"What will the girls think, anyway, when we fail to arrive at the
Bates's?" said Nyoda.
"They'll probably telephone to town," said Gladys, "and mother will know I didn't get there and she will be frantic." She lost all her appetite with a rush when this thought came to her.
They waited impatiently for the return of the woman with the tray. Nyoda wrote a note and had it ready for her. It read:
"There has been some mistake. We are not the persons you intended to keep here."
But the woman did not come. Darkness fell outside the window and they lighted the lights in the room, but still there was no movement of the elevator. They spent the evening pacing up and down the room, discussing the mysterious situation in which they found themselves, until from sheer weariness they lay down on the bed. They did not undress and they left the lights burning, intending to watch for the return of the woman. They set the tray on the floor at some distance from the elevator.
"Can it be possible," said Gladys, "that it was only this afternoon that we broke into our house? It seems years ago." Nyoda lay staring at the elevator shaft, awaiting the return of the cage.
"This purple glare over everything hurts my eyes," she said. She closed them a minute to get relief. When she opened them again there was a broad streak of light coming in through the window. The lights were out in the room and the tray had disappeared from the floor. Gladys lay sound asleep, her head pillowed on her arm. Nyoda started up and was on the point of rousing Gladys. "No, I'll let her sleep," she thought; "it's a good thing she can."
She went to the window and looked out through the bars at the sun rising over the water. There was the same old lake with which she had been familiar all her life, with the cliffs jutting out in points, one always a little farther out than the other, to form the great curve of the shore line. She must have passed this place dozens of times while riding in the lake boats. Here was a scene she had admired many times from the open shore, and now she was looking at it from behind bars, a prisoner. It was too grotesque to be true. She turned pensively toward the bed and noticed with a start that a tray containing breakfast for two stood on the shelf beside the elevator. And yet she had not heard a sound! Gladys was still asleep on the bed. As Nyoda stood looking down at her she woke up and stared around the room uncomprehendingly. She could not place herself at first. Then at the sight of the violet room the events of yesterday came back to her.
They ate breakfast with what appetite they could and then sat down close beside the elevator shaft to be sure and see the deaf-mute when she came, for it seemed impossible to detect her visit when they had their backs turned. While they waited they examined the iron grating for the door opening, but found none. There was apparently no break in the scroll-work anywhere, no hinge, no slide arrangement. "Did we come into the room through there, or did we only imagine it?" asked Nyoda, completely baffled. "Surely we didn't come through that little grating that opens on top, did we? I declare, I'm getting so bewildered that if any one told us we did come in that way I wouldn't dispute them."
Almost while she was speaking the elevator cage shot rapidly and noiselessly into view and the deaf-mute opened the slide to take the tray. Instead of giving it to her, however, they gave her the note first. She took it and read it and then looked at the two girls in silence. "Maybe she would write something if you gave her a pencil," suggested Gladys.