more thrilling than plain 'Horatio Gaines'! Let's look through the rest of
the books and see if we can discover anything else."

They examined them all, but found nothing more of interest and Leslie
suggested uneasily that they had better go.

"But there's one thing I must see first,--" decided Phyllis; "the beads
and broken penknife you found. I've been wild to look at them for myself.
Come along! We'll have time for that."

They made their way cautiously into the next bedroom, bent down, and
turned the torch toward the floor under the bureau where Leslie had made
the discovery. Then both girls simultaneously gasped. There was not a
sign of the beads anywhere to be seen!

"Phyllis!" breathed Leslie, in frightened wonder. "It's gone--the whole
string! What can be the meaning of it?"

"Come!" cried Phyllis, dragging Leslie after her. "Let's go and see if
the broken penknife blade is there yet. If that's gone, too, something
new has happened here!"

They hurried to the living-room and bent over the fireplace. The
half-loosened brick was there as Leslie had described it, but of the
broken penknife blade in the corner, there was not a vestige to be seen!

CHAPTER VIII

THE CLUE OF THE GREEN BEAD

With shaking knees and blank dismay on their faces, they crept out of
Curlew's Nest and fastened the door. Then they hurried down to the
water's edge and sat on a rise of sand to talk it over.

"What can it all mean, Phyllis?" quavered Leslie.

"It means that some one has been in there again since day before
yesterday," declared her companion, "though it's been bright moonlight
for the past two nights, and how they got in without being seen, I can't
quite understand! You said you kept some sort of watch, didn't you?"

"I certainly did. I haven't gone to bed till late, and every once in a
while during the night, I've waked up and looked over there. It doesn't
seem possible they would dare to come with the moonlight bright as day,
all night long. Of course, that side door is on the opposite side from
us, and the only way I could tell would be by seeing a light through the
cracks of the shutter. Perhaps if they hadn't had a very bright light, I
wouldn't know."

"But what did they come for?" questioned Phyllis.

"Why, that's simple. They came back to get the beads and the knife-blade.
Probably it was the 'mysterious she,' and she came to get those things
beca