The Hidden Window Mystery Read online

  By suppertime the girls had thoroughly memorized the layout of the house and the grounds.

  “I could almost find my way around in the dark,” Nancy said, but Sheila assured her that this would not be necessary. There were electric lights everywhere except the attic.

  When the visitors said good night at ten o’clock and went upstairs, Annette followed them into their room and sat down to chat. She asked about River Heights and the girls’ friends. Nancy described their home town briefly, and Bess spoke enthusiastically of Ned, Burt, and Dave. Then Nancy mentioned the young man she had seen on the Pattersons’ porch that morning.

  “Is he someone you date?” she asked Annette.

  The girl looked blank for a moment. Then she said, “Oh, you mean Luke Seeny.”

  Bess giggled. “Is he a real cowboy?”

  “Yes, he is—from Oklahoma. I met him at a dance. Luke’s been trying to date me for over a week, but I don’t care for him. All he does is brag about his wealthy family back home.”

  “Where does he stay here?” Nancy inquired.

  “At a hotel in Charlottesville.”

  This information surprised Nancy and her friends, who had expected to hear that Luke lived with Mr. Honsho at Cumberland Manor.

  “What is Luke doing in Charlottesville?” George asked.

  “Oh, nothing special, I guess,” Annette answered. “Just sightseeing.”

  The other girls exchanged glances. Luke’s story about doing nothing in particular did not ring true, but they did not mention this to Annette. Presently she rose, said good night, and wished them pleasant dreams.

  “I wish so, too,” said Bess, after Annette had closed the door. “Ivy Hall gives me a funny feeling. It’s hard to describe, but even if I hadn’t heard that the place is haunted, I’d have thought so myself.”

  “Now, Bess,” Nancy said with a grin, “you don’t mean that!”

  George gave her cousin a look of reproach. “You’ll sleep sounder than any of us,” she prophesied, “and in the morning you’ll take back those words.”

  Bess and George climbed into the canopied bed, since Nancy insisted that she would sleep on the cot. With the lights out, Ivy Hall seemed extremely dark and quiet. There was not a sound in the house, and outside only the chirping of crickets could be heard. Soon all three girls were sound asleep.

  About midnight Nancy was awakened by sounds of someone moving around in the attic. Listening intently, she could distinctly hear boards creaking overhead.

  Bess and George awoke too. There was no doubt that someone was walking in the attic.

  “The ghost!” Bess shrieked.

  CHAPTER XII

  A Weird Disappearance

  “OH, it’s true!” Bess cried out. “There are ghosts in this house.” She dived under the covers and lay motionless.

  George turned on the night-table lamp and said, “Shame on you, Bess. We came here to help Nancy solve the mystery. Get up! Let’s go!”

  “You—you tell me about it later,” Bess said unhappily.

  Nancy was already up and putting on her robe and slippers. George donned her own, then put Bess’s slippers on her.

  As Nancy turned the doorknob she said quietly, “Never mind, George. The two of us can go.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to be left alone!” Bess cried out. “Wait for me!” She quickly put on her robe and followed Nancy and her cousin into the hall.

  Annette, in pajamas, was standing outside her own bedroom, a look of fright on her face. “You heard it, too?” she whispered.

  In a low voice Nancy said, “We’re going up to the attic. Want to come?”

  “Oh, you’d better not! Something might happen to you,” Annette warned. “I wouldn’t dare go, anyway. I promised Mother I never would.”

  Nancy quietly opened the door to the attic stairway. She looked on the wall for a light switch, then remembered there was none.

  “You’ll have to use a candle,” Annette said.

  On a small table in the hallway stood a glass candleholder with a short white candle in it. Annette picked up a packet of matches beside it and with trembling fingers lighted the candle. Nancy, meanwhile, chided herself for leaving her flashlight in the car.

  “Here you are,” Annette said, handing the candle to Nancy, who went at once to the stairway.

  The creaking sounds above had not been repeated. Bess, last in line, said in a shaky voice, “The ghost must be hiding!”

