“Now,” says Poppy, when he was dressed, “you wait here at the window. I’ll go out the back way, taking the door key with me. And to play safe, I’ll circle to the front road. You may not see me at first. But don’t let that fuss you. Give me ten minutes and I’ll be there.”

I felt sort of calfy in the separation—as though he was giving me the soft end.

“Why can’t I go, too?” says I, wanting to be as brave as he was. “Then you’ll have me if you need me.”

But he shook his head, laughing.

“You’re the guy who lights up the old South Church tower,” says he.

Every American kid knows that poem.

“And who are you?” I grinned, getting a slant on his scheme. “Paul Revere in a raincoat?”

“Bu-lieve me,” came with another laugh, “it would be ‘Paul Revere in a bathing suit,’ if I had one. For I hate the thought of getting these clothes soaked. I guess, though, it can’t be helped.”

I hinted around then that a little lucid information about my “old-South-Church-tower” job wouldn’t be out of place. So he got down to business.

“Here’s the dope, Jerry: You’re to watch that guy down there. If he moves to another bush, or toward the house, keep track of him. Then, as in the poem, twitch your flashlight once if he’s still there, and twice if he’s moved. Getting your signal, I’ll let you spot me in the lightning and signal back with my cap. See?”

“I get you,” I nodded, writing down the instructions in my mind.

“After that,” came the further dope, “keep track of us both, and guide me. One flash up and down will mean that I’m ‘cold,’ two will mean that I’m ‘warm,’ and three will mean danger—scoot for your life. But keep a steady grip on yourself, old pal, and don’t flash ‘danger’ unless there is danger. When I’m all through, I’ll signal again with my cap. Then you can wait for me in the kitchen, where we’ll dry my clothes.”

Left alone, and kind of shaky, too, in the separation, I got my nose against the window, as the leader had said. I was careful, though, not to show myself any more than I could help. For I didn’t want the spy to get hep to the fact that I was watching him, while he in turn watched the house.

Poppy had said to give him ten minutes. So I started counting off the seconds. When I came to sixty that meant a minute, and I crooked a finger. Pretty soon I had all ten fingers and thumbs crooked. So I got ready with my flashlight.

The man hadn’t moved. That is, he was still behind the bush where we first had seen him. So I gave one flash. I did it in the dark, of course, though it wasn’t dark very often, for the lightning, like an octopus, was swinging a hundred fiery tails.

Watching the road beyond the stone wall, I presently got sight of Poppy, a sort of skulking black spot in the continued storm. He was waving his cap, showing that my first signal had gotten to him all right. I was glad to see him. I felt safer in knowing that he was safe. Then, on the job, I gave him two quick up-and-down flashes, for the sharp-eyed spy, as though alarmed by the window signal, was heading for the road, and that, as I say, is where my chum was.

But pretty soon the man stopped short and sort of crouched behind another bush, of which a dozen or more were scattered, to a fancy plan, up and down the edges of the graveled drive. Poppy was inside the stone wall now. He was getting closer and closer to the spy, so I kept on with the two up-and-down flashes. The signals were working as slick as a button. I thought how easily I could yank my chum out of danger—three twitches of my thumb, as it rested on the switch, and the trick would be done. He could scoot to cover before the man caught him. Easy.

And now comes a part of my story that I hate to write down. The recollection of it gives me cold shivers. Talk about trapped people turning gray-headed over night! The wonder to me is that my hair didn’t turn green.

The flashlight suddenly went on the bum. There you are! You can see what a fix I was in, or, rather, what a fix Poppy was in. Getting no signals from me, he would think that everything was lovely. He’d keep on. And how was I going to warn him if the spy took after him?

Matches! As the thought jumped into my head, I ran to the dresser. But to no success. Then, sort of crazy, I began to go through my clothes, though I should have known that I would find no matches there—for what few matches we carried were in a waterproof case in Poppy’s hip pocket. In dividing our truck he had taken the matches and I had taken the cake of soap.

