on you and said over and over, 'Come, please come.' Didn't you feel
anything at all?"

"Good old trap-door!" I said. "I know I was thinking about you, but I
never suspected the reason. And then to have walked past here twenty
minutes ago! Why didn't you call me then?" I was tugging at the door,
but it was fast, with the skirts to hold it tight.

"I looked such a fright," she explained. "Can't you pry it up with
something?"

I tried several things without success, while Margery explained her
plight.

"I was sure Robert had not looked carefully in the old wine cellar," she
said, "and then I remembered this trap-door opened into it. It was the
only place we hadn't explored thoroughly. I put a ladder down and
looked around. Ugh!"

"What did you find?" I asked, as my third broomstick lever snapped.

"Nothing--only I know now where Aunt Letitia's Edwin Booth went to. He
was a cat," she explained, "and Aunt Letitia made the railroad pay for
killing him."

I gave up finally and stood back.

"Couldn't you--er--get out of your garments, and--I could go out and
close the door," I suggested delicately. "You see you are sitting on the
trap-door, and--"

But Margery scouted the suggestion with the proper scorn, and demanded a
pair of scissors. She cut herself loose with vicious snips, while I
paraphrased the old nursery rhyme, "She cut her petticoats all around
about." Then she gathered up her outraged garments and fled
precipitately.

She was unusually dignified at dinner. Neither of us cared to eat, and
the empty places--Wardrop's and Miss Letitia's--Miss Jane's had not been
set--were like skeletons at the board.

It was Margery who, after our pretense of a meal, voiced the suspicion I
think we both felt.

"It is a strange time for Harry to go away," she said quietly, from the
library window.

"He probably has a reason."

"Why don't you say it?" she said suddenly, turning on me. "I know what
you think. You believe he only pretended he was robbed!"

"I should be sorry to think anything of the kind," I began. But she did
not allow me to finish.

"I saw what you thought," she burst out bitterly. "The detective almost
laughed in his face. Oh, you needn't think I don't know: I saw him last
night, and the woman too. He brought her right to the gate. You treat me
like a child, all of you!"

In sheer amazement I was silent. So a new character had been introduced
into the play--a woman, too!

"You were not the on