"What is it?" he asked.
"Belle thinks she hears something in her room."
"It's in mine, now," called out Bess, whose apartment was beyond that
of her sister.
"Open the door, and I'll have a look," suggested Jack,
good-naturedly.
"Wait a minute," Cora said, and, slipping into a robe, she admitted
her brother.
"Now we'll see what's going on," he promised.
"Cover up your heads, girls," he called to Bess and Belle, as he and
Cora went into the room of the latter. "If it's a villain, you won't
get nervous when you see me squelch him."
"Oh!" faintly murmured Belle, as she pulled the covers over her head.
Jack groped for the electric switch and found it, making light
Belle's room.
"I don't see a thing," he announced, looking carefully about.
"It is in here!" said Bess, faintly. "I can hear it walking about.
It's rattling some papers in a corner of my room."
Jack and Cora went on through to the farther apartment, and Jack,
turning on the light there, approached a pile of paper Bess had
tossed in one corner after unwrapping some purchases made during the
day.
"Look out!" warned Cora, while Bess adopted the same protective
measures as had her sister. "It may be a rat--or--or something!"
"Most likely--something," said Jack. He began picking up piece after
piece of paper, and then he suddenly uttered an exclamation.
"Ah! Would you!" he snapped, and, standing on one foot, he took the
slipper from the other, holding his bare member carefully off the
floor, while he slapped viciously at the pile of papers with his
bedroom weapon.
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