ld doctor's big desk, and the bookcases all about the room,
and the jars with "specimens" in them and--yes!--the skeleton case in the
corner.

She had advanced to the middle of the room when suddenly she saw that the
door into the lumber room, or laboratory, at the back, was open. A white
wand of light shot through this open door, and played upon the ceiling,
then upon the wall, of the old doctor's office.

CHAPTER XXVI

A BLOW-UP

'Phemie's heart beat quickly; but she was no more afraid than she had
been the moment before, when she found the green door unlocked. There was
somebody--the person who had found the lost key--still in the offices
of the east wing.

The wand of white light playing about her was from an electric torch. She
stooped, and literally crawled on all fours out of the range of the light
from the rear doorway.

Before she knew it she was right beside the case containing the skeleton.
Indeed, she hid in its shadow.

And her interest in that moving light--and the person behind it--made her
forget her original terror of what was in the box.

She heard a rustle--then a step on the boards. It was a heavy person
approaching. The door opened farther between the workshop and the room
in which she was hidden.

Then she recognized the tall figure entering. It was as she had expected.
It was Professor Spink.

The breakfast food magnate came directly toward the high, locked desk
belonging to the dead and gone physician, who had been a kind friend and
patron of this quack medicine man when he was a boy.

'Phemie had heard all the particulars of Spink's connection with Dr. Polly
Phelps. The good old doctor had been called to attend the boy in some
childish disease while he was an inmate of the county poorhouse. His
parents--who were gypsies, or like wanderers--had deserted the boy and he
had "gone on the town," as the saying was.

Dr. Polly had taken a fancy to the little fellow. He was then twelve years
old--or thereabout--smart and sharp. The old doctor brought him home to
Hillcrest, sent him to school, made him useful to him in a dozen ways,
and began even to train him as a doctor.

For five years Jud Spink had remained with the old physician. Then he had
run away with a medicine show. It was said, too, that he stole money from
Dr. Polly when he went; but the physician had never said so, nor taken
any means to punish the wayward boy if he returned.

And Jud Spink had never re-appeared in