“Oh, pick it up! Pick it up, quick! It is spilling.”
Runyon made no reply. He was staring straight ahead, in a dazed, bewildered way, and now Mildred’s eyes followed his.
The smoke was rolling out of a large aperture in the outer wall. Three huge blocks of adobe, neatly joined together, had swung outward, moved by a secret spring which the bullet had released.
Through the grim prison wall they were looking out at the sunshine that flooded the rose garden.
Mildred sank to her knees, sobbing with joy. Big Runyon walked to the staircase.
“Hi, there, Inez!” he called. “Come down here and take Toodlums to her mother. I’ll bet a button she’ll be jolly glad to see that kid again!”
At four o’clock in the afternoon Patsy rubbed her eyes, yawned and raised her head from her pillow.
“Dear me!” she sighed, “I’m tired yet, but this sleeping in the daytime is unnatural. I wonder if Beth is awake.”
She went to the door of the adjoining room, opened it and found her cousin dressing.
“Do you suppose anyone else is up?” she inquired.
“See there,” replied Beth, pointing through the window.
Patsy saw. Mr. Runyon was seated on a garden bench in earnest conversation with Mildred Travers.
“Didn’t he go home this morning, after the excitement was over?” she asked.
“No,” replied Beth. “Mr. and Mrs. Hahn drove their car home, but our interesting neighbor at the north, Mr. Bul Run, declared there was nothing at his own ranch half so enticing as a bed here. He’s a bachelor, it seems, and leads rather a lonely life. So Arthur gave him a room and he went to bed; but it seems he has had his sleep out and is indulging in other recreations.”
Patsy was eyeing the couple in the garden.
“Mr. Runyon seems to have struck up a friendship with your protégé Mildred,” she observed.
“Yes,” answered Beth. “You know he was shut up in the wall with her and Inez for awhile and the adventure must have made them feel well acquainted. Wasn’t that imprisonment a most peculiar thing, Patsy?”
“Very peculiar. I haven’t had much time to think about it, for as soon as Toodlums was safe in Louise’s arms I went to bed. But it occurs to me to wonder how Mildred Travers knew so much of the secrets of this absurd old house and why she ventured to explore the hidden rooms in our absence. Put that with the fact that she lived in these parts as a girl, and with her eagerness to come out here—don’t you remember her fervent ‘thank heaven’?—and it seems the whole mystery isn’t unraveled yet; it’s only getting more tangled.”