CHAPTER XI. BESS

First tenant, Mr. Hugh Dennison and family.Night 1: Heard and saw nothing.Night 2: The entire household wakened by a scream seeminglycoming from below.  This was twice repeated before Mr. Dennisoncould reach the hall; the last time in far distant and smotheredtones.  Investigation revealed nothing.  No person and no traceof any persons, save themselves, could be found anywhere in thehouse.  Uncomfortable feelings, but no alarm as yet.Night 3: No screams, but a sound of groaning in the library.The tall clock standing near the drawing-room door stopped attwelve, and a door was found open which Mr. Dennison is sure heshut tight on retiring.  A second unavailing search.  One servantleft the next morning.Night 4: Footfalls on the stairs.  The library door, locked by Mr.Dennison’s own hand, is heard to unclose.  The timepiece on thelibrary mantel-shelf strikes twelve; but it is slightly fast, andMr. and Mrs. Dennison, who have crept from their room to thestair-head, listen breathlessly for the deep boom of the greathall clock—the one which had stopped the night before.  No lightis burning anywhere, and the hall below is a pit of darkness, whensuddenly Mrs. Dennison seizes her husband’s arm and, gasping out,“The clock, the clock!” falls fainting to the floor.  He bends tolook and faintly, in the heart of the shadows, he catches in dimoutline the face of the clock, and reaching up to it a spectralhand.  Nothing else—and in another moment that, too, disappears;but the silence is something awful—the great clock has stopped.With a shout he stumbles downward, lights up the hall, lights upthe rooms, but finds nothing, and no one.  Next morning the secondservant leaves, but her place is soon supplied by an applicant wewill call Bess.Night 5: Mrs. Dennison sleeps at a hotel with the children.  Mr.Dennison, revolver in hand, keeps watch on the haunted stairway.He has fastened up every door and shutter with his own hand, andwith equal care extinguished all lights.  As the hour of twelveapproaches, he listens breathlessly.  There is certainly a stirsomewhere, but he can not locate it, not quite satisfy himselfwhether it is a footfall or a rustle that he hears.  The clockin the library strikes twelve, then the one in the hall gives onegreat boom, and stops.  Instantly he raises his revolver andshoots directly at its face.  No sound from human lips answersthe discharge of the weapon.  In the flash which for a moment haslighted up the whole place, he catches one glimpse of the brokendial with its two hands pointing directly at twelve, but nothingmore.  Then all is dark again, and he goes slowly back to his ownroom.The next day he threw up his lease.Second tenant: Mrs. Crispin.Stayed but one night.  Would never tell us what she saw.Third tenant: Mrs. Southwick.  Hires Bess for maid-of-all-work, theonly girl she could get.Night 1: Unearthly lights shining up through the house, wakingthe family.  Disappeared as one and all came creeping out into thehall.Night 2: The same, followed by deep groans.  Children waked andshrieked.Night 3: Nothing.Night 4: Lights, groans and strange shadows on the walls andceilings of the various hallways.  Family give notice the next day,but do not leave for a week, owing to sickness.  No manifestationswhile doctor and nurses are in the house.House stands vacant for three months.  Bess offers to remain in itas caretaker, but her offer is refused.Police investigate.An amusing farce.One of them saw something and could not be laughed out of it by hisfellows.  But the general report was unsatisfactory.  The mistakewas the employment of Irishmen in a task involving superstition.Fourth tenant: Mr. Weston and family.Remain three weeks.  Leaves suddenly because the nurse encounteredsomething moving about in the lower hall one night when she wentdown to the kitchen to procure hot water for a sick child.  Bessagain offered her services, but the family would not stay under anycircumstances.Another long period without tenant.Mr. Searles tries a night in the empty house.  Sits and dozes inlibrary till two.  Wakes suddenly.  Door he has tightly shut isstanding open.  He feels the draft.  Turns on light from darklantern.  Something is there—a shape—he can not otherwisedescribe it.  As he stares at it, it vanishes through doorway.  Herushes for it; finds nothing.  The hall is empty; so is the wholehouse.

This finished the report.

“So Mr. Searles has had his own experiences of these Mysteries!” I exclaimed.

“As you see. Perhaps that is why he is so touchy on the subject.”

“Did he ever give you any fuller account of his experience than is detailed here?”

“No; he won’t talk about it.”

“He tried to let the house, however.”

“Yes, but he did not succeed for a long time. Finally the mayor took it.”

Refolding the paper, I handed it back to Mr. Robinson. I had its contents well in mind.

