“I pulled the bed half to pieces.”
“We’ll help you look for it,” Penny offered. “It must be here somewhere.”
“This is the fust time in twenty years that anyone ever stole anything off me,” the old lady wailed as she led the way down the dark hall. “But I kinda knowed somethin’ like this was goin’ to happen.”
Mrs. Lear’s bedroom was in great disorder. Blankets had been strewn over the floor and the limp mattress lay doubled up on the springs.
“You see!” the old lady cried. “The deed’s gone! I’ve looked everywhere.”
Penny and Louise carefully folded all the blankets. They straightened the mattress and searched carefully along the springs. They looked beneath the bed. The missing paper was not to be found.
“Are you sure you didn’t hide it somewhere else?” Penny asked.
“Fer ten years I’ve kept that deed under the bed mattress!” the old lady snapped. “Oh, it’s been stole all right. An’ there’s the tracks o’ the thievin’ rascal that did it too!”
Mrs. Lear lowered the oil lamp closer to the floor. Plainly visible were the muddy heelprints of a woman’s shoe. The marks had left smudges on the rag rugs which dotted the room; they crisscrossed the bare floor to the door, the window and the bed. Penny and Louise followed the trail down the hallway to the stairs. They picked it up again in the kitchen and there lost it.
“You don’t need to follow them tracks no further,” Mrs. Lear advised grimly. “I know who it was that stole the deed. There ain’t nobody could o’ done it but Mrs. Burmaster!”