“Move over, Terry, give me a look!” demanded Sim, elbowing her way nearer to the long mirror before which Terry was admiring herself.
“There’s plenty of room and at least two more mirrors within easy walking distance,” Terry replied. “Why we all have to congregate in here, I don’t know.”
“It’s more fun, that’s why,” Arden crisply replied. “And we can talk better. Moselle can hear every word we say if we call to each other from room to room. Don’t forgetshe’sunder suspicion too.”
“As far as I can see, the only person who isn’t is Dorothy Keene, daughter of Rita Keene the distinguished comédienne,” Terry remarked, successfully maneuvering Sim away from the glass again. “We saw her get off the train ourselves. You’re the only innocent one among us, Dot, but you don’t look it in that swanky dress.”
“Do you think we’re dressing up too much? We wouldn’t want to embarrass Granny Howe,” Dorothy considered.
The girls were all in Sim’s big blue-and-white bedroom, laughing and talking as they dressed. It was the afternoon following the “trial by jury.” Sim had lately gone “modern,” and the room showed it. The walls were a cream-white edged in dark blue; light fixtures were star shaped, and the twin beds were covered with a dark-blue satin spread with Sim’s monogram in white-satin letters on the fold. It was all glorious.
Fooling around until the last possible minute, they were now making up for lost time by all hurriedly dressing in Sim’s room; getting ready for the visit to Granny Howe.
After talking it over they had decided that the old lady, though she was spry and active, might better enjoy the little party if they did put on a little style and dressed up. So they were wearing soft dresses and high-heeled shoes and had put on other dainty accessories.
The day was rather dark, a slate-colored sky promising snow before night, but the balmy air contradicted the warning, and Sim, with the top of the roadster down, urged the girls to hurry. A glance at her watch showed three-thirty, and their first call should not keep Granny waiting.
They were ready at last and piled in the car, Sim letting the clutch in so fast that the sudden start snapped their heads back and jerked the car forward as though Sim was just learning to drive. They went off in a gale of laughter but not in a cloud of dust, for the frozen ground of the driveway refused to part with any of its surface.
Sim drove as near as she could to the little white house where Hannah Howe lived. The cottage-like place was behind the more stately Sycamore Hall and to the left of the lane. The lane was a mere path just tunneled with trees.
Four small pillars, more like posts, supported the shingled roof of the low porch, and behind it were two square windows with a door in between.
The girls stood in dignified silence waiting for Granny to answer Arden’s knock, but she didn’t keep them long.
“Come in, my dears!” exclaimed the elderly lady like a grandmother in a fairy tale. “I’m glad to see you all looking so well and happy.”
Granny herself looked well and at least temporarily happy. She wore a long-sleeved, high-necked dress, dark-blue color with little pink flowers dotted over it. At her throat, precisely in the middle, glowed with sullen brightness the soft purple of an antique amethyst brooch. Her thick white hair accentuated the smooth tan of her skin, as she smiled a welcome.
The party trooped inside the little old house, and they were at once struck by the charm and quaintness of the little place.
With admiring “Ohs!” and “Ahs!” the visitors looked eagerly about, and Granny, pleased with their young enthusiasm, explained and pointed out the interesting features.
The fireplace, with a pot in place and hooks for holding others, was especially fascinating.
“Imagine cooking over an open fire!” exclaimed Sim, “and Moselle complains about the oven in our new gas range.”
“Years ago the fireplace served a double purpose,” Granny explained: “that of heat and a stove. And as someone has said, they were truly the heart of the home. Many a lone winter night Patience Howe sat by this one, keeping the fire alive, wondering would she ever see her father and brothers again.”
On a low maple table in front of the old Colonial davenport, Granny was putting out the “best china”: thin cups and saucers with a pink wild-rose pattern. With unfeigned interest, Arden watched her dainty movements. She seemed as much a part of the place as did the pewter plates on the mantel. The little company had settled down to chat with the abruptness of old friends. After the first greetings were over, they all felt they had known this little lady all their lives. But it was Sim who first broached the subject uppermost in the minds of all.