“There is one fact to which I should like to call your attention,” said I. “The manifestations, as here recorded, have all taken place in the lower part of the house. I should have had more faith in them, if they had occurred above stairs. There are no outlets through the roof.”

“Nor any visible ones below. At least no visible one was ever found open.”

“What about the woman, Bess?” I asked. “How do you account for her persistency in clinging to a place her employers invariably fled from? She seems to have been always on hand with an offer of her services.”

“Bess is not a young woman, but she is a worker of uncommon ability, very rigid and very stoical. She herself accounts for her willingness to work in this house by her utter disbelief in spirits, and the fact that it is the one place in the world which connects her with her wandering and worthless husband. Their final parting occurred during Mr. Dennison’s tenancy, and as she had given the wanderer the Franklin Street address, you could not reason her out of the belief that on his return he would expect to find here there. That is what she explained to Mr. Searles.”

“You interest me, Mr. Robinson. Is she a plain woman? Such a one as a man would not be likely to return to?”

“No, she is a very good-looking woman, refined and full of character, but odd, very odd,—in fact, baffling.”

“How baffling?”

“I never knew her to look any one directly in the eye. Her manner is abstracted and inspires distrust. There is also a marked incongruity between her employment and her general appearance. She looks out of place in her working apron, yet she is not what you would call a lady.”

“Did her husband come back?”

“No, not to my knowledge.”

“And where is she now?”

“Very near you, Miss Saunders, when you are at your home in Franklin Street. Not being able to obtain a situation in the house itself, she has rented the little shop opposite, where you can find her any day selling needles and thread.”

“I have noticed that shop,” I admitted, not knowing whether to give more or less weight to my suspicions in thus finding the mayor’s house under the continued gaze of another watchful eye.

“You will find two women there,” the amiable Mr. Robinson hastened to explain. “The one with a dark red spot just under her hair is Bess. But perhaps she doesn’t interest you. She always has me. If it had not been for one fact, I should have suspected her of having been in some way connected with the strange doings we have just been considering. She was not a member of the household during the occupancy of Mrs. Crispin and the Westons, yet these unusual manifestations went on just the same.”

“Yes, I noted that.”

“So her connivance is eliminated.”

“Undoubtedly. I am still disposed to credit the Misses Quinlan with the whole ridiculous business. They could not bear to see strangers in the house they had once called their own, and took the only means suggested to their crazy old minds to rid the place of them.”

Mr. Robinson shook his head, evidently unconvinced. The temptation was great to strengthen my side of the argument by a revelation of their real motive. Once acquainted with the story of the missing bonds he could not fail to see the extreme probability that the two sisters, afflicted as they were with dementia, should wish to protect the wealth which was once so near their grasp, from the possibility of discovery by a stranger. But I dared not take him quite yet into my full confidence. Indeed, the situation did not demand it. I had learned from him what I was most anxious to know, and was now in a position to forward my own projects without further aid from him. Almost as if he had read my thoughts, Mr. Robinson now hastened to remark:

“I find it difficult to credit these poor old souls with any such elaborate plan to empty the house, even had they possessed the most direct means of doing so, for no better reason than this one you state. Had money been somehow involved, or had they even thought so, it would be different. They are a little touched in the head on the subject of money; which isn’t very strange considering their present straits. They even show an interest in other people’s money. They have asked me more than once if any of their former neighbors have seemed to grow more prosperous since leaving Franklin Street.”

“I see; touched, touched!” I laughed, rising in my anxiety to hide any show of feeling at the directness of this purely accidental attack. But the item struck me as an important one. Mr. Robinson gave me a keen look as I uttered the usual commonplaces and prepared to take my leave.

“May I ask your intentions in this matter?” said he.

“I wish I knew them myself,” was my perfectly candid answer. “It strikes me now that my first step should be to ascertain whether there exists any secret connection between the two houses which would enable the Misses Quinlan or their emissaries to gain access to their old home, without ready detection. I know of none, and—”

“There is none,” broke in its now emphatic agent. “A half-dozen tenants, to say nothing of Mr. Searles himself, have looked it carefully over. All the walls are intact; there is absolutely no opening anywhere for surreptitious access.”

“Possibly not. You certainly discourage me very much. I had hoped much from my theory. But we are not done with the matter. Mrs. Packard’s mind must be cleared of its fancies, if it is in my power to do it. You will hear from me again, Mr. Robinson. Meanwhile, I may be sure of your good will?”

“Certainly, certainly, and of my cooperation also, if you want it.”

