d a doubt they were the victims of some mistake; but how was the
mistake to be cleared up if they could not make themselves understood?
They looked the room over thoroughly for some clew to the mystery. They
found none. There was no door leading from the room except the one
opening into the bath. There was no door leading out from the bath, to
any other room; neither was there any window. The little room was
lighted by electricity. As in the other room, everything here was
violet-colored. The tiled walls, the floor, the calcimined ceiling, the
light globe, the enameled medicine chest, the outside of the bathtub,
and even a little three-legged stool, were all the same shade. The
wonder of the girls increased momentarily.

"Can this be real," asked Nyoda, looking around her in a daze, "or are
we in the middle of some nightmare? Pinch me to see if I'm awake."

"We're awake, all right," said Gladys.

"Then have we dropped back into one of the novels of Dumas? Can this be
the year 1915? Imprisoned in a lonely tower, with no window except one
over the lake, and that window barred. How did we get here, anyway?" she
asked wearily, her head spinning with the effort to make head or tail
out of their position. "Let's see, just how was it? We missed the
Limited, telephoned Mrs. Bates, and she told us that her automobile was
at the corner of ----th Avenue and L---- Street--a bright blue
automobile with a cane streamer--and we should get in and the driver
would come and take us out to Bates Villa. We went down to the corner,
found the automobile, got in, and the driver came and drove off and we
landed here." Her temples throbbed as she tried to recall anything out
of the way in the business. But no light came. The whole thing was
mysterious, inexplicable, grotesque.

"Hadn't we better eat something?" suggested Gladys gently. "It evidently
isn't their intention to starve us, whatever they are keeping us here
for."

"You are right," said Nyoda, and she lifted the tray down from the
shelf. The dishes and silver were of good quality, but the knives were
so dull that it was impossible to cut anything with them. After vainly
trying to make an impression on a piece of meat, Gladys threw her knife
aside impatiently.

"They certainly never made those knives to cut with," she said.

At her remark Nyoda raised her head suddenly. She thought she saw a ray
of light on the situation. "Gladys," she said, "do you know what kind of
people the