As Lois swerved to avoid the oncoming car, Lorraine ducked her head. She kept herself hidden behind Judy until the car had passed. The man driving it was a stranger to Judy, but she would remember his hypnotic, dark eyes and swarthy complexion for a long time. The soft brown hat he was wearing covered most of his hair.
“What’s the matter with you two?” asked Lois when the car had passed. “Aren’t you a little old for playing hide and seek?”
“I wasn’t—playing. Let’s not go up there,” Lorraine begged. “I don’t think the Brandts live there any more.”
“Maybe not, but we can pretend we think they do, can’t we?” Judy replied a little uncertainly.
She was beginning to suspect that Lorraine knew more about the Brandt estate than she was telling.
Lois kept on driving along the narrow, gravelly road. Soon there were more evergreens and a hedge of rhododendrons to be seen. They looked very green next to the leafless trees in the woods beyond. The sky was gray with white clouds being driven across it by the wind.
“There’s the tower!” Lorraine exclaimed. “I can see it over to the left. It looks like something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, doesn’t it?”
“It looks grim all right,” agreed Judy. “I wonder what it is.”
“I suppose it’s nothing but an old water tower. It would be fun to explore it, though,” Lois said. “But if there are new people living here they’ll never give us permission.”
“We might explore it without permission,” Judy suggested daringly. “Come on!” she urged her friends as Lois parked the car in a cleared place beside the road. “Who’s going to stop us? And who wants to explore a gloomy old tower, anyway? Let’s look for the fountain.”