“Thank you,” said I, and left the office.

His last look was one of interest not untinged by compassion.

On my way back I took the opposite side of the street from that I usually approached. When I reached the little shop I paused. First glancing at the various petty articles exposed in the window, I quietly stepped in. A contracted and very low room met my eyes, faintly lighted by a row of panes in the upper half of the door and not at all by the window, which was hung on the inside with a heavy curtain. Against two sides of this room were arranged shelves filled with boxes labeled in the usual way to indicate their contents. These did not strike me as being very varied or of a very high order. There was no counter in front, only some tables on which lay strewn fancy boxes of thread and other useless knick-knacks to which certain shopkeepers appear to cling though they can seldom find customers for them. A woman stood at one of these tables untangling a skein of red yarn. Behind her I saw another leaning in an abstracted way over a counter which ran from wall to wall across the extreme end of the shop. This I took to be Bess. She had made no move at my entrance and she made no move now. The woman with the skein appeared, on the contrary, as eager to see as the other seemed indifferent. I had to buy something and I did so in as matter-of-fact a way as possible, considering that my attention was more given to the woman in the rear than to the articles I was purchasing.

“You have a very convenient place here,” I casually remarked, as I handed out my money. With this I turned squarely about and looked directly at her whom I believed to be Bess.

A voluble answer from the woman at my side, but not the wink of an eye from the one whose attention I had endeavored to attract.

“I live in the house opposite,” I carelessly went on, taking in every detail of the strange being I was secretly addressing.

“Oh!” she exclaimed in startled tones, roused into speech at last. “You live opposite; in Mayor Packard’s house?”

I approached her, smiling. She had dropped her hands from her chin and seemed very eager now, more eager than the other woman, to interest me in what she had about her and so hold me to the shop.

“Look at this,” she cried, holding up an article of such cheap workmanship that I wondered so sensible an appearing woman would cumber her shelves with it. “I am glad you live over there,” for I had nodded to her question. “I’m greatly interested in that house. I’ve worked there as cook and waitress several times.”

I met her look; it was sharp and very intelligent.

“Then you know its reputation,” I laughingly suggested.

She made a contemptuous gesture. The woman was really very good-looking, but baffling in her manner, as Mr. Robinson had said, and very hard to classify. “That isn’t what interests me,” she protested. “I’ve other reasons. You’re not a relative of the family, are you?” she asked impetuously, leaning over the table to get a nearer view of my face.

“No, nor even a friend. I am in their employ just now as a companion to Mrs. Packard. Her health is not very good, and the mayor is away a great deal.”

“I thought you didn’t belong there. I know all who belong there. I’ve little else to do but stare across the street,” she added apologetically and with a deep flush. “Business is very poor in this shop.”

I was standing directly in front of her. Turning quickly about, I looked through the narrow panes of the door, and found that my eyes naturally rested on the stoop of the opposite house. Indeed, this stoop was about all that could be seen from the spot where this woman stood.

“Another eve bent in constant watchfulness upon us,” I inwardly commented. “We are quite surrounded. The house should certainly hold treasure to warrant all this interest. But what could this one-time domestic know of the missing bonds?”

“An old-fashioned doorway,” I remarked. “It is the only one of the kind on the whole street. It makes the house conspicuous, but in a way I like. I don’t wonder you enjoy looking at it. To me such a house and such a doorway suggest mystery and a romantic past. If the place is not haunted—and only a fool believes in ghosts—something strange must have happened there or I should never have the nervous feeling I have in going about the halls and up and down the stairways. Did you never have that feeling?”

“Never. I’m not given to feelings. I live one day after another and just wait.”

Not given to feelings! With such eyes in such a face! You should have looked down when you said that, Bess; I might have believed you then.

“Wait?” I softly repeated. “Wait for what? For fortune to enter your little shop-door?”

“No, for my husband to come back,” was her unexpected answer, uttered grimly enough to have frightened that husband away again, had he been fortunate or unfortunate enough to hear her. “I’m a married woman, Miss, and shouldn’t be working like this. And I won’t be always; my man’ll come back and make a lady of me again. It’s that I’m waiting for.”

Here a customer came in. Naturally I drew back, for our faces were nearly touching.

“Don’t go,” she pleaded, catching me by the sleeve and turning astonishingly pale for one ordinarily so ruddy. “I want to ask a favor of you. Come into my little room behind. You won’t regret it.” This last in an emphatic whisper.