“It was Patience who hid the wounded soldier, wasn’t it?” she asked, nibbling at a tiny bread-and-butter sandwich.
“Her picture still hangs in the Hall, doesn’t it?” Terry inquired, following Sim’s lead.
“What a brave girl she must have been,” remarked Arden, hoping Granny would take the cue and tell them about her.
Handing Dorothy a cup of tea and settling herself in a quaint high-backed rocker, the old lady nodded her head and smiled.
“I can see you are all burning with curiosity,” she laughed. “Of course, I’ll tell you about her, I’m very proud of her, and as you say, my dear, she was indeed very brave.” Granny glanced at the girls sitting around her, sipping their tea and patiently waiting for her story. Then she began:
“In the year when Washington’s troops were retreating from New York, Patience refused to leave her home to seek shelter with relatives at Philadelphia. This was her home: the big house, I mean, of course,” she explained. “This tiny place was for the servants. But Patience decided to stay and help with the work of the farm; so many of the working men had joined the troops. There was plenty of work, and it was bitter cold, too. One day, as the poor, tired army was forced to go still farther back beyond the advancing British troops, a wounded soldier was carried into the house. Nathaniel Greene, his name was, and his comrades begged Patience to take him in and keep him, for he would surely die if made to march in the bitter cold. Patience hid him in her own room, disguised herself as an old servant, and moved out here to live.”
“What a—girl!” breathed Arden, as Granny paused a moment.
“Imagine waiting on a wounded soldier,” followed up Terry.
“And imagine the danger she was in,” concluded Sim.
Granny, gratified that the story of her famous relative should gain so much honor through her own simple telling, finally continued.
“When the British took possession of the house Patience declared the wounded man was a raving lunatic, and so she kept him out of harm’s way. Until spring she hid him successfully, and by that time the soldier and the maid had fallen in love.”
The girls waited while Granny shook her head sorrowfully.
“But he contracted pneumonia and died,” she murmured. “Patience never married but gave herself up to her country’s cause and became a nurse for wounded soldiers. That was her candle holder; she used it to light her way along a secret passage from the big house to this one.”
Granny indicated a pewter candlestick on the mantel between two plates. Their eyes lingered on it lovingly. A moment later Granny went on with her story.
“I have an old letter telling about it, but when the place was remodeled the passage must have been walled up. Dick and Betty have never been able to find any trace of it. Although, I dare say, it will come to light when the house is torn down.” Granny finished her recital and sat looking straight before her, her bright eyes dimmed with tears. She sighed and attempted a little smile.
Arden’s heart skipped a beat, and a lump rose in her throat.
“Oh, it’s monstrous to think that dear old place should come down!” she exclaimed bitterly. “Can’t something be done to save it? Is there no way of buying it in?”
“I’m afraid we couldn’t keep it, even if we could save it,” Granny replied. “We need the money it would bring. But as it is now, we are unable to prove title to it, and it will go and be forgotten,” she sighed pathetically. “I can stay here while I live, they have allowed me that, but Dick and Betty will be left homeless when——”
She did not finish that prophecy, but they all knew what she meant, and instantly they secretly determined to help her some way; how, they did not know.
But in a flash Sim imagined herself handing the long lost deeds to Granny Howe and then becoming a heroine. The plot had magic influence on them all.
It was Dorothy who brought them back to the present. “Was it Nathaniel Greene the workmen thought they saw the other day? But it couldn’t have been Patience on the bed,” she demurred. “Of course, the workmen didn’t know anything about these war stories.”
“There is an old tradition,” Granny resumed, “that Nathaniel appears in his tattered uniform and with his head bandaged whenever the old house, or anyone in it, is in danger.
“Sometimes, so the story goes, and you may believe it or not, as you choose,” Granny smiled whimsically, “the ghost of Patience Howe is seen wandering about the old house. Certainly she would have good reason to come back here now. Not thatIbelieve in such things,” she hurried to declare, rather unreasonably.
The girls politely agreed, but did not want to interrupt the stirring narrative. Patience Howe’s story was simply fascinating.
