They stood there under the vault as if Paul Riker were already dead, mourning for him. But suddenly Peter sprang into action. He vaulted up the stairs, taking them three at a time. He was just too late. Judy heard a crash of stone falling against stone. They were imprisoned under the vault!
A shot rang out. Then another and another!
“Peter!” cried Judy. “Are you all right?”
“All right,” he called back in a voice of confidence. “You can trust the forest rangers to get us out of here if we can’t find a way out by ourselves.”
“If the children’s mother had come with us she might have been able to help us,” Judy told the magician. “She says she used to play here with the Riker twins, Philip and Paul. Their uncle chased them out and took possession of the cave. I should have asked her if there’s more than one entrance.”
“There were two,” was the startling reply. “One was the cave of Ravana. Rama would stand at the other entrance calling, ‘O my Sita! Do not give up hope. I will send my faithful Hanumen, king of the monkeys, with a ring for thy finger.’ The ring,” the magician explained in his ordinary voice, “stands for the magic circle of love that never ends, like the love of Rama and Sita.”
“You know the story as well as Helen does,” Judy said quietly, smiling. “You called Mr. Riker Uncle Paul and you knew about the cave. You must be—”
“For the time being, call me Rama,” he interrupted before she could say what she felt sure now must be his name. “I hope I may be the true Rama and that Sita will accept my ring.”
For a moment Judy really felt like Cupid, but she still hadn’t brought the two lovers together. Their predicament took her quickly back to reality. The other entrance to the cave proved to be effectively blocked by an iron door evidently bolted on the outside. After several useless attempts to open it, Peter fired a few more signal shots and then announced that there was nothing to do but wait.
“It’s a good thing we found the jade collection before the thieves did,” he said to the magician. “I doubt if your uncle could have stopped them.”
“He couldn’t have. I’d like to see the whole collection placed in a museum where it would be safe and other people could enjoy it and learn the legends about the different gods and goddesses.”
“I know a lot of them,” announced Paul. “Mom used to tell them to me before Penny began asking so many questions. Maybe Ganesha, the Remover of Obstacles, will remove the stone from over the door. I don’t like being shut down here. Is it all right if I ask him?”
Peter started to protest, but the magician said, “Let him pretend if he wants to. It will keep him from being frightened.”
“Lift me up!” Penny pleaded. “I can’t see anything.”
Judy smiled as she saw the magician lift her and hold her close. She was thinking what a good father he would make. Impulsively she asked, “You aren’t married, are you? I thought at first you were Mr. Dran. I know you live with them.”
“All four of them,” he said. “Mr. and Mrs. Dran and the two children. They keep my house in order and make it more like a home. Their boys are smart little fellows, but they can’t beat these two. Paul, here, knows the names of these pieces almost as well as I do.”
He was pointing them out, one after another, to the children. Not all of them were green. The monkey god was carved out of mottled gray jade, and Ravana, with his many heads, was almost black.
All the idols were small and delicately carved. The largest was the four-headed Brahma, the Creator, sitting on his throne in the center. The Preserver of Life, Vishnu, and the Destroyer, Shiva, were placed on his right and his left. The other jade pieces were variously grouped around them.
Peter pointed out the life god or the Preserver, and his wife, a tiny image. Penny said she looked almost like Sita.
“But where is Rama?” she asked.
“He’s in good hands, thanks to Judy and Peter,” the magician assured both children. “He’s waiting for Sita just as I am. When you see him I hope they will be together.”
“They will be,” Peter said with quiet confidence.
Now little Paul was curious.
“What did Rama look like?” he asked.
He was told that Rama was a green image and carried a sheaf of arrows at his belt. He had been carved in the act of bending a great bow in order to win the hand of Sita.
“What bow shall I bend?” asked the magician.
“I think you’re already bending it,” Judy told him, “in winning the hearts of the children. Do they know who you are?”
She asked this last question in almost a whisper. The children had moved away from them a little and were busy talking to each other about the contents of the case. Peter had let them take his flashlight.
“It’s hard to say what they know,” the magician said in answer to her whispered question. “I think Paul suspects more than he will admit.”
“What about Penny? Does she know?” Judy asked.
“I don’t believe she does,” he replied. “She keeps staring at me with those big blue eyes of hers as if she expects me to vanish any minute. She’s such a little pretender that it’s hard to guess what she’s thinking. Neither of them has called me Uncle Paul. You knew it, of course?”
“After a while,” Judy said, relieved that he had admitted it. “Naturally, it explains a lot.”
