But the weather remained quite clear for several nights after this. And meantime other things happened that gave a new twist to the girls’ conjectures.

Two mornings after the events of the last chapter, Phyllis appeared at Rest Haven with a mysterious wrapped parcel in her hand. Answering Leslie’s curious glance, she whispered:

“I want you to take this thing and keep it here and hide it. It’s ‘The Dragon’s Secret.’ I don’t feel safe a minute with it around our place since Ted’s performance the other day. You know, he boasted he’d find out our secret, and he will certainly make every effort to, or I don’t know him. Whether he’ll succeed or not depends upon how clever we are in spoiling his plans. If he found this, though, we might as well not try to keep the rest from him. I discovered him snooping around my room rather suspiciously yesterday. This was locked up in my trunk, and he said he was only hunting for fudge! But anyhow, you’d better keep it now, if you can think of some safe place to hide it.”

“I’m sure I don’t know where to put it!” sighed Leslie, rather worried by the responsibility. “Aunt Marcia and I shared one big trunk because it didn’t seem worth while to bring two, when one needs so few things here. So of course I couldn’t put it in there, and the lock of my suitcase is broken. There isn’t a bureau-drawer with a key in the whole bungalow—so what am I going to do?”

For a time, Phyllis was equally puzzled. Then suddenly she had a bright idea. “I’ll tell you! That top shelf in your pantry where the refrigerator is! You said you’d put quite a few kitchen things that you didn’t use there, and it’s dark and unhandy and neither your aunt nor any one else would think of disturbing it. Wouldn’t that be the best place, really?”

“I guess you’re right,” admitted Leslie, considerably relieved. “Wait till Aunt Marcia has gone to sit on the front veranda, and we can put it there.”

The Dragon’s Secret had probably known some strange resting-places in its time, but doubtless none stranger than the one in which it now found itself—a dark, rather dusty top shelf in a pantry, hobnobbing with a few worn-out pots and pans and discarded kitchen-ware! But the girls tucked it far into a corner, and, wrapped in its burlap bag, it was as successfully concealed as it would have been in a strong-box.

“And now, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you,” said Leslie, as the two girls strolled down to the beach. “Do you happen to know anything about the people who hired Curlew’s Nest the latter part of this summer?”

“Oh, yes!” answered Phyllis, “though I didn’t happen to see them myself. Mrs. Danforth told me that in July the Remsons had it, as they always do. But in August and September she rented it to an elderly gentleman,—I can’t think of his name, just this minute,—who stayed there all by himself, with only his man or valet to do all the work. He wasn’t very well,—was recovering from some kind of a fever, I think,—and wanted to be alone in some quiet place. You know, Mrs. Danforth herself spent all summer in your bungalow, and she said she saw very little of the man in Curlew’s Nest, though they were such near neighbors. He sat on his porch or in the house a great deal, or took long walks by himself on the beach. He used to pass the time of day with her, and make some other formal remarks, but that was about all. She was really rather curious about him, he seemed so anxious not to mix with other people or be talked to. But he left about the middle of September, and she closed up that bungalow for the winter. That’s about all I know.”

“It’s too bad you can’t think of his name!” exclaimed Leslie.

“Why?” demanded Phyllis, suddenly curious. “You surely don’t think that has anything to do with this affair, do you?”

But Leslie countered that question by asking another: “Has it ever occurred to you as strange, Phyllis, that whoever got into that bungalow lately, knew the little secret about the side door and worked it so cleverly?”

Phyllis’s eyes grew wide and she seized Leslie’s arm in so muscular a grip that Leslie winced. “No, it didn’t, you little pocket-edition Sherlock Holmes! But I see what you’re driving at. To know about that side door, one must have been pretty well acquainted with that bungalow—lived in it for a while! Aha! No wonder you’re curious about the last occupant. We’ll have to count that old gentleman in on this!”

“Yes, but here’s the mystery,” reminded Leslie. “You said he lived here alone except for his man-servant. Remember, please, that the footprint we saw—was a woman’s!”

