“Oh, Sim!” exclaimed Dot impatiently, “we’ve got enough to go out to the Hall and back. It will only take more time to go to a station.”
“Yes, Sim, we won’t be driving any place else. Don’t go now,” Terry begged.
But Sim was firm, and they headed toward town and stopped at a filling station, the other girls glaring at their little blonde chauffeur while the tank was being filled.
“I believe in being prepared,” Sim lectured, paying the service man. “How do you know where we’ll be before night?”
The words were prophetic, though Sim didn’t realize it, for they were destined to have a queer experience that very day.
When they reached the road that led down to Sycamore Hall, the Hollow now being covered with snow, they saw tire tracks stretching before them. The workmen were there, of course. And they were late!
Parked in the spot they thought of as their own special place was an open truck with the name “Callahan—Contractor” painted on the back. Knowing what that meant, they looked at each other with questioning dismay. Callahan himself must be there and would not be likely to leave at once. Even as they wondered, he came marching out of the Hall, a smile on his broad ruddy face, and nonchalantly came over to their car.
Giving a tug at the brim of his shapeless soft hat he said jovially: “Well, we’re back on the job again, ya’ see. I’ve got a fine bunch of men there now. Not ordinary laborers. These men don’t believe in ghosts,” and taking a big black cigar from a pocket he bit off the end and searched in his pockets for a match.
Sim reached over Terry’s knees, took the detachable cigarette lighter from the dash board, and smilingly handed it to the man. They watched to see what that might do.
The girls could hear the men stamping the snow off their feet in the empty house, now and then a loud crash as an iron bar or tool was carelessly dropped. The voices of the men, in good-natured badinage, floated out on the brisk air; then came shouts of laughter. Peal on peal, deep rumbling laughter, and the lighter sounds mingling together. What could this mean?
Mr. Callahan turned a pleased face to Sim as he handed back the lighter. “There! These men didn’t run. I guess they’re onto the trick.” He started toward the house, then stopped and said: “If you girls want to see the ghost you may as well. Come in with me, I’ll show you what’s been scaring my men.” There was a bragging tone in his hearty voice, and a confident tread in his heavy stride.
The girls needed no urging, quickly getting out of the car and following the triumphant lead of the contractor through the light snow. Once inside, he went straight to the top of the house, walking with a precision that showed his determination. Now he would “tell the world,” his attitude seemed to declare.
Reaching the third floor they found the men still merry. They were in a room similar to that where the suspected ghostly bed was, on the floor below. As the boss, with the girls, came in, it was clear the men were trying to look businesslike.
“What’s the joke?” asked Callahan bruskly. “What’s all the laughing about?”
A young man wearing a windbreaker jacket and awkwardly holding a crowbar spoke first.
“We heard groans coming from the chimney, and Pete opened the chute in the fireplace and threw down a brick. I guess we hit the ghost, the noise stopped so quick,” chuckled the workman.
“Ghost, my eye!” exclaimed another man. “Probably it was a cat or something caught in there. Well, you finished him anyway, Pete,” and they were ready to laugh again.
Arden and the girls drew closer together. “There is that Nick,” whispered Arden to Dot, indicating a man in the group who alone showed no amusement. He was covertly glancing at his companions, and suddenly he left the room.
In an instant he was back, bringing with him another man. Both were seriously excited.
“Any of you guys seen Jim? He was working with me across the hall, but he ain’t here now,” declared the new man.
“He didn’t come here,” answered the man who had spoken before. “What’s the matter? You look worried.”
Callahan stood facing the newcomer, dismay slowly blotting out the pleased expression on his face. Was this more trouble? Was ever a man so followed by bad luck? What was going on in this old house, anyway?
“What’s your trouble?” Callahan was once more the boss contractor.
“I can’t find Jim. He was with me, and we were sizin’ up the room, figurin’ on how she would tear apart. I was at one end and Jim at another, near a closet. I saw him go in. Then I heard a funny noise, sort of groan, and when I turned around—Jim wasn’t there!”
“Nonsense!” snorted Callahan, chewing on the end of his cigar. “He’s probably downstairs.”
“No, sir, I looked! Jim ain’t so well. He’s been sick, and this is the first time he’s been out on a job in quite a while,” the workman said. “He’s a swell feller. I’ve known him a long time. I’m afraid he’s hurt.”
“How could he be hurt? He hasn’t even begun to work. Show me the room you were in.” The contractor spoke disgustedly.
