“There’s a lovely fire in Aunt Rebecca’s parlor,” soothed the colonel; “come in there.”

Afterward it seemed to him that this whole interview with Millicent could not have occupied more than four minutes; that it was not more than seven minutes since he had seen Archie’s shapely curly head against the curtain fall of the window.

But when he opened the door, Miss Smith came toward them. “Is Archie with Aunt Rebecca?” said she.

The colonel answered that he had left him in the parlor; perhaps he had stepped into his own room.

But neither in Archie’s nor the colonel’s nor in any room of the party could they find the boy.

[83]

CHAPTER V BLIND CLUES

“But this is preposterous,” cried Mrs. Melville, “you must have seen him had he come out of the room; you were directly in front of the doors all the time.”

“I was,” admitted the colonel; “can—can the boy be hiding to scare us?” He spoke to Miss Smith. She had grown pale; he did not know that his own color had turned. Millicent stared from one to the other.

“How ridiculous!” she exclaimed; “of course not; but he must be somewhere; let me look!”

Look as they might through all the staring, empty rooms, there was no vestige of the boy. He was as clean vanished as if he had fallen out of the closed and locked windows. The colonel examined them all; had there been one open, he would have peered outside, frightened as he had never been when death was at his elbow. But it certainly wasn’t possible to jump through a window, and not only shut, but lock it after one.

[84]Under every bed, in every closet, he prowled; he was searching still when Mrs. Winter returned. By this time Mrs. Melville was agitated, and, naturally, irritated as well. “I think it is unpardonable in Archie to sneak out in this fashion,” she complained.

[84]

“I suppose the boy wanted to see the town a bit,” observed Aunt Rebecca placidly. “Rupert, come in and sit down; he will be back in a moment; smoke a cigar, if your nerves need calming.”

Rupert felt as if he were a boy of ten, called back to common sense out of imaginary horrors of the dark.

“But, if he wanted to go out, why did he 

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