“So that’s the secret you two have been keeping!” several of Judy’s friends exclaimed.
“I can’t believe it!” cried Helen. “That used to be a storeroom. There was an outside door then—”
“They walled it in and stuffed the loot from dozens of robberies between the wall and the door. It was concealed from the inside, too, but not quite well enough. The only entrance they left clear was the one under the cupids. If they hadn’t dropped one of their stolen diamonds by accident on the way in, we might have given up the search. Judy found it,” Peter finished proudly.
“I pretended it was a frozen tear. Can you guess why, Helen?” asked Judy. “Were you there, the day, years ago, when I came with my grandparents?”
“I remember,” Helen Brandt replied. She was a little vague about it, but soon her explanation of the unsolved mystery began to make sense. “Your grandmother said she’d found you crying over the picture of our fountain,” she told Judy. “The picture appeared once in a magazine with an article about gardens. I guess your grandmother had the magazine. You know it’s an old fountain, don’t you? It’s been there ever since my mother can remember.”
“Tell us about the rooms under it. I’d like to see them,” declared Honey.
“They were built underground so we could have heat down there in the winter to keep the pipes from freezing. The caretaker we had before Stanley used to live down there and take care of the pipes. He suggested making the other room into a playroom for me,” Helen continued, “but he died before it was finished. I used to pretend things about his ghost.”
Judy shivered. “I didn’t need to pretend things. The moans we heard were real.”
“It was Dick Hartwell,” Lois whispered. “They had him locked up in one of those rooms.”
“What was in the other one?”