They all started for the room across the hall. The men were in various kinds of working clothes, one or two wearing ordinary business suits. These were the better class, who needed the work. Then there were regular house-wreckers in stout shoes and overalls. As a background there were the girls in their smart riding habits and bright scarfs following Callahan, whose cigar was now reduced to a soggy brown mass.
In the room from which the man Jim Danton had disappeared was a conglomeration of furniture. Old chairs and a rickety table piled in a group in one corner, a huge wicker clothes hamper that had been turned upside down, perhaps in the hope that Jim would fall out.
The girls could not suppress a giggle, it was so silly, and some of the men snickered too. But Jim was nowhere to be seen.
“Here’s where I last saw him standing. Right here; but he wasn’t there when I looked.” The man who had been about to begin work with the missing Jim indicated the far end of the room.
Callahan strode over with Napoleon-like firmness. A door was closed, there; a closet door. With a huge red hand the contractor grasped the knob and wrenched it open. There was an expectant silence, then Callahan took a step forward to see better. The closet was empty!
The group pressed nearer. Three sides of dark wood but nothing more. The contractor thumped the walls vigorously.
“You’re crazy, man!” he said to the puzzled wrecker. “Jim never disappeared from here.”
“Well, he disappeared from some place. He’s not here now,” insisted the friend of Jim.
Callahan was clearly disgusted. Just when everything seemed to be going well at last, something new had to crop up. What silly persons these men were. Like a bunch of sheep. Because a few not too intelligent Negroes claimed they had seen a ghost, these men, who ought to have more sense, were already showing signs of fright because one of their group could not be found. The contractor pulled his battered gray hat down over one eye and produced a new cigar from an apparently endless supply. Then began the slapping of his pockets for matches. He looked vaguely at Sim as though remembering that she had come to his rescue before, but this time she stared back at him uncomprehending.
Callahan went to the head of the stairs and shouted over the banister. “Danton!” he called, his powerful voice booming through the house. “Jim Danton!”
But not even an echo answered him and, giving the cigar a vicious bite, he strode over to the window. “Hey, you, Danton, come here!” he shouted, but the result was the same as before.
“Maybe he got sick and started home,” timidly suggested Sim in a voice that sounded ridiculously small after the Gargantuan tones of Mr. Callahan.
“Oh, no, miss,” answered the worried worker. “He couldn’t go back till the truck came to take him and all of us out the main road. He lives too far. Besides, this job meant a lot to Jim. It’s the first work he’s had in months.”
There was a discontented murmur growing among the men, and Arden could see the man whom Titus Ellery called “Nick” circulating among them and saying something in an insistent low tone. They were talking in a little group near the door of the room while Callahan questioned Jim’s particular friend more closely.
Arden stepped to the open door of the closet and peered inside. Then she stooped down, and when she straightened up again she held up a small grimy object.
She turned and faced the awe-struck company, for what she was displaying was a glove such as workmen wear, of a dull white color with a dark-blue knitted band at the wrist.
“That’s his glove!” exclaimed the man near Mr. Callahan. “I was with him when he bought the pair. Jim said his hands were soft from not working in so long; he needed gloves.”
At this discovery the men who had been talking quietly now showed open revolt. One fellow dropped a crowbar he had been carrying. It fell with a crash and seemed to startle them all into activity.
“Not quitting, are you?” the contractor asked, sneering. “Fine bunch of men, you are!”
“We sure are quitting, Mr. Callahan! We don’t mind ghosts; but when a man disappears in broad daylight, that’s too much.” It was the sinister Nick who spoke. Arden thought he seemed pleased at his announcement.
The men near by shook their heads in agreement, and some put on their coats as they prepared to leave.
The weary Callahan sank helplessly down on a pile of boards and pushed his hat back on his head. This, surely, was the last straw! The men straggled out of the old house. The girls followed them. In a little while the contractor also came out.
There appeared to be a spirit of uncertainty among the workmen. They were not like the Negroes and Italians who had previously “seen ghosts.” These new workmen were not superstitious. But even they, white-collar-class, as they were called, seemed suddenly given to some strange and nerve-racking fear. They wanted to hurry away from the old Hall where such a strange thing had seemingly just happened, but felt they owed a certain allegiance to their missing fellow worker if not to the burly and baffled boss, Callahan.
“I say, fellows,” one of the men began, “I wonder if we shouldn’t do something about Jim before we leave.”
