was Anna Towne.

"Come in, Miss Towne." Jerry stepped aside for her unexpected caller to
enter. "Have you seen Marjorie?"

"Why, no. I haven't seen anyone except the maid who answered the door. I
came over to see if I could go to the masquerade with you girls. Phyllis
and a crowd of Silvertons went out to parade. I didn't care about it, so
I thought I would come over here."

"Wha-a-t!" Jerry was almost shouting. Ronny, Katherine and Lucy were the
picture of blank amazement.

"What's the matter?" Anna Towne flushed deeply. She did not understand
the meaning of Jerry's loud exclamation. Perhaps she had presumed in
thus breaking in upon the chums.

"Matter! I don't know what's the matter, but I am going to find out.
Read this note. You didn't write that, now did you?" Jerry thrust the
note into Anna's hands.

The room grew very still as she fastened her attention upon the
communication, supposedly from herself.

"Of course I never wrote it." Anna looked up wonderingly. Almost
instantly her expression changed to one of alarm. "There is no one
living at 852 on our street," she asserted. "My landlady has not moved.
I still live at 856. I haven't had any trouble. I came here dressed for
the masquerade. I'm wearing a Kate Greenaway costume. See. She took the
silk scarf from her head disclosing a Kate Greenaway cap.

"No one living there!" came in a breath of horror from Ronny. It was
echoed by the other three Lookouts. "Then _who_ wrote that note and
_what_ has happened to Marjorie?"

"I am going to find out pretty suddenly." Jerry sprang to her dress
closet for her fur coat and overshoes. "Go and get ready to go over to
that house, girls. One, two, three, four--We are five strong. Get your
wraps and meet me downstairs. I am going to see if I can't find Leila
and Vera. You had better wait for me here, Miss Towne. I'll be back
directly."

Ten minutes later a bevy of white-faced girls met in the lower hall.
Leila and Vera were among them. Jerry had met them just in the act of
leaving for the gymnasium.

"I'd go for my car but if would take longer to get it than for us to
walk. We must make all haste. Now I have an idea of my own about this. I
am not far off the truth when I say the Sans are to blame for the whole
thing. I would rather think it was they than that the note had been
written by some unknown person." Leila's blue eyes were dark with
emotion. "And that beloved child trotted blindly off by herself never
d