“Funny Elsie didn’t hear you try to scream the first time,” remarked Jane. “She was awake.”
“You were?” asked Mary Louise. “What time is it?”
“It’s only quarter-past eleven,” answered Elsie. “I couldn’t go to sleep—too much chocolate cake and apple pie, I suppose.”
“It was Silky who waked me up,” said Jane. “I heard him barking. And I looked for Elsie and saw she wasn’t in bed. So I thought he was just barking at her, prowling around the house.”
Mary Louise opened her eyes wide.
“Where were you, Elsie?”
“I—was down in the kitchen, getting some baking soda.” She burst into tears. “You don’t think I did that fiendish thing, do you, Mary Louise?”
“No, of course not.” But Mary Louise knew that Miss Grant would not be so ready to accept her niece’s innocence.
“We better make a tour of the house,” she suggested, standing up and going over to the window, where she noticed that the screen was out, lying on the floor. “I think the intruder must have gotten out this way.”
“But that’s not the window with the porch underneath,” objected Jane.