“What can we do?” faltered the man who had dropped the heavy bar.
It was here that Arden Blake saw her opportunity. Stepping forward with a manner and air that her girl friends warmly complimented her about, she called:
“Are you going to leave without trying to find that missing man?”
“But how can we find him?” a voice from the huddled group asked. “He just disappeared. We can’t find him. There’s nowhere even to look.”
“But have you searched?” Arden demanded.
They seemed confused at that straightforward question.
“No,” one finally murmured.
“Then come back to the house with me!” insisted Arden. “We girls will go with them, Mr. Callahan,” she promised. “We’ll have another good look all around. There is nothing in that house to harm anyone. And we don’t believe in ghosts, so the man must be found.”
“If it comes to a question of ghosts, miss,” said a tall, lanky man, “I don’t believe in ’em myself. But when a man is snatched away, you might say, right from under your nose, why, that’s something different.”
“Sure is,” his friends muttered.
“Could it not very well be,” asked Sim, “that this Jim Danton might have gone to some other part of the house without telling any of you, and have been hurt there?—his hammer may have slipped and hit him on the head, knocking him unconscious. That could have happened.”
“And he may be up in one of the old rooms now, injured, suffering,” added Terry.
“This certainly is getting interesting, to say the least,” spoke Dorothy. “I must give you girls credit for getting up some good theatrical effects in this mystery. That’s quite a mob scene,” and she pointed a rather languid finger at the group of workers.
“Don’t make fun, Dot,” said Terry in a low voice. “This may be serious.” Dot was inclined to be theatrical at the wrong time.
“It is serious,” declared Sim.
Arden still held the center of the stage. She felt the need of prompt, effective action.
“Well, let’s go make another search,” she proposed. “And don’t waste time.”
“We’ll do that with you,” said a young fellow. “But Jim didn’t go to any isolated room and hit himself on the head with his hammer. In the first place, he didn’t have any hammer. He was using a crowbar.”
“That’s right,” came in a murmur, a proper mob-scene murmur, Dorothy thought, though she did not dare mention it.
“And in the second place,” went on the same young fellow, “he was in that closet. I saw him go in.”
“And nobody saw him come out, and there isn’t even a rat-hole in that closet yet,” declared another. “We haven’t started ripping there.”
It looked as though the fear and mystery would start all over again. But Arden was not going to give up.
“Let’s go have a look,” she proposed.
“That’s the idea!” boomed Mr. Callahan. He was getting hopeful once more. “The girls’ll put you fellows to shame! Let’s all go in.”
The Hall was quickly invaded with more persons than it had housed in many a long day. On the two lower floors no work of demolishing the place was visible. The men had first started tearing out the top or fourth floor. It was from the third floor that Jim Danton had disappeared.
“I wonder how much longer Mrs. Howe is going to leave some of her possessions in here?” said Sim as they reëntered the big lower entrance.
“She’ll have to be getting it all out pretty soon,” threatened the contractor, “or I’ll have to set it out for her. I don’t want to damage anything of hers and have her sue me, for she’s a determined woman, though, in ways, as nice as my own mother. But she sort of feels that she is being cheated. It’s none of my doing. She claims this place, and she told me she was going to leave stuff in here to enforce her claim. But it’ll have to be got out of here pretty quick now. The men’ll soon be down to the second floor. There’s hardly any of Mrs. Howe’s stuff on the third floor now. She took it away before I began my work this week.” He was saying this as they tramped into the echoing old hall.
The party, scattering, though the girls kept together, looked all over the first floor. There was no sign of any missing man, though it took some little time to establish this fact, for there were many nooks, corners, passages, closets, and rooms in the lower part of the rambling old place.
The second floor, where the “ghosts” had been said to appear, was likewise devoid of any missing person, man or otherwise. They looked, one after another, calling back and forth like scouts in the woods.
“Well, he isn’t here,” Mr. Callahan finally announced.
“No,” Arden was forced to agree, with a sense of disappointment. She had really hoped to find the man and so dispel the unreasoning fears about the place as well as to save Jim Danton.
“Now, we’ll try once more to see how it could happen that Jim could possibly have vanished out of a closet that you say hasn’t even a rat-hole,” spoke the contractor, as they all went up to the third floor like some awkward brigade. Some of the rooms there were open to the weather, their outer walls having been torn away in uneven patches.
“There’s where he went in but where he didn’t come out!” said the man who claimed to have heard the weird ghostly howling through the ash-chute.
