“Fine talk, but there’s the same old stumbling block. You can’t argue an outsider,—an intruder, without allowing a secret entrance to that house,—and you say there isn’t any.” “There sure isn’t.” “Well, suppose your criminal didn’t arrive and depart in an aeroplane?” “I’ve thought of that,—but it isn’t possible. You see there were half a dozen people looking on all the time. I wish I’d been there!” “’Twouldn’t have done any good. You couldn’t ’a’ seen more’n anybody else did. There was nothing to see.” “No,” agreed Granniss, “there was nothing to be seen.” Lawrence North came up to the house again at Rod’s request, and once more they looked for a secret room or cupboard. Armed with a yardstick and measuring tape, they went through the house from roof to cellar. They paced floors and measured walls and tapped ceilings, and proved to their own conviction that there was no foot of space in the whole structure unaccounted for. “It isn’t,” said North, “as if it were an old English manor house or a medieval castle. It’s modern, it isn’t built with any sinister plan or any desire for secret maneuvers. There never was any smuggling going on up as far as this, and, anyway, this is a simple pleasure house, built for a pleasant simple family life. I’ve looked up the builders, and they say it was built by a commonplace man with a commonplace family. They moved out of the state long ago, but there never was anything secretive or mysterious about them.” They spent a long time in the cellar, but here, too, there was no uncertain space. Everything was built four-square. Every room, bin or cupboard was as plainly defined as those above, and there was no hiding place possible. Granniss looked down the old dried up well. “Dunn went down that,” Lawrence said; “nothing doing.” “I’ve got to go down myself,” returned Rodney, shortly, as he took off his coat. “Be careful, then,” North admonished him. “I’ll hold the light.” A good, strong flashlight illumined the old well, and Rod Granniss clambered down its stone sides. But he returned with the same message Dunn had brought. “All dried up; nothing down there but a muddy bottom and moss-grown stones.” “No stones missing?” “No; all solid and complete. I gave it a most careful scrutiny, for I don’t want to have to go down again.” “Well, that finishes the cellar, then.” “Yes; and finishes the house. You must admit, Lawrence, there’s no possible chance of Betty Varian being in this house, dead or alive.” “Of course, I admit that,—but, what, then?” “I can’t even suggest! Can you?” “There’s nothing left but that she went away,—managed somehow to elude the watchers,—perhaps they were not noticing the house.” “You talk as if she could get down from this headland by any other route than right past where the crowd were waiting.” “Maybe she hid here in the house, until after dark——”