In half an hour’s time Jo was tucked up on the couch in Joan’s room, perfectly clean, though marked with scratches and bruises from top to toe, hair washed, dried, and brushed so that it stood up in wiry curls like George’s. A basin of steaming bread and milk was on a tray in front of her.

Joan went to the landing and called across to Julian’s room. “Master Julian! Jo’s in bed. She wants to say something to you and Master Dick.”

Dick and Julian put on dressing-gowns and went into Joan’s neat room. They hardly recognized Jo. She was wearing one of Anne’s old nightgowns and looked very clean and childish and somehow pathetic.

Jo looked at them and gave them a very small smile. “What do you want to say to us?” asked Julian.

“I’ve got some things to tell you,” said Jo, stirring the bread round and round in the basin. “I feel good now — good and clean and — and all that. But maybe tomorrow I’ll feel like I always do — and then I wouldn’t tell you everything. So I’d better tell you now.”

“Go ahead,” said Julian.

“Well, I let the men into your house here, the night they came,” said Jo. Julian and Dick stared in astonishment. Jo went on stirring her bread round and round.

“It’s true,” she said. “I got in at that tiny window that was left unfastened, and then I went to the back door and opened it and let the men in. They did make a mess of that room, didn’t they? I watched them. They took a lot of papers.”

“You couldn’t possibly squeeze through that window,” said Dick at once.

“Well, I did,” said Jo. “I’ve — I’ve squeezed through quite a lot of little windows. I know how to wriggle, you see. I can’t get through such tiny ones as I used to, because I keep on growing. But yours was easy.”

“Phew!” said Julian, and let out a long breath. He hardly knew what to say. “Well, go on. I suppose when the men had finished you locked and bolted the kitchen door after them and then squeezed out of the pantry window again?”

“Yes,” said Jo, and put a piece of milky bread into her mouth.

“What about Timmy? Who doped him so that he slept all that night?” demanded Dick.

“I did,” said Jo. “That was easy, too.”

Both boys were speechless. To think that Jo did that, too! The wicked little misery!

“I made friends with Timmy on the beach, don’t you remember?” said Jo. “George was cross about it. I like dogs. We always had dozens till Mum died, and they’d do anything I told them. Dad told me what I was to do — make friends with Timmy so that I could meet him that night and give him meat with something in it.”

“I see. And it was very, very easy, because we sent Timmy out alone — straight into your hands,” said Dick bitterly.