Phyllis tore at her hair in mock despair. “Worse and more of it!” she groaned. “But the deeper it gets, the more determined I grow to get to the bottom of it!”

They strolled on a while in silence. Suddenly Phyllis asked, “Where’s Rags this morning?”

“He doesn’t seem to feel very well to-day. Something seems to have disagreed with him—perhaps too many hermit-crabs! Anyway, he’s lying around on the veranda and seems to want to stay near Aunt Marcia and sleep. She said she’d keep him there.”

“Best news I’ve heard in an age!” exclaimed Phyllis, delightedly. “That dog is a most faithful article, Leslie, but he’s a decided nuisance sometimes! And now, I have a gorgeous idea that I’ve been wanting to try for two days. Father and Ted have gone off for the day up the inlet, and Rags is out of commission. Here’s our chance. Do you realize that there’s one bedroom in Curlew’s Nest we didn’t have a chance to explore the other day? Let’s go and do it right now. I’ll run down to our house for the electric torch and meet you at the side door. There’s not a soul around to interfere with us!”

“Oh, no, Phyllis! I really don’t think we ought—” objected Leslie, recalling all too vividly the unpleasantness of their former experience. But Phyllis was off and far away while she was still expostulating, and in the end, Leslie found herself awaiting her companion in the vicinity of the side door of Curlew’s Nest.

They entered the dark bungalow with beating hearts, more aware this time than ever that mystery lurked in the depth of it. Straight to the unexplored bedroom they proceeded, for, as Leslie reminded them, they had no time to waste; Rags might have an untimely recovery and come seeking them as before! Ted also might be prompted by his evil genius to descend on them; or even Aunt Marcia might be minded to hunt them up.

The bedroom in question, as Phyllis now recalled, was the southwest one, and the one Mrs. Danforth said that the last tenant had chosen for his own. “Therefore it ought to be more than ordinarily interesting,” went on Phyllis. “I remember now that Mrs. Danforth said he had asked permission to leave there, as a little contribution to the bungalow, a few books that he had finished with and did not wish to carry away. She left them right where they were on a shelf in his room, instead of putting them in the bookcase in the living-room. I’m sort of remembering these things she told me, piecemeal, because Mrs. Danforth is a great talker and is always giving you a lot of details about things you’re not particularly interested in, and you try to listen politely, but often find it an awful bore. Then you try to forget it all as soon as possible!”

They found the bedroom in question somewhat more spacious and better furnished than the others. But though they examined every nook and cranny with care, they discovered nothing thrilling, or even enlightening, within its walls till they came to the shelf of books. These, with the exception of two books of recent fiction, were all of travel and politics in foreign countries.

“My, but he must have been interested in India and China and Tibet and those countries!” exclaimed Leslie, reading the titles. “I wonder why?”

She took one of them down and turned the pages idly. As she did so, something fluttered out and fell to the floor. “Oh!” she cried, picking it up and examining it. “Phyllis, this may prove very valuable! Do you see what it is?” It was an envelop of thin, foreign-looking paper—an empty envelop, forgotten and useless, unless perhaps it had been employed as a bookmark. But on it was a name—the name no doubt of the recipient of the letter it had once contained, and also a foreign address.

“Do you see what it says?” went on Leslie, excitedly. “‘Honorable Arthur Ramsay, Hotel des Wagons-Lits, Peking’. Why, Phyllis, that’s his name (which you couldn’t remember!) and he was evidently at some time in Peking!”

But Phyllis was puckering her brows in an effort of memory. “There’s some mistake here, I guess,” she remarked at length, “for now I recall that Mrs. Danforth said his name was Mr. Horatio Gaines!”

Leslie dropped the envelop back in the book, the picture of disappointment. “It doesn’t seem likely he’d have someone else’s envelops in his books,” she remarked. “And I think Honorable Arthur Ramsay of Peking sounds far 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!