“There! That’s my detective. Irene is the heroine. She has the original manuscript reading it now. Our whole future depends on what she thinks of the ending.”
“Really, Dale? Is it as serious as that?”
“It was serious enough for me to invest in this. Do you think she’ll like it?”
He took from his pocket a tiny square box. Opening it, he displayed a ring that would, had Judy known it, play an important part in another mystery that she was to solve. It was a beautiful thing. Beautiful chiefly because it was so simple, just a solitaire set in a gold band and decorated with almost invisible orange blossoms.
“I even had it engraved,” he said and then blushed, a thing Judy had never known Dale Meredith to do before.
“I don’t know why I’m showing it to you girls,” he said. “Perhaps I shouldn’t. She might rather show it herself.”
Snapping shut the lid, he put it hastily back in his pocket. He stood as if waiting for something.
“I’ll be almost afraid to read your story if it’s all true, Dale,” Judy said. “It will be so much like—like—” She floundered for a word.
“Like spying on me?”
“Something like that.”