CHAPTER XIII

Too Many Clues

“What are you going to do with this?” asked Horace as he brought in the tourist sign.

“Maybe you ought to hide it,” laughed Honey, taking it from him and standing it behind the kitchen door.

Usually the door into the combined kitchen and dining room was left open. It swung against the living-room wall. From within the kitchen came the odor of something cooking.

“Peter has given me up for lost and is cooking his own supper,” Judy exclaimed. “Come in, Helen. Mrs. Riker, I want you to meet my husband, Peter Dobbs.”

Peter looked more like a coal miner than a G-man as he turned from the stove to regard the group in the doorway. A boyish grin spread slowly over his face.

“I’m happy to know you,” he said. “If I had been warned that Judy was bringing company home I would have dressed for the occasion and prepared something more elaborate than canned soup. You’ll have to excuse my appearance,” he added after a quick introduction to the children, “but fighting forest fires is dirty work.”

“Forest fires!” exclaimed Judy.

“Are you a forest ranger?” Paul wanted to know. “Did you help put out the fire that burned Uncle Paul’s house down?”

“I’m afraid I was too late for that,” replied Peter, “but I did volunteer to help the chief deputy and his forest rangers. They had to keep the forest fire from spreading. The control of forest fires,” he continued, “is everybody’s business. Even boys and girls can help by reporting any brush fires they see.”

“We didn’t see the fire. We just saw the Destroyer,” Paul said.

“Paul means the statue on his uncle’s tomb,” Judy put in quickly. “I recognized it and told him what it was.”

“You recognized it? Were you there?”

Peter had abandoned his soup-making to listen.

“We all were,” Honey answered. “Mrs. Riker was on the way to visit her uncle—”

“He is my husband’s uncle, not mine,” Helen Riker pointed out. “That makes him the children’s great-uncle.”

Judy laughed. “Little Paul ran up to the vault and knocked, and he thinks he heard someone say ‘Go away!’ And, honestly, Peter, there was no one inside. We looked, and it was empty.”

“The voice must have been carried from somewhere,” Horace concluded. “It could have been a trick of the wind, like the talking tree.”

“Is that what you think it was?” asked Judy. “I don’t see how a trick of the wind could make a tree talk, do you, Peter?”

“If the trees I saw today could have talked,” he replied, “they would have all screamed, ‘Save us!’ We did our best, but it was the rain that finally put the fire out, after the wind changed.”

“That was just about the time those men stopped here, wasn’t it, Judy?” asked Honey.

“What men?” asked Peter. “I still don’t get it.”

“No wonder,” Judy told him. “We took the sign down and hid it behind the door. Here it is,” she added, dragging it out. “You might call it Exhibit A. Isn’t it a beauty? Honey lettered it herself.”

“Tourists Welcome,” he read aloud, the puzzled frown on his forehead deepening. “What was the idea?” he questioned. “Are we suddenly in the tourist business?”

“I’m afraid we were,” Judy admitted, “and we’re also deep in another mystery.”

Eagerly the children began telling him about it, but their mother stopped their chatter by offering them some of the soup Judy was dishing out, and telling them to keep quiet while they ate it.

“Don’t dish out any for us, Judy,” Horace told her. “I promised Honey I’d take her out to dinner, and I mean to keep my word if all the restaurants aren’t closed—”

“We’ll be back if they are. ‘Bye, all!” Honey said as she followed him out into the snow.

The ground was covered now. What a day it had been! First the dry weather with forest fires raging, then rain, and now snow!

“It’s just too much for me,” sighed Judy.

Peter had had a word privately with Horace before he left. Afterwards Judy brought out what she called Exhibit B—the empty pocketbook. Peter whistled in surprise when he saw it. But Mrs. Riker seemed unwilling to talk about it. She soon pleaded a headache and asked that she and the children be shown to their rooms.

Judy made them as comfortable as she could in the two spare bedrooms and then returned to the kitchen to prepare a little more supper for Peter. She gave him the kiss she had been saving for him and said, “I thought you might like to follow the soup course with another one of meat and potatoes. I’ll have them on your plate in a jiffy.”

“What about your own plate?” he asked.

“I’m not hungry,” she admitted. “I had enough to eat with Mrs. Riker and the children. For once we have a mystery with too many clues and I’d rather sort them out in my mind and talk. Peter,” she asked abruptly, “did you ever hear of a green dolly?”

He looked puzzled. “A green dollar? Who hasn’t? They’re all green except the silver and gold ones.”

“I didn’t say _dollar_. I said _dolly_. You know, one of those things that children play with.” She spelled it, “D-o-l-l,” and Peter laughed.

“Turn off the advertising, Angel. I get it. Are you speaking of a talking doll?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Penny asked me to help her find a green doll she said her mother had in the pocketbook that was stolen from her. But Helen Riker won’t tell me. She said there was nothing of any consequence in her pocketbook, but there was certainly something worth stealing. Those men must have been looking for her when they stopped here. I took the license number of their car.”

“Good girl,” approved Peter. “I knew you would. Now, if you can describe them—”

Judy described them in detail, answering a few more questions Peter asked her about them.

“They stopped short in front of Helen Riker and crowded her car into the ditch. Then the men jumped out and questioned her about her uncle’s jade collection at the point of a gun. She told me that much. But she won’t admit she had anything of value in the pocketbook they drove off with. What do you think was in it, Peter? Why do I get mixed up in such fantastic adventures?”

“Perhaps,” he replied mysteriously, “it’s because you’re married to me. I’m on the trail of a green doll myself. In fact, quite a number of them. These clues you speak of may be just the ones I need.”

“Peter! Really? Then maybe I _can_ help you. Take a look at Exhibit C!” And Judy drew the tiny green jade figure from her pocket and laid it down before him.