“What is it?” whispered someone close behind Jupe.
Jupe jumped as though he had been shot.
“Hey, it’s only me.”
Bob was there looking tousled, his shoes off. He gestured toward the ceiling. “Somebody’s walking around up there,” he said. He still spoke in a whisper.
“You heard it too?”
A board creaked above them. The intruder had left the stairwell. He was going toward the front of the house.
“You fell asleep,” Jupe accused his pal. “That guy came in and walked right past you, and you were sound asleep and didn’t see him!”
“No way!” Bob declared. “Not for a second. I had to get up a couple of times and walk around to keep awake, but I kept awake!”
Jupe scowled at the ceiling. “Well, however he got in, he certainly knows he’s not alone. He knows we’re here, and he knows that we know he’s here, and so —”
Jupe yanked open the attic door and called out. “Hey! Who’s there?”
No one answered, but the unseen one stopped walking.
Jupe called again.
Still there was no answer.
Jupe flicked on the attic light.
“You’re not going up there!” cried Bob. “Suppose the guy’s got a gun?”
“He’d have shot me by now if he was going to shoot me,” said Jupe. He sounded confident — more confident than he really felt.
He went up the stairs in a rush. He wanted to get to the top before the person who lurked in the attic could get back to the stairwell.
He reached the top unharmed, but no one was there! The attic was empty.
Jupe saw bookcases and trunks and boxes, and that was all.
He stood still and listened.
Not a sound.
He went back to the stairs and looked down. Bob was looking up at him.
“Nothing,” said Jupe. “We — we must be sharing some kind of… hallucination!”
“I don’t believe that!” said Bob.
“There’s nobody here,” insisted Jupe. “Unless… unless there’s some way to get in and out of here without coming down the stairs! That’s it! This is an old house. There could be a hidden passageway — something nobody knows about!”
Marilyn appeared behind Bob in the hall. She was wearing a quilted robe and a grumpy expression. “What’s the matter with you two?” she demanded. “Jupe, what are you doing up there?”
“Marilyn, could there be a secret passageway in this house? Have you ever heard of one? Even a rumor of one?”
“No.” She shook her head. Jupe searched. He looked behind boxes and trunks. He moved things that stood near the chimney, thinking a door might be concealed next to the bricks. He got a flashlight from the kitchen, then crawled around on his hands and knees to examine the open area between the end of the floorboards and the place where the roof slanted down to meet the joists. Here for a foot or two, he could see the lath and plaster of the bedroom ceilings. He sent a beam of light into the space under the floorboards. But he saw nothing except the grime that had collected over the years, plus some odds and ends that people had dropped and then forgotten. He recovered an old golf ball, an empty cola bottle, and a few bits of crumpled paper.
When he was satisfied that he had examined every inch of the attic, Jupe went down to the hall where Marilyn and Bob waited.
“Weird!” said Bob.
“You guys are hearing things!” Marilyn accused.
She went back to her room and closed the door.
Bob went for his blanket, wrapped it around himself, and settled down on the floor next to the armchair.
“You aren’t going back to bed?” said Jupe. “It’s my watch, you know.”
“I don’t think I want to be by myself,” Bob confessed. “I’ll stay here and keep you company.”
So the two Investigators spent the remaining hours before daylight watching the staircases, watching the ceiling, and listening — always listening.
Once Bob thought he heard the stealthy footsteps again, but the sound was so soft he couldn’t be sure.
At last a thin gray light began to show at the windows. Soon the sun would be up. The long, dreary watch was over.
But Jupe stiffened. He heard a key rattle in a lock! Downstairs! The kitchen door! Someone was at the kitchen door. Someone who had a key.
Jupe was up and out of his chair. A weapon! He mustn’t go down there without a weapon!
Bob flung his blanket aside.
Jupe touched his lips, signaling silence, and seized a tarnished brass plate that hung on the wall near the attic stairs. It was the only thing he could grab. It would be a clumsy weapon, but it would have to do.
He started down the back stairs with Bob behind him.
At the bottom of the stairs the two stared-across the kitchen. The upper half of the kitchen door was glass, but a shade had been drawn to cover it. There was no way to tell who was there.
Jupe went forward, his brass plate held ready.
The rattling stopped. The door swung in. Jupe lifted the plate, ready to strike!
“Saints preserve us!”
A gray-haired woman shrank away from Jupe. She threw her arm up to protect her face.
Jupe was paralyzed with surprise. For a second he froze, his brass plate still held ready. Then he realized that the gray-haired little woman with the string shopping bag couldn’t possibly be a menace. “I’m very sorry,” he said. He lowered the brass plate.