’s name. She tried desperately to speak louder and presently the cry came.

“Irene!”

With that she swayed and would have fallen sideways if the man with the newspaper hadn’t caught her. Irene was at her side. Unaccountably, they were back in the train.

“How—where—what?” Judy stammered. She was awake now, but the feeling that a crowd of golden-haired people were suffocating her still lingered.

“What happened? Where are we?” she managed to ask.