The Hidden Staircase Read online

  “Oh!” Nancy said, gazing ruefully at her wrists which now showed several bloody digs from the owl’s beak. “I’m glad that’s over.”

  “And I am too,” said Helen. “Let’s lock Miss Flora’s door from the outside, so that ghost can’t bring in any owls to the rest of us.”

  Suddenly Helen grabbed Nancy’s arm. “I just thought of something,” she said. “There’s supposed to be a police guard outside. Yet the ghost got in here without being seen.”

  “Either that, or there’s a secret entrance to this mansion which runs underground, probably to one of the outbuildings on the property.”

  Nancy now told about the furtive figure she had seen dart from behind a tree. “I must find out right away if he was the ghost or the guard. I’ll do a little snooping around. It’s possible the guard didn’t show up.” Nancy smiled. “But if he did, and he’s any good, he’ll find me!”

  “All right,” said Helen. “But, Nancy, do be careful. You’re really taking awful chances to solve the mystery of Twin Elms.”

  Nancy laughed softly as she walked back to the girls’ bedroom. She dressed quickly, then went downstairs, put the back-door key in her pocket, and let herself out of the house. Stealthily she went down the steps and glided to a spot back of some bushes.

  Seeing no one around, she came from behind them and ran across the lawn to a large maple tree. She stood among the shadows for several moments, then darted out toward a building which in Colonial times had been used as the kitchen.

  Halfway there, she heard a sound behind her and turned. A man stood in the shadows not ten feet away. Quick as a wink one hand flew to a holster on his hip.

  “Halt!” he commanded.

  CHAPTER VIII

  A Startling Plunge

  NANCY halted as directed and stood facing the man. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “I’m a police guard, miss,” the man replied. “Just call me Patrick. And who are you?”

  Quickly Nancy explained and then asked to see his identification. He opened his coat, pulled out a leather case, and showed her his shield proving that he was a plain-clothes man. His name was Tom Patrick.

  “Have you seen anyone prowling around the grounds?” Nancy asked him.

  “Not a soul, miss. This place has been quieter than a cemetery tonight.”

  When the young sleuth told him about the furtive figure she had seen from the window, the detective laughed. “I believe you saw me,” he said. “I guess I’m not so good at hiding as I thought I was.”

  Nancy laughed lightly. “Anyway, you soon nabbed me,” she told him.

  The two chatted for several minutes. Tom Patrick told Nancy that people in Cliffwood regarded Mrs. Turnbull as being a little queer. They said that if she thought her house was haunted, it was all in line with the stories of the odd people who had lived there from time to time during the past hundred years or so.

  “Would this rumor make the property difficult to sell?” Nancy questioned the detective.

  “It certainly would.”

  Nancy said she thought the whole thing was a shame. “Mrs. Turnbull is one of the loveliest women I’ve ever met and there’s not a thing the matter with her, except that once in a while she is forgetful.”

  “You don’t think that some of these happenings we’ve heard about are just pure imagination?” Tom Patrick asked.

  “No, I don’t.”

  Nancy now told him about the owl in Miss Flora’s bedroom. “The door was locked, every screen was fastened, and the damper in the chimney closed. You tell me how the owl got in there.”

  Tom Patrick’s eyes opened wide. “You say this happened only a little while ago?” he queried. When Nancy nodded, he added, “Of course I can’t be everywhere on these grounds at once, but I’ve been round and round the building. I’ve never stopped walking since I arrived. I don’t see how anyone could have gotten inside that mansion without my seeing him.”

  “I’ll tell you my theory,” said Nancy. “I believe there’s a secret underground entrance from some other place on the grounds. It may be in one of these outbuildings. Anyway, tomorrow morning I’m going on a search for it.”

  “Well, I wish you luck,” Tom Patrick said. “And if anything happens during the night, I’ll let you know.”

  Nancy pointed to a window on the second floor. “That’s my room,” she said. “If you don’t have a chance to use the door knocker, just throw a stone up against the screen to alert me. I’ll wake up instantly, I know.”

