CHAPTER XX—MORE HAPPENINGS
Walter considered the matter rather judicially before answering. Then he gave as his decision:
“No, I can’t say that I do. It is, perhaps, only a coincidence that your automobile and your flashlight should have been taken. I dare say that had it been a light belonging to any one else it would have disappeared just the same.”
“You mean that they—the mysterious They—would have taken the light, no matter to whom it belonged?” asked Jack.
“Exactly! It was a case of wanting a light and taking it.”
“But how did they get in to take it?” asked Paul. “There’s no sign of anything having been broken; is there—no doors or windows?”
“We didn’t look,” Cora said.
“Then that’s what we’d better do,” Jack suggested.
But an examination did not show that any means had been used to force a passage from without. The windows were provided with screens which fastened from within in such a way that force would have to be exerted to slip them. And this had not been done. Nor had the door been tampered with.
“There’s only one way to account for it,” said Walter, “and that is on the theory that the Surprisers, Ghosts, They—whatever you choose to call them—used skeleton keys. And they must be professional burglars, or they would have made noise enough to have aroused you girls. You didn’t hear anything; did you?”