Not much, perhaps, but the dripping investigators soon began to suspect that they themselves knew even less, for they failed to detect any sign of rope on the second floor.
“Now, my friends!” exclaimed the principal, triumphantly, “whoever the perpetrators may be, we are reasonably assured of their capture. They have lingered too long in the steeple!”
“Looks like it,” muttered Zeb; “nobody ever engineered a dun heifer up those crooked stairs. It was a tough enough job to get her into the lower hall.”
But not on the stairs, nor even to the adventurous eyes which shortly afterwards peered out upon the “deck” above, did there appear any sign of boy or man or apple-hunting cow.
Such a gale as was sweeping through the sashless frame of the bell-tower and across the vacant level of the deck at that moment!
It laid the wing of Bar Vernon’s subtle invention so very flat that the tolling ceased and even the uplifted lanterns failed to discover it.
The combined light of the latter, moreover, convinced the keen eyes of George Brayton that no human form was lurking among the cross-pieces of the bell-frame in its nook overhead.
“Not a living soul, there or here,” solemnly exclaimed one of the trustees.
“No rope,” added another.
“It’s an awful mystery,” exclaimed a third.