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all comers.
    Trixie tingled with
excitement. It’s
the same setting, almost exactly, she thought, as the one in Kidnapped for
Ransom.
    “I’ve never been
inside this room before,” Honey said. “I think most of the things must have
been here when Daddy bought the house.”
    “Just look at this
table!” Mart exclaimed. “It’s cherry, or I’ll miss my guess. This is valuable,
Honey, and here’s its twin! Do you think your mother meant that we could have
anything in this room?”
    “That’s what she
told me,” Honey answered.
    Mart, excited,
carried the two tables through the trapdoor to the hall. “This is the first
installment,” he called back over his shoulder.
    Trixie's head was
deep in a big trunk she pulled open. “It’s full of old costumes,” she said.
“The little theatre in Sleepyside will pay a lot of money for these or... say,
I think we’d better keep them and rent them to all the drama groups. We’d make
more money that way. Look at this. What do you suppose it opens?”
    Trixie held up a
little key. There was a tag attached to it. “This is queer,” she said and
turned the tag faceup so they could see it. On it were these little acrobatic
figures in different postures:
     

     
    “Do you suppose it
says something?” Honey picked up the key and its tag and took it over under the
light. “Did you ever see anything like this before?” she asked.
    “It’s probably some
kind of a code,” Mart said. “It’s neat. I’ll bet some kid did that a long time
ago.”
    “Right,” Jim said.
“More than likely, though, it doesn’t mean a thing.”
    “Maybe not,” Trixie
agreed, then slipped it into the pocket of her sweater. “What are you making
such a fuss about, Brian?”
    Brian had found an
old sword, and he was rubbing it against his blue jeans to brush off the dust.
    “Say, Jim, take a
look at this,” he said. “Could these be gold ornaments on the hilt?”
    “Why don’t you ask
me?” Mart asked. “I’m an authority on swords. It’s a samurai sword. There
should be a dagger to match. They come in pairs.”
    The boys hunted
around on the floor. “Here it is! It’s a beauty!”
    “The samurai were
military guards at the mikado’s palace way back in feudal days in Japan,” Mart recited, sure of his subject. “They were the only ones allowed to wear the two
swords.”
    “They had a pleasant
way of using them,” Jim said.
    “They did,” Mart
agreed. “When the honor of a samurai was questioned, even ever so faintly, he
had the great privilege of plunging this short dagger into his abdomen to end
his life.”
    “Then his best
friend, who bent over, watching to see that he did the job neatly,” said Brian,
“would slice off his head with this long sword to be sure the dagger did its
work.”
    “Don’t talk about
things like that,” Honey said, her face white. “It makes me sick. Let’s leave
these old swords here. Nobody will want them.”
    “You’re wrong,
Honey,” Brian said. “When I went to New York with Dad before Christmas I saw a
Japanese sword in the gift department of a store. It wasn’t as old as this
one... at least I don’t think it was... but the price on it was over a hundred
dollars.”
    “I still don’t like
them,” Honey said.
    “It’s history,
though, Honey,” Trixie said. “Wow! Look at these old masks! This one—why, I
believe it’s a Garuda bird. Do you remember that Balinese dance we saw on TV
out at the ranch?”
    Mart picked up the
mask, and ran his hand down the beak of the Garuda bird, with its serrated
teeth. “I remember,” he said. “A man wore one in the Balinese shadow play.
Someone who lived here before must have traveled in the Far East and picked up
these masks and swords.”
    Just then Celia, the
Wheelers’ pretty maid who had married Tom, the chauffeur, pushed a tray ahead
of herself through the trapdoor. “Mrs. Wheeler said to bring lunch up to you,”
she said and put a tray of steaming hot dogs in