Amazed at the turn which the conversation had taken and congratulating myself greatly upon my success in insuring her immediate confidence, I slipped through the opening she made for me between the tables serving for a counter and followed her into a room at the rear, which from its appearance answered the triple purpose of sleeping-room, parlor and kitchen.

“Pardon my impertinence,” said she, as she carefully closed the door behind us. “It’s not my habit to make friends with strangers, but I’ve taken a fancy to you and think you can be trusted. Will—” she hesitated, then burst out, “will you do something for me?”

“If I can,” I smiled.

“How long do you expect to stay over there?”

“Oh, that I can’t say.”

“A month? a week?”

“Probably a week.”

“Then you can do what I want. Miss—”

“Saunders,” I put in.

“There is something in that house which belongs to me.”

I started; this was hardly what I expected her to say.

“Something of great importance to me; something which I must have and have very soon. I don’t want to go there for it myself. I hid it in a very safe place one day when my future looked doubtful, and I didn’t know where I might be going or what might happen to me. Mrs. Packard would think it strange if she saw where, and might make it very uncomfortable for me. But you can get what I want without trouble if you are not afraid of going about the house at night. It’s a little box with my name on it; and it is hidden—”

“Where?”

“Behind a brick I loosened in the cellar wall. I can describe the very place. Oh, you think I am asking too much of you—a stranger and a lady.”

“No, I’m willing to do what I can for you. But I think you ought to tell me what’s in the box, so that I shall know exactly what I am doing.”

“I can’t tell; I do not dare to tell till I have it again in my own hand. Then we will look it over together. Do you hesitate? You needn’t; no inconvenience will follow to any one, if you are careful to rely on yourself and not let any other person see or handle this box.”

“How large is it?” I asked, quite as breathless as herself, as I realized the possibilities underlying this remarkable request.

“It is so small that you can conceal it under an apron or in the pocket of your coat. In exchange for it, I will give you all I can afford—ten dollars.”

“No more than that?” I asked, testing her.

“No more at first. Afterward—if it brings me what it ought to, I will give you whatever you think it is worth. Does that satisfy you? Are you willing to risk an encounter with the ghost, for just ten dollars and a promise?”

The smile with which she said this was indescribable. I think it gave me a more thrilling consciousness of human terror in face of the supernatural than anything which I had yet heard in this connection. Surely her motive for remaining in the haunted house had been extraordinarily strong.

“You are afraid,” she declared. “You will shrink, when the time comes, from going into that cellar at night.”

I shook my head; I had already regained both my will-power and the resolution to carry out this adventure to the end.

“I will go,” said I.

“And get me my box?”

“Yes!”

“And bring it to me here as early the next day as you can leave Mrs. Packard?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, you don’t know what this means to me.”

I had a suspicion, but held my peace and let her rhapsodize.

“No one in all my life has ever shown me so much kindness! Are you sure you won’t be tempted to tell any one what you mean to do?”

“Quite sure.”

“And will go down into the cellar and get this box for me, all by yourself?”

“Yes, if you demand it.”

“I do; you will see why some day.”

“Very well, you can trust me. Now tell me where I am to find the brick you designate.”

“It’s in the cellar wall, about half-way down on the right-hand side. You will see nothing but stone for a foot or two above the floor, but after that comes the brick wall. On one of these bricks you will detect a cross scratched. That’s the one. It will look as well cemented as the rest, but if you throw water against it, you will find that in a little while you will be able to pry it out. Take something to do this with, a knife or a pair of scissors. When the brick falls out, feel behind with your hand and you will find the box.”

“A questionable task. What if I should be seen at it?”

“The ghost will protect you!”

Again that smile of mingled sarcasm and innuendo. It was no common servant girl’s smile, any more than her language was that of the ignorant domestic.

“I believe the ghost fails to walk since the present tenants came into the house,” I remarked.

“But its reputation remains; you’ll not be disturbed.”

“Possibly not; a good reason why you might safely undertake the business yourself. I can find some way of letting you in.”

“No, no. I shall never again cross that threshold!” Her whole attitude showed revolt and bitter determination.

“Yet you have never been frightened by anything there?”

“I know; but I have suffered; that is, for one who has no feelings. The box will have to remain in its place undisturbed if you won’t get it for me.”

“Positively?”

“Yes, Miss; nothing would induce me even to cross the street. But I want the box.”

“You shall have it,” said I.

