"Yes, where do you suppose we got our experience in picking locks?" added
Chet, looking aggrieved.
"Goodness, I don't care whether you pick the lock or what you do as long as you get it open," cried Billie, half wild with impatience now that the fateful moment had arrived. "You can use dynamite for all I care."
"Maybe that's what's in it," suggested Teddy, and the girls screamed.
"Teddy! Of all the wet blankets!"
"Well, you never can tell," said Teddy, adding wickedly, as Ferd started to set the trunk on end: "Be careful there, Ferd; she may explode, as the aeroplane did."
"Somebody give me something to throw at him," cried Laura indignantly. "Anyway," she added triumphantly, "we know there isn't dynamite in it or we'd have been blown to bits long ago. We dragged it down stairs."
"Yes, and we didn't do it very gently either," added Violet.
"It has a pretty strong lock," said Chet, getting to his feet and rumpling up his hair thoughtfully. "I'll have to get a hammer and a wedge of some sort."
"Oh, there are all sorts of tools down in the tool-house," Billie cried eagerly, and Chet looked at her as though she had said she had discovered a gold mine in the back yard.
"Tools!" he repeated, his eyes shining. "Are they good ones?"