“As for the figure on the bed, Patience died there when she was an old woman. Her horse fell, breaking his leg, and she was mortally injured. She died in her red cloak there on the old four-poster.” A reverent pause followed that statement. “But we are becoming too sad. All those things are over and done with. Won’t you have some more tea, my dear?” Granny quickly asked, addressing Sim.
“The story holds such strange historic interest,” Sim replied, accepting her second cup of tea. “May we go through the Hall sometime?”
“Whenever you like,” Granny consented. “But I advise you to do it soon. That Callahan will have a new batch of workmen here by the end of the week, and you won’t have the house to yourselves after that. I must say he is very determined. Don’t let those ghost stories frighten you—the house is really very interesting, and the door is always open ... to you,” and the hostess included them all with a bright smile and a graceful wave of her gentle hand.
It was almost dark now, and the girls, realizing this, drew themselves up with a start.
“We want to thank you for a most pleasant afternoon,” said Sim smilingly. “We must be going now; Moselle will be worried to death, and look—it’s beginning to snow!”
The first feather-like flakes were floating down to be lost in the brush below. Arden sprang up and impulsively kissed the old lady they had all come to love. She gave Arden a little hug in return, and asked them all to stop and see her whenever they could, declaring she had had a wonderful afternoon, herself. Then, gathering their things quickly, they left the little white house behind them. As they drove away the merry snowflakes were making little jabs at their happy, willing faces.
“Oh, wasn’t it great!” sighed Arden.
“I feel like a live history of the American Revolution,” declared Sim.
“And I feel like the latest authority on military ghosts. But I hated to have the soldier die before he married Patience,” sighed romantic Terry.
“We might even be able to fix that up if we get friendly enough with the ghosts,” teased Arden, which seemed like a very good idea to all of them.
The air was brisk now, and the countryside had taken on that hushed feeling that comes just before a snowstorm. At the moment the roads seemed quite deserted, and their little roadster hummed along with all its prideful speed and importance.
Suddenly Arden spoke. “Let me off near the library, Sim, will you?” she asked. “I’ll get a cab back. I’m going to see if I can’t find a book with something about Jockey Hollow. I’ve heard so much, I’m greedy for more.”
“We can wait for you, Arden,” Sim answered. “It’s not so very late, and it’s only beginning to snow. You might not get a cab handy.”
“No, I’d rather you didn’t,” Arden objected. “I want to take my time. Besides, you’ve got the top down, and Moselle will be worried. You go along and I’ll come later,” she insisted, pulling her collar up closer around her neck.
Sim finally agreed and turned toward the village, where she dropped Arden at the corner nearest the library, so she wouldn’t have to turn around. Sim was not yet an expert driver and often went blocks out of her way to avoid turning. Arden stood at the corner and waved goodbye as her friends continued on their way. The corner drugstore was brilliantly lighted, and the usual group of men was hanging about the entrance, leaning up against the window, talking and laughing. They were the least desirable element in the town, lazy and shiftless and, somehow, they always gathered together.
Titus Ellery was in this group, Arden noticed, as she hurried along. A thin man, unshaven and carelessly dressed, Arden gave him a glance out of the corner of her eye. His booming voice rang out on the night air, for he made no effort to control it, and Arden could not help hearing him say:
“Swears he don’t know a thing about it. But there’s a chance to pick up some easy money. If we can do it. Thing is to find the stuff. It’s around there some place, I’ll bet. That old Mrs. Howe ain’t as dumb as she looks. You got the job all right, Nick?”
Arden started. Could she stop and learn some more, or would they become suspicious and stop talking? She thought suddenly of a plan and, entering the store, bought some powder she did not need, emerging just in time to hear the man called “Nick” laugh rancorously and say: “That Callahan’s got his job cut out for him. Every darky in Pentville’s scared to death. I didn’t have no trouble gettin’ him to hire me.”
“Good!” exclaimed Ellery. “Then tomorrow——”
But Arden could linger no longer and so continued reluctantly down the street to the library, although she was now anxious to get back and tell the others what she had heard. She reasoned nothing could be done that night, so she would try again to locate the books in which she hoped to find important details.
It was almost closing time when she reached the library, and the place was deserted except for a young girl putting books back on the shelves.
