and pulled the curtain away from the glass panel in the door in order to peer out.

His breath caught sharply. Footprints stood out clearly on the snow-covered porch. And through the veil of falling snow, for as far as the light penetrated, he could see further footprints—on the porch steps and on the flagstone walk that crossed the lawn to the sidewalk.

CHAPTER II

There was a double line of the footprints—one set coming toward the door, one set going away from it. Ken stared at them for a long moment.

Suddenly he realized that he was clearly visible, through the glass, to anyone who might be outside the house. Quickly he dropped the curtain into place and with a swift gesture he fastened the safety chain above the lock on the door.

Then he ran to the back door and fastened the safety chain there.

The events of the past few moments were perfectly clear in his mind. He sat on the edge of the kitchen table and ran over them again, trying to explain them to himself as he went along.

He had stepped out of his bedroom and had almost immediately felt the draft of cold air. Probably the front door was just then being opened. The faint click he had heard an instant later had probably been the door being cased shut again—because after the click he had no longer felt the draft.

The intruder—and there must have been one, Ken concluded—had actually been inside the house. Because there had been two other clicks, and another draft of cold air, which must have occurred as the intruder opened the closed door again in order to escape into the darkness.

Ken was out of the kitchen in a flash, and on his knees before the front door. His fingers explored the surface of the polished floor. A few feet inside the threshold there were two patches of dampness.

Ken moved backward carefully, surveying every inch of the smooth surface. He found no further wet spots. It seemed clear that the intruder had taken one step into the hall and then retreated again, apparently frightened off by Ken’s own footsteps in the upper hall.

Ken made one more round of the house, and again assured himself that nothing had been taken or disturbed. His impulse to wake Sandy, and tell him about the whole business, died slowly away. There seemed no point in arousing Sandy, or anybody else, in the middle of the night.

Ken warmed a glass of milk for himself in the kitchen and drank it thoughtfully. Then he went back upstairs, with a book under his arm. But he didn’t turn on his small reading light. He lay on his back, staring up into the darkness and puzzling over the mysterious intruder, until he finally fell into a troubled sleep.

When he woke up, the clock said only seven-thirty, but he got out of bed immediately. The snow had stopped. The world outside was blanketed with white. It was dazzling to Ken’s eyes, even at that early hour of a winter morning.

Sandy opened one sleepy eye as Ken stripped off his pajamas and began to dress. “Where do you think you’re going at this time of night?”

“Downstairs,” Ken said. “And it’s morning. You’d better get up too. I’ve got something to tell you.”

Sandy closed his eye again. “Can’t you tell me here?”

“We’d wake everybody else up.” Ken tied his last shoelace. “Come on. It’s important.”

The seriousness in his voice brought Sandy to a sitting position. “O.K. Get some coffee going. I’ll be down before it’s ready.”

Ten minutes later, while the coffee percolator bubbled away unnoticed, Ken completed his story.

“Well,” he said after a moment, “what do you think? Were we almost burglarized—or weren’t we?”

Sandy set his empty orange-juice glass on the table. He was grinning widely. “I think,” he said, “you were asleep last night half a minute after I was. The whole thing was a dream. You should give up cheese sandwiches.”

Ken pointed to the rear door. “I didn’t dream the chain into place there. Or on the front door, either.”

Sandy shrugged. “Maybe you walked in your sleep.” But he got to his feet. “All right. Let’s go see these alleged footsteps on the front porch.”

They walked through the hall together. Sandy unfastened the chain, unlocked the door, and threw it wide open. The white sweep of snow over the porch was unmarked.

“I could have told you they wouldn’t show any more,” Ken pointed out. “It was still snowing then. Naturally they got covered up.”

Sandy was still smiling as he bent down to examine the outer face of the lock. When he straightened again he looked sober.

“Take a look,” he said quietly. “Those little scratches on the face plate were never made by keys. I’d say somebody’s been using a picklock in the dark.”

“I’d say it’s a good thing I did eat cheese sandwiches,” Ken said a moment later, as they closed the door. “If I hadn’t come downstairs the house might have been cleaned out. Do you think we ought to notify the police?” he asked, when they were back in the kitchen and Sandy was pouring out two cups of coffee.

“Let’s let Pop decide,” Sandy suggested. “And let’s not worry Mom about it as long as nothing was taken and no harm seems to have been done.”

“Right,” Ken agreed. “We can talk to Pop at the office.”

They ate some toast, drank their coffee, and then went outside to clear the walks and the driveway. By the time they had finished shoveling the snow it was almost nine o’clock and they were ready for some of the bacon and eggs Mom was preparing for Pop and Bert and Richard Holt and herself.

The phone rang while they were all at the table.

Bert went to answer it. “Global News wants Richard Holt,” he called from the hall.

Holt shoved his chair back with an impatient gesture. “I called the office from the apartment yesterday, just to let them know I was back,” he said. “I see now that was a mistake. If they’ve thought up an assignment that will cut me out of a turkey dinner—” He disappeared into the hall.

When he came back he was smiling. “Nothing serious,” he reported quickly, answering the question in Ken’s eyes. “I’m still on vacation. Global just wanted to let me know I didn’t close the apartment door carefully when I dashed in and out yesterday.”

“Global told you that?” Pop looked blank.

The correspondent grinned over a fresh cup of coffee. “I know it sounds confusing. Seems the apartment-house janitor found my door ajar when he was cleaning the hall this morning. He didn’t know I was back in the country, so he called Global News to ask what to do about it. Granger sent a man down to look the place over—very kind of him, of course, as he was careful to remind me. But nothing was disturbed—clothes, portable radio, typewriter, all safe and sound. No signs of illegal entry, so apparently the fault was mine.”

He grinned again. “Granger wouldn’t even have called me about it, except that it gave him a chance to explain that Global always has the best interests