That night a shadow stole down to Miss Romaine's office. Moonlight streaming in at the window revealed the face and form of Lottie Sparks.
Lottie worked quickly but stealthily. She opened the drawers of Miss Romaine's desk—always a model of neatness—and rummaged the papers about until they were in complete disorder. Some of them she removed and scattered over the floor.
Then she took the articles stolen from the chums' room and placed them about the office so that they would appear to have been dropped by accident and yet could not fail to be discovered.
After this she took an inkwell from one of the drawers of the desk and deliberately turned it upside down in the center of Miss Romaine's beautiful rug!
She overturned a chair, pulled one curtain from the rod, and was about to muss up the place still further when she was arrested by a sudden sound.
In alarm she shrank back into the shadows, her eyes fixed upon a doorway in the far corner of the room.
The door opened, the figure of a man slipped through stealthily and stopped in the position of a crouching animal.
Lottie waited for no more, but with quaking limbs she turned and fled.
Upstairs in her bed she cowered beneath the covers and waited, shivering, for the dawn.
With morning came a terrible revelation for the girls of Laurel Hall.