“It’s okay except for one thing,” Peter said. “What if Mr. X doesn’t do anything to make us suspect him? Up until the unmasking we won’t have any way of knowing whether he is one of the village merchants or not. And by that time he will certainly have disappeared.”
“Oh, he’s bound to do something to make him stand out from the others,” Marjorie put in. “And he’ll probably be very careless because he won’t have any idea that we plan to catch him in a trap.”
“That’s true,” Peter admitted.
“Sometimes,” Jimmy said with a teasing grin, “the gal makes sense.”
Phil stood up. “If we’re all agreed, I may as well go down to the village now and spread the word about the party.”
“And I,” said Penny, rising, too, “had better go through the stuff in the storage room and see what we have. I thought it might be fun to decorate the secret room so it’ll look good and scary.”
“I’ll help,” Marjorie said. “I know where there’s one of those old paper skeletons that we used to hang up on Hallowe’en.” She slipped her arm through Penny’s. “Oh, isn’t it going to be fun? Even if we don’t catch Mr. X, the masquerade will be the best event of the whole summer.”
“I hope so,” Penny said. “And I hope we do catch him. Even if he’s just a crank and isn’t after anything valuable, he’s annoyed us enough. It’s time we put a stop to it.”
She glanced back over her shoulder at Peter who was still sitting at the desk.
“Oh, dear,” she thought reading the anxious expression on his face. “He still thinks we ought to get help from the police.” She shivered involuntarily. “Maybe before the party is over we’ll be sorry we didn’t follow his advice.”