There was a lot it didn’t explain, though. Judy was about to question him further when, suddenly, a light fell across the cabinet, and she heard Peter calling her from above.
“The entrance must be clear,” she told the children. “Let’s follow the magician up the steps and see what’s happening above.”
Angry words came down to her. An old man’s voice was raised above the others.
“So you did come back, you thieving rascal! I knew you would! But that jade collection is mine, I tell you! And I mean to keep it!”
CHAPTER XXII
Blackberry’s Discovery
When Judy and the children reached the top of the steps leading up from the cave, they found a straight, tall, thin old man standing between the two forest rangers who had heard Peter’s signal and freed them from the cave. Without a doubt, the old man was Paul Riker, and he was shaking his finger angrily at the magician.
“You’re a thief just like your brother,” the enraged voice of the old man continued. “I’ll have the law on you! It was you who robbed my house, and now you’re trying—”
“I only moved your things to keep them from being destroyed, Uncle Paul,” the magician declared. “But the men I trusted have tricked me. They found out that your famous jade collection was missing when they moved your other things, and they have been searching for it ever since.”
“What do you mean?” the old man demanded.
“I’ll tell you what he means,” Peter put in. “Three of the moving men he hired turned out not to be so trustworthy. They found a letter from your niece saying she was returning a piece that belonged in your jade collection. Since the collection was not moved to the warehouse, they thought it must still be in your house. They returned to the house after the police had left, and searched it.” Peter hesitated. “It’s my theory,” he went on, “that they set fire to the house either on purpose or accidentally. However, you will have to convince the insurance people that you did not do it yourself.”
“Set fire to my own house!” The old man roared with rage. “What kind of idiots am I dealing with? I simply closed the house and took a room in a place a few miles from here. And do you know why I did that? Because I had no wish to see that ungrateful girl nor the children of that scamp, Philip!”
“But you came back and watched what was going on,” Peter reminded him. “You were in the cave when my wife came here yesterday, and you are here again today. You went out the other exit from the cave as we came down the steps.”
“And why not?” the old man snapped. “It is my property, every inch of it, and I intended to guard it. Somebody had to,” he added. “That idiot, Abner Post, went away Thursday night and let this thieving rascal walk off with practically everything in my house.”
“I told you, Uncle Paul,” the younger Paul Riker said wearily, “I saw that your house was in the path of the fire and wanted to save your things. I came to the caretaker’s cottage, but it was locked and he was away. The big house was closed too. So I called up the moving company, gave them my name, and had them take your most valuable things to the warehouse. What else could I do?”
“It’s lucky for you, Mr. Riker, that he did,” Peter said, “The fire would have reached your house eventually. Then you would have lost everything.”
The old man cackled suddenly. “I wouldn’t have lost my jade collection,” he declared. Then his face darkened. “But there are two pieces missing now. And without Rama and Sita it’s hardly a collection at all. My thieving nephews robbed me of Sita years ago, and now somebody’s stolen Rama from inside the vault where I intended to keep the whole collection. I gave orders to have it buried with me, but who can I trust to carry out my orders?”
Judy wanted to tell him Rama was safe, but a warning look from Peter stopped her. As the millionaire raved on she began to understand the warped reasoning that had cheated him out of all the things she felt enriched a life. He seemed to care more for his memorial in stone than for the living memory he could leave with those who would love him if he would only let them.
“Do you remember, Uncle Paul, how you used to accuse me of stealing Sita?” the magician was saying. “Well, I can tell you now, because, for the first time, I know what happened to her. Philip took her to give to Helen.”
“And in all these years she’s never returned it!” the old man exploded.
“But Uncle, it was your own fault,” the magician pointed out. “You drove them both out and made them afraid of you. And Helen was on her way to return it to you. The thieves knew from her letter when she was arriving. They were on the lookout for her and tried to force her to tell them where the rest of the collection was. Can’t you see what they were planning? Be sensible, Uncle Paul, and let us put it in a museum where it will be under guard—”
“Never!” roared Uncle Paul.
“I think we will have to place it under guard while you are being questioned,” Peter said quietly. “I hate to have to say this, Mr. Riker, but your house was not burned by the forest fire, and you will have to satisfy the insurance company as well as our office that you had nothing to do with either of the fires. The law says arson on state forest land is a federal offence.”
Mr. Riker protested vehemently. Nevertheless, when the chief deputy of the rangers drove his car up to the vault, the old man got in with surprising meekness. Judy suspected that the excitement had tired him out in spite of his rambunctious spirit.
