CHAPTER XIX AGAINST TIME Joey had shouted till she was hoarse; she had flung her inconsiderable weight upon the door again and again in the hope of forcing it--a feat performed with misleading ease in all Gavin's books of adventure. She had to stop at last from sheer exhaustion, and then it was, when there was nothing else to do, that she began to think. The Professor had locked her in, though she had called to him. So he had known that she was there. He was not deaf, so he had locked her in on purpose. That was the first thought which came at all clearly to her mind. The second was more puzzling still--why had he done it? Joey never knew exactly at what moment it was that a suspicion about the Professor crossed her mind. Her mind had travelled quite a long way first--as far as Mote. What would Cousin Greta say when the car came back without her? Oh, but it wouldn't--somebody would look for her. Yes, they would look, but would they look in the right place, for no one knew where she had gone--no one but little Tiddles? All the girls would have gone by the time Cousin Greta's car came for her. Syb and Barbara most likely, and Gabrielle and Noreen most certainly, would never have given up hunting for her if she were missing in a mysterious way; but then they were her friends. The maids were very kind and good-natured--they would look for her in the Blue Dorm and the playroom, and one or two more likely places of that kind, but it was not to be expected they would go on looking after that. They would probably think she had changed her mind, and gone off in one of the brakes, and tell Cousin Greta's chauffeur so. He would go back to Mote without her, and Cousin Greta would think her a girl who had been even ruder than on the former occasion, with less excuse; and John would think her a slacker, which was worse. Joey felt despairingly miserable at the thought of John's contempt; and with that misery came naturally the thought why John had wanted her to come to-day. She was not very clear as to the reason herself; but it was certainly something to do with the Professor's signalling. And somewhere at that point a suspicion lifted its head. Joey groped for a box in the darkness, and sat down to consider. All kinds of queer things about the Professor kept shifting in a muddled kaleidoscopic whirl across her memory--his curious anger on the first day they had met, the afternoon when she had tried to perform the duties of a scholarship kid by tidying the Lab; the violet handkerchief he used, with the queer marks on it; his prowls and signalling at night. Sitting there in the darkness, with her fingers pressed tightly on her eyeballs to help her to think, Joey saw again that handkerchief hung out to dry upon the nursery guard of the First Form Room, and the little yellow marks that came out with the heat, and disappeared when the handkerchief was cool again. They might just have been washing marks--if washing marks ever did a thing like that.