  The guard promised to do this and Nancy went back into the mansion. She climbed the stairs and for a second time that night undressed. Helen had already gone back to sleep, so Nancy crawled into the big double bed noiselessly.

  The two girls awoke the next morning about the same time and immediately Helen asked for full details of what Nancy had learned outdoors the night before. After hearing how her friend had been stopped by the guard, she shivered.

  “You might have been in real danger, Nancy, not knowing who he was. You must be more careful. Suppose that man had been the ghost?”

  Nancy laughed but made no reply. The girls went downstairs and started to prepare breakfast. In a few minutes Aunt Rosemary and her mother joined them.

  “Did you find out anything more last night?” Mrs. Hayes asked Nancy.

  “Only that a police guard named Tom Patrick is on duty,” Nancy answered.

  As soon as breakfast was over, the young sleuth announced that she was about to investigate all the outbuildings on the estate.

  “I’m going to search for an underground passage leading to the mansion. It’s just possible that we hear no hollow sounds when we tap the walls, because of double doors or walls where the entrance is.”

  Aunt Rosemary looked at Nancy intently. “You are a real detective, Nancy. I see now why Helen wanted us to ask you to find our ghost.”

  Nancy’s eyes twinkled. “I may have some instinct for sleuthing,” she said, “but unless I can solve this mystery, it won’t do any of us much good.”

  Turning to Helen, she suggested that they put on the old clothes they had brought with them.

  Attired in sport shirts and jeans, the girls left the house. Nancy led the way first to the old ice-house. She rolled back the creaking, sliding door and gazed within. The tall, narrow building was about ten feet square. On one side were a series of sliding doors, one above the other.

  “I’ve heard Miss Flora say,” Helen spoke up, “that in days gone by huge blocks of ice were cut from the river when it was frozen over and dragged here on a sledge. The blocks were stored here and taken off from the top down through these various sliding doors.”

  “That story rather rules out the possibility of any underground passage leading from this building,” said Nancy. “I presume there was ice in here most of the year.”

  The floor was covered with dank sawdust, and although Nancy was sure she would find nothing of interest beneath it, still she decided to take a look. Seeing an old, rusted shovel in one corner, she picked it up and began to dig. There was only dirt beneath the sawdust.

  “Well, that clue fizzled out,” Helen remarked, as she and Nancy started for the next building.

  This had once been used as a smokehouse. It, too, had an earthen floor. In one corner was a small fireplace, where smoldering fires of hickory wood had once burned. The smoke had curled up a narrow chimney to the second floor, which was windowless.

  “Rows and rows of huge chunks of pork hung up there on hooks to be smoked,” Helen explained, “and days later turned into luscious hams and bacon.”

  There was no indication of a secret opening and Nancy went outside the small, two-story, peak-roofed structure and walked around. Up one side of the brick building and leading to a door above were the remnants of a ladder. Now only the sidepieces which had held the rungs remained.

  “Give me a boost, will you, Helen?” Nancy requested. “I want to take a look inside.”

  Helen squatted on the ground and Na
ncy climbed to her shoulders. Then Helen, bracing her hands against the wall, straightened up. Nancy opened the half-rotted wooden door.

  “No ghost here!” she announced.

  Nancy jumped to the ground and started for the servants’ quarters. But a thorough inspection of this brick-and-wood structure failed to reveal a due to a secret passageway.

  There was only one outbuilding left to investigate, which Helen said was the old carriage house. This was built of brick and was fairly large. No carriages stood on its wooden floor, but around the walls hung old harnesses and reins. Nancy paused a moment to examine one of the bridles. It was set with two hand-painted medallions of women’s portraits.

  Suddenly her reflection was interrupted by a scream. Turning, she was just in time to see Helen plunge through a hole in the floor. In a flash Nancy was across the carriage house and looking down into a gaping hole where the rotted floor had given way.

  “Helen!” she cried out in alarm.

  “I’m all right,” came a voice from below. “Nice and soft down here. Please throw me your flash.”

