The cