“We’d better break in somehow. You are an officer of the law, so you have a right to do that in an emergency. Come along and we’ll see how things are inside. My family will be throwing fits about now, especially if the bang of that blow-up carried so far,” Jim urged. They hurried toward the old ranch house and presently were standing on the long, low veranda. Their first try was to find out if there were any of the windows which had been left unfastened, but they were all nailed tightly.
“Here goes.” Carl smashed one of the larger panes with a piece of the torch wood they carried, then he ripped out the cross sections, and in a few minutes they were standing in what had been the family living room. Considering the haste the owners had been forced to make when they took their departure, the place was almost bare.
“How do you account for this?” Jim asked in surprise.
“Can’t really. I’ve never been in here, not since I came up to keep watch. The sheriff told me not to unless it was necessary. He said the house had been locked just as they found it and not to disturb anything,” answered Carl. “Expect Arthur Gordon has been hanging around and got away with the stuff. Great Scott, I’m some watchman.”
The same depleted state existed everywhere they investigated and as they walked from room to room their footsteps echoed hollowly. Carefully they both watched for telephone instruments and at last they found one in the long hall which went from one end of the building to the other but after examining it they learned that it was merely a house phone that was not used for outside purposes at all.
“That’s that! I know there was a phone in this room,” Jim declared suddenly making his way back to the living room. He remembered the day he had been in Don Haurea’s laboratory and had sat before the television-radio watching and listening to the two Gordons. That time the phone had rung and the young man talked over it. Without the furnishings it was not easy to locate where the instrument had stood, so they lighted a second torch and painstakingly examined the floor.
“Isn’t that a hole?” Carl pointed to the floor and sure enough they found an opening large enough to permit wires or a cable to go through, but there wasn’t even an inch of one left.
“It must go into the cellar,” Jim announced. He stood a moment to get the position, then they searched for the trap door through which they followed the stone steps down to the cave-like basement. It too had been systematically cleaned out. There wasn’t a useful thing in the place. It took a few minutes to find the hole that went into the living room above, but there was nothing left of the telephone.
“Wonder why in heck he ripped them up!” Carl exploded. “What did he expect to do with them?”
“Search me,” answered Jim. “I say, this place surely is spooky.”