“Live ghost!” sniffed Laura crossly, for she was really feeling very much injured. “All the ghosts that I ever heard about were as dead as a doornail.”
“For goodness’ sake, stop talking about dead people,” said Vi querulously from the doorway. “If there isn’t anything in here—and thank goodness there isn’t—let’s go back.”
“Not yet,” said Billie. Her eyes, become more accustomed to the dim light, had lighted upon something interesting among the junk. What had caught her attention was a large, clumsy-looking thing like a queerly shaped wooden box. The girls watched her curiously as she bent over to examine it.
“You haven’t found your ghost, have you?” asked Vi, in a voice that was meant to be sarcastic.
“No,” said Billie, a thrill of wonder and excitement creeping into her voice. “But I may have found something! Girls, come here and have a look at this!”
The girls picked their way over the rubbish that littered the floor. What had seemed like a peculiarly shaped box proved on closer inspection to be some cunningly fashioned wooden machinery.
The girls looked at each other in awed silence. To them all in an instant had come the same thrilling thought.
“The lost invention!” murmured Billie. “And we thought there was nothing here!”
CHAPTER XX—STOLEN
“Oh, but how do we know?” protested Laura. “It looks like machinery of some kind, but we have no way of proving that it is the stolen invention.” “No,” said Billie, still in a kind of daze. “It may be just some old worthless thing that has been put up here because it is of no use to anybody. But then again——”