the world had I ever suggested coming in here!

“This must be the parlor,” Eve was saying with her hand on a door at the right of the hall.

“Oh, never mind if it is,” I urged. “Don’t let’s bother now.”

“It’s now or never, I suspect,” Eve returned coolly. “What’s the matter with you, Sandy, haven’t you got any curiosity?”

“I don’t like old houses when nobody lives in ’em,” I confessed. “They give me the creeps.”

Eve seemed to think this funny, and the sound of her laughter echoed back from the wide stairway. It was uncanny—as if somebody else had laughed. And now she was opening the door and stepping across the threshold into the room which she had correctly guessed was the parlor.

It was a wide, bare room. The windows were shuttered and at only one place, where some of the slats of the blind had been broken, did any light come in. This was just enough for us to see by, though in truth there was little to see. An old horsehair sofa and chairs, a low carved cabinet in front of a broad fireplace, and above the fireplace, a gilt and white mantle. The wallpaper showing a pattern of faded rosebuds was warped and ragged in many places.

“I guess probably people have had lots of good times in this room!” Eve murmured dreamily.

“A good place for a funeral, if you ask me!” I retorted crossly. “Oh, do let’s get out, I don’t like the place a bit.”

“Oh, all right,” she said, turning toward the door. “Though I should love to take a look around upstairs,” she added with a glance toward the stairway. “I think it’s a love——”

The sentence was never finished. A sound suddenly broke in upon the stillness. It came from the direction of the kitchen. A sound like the closing of a door. As we stood there in the middle of the hall, hardly realizing what was happening, it was followed immediately by another more ominous one—the unmistakable click of a key as it turned in a lock.

Then Eve was speeding down the hall. Across the kitchen, and pounding on the closed door. “Mr. Bangs!” she called. “Oh, I say, wait—wait!”

But there was no answer and no sound from without. Our jailer’s retreating footsteps were already deadened in the thick grass outside!

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