"What does this mean?" he asked himself.
He peered through the key-hole and detected the key sticking in from the other side of the door.
"This is Mr. Talbot's work," he decided. "What does he expect to gain by it?"
Robert was quite cool, and upon the whole, rather amused. It seemed to him a childish trick to play upon him.
"What a contemptible fellow he is!" he said to himself. "It mortifies me to think he is my mother's husband."
Robert's room was a large front apartment on the third floor. It was quite as handsome as any on the second floor. It was directly over the room occupied by his mother. She, however, must already be downstairs.
"I am sure mother can't know of this," he decided.
Just then the breakfast bell rang, and Robert wondered whether anyone would come up to see why he did not come down.
Presently he heard a step on the stairs, and a minute later he heard the voice of his step-father.
"Robert!" he called out, "are you up?"