“I don’t think that this was brought in on his feet,” ventured Ralph West, “for I don’t see any heel print right here, and the heel would have brought it in.”
For a long minute the four boys looked here and there along the floor, at the hearth, at the fresh particles of earth, and at each other.
“Let us go through everything in this room,” said Frank decisively. “I believe he has unwrapped the box, burned the paper and string, and has hidden the box somewhere in the house, so that he could guard it more closely.”
With this the boys, having set the lamp on one of the wooden boxes, started a search of the room. Under the cot, behind the boxes, back of the clothes hanging on the hooks along the wall opposite the fireplace, they looked closely for a metal box. But to no avail. Several minutes were passed in this search.
From here the search spread into the kitchen, or combination kitchen and dining room. Into all sorts of boxes and tin cans and cardboard containers they went, finding particles of food in all these places. A looking glass on one wall was brought down for fear the jewel-box might rest behind it.
The search was getting nowhere, excepting failure.
“Let’s look in the stove,” said Lanky Wallace, as he reached for the lid-lifter and started to raise part of the top.
“That gives me an idea!” cried Frank, wheeling on his heel and looking toward the bedroom which was now dark.
Grabbing up the lantern he strode into that room, the other boys directly and very breathlessly behind him. What kind of idea had their leader now? They instinctively felt it was a good one, and probably a winner—but what was it?
“That box was black. All such document boxes are black—they are made of thin iron and are japanned, as they call it.”