“Silly,” protested Bess.
“But they are a long time,” said Hazel, she and Belle having uttered the two rather impatient sentences at the opening of this chapter.
The girls were in the bungalow, eating, not exactly bread and honey, but ice cream and cake, which Mrs. Floyd had made. And they were talking of the absence of Jack and his chums, who had gone to town to telephone to Mr. Haight.
It was now lunch time and the girls, after waiting in vain for the boys, had eaten, and were enjoying their dessert. Or rather, they were trying to enjoy it under the rather unappetizing influence of impatient worry.
“If they don’t come back pretty soon I’m going down there myself and see if we can discover anything,” Cora declared.
“Down where?” asked Belle.
“In the passage, of course. I want to see if we can find where that queer noise came from.”
“And who upset the furniture,” added Bess.
“Well, we’re on the track of it,” said Hazel. “We are pretty certain, now, that whoever did it came up through that sliding door, and went down the same way. That accounts for our never seeing any one enter or leave the bungalow after the manifestations, and that’s why, after the boys ran over so promptly the time we saw the dancing light, they couldn’t find any one. Whoever it was just slipped down through the secret passage, pulled the section of flooring back into place, and there was no trace.”
“But where did they go after they got down in the passage?” asked Belle. “They couldn’t stay there all the while, and there’s no sign of any one there now, unless they’re invisible. They couldn’t get past the blocking cement wall.”