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"I I think I'm more afraid of that than I am of the b-burglar." Chet's only answer was a grim "Come on," from between set young lips. Fearfully they made their way over to the door. Their burglar seemed to have gone on to some other room, for they could hear the stealthy padding at the other end of the hall. But now he had turned in their direction.
He was nerving himself to undergo without flinching whatever new torture might be in store. Yet he thrilled inexplicably as through the sounds of these things about him, he heard a muffled: "Yes yes! Oh, I am glad " The sentence was unfinished. Before Chet's eyes a light was growing. A mere slit at first, it grew to a luminous circle in the rocky floor.
"Goodness, now I have to get busy!" cried Billie, jumping up from the table in such a hurry that she very nearly upset Chet's coffee cup, thereby considerably surprising that boy. "Say, do you think it's catching?" he asked, with a smile. "What's the matter with you, Billie?"
The command was no less imperative for being spoken beneath Spud's breath, and for the first time Chet's hopes soared high within him. It had all been so hopeless, the prospect of actual escape from the net that was closing about him. And now ! He unrolled the tight package of cloth to find a small can of black graphite lubricant done up in a jacket and blouse.
It went down and still down where Chet's eyes could not follow down to an utter blackness. Chet was staring speculatively at that waiting dark when the first flash came. Blindingly keen! A flash of white light! another and another! It blazed dazzlingly into their cabin in vivid dashes and dots the same signal as before was being repeated! A hundred yards away was a little shelf of rock.
"Glad to see you," went on the colonel, as though talking to a human, and, with more gyrations of the tail, which constituted Chet's side of the talk with the colonel, the little creature sought a warm spot near the gas log, stretched out and sighed long in contentment.
Yes, the sound that issued from their supposed burglar was a very distinct and friendly canine bark. For a minute Chet and Billie just stared speechlessly. Then slowly the revolver in Chet's hand dropped to his side and he began to laugh. It was a weak laugh at first, but it gradually swelled into a roar as he took in the full humor of the situation.
Chet's mind was filled with a confusion of questions that jostled one another to silence when he tried to give them expression. And there was little time for questioning. He saw other floating eggs whose membraneous coverings had turned leathery and opaque. And he saw white phantom figures who gathered those eggs.
Then: "I'm demoted," Chet told the round-eyed man who stared unbelievingly at the vacant place on Chet's blouse. "The air's hot with orders for my arrest. I've got to get out, and I've got to do it quick." And now there was only a trace of the brogue in Spud's voice.
The whole would eventually be pulled on a string guided by the plump, moist hand of some blissful five-year-old. You got the incongruity of it the instant your eye fell upon Chet Ball. Chet's shoulders alone would have loomed large in contrast with any wooden toy ever devised, including the Trojan horse.
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