I remembered then that there were matches galore in the kitchen. I had seen them in a little box near the stove. To get a handful wouldn’t take more than a minute or two. Hot dog, was my great joy. I could save old Poppy yet.

I was out of the room and down the hall like a streak. Nor did I miss a lamp, for by fits and jerks, as the lightning came and went, the hall, with its big end windows, was almost as bright as day.

Scooting along in my bare feet I made no more sound than a cat. Nor did I stir up any racket on the back stairs. Suddenly, though, as I came to the bend in the stairs, I stopped short. Talk about slamming on the brakes! Boy, I skidded seventeen feet with locked wheels. Smell the rubber. Phew! There was a light in the kitchen. A moving light. Its reflection on the wall ahead of me, where the stairs turned, is what had stopped me.

It wasn’t Poppy. I knew that. As for Mrs. Doane and her cuckoo husband, they were in bed. Seemingly, I thought, with a queer feeling not easy to explain, I had tumbled into an entirely new part of the mystery!

Was it the ghost? If so, then the spy in the storm was a second party, of whom we knew nothing, for certainly, as my good sense pointed out, the man couldn’t be in both places at once.

I suddenly was sort of suffocated under the weight of the growing mystery. It seemed so—so sort of tremendous. A spy outside, with the rain beating down on him (though evidently he didn’t notice it or mind it) and a “ghost” inside! How many more people were there, I wondered, in the crazy hidden tangle? And whether they were working together, or against each other, what was their secret purpose? Property! That must be it. In his grave less than a full year, his will about to be read, greedy hands were already reaching out in the dark, in evil schemes, for the dead house-owner’s property. That’s the way it is when some rich men die. And Corbin Danver, the housekeeper had told us, had been a millionaire.

I don’t think that it’s any discredit to me that I sort of dropped Poppy out of my mind at this point. He was able to take care of himself, was my quick decision, seeing that I had other work to do. Not being dumb, he’d begin to wonder when the signals stopped. He’d go slow. And that would make him safe. In a pinch, he could take to long legs, and outside of Spider Whickleberry and myself, if there’s anyone who can fan legs any faster than old Poppy, I don’t know who it is, though usually he runs at things instead of away from them.

Yes, the leader was safe enough, I concluded. And to that point, he might even be safer than me! For here I was, not twenty feet from the ghost, and wanting to go on, to see who the “spook” was, there was no telling where I might end up. Instead of the leader getting laid out cold, it might be little dew-drop!

But here was my chance; I hung on doggedly. I wasn’t going to back down. For how would Poppy feel toward me to learn that I had hid from the ghost in a closet? No, instead of backing up, the thing for me to do, I realized, getting out all my grit, was to go farther down the stairs, even around the bend. Then I could see into the kitchen.

So down I went, slowly you may be sure, and on tiptoe. I was at the bend now. Another step; two steps. I could see a man in a long white nightshirt—ghostly enough, all right! Stooped over, he was doing something to the lock of the kitchen door.

Well, if you must know the truth, I felt sort of weak as the “ghost” turned his face. For who do you think it was? Yah, you guessed it—nobody but old Ivory Dome himself!

As I say, the discovery sort of amazed and stunned me. And yet, I thought, my mind jumping back to the housekeeper’s crazy story, who besides old Ivory Dome could better have played the “ghost” here? Dumb in his wife’s eyes, the finest chance in the world had been given him to fool her. And he had fooled her, all right! More than that, he had fooled all of us. He let on that he didn’t know where the granddaughter was. But he did. He knew the gander’s secret, too. In fact he knew a hundred things in the mystery that his sharp-tongued wife never suspected, with all of her wonderful family smartness! She was a Danver, was the way she had patted herself on the back, and he was a Doane. A thick-headed lot, the Doanes!—to hear her tell it. Say, she was good. Hip-hip-hurray for old Ivory Dome, I thought, glad at the moment, though fooled, too, that old henpecked was coming out ahead.

