Then he turned back to the picture and studied it long and intently. Meanwhile the steady murmur of voices could be heard from above. Rex was showing Mr. Keeler the treasures in their room. “I had better go up and ask him to leave,” then said Roy suddenly. “Oh, no, no, that will precipitate a quarrel,” exclaimed Jess. “He may murder us all.” “What do you want me to do then?” asked Roy. “I don’t see that you can do anything except sit up with Eva and me down here till morning. I’m sure I should never sleep a wink if I went to bed.” “I’m hoping yet there’ll be some way to prove we are mistaken in thinking him the same person,” put in Eva. “You might take this book up, Roy, and show it to him, then if he didn’t flush when he saw this picture we’d know it was all right.” “And if it wasn’t, poor Roy might be stabbed where he stood,” added Jess cheerfully. “I tell you! we might cry fire and scare him out that way.” “Don’t be silly, Jess,” Roy admonished her, and then he returned once more to the study of the face of the criminal. There was a sudden crash up stairs. Jess uttered a half stifled scream. “Oh, Roy,” she cried, “do go and see! He may have killed poor Rex!” CHAPTER XIII DISCUSSION OF WAYS AND MEANS Roy bounded up the stairway two steps at a time. He was conscious that both his sisters had walked to the foot of it and were looking after him fearfully. Then he heard Rex’s voice. Evidently his brother was not hurt. “Oh, it didn’t matter in the least,” Rex was saying. “It was an old thing, we shouldn’t have taken it with us to the new house.” He and Mr. Keeler were bending over a heap of fragments on the floor. Roy stepped into the room and saw that they had once been the clock that stood on a bracket near the foot of the bed. “I was reaching up to get that wasp’s nest we stuck behind it,” Rex explained. “My coat sleeve caught on the clock and pulled the whole thing over.” Roy gave a sigh of relief and then almost smiled as he recalled what he and his sisters had thought for a minute had really happened. He bent down and helped the others to pick up the pieces. “I think this should be a warning to me to go to bed at once,” said Mr. Keeler with a laugh. “Good-night, boys, I shall be on hand for eight o’clock breakfast.” He went out into the hall and up the stairs to the third floor, where Roy had already lighted the lamp for him in Syd’s room. “An awfully nice fellow, isn’t he, Roy?” remarked Rex, rolling the fragments of the clock up in an old newspaper. Roy did not make any reply. He had sat down on a chair by the bureau, on which he was resting his elbow. His eyes were fixed thoughtfully on the book rack opposite in which stood the volume of which Mr. Keeler was the author. “Rex,” he said suddenly, “come on downstairs.” “I’ve got to go down any way with this rubbish. But what’s come over you, Roy? You look as sober as a judge in a criminal case.”