  Nancy removed the flashlight from the pocket of her jeans and tossed it down.

  “I thought maybe I’d discovered something,” Helen said. “But this is just a plain old hole. Give me a hand, will you, so I can climb up?”

  Nancy lay flat on the floor and with one arm grabbed a supporting beam that stood in the center of the carriage house. Reaching down with the other arm, she assisted Helen in her ascent.

  “We’d better watch our step around here,” Nancy said as her friend once more stood beside her.

  “You’re so right,” Helen agreed, brushing dirt off her jeans. Helen’s plunge had given Nancy an idea that there might be other openings in the floor and that one of them could be an entrance to a subterranean passage. But though she flashed her light over every inch of the carriage-house floor, she could discover nothing suspicious.

  “Let’s quit!” Helen suggested. “I’m a mess, and besides, I’m hungry.”

  “All right,” Nancy agreed. “Are you game to search the cellar this afternoon?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  After lunch they started to investigate the store-rooms in the cellar. There was a cool stone room where barrels of apples had once been kept. There was another, formerly filled with bags of whole-wheat flour, barley, buckwheat, and oatmeal.

  “And everything was grown on the estate,” said Helen.

  “Oh, it must have been perfectly wonderful,” Nancy said. “I wish we could go back in time and see how life was in those days!”

  “Maybe if we could, we’d know how to find that ghost,” Helen remarked. Nancy thought so too.

  As the girls went from room to room in the cellar, Nancy beamed her flashlight over every inch of wall and floor. At times, the young sleuth’s pulse would quicken when she thought she had discovered a trap door or secret opening. But each time she had to admit failure—there was no evidence of either one in the cellar.

  “This has been a discouraging day,” Nancy remarked, sighing. “But I’m not giving up.”

  Helen felt sorry for her friend. To cheer Nancy, she said with a laugh, “Storeroom after storeroom but no room to store a ghost!”

  Nancy had to laugh, and together the two girls ascended the stairway to the kitchen. After changing their clothes, they helped Aunt Rosemary prepare the evening dinner. When the group had eaten and later gathered in the parlor, Nancy reminded the others that she expected her father to arrive the next day.

  “Dad didn’t want me to bother meeting him, but I just can’t wait to see him. I think I’ll meet all the trains from Chicago that stop here.”

  “I hope your father will stay with us for two or three days,” Miss Flora spoke up. “Surely he’ll have some ideas about our ghost.”

  “And good ones, too,” Nancy said. “If he’s on the early train, he’ll have breakfast with us. I’ll meet it at eight o’clock.”

  But later that evening Nancy’s plans were suddenly changed. Hannah Gruen telephoned her to say that a man at the telegraph office had called the house a short time before to read a message from Mr. Drew. He had been unavoidably detained and would not arrive Wednesday.

  “In the telegram your father said that he will let us know when he will arrive,” the housekeeper added.

  “I’m disappointed,” Nancy remarked, “but I hope this delay means that Dad is. on the trail of Willie Wharton!”

  “Speaking of Willie Wharton,” said Hannah, “I heard something about him today.”

  “What was that?” Nancy asked.

  “That he was seen down by the river right here in River Heights a couple of days ago!”

  CHAPTER IX

  A Worrisome Delay

  “You say Willie Wharton was seen in River Heights down by the river?” Nancy asked unbelievingly.

  “Yes,” Hannah replied. “I learned it from our postman, Mr. Ritter, who is one of the people that sold property to the railroad. As you know, Nancy, Mr. Ritter is very honest and reliable. Well, he said he’d heard that some of the property owners were trying to horn in on this deal of Willie Wharton’s for getting more money. But Mr. Ritter wouldn’t have a thing to do with it—calls it a holdup.”

  “Did Mr. Ritter himself see Willie Wharton?” Nancy asked eagerly.

  “No,” the housekeeper replied. “One of the other property owners told him Willie was around.”

  “That man could be mistaken,” Nancy suggested.

  “Of course he might,” Hannah agreed. “And I’m inclined to think he is. If your father is staying over in Chicago, it must be because of Willie Wharton.”

