s, Val?"

He shook his head. "Positive."

"Queer," murmured Rupert and reached for it again. "It's a good quality
of linen and it's almost new." He held it to his nose. "That's oil on
it. But how--?"

"I wonder--" Val mused.

"What do you know?" asked Ricky.

"Well--Oh, it isn't possible. He wouldn't carry a handkerchief," her
brother said half to himself.

"Who wouldn't?" asked Rupert. Then Val told them of his meeting with the
boy Jeems and what Sam had had to say of him.

"Don't know whether I exactly like this." Rupert folded the mysterious
square of stained linen. "As you say, Val, a boy like that would hardly
carry a handkerchief. Also, you met him in the garden, while--"

"The person who left that was in this house last night!" finished Ricky.
"And I don't like that!"

"The door was locked and bolted when I came down this morning," Val
observed.

Rupert nodded. "Yes, I distinctly remember doing that before I went up
to bed last night. But when I was going around the house this morning I
discovered that there are French doors opening from the old ball-room to
the terrace, and I didn't inspect their fastening last night."

"But who would want to come in here? There are no valuables left except
furniture. And it would take three or four men and a truck to collect
that. I don't see what he was after," puzzled Ricky.

Rupert arose from the table. "We have, it seems, a mystery on our hands.
If you want to amuse yourselves, my children, here's the first clue.
I've got to get back to the carriage house and my labors there."

He dropped the handkerchief on the table and left. Ricky reached for the
"clue." "Awfully casual about it, isn't he?" she said. "Just the same, I
believe that this is a clue and I know what our visitor was after, too,"
she finished triumphantly.

"What?"

"The treasure Richard Ralestone hid when the Yankee raiders came."

"Well, if our unknown visitor has as little in the way of clues as we
have, he'll be a long time finding it."

"And we're going to beat him to it! It's somewhere in the Hall, and the
secret--"

"See here," Val interrupted her, "what were you about to tell me when
Rupert came in?"

She put the handkerchief in the breast pocket of her sport dress,
buttoning the flap over it.

"Rupert's got a secret."

"What kind?"

"It has to do with those two brief-cases of his. You know, the ones he
was so particular about all the way down here?"

Val nodded. Those bu