“Not in six months.” “Here’s the key. Go and look inside.” “Pshaw! there’s nothing there for me.” “You don’t know what’s there, since you confess that you haven’t crossed its threshold in six months.” “If you tell me the secret I won’t have to make the trip.” “Go and find it.” Opal pushed her brother away. “I want to make sure of a certain thing.” “I see. You’ve been to the Cedar Street house.” Opal gave him a knowing look, and again pushed him toward the door. “I’ll go, hang me if I don’t!” he exclaimed. “I say, sis, if you’ve intrusted a secret to that house it ought to be safe, for it hasn’t been tenanted for half a year. Into which part of it shall I look?” “In the first room to the right.” “The old-fashioned parlor, eh?” “Yes, there, there!” cried the millionaire’s child. “God forgive me, Claude, I couldn’t help it. I had him in the snare.” Five minutes later Claude Lamont stood on the sidewalk in front of his home. “In creation’s name, what does sis mean?” he asked himself. “What has she been doing in that old house? Something desperate, I’ll bet my head.” He walked to the first corner, where he took a passing car and rode downtown. A few minutes later he left it, and proceeded to Cedar Street. The millionaire owned half a dozen houses there, but the one designated by Opal was the best of all. With the key supplied by his sister, the city sport let himself into the house and shut the door carefully behind him. Then he made his way to the first room on the right of the hall and opened its portal. It was quite dark, all the curtains down--Lamont kept his untenanted houses already furnished--and Claude had to strike a match. “Jehu! what did sis mean, anyhow?” he exclaimed, as the light flickered up. “No one here.” He held the lucifer above his head and took a survey of the parlor. Everything seemed in place, and he looked everywhere as he moved about the room. He noticed that the transom over the hall door was wide open, but he thought nothing of this. The faintest odor of burned powder assailed his nostrils and he stood in the middle of the room a few seconds and sniffed the air. “The girl’s mad!” he suddenly cried. “What is the fool’s errand she wanted me to attend to, I’d like to know? There’s nothing in this room, and yet she wanted me to look nowhere else but in this chamber. There’s the smell of powder here. What does it mean? She was here, she admitted. She can shoot like a professional. I’ve seen her at it in the gallery. I’ll have to go back and laugh at her foolery.” Claude quitted the room, and, to make sure there was nothing out of the way in the house, went all over it. “Sis is out of her head,” he again exclaimed, when he had inspected the last room. “She may have thought she trapped the detective, but she did nothing of the kind.” When he left the Cedar Street house it was to go straight home. He peeped into the library, but his father was no longer there.