Nyoda was inspecting the upper windows of the house.  “There is one open a little,” she said; “the one over the side entrance.”  Gladys abandoned her idea of breaking the pantry window and bent her energies to reaching the open one.  With the aid of Nyoda she climbed up the post of the little side porch, swung herself over the edge of the roof and raised the window.

“Stop where you are!” called a commanding voice.  Gladys and Nyoda both started guiltily.  A man was running across the lawn from the next estate.  “Stop or I’ll call the police,” he said, coming upon the drive.

He looked much disconcerted when Nyoda and Gladys both burst into a ringing peal of laughter.  “Oh, it’s too funny for anything,” said Gladys, wiping her eyes, “to be caught breaking into your own house.  You’re a good man, whoever you are, for keeping an eye on the house,” she said to the puzzled-looking arrester, “but the joke is on you this time.  This is my father’s house.  I’m Gladys Evans.  Give him one of my cards out of my purse, Nyoda, so he’ll believe it.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the man, convinced that Gladys had a right to enter the Evans’s house by the second-story window if she chose.  “I’m the new gardener next door and I didn’t know you, and it always looks suspicious to see such goings-on.”

“You did perfectly right,” said Gladys, as he went back to his work.

Laughing extravagantly over their being taken for housebreakers, Gladys climbed into the window and went downstairs.  Opening the front door a crack, she gave a low whistle which she fondly believed to be a burglar-like signal.  Nyoda answered with a similar whistle.  “Is that you, Diamond Dick?” she asked in a thrilling whisper.

“Who stands without?” asked Gladys.

“It is I, Dark-lantern Pete,” hissed Nyoda.

“Give the countersign,” commanded Gladys.

“Six buckets of blood!” replied Nyoda in a curdling voice.

Gladys admitted her into the house and they both sat down on the stairs and shrieked with laughter.  “Oh, I can hardly wait until we get down to the car, so we can tell the other girls,” said Gladys.  “Caught in the act!  My fair name is ruined.  Now for some dinner.”

“I’m hungry for a pickle,” she said as they foraged in the pantry for something to eat.  “Wait a minute until I go down cellar and get some.”  As she opened the door of the cool cellar she started back in surprise.  On the floor lay Katy, the maid, unconscious.  An overturned chair beside her and a shattered light globe told how she had tried to screw a new bulb into the fixture in the ceiling and had tipped over with the chair, striking her head on the cement floor.  “Nyoda, come down here,” called Gladys.  Nyoda hastened down.  Together they laid the unconscious girl on a pile of carpet and tried to revive her.  After a few minutes’ work Nyoda went upstairs and called the ambulance to take Katy to the hospital.  When she had been examined by a surgeon and pronounced badly stunned but not seriously injured, Gladys and Nyoda breathed a sigh of relief and left her in the care of the hospital.