  Nancy did not tell Hannah what was racing through her mind. She said good night cheerfully, but actually she was very much worried.

  “Maybe Willie Wharton was seen down by the river,” she mused. “And maybe Dad was ‘unavoidably detained’ by an enemy of his in connection with the railroad bridge project. One of the dissatisfied property owners might have followed him to Chicago.”

  Or, she reflected further, it was not inconceivable that Mr. Drew had found Willie Wharton, only to have Willie hold the lawyer a prisoner.

  As Nancy sat lost in anxious thought, Helen came into the hall. “Something the matter?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Nancy replied, “but I have a feeling there is. Dad telegraphed to say that he wouldn’t be here tomorrow. Instead of wiring, he always phones me or Hannah or his office when he is away and it seems strange that he didn’t do so this time.”

  “You told me a few days ago that your father had been threatened,” said Helen. “Are you afraid it has something to do with that?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” Helen offered.

  “Thank you, Helen, but I think not. There isn’t anything I can do either. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens. Maybe I’ll hear from Dad again.”

  Nancy looked so downcast that Helen searched her mind to find something which would cheer her friend. Suddenly Helen had an idea and went to speak to Miss Flora and Aunt Rosemary about it.

  “I think it’s a wonderful plan if Nancy will do it,” Aunt Rosemary said.

  Helen called Nancy from the hall and proposed that they all go to the attic to look in the big trunk containing the old costumes.

  “We might even put them on,” Miss Flora proposed, smiling girlishly.

  “And you girls could dance the minuet,” said Aunt Rosemary enthusiastically. “Mother plays the old spinet very well. Maybe she would play a minuet for you.”

  “I love your idea,” said Nancy. She knew that the three were trying to boost her spirits and she appreciated it. Besides, what they had proposed sounded like fun.

  All of them trooped up the creaky attic stairs. In their haste, none of the group had remembered to bring flashlights.

  “I’ll go downstairs and get a couple,” Nancy offered.

  “Never mind,” Aunt Rosemary spoke up. “There a
re some candles and holders right here. We keep them for emergencies.”

  She lighted two white candles which stood in old-fashioned, saucer-type brass holders and led the way to the costume trunk.

  As Helen lifted the heavy lid, Nancy exclaimed in delight, “How beautiful the clothes are!”

  She could see silks, satins, and laces at one side. At the other was a folded-up rose velvet robe. She and Helen lifted out the garments and held them up.

  “They’re really lovelier than our formal dance clothes today,” Helen remarked. “Especially the men’s!”

  Miss Flora smiled. “And a lot more flattering!”

  The entire trunk was unpacked, before the group selected what they would wear.

  “This pale-green silk gown with the panniers would look lovely on you, Nancy,” Miss Flora said. “And I’m sure it’s just the right size, too.”

  Nancy surveyed the tiny waist of the ball gown. “I’ll try it on,” she said. Then laughingly she added, “But I’ll probably have to hold my breath to close it in the middle. My, but the women in olden times certainly had slim waistlines!”

  Helen was holding up a man’s purple velvet suit. It had knee breeches and the waistcoat had a lace-ruffled front. There were a tricorn hat, long white stockings, and buckled slippers to complete the costume.

  “I think I’ll wear this and be your partner, Nancy,” Helen said.

  Taking off her pumps, she slid her feet into the buckled slippers. The others laughed aloud. A man with a foot twice the size of Helen’s had once worn the slippers!

  “Never mind. I’ll stuff the empty space with paper,” Helen announced gaily.

  Miss Flora and Aunt Rosemary selected gowns for themselves, then opened a good-sized box at the bottom of the trunk. It contained various kinds of wigs worn in Colonial times. All were pure white and fluffy.

  Carrying the costumes and wigs, the group descended to their bedrooms, where they changed into the fancy clothes, then went to the first floor. Miss Flora led the way into the room across the hall from the parlor. She said it once had been the drawing room. Later it had become a library, but the old spinet still stood in a corner.