Arden approached her. “Are you Betty Howe?” she asked impulsively.
The girl looked at her coldly. “No, she’s not here this afternoon. May I help you?” She flashed a brief professional library smile.
Arden felt rebuffed and explained that she had come for a book on the history of Jockey Hollow.
“We haven’t very much on the subject. Most of the papers and maps telling about it were destroyed in a fire years ago. There is this book, though,” she said, and going to a shelf took a thin red book from it. “They say Richard Howe, the old one, that is, refused to trust his papers to anyone but himself and they were lost when a fire broke out in Sycamore Hall while he was still living. Betty says the deeds to the old place were lost then also.”
Arden took the book eagerly. It was pitifully small, she thought regretfully, but thanked the librarian and, after having it stamped, left to get one of the rickety village cabs and tell the girls all about it.
It was odd though that Betty Howe was not there, and she had not appeared at tea, either. “Oh, well,” thought Arden, “perhaps she’s gone into New York or some place.” And holding the precious book close to her, she climbed into old Pop Warner’s car and told him to take her to Sim’s house. He was a talkative old man, and he knew Arden and her friends quite well. He seemed to know a lot about them, in fact, and asked her question after question as he drove her to Sim’s. She squirmed with impatience and then sat bolt upright as he asked in his squeaky voice:
“Heard you was chased by a ghost in Sycamore Hall! What would your dad say if he knew you was galavantin’ around there? No place for young ladies, I’ll say! Stay on your own side of the railroad tracks.” Then he lapsed into silence as he turned into the driveway.
“What do you mean, Mr. Warner?” Arden asked quickly. “Who told you we were there?”
“I hear things in this business. People always talk when they’re riding along. There’s bound to be fire where there’s smoke,” he chuckled. “If I was you, I’d let well enough alone. Hannah Howe is a smart woman,” he managed to say as the car stopped with a jerk. “That’ll be fifty cents.” He took the money and started away after a curt, “G’afternoon.”
Arden felt rather suffused with the day’s adventures. There had been Granny’s story; then the overheard remarks from those men at the drugstore, and last but not least, the insinuations of the old cab driver.
At any rate, she had news for the girls, and she hurried up the drive and into the house to give it to them. This historical study was fast becoming a deep-dyed mystery, decided Arden.
Sim, Terry, and Dot were gathered in the big living room quietly talking over their visit with Granny Howe, when Arden burst in on them in great excitement and blurted out her newest and latest story.
The “crime sheet,” as they had come to call the history of the Jockey Hollow ghost story, was hurriedly taken from the locked drawer of their desk, and Arden wrote in the three new suspicious characters: Titus Ellery, Pop Warner, and the mysterious dark man mentioned as Nick.
“We’ll have to go over to the Hall the first thing in the morning: they begin work early,” Arden decided as she finished entering her report. “Something is going to happen, I’m sure, and we don’t want to miss it. Those men at the drugstore seemed ready to pop.”
“Suppose that Callahan person just tells us to go away—what then?” questioned Sim.
“Granny told us we could go through the house, and if he says anything contrary we’ll tell him Mrs. Howe gave us permission. I guess he won’t put up any objections then,” Terry said decidedly.
So the next morning the girls tumbled out of their warm beds and dressed quickly in riding clothes, that sort of outfit being most practical for the day ahead. The dead white snow covered everything, rounding out sharp stones and smoothing corners like a layer of lovely new downy cotton. Apparently it had continued snowing for some time during the night, but now the sun was shining with a dazzling brightness and a deep blue sky promised fair weather for the day.
The girls ate a big breakfast, which pleased Moselle. She was also pleased to make sure that the girls had suddenly become too busy to bother with the house, so the precious task was all her own.
Sim got the little car out and waited impatiently while Terry went back for a woolly scarf, but she nearly exploded when Arden, as soon as Terry returned, discovered she had forgotten her gloves and had to go back for them. Eventually they got going, only to stop when Sim noticed the gasoline gage showed nearly “empty.” She decided she would have to drive to town for gas.
