“There may be one, for all I know,” replied Nyoda, “but I have never found it if there is. I have never looked for any such thing. It takes all my time,” she proclaimed with a comic-tragic air, “to keep all the open passages in this place clean, without looking for any more behind panels.”
“Do you care if we try to find one?” asked Sahwah eagerly. “I just feel it in my bones that there is one somewhere.”
“Search all you like,” replied Nyoda, with an amused laugh.
“O goody!” exclaimed Sahwah. “Let’s begin right away.”
She rose from the table and the rest followed, much taken up with this new quest, and the search began immediately. Upstairs and downstairs they tapped, peered, pried and investigated, but without success. One by one they abandoned the quest and drifted into the library where Nyoda and Sherry and Sylvia sat in a close group before the fire; Sherry smoking, Nyoda reading aloud, and Sylvia watching the images in the fire. Sahwah and the captain were the last to give up, but finally they, too, drifted in and joined the ranks of the unsuccessful hunters.
Nyoda paused in her reading and looked up with a smile as Sahwah and the captain came in.
“What have you to report, my darling scouts?” she asked gravely.
“Nothing,” replied the captain, rather sheepishly.
Sahwah rubbed her fingers tenderly. “There are miles of oak paneling in this house,” she remarked wearily, “and I’ve rapped on every inch of it with my knuckles, until they’re just pulp, but not one of those panels sounded hollow.”
“Poor child!” said Nyoda sympathetically.