One by one the men, the girls, and the contractor looked and stepped inside the closet. As before, it seemed as solid as any such place always seems. There were rows of old hand-forged iron hooks on the two side walls and the back, but it appeared solid; unbroken in walls and, as had been said, there wasn’t even a rat-hole for escape.
“A collector would give a good deal for those hooks,” said Dot. “They’re real antiques.”
“We’re looking for a man, not antiques,” said Sim, under her breath.
Mr. Callahan and some of the men stamped on the floor and kicked at the baseboards. Everything was solid. The door was the only visible means of egress.
“And Jim didn’t come out of the door!” declared several of his companions, at which all of them shook their heads in positive agreement.
“Well, it sure is queer,” the contractor had to admit when they had finished inspecting the third floor, including a big room next to the one containing the closet that seemed to be the starting point of the mystery. This room had an immense fireplace, and one of the men even stooped within it and peered up the chimney.
“He isn’t up there,” he announced, scraping some soot and dirt down the uncovered ash-chute with his foot. “Jim isn’t there.”
This was terrifying. Workmen might be familiar with accidents, but the girls could hardly stand such suspense.
The entire third floor, at least the undemolished rooms, was thoroughly searched, with no result. The fourth floor and the roof over it were so nearly destroyed that it required but the briefest of inspections to make sure no missing man was there.
Baffled, the party went down to the lower hall, Mr. Callahan becoming more serious and even showing alarm now that his workman could not be traced or located.
“What do you think now, Arden?” asked Terry in a low voice.
“I don’t know what to think, but he must be some place.”
“There’s no use in our staying here any longer, is there?” asked Dorothy.
“I can’t see what good we can do,” agreed Sim.
The contractor was talking to his men off a little to one side. He was arguing against their desire to quit.
“If you go,” he threatened, “you’ll lose the bonus I promised to everybody who’d work a week straight here and not be scared away by silly stories. Besides, we’ve got to keep on looking for Jim.”
“A man vanishing isn’t a silly story,” snarled one man.
Sim, Terry, and Dorothy were interested in the efforts of the contractor and realized that he was trying desperately to keep his force together. It was a sort of last stand with him, since so many of the more ignorant workers had left previously. Arden, hardly knowing why, wandered out and around to the rear of the old Hall. She was tired of the confusion but did not want to give up.
“I wonder if I could think this out?” she reasoned. “There must be some answer.”
In a sort of mental fog, Arden walked on a little farther into the field. She found herself in a tangle of weeds where once had been beds of flowers. There was one of the entrances to the great cellar under the old mansion, just under a little back porch.
Arden peered down the crumbling stone steps and looked past the sagging, rotting, open door into the blackness. A damp, musty smell floated up to her; perhaps the remains of the aroma that must have clung to the cellar since its days of full and plenty.
As Arden stood there, she was surprised to see a little flickering light in the darkness of the cellar. Suddenly the light, which was bobbing about like a will-o’-the-wisp, came to a stop.
“Somebody’s down there!” gasped Arden. “Oh——”
A moment later she heard a scream. It was the high-pitched and frightened voice of a girl.
Then, out of the black cellar, with horror showing on her face, came running—Betty Howe!
“Oh! Oh!” she screamed. “It’s terrible! Down there—in the cellar—a dead man!”
“A dead man!” repeated Arden, her mind now working fast. She wanted to be sure of her ground. “Are you sure, Betty?” she asked.
“Yes! Oh, yes! I saw him—as plain as anything!”
Betty rushed toward Arden, all but falling upon her, the flashlight still glowing. At the same moment Arden became aware of the approach of an old woman from around the corner of the house, at the rear.
Arden Blake, for a moment, did not know which to attend to first, the strange old woman or the nervous and excited Betty Howe with her gasping declaration of a dead man in the cellar.
Then, in a flash, Arden decided if there was a dead man there he must be the missing Jim. And if he were dead he would remain there. Also Arden knew Betty, but she did not know this strange woman who had so suddenly, and seemingly mysteriously, appeared on the scene.
“Don’t be afraid, Betty!” Arden told the trembling girl. “We are here with you—the other girls are around in front, and so is the contractor and his men. But who is this—lady?”
The strange woman was regarding Arden with malevolent eyes, and her mouth seemed to be muttering words. Betty, who, up to this moment, did not appear to have been aware of the other’s presence, now turned and looked. She showed no surprise.
