As Jeanne lay in her tiny chamber that night with the distant roar of old Superior in her ears, she found herself confronted with two mysteries. One was intriguing, the other rather startling and perhaps terrible. The first was the mystery of the unopened churn, the other that of those figures and letters with a circle, D.X.123.
CHAPTER XVIII
D.X.123
“There it is. Or is it?” Rodney Angel turned enquiring eyes upon June Travis. They had traveled by the third-rail line twenty miles into the country. There before them stood a large stone building topped by a circular tower. Rodney held his breath. If the girl said “No,” all this work had gone for nothing.
June half closed her eyes. A dreamy expression overspread her face. Once again she was thinking back, back, back, into the dim, misty realm of her childhood.
“Yes,” she said quite simply, “yes, that is the tower. I have seen it before. That must have been when I was very young.”
“Then—” the word was said with a shout of joy. “Then right over there is the brick house you once lived in with your father.”
“Our house!” Who can describe the emotions that throbbed through June’s being as she looked upon the home of her earliest childhood?
She was not given long to dream. “Come on,” said Rodney. “There is a little cottage next door to it. Looks as if it were half a century old and been owned by the same person all the time. That person should be able to help us.”
“That person” turned out to be a little old dried up man with a hooked nose.
“Do I know who lived in the red brick house ten years ago?” He grinned at Rodney. “Yes, and forty years ago. There was Joe Green and Sam Hicks, and—”