I seemed bound to be the prey of a divided duty. As I crossed the street, I asked myself which of the two experiments I had in mind should occupy my attention first. Should I proceed at once with that close study and detailed examination of the house, which I contemplated in my eagerness to establish my theory of a secret passage between it and the one now inhabited by the Misses Quinlan, or should I wait to do this until I had recovered the box, which might hold still greater secrets?

I could not decide, so I resolved to be guided by circumstances. If Mrs. Packard were still out, I did not think I could sit down till I had a complete plan of the house as a start in the inquiry which interested me most.

Mrs. Packard was still out,—so much Nixon deigned to tell me in answer to my question. Whether the fact displeased him or not I could not say, but he was looking very sour and seemed to resent the trouble he had been to in opening the door for me. Should I notice this, even by an attempt to conciliate him? I decided not. A natural manner was best; he was too keen not to notice and give his own interpretation to uncalled for smiles or words which contrasted too strongly with his own marked reticence. I therefore said nothing as he pottered slowly back into his own quarters in the rear, but lingered about down-stairs till I was quite sure he was out of sight and hearing. Then I came back and took up my point of view on the spot where the big hall clock had stood in the days of Mr. Dennison. Later, I made a drawing of this floor as it must have looked at that time. You will find it on the opposite page.

[transcriber’s note: The plan shows the house to have tworows of rooms with a hall between. In the front each roomends in a bow window. On the right the drawing-room has twodoors opening into the hall, equally spaced near the frontand rear of the room. Across the hall are two rooms ofapparently equal size; a reception room in front and thelibrary behind it, both rooms having windows facing on thealley. There is a stairway in the hall just behind the doorto the reception room. The study is behind the drawing-room.Opposite this is a side hall and the dining-room. Thelibrary and dining-room both open off this hall with thedining room also having doors to the main hall and kitchen.The side hall ends with a stoop in the alley. A small roomlabeled kitchen, etc. lies behind the dining-room and thehall extends beyond the study beside the kitchen with thecellar stairs on the kitchen side. There is a smallrectangle in the hall about two-thirds of the way down theside of the drawing-room which is labeled A.]

Near the place where I stood [marked A on the plan], had occurred most of the phenomena, which could be located at all. Here the spectral hand had been seen stopping the clock. Here the shape had passed encountered by Mr. Weston’s cook, and just a few steps beyond where the library door opened under the stairs Mr. Searles had seen the flitting figure which had shut his mouth on the subject of his tenants’ universal folly. From the front then toward the back these manifestations had invariably peeped to disappear—where? That was what I was to determine; what I am sure Mayor Packard would wish me to determine if he knew the whole situation as I knew it from his wife’s story and the record I had just read at the agent’s office.

Alas! there were many points of exit from this portion of the hall. The drawing-room opened near; so did Mayor Packard’s study; then there was the kitchen with its various offices, ending as I knew in the cellar stairs. Nearer I could see the door leading into the dining-room and, opening closer yet, the short side hall running down to what had once been the shallow vestibule of a small side entrance, but which, as I had noted many times in passing to and from the dining-room, was now used as a recess or alcove to hold a cabinet of Indian curios. In which of these directions should I carry my inquiry? All looked equally unpromising, unless it was Mayor Packard’s study, and that no one with the exception of Mr. Steele ever entered save by his invitation, not even his wife. I could not hope to cross that threshold, nor did I greatly desire to invade the kitchen, especially while Nixon was there. Should I have to wait till the mayor’s return for the cooperation my task certainly demanded? It looked that way. But before yielding to the discouragement following this thought, I glanced about me again and suddenly remembered, first the creaking board, which had once answered to the so-called spirit’s flight, and secondly the fact which common sense should have suggested before, that if my theory were true and the secret presence, whose coming and going I had been considering, had fled by some secret passage leading to the neighboring house, then by all laws of convenience and natural propriety that passage should open from the side facing the Quinlan domicile, and not from that holding Mayor Packard’s study and the remote drawing-room.

This considerably narrowed my field of inquiry, and made me immediately anxious to find that creaking board which promised to narrow it further yet.

Where should I seek it? In these rear halls, of course, but I hated to be caught pacing them at this hour. Nixon’s step had not roused it or I should have noticed it, for I was, in a way, listening for this very sound. It was not in the direct path then from the front door to the kitchen. Was it on one side or in the space about the dining-room door or where the transverse corridor met the main hall? All these floors were covered in the old-fashioned way with carpet, which would seem to show that no new boards had been laid and that the creaking one should still be here.