“I’ll have to go with Mr. Riker, Angel,” Peter said. “Do you mind driving home, or would you rather wait here for me?”
“I don’t mind driving a bit,” Judy replied. “But before we start, I want to find out why the statue seemed to talk. It’s solid cement. Nobody could possibly get inside it.”
“No,” replied Peter, “but there are hollow pipes running through it. They were probably placed there to keep the cement from cracking. Old Paul Riker, down in the cave, must have shouted through them in order to scare people away.”
“Hollow pipes,” Judy said thoughtfully. “Peter, do you think the tree talked the same way?”
“Perhaps,” he replied. “Horace told me he heard it say, ‘We’re starved!’ just before you and the kids dashed in from the barn.”
“Then it carried our voices from the hayloft! But who was up there, calling, ‘Don’t look for it!’?”
Peter shook his head. He had no answer for that.
“One more question, Peter, please,” Judy begged. “Why didn’t you tell Mr. Riker we had found his jade Rama? Were you trying to protect me?”
“And why not?” he answered. “You saw how vehemently he accused his nephew. He wouldn’t have believed you were trying to help him. When we find Sita we’ll give him both pieces and his collection will be complete.”
“But how will you find her?” asked Judy.
“By finding the thieves. In the meantime,” Peter said, “we intend to see to it that they don’t find the rest of the collection.”
Two of the rangers went down the steps into the cave and brought up the cabinet containing the jade. They put it in the car with old Mr. Riker, Peter got in, and off they went.
Young Paul Riker stood watching the car disappear down the road, as Judy loaded the two children and Blackberry into Peter’s car.
“Poor Uncle Paul,” he sighed.
CHAPTER XXIII
Stage Magic
“Nothing must keep your mother from attending the magic show with us,” Judy told the children when they reached home.
Little else was said about it.
“A secret is more fun,” Penny whispered. Both children knew now that the magician was their young uncle Paul.
There were so many secrets that Judy was afraid the children’s mother would suspect their plans. But she was too busy with plans of her own to pay much attention to them. The very next day she found employment in the Roulsville variety store and declared that she would soon repay Judy and Peter for all their kindnesses.
On the same day, which was Monday, Penny and Paul started in school, taking the bus at the main road and attending the school where Judy once went.
Wednesday finally came, the day of the magic show. Since there was no school the next day, Thursday being Thanksgiving, the children could stay up a little later in the evening. Penny was all excited.
“You just wait, Mommy!” she cried. “You’ll see I’m not making it up. The magician can even make wishes come true.”
“Wear your prettiest dress, Mom,” Paul suggested.
“Very well,” she agreed, “but I don’t want to meet this magician. You know how I feel about strangers.”
Judy did not tell her the magician was no stranger.
Judy and Peter arrived with Horace and Honey to find the Browns’ recreation room already crowded. Rows and rows of chairs were lined up before the stage. The front row was reserved for the club members. Penny and Paul joined them.
“There’s room for you, too,” Ricky whispered.
“Thanks,” Judy whispered back.
They were all seated before she realized Helen Riker was not with them. “Where’s your mother?” she whispered across to Paul.
“She’s back there somewhere,” he replied. “Her face got awfully white when she saw him.”
Judy knew Paul meant the magician.
“I guess it’s all right,” she began uncertainly, “as long as she can—”
She was interrupted by the sound of clapping hands. The heavy velvet curtain had parted. The magician appeared on the stage smiling and bowing. He had a wand in his hand. As he waved it, flags of all nations began to appear. When the stage was quite filled with them he waved the wand again and every flag vanished.
“This is stage magic,” he announced. “Watch carefully and you may discover my secrets.”
After he had done a few more astounding feats with ropes, balls, and boxes, he asked, “Did anyone in the audience wish for a canary bird?”
“I did!” cried Paul, jumping to his feet.
“Will you step up on the stage for a moment?” asked the magician. “Birds come from eggs, do they not? May I take your handkerchief? I hope you don’t mind what happens to it,” he continued as he began rolling it into a ball. Soon the handkerchief was gone and in its place was a round, white egg!
“My handkerchief!” gasped Paul.
Judy could see that this trick had not been rehearsed. She was as surprised as the children were when little Paul reached in his pocket, at the magician’s suggestion, and pulled out a real live canary.
“Where will I put him?” asked Paul as he held the fluttering bird.
“What about a cage?” asked his amazing young uncle. Touching the table in front of him with his wand, he made a cage appear out of nothing. Another flick of his magic wand and it disappeared.
