But where, he mused, had the scientific star-student gone to?
Where was Cousin Grover? And, above all, where was Tip, one out of all of them who ought to have been on duty, if not asleep.
Roger glanced up at the clock.
Not five, but two, was the hour toward which the smaller hand was dropping as the minute hand marked the quarter-of.
It had been “fire” that his record had screeched at him.
But there was no fire here!
Roger began to feel somewhat like a person flying in an airplane for the first time, seeing everything else swinging beneath him, and feeling no movement himself.
It made him sickish.
“Am I out of my mind?” he asked himself. “Is this a dream?”
There must be some loose end of this amazing situation that he could get hold of, to reel in the story and steady his rapidly failing sense of reality.