“Oh, Sim!” exclaimed Dot impatiently, “we’ve got enough to go out to the Hall and back. It will only take more time to go to a station.”
“Yes, Sim, we won’t be driving any place else. Don’t go now,” Terry begged.
But Sim was firm, and they headed toward town and stopped at a filling station, the other girls glaring at their little blonde chauffeur while the tank was being filled.
“I believe in being prepared,” Sim lectured, paying the service man. “How do you know where we’ll be before night?”
The words were prophetic, though Sim didn’t realize it, for they were destined to have a queer experience that very day.
When they reached the road that led down to Sycamore Hall, the Hollow now being covered with snow, they saw tire tracks stretching before them. The workmen were there, of course. And they were late!
Parked in the spot they thought of as their own special place was an open truck with the name “Callahan—Contractor” painted on the back. Knowing what that meant, they looked at each other with questioning dismay. Callahan himself must be there and would not be likely to leave at once. Even as they wondered, he came marching out of the Hall, a smile on his broad ruddy face, and nonchalantly came over to their car.
Giving a tug at the brim of his shapeless soft hat he said jovially: “Well, we’re back on the job again, ya’ see. I’ve got a fine bunch of men there now. Not ordinary laborers. These men don’t believe in ghosts,” and taking a big black cigar from a pocket he bit off the end and searched in his pockets for a match.
Sim reached over Terry’s knees, took the detachable cigarette lighter from the dash board, and smilingly handed it to the man. They watched to see what that might do.
The girls could hear the men stamping the snow off their feet in the empty house, now and then a loud crash as an iron bar or tool was carelessly dropped. The voices of the men, in good-natured badinage, floated out on the brisk air; then came shouts of laughter. Peal on peal, deep rumbling laughter, and the lighter sounds mingling together. What could this mean?
Mr. Callahan turned a pleased face to Sim as he handed back the lighter. “There! These men didn’t run. I guess they’re onto the trick.” He started toward the house, then stopped and said: “If you girls want to see the ghost you may as well. Come in with me, I’ll show you what’s been scaring my men.” There was a bragging tone in his hearty voice, and a confident tread in his heavy stride.
The girls needed no urging, quickly getting out of the car and following the triumphant lead of the contractor through the light snow. Once inside, he went straight to the top of the house, walking with a precision that showed his determination. Now he would “tell the world,” his attitude seemed to declare.
Reaching the third floor they found the men still merry. They were in a room similar to that where the suspected ghostly bed was, on the floor below. As the boss, with the girls, came in, it was clear the men were trying to look businesslike.
“What’s the joke?” asked Callahan bruskly. “What’s all the laughing about?”
A young man wearing a windbreaker jacket and awkwardly holding a crowbar spoke first.
“We heard groans coming from the chimney, and Pete opened the chute in the fireplace and threw down a brick. I guess we hit the ghost, the noise stopped so quick,” chuckled the workman.
“Ghost, my eye!” exclaimed another man. “Probably it was a cat or something caught in there. Well, you finished him anyway, Pete,” and they were ready to laugh again.
Arden and the girls drew closer together. “There is that Nick,” whispered Arden to Dot, indicating a man in the group who alone showed no amusement. He was covertly glancing at his companions, and suddenly he left the room.
In an instant he was back, bringing with him another man. Both were seriously excited.
“Any of you guys seen Jim? He was working with me across the hall, but he ain’t here now,” declared the new man.
“He didn’t come here,” answered the man who had spoken before. “What’s the matter? You look worried.”
Callahan stood facing the newcomer, dismay slowly blotting out the pleased expression on his face. Was this more trouble? Was ever a man so followed by bad luck? What was going on in this old house, anyway?
“What’s your trouble?” Callahan was once more the boss contractor.
“I can’t find Jim. He was with me, and we were sizin’ up the room, figurin’ on how she would tear apart. I was at one end and Jim at another, near a closet. I saw him go in. Then I heard a funny noise, sort of groan, and when I turned around—Jim wasn’t there!”
“Nonsense!” snorted Callahan, chewing on the end of his cigar. “He’s probably downstairs.”
