“Does she know it?” asked Hinpoha.

“Not yet,” replied Nyoda. “I thought we would keep it for a birthday surprise. Her birthday is the twenty-ninth. I’ll have Dr. Gilbert come that day and let him tell her himself. Don’t anybody mention it to her until then.”

“We won’t,” promised the Winnebagos, and trooped off to bed, heavy with their delicious secret.

CHAPTER VIII
THE FOOTPRINTS ON THE STAIRS

The Winnebagos woke bright and early the next morning, eager to begin the search for the secret passage again, but whatever plans they had formed were driven entirely out of their minds by the appearance of the footprints on the stairs. Nyoda discovered them first when she raised the curtains on the stair landing on her way down to bring in the morning paper.

The day before, in anticipation of the coming of the men from the second hand store to remove the discarded furniture from Uncle Jasper’s study, she had improvised a runner to cover the front stairs to keep them from being scratched. The stretch from the upstairs to the landing she had covered with a strip of rag carpet, and from the landing down she had used a length of white canvas. The landing itself was still bare, as she had not yet found the old rug she intended laying there.

Now, as she came downstairs, she noticed, on the strip of white canvas that covered the bottom half of the stairs, three dark red footprints. On the white background they stood out with startling distinctness. They began on the third step from the top and appeared on every other step from then on to the bottom. All three were the prints of a right foot. No heel marks were visible, only the upper half of the foot. From the direction which they pointed they were made by a person descending the stairs, and from their size that person was a man.

Nyoda’s first thought that Sherry had cut his foot and had gone downstairs, leaving a bloody trail on her stair runner, and full of concern she immediately sought him. But her search revealed him down in the basement, coaxing up the furnace, and there was nothing the matter with his feet. The Captain was with him and he likewise disclaimed a cut foot. The two of them had come down the back stairs. Nyoda hurried back upstairs. Justice and Slim were in the upper hall when she came up, just in the act of coming down.

“Good morning!” they both called out in cheery greeting.

“Which one of you has the cut foot?” she asked.