“Oh,” she said in a low voice to Arden, “that is Granny’s cousin, Viney Tucker. She lives with us. I guess Granny didn’t mention her before, because, well—she is a little——”
Betty did not need to add the word “queer,” Arden could see that for herself. But there was nothing abnormal about Viney Tucker. She had once been a handsome woman, Arden reasoned, perhaps even more so than Granny Howe.
“Cousin Viney helps Granny with the work, as she used to do when we all lived in the Hall,” Betty hurried to say. “But don’t bother about her. She goes and comes as and when she pleases. But the man in the cellar—the dead man. Oh, I was so frightened! What shall we do?”
“This probably explains the whole mystery,” said Arden.
“What mystery?”
“About the missing workman, Jim Danton. Didn’t you hear all the excitement about him, Betty?”
“No, I only just got here a few minutes ago. What do you mean about a missing man?”
“First tell me,” suggested Arden, “what you were doing in the cellar.”
“I was there looking for some old books that were stored down there when we moved out and over to the cottage. I happened to mention them to our librarian the other day, and he suggested that I bring some in for him to examine. He said there might be some valuable volumes among them. So I took a little time off from my work, and I came directly here—with a flashlight.” This was all said in breathless haste.
“Yes,” said Arden, “I see you have a flashlight.”
“It’s the only way to find things in the cellar—it’s so dark down there with all the lights off now. And if it hadn’t been for my light I wouldn’t have seen the dead man.” She actually leaned against Arden and was trembling still.
“Let’s hope he isn’t dead,” suggested Arden. “Come! We must tell the others quickly.”
Up to this time Viney Tucker had neither moved nor spoken since her arrival on the scene. She stood at the corner of the house and fairly glared at the girls. Now she exclaimed:
“Ha! So there’s a dead man, is there? I knew murder would be done before they finished tearing down our house! I knew it!”
“It isn’t murder, Cousin Viney,” said Betty.
“Well, there will be murder before this business is finished,” sniffed the old woman. “And I don’t like murder being done in our old house.”
“And it isn’t our house any more, Cousin Viney,” said Betty. “That’s just the trouble—we can’t prove it is ours.”
“If we could only find the papers! If we could only find the papers!” muttered Viney Tucker as she hurried away in the direction of the cottage. Evidently the excited woman was suffering from the wrongs she, as well as her family, felt had been done them about the Hall.
“Now we must hurry!” cried Arden. “This man you think is dead—I’m sure he’s the missing Jim, and he may not be dead at all; he must be looked after. If he’s injured, he’ll need a doctor. Come and tell the others all about it! They’re right out here.”
“But I don’t know anything about him,” Betty objected as Arden fairly dragged her around to the front of the house.
“You found him—that’s enough!”
The conference between the contractor and his men was still on, but Sim and the others seemed on the point of leaving. They had just become aware of the fact that Arden was not in sight when she came into view with Betty.
“We’ve found the missing man. Or, rather, Betty did when she went in the cellar after books!” cried Arden all in a breath. Quickly she introduced Betty to her chums.
“You mean Jim?” shouted Mr. Callahan.
“I think so,” Arden answered.
“Come on, men!” cried the contractor leading a rush around to the side cellar door. “But it’ll be dark down there. We’ll need some lanterns. Get one, some of you.”
“Take my flashlight,” offered Betty.
Mr. Callahan did, fairly snatching it away but begging her pardon a moment later.
“You can’t know how upset I am,” he explained. “So many things have happened today and other days. Poor Jim! How in the world did he get down in the cellar? Is he badly hurt, do you think?”
“He seemed to be unconscious,” Betty answered. “But I didn’t give more than a look, and I thought he was dead, so I screamed and rushed out.”
“And I met her as I was wandering around that way trying to think up some reason for all this,” Arden explained.
“Well, we must get help to him quickly if he’s alive!” decided the contractor, and he led his hurrying men while the girls followed.
“How long were you in the cellar, Betty?” asked Arden.
“Only a few minutes. I couldn’t find the box of books at first. It must have been moved. And then I saw—him!”
“And you didn’t hear anything of the search we have been conducting for the last half hour?” asked Sim.
“Not the least sound. But then I was away down cellar, and the floors are very heavy.”
“And we were searching the upper floors,” said Terry. “Of course you couldn’t hear, Betty.”
