Assuming the manner of a disinterested clerk, she replied, “Miss Grimshaw is away. She left me in charge. What can I do for you?”
“Plenty,” he cried. An angry flush spread over his face. “You can tell me for one thing what happened to my sister’s poetry. The publishers say that they have never seen it.”
Judy pretended surprise. She rose and stood beside the man, her back against the door.
“There must have been some mistake,” she went on. “You can search Miss Grimshaw’s desk yourself and see if the poems are there.”
“Thanks! I will.”
He made a dive for the desk and began turning over papers recklessly, his hawk eyes searching every one.
Judy, with her back still against the door, turned the key in the lock, slowly, cautiously, so that he would not hear. Now she had him imprisoned in the room. He could not escape. But neither could she! For a moment she felt completely at his mercy.
“The poems aren’t here,” he announced in a voice that boded no good for Judy.
Quickly, then, she planned her course of action. She breathed a silent prayer that she might not fail. Aloud she said, “I’ll call Emily Grimshaw and ask her what happened to the manuscripts.”
He muttered something about making it snappy and Judy walked over to the telephone. She began dialing a number. But it was not Emily Grimshaw’s number. It was the number Peter Dobbs had given her!