And at the very foot of those sagging steps, lying on the ground, Old Ferret found something to cause his eyes to glitter. He quickly stooped and picked it up.
It was a knot of dark-blue ribbon, the same modest knot that had been worn by Jimmy Lee when the train bearing the Yale team drew in at the railway-station that day.
There was now no longer the least doubt but that the great detective was on the right track. However, the most desperate and daring part of his work lay before him.
It must be confessed that his heart was performing queer capers in his bosom as he mounted those steps and paused to peep into the hall that the partly open door revealed.
It was a forbidding-looking hall, too. No wonder he felt like drawing back. Unpapered, unpainted, and dirty it seemed on close examination.
But Old Ferret bethought himself of his disguise and turned not back. If he were seen, he would have recourse to his ready wit to get himself out of the scrape. Any detective could do that, and when did the ready wit of the real detective ever fail him in time of emergency!
Into the hall he slipped, with the velvet tread of the panther. Never mind if one of his shoes did squeak a little, it was just the same, “the velvet tread of the panther.” Great detectives always walked that way in a place like this.
Still the silence of the place was unbroken. He wondered greatly at it, and he longed to call to Frank Merriwell. This inclination to shout, however, he knew was very unprofessional, and he sternly repressed it.
From room to room he went with the same cautious tread, peering into first one and then another. Apparently all were empty save of the battered old furniture. There seemed to be no woman about the place. Plainly Ben Shannon was not partial toward women.
The lower part of the house was explored. There was no cellar. Even Old Ferret, for all of his wonderful nerve, might have hesitated in the teeth of a dark cellar that abounded with rats.