Of course, to a point of detail, a number of things needed explaining—for instance the old man’s trick of slamming the death-chamber door every night at ten o’clock. As for the “queer smell,” he probably carried a bottle of it in his pocket. How simple everything was now! Yet we had let the “mystery” bewilder us! Fine detectives, we were.

“Pa! Pa!” Above me the woman’s shrill voice rang through the house. Boy, was she ever yipping it off! “Pa! Where are you? Pa!”

Quick as scat, the light went out in the kitchen. Then I heard the old man coming toward me in the dark, sort of muttering angrily to himself. He was breathing hard, too. Like a cornered animal. I got to one side, flat against the wall. And hurrying up the stairs, the older one passed me without touching me. But it was a close shave, I want to tell you. Phew! Was I ever sweating.

Here a key turned in the kitchen lock. It was Poppy. The spy had gotten away from him, he told me, starting to strip off his wet clothes. Then, stopping, he looked at me and grinned. I don’t know—when he grins at me that way, as though I mean so very much to him, like a ton of chewing gum, or something, it just seems to me as though I love him a million times. Oh, gee, he’s a peachy kid. I hope I always have him for a pal.

“What happened to you and the flashlight?” he inquired. “Did you both go to sleep?”

I quickly ran through my story.

“I’m not surprised,” came the thoughtful nod, when I wound up. “For, to tell the truth, I half suspicioned the old man of putting on, though I think he was dizzy enough right after the accident. Later on I noticed a sort of crafty look in his eyes, which set me to thinking. He’ll bear watching, all right.”

“Shall we tell Mrs. Doane?”

The other laughed.

“You must hate the henpecked old man, Jerry, to suggest a thing like that. For what Mrs. Samantha Ann Danver Doane would do to him, huh? Boy, oh boy! No, let’s keep his secret. Then by watching him, and finding out why he’s doing these things, we ought to quickly clear up the mystery.”

I saw what Poppy meant. We knew what the old man was doing, but we weren’t wise to his object. And to get wise was to be our job.

“Do you suppose,” was the theory I then brought out, “that the old geezer is working with the spy, and that he came downstairs to-night to let the other man in the house?”

“That’s a good guess. But it so happened that I had the door key. See? Hence disappointment for old Ivory Dome, and possibly, as you say, for the other guy, too.”

“You didn’t get a look at him?”

“No. I was within a few feet of him once, but he gave me the slip. I think he lit out for New Zion.”

“Anyway,” says I, “you wouldn’t have known who he was if you had seen his face. For the people around here are all strangers to you.”

“I could have described him to Mrs. Doane.”

Having dried Poppy’s clothes beside the kitchen fire, we went to bed, at one o’clock, and slept until breakfast time.

“Laws-a-me!” was the familiar exclamation that greeted us when we came downstairs. “It does beat all how some boys can sleep. I dare say you never heard me screeching my head off in the middle of the night.”

“No,” says Poppy truthfully, “I never heard you.”

“Waking up suddenly, I missed Pa. He wasn’t in bed where I put him. And where do you think I found him—sleepwalking, mind you. Imagine! As though he wasn’t dumb enough without trying that. Oh, dear! If he isn’t enough to tax the patience of a saint. No wonder I have to watch him like a child. Pa!” then came sharply. “Quit gurgling in the wash basin.”

“I wasn’t gurglin’,” whined the old man, as he fiddled at the sink, washing his face and hands. “I jest choked.”

“Well, quit your choking then. Laws-a-me! For see what happened to your Cousin Peter when he choked. The poorest funeral I ever was at.”

“I kain’t help it if I choke,” came grumpishly. “An’ I kain’t help it, nuther, if I sleepwalk. No, I kain’t.”

Sleepwalk! I suppose he was asleep when he blew out the kitchen light and beat it up the stairs! Yes, he was—like so much mud!

The old trickster!