The others agreed with her heartily. They had their lunch without Julian, because he hadn’t come back. Why was he so long? He only had to telephone his uncle!

He came back at last. “Sorry I’m so late,” he said, “but first of all I couldn’t get any answer at all, so I waited a bit in case Aunt Fanny and Uncle Quentin were out — and I had lunch while I waited. Then I telephoned again, and Aunt Fanny was in, but Uncle Quentin had gone to London and wouldn’t be back till night.”

“To London!” said George, astonished. “He hardly ever goes to London.”

“Apparently he went up about these two missing scientists,” said Julian. “He’s so certain that his friend Terry-Kane isn’t a traitor, and he went up to tell the authorities so. Well, I couldn’t wait till night, of course.”

“Didn’t you report our news then?” said Dick, disappointed.

“Yes. But I had to tell Aunt Fanny,” said Julian. “She said she would repeat it all to Uncle Quentin when he came back tonight. It’s a pity I couldn’t get hold of him and find out what he thinks. I asked Aunt Fanny to tell him to write to me at once.”

After tea they sat on the hillside again, basking in the sun. It really was wonderful weather for them. Julian looked over to the ruined castle opposite. He fixed his eyes on the tower where they had seen the face. It was so far away that he could only just make out the window-slit.

“Get your glasses, George,” he said. “We may as well have another squint at that window. It was about this time that we saw the face.”

George fetched them. She would not give them to Julian first though — she put them to her own eyes and gazed at the window. At first she saw nothing — and then, quite suddenly, a face appeared at the window! George was so astonished that she cried out.

Julian snatched the glasses from her. He focused them on the window and saw the face at once. Yes — the same as yesterday — eyebrows and all!

Dick took the glasses, and then each of them in turn gazed at the strange face. It did not move at all, as far as they could see, but simply stared. Then, when Anne was looking at it, it suddenly disappeared and did not come back again.

“Well — we didn’t imagine it yesterday then,” said Julian. “It’s there all right. And where there’s a face, there should be a body. Er — did any of you think that the face had a — a sort of — despairing expression.”

“Yes,” said Dick and the others agreed. “I thought so yesterday, too,” said Dick. “Do you suppose the fellow, whoever he is, is being kept prisoner up there?”

“It looks like it,” said Julian. “But how in the world did he get there? It’s a marvellous place to put him, of course. Nobody would ever dream of a hiding-place like that — and if it hadn’t been for us looking at the jackdaws through very fine field-glasses, we’d never have seen him looking out. It was a chance in a thousand that we saw him.”