I ventured to go as far as the transverse hall,—I was at full liberty to enter the library. But no result followed this experiment; my footsteps had never fallen more noiselessly. Where could the board be? In aimless uncertainty I stepped into the corridor and instantly a creak woke under my foot. I had located the direction in which one of the so-called phantoms had fled. It was down this transverse hall.

Flushed with apparent success, I looked up at the walls on either side of me. They were gray with paint and presented one unbroken surface from base-board to ceiling, save where the two doorways opened, one into the library, the other into the dining-room. Had the flying presence escaped by either of these two rooms? I knew the dining-room well. I had had several opportunities for studying its details. I thought I knew the library; besides, Mr. Searles had been in the library when the shape advanced upon him from the hall,—a fact eliminating that room as a possible source of approach! What then was left? The recess which had once served as an old-time entrance. Ah, that gave promise of something. It projected directly toward where the adjacent walls had once held two doors, between which any sort of mischief might take place. Say that the Misses Quinlan had retained certain keys. What easier than for one of them to enter the outer door, strike a light, open the inner one and flash this light up through the house till steps or voices warned her of an aroused family, when she had only to reclose the inside door, put out the light and escape by the outer one.

But alas! at this point I remembered that this, as well as all other outside doors, had invariably been protected by bolt, and that these bolts had never been found disturbed. Veritably I was busying myself for nothing over this old vestibule. Yet before I left it I gave it another glance; satisfied myself that its walls were solid; in fact, built of brick like the house. This on two sides; the door occupied the third and showed the same unbroken coat of thick, old paint, its surface barely hidden by the cabinet placed at right angles to it. Enough of it, however, remained exposed to view to give me an opportunity of admiring its sturdy panels and its old-fashioned lock. The door was further secured by heavy pivoted bars extending from jamb to jamb. An egg-and-dart molding extended all around the casing, where the inner door had once hung. All solid, all very old-fashioned, but totally unsuggestive of any reasonable solution of the mystery I had vaguely hoped it to explain. Was I mistaken in my theory, and must I look elsewhere for what I still honestly expected to find? Undoubtedly; and with this decision I turned to leave the recess, when a sensation, of too peculiar a nature for me readily to understand it, caused me to stop short, and look down at my feet in an inquiring way and afterward to lift the rug on which I had been standing and take a look at the floor underneath. It was covered with carpet, like the rest of the hall, but this did not disguise the fact that it sloped a trifle toward the outside wall. Had not the idea been preposterous, I should have said that the weight of the cabinet had been too much for it, causing it to sag quite perceptibly at the base-board. But this seemed too improbable to consider. Old as the house was, it was not old enough for its beams to have rolled. Yet the floor was certainly uneven, and, what was stranger yet, had, in sagging, failed to carry the base-board with it. This I could see by peering around the side of the cabinet. Was it an important enough fact to call for explanation? Possibly not; yet when I had taken a short leap up and come down on what was certainly an unstable floor, I decided that I should never be satisfied till I had seen that cabinet removed and the floor under it rigidly examined.

Yet when I came to take a look at this projection from the library window and saw that this floor, like that of the many entrances, was only the height of one step from the ground, I felt the folly into which my inquiring spirit had led me, and would have dismissed the whole subject from my mind if my eyes had not detected at that moment on one of the tables an unusually thin paper-knife. This gave me an idea. Carrying it back with me into the recess, I got down on my knees, and first taking the precaution to toss a little stick-pin of mine under the cabinet to be reached after in case I was detected there by Nixon, I insinuated the cutter between the base-board and the floor and found that I could not only push it in an inch or more before striking the brick, but run it quite freely around from one corner of the recess to the other. This was surely surprising. The exterior of this vestibule must be considerably larger than the interior would denote. What occupied the space between? I went upstairs full of thought. Sometime, and that before long, I would have that cabinet removed.

Mrs. Packard came in very soon after this. She was accompanied by two friends and I could hear them talking and laughing in her room upstairs all the afternoon. It gave me leisure, but leisure was not what I stood in need of, just now. I desired much more an opportunity to pursue my inquiries, for I knew why she had brought these friends home with her and lent herself to a merriment that was not natural to her. She wished to forestall thought; to keep down dread; to fill the house so full of cheer that no whisper should reach her from that spirit-world she had come to fear. She had seen—or believed that she had seen—a specter, and she had certainly heard a laugh that had come from no explicable human source.

