But Julian was gone. Foster sighed an echoing sigh within the helmet. He could see pretty well through the eye slits, but he felt top-heavy, as though he were wearing an iron bucket on his head, and he couldn't get it off by himself. Sighing again, he felt for the banister and started cautiously up the stairs to find his cousin. "_Portia!_" roared Julian. "Now what?" she said, marking her place on the page with her finger. "Listen to this, just listen! This piece of paper fell out of the helmet--" "What helmet?" "Oh, never mind, it doesn't matter. Listen; here's what it says: zero dash, six R dash, two L dash, eight R dash, three whole turns R to eight." Portia stared at him. "Are you crazy or something?" "Doesn't it mean anything to you? Listen again. R means right and L means left, see? So it's zero dash, six _right_ dash, two _left_ dash, eight _right_ dash, three whole turns _right_ to _eight_. Do you dig it now?" "No," Portia said. "Oh, for Pete's sake. It's a combin_ation_, brain. It's sort of a recipe for opening a safe. Now do you see?" "Mrs. Brace-Gideon's safe?" Julian just sighed. "Well, how do you know that's what it is? Maybe it's a recipe for some kind of dance: turn three times to the right and then six times to the left or whatever it is. It _could_ be a dance." Julian rolled his eyes upward. "How do you start a dance at zero?" he inquired. "Just give me a clue." At this moment, staring beyond him, Portia gasped. Footsteps were sounding slowly on the attic stairs, and just above the level of the attic floor appeared the helmet of an armored knight. "Oh, Jule, oh, Jule," she whispered, grasping his arm; and then she wished she hadn't. How she wished she hadn't! Because below the shining headdress of Sir Launcelot was the figure of her brother Foster, sloppily attired in blue jeans and a grass-stained T-shirt. "_When Knighthood Was in Flower_," commented Julian, kindly ignoring his cousin's moment of panic. "Get me out of here, will you?" begged Foster, his plea reverberating in the helmet. "Please hurry up." When Julian had liberated him, he did a little hopping. "Now my head feels light again. I feel light all over, and nice. But you know what, Jule? I bet they used to have a lot of headaches in knight-days. And stiff necks, too. And if their ear itched, how could they ever scratch it?" 10 _The Rescue Shell_ "What I don't see," Portia objected later that day, "is what's so wonderful about finding the combination when you haven't found the safe and maybe never will." "I don't know myself, to tell you the truth. It's just that it makes the safe seem _realer_--as if we really would find it. I know that doesn't make sense and it's a dumb way to reason; I guess you'd call it a superstition or a hunch or something, but that's the way I feel." "It will probably be empty if we do find it, just as Aunt Minnehaha said."