  The others did not comment. Reaching the top step they looked around cautiously. Several old curved-top trunks stood about, discarded draperies hung on lines, and large paintings in ornate gold frames were propped against the eaves.

  Nancy set the candle down on a table in the middle of the room and the three girls began looking behind various objects to see if anyone were hiding. They found no one. Next, Nancy started to open trunks to determine if the “ghost” were inside. As she lifted back the lid of the third one, Bess gasped and Nancy and George stepped back in horror.

  A little girl, her eyes closed, lay in the trunk!

  For a moment the three stared, horrified. Then suddenly they smiled. The figure was that of a very large lifelike doll! The rest of the trunks were examined but revealed no one hiding inside.

  As Nancy and George stood gazing about the attic, wondering if there were any other entrance, Bess became fascinated by a large painting at one end of the room. The picture portrayed a dashing cavalier, his waxed mustache perfectly groomed. The man’s turned-up hat was worn at a rakish angle, with a feather curled smartly over his shoulder.

  The cavalier’s eyes seemed to stare at Bess as she walked about. Drawn to it like a magnet, she went to the far side of the attic to examine the gallant gentleman’s face. It looked so real that it seemed almost to be alive.

  Nancy and George, meanwhile, had been studying the wall on the opposite side of the attic. It was higher than any of the other three unfinished walls and was paneled. The two girls walked toward it to see if there might be a concealed entrance to another room.

  Hearing a slight gasp, Bess turned around. To her astonishment, neither of the other girls was in sight.

  “Nancy! George! Where are you?” she called.

  Bess’s heart began to pound. Her friends must have gone downstairs without her!

  “I’m not going to stay up here alone,” she told herself, and headed for the stairway.

  As Bess picked up the candle, she stopped short in panic. A few feet ahead of her stood a swaying form in white. The ghost!

  Bess stared at it, too terrified to utter a sound. Suddenly the figure took a step toward her. With a great leap Bess passed it, dashed toward the stairway, and raced down the steps pell-mell, making a terrific clatter.

  Annette, hearing her, hurried to the foot of the stairs. One look at Bess’s terrified expression convinced her that the girl must have seen something frightening in the attic.

  “What was it?” she cried out, taking the candle from Bess’s trembling hand.

  “A—a—gh-ghost!” Bess wailed and slumped to the floor. Her legs would no longer hold her.

  “Then it’s true! The house is haunted!” Annette cried out.

  Bess nodded and in a frantic whisper asked, “Where are Nancy and George?”

  “What do you mean?” Annette asked. “Weren’t they with you?”

  Bess stared in stupefaction. “You—you mean they didn’t come d-down here?”

  “No.”

  Bess gave a cry of alarm. “Then they’re gone!” she moaned. “The ghost got them!”

  The commotion had awakened Sheila Patterson. Now she hurried into the hall in a frilly nightgown. On hearing what had happened, she paced back and forth, waving her arms dramatically and crying out, “Oh, what will we do? What will we do?”

  “We could call the police,” said Annette.

  Bess, though frightened, realized that if Nancy and George were in trouble, she must help them at once. They could not wait for the police!
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  Bess’s courage returned. She stood up and said with determination, “Come on, Annette! We’ll have to go back to the attic and rescue Nancy and George!”

  Sheila grabbed her daughter’s arm. “No, you mustn’t go! I won’t let you!”

  “Mother, we have to do something!” Annette urged. “Nancy and George were willing to come here and risk their lives to help us. It’s our responsibility if something has happened to them!”

  “Oh, I know—I know!” moaned Sheila.

  A thought came to Bess. “You know, my cousin sometimes plays tricks on me,” she spoke up. “Maybe George found a sheet in the attic and played ghost to scare me!”

  Somewhat reassured, Sheila finally agreed to allow her daughter to go up to the attic. As Bess started up the steps, the actress’s conscience began to bother her.

  “I’m going along,” she said.