The brightness of the sunshiny day aided her unconsciously in this endeavor. But I foresaw the moment when this brightness would disappear and her friends say good-by. Then the shadows must fall again more heavily than ever, because of their transient lifting. I almost wished she had indeed gone with her husband, and found myself wondering why he had not asked her to do so when he found what it was that depressed her. Perhaps he had, and it was she who had held back. She may have made up her mind to conquer this weakness, and to conquer it where it had originated and necessarily held the strongest sway. At all events, he was gone and she was here, and I had done nothing as yet to relieve that insidious dread with which she must anticipate a night in this house without his presence.

I wondered if it would be any relief to her to have Mr. Steele remain upon the premises. I had heard him come in about three o’clock and go into the study, and when the time came for her friends to take their leave, and their voices in merry chatter came up to my ear from the open boudoir door, I stole down to ask her if I could suggest it to him. But I was too late. Just as I reached the head of the stairs on the second floor he came out of the study below and passed, hat in hand, toward the front door.

“What a handsome man!” came in an audible whisper from one of the ladies, who now stood in the lower hall.

“Who is he?” asked the other.

I thought he held the door open one minute longer than was necessary to catch her reply. It was a very cold and unenthusiastic one.

“That is Mr. Packard’s secretary,” said she. “He will join the mayor just as soon as he has finished certain preparations intrusted to him.”

“Oh!” was their quiet rejoinder, but a note of disappointment rang in both voices as the door shut behind him.

“One does not often see a perfectly handsome man.”

I stepped down to meet her when she in turn had shut the door upon them.

But I stopped half-way. She was standing with her head turned away from me and the knob still in her hand. I saw that she was thinking or was the prey of some rapidly growing resolve.

Suddenly she seized the key and turned it.

“The house is closed for the night,” she announced as she looked up and met my astonished gaze. “No one goes out or comes in here again till morning. I have seen all the visitors I have strength for.”

And though she did not know I saw it, she withdrew the key and slipped it into her pocket. “This is Nixon’s night out,” she murmured, as she led the way to the library. “Ellen will wait on us and we’ll have the baby down and play games and be as merry as ever we can be,—to keep the ghosts away,” she cried in fresh, defiant tones that had just the faintest suggestion of hysteria in them. “We shall succeed; I don’t mean to think of it again. I’m right in that, am I not? You look as if you thought so. Ah, Mr. Packard was kind to secure me such a companion. I must prove my gratitude to him by keeping you close to me. It was a mistake to have those light-headed women visit me to-day. They tired more than they comforted me.”

I smiled, and put the question which concerned me most nearly.

“Does Nixon stay late when he goes out?”

She threw herself into a chair and took up her embroidery.

“He will to-night,” was her answer. “A little grandniece of his is coming on a late train from Pittsburgh. I don’t think the train is due till midnight, and after that he’s got to take her to his daughter’s on Carey Street. It will be one o’clock at least before he can be back.”

I hid my satisfaction. Fate was truly auspicious. I would make good use of his absence. There was nobody else in the house whose surveillance I feared.

“Pray send for the baby now,” I exclaimed. “I am eager to begin our merry evening.”

She smiled and rang the bell for Letty, the nurse.

Late that night I left my room and stole softly down-stairs. Mrs. Packard had ordered a bed made up for herself in the nursery and had retired early. So had Ellen and Letty. The house was therefore clear below stairs, and after I had passed the second story I felt myself removed from all human presence as though I were all alone in the house.

This was a relief to me, yet the experience was not a happy one. Ellen had asked permission to leave the light burning in the hall during the mayor’s absence, so the way was plain enough before me; but no parlor floor looks inviting after twelve o’clock at night, and this one held a secret as yet unsolved, which did not add to its comfort or take the mysterious threat from the shadows lurking in corners and under stairways which I had to pass. As I hurried past the place where the clock had once stood, I thought of the nurses’ story and of the many frightened hearts which had throbbed on the stairway I had just left and between the walls I was fast approaching; but I did not turn back. That would have been an acknowledgment of the truth of what I was at this very time exerting my full faculties to disprove.

I knew little about the rear of the house and nothing about the cellar. But when I had found my way into the kitchen and lit the candle I had brought from my room, I had no difficulty in deciding which of the many doors led below. There is something about a cellar door which is unmistakable, but it took me a minute to summon up courage to open it after I had laid my hand on its old-fashioned latch. Why do we so hate darkness and the chill of unknown regions, even when we know they are empty of all that can hurt or really frighten us? I was as safe there as in my bed up-stairs, yet I had to force myself to consider more than once the importance of my errand and the positive result it might have in allaying the disturbance in more than one mind, before I could lift that latch and set my foot on the short flight which led into the yawning blackness beneath me.