“No, sir, I looked! Jim ain’t so well. He’s been sick, and this is the first time he’s been out on a job in quite a while,” the workman said. “He’s a swell feller. I’ve known him a long time. I’m afraid he’s hurt.”
“How could he be hurt? He hasn’t even begun to work. Show me the room you were in.” The contractor spoke disgustedly.
They all started for the room across the hall. The men were in various kinds of working clothes, one or two wearing ordinary business suits. These were the better class, who needed the work. Then there were regular house-wreckers in stout shoes and overalls. As a background there were the girls in their smart riding habits and bright scarfs following Callahan, whose cigar was now reduced to a soggy brown mass.
In the room from which the man Jim Danton had disappeared was a conglomeration of furniture. Old chairs and a rickety table piled in a group in one corner, a huge wicker clothes hamper that had been turned upside down, perhaps in the hope that Jim would fall out.
The girls could not suppress a giggle, it was so silly, and some of the men snickered too. But Jim was nowhere to be seen.
“Here’s where I last saw him standing. Right here; but he wasn’t there when I looked.” The man who had been about to begin work with the missing Jim indicated the far end of the room.
Callahan strode over with Napoleon-like firmness. A door was closed, there; a closet door. With a huge red hand the contractor grasped the knob and wrenched it open. There was an expectant silence, then Callahan took a step forward to see better. The closet was empty!
The group pressed nearer. Three sides of dark wood but nothing more. The contractor thumped the walls vigorously.
“You’re crazy, man!” he said to the puzzled wrecker. “Jim never disappeared from here.”
“Well, he disappeared from some place. He’s not here now,” insisted the friend of Jim.
Callahan was clearly disgusted. Just when everything seemed to be going well at last, something new had to crop up. What silly persons these men were. Like a bunch of sheep. Because a few not too intelligent Negroes claimed they had seen a ghost, these men, who ought to have more sense, were already showing signs of fright because one of their group could not be found. The contractor pulled his battered gray hat down over one eye and produced a new cigar from an apparently endless supply. Then began the slapping of his pockets for matches. He looked vaguely at Sim as though remembering that she had come to his rescue before, but this time she stared back at him uncomprehending.
Callahan went to the head of the stairs and shouted over the banister. “Danton!” he called, his powerful voice booming through the house. “Jim Danton!”
But not even an echo answered him and, giving the cigar a vicious bite, he strode over to the window. “Hey, you, Danton, come here!” he shouted, but the result was the same as before.
“Maybe he got sick and started home,” timidly suggested Sim in a voice that sounded ridiculously small after the Gargantuan tones of Mr. Callahan.
“Oh, no, miss,” answered the worried worker. “He couldn’t go back till the truck came to take him and all of us out the main road. He lives too far. Besides, this job meant a lot to Jim. It’s the first work he’s had in months.”
There was a discontented murmur growing among the men, and Arden could see the man whom Titus Ellery called “Nick” circulating among them and saying something in an insistent low tone. They were talking in a little group near the door of the room while Callahan questioned Jim’s particular friend more closely.
Arden stepped to the open door of the closet and peered inside. Then she stooped down, and when she straightened up again she held up a small grimy object.
She turned and faced the awe-struck company, for what she was displaying was a glove such as workmen wear, of a dull white color with a dark-blue knitted band at the wrist.
“That’s his glove!” exclaimed the man near Mr. Callahan. “I was with him when he bought the pair. Jim said his hands were soft from not working in so long; he needed gloves.”
At this discovery the men who had been talking quietly now showed open revolt. One fellow dropped a crowbar he had been carrying. It fell with a crash and seemed to startle them all into activity.
“Not quitting, are you?” the contractor asked, sneering. “Fine bunch of men, you are!”
“We sure are quitting, Mr. Callahan! We don’t mind ghosts; but when a man disappears in broad daylight, that’s too much.” It was the sinister Nick who spoke. Arden thought he seemed pleased at his announcement.
The men near by shook their heads in agreement, and some put on their coats as they prepared to leave.
The weary Callahan sank helplessly down on a pile of boards and pushed his hat back on his head. This, surely, was the last straw! The men straggled out of the old house. The girls followed them. In a little while the contractor also came out.