Up out of the cellar, sliding and slipping on the crumbling stone steps, came the men carrying an apparently lifeless form. They had found it by means of Betty’s electric torch.
“Is it the missing man?” called Arden.
“Yes, it’s Jim Danton,” someone answered.
“Is he—dead?”
“We don’t know yet,” said Mr. Callahan. “We’ve got to get him to a doctor pretty quick.”
“Well, at any rate,” said Dorothy, “the mystery of the poor man’s disappearance is solved, and I hope he isn’t seriously injured.”
One of the men who was standing near the girls turned to answer Dorothy.
“That doesn’t explain it,” he said. “Jim was working on the third floor, but how did he get down in that cellar?”
Having carried the unconscious man out of the cellar, the men stood at the top of the steps leading down into the darkness, awkwardly holding their burden. The girls had a momentary glimpse of Jim Danton’s face. There was blood on it. With a little shudder and murmur of horror Dorothy turned away.
“Poor fellow!” murmured Sim.
“Can’t we do something to help?” asked Terry.
“You ought to put him down—lay him down flat!” commanded Arden. “There may be broken bones! It isn’t doing him any good to hold him all crumpled that way.”
“He ought to have a doctor!” declared the contractor. “I wonder if it’s best to try to get him home and have the doctor there or get a doctor here? Where’s a telephone?”
“There isn’t one anywhere near here,” Betty volunteered.
“Then we’d best take him home,” decided Mr. Callahan. “But how to do it? I let my partner take my car after he dropped me off here, and I don’t know when he’ll be back.”
“I have a car!” Sim quickly interposed. “If one of you men will sit in the rumble seat and hold this man, I’ll drive him home—if it isn’t too far.”
“Oh, he lives right here in Jockey Hollow,” said the tall thin worker. “About two miles from here, down by Primrose Brook.”
“I’ll take him in my car, then,” decided Sim. “One of you girls had better ride with me,” she added in a lower voice.
“I will,” Arden offered. “And I know a little about first aid, so maybe we can be of some help when we get this man home—before the doctor comes.” The unfortunate man hadn’t moved, nor did he seem even to breathe.
“That’s right,” agreed Sim. “But about a doctor?” she asked, turning to the contractor and the men gathered about him. “How are you going to get a doctor?”
“I’ll run to the nearest telephone, miss, as soon as you start with Jim,” the tall thin man offered. “I know the location of Jim’s house. I can direct the doctor there.”
“All right,” Sim assented. “Take him to my car. Come on, Arden. We certainly have run into something all right—whether or not it’s a mystery will develop later. But about you girls?” she asked, looking at Dot and Terry and, incidentally, at Betty.
“We’ll wait here until you two come back,” Terry suggested.
“Please come with me and have some tea at our cottage,” invited Betty. “You can wait there.”
“That will be better,” Arden accepted. As the men started to carry Jim to Sim’s car, she inquired, of no one in particular: “Where did you find him, and is there any explanation of how he got into the cellar?”
“He was at the bottom of an old ash-chute,” said Mr. Callahan. “It opens into the cellar and connects with that big fireplace on the third floor, in the room next to the one with the closet in—the closet they say Jim disappeared from, only he couldn’t. It’s a very big ash-chute—big enough for a man to slide down. They must have burned whole trees in the old days, in that fireplace. And when the fire was out, instead of carting the ashes downstairs in a hod, they just opened a sort of trapdoor on the bottom of the hearth and dumped the ashes down. Only the trapdoor is rusted away now, and, somehow, Jim must have got into the ash-chute and he slid down to the cellar, bumping his head, cutting himself and knocking himself out on the way. That’s all there is to the mystery. And I’m glad of it.”
His men looked relieved. One of them said:
“Then I guess Jim couldn’t have gone into that closet like Nate thought he did. Though he may have gone in there, and have come out without Nate seeing him. Next he went into the fireplace room and, somehow or other, he slipped down the ash-chute.”
“That’s the way of it,” said Mr. Callahan. “It explains everything, boys, and tomorrow we’ll get on this job and clean it up. The mystery is all solved.”
“In my eye!” someone muttered.
“What makes you say that, Nate Waldon?” asked the contractor.
“Because Jim did disappear right out of the closet. I know it. I didn’t see him disappear, of course, but he didn’t come out and go in the fireplace room.”
“This is worse and more of it!” sighed the contractor. He looked at the men carefully getting Jim into the rumble seat of Sim’s car and asked: “Well, what do you say happened, Nate?”