But once on my way I took courage. I pictured to myself the collection of useful articles with which the spaces before me were naturally filled, and thought how harmless were the sources of the grotesque shadows which bowed to me from every side and even from the cement floor toward the one spot where the stones of the foundation showed themselves clear of all encumbering objects. As I saw how numerous these articles were, and how small a portion of the wall itself was really visible, I had my first practical fear, and a practical fear soon puts imaginary ones to flight. What if some huge box or case of bottles should have been piled up in front of the marked brick I was seeking? I am strong, but I could not move such an object alone, and this search was a solitary one; I had been forbidden to seek help.

The anxiety this possibility involved nerved me to instant action. I leaped forward to the one clear spot singled out for me by chance and began a hurried scrutiny of the short strip of wall which was all that was revealed to me on the right-hand side. Did it hold the marked brick? My little candle shook with eagerness and it was with difficulty I could see the face of the brick close enough to determine. But fortune favored, and presently my eye fell on one whose surface showed a ruder, scratched cross. It was in the lowest row and well within reach of my hand. If I could move it the box would soon be in my possession—and what might that box not contain!

Looking about, I found the furnace and soon the gas-jet which made attendance upon it possible. This lit, I could set my candle down, and yet see plainly enough to work. I had shears in my pocket. I have had a man’s training in the handling of tools and felt quite confident that I could pry this brick out if it was as easily loosened as Bess had given me to understand. My first thrust at the dusty cement inclosing it encouraged me greatly. It was very friable and so shallow that my scissors’-point picked it at once. In five minutes’ time the brick was clear, so that I easily lifted it out and set it on the floor. The small black hole which was left was large enough to admit my hand. I wasted no time thrusting it in, expecting to feel the box at once and draw it out. But it was farther back than I expected, and while I was feeling about something gave way and fell with a slight, rustling noise down out of my reach. Was it the box? No, for in another instant I had come in contact with its broken edges and had drawn it out; the falling object must have been some extra mortar, and it had gone where? I did not stop to consider then. The object in my hand was too alluring; the size, the shape too suggestive of a package of folded bonds for me to think of anything but the satisfaction of my curiosity and the consequent clearing of a very serious mystery.

Just at this moment, one of intense excitement, I heard, or thought I heard, a stealthy step behind me. Forcing myself to calmness, however, I turned and, holding the candle high convinced myself that I was alone in the cellar.

Carrying the box nearer the light, I pulled off its already loosened string and lifted the cover. In doing this I suffered from no qualms of conscience. My duty seemed very clear to me, and the end, a totally impersonal one, more than justified the means.

A folded paper met my eyes—one—not of the kind I expected; then some letters whose address I caught at a glance. “Elizabeth Brainard”—a discovery which might have stayed my hand at another time, but nothing could stay it now. I opened the paper and looked at it. Alas! it was only her marriage certificate; I had taken all this trouble and all this risk, only to rescue for her the proof of her union with one John Silverthorn Brainard. The same name was on her letters. Why had Bess so strongly insisted on a secret search, and why had she concealed her license in so strange a place?

Greatly sobered, I restored the paper to its place in the box, slipped on the string and prepared to leave the cellar with it. Then I remembered the brick on the floor and the open hole where it had been, and afterward the something which had fallen over within and what this space might mean in a seemingly solid wall.

More excited now even than I had been at any time before, I thrust my hand in again and tried to sound the depth of this unexpected far-reaching hole; but the size of my arm stood in the way of my experiment, and, drawing out my hand, I looked about for a stick and finding one, plunged that in. To my surprise and growing satisfaction it went in its full length—about three feet. There was a cavity on the other side of this wall of very sizable dimensions. Had I struck the suspected passage? I had great hope of it. Nothing else would account for so large a space on the other side of a wall which gave every indication of being one with the foundation. Catching up my stick I made a rude estimate of its location, after which I replaced the brick, put out the gas, and caught up Bess’ box. Trembling, and more frightened now than at my descent at my own footfall and tremulous pursuing shadow, I went up-stairs.

As I passed the corridor leading to the converted vestibule which had so excited my interest in the afternoon, I paused and made a hurried calculation. If the stick had been three feet long, as I judged, and my stride was thirty inches, then the place of that hole in the wall below was directly in a line with where I now stood,—in other words, under the vestibule floor, as I had already, suspected.

How was I to verify this without disturbing Mrs. Packard? That was a question to sleep on. But it took me a long time to get to sleep.

Back to IndexNext