As she watched, Judy’s hopes sank lower and lower. She began to realize that it was not the part of wisdom to go on her dangerous errand to the poet’s house alone. What would she say if Jasper Crosby opened the door? Would her experience with eccentric Emily Grimshaw help her to cope with the insane hallucinations of Sarah Glenn? Would she dare demand to know what had happened to Irene when a possibility existed that they had never seen her? Suppose they asked for the missing poetry. If she lied to defend Irene her nervousness might betray her. Judy knew that her chances of finding her chum were slim, very slim. Like the shining tracks behind her they seemed to lessen as the train sped on.
At Ninth Avenue she changed to the Culver Line. Up came the train, out of the tunnel, and the wet gray walls at the side of the tracks grew lower and lower. Soon they were clear of the ground and Judy realized that this was the elevated. Only four more stations! She looked around, eager for her first glimpse of Brooklyn, but what she saw caused her to shudder.
“Ugh! A graveyard.”
It stretched on and on, a grim sight on that dreary morning. Even after the white stones were left behind vacant lots and empty buildings made the scene look almost as cheerless.
At the fourth stop Judy got off and went down to the street. It was silly, but the thought came to her that if ever spirits walked abroad they would walk along Gravesend Avenue.
Consulting the slip of paper, she counted blocks as she passed them and watched for Parkville Avenue. She knew the old-fashioned street at once from the quaint houses that lined it. Then came the Long Island Railroad cut with a long line of box cars passing under Gravesend Avenue in a slow-moving procession.
She paused. Could the alley beyond be the street she sought? No wonder they hadn’t named it anything. Why, it wasn’t even paved! It seemed little more than a trail through vacant lots. She hesitated, looked ahead and caught her breath in a quick, terrified gasp. Then she stared, open-mouthed. There was something sinister about the huge, gray frame building that loomed in her path. The gnarled old trees surrounding it seemed almost alive, and the wind whistling through their branches sounded like a warning. But it was the tower, not the house itself, that caused Judy to gasp. The whole lower part of it was burned away and in the tower window something thin and yellow moved back and forth behind the curtains. It looked like an elongated ghost!
Judy rubbed her eyes and looked again. This time the tower was dark with the even blackness of drawn shades behind closed windows.
An unreasonable fear took possession of the watching girl. She felt that she had seen something not there in material substance. Stanza after stanza of Sarah Glenn’s poetry forced itself upon her consciousness, and it all fitted this house—the yellow ghost in the window, the crumbling tower.
Suddenly Judy realized that she was standing stock-still in the middle of the muddy unpaved street, moving her lips and making no sound. She was doing the same thing that Emily Grimshaw had done when Dale Meredith said she was crazy. Oh! She must get control of herself, take herself in hand.