“Wonderful, isn’t it?” he asked. “As a rule magicians don’t explain their tricks, but this is going to be an exception. You’ve seen a magnet attract a pin or a needle. Well, the magnet on the end of the wand attracts the spring that collapses or unfolds the cage, and presto!”
The cage reappeared on the table, and Paul let the bird fly into it. There was a thunder of applause followed by the announcement that a girl could be made to vanish as easily as a birdcage.
“Let me!” cried Penny, running up on the stage.
CHAPTER XXIV
Real Magic
Judy was glad when Helen Riker slipped into the seat Penny had left. She was just in time to hear the magician’s announcement that it would be real magic if he could make all the children’s wishes come true.
“Penny has wished for her father and now she sees a man exactly like him. Is that right?”
“Oh, yes!” Penny said. “I closed my eyes, and when I opened them there was my daddy again—”
“You see?” he interrupted. “If I’m not her real daddy, I must be his twin brother. At any rate, the little lady trusts me. Now watch as I make her disappear.”
Penny climbed up on the long table in front of the magician and waved good-bye to the audience. Her mother was watching as if she really expected a miracle. Turning to Judy, she said, “He isn’t going to use a screen. I’ve seen this trick before, but Paul would be different. He is like Philip—so like him it’s almost uncanny.”
“Penny’s gone!” cried Judy, but nobody heard her because at the same time exclamations of surprise went up from everyone else in the audience. The table top was empty. The magician had made the little girl vanish right before their eyes.
“That,” he announced, “was a trick which Penny herself will explain to you as soon as I bring her back. I have to say a few magic words first. They may be familiar to someone in the audience.”
And he began to chant, “Rama! Rama! Sita! Rama! Arise, daughter of Sita as lovely as a rose.”
Holding his wand over a large, empty vase that stood on the table, he continued to chant mystic phrases as first a bouquet of roses and then Penny herself came up, smiling through the roses.
“A real girl and real roses!”
“And a real daddy,” she chirped. “Isn’t that real magic?”
Clapping hands answered her as the magician began throwing the roses. Helen Riker caught one, and held it in her hand.
“It will make up for everything I lost, unless—Judy!” she asked suddenly. “Who were those boys who came in with him? I saw them together in the store, too. He’s not married, is he? I couldn’t—”
Judy told her the Dran family were only caretakers for young Uncle Paul as her family had been caretakers for old Uncle Paul.
“He said he likes children around him,” Judy finished.
“I can see that. Oh, I’m so happy. We don’t need those little idols, Judy. We’re going to have each other.”
“See, Mommy!” Penny announced, returning to her chair and cuddling into her mother’s lap. “Didn’t I tell you he could make wishes come true?”
Soon after that, the curtain was drawn and the magician did not appear again in spite of all the clapping. Now the club members gathered around Penny. She began to explain in a mysterious voice just the way she had rehearsed the disappearing trick. “There’s a hiding place under the stage. You remember how thick the table top was? Well, there’s a sliding panel of thin wood—see! And when the panel slid out from under me, I dropped right into the table and disappeared.”
“How did you get inside the vase?” several voices questioned.
Penny laughed.
“That was easy. I slid through the table leg. It was hollow and went down like a tunnel under the stage.”
“I was there,” Wally spoke up proudly. “I pushed up Penny and the roses through the table and through the bottom of the vase. It was a neat trick. I only wish—”
“What?” everybody asked when he paused.
“I wish my father’s pocketknife would turn up like Penny did,” he said ruefully. “Pop’s mad at me. I borrowed it to play with, and dropped it in the hay in your barn, Judy.”
“You did?” Judy asked. “When was this?”
“Saturday morning,” he replied. “I was going to look for it, but Ricky chased me out of there. We’d had a fight. He said, ‘Don’t look for it!’ I was going to come back and hunt around later, but he kept chasing me out, and yelling, ‘Run!’ and I was scared. He can throw knives, that Ricky! He’s—”
“Wait a minute,” Judy stopped him. “He has a knife, but have you ever seen him throw it?”
“N-no,” Wally admitted. “He can throw a lasso, though.”
“We know that.” Judy smiled at Peter, and from the way he smiled back she knew that he too had guessed the solution of the mystery of the talking tree. It had been Ricky’s voice all the time, but he hadn’t even known it himself.
The curtain suddenly parted and there stood Helen Riker and the magician on the stage together.
Running up on the stage, Judy whispered something to the magician and then turned to the audience.
“Weather permitting,” she announced, “a play will be given in our grove the day after Thanksgiving. I hope you will all be there to see it. The magician will direct it. I can’t promise for certain, but I believe he will accomplish the amazing feat of making a tree talk.”
