IN THE OLD DOCTOR'S OFFICE
The two girls, almost at once, began to shrink away through the bushes
again--and this without a word or look having passed between them. Both
Lyddy and 'Phemie were unwilling to meet the professor under these
conditions.
They were back at the strawberry patch before either of them spoke aloud.
"What _do_ you suppose he was about?" whispered 'Phemie.
"How do I know? And those bottles!"
"What do you think was in them?"
"Looked like water--nothing but water," said Lyddy. "It certainly _is_
a puzzle."
"I should say so!"
"And there doesn't seem to be any sense in it," cried Lyddy. "Let's go
home, 'Phemie. We've got enough berries for supper."
As they went along the pasture trail, the younger girl suggested:
"Do you suppose he could be making up another of his fake medicines?
Like those 'Stonehedge Bitters?' Lucas says they ought to be called
'_Stonefence_ Bitters,' for they are just hard cider and bad whiskey--and
that's what the folks hereabout call 'stonefence.'"
"It looked like only water in those bottles," Lyddy said, slowly.
"And he's so afraid old Mr. Colesworth--or Harris--will come up here and
find him at work--or come across his water-bottles," continued 'Phemie.
"Lucky this new boarder--Mr. Chadwick--isn't much for long walks. It would
keep old Spink busier than a hen on a hot griddle, as Lucas says, to watch
all of them."
"Well, I wish I knew what it meant. It puzzles me," remarked Lyddy. "And
I never yet asked Mr. Pritchett about the evening we saw him and a man
whom I now think must have been Professor Spink at the farmhouse."
"Ask him--do," urged 'Phemie, at last curious enough to have Lyddy share
all the mystery that had been troubling her own mind since they first came
to Hillcrest.
"I'll do so the very first time I see him," declared Lyddy.
But something else happened first--and something that brought the mystery
regarding Professor Lemuel Judson Spink to a head for the time being, at
least.
'Phemie lost the key to the green door!
Now, off and on, that missing key had troubled Lyddy. She had seldom
spoken of it, for she had never even known it had been in the door when
the girls came to Hillcrest. Only 'Phemie, it will be remembered, had
the midnight adventure in the old doctor's suite of offices in the east
wing.
Lyddy only said, occasionally, that it was odd Aunt Jane had not sent the
key to the green door when she expressed all the other keys to her nieces
when the project of keeping boarders at Hillcrest was first broached.
At these times 'Phemie had kept as still as a mouse. Sometimes the key
was worn on a string around her neck; sometimes it was concealed in a
cunning little pocket she had sewn into her skirt. But wherever it was,
it always seemed--to 'Phemie--to be burning a hole in her garments and
trying to make its appearance.
After finding Professor Spink filling the bottles with water up by
Pounder's Brook, the girl was more than usually troubled about the east
wing and the mystery.
She moved the key about from place to place. One day she wore it; another
she hid it in some corner. And finally, one night when she came to go to
bed, she found that the cord on which she had worn the key that day was
broken and the key was gone.
She screamed so loud at this discovery that her sister was sure she had
seen a mouse, and she bounded into bed, half dressed as she was.
"Where--where is it, 'Phemie?" she gasped, for Lyddy was as afraid of mice
as she was of rats.
"Oh, mercy me!" wailed 'Phemie, "that's what I'd like to know."
"Didn't you see it?" cried her trembling sister.
"It's gone!" returned 'Phemie.
Lyddy got gingerly down from the bed.
"Then I'd like to know what you yelled so for--if the mouse has
disappeared?" she demanded, quite sternly.
And then 'Phemie, understanding her, and realizing that she had almost
given her secret away, burst into a hysterical giggle, which nothing but
Lyddy's shaking finally relieved.
"You're just as twittery as a sparrow," declared Lyddy. "I never _did_
see such a girl. First you're squealing as though you were hurt, and then
you laugh in a most idiotic way. Come! do behave yourself and go to bed!"
But even after 'Phemie obeyed she could not go to sleep.
Suppose somebody picked up that key? She had no idea, of course, where
it had been dropped. Certainly not on the floor of her bedroom. Some time
during the day, inside, or outside of the house, the key, with its little
brass tag stamped with the words "East Wing," had slipped to the ground.
Now--suppose it was found?
'Phemie got out of bed quietly, slipped on her slippers and shrugged
herself into her robe. Somebody might be down there in old Dr. Phelps's
offices right now.
And that somebody, of course, in 'Phemie's mind, meant just one
person--Professor Lemuel Judson Spink.
Why had he come to Hillcrest to board, anyway? And why hadn't he gone away
when he had been made the topic of many a joke about old Bob Harrison's
treasure trove?
For nearly a fortnight now the professor had stood grimly the jokes and
laughing comments aimed at him by the other boarders. The presence of Mrs.
Harrison, too, in the house, was a constant reminder to the breakfast food
magnate of how his own acquisitiveness had made him over-reach himself.
'Phemie went downstairs, taking a comforter with her, and went into
the long corridor leading from the west wing entry to the green door.
The girls had never taken the old davenport out of this wide hall, and
'Phemie curled up on this--with its hard, hair-cloth-covered arm for a
pillow--spread the quilt over her, and tried to compose her nerves here
within sight and sound of the east wing entrance.
Suppose somebody was already in the offices?
The thought became so insistent that, after ten minutes, she was forced
to creep along to the green door and try the latch.
With her hand on it, she heard a sudden sound from the room nearby. Was
somebody astir in the Colesworth quarters?
This was late Saturday night--almost midnight, in fact; and of course
Harris Colesworth was in the house. Sometimes he read until very late.
So 'Phemie turned again, after a moment, and lifted the latch. Then she
pushed tentatively on the door, and----
_It swung open!_
'Phemie gasped--an appalling sound it seemed in the stillness of the
corridor and at that hour of the night.
Often, while the key had been in her possession, she had tried the door as
she passed 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 nobody 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.