Often, while the key had been in her possession, she had tried the door as she pa.s.sed it while working about the house. It had been securely locked.

Then, she told herself now, on the instant, the key had been found and it had been put to use. Somebody had already been in the old doctor's offices and had ransacked the rooms.

She crossed the threshold swiftly and groped her way to the door of the second room--the old doctor's consulting room. Here the light of the moon filtered through the shutters sufficiently to show her the place.

There seemed to be n.o.body there, and she stepped in, leaving the green door open behind her, but pulling shut the door between the anteroom and the office.

There was the old doctor's big desk, and the bookcases all about the room, and the jars with "specimens" in them and--yes!--the skeleton case in the corner.

She had advanced to the middle of the room when suddenly she saw that the door into the lumber room, or laboratory, at the back, was open. A white wand of light shot through this open door, and played upon the ceiling, then upon the wall, of the old doctor's office.

CHAPTER XXVI

A BLOW-UP

'Phemie's heart beat quickly; but she was no more afraid than she had been the moment before, when she found the green door unlocked. There was somebody--the person who had found the lost key--still in the offices of the east wing.

The wand of white light playing about her was from an electric torch. She stooped, and literally crawled on all fours out of the range of the light from the rear doorway.

Before she knew it she was right beside the case containing the skeleton.

Indeed, she hid in its shadow.

And her interest in that moving light--and the person behind it--made her forget her original terror of what was in the box.

She heard a rustle--then a step on the boards. It was a heavy person approaching. The door opened farther between the workshop and the room in which she was hidden.

Then she recognized the tall figure entering. It was as she had expected.

It was Professor Spink.

The breakfast food magnate came directly toward the high, locked desk belonging to the dead and gone physician, who had been a kind friend and patron of this quack medicine man when he was a boy.

'Phemie had heard all the particulars of Spink's connection with Dr. Polly Phelps. The good old doctor had been called to attend the boy in some childish disease while he was an inmate of the county poorhouse. His parents--who were gypsies, or like wanderers--had deserted the boy and he had "gone on the town," as the saying was.

Dr. Polly had taken a fancy to the little fellow. He was then twelve years old--or thereabout--smart and sharp. The old doctor brought him home to Hillcrest, sent him to school, made him useful to him in a dozen ways, and began even to train him as a doctor.

For five years Jud Spink had remained with the old physician. Then he had run away with a medicine show. It was said, too, that he stole money from Dr. Polly when he went; but the physician had never said so, nor taken any means to punish the wayward boy if he returned.

And Jud Spink had never re-appeared in Bridleburg, or the vicinity, while the old doctor was alive.

Then his visits had been few and far between until, at last, coming back a few months before, a self-confessed rich man, he had declared his intention of settling down in the community.

But 'Phemie Bray believed that the false professor had come here to Hillcrest for a special object. He was money-mad--his avariciousness had been already well displayed.

She believed that there was something on Hillcrest that Jud Spink wanted--something he could make money out of.

She was not surprised, then, to see a short iron bar in the professor's hand. It was flattened and sharpened at one end.

By the light of the hand-lamp the man went to work on the locked desk.

It was of heavy wood--no flimsy thing like that one which he had burst open so easily the day of the Widow Harrison's vendue.

The man inserted the sharp end of the jimmy between the lid and the upper shelf of the desk. 'Phemie heard the woodwork crack, and this time she did _not_ suppress a gasp.

Why! this fellow was actually breaking open the old doctor's desk. Aunt Jane had not even sent _them_ the keys of the desk and bookcases in this suite of rooms.

Then 'Phemie had a sudden thought. She was really afraid of the big man.

She did not know what he might do to her if he found her here spying on his actions. And--she didn't want the lock of the old desk smashed.

She reached up softly and turned with shaking fingers the old-fashioned wooden b.u.t.ton that held shut the door of the case beside which she crouched.

She remembered very clearly that it had snapped open before when she was investigating--and with a little click. The door of this case acted almost as though the hinges had springs coiled in them.

At once, when she released the door, it swung open--and in yawning it _did_ make a suspicious sound.

Professor Spink started--he had been about to bear down on the bar again.

He flashed a look back over his shoulder. But the corner was shrouded in darkness.

'Phemie sighed--this time with intent. She remembered how she had been frightened so herself at her former visit to this office--and she believed the marauder now before her had been partially the cause of her fright.

The jimmy dropped from Spink's hand and clattered on the floor. He wheeled and shot the white spot of his lamp into the corner.

By great good fortune the ray of the lantern missed the girl; but it struck into the yawning case and intensified the horrid appearance of the skeleton.

For half a minute Spink stood as if frozen in his tracks. If he had known the old doctor had such a possession as the skeleton, he had forgotten it. Nor did he see any part of the case that held it, but just the dangling, grinning Thing itself, revealed by the brilliance of his spotlight, but with a ma.s.s of deep shadow surrounding it.

Professor Spink had perhaps had many perilous experiences in his varied life; but never anything just like _this_.

He might not have been afraid of a man--or a dozen men; no emergency--which he could talk out of--would have feazed him; but a man doesn't feel like trying to talk down a skeleton!

He didn't even stop to pick up the jimmy. He shut off the spotlight; and he stumbled over his own feet in getting to the door.

_He was running away!_

'Phemie was up immediately and after him. She did not propose for him to get away with that key.

"Stop! stop!" she shouted.

Perhaps Professor Spink verily believed that the skeleton in the box called after him--that it was, indeed, in actual pursuit.

He didn't stop. He didn't reply. He went across the small anteroom and out of the open green door.

But he had made a lot of noise. A big man with the fear of the supernatural chilling his very soul does not tread lightly.

A frightened ox in the place could have made no more noise. He tumbled over two chairs and finally went full length over an old ha.s.sock. He brought up with an awful crash against the big davenport in the corridor, where 'Phemie had tried to keep watch.

And there, when he tried to scramble up, he got entangled in 'Phemie's quilt and went to the floor again just as a great light flashed into the corridor.