off, now that he had the opportunity. "That's what they are—telescopes for spying out when the counterfeiters are at work."
There were several small windows in the secret room, and they were rather high up from the floor. In fact Sammy and his chums had to drag out boxes to stand on, in order to see above the sills.
They paused a moment in looking over the strange apparatus to glance at the furniture in the room. As I have said, there was a bed, a table and several chairs. The bed did not look very nice, being covered with old blankets and some cut-up bags for covers. But it appeared to have been slept in, and was not actually dirty. In fact it was no worse than the place where the boys had slept when they were wrecked on the other end of Pine Island in the Summer.
"I wonder if they live here all the while?" spoke Bob.
"I guess they stay here when they're not away getting rid of the bad money," said Sammy. "They may come back any minute. We'd better be getting out of here!"
"Let's look around a little more," proposed Bob, who was getting braver now. "What can you see from the windows?"
The boys looked out The windows of the secret room gave a view of only a dense mass of trees, and it was plain that this was the reason no one had ever found the apartment before. That side of the old mansion was opposite a deep and seldom-visited part of the woods.
"Well, we'll look at the counterfeiting machinery a little more, and then we'll go," suggested Sammy. "We'd better tell Mr. Jessup about this, and he can get the police after these fellows."
This seemed good advice to his chums, and they went back again to the table and shelves where the apparatus was spread out. They now examined it all more closely.
