with them."
Moto had set the dinner table close to the edge of the lanai overhanging the valley, and the tints of sunset were beginning to show on the opposite mountain side. The slight breeze in the ironwoods had died down and the atmosphere seemed more sultry than ever. It lacked half an hour until dinner time, and Dick wandered about trying to find a cool place and at last headed toward his own room for a shower. The arrangement of the house was very simple. A T shaped open lanai with the front entrance at the base of the T. On the left was the kitchen and a small room probably intended for a servant's chamber but now used merely as a trunk room, since Moto slept in the loft over the garage in a front corner of the garden. On the right was Dick's bed room and bath, the latter supplied with water from a tank farther up the mountain. As the master entered the room he looked about protestingly. It was absolutely airless. The wall toward the other house was without a window; there was one window into the garden, but that was so overgrown with vines and so overhung with shrubbery that not a breath of air could enter. The window on the opposite end opened onto the lanai. "There'll be a great chance to sleep tonight!" he grumbled, as he twisted his head to loosen his necktie.
And therewith his upturned eyes rested upon a trap-door in the ceiling. He dropped his hands and
