“It’s a tower room!” said Gladys.  The chamber they were in was square, about fifteen by fifteen, furnished as a bedroom.  Through a door which opened at one side they could see a luxurious tiled bath.  The walls and ceiling of the chamber were tinted a deep violet, and the covers on the bed, dresser, table and the upholstery of the chairs were of the same shade.  The lamp globes hanging from the ceiling were deep purple.

“What an extraordinary color to decorate a room in,” said Nyoda.  “I wonder if this is where we are going to sleep.  Where can Mrs. Bates be, I wonder?” she said, getting rather impatient for the joke to be sprung.

Just at this time Gladys made a discovery.  There was only one window in the room, curtained with heavy cretonne, purple, to match the rest of the hangings.  Drawing the curtain aside to look out at the landscape, she suddenly stood still, frozen to the spot.  At her exclamation Nyoda turned around and also stood as if turned to stone. The window was barred!  “What does it mean?” asked Gladys in a horrified voice.  The two hastened back to the elevator entrance and looked for the button to summon the elevator.  There was none.  They called down the shaft repeatedly, but there was no answer.  As they stood listening for sounds from below they heard the automobile which had brought them start up and drive away from the house.  After that there was not another sound of any kind.  An unnamable terror seized them both.  Each read the other’s fear in her eyes.  Rushing to the window, they looked out.  There was nothing to be seen but the lake stretching out before them, calm and smiling in the May sunshine.  The boom of the waves sounded directly beneath them, and they knew that the tower was on the extreme edge of the bluff.

“This is not Norma Bates’s house,” said Nyoda in a frightened voice.  “She said that they were a hundred feet back from the lake.”

“Whose house is it, then?” asked Gladys.

“I can’t imagine,” said Nyoda.  “It’s all a mistake somewhere.”

“But that was the Bates’s automobile, all right, that we got into,” said Gladys.

“Yes,” said Nyoda reflectively; “bright blue with a cane streamer, standing at the corner of ——­th Avenue and L——­ Street. But was it the right one?" she asked suddenly, putting her hands to her head.  “That driver never said a word, just got in and drove off.  What on earth are we into?”

Gladys’s face suddenly went as white as chalk.  “Nyoda!” she gasped, clutching the other girl’s arm.

“What is it?” asked Nyoda.

“You read every day in the papers of girls disappearing,” said Gladys faintly, “never to be heard of again.  Have we—­have we—­disappeared?”

“I don’t know,” said Nyoda, with thoughts whirling.  She turned away from the window, toward the elevator.  Not a sound of any kind had been heard, and yet when she turned around there was the elevator up again with the same woman in it who had brought them up.  Instead of opening the door, however, she pressed something and a little slide opened at about the height of her head.  Through this she passed a supper tray, which she set on a shelf on the wall at the side of the elevator.  Gladys and Nyoda hastened toward her.