"Now maybe you won't think I was right!" exclaimed the aviator's son. "Somebody must have bumped into that chair, Monsieur Manning, and knocked it over."
"What other explanation could there be?" agreed Dunstan.
"Which means to say that we haven't been the only prowlers in the De Morancourt palace to-night," muttered Chase, his voice betraying a most uncomfortable state of mind.
"No."
The proof was conclusive—there could be no question about it: some person or persons had been in that very room while the ambulanciers were up in the tower. Now there was, indeed, something quite startling in this thought. Who could the other, or others, have been? What was their object in entering? And did they still linger in the château?
For a perceptible interval of time the boys stood in silence. The weirdness and loneliness of the situation, with only a narrow band of light between them and the deepest gloom, intensified a curious tingling sensation which the discovery had produced in the nerves of each.
"What can it mean?" exclaimed Dunstan.
Don's light was swiftly flashing and criss-crossing in every direction, and not a single portion of the great apartment had escaped its glare when he declared:
"Fellows, there's certainly no one besides ourselves in this room."
"Can there be no hiding places?"