The two little boys were wide awake. They sat up to look at me and both spoke at once. “Can you tell fairy tales out of your head?” “Did you see Chang?” They were small, sleek-headed, fair-skinned youngsters, adorably clean and rumpled. “Chang is their dog, a Pekingese,” explained the mother. “He has been lost for several days.” “But he isn’t lost, mother. I can hear him crying every now and then. You’ll look again, mother, won’t you?” “We heard him through the furnace pipe,” shrilled the smaller of the two. “You said you would look.” “I did look, darlings. He isn’t there. And you promised not to cry about him, Freddie.” Freddie, thus put on his honor, protested he was not crying for the dog. “I want to go out and take a walk, that’s why I’m crying,” he wailed. “And I want Mademoiselle, and my buttons are all off. And my ear aches when I lie on it.” The room was close. I threw up the windows, and turned to find Mrs. Reed at my elbows. She was glancing out apprehensively. “I suppose the air is necessary,” she said, “and these windows are all right. But—I have a reason for asking it—please do not open the others.” She went very soon, and I listened as she went out. I had promised to lock the door behind her, and I did so. The bolt outside was not shot. After I had quieted the children with my mildest fairy story I made a quiet inventory of my new quarters. The rough diagram of the second floor is the one I gave Mr. Patton later. That night, of course, I investigated only the two nurseries. But, so strangely had the fear that hung over the house infected me, I confess that I made my little tour of bathroom and clothes-closet with my revolver in my hand! I found nothing, of course. The disorder of the house had not extended itself here. The bathroom was spotless with white tile, the large clothes-closet which opened off the passage between the two rooms was full of neatly folded clothing for the children. The closet was to play its part later, a darkish little room faintly lighted by a ground glass transom opening into the center hall, but dependent mostly on electric light. Outside the windows Mrs. Reed had asked me not to open was a porte-cochère roof almost level with the sills. Then was it an outside intruder she feared? And in that case, why the bolts on the outside of the two nursery doors? For the night nursery, I found, must have one also. I turned the key, but the door would not open.