“This place is sure burglar proof!”

All the rest of them were the same. Finally we went back upstairs. Eve had a smudge across one cheek. At any other time I would have laughed. “Well,” she said quite cheerfully, “there are still the upstairs’ windows.”

“Eve,” I said, “have you thought of this? No one knows we’re in this house. Not even Mr. Bangs. What I mean is that when they start looking for us, they’ll never think of looking here!” Already I was imagining searching parties and headlines in the newspapers. There would be descriptions of our appearance: “Eve Fordyce, brown eyes, short wavy hair, when last seen was wearing a blue cotton skirt and white slipover blouse; Sandra Hutton, green eyes, lightish hair, wearing faded gingham dress——”

“Mrs. Trapp or whatever her name is knows we came up here,” Eve was saying. “And Mr. Bangs saw us outside.”

“You can’t depend on him for any help,” I declared emphatically. “Oh, Eve, do you think they’ll broadcast us among the missing persons on the radio?”

“Of course not! Oh, do cheer up, Sandy. Think what an adventure we’ll have to tell the girls about next fall. Why, it’ll go over big. Especially,” she added calmly, “if we spend the night here.”

This view of the situation did not serve to cheer me in the slightest degree. I was not concerned with the dim and distant fall but with what was going to happen to us right now. The thought of the night coming on, of the darkness catching us there in that big echoing house already sent shivers running up and down my spine. “Oh, dear, why did we ever come in at all?” I wailed. “It serves me right for being so snoopy.”

“It was more my fault than yours,” Eve declared consolingly. “At least it was my fault that we stayed so long. Now I’m going to take a look round upstairs. Very likely they weren’t so particular about fastening those windows.”

But even if we did find one unfastened, how were we going to get down to the ground? As I remembered the spacious lines on which the house was built, I felt that escape that way was hopeless from the outset. Still there was nothing else to do so I again followed Eve, this time up the broad curving stairway.

We found ourselves in a square hall from the rear end of which ran a narrow passage. At our right was a large bedroom, containing a big double bed, minus mattress or coverings. Instead of springs, there were 

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