She knocked on the door. There was no response. After a long wait she was forced to the realization that Mr. Jay was not at home.
She started to leave, but halfway across the porch looked thoughtfully at the dog and then turned back.
“Mr. Jay may be inside, too ill to open the door,” Doris told herself. “Perhaps the dog is trying to make me understand.”
After a slight hesitation she tried the door, and, finding it unlocked, pushed it gently open. Mr. Jay was not there.
Doris surveyed the room in astonishment. She saw at a glance that the miser had not eaten supper there, yet everything was in confusion. The books had been removed from the wall rack, papers were scattered about the floor, the desk was in disorder.
Yet the thing which struck Doris most forcibly was that Mr. Jay’s suitcase, which he kept under the bed, was gone. Quickly she crossed the room and opened the closet. It was empty save for a torn shirt and a pair of dirty overalls.
“He’s packed up and left!” she gasped in amazement. “Oh, why did he do that?”
Doris felt that the situation was one which called for wiser heads than hers. Leaving the cabin, she ran back to call Mrs. Mallow and the others. On their way to investigate, she told them all that she had learned that afternoon in her talk with the old man.
“I’m afraid I’ve driven him away,” Doris cried, “though why he should be frightened, is more than I can guess. Oh, dear, it’s so disappointing! Just when I thought the mystery had been solved.”
“We may be able to find him,” Dave said encouragingly. “Have you searched the cabin for clues?”
“No, I didn’t want to go through his desk.”
“It seems to me it would be perfectly all right, considering the circumstances,” Mrs. Mallow declared. “We must try to find Mr. Jay and bring him back. Unless we find some clue in the cabin, we will not have the slightest idea where to look for him.”
“Maybe he hasn’t skipped out, after all,” Marshmallow commented. “He left his hound.”
“Oh, I’m sure he doesn’t intend to return,” Doris insisted. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t have taken all of his clothing. He knew we would find his dog and take good care of him.”
As she spoke, she flung open the door and her friends beheld the disarray of the cabin. Doris crossed over to the desk and began to examine the scattered papers. She saw that nearly everything had been removed, but she hoped that in his haste to depart Mr. Jay had overlooked something of significance.
To her disappointment the few papers which remained in the pigeonholes were worthless. LThey were mostly advertising folders.
“I can’t find a thing,” she declared.
“Nothing here either,” Kitty said. She had been looking through the drawer of the kitchen table. “Just a few scribbled notations on an old envelope.”
“Let me see it!”
“It’s worthless,” Kitty insisted, handing it over. “Just a grocery list, I believe.”
Doris took one look at the envelope and then gave a cry of pleasure.
“I’m sure this is written in Mr. Jay’s own hand!”
“I suppose so,” Kitty admitted, wondering what was so exciting about that.
Light dawned upon her, as Doris brought out the photograph of her uncle.
“The signature on the back!” she cried.
Doris turned the photograph over and compared the signature, which her uncle had scrawled there many years before, with the writing on the envelope.
“They look the same to me!” she exclaimed. “What do the rest of you think?”
The others had crowded about, eagerly studying the two specimens.
“Jumping gazelles!” Marshmallow exploded. “They are the same!”
“That is rather an unusual signature,” Mrs. Mallow suggested. “Very fine.”
“A bold handwriting,” Dave commented. “The kind I like to see, too.”
For a full minute the five stared at one another, unable to comprehend the full significance of the discovery. Doris was the first to recover from the shock.
“Do you understand what this means?” she demanded intently. “My Uncle John Trent isn’t dead!”
“Then you haven’t any fortune,” Kitty murmured.
“Oh, what do I care about that, if my uncle is actually alive! I’m just as sure as anything that Mr. Jay is my uncle. How selfish he must have thought me, when I talked about the inheritance.”
“No one could believe you were selfish,” Dave interposed.
“Then why did Mr. Jay run away, when I tried to question him? I can’t understand that.”
“It’s clear he didn’t want his identity known,” Mrs. Mallow said, “but why he should have hidden all these years is beyond me. He didn’t do anything to be ashamed of, did he, Doris?”
“Nothing that I ever heard about. Of course, that affair with the Misses Gates must have troubled him considerably. Especially if he learned about the death of their father. I suppose if he were sensitive, he might have considered that he was indirectly responsible for the poor man’s death.”
“Mr. Gates had always been troubled with his heart,” Mrs. Mallow observed. “That quarrel they had wasn’t really the cause of his death.”
“No,” Doris admitted, “but I imagine my uncle blamed himself for it. Of course, he felt he could never face the Gates twins again after refusing to say which one he loved the better.”
“It’s all a hopeless muddle,” Kitty sighed.
The others were inclined to agree with her, but wanted to help Doris.
“Surely,” argued Marshmallow, “something will turn up to straighten things out. Now that you know Mr. Jay is your uncle, and he is alive, it should be easy to find him.”
“The trouble is,” interposed Mrs. Mallow, “that you’re not sure”
“If only we can find Mr. Jay, we may be able to straighten everything out!” Doris declared, her eyes sparkling with excitement.
“How can we find him, when we haven’t any idea where he went?” Kitty demanded.
“He may have gone to Cloudy Cove. We’ll get the car out and go there as quickly as we can!”
To think was to act with Doris, and she turned toward the door. She uttered a cry of astonishment, for there stood Ollie Weiser!
“I didn’t hear your step on the porch!” she gasped, wondering how much of her affairs the man had overheard.
“Guess you folks were making too much racket yourselves,” the magician grinned. “Why all the excitement, anyway?”
“There isn’t any,” Dave retorted coldly, before Doris could answer.
“I thought I’d throw a little party tonight,” Weiser announced, ignoring Dave’s thrust. “I want to celebrate my victory over that bloated hotel-keeper, you know. How about it, folks?, You’re all invited.”
“Really, we can’t tonight,” Doris said hastily. “We have Some very important business which must be attended to at once.”
She glanced suggestively toward the door, but the magician did not take the hint.
“Business,” he repeated, smiling blandly. “That reminds me of something, Miss Force. How about that act of ours? Have