“I guess we weren’t!” declared Coe. “Break in. I’ll take all responsibility.”
“Try the basement door,” suggested Allison; “that’s where the milkman would see the caretakers, you know.”
Down they trooped and recommenced their knocking there.
“I’m scared they’ll escape at the back,” warned Coe. “One of you chaps scoot around there.”
By this time, though there was no response to their summons, they heard faint sounds of a commotion inside the house.
And at last a girl’s shriek rose high, though muffled at once by interception of some sort.
“That’s Elsie!” whispered Coe, not so much from recognition of the voice as from an intuition of the facts.
At sound of the shriek, the policeman burst in the door, and they rushed in. Nobody was in sight, but they went on to the rear room, and found there Elsie and Fenn Whiting.
The two caretakers had managed to hide themselves, but small attention was paid to that.
It was quite evident from the girl’s trembling, nerve-racked condition that Whiting had been frightening her with some terrible threat, and his brutal, rage-drawn countenance corroborated this.