CHAPTER VIII
THE CLUE OF THE GREEN BEAD
With shaking knees and blank dismay on their faces, they crept out of Curlew’s Nest and fastened the door. Then they hurried down to the water’s edge and sat on a rise of sand to talk it over.
“What can it all mean, Phyllis?” quavered Leslie.
“It means that some one has been in there again since day before yesterday,” declared her companion, “though it’s been bright moonlight for the past two nights, and how they got in without being seen, I can’t quite understand! You said you kept some sort of watch, didn’t you?”
“I certainly did. I haven’t gone to bed till late, and every once in a while during the night, I’ve waked up and looked over there. It doesn’t seem possible they would dare to come with the moonlight bright as day, all night long. Of course, that side door is on the opposite side from us, and the only way I could tell would be by seeing a light through the cracks of the shutter. Perhaps if they hadn’t had a very bright light, I wouldn’t know.”
“But what did they come for?” questioned Phyllis.
“Why, that’s simple. They came back to get the beads and the knife-blade. Probably it was the ‘mysterious she,’ and she came to get those things because she realized they’d been left there and might be discovered by some one else. What else could it be?”
“Of course you must be right,” agreed Phyllis. “But it’s the queerest thing I ever heard of! Anyway, there’s one thing the lady doesn’t know—that we have still one of the beads! I wonder how she’d feel if she did realize it?”