There appeared to be a spirit of uncertainty among the workmen. They were not like the Negroes and Italians who had previously “seen ghosts.” These new workmen were not superstitious. But even they, white-collar-class, as they were called, seemed suddenly given to some strange and nerve-racking fear. They wanted to hurry away from the old Hall where such a strange thing had seemingly just happened, but felt they owed a certain allegiance to their missing fellow worker if not to the burly and baffled boss, Callahan.
“I say, fellows,” one of the men began, “I wonder if we shouldn’t do something about Jim before we leave.”
“What can we do?” faltered the man who had dropped the heavy bar.
It was here that Arden Blake saw her opportunity. Stepping forward with a manner and air that her girl friends warmly complimented her about, she called:
“Are you going to leave without trying to find that missing man?”
“But how can we find him?” a voice from the huddled group asked. “He just disappeared. We can’t find him. There’s nowhere even to look.”
“But have you searched?” Arden demanded.
They seemed confused at that straightforward question.
“No,” one finally murmured.
“Then come back to the house with me!” insisted Arden. “We girls will go with them, Mr. Callahan,” she promised. “We’ll have another good look all around. There is nothing in that house to harm anyone. And we don’t believe in ghosts, so the man must be found.”
“If it comes to a question of ghosts, miss,” said a tall, lanky man, “I don’t believe in ’em myself. But when a man is snatched away, you might say, right from under your nose, why, that’s something different.”
“Sure is,” his friends muttered.
“Could it not very well be,” asked Sim, “that this Jim Danton might have gone to some other part of the house without telling any of you, and have been hurt there?—his hammer may have slipped and hit him on the head, knocking him unconscious. That could have happened.”
“And he may be up in one of the old rooms now, injured, suffering,” added Terry.
“This certainly is getting interesting, to say the least,” spoke Dorothy. “I must give you girls credit for getting up some good theatrical effects in this mystery. That’s quite a mob scene,” and she pointed a rather languid finger at the group of workers.
“Don’t make fun, Dot,” said Terry in a low voice. “This may be serious.” Dot was inclined to be theatrical at the wrong time.
“It is serious,” declared Sim.
Arden still held the center of the stage. She felt the need of prompt, effective action.
“Well, let’s go make another search,” she proposed. “And don’t waste time.”
“We’ll do that with you,” said a young fellow. “But Jim didn’t go to any isolated room and hit himself on the head with his hammer. In the first place, he didn’t have any hammer. He was using a crowbar.”
“That’s right,” came in a murmur, a proper mob-scene murmur, Dorothy thought, though she did not dare mention it.
“And in the second place,” went on the same young fellow, “he was in that closet. I saw him go in.”
“And nobody saw him come out, and there isn’t even a rat-hole in that closet yet,” declared another. “We haven’t started ripping there.”
It looked as though the fear and mystery would start all over again. But Arden was not going to give up.
“Let’s go have a look,” she proposed.
“That’s the idea!” boomed Mr. Callahan. He was getting hopeful once more. “The girls’ll put you fellows to shame! Let’s all go in.”
The Hall was quickly invaded with more persons than it had housed in many a long day. On the two lower floors no work of demolishing the place was visible. The men had first started tearing out the top or fourth floor. It was from the third floor that Jim Danton had disappeared.
“I wonder how much longer Mrs. Howe is going to leave some of her possessions in here?” said Sim as they reëntered the big lower entrance.
“She’ll have to be getting it all out pretty soon,” threatened the contractor, “or I’ll have to set it out for her. I don’t want to damage anything of hers and have her sue me, for she’s a determined woman, though, in ways, as nice as my own mother. But she sort of feels that she is being cheated. It’s none of my doing. She claims this place, and she told me she was going to leave stuff in here to enforce her claim. But it’ll have to be got out of here pretty quick now. The men’ll soon be down to the second floor. There’s hardly any of Mrs. Howe’s stuff on the third floor now. She took it away before I began my work this week.” He was saying this as they tramped into the echoing old hall.