She had no dinner to prepare the following day, as there would be a family gathering around her parents’ table. The Rikers were invited but politely refused.
“We’ll be having our own Thanksgiving at Paul’s house,” Helen Riker said, and added impulsively, “Oh, Judy! Aren’t you happy for us?”
“I certainly am,” Judy said warmly, and meant it.
“Rama has rescued me,” Helen said, “as he rescued Sita in the ‘Ramayana.’ Friday you shall see it.”
Judy did see it. The story was all that she had hoped it would be—and more. Old Uncle Paul was there to watch it. He had been cleared of the charge of arson when Peter and the police caught the three men who had stolen Sita from Helen. The thieves also admitted having set fire to the house by accident when they went back to search for the jade.
The magician, taking the part of Rama, was also the narrator. Evil, according to the ancient story, reigned supreme until the god of life, Vishnu, and his wife were born as Rama and Sita. Prince and princess, they were fated to meet and marry.
Helen Riker, in a green dress, was beautiful as Sita. The children took the parts of the monkeys who rescued her, but the strangest character in the whole play was the demon Ravana. The part of the many-headed monster was taken by the talking tree! When Sita was kidnaped, she sat in its lower branches chanting her mystic “Rama! Rama! Rama! I seek thee within me and my senses are sealed.”
After the rescue, the magician, as Rama, was supposed to slay the monster and restore the powers of virtue to the earth. Each time he pierced the tree with his arrow, Judy, hiding in the barn to be the voice of Ravana, called out, “Too late!” But the last time she spoke the ancient words of wisdom, “Learn by my example! Do selfless deeds at once!”
And almost at once she was back in the grove presenting old Uncle Paul with his two precious jade statues. He took them both, fondled them a moment and then, with tear-moist eyes, said, “They complete the Riker collection. Put it in the museum, Paul. Let other people look at it. Let them learn by my example.”
“Never,” Judy told Peter later, “have I felt so sorry for anyone. He’s an old man and an unhappy man in spite of his wealth. He can’t have very many more years to live.”
“Be thankful,” Peter said, “that he has lived long enough to do this one generous act. People will remember him for his jade collection long after they have forgotten even his monument. Someone—if I were Horace I could quote him exactly—said, ‘The best thing to do with a life is to spend it for something which outlasts it.’ And whether he intended it that way or not, that’s what Paul Riker has done.”
“I see,” Judy whispered. “Does love outlast it?”
Peter’s answer was a kiss. They both knew it did. They were quiet, sharing a wonderful moment together. Then Peter broke the spell by suggesting that Judy go with him to the barn.
“Honey’s still here. We must show her how the tree talked if Horace hasn’t already told her. It works just like the pipes in that statue, doesn’t it?”
After much persuasion, Honey consented to stand beside the hollow tree while they showed her how it had all happened.
“Don’t be scared,” Judy told her. “We may sound a little spooky.”
“I don’t doubt it,” she replied.
When they had climbed to the hayloft they stood directly under the little window that looked out over the grove. The hollow branch just outside it acted like a speaking tube and carried their voices out through the hole in the tree as they chanted:
“You’re standing beside the talking tree,
But the voices you hear are Peter and me-ee!”
Judy knew how hollow their voices must sound to Honey. A moment later she was racing toward the barn.
“So that’s it!” she charged. “You two spooks can haunt the grove whenever you want to by hiding in the hayloft and talking out that little window.”
Now she was convinced that the superstition had started when someone in the barn had accidentally frightened Horace.
“He’s so silly,” she said fondly, “but I can’t help loving him for it. And isn’t it wonderful how things have turned out for Mrs. Riker and the magician?”
“It certainly is,” agreed Judy. “He gave her a ring just the way Rama did in the story. But, best of all, the collection is saved for future Ramas and Sitas. It’s nice to know what’s expected of the ideal man and woman, isn’t it? Peter,” she asked abruptly, “am I your ideal?”
“You’re my Judy,” he replied, “and that’s even better. What was it you said about every day beginning a new mystery?”
“It’s the way I feel about life,” Judy explained to Honey. “It’s my philosophy, my Judyana, or whatever you want to call it. Go down to the grove and the talking tree will tell you.”
“No, thanks,” Honey said with a laugh. “I’ve been meditating the matter, and my Honeyana tells me I’ve had enough. The next time I letter a sign, Judy, it will be for Dean Studios, not for anyone like you.”
Transcriber’s Notes
- Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.
- Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged.
- In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)