“So I told her it was for Aunt Freda, and she gasped:
“‘What! All that?’”
The boys got the thing they wanted soldered completed about this time, and Bob ran down the back way with the fire-pot. The rain began to lift. As Nell cheerfully said, a patch of blue sky 168 soon appeared in the west big enough to make a Scotchman a kilt, so they could be sure that it would clear.
Jessie and Amy walked home after seeing the Stanley boys’ radio set completed. Their minds then naturally reverted to the adventures of the morning and what they had heard so mysteriously out of the ether the evening before. Jessie had warned her chum to say nothing to anybody about the mysterious prisoner and the stock farm over by Harrimay or of their suspicions until she had talked again with Mr. Norwood.
Momsy came home that afternoon from Aunt Ann’s, but Mr. Norwood did not appear. The Court was sitting, and he had several cases which needed his entire attention. He often remained away from home several days in succession at such times.
“And one of the most important cases is that one he told us about,” Momsy explained. “He is greatly worried about that. If he cannot find that girl who lived with Mrs. Poole––”
“Oh, Momsy!” exclaimed Jessie, “let us find Daddy and tell him about what Amy and I heard over the radio. I believe we learned something about Bertha Blair, only we could not find her this morning.”
She proceeded to explain the adventure which included the automobile trip to Harrimay and 169 the Gandy farm. Momsy became excited. It did not really seem to her to be so; but she agreed that Daddy Norwood ought to hear about it.
When they tried to get him on the long distance telephone, however, the Court had closed for the day and so had the Norwood law office. He was not at his club, and Momsy did not know at which hotel he was to spend the night. There really seemed to be nothing more Jessie could do about the lost witness. And yet she feared that this delay in getting her father’s attention would be irreparable.