CHAPTER IX
AUNT SALLY ADDS TO THE MYSTIFICATION
THE two girls walked home in a state bordering on stupefaction. Every little while Phyllis would stop to ejaculate: “Who would have thought it! The horrid little snob! I really can’t believe yet that it is she, Leslie—our ‘mysterious she!’ I’m sure there must be some mistake.”
“Well, of course, it may not be so,” Leslie admitted, “but you must see how many things point to it. The beads are identical. I stood so near her that I had a fine chance to see them closely. Her name is the same as the one on the envelop in the book—”
“Yes, but that isn’t the name of the man who hired the bungalow,” objected Phyllis.
“That’s quite true, but even so, you can’t tell what connection there may be with the other name. It isn’t exactly a common one, and that makes it all the more likely that we may be right. And then, there’s the fact of her being so near here—right in the village. I have always imagined that whoever it was had to come from quite a distance, and I’ve always wondered how she managed it, so late at night.”
“But Leslie, why on earth should she come to that bungalow in the dead of night, in a storm, and hide that ‘Dragon’s Secret’? What mysterious affair can she be mixed up with, anyway?”
Leslie, however, had no solution to offer to this poser, but she did have a sudden idea that made her stop short in the road and gasp:
“Do you realize, Phyllis Kelvin, that we are doing a very questionable—yes, a wrong thing in keeping the ‘Dragon’s Secret,’ when it evidently belongs to this girl?”