Cora was right, in so far as Mrs. Floyd was concerned. The chaperon and her husband had been away all day.
"What is it? What has happened? Is anything the matter?" asked Mrs.
Floyd, as she saw the young people on the porch of the bungalow, looking in at the open door. "Is any one hurt?"
"No, it"s just the surprise," said Cora. "Is that what has happened before, Mrs. Floyd?"
The caretaker looked inside, and caught her breath sharply.
"Yes-yes," she answered slowly. "This has happened before, but never as bad as this. I mean it never before was quite so upset. I-I can"t account for it."
"It"s them pesky tramps!" said Mr. Floyd. "I"ll notify the constable again; that"s what I"ll do!"
"Do you think it was tramps?" asked Jack.
"Who else could it be?" the caretaker demanded, and neither Jack nor the others could answer, though Walter asked:
"Well, if it were tramps, wouldn"t they steal something if they had the chance they"ve had to-day? Let"s take a look and see if anything is missing."
Then they went in, a bit gingerly at first, for there is a queer, uncanny sort of feeling in coming back to find the furniture upset in a strange fashion. They all felt it, even joking Jack.
But, aside from the misplaced tables, chairs and couch, nothing wrong was found. Nothing was missing, as far as could be ascertained, and no food had been taken from the pantry, though more than once, Mrs. Floyd said, on former occasions when the "surprise" had been manifested, the larder showed signs of an unknown visitor.
"Now before we set things to rights," suggested Jack, "suppose we see if there are any clews. Let"s go at this thing right. Look at each piece of furniture and see if it has--"
"Any finger marks on? Is that what you mean, Jack?" asked Paul.
"No, I"m not drawing it quite as fine as that. I mean look around on the floor for bits of mud, for any signs of foot prints-anything, in fact, that would give us a line on who did this."
"It seems to have been done deliberately, anyhow," observed Walter. "The chairs and other things weren"t misplaced in a hurry. They took their time. Why any one but a child would want to pile that chair on the table is remarkable."
"That very thing may indicate that it was just some skylarking boys,"
commented Jack.
Mr. Floyd shook his head.
"There aren"t any boys around here," he said. "Of course lads might come out from the village, and break in to do this mischief, but it isn"t likely. This is private land, and on several previous occasions trespa.s.sers have been arrested, so the boys don"t generally come here.
Besides, they wouldn"t have had a key to come in with."
"Did they use a key to enter?" asked Paul.
"The door was locked when we got back," replied Cora, as if that settled it.
"And the window fastenings are still on," reported Jack, who made a quick inspection.
"Here"s a bit of mud near this one chair, as if it had dropped from some one"s shoe," Walter said. "So the surprisers must have come in from outside."
"Where else would they come from?" Jack demanded. "Did you think they were concealed in the bungalow?"
"I don"t know what to think," Walter answered slowly. "It"s a queer mystery."
"I hope it won"t cause you folks to leave," said Mrs. Floyd a bit anxiously. "We"d like you to stay on."
"And we will!" cried Cora. "We knew that a surprise awaited us when we came here, and we haven"t been disappointed. And, now that it has come, we"re not going to turn cowards and run away. We"ll get to the bottom of this mystery."
"That"s right!" cried Jack. "Who"s afraid? You aren"t; are you, Hazel?"
"Not-not if--"
"Not if _I_ stay! There, I knew it!" and Jack puffed out his chest. "See what it is to have confidence in a man. Now if the rest of you will act as I do, we"ll soon--"
"Oh, I didn"t say that at all!" cried the blushing Hazel. "I meant I would stay if the _rest_ did."
"Squelched!" murmured Jack in dejected tones. "Never mind, I"ll lay this ghost yet. Now let"s get things to rights, and then we"ll stay to supper with you girls."
"Hadn"t you better wait until you"re invited?" asked Cora.
"Oh, do let them stay!" begged Belle. "I-I"m a bit nervous over this."
"Another manly protector needed," murmured Paul.
"Let us stay and we"ll help find the ghost," suggested Walter, and the girls were glad enough to agree, for, truth to tell, they were a bit upset, and even Cora looked over her shoulder nervously as she ascended the stairs.
"Well, they didn"t come up and disturb your bedrooms this time," said Mrs. Floyd, as she went to the upper story with the girls.
"Do you mean to say they actually have upset the things in the _bedrooms_?" asked Belle.
"Sometimes," replied the caretaker. "Though that hasn"t happened of late."
"Oh, dear!" sighed the slim girl. "I did hope we would be safe from them up here."
"Oh, they never come-that is, things never happen-when any one is in the house," Mrs. Floyd hastened to add. "It"s always when the place is left to itself."
"Then the-er-well, call it ghost, for want of a better name," said Jack-"then the ghost must keep watch to know when we go out."
"I"m sure I don"t know," said Mrs. Floyd. "It"s very annoying, and I do hope you will find out what does it and stop it."
"We will," Jack declared. "I"m sure, after all, we"ll find out that it is due to perfectly natural causes."
"That"s what I believe," said Walter. "I wonder if it could be an earthquake?"
"Earthquake?" echoed the others.
"Yes," Walter went on. "You know that queer noise which Cora, Belle and I seem to have heard to the exclusion of you others? Well, that was a sort of rumbling of the earth. It might have been a slight shock, a reaction from a distant quake. Such things have been known to happen.
And if there was one there might well be another. If the bungalow shook hard enough the chairs might have been upset as we found them."
Jack shook his head.
"Your theory won"t hold water," he said. "If there was a hard enough shock to knock over chairs and tables, the dishes in the closets would have been broken."