  Bess reached the top and held the candle high. As she paused to look around, a current of air suddenly blew out her light.

  Standing almost paralyzed in total darkness, she heard a door somewhere in the old house squeak eerily, then close with a terrific bang!

  Ten minutes earlier, Nancy and George had been walking across the attic toward the panel wall. Without warning, the floor had opened beneath their feet!

  The girls found themselves shooting down a steep wooden slide into pitch blackness. A trap door above them closed quietly. They landed abruptly on a hard surface at the bottom of the chute.

  “Oh, my head!” George groaned. “Nancy, are you all right?”

  “I guess so. I banged my shoulder a little.”

  The two friends untangled themselves and slowly stood up. Both groped around and could feel with the tips of their fingers a dank ceiling a few inches above their heads.

  “Where do you suppose we are?” George asked.

  “In the cellar, probably.” Nancy smiled. “That was a fast ride!”

  George sighed. “Where do we go now?”

  Nancy ran her fingers over the slippery surface of the slide. “We never could crawl up that long chute,” Nancy replied. “We’ll have to try getting out of here some other way.”

  The girls stood still a few minutes, waiting to see if Bess would also shoot down the slide. They braced themselves to catch her. Nancy called up the opening, telling Bess what had happened.

  “Turn on the light in the cellar and open the door, will you?” she shouted.

  There was no answer. “I suppose,” said George, “that when Bess missed us, she got out of the attic in a hurry.”

  “No doubt. George, what I can’t understand is why the trap door opened all of a sudden. I’m sure we walked over it several times before.”

  George whispered in Nancy’s ear, “There’s only one answer. That ghost we were trying to find must have opened it.”

  “Which means,” Nancy replied in a low tone, “that he may still be at the top of this slide in a niche. Well, George, we’ll have to rescue ourselves. Let’s start.”

  Nancy ran her hands along the ceiling, floor, and side walls. “I think we must be in some kind of a tunnel. Maybe it was an old one used by the slaves years ago and led from their quarters to the main house.”

  “Well, the sooner we get to the end of it, the happier I’ll be,” George replied. “Let’s go!”

  The girls got down on their hands and knees and began to inch their way along the floor, side by side. They felt ahead cautiously before moving forward.

  After progressing some twenty-five feet, George said, “This sure is slow work.” Her knees began to burn and she was sure most of the skin had been scraped off them.

  Fifty feet beyond, the two came to a heavy door and stood up to examine it. The door had a huge, old-fashioned iron latch and slide bolt, both of which were coated with rust. Though the girls pushed with all their strength to move them, Nancy and George were not able to budge the bolt even a fraction of an inch.

  “Dead end!” George remarked woefully.

  “I’m afraid so,” Nancy answered. “We’ll have to go back where we started from and try the other direction.”

  This time the girls felt it was safe to walk upright. With Nancy on the right and George on the left, they moved fairly rapidly, but each kept one hand on the wall nearest her. By the time they reached the spot where Nancy thought they would find the slide, George was considerably in the lead.

  “Wait!” Nancy called. She was going to say that from this point on they should crawl when George cried out from the pitch blackness, “Help!”

  “What’s the matter?” Nancy asked quickly.

  There was no response and suddenly Nancy could hear the splash of water. George must have fallen into a well or pit!

  CHAPTER XII

  The Slave Tunnel

  NANCY dropped to her knees and crawled forward rapidly. In a moment she reached what seemed to be a pool.

  “George, where are you? Answer me!” she cried, fear gripping her.

  Then, to her intense relief, George replied, “I’m all right but I went down under water. Keep talking, so I can swim toward your voice.”

  Nancy encouraged George, who said the water was icy cold. A few seconds later the two girls touched hands and Nancy pulled her friend out of the underground water hole.

  “Thank goodness you’re all right!” Nancy exclaimed. “I wonder how wide the pit is.” She feared that escape this way was cut off.

  George said the pit seemed very large to her, but perhaps she was overestimating its size.

