Chapter XVI: Danny’s Confession

“My father?” Danny repeated with a dazed expression on his face. “You mean that man I’ve been following is my father?”

“I’m asking _you_,” Judy said, torn between sympathy and anger. Her arm was beginning to turn black and blue where the boy had held it. “You must know who was with you that night you stayed at the beaver dam. Or didn’t you stay there?”

“Not all the time,” Danny confessed. “Some of the time I was watching the house. That man has a key. He goes in and out whenever he pleases, but if he _is_ my father it’s all right, isn’t it?”

What could Judy say? It was all wrong whoever the man was. Danny seemed to sense it.

“But my father would come and see me,” he objected to his own reasoning. “And how can he send me letters from Canada if he’s right here?”

“Are all his letters from Canada?” asked Judy.

Danny had started walking back toward the house that used to be his home. Judy followed him. He walked a little way before he answered. “All but the last one. That was just a note. It didn’t have any stamp on it.”

“How could it go through the mail without a stamp?” Judy wondered.

Danny looked back at her. “Are you following me just to ask questions?” he demanded.

“I’m going to let my cat out. You said you shut him in the house. But I would like an answer to my question.”

“About the letter, you mean? I guess it could have been inside another letter, couldn’t it? Maybe my father wrote to tell Ma he was coming. We always call the matron Ma,” Danny explained. “All the orphans do except the new ones. Some of them won’t talk at all.”

“I guess they’re afraid—”

“Sure,” Danny interrupted. “I was, too. I was only four years old when my mother died and my father took me away in his car. He only took me as far as the orphanage. Then he said, ‘Get out!’ in a sort of funny voice. ‘Go on up to the door,’ he told me. So I did. By the time Ma opened it my father was gone.”

“And that was the last time you saw him?” Judy asked in surprise.

Danny nodded. He and Judy were walking together now. Through the trees, they could see the house with the boarded-up windows.

“The windows weren’t like that when we lived there,” Danny went on talking. “You could see out, and people on the outside could see in. It will be like that again when my father comes home. I don’t remember him very well, but I do know he promised to come back when I was ten. He keeps reminding me of it in his letters. He said by then he’d have a lot of money—”

“He didn’t say where he’d get it, did he?” Judy interrupted to ask.

Danny’s eyes blazed at her. “He’d work for it, of course. Where else would he get it?”

Judy was getting in deeper and deeper. She wished Peter would come back. He would know what questions to ask and how to answer those that the boy fired at her.

“He said,” Danny continued, eager to talk about it now, “that he’d work hard and save money and when I was ten years old we’d go back to the old house, and everything would be the way it was when Mother was alive. But it isn’t! The things in the house are all different.”

“How do you know that?” asked Judy. “I mean, how can you tell when you can’t get in?”

“Because those things the beavers dragged out aren’t our things. Anyway, I don’t _think_ they are. You said that lady stick was a leg from your table.”

“I thought it was,” Judy replied quietly.

“But you aren’t sure?”

“Oh, Danny! I don’t know. I’m just as puzzled as you are,” Judy told him. “Can’t we be friends? Can’t we work out this puzzle together?”

“Not if it’s going to get my father in trouble.”

He stopped abruptly. Peter was coming toward them.

“Somebody shut Blackberry in the house,” he began. “I unplugged the hole but I couldn’t coax him out. Who do you suppose could have done a thing like that?”

Judy looked at Danny expecting him to answer, but he had his head down. He seemed to be very much interested in tying the lace on one of his sneakers.

“I don’t suppose it matters. Old Blackberry wasn’t complaining. I think he’s found a mouse or two in there to keep him busy until we come back for him. Come on, everybody,” Peter urged as he hurried them toward the car. “The important thing right now is lunch.”

“Lunch?” Danny questioned as if he had never heard the word.

“Yes, aren’t you hungry?”

“I’m starved,” the boy admitted. “Where will we eat?”

Peter smiled. “I guess the Beverly’s the nearest place unless you want to go back to the orphanage.”

“They eat at twelve. The dining room closes at one. It’s after that, isn’t it?” Danny asked.

Peter consulted his watch. “Way after. It’s nearly two. Shall we go?”

The Beverly turned out to be an old mansion made over into an inn. It was quiet in the daytime, but Judy could see that it must be quite a gay place at night. There was a dance floor and a platform for an orchestra as well as separate dining rooms for private parties.

“This _is_ a surprise!” she exclaimed as they entered through the lobby and stood looking into the dining room. “I never expected to find a place like this way out here in the country.”

“It isn’t so far out in the country as you may think,” Peter told her. “This road follows the Genessee River north to Wellsville and on to Rochester. It crosses Route 17, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find a sign at the crossroads directing tourists here. Like it?”

“Love it,” Judy replied. “We’ll have to come here some evening when the place is more lively.”

Danny bounced on one of two sofas opposite each other. “Golly! You could sleep on this,” he exclaimed. “What’s all this furniture for?”

“For people to sit on, of course,” Judy replied, laughing.

“You mean when they’re waiting for other people?”

“Yes, or when they want to rest. It’s sort of a living room for people who stay overnight here. Hotels always have lobbies—”

“Would my father stay overnight here if he came to see me?” Danny interrupted, as they followed the waiter to a table.

“He might.”

Judy and Peter looked at each other. Neither of them wanted to say anything against Danny’s father. Finally, just as they were finishing lunch, Danny produced the note his father had written.

“Here it is,” he said, fishing a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. “See what it says! ‘_I am keeping my promise. I think I have money enough to start a good business. We’ll operate from our own home. I’ll take you back there to live with me very soon...._’”

“It’s typewritten!” Judy exclaimed. She couldn’t help thinking of Holly’s stolen typewriter.

“Danny,” Peter asked, his voice grave, “have you any idea what this business is?”

The boy shook his head. He seemed as confused as they were. “I hope it’s farming, but it doesn’t sound much like it. Whatever it is, he wants me to help him.”

“Have you helped him, Danny?”

“No-oo,” was the reply to Peter’s question. Danny sounded a little uncertain. He couldn’t be the boy who ran off with Holly’s typewriter. Horace had judged that boy to be about sixteen or seventeen. Judy thought of the matron’s car. Could it have been “borrowed” by Danny’s father that day Miss Hanley and the Jewell sisters were picking apples? Certainly someone had taken it and then returned it.

“Are you sure you haven’t seen your father since he left this note?” Peter continued his questioning.

“Maybe I have. Maybe he was the man I was trailing,” Danny admitted. “I thought that man had no right to go in our house, and so I spied on him. I didn’t speak to him. I didn’t say one word.”

“Did he know you were there?”

“I don’t think so. I heard him muttering something about the beavers. It wasn’t a very nice thing to say. I don’t think my father would talk like that. He—”

If Danny finished answering Peter’s question, Judy failed to hear what he said. The sentence was suddenly drowned out by the shrill sound of a siren that grew increasingly louder. Danny rushed to the window with Judy following him. Peter joined them as soon as he had paid for their lunch.

“It’s fire engines!” Danny shouted above the noise outside. “They must be coming from Wellsville. Let’s watch and see which way they turn.”