Dick, before leaving the room, hooked the blind carefully on the inside, and, after closing the window, he remarked, “It’s queer Mother should have left a window open as well as the back door. But I remember now. She said that they were afraid of losing the train. Something had delayed them. I had gone on ahead to start school.”
When they were again safely out in the sunshine, Nann inquired, “I wonder where your mother left the key. It isn’t in the door.”
Before replying Dick went to one corner beneath the porch, removed a lattice door which could not have been discovered by anyone not knowing about it, reached his hand around to one of the uprights where, on a nail, he found the key hanging. He held it up triumphantly. Then, after locking the kitchen door, he replaced the key and the lattice, exclaiming as he did so, “I believe I understand now what happened. In the hurry, Mother put the key in the right place without having locked the door, so that’s that.” But Nann was not entirely convinced.
The late afternoon fog was drifting in when the three started to walk along the beach. They saw Dories running to meet them. “Well, thanks be you’re all alive,” was her relieved exclamation.
Nann laughed. “Did you think a cannibal was hiding in the Burton cottage?” Then she added, pretending to be disappointed, “I had at least hoped to find a ghost or a——”
“Look! Look!” Gib cried excitedly, pointing beyond the rocks.
“What? Where?” the girls scrambled to the top step of cabin three, which they happened to be passing, that they might have a better view of whatever had aroused Gib’s interest.
“Is it the Phantom Yacht?” Nann asked, almost hoping that it was.
“No, ’tisn’t that, I’m sure, because it isn’t white.” Gib continued to stare into the gathering dusk. “It’s some queer kind of craft, as best I can make out, and it’s scooting away from the shore at a pretty speedy rate and heading right for the island.” For a moment the young people fairly held their breath as they watched.
Dick was the first to break in with, “Gee-whiliker! I know what it is! Stupid that I didn’t get on to it from the very first.”