While Frank fumbled along the wall, trying to find the door or closet wherein Mrs. Parsons was imprisoned, Lanky was in turn fumbling in his pockets for a match, which, finding at last, he scratched. The feeble light flared up, and the quick eyes of both boys located the push button. Each made a dive to get it, but Lanky being nearest reached it and flooded the room with the necessary light.
In another moment Frank was smashing against the door behind and beyond which the woman was screaming even more lustily, more excitedly, than before.
As it gave before his second onslaught, he saw she was lying on the floor, her arms and feet pinioned, a rag which had been used as a hurriedly made gag lying alongside her head.
Loosening her arms quickly and lifting her bodily to her feet, Frank and Lanky both supported her to a chair.
It was Mrs. Parsons, the wealthy recluse of the county. She was thoroughly hysterical.
“My jewels! My silver! They’ve stolen it all and got away! What shall I do? What shall I do?”
Frank tried to quiet her, but for a few minutes it was of no avail. She was thoroughly excited over her experience and her loss, wildly hysterical about it, crying one moment and screaming the next.
What seemed to the boys a very long time was only a few minutes, and then she quieted enough to tell, between gasps and moans, something of what had happened.
Mrs. Parsons said that she had returned to her house from a trip to Columbia just after dark and that her automobile had been put up. She came into the house, and her maid being out for her regular weekly day off, she had prepared a little supper for herself. In doing this she had not gone any further than the kitchen, the pantry, and the small room off the kitchen which she used as a breakfast room and which, under circumstances such as these, she used also as a dining room.
Having finished her supper she sat in the same small room checking over her balance in bank as shown by her bankbook as against her own check stubs.