“Oh, Tillie, I’m going outside for a minute. I’ll come back.”
“All right,” agreed the girl. “Sorry to keep you waiting but I still have a few things to pick up.”
Leaving by the side door, Penny paused on the porch for a moment. Carefully she glanced about the yard and surrounding fields. A thin quarter moon rising over the pine trees gave dim shape to the barn and silo. She could see no one, yet Tillie’s revelation that strange men spied upon the house, made her attentive to danger.
Swiftly she crossed the lawn to the storm cave. As she had fully expected, the slanting door was padlocked.
“Oh, shoot!” she exclaimed impatiently. “I want to get down there!”
She jerked at the padlock several times, and then accepting the situation, turned toward the house. As she walked, Penny’s eyes fastened absently upon a clump of lilac bushes some twenty yards from the cave. They were moving gently as if stirred by a wind. Yet there was no wind.
Penny did not pause, but every sense became alert. Her heart pounded. Distinctly she could see a man crawling on hands and knees behind the lilacs.
CHAPTER
16
BEHIND THE LILACS
Without disclosing by her actions that she had observed anything amiss, Penny walked steadily on toward the house. Her first thought had been that it was Peter Fenestra who spied upon her. However, as the figure straightened she knew she had been mistaken. The man was not Fenestra.
Before she could see his face, he moved to another clump of bushes, and then was enveloped by darkness.