  “I’ll try to find out,” said Nancy.

  While Nancy felt her way along the edge of the water, George remained behind, trying to wring out her soaking-wet bathrobe and pajamas. She had lost her slippers in the water.

  “This appears to be more like a large well,” Nancy surmised. “It’s only in the center of the tunnel. I think we can creep along the edge safely and get to the other side of the water.”

  George crawled after Nancy. Foot by foot, they went on without coming to the end of the tunnel.

  “This must run all the way to Charlottesville,” said George disgustedly.

  Nancy was growing more concerned about their predicament. Suppose this end of the tunnel was blocked also!

  To keep up George’s spirits as well as her own, Nancy said with a chuckle, “If the slaves had to walk along this bumpy path carrying trays of food, they must have had a lot of spills.”

  “I’ll say,” George replied. “Can’t you just see a big silver tray with a freshly roasted turkey being dropped upside down on this earthen floor!”

  The remark made both girls laugh, and each felt better. Suddenly Nancy’s outstretched hand touched a wooden step.

  “End of the trail!” she said happily as the two friends inched their way up the stairs.

  The flight was very steep, and at the top Nancy could not feel any doorknob, latch, or lock.

  George had no better luck. “The exit has been boarded up!” she said fearfully. “What do we do now?”

  Nancy did not reply. She began to look for a way to slide or rotate a section of the wall. Suddenly, her fingertips caught on a narrow crevice and the end of a panel moved slightly.

  “It’s a sliding door,” Nancy reported. “Help push!”

  Together, the two girls stuck their fingers into the tiny opening and shoved. The panel began to give, but it squeaked and groaned loudly.

  “Spooky!” George remarked, as the girls squeezed through the narrow opening.

  Nancy and George found themselves in a large closet filled with dishes. At the opposite side was a door with a handle, which opened easily.

  The friends walked into the kitchen of Ivy Hall. Moonlight streamed through the windows. It was a welcome relief from the total darkness of the tunnel.

  “Thank goodness we’re freed!” George exclaimed.

  The closet door swung shut with a tremendous bang, which made both Nancy and George jump.

  “The noise probably scared the Patters
ons and Bess out of a year’s growth!” George said, as they walked toward the front hall.

  The girls ascended the stairs and Nancy called, “Bess! Annette! Sheila!”

  Instantly footsteps came pounding down the attic steps. In a few moments the group had assembled in the second-floor hall.

  “Nancy! George!” Bess cried out. “Where have you been? We thought the ghost got you!”

  “Not us,” her cousin retorted.

  Bess pointed. “Look at you!”

  Nancy and George glanced down and saw that their pajamas and robes were streaked with dirt.

  “George, you’re soaking wet!” Annette cried out.

  George laughed. “I’ve been swimming.”

  “What happened to you girls?” Sheila asked.

  Nancy and George described their harrowing experience.

  “I didn’t know about the trap door and the tunnel,” Sheila said, shivering a little.

  When Nancy heard that Bess had really seen a ghost, her eyes opened wide. This meant that the impersonator could not have been hiding below the trap door after she and George went through it.

  Nancy looked at Bess questioningly. “Did that ghost come down the attic stairs?”

  “No.”

  “Well, he didn’t follow George and me,” she said. “That means he must still be in the house. We’re going to find him!”

  Sheila Patterson stared in amazement. “How can you find a ghost? It’s not real!”

  Nancy said she was certain that Bess’s ghost was a human being. “And I intend to locate him! Come on, everybody!” she urged.

  With Nancy in the lead, holding the candle, the entire group trooped to the attic. Bess almost expected to see the ghost standing near the stairway, but there was no sign of it. The attic was apparently deserted.

  “If the ghost is a real person, he might be hidden!” Bess said nervously.

  “We’ll smoke him out!” George said with determination. “But, for goodness sake, don’t anybody step on the trap door!”

  Nancy held a candle close to the floor, which made the trap plainly visible. She got down alongside it and pushed on the door. It would not open!