"Then perhaps you could tell us—" Joyce was persisting, when the agent suddenly interrupted, turning on her suspiciously:
"Say, what do you want to know all this for? What's the old place to you, anyhow?"
"Oh, nothing—nothing at all!" protested Joyce, alarmed lest their precious secret was about to be discovered. "We only asked out of curiosity. Good day, sir!" And the two girls fled precipitately from the office.
"I was going to ask him the name of the lawyers," Joyce explained as they hurried away. "But it wouldn't do any good, I guess, if we knew. We couldn't go and question them, for it's plain from what the agent said that they don't want to talk about it. My, but that man was cranky, wasn't he!"
"I think he was sick," said Cynthia. "He looked it. Well, I suppose we will have to give it all up! We've tried just about everything." Suddenly she stopped and stood perfectly still, staring blankly at nothing.
"Come on!" urged Joyce. "Whatever is the matter with you, standing here like that?"
"I was just thinking—seems to me I remember something about the first day we got into the B. U. H. Didn't you tell me that you knew the house was left furnished, that somebody had told your father so?"
"Why, of course!" cried Joyce, excited at once. "I certainly did, and what a stupid I am not to have thought of it since!" And she herself stopped short and stood thinking.
"Well, what is it?" demanded Cynthia, impatiently. "Who's stopping and staring now?"
"The trouble is," said Joyce, slowly, "that the whole thing's not very clear in my mind. It was several years ago that I heard Father mention it. Somebody was visiting us when we first moved here, and asked him at the table about the old house next door. And Father said, I think, that he didn't know anything much about it only that it was a queer old place, and once he had met an elderly lady who happened to mention to him that she knew the house was left furnished, just as it was, and she didn't think the owners would ever live in it again. I don't know why I happened to remember this. It must have made quite an impression on me, because I was a good deal younger and didn't generally listen much to what they were saying at table."