The party, scattering, though the girls kept together, looked all over the first floor. There was no sign of any missing man, though it took some little time to establish this fact, for there were many nooks, corners, passages, closets, and rooms in the lower part of the rambling old place.
The second floor, where the “ghosts” had been said to appear, was likewise devoid of any missing person, man or otherwise. They looked, one after another, calling back and forth like scouts in the woods.
“Well, he isn’t here,” Mr. Callahan finally announced.
“No,” Arden was forced to agree, with a sense of disappointment. She had really hoped to find the man and so dispel the unreasoning fears about the place as well as to save Jim Danton.
“Now, we’ll try once more to see how it could happen that Jim could possibly have vanished out of a closet that you say hasn’t even a rat-hole,” spoke the contractor, as they all went up to the third floor like some awkward brigade. Some of the rooms there were open to the weather, their outer walls having been torn away in uneven patches.
“There’s where he went in but where he didn’t come out!” said the man who claimed to have heard the weird ghostly howling through the ash-chute.
One by one the men, the girls, and the contractor looked and stepped inside the closet. As before, it seemed as solid as any such place always seems. There were rows of old hand-forged iron hooks on the two side walls and the back, but it appeared solid; unbroken in walls and, as had been said, there wasn’t even a rat-hole for escape.
“A collector would give a good deal for those hooks,” said Dot. “They’re real antiques.”
“We’re looking for a man, not antiques,” said Sim, under her breath.
Mr. Callahan and some of the men stamped on the floor and kicked at the baseboards. Everything was solid. The door was the only visible means of egress.
“And Jim didn’t come out of the door!” declared several of his companions, at which all of them shook their heads in positive agreement.
“Well, it sure is queer,” the contractor had to admit when they had finished inspecting the third floor, including a big room next to the one containing the closet that seemed to be the starting point of the mystery. This room had an immense fireplace, and one of the men even stooped within it and peered up the chimney.
“He isn’t up there,” he announced, scraping some soot and dirt down the uncovered ash-chute with his foot. “Jim isn’t there.”
This was terrifying. Workmen might be familiar with accidents, but the girls could hardly stand such suspense.
The entire third floor, at least the undemolished rooms, was thoroughly searched, with no result. The fourth floor and the roof over it were so nearly destroyed that it required but the briefest of inspections to make sure no missing man was there.
Baffled, the party went down to the lower hall, Mr. Callahan becoming more serious and even showing alarm now that his workman could not be traced or located.
“What do you think now, Arden?” asked Terry in a low voice.
“I don’t know what to think, but he must be some place.”
“There’s no use in our staying here any longer, is there?” asked Dorothy.
“I can’t see what good we can do,” agreed Sim.
The contractor was talking to his men off a little to one side. He was arguing against their desire to quit.
“If you go,” he threatened, “you’ll lose the bonus I promised to everybody who’d work a week straight here and not be scared away by silly stories. Besides, we’ve got to keep on looking for Jim.”
“A man vanishing isn’t a silly story,” snarled one man.
Sim, Terry, and Dorothy were interested in the efforts of the contractor and realized that he was trying desperately to keep his force together. It was a sort of last stand with him, since so many of the more ignorant workers had left previously. Arden, hardly knowing why, wandered out and around to the rear of the old Hall. She was tired of the confusion but did not want to give up.
“I wonder if I could think this out?” she reasoned. “There must be some answer.”
In a sort of mental fog, Arden walked on a little farther into the field. She found herself in a tangle of weeds where once had been beds of flowers. There was one of the entrances to the great cellar under the old mansion, just under a little back porch.
Arden peered down the crumbling stone steps and looked past the sagging, rotting, open door into the blackness. A damp, musty smell floated up to her; perhaps the remains of the aroma that must have clung to the cellar since its days of full and plenty.
As Arden stood there, she was surprised to see a little flickering light in the darkness of the cellar. Suddenly the light, which was bobbing about like a will-o’-the-wisp, came to a stop.
“Somebody’s down there!” gasped Arden. “Oh——”
A moment later she heard a scream. It was the high-pitched and frightened voice of a girl.
Then, out of the black cellar, with horror showing on her face, came running—Betty Howe!