The Mystery of the 99 Steps Read Online Free Page B

off the alarm. No sign of a prowler.
    “Let’s divide up and search,” Nancy suggested. “Marie and Monique, will you examine the windows? Hannah, please try the doors. I’ll search for anyone hiding.”
    The four separated. There was tense silence as the hunt went on. Nancy looked in closets, behind draperies and furniture. She found no one.
    “I guess the intruder was scared away,” she thought. “At least we know he wasn’t Claude Aubert!”
    At that moment Marie called from the dining room, “Please come here, everybody!”
    The others rushed to her side. She was pointing to a side window which had been jimmied between the sashes and the lock broken. The intruder probably had been frightened by the burglar alarm before he had a chance to climb in.
    “There will be footprints outside,” Mrs. Gruen spoke up.
    “We’ll look,” Nancy said, and went for a flashlight.
    The quartet trooped outdoors to the dining-room window. A few feet away from it they stopped and Nancy beamed her light over the area.
    “No footprints!” Hannah exclaimed. “If somebody tried to get in the house from here, he must have been a ghost!”
    Nancy had been studying the ground. Now she pointed to a series of evenly spaced holes. “I think they were made by stilts.”
    “Stilts!” Monique exclaimed. “You mean the person who tried to get into your house was walking on stilts?”
    “That’s my guess,” Nancy replied.
    Mrs. Gruen gave a sigh. “It seems to me that every time we have a chance to pick up a clue, somebody outwits us.”
    Nancy smiled. “Stilts might be a better give-away than footprints,” she said cheerfully. “I’m sure there aren’t many thieves who use them.”
    Monique asked, “Then you think the intruder meant to steal something?”
    Hannah Gruen answered. “He was either a thief or intended to harm us.”
    Nancy’s own feeling was that the stilt walker might be linked with her mystery. She returned to the house and called the police. The sergeant at the desk was amazed to hear of the second attempted break-in.
    “Two alarms in one night!” he exclaimed. “But this one sounds like some boy’s prank,” he commented. “Probably a town hood. I’ll make an investigation and see if anybody on our list of troublemakers owns a pair of stilts. Miss Drew, perhaps you have some ideas yourself about who the person was and why he wanted to break in.”
    “No, I haven’t,” she answered, “unless there’s a connection between him and Claude Aubert.”
    The officer whistled. “In any case, I’ll speak to the chief about having a detective watch your house every night until this prowler mystery is solved.”
    “Thank you and I’ll hunt around our place for more clues,” she offered.
    Again Nancy organized a search party. Marie and Monique were assigned to the house. The sisters frankly admitted they did not know what to look for.
    “Oh, anything that seems odd to you,” Nancy replied. “For instance, table silver missing or disturbed.” Even though she felt that the intruder had not entered the house, Nancy did not want to miss an opportunity to track down the slightest piece of evidence.
    She and Mrs. Gruen began searching the grounds. A single set of stilt marks came from the street, ran along the curved driveway, then turned toward the window.
    “There should be two sets of marks,” Nancy said. “One coming and one going.”
    She asked Hannah to go into the house and put on the back porch and garage lights. As soon as this was done, Nancy extinguished her flashlight and stared intently at the ground.
    She noticed that the top branches of a bush near the forced window were broken. Nancy looked beyond the shrub and saw that the stilt marks went across the rear lawn toward the garage.
    “I guess the man stepped over the bush,” she thought.
    As Nancy hastened forward to follow the marks, the housekeeper joined her. Side by side the two hurried to the double garage. The door behind Nancy’s