“There might be one we don’t know. I—I think we ought to leave it alone now, Sig, I really do.”

“It’s darn queer. Maybe it’s just today, maybe if we came back some other time—”

“Maybe, Sig, but somehow I don’t think so. And don’t you feel queer now, as if we shouldn’t be here at all? I didn’t feel that way before.”

There was a long moment of quiet and then Sig answered, “Yeah. I wasn’t going to say that, you might think I was a kook or something. But—let’s get out of here—right now!”

Artie was confused. Somehow he did not want to face them at this moment. He looked around a little wildly, tugged open the nearest door, and swung into a closet, keeping his hand on the doorknob and the door open a crack. He did not even see them go by, but he heard their footsteps echoing through the big rooms. When it was quiet again he came out, determined to see what was in the room, what this red-yellow thing might be.

At first glance he saw nothing at all but a table and a chair. Then the light from the window showed him color on the table, which drew him closer.

The football dropped from his loosened grasp and he was not even aware he had lost it. A puzzle—a jigsaw puzzle! Why had Sig and Ras been so excited about a stupid old puzzle? There was a box there, too, with a lot of pieces in it. Some were turned up to show brilliant red or gleaming gold. There were a few red pieces lying by themselves to one side. How they glowed!

He could see the picture on the lid of the box, with a big silver dragon at the top and a queer blue one at the bottom, just like the finished two on the table. Then there were two more, a red dragon on the left and a gold one on the right. He hardly looked at the gold one. It was the red which caught his full attention.

It was—it looked so real! Artie put out a finger and touched one of the red pieces. It moved a little and—why, it actually seemed to snap into place beside another, interlocking smoothly. But Sig and Ras, they had talked as if they couldn’t get the pieces together at all! What did they mean—this was easy!

One of the pieces was lying face down and there was black writing on it, the letters thick and blocky. “R-e-x—Rex,” Artie spelled out.

Uncle Jim had had a dog named Rex once, he said it meant “king” in Latin.