“Never mind! Go back! I’ll be there in two minutes.” And tearing herself from Leslie’s grasp, Phyllis ran back into the dark bungalow.
But Leslie would not return to her own house and desert her companion, though she could not bring herself to enter again that fear-inspiring place. So she lingered about outside in a state of unenviable desperation till Phyllis once more emerged from the dark doorway.
“So you couldn’t leave me, after all!” Phyllis laughed. “Well, come back to bed now, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
They were chilled through with the drenching mist by the time they returned, and not till they were enveloped in the warm bed-clothing did Phyllis deign to explain her ideas about the newest development in their mystery.
“You were mightily scared by that little piece of paper, and I confess that I was startled myself, for a minute. But after I’d thought it over, it suddenly dawned on me that there was precious little to be scared about, and I’ll tell you why. I’m perfectly convinced that that thing was written and placed there by my brother Ted!”
Leslie sat up in bed with a jerk. “You can’t possibly mean it!”
“I certainly do, and here’s my reason: You yourself convinced me, earlier this evening, that there was a chance of Ted’s being mixed up in this thing somehow. I can’t imagine how he got into it—that’s a mystery past my explaining. But it looks very much as if he knew this Eileen, and that he was poking around here this afternoon while we were away. Now he suspects that we are mixed up in it, too, for he saw us come out of the bungalow that day. Well, if Eileen has told him about the Dragon’s Secret and its disappearance, perhaps he thinks we know what happened to it. At any rate, he’s taken the chance, and written this warning for our inspection the next time we happened in. He thinks it will scare us, I suppose! He’ll presently find out that we don’t scare for a cent! And I have thought of a scheme as good as his!—Do you know what I did when I went back there? I took a pencil and printed on the bottom of that paper just this:
“‘The article will be returned to its hiding-place.’
“Now here’s what I’m going to do next. In my trunk I have a little jewel-case, very much the size and shape and weight of the Dragon’s Secret. It’s one of those antimony things you’ve often seen, covered with a kind of carving that might easily pass for what’s on that other one, if it weren’t seen. I’m going to-morrow to make a burlap bag, just like the one we found, and sew the jewel-case in it, and it will be a sharp person who can tell the difference between them till the bag is opened. Then we’ll bury it in the place where Rags dug up the other, some time to-morrow when the coast is clear. After that we’ll wait and see what happens next! Now what do you think of my scheme?”
“It sounds splendid to me,” admitted Leslie, then she added uneasily: “But there’s something you haven’t explained yet. You think Ted wrote that thing, yet it is type-written! How do you explain that?”