“All right, but the other time was before Jan got home.”
Back the girls went, somewhat timorously, to be sure, to put on slippers and kimonos. Thus clad, they slipped quietly down the back stairs, and Nell stepped close to the door to listen. A heavy pin, with which she had fastened her kimono, fell out at this juncture and in the stillness of the hall it made quite a little noise.
“What’s that?” they heard Chick say, and presently a low grunt answered him. The bed creaked and the girls flew upstairs as fast as they could, Nell retrieving her pin first.
“Well,” said Jannet, as they entered the room again, “shall we wake up Paulina and get things stirred up? You will be afraid to go to sleep again, won’t you?”
“I g-guess not,” shivered Nell. “Put down the windows and leave the light on.”
“We’d smother, child,” said Jannet.
“Look under the bed, then. I refuse to get into it unless that is done.” Nell tried to be jolly with poor success.
“Perhaps that is where—It—was. Say, that was a funny feeling, Nell, to jerk that coverlid and find it come just too easy!”
As before, Jannet went all over to see what she could see. There was no sign of any one’s having been in the closets or in the bath room. The vines on the porch looked undisturbed. Jannet put the windows down to a point where they would have to be raised to admit anyone. Again she went over the paneled wall to see if there were a hidden door between her room and the next one. “But that light was too near the big chimney,” she said. “Perhaps there might be an opening of some sort there.”
The girls looked up into the chimney with its bricks discolored by many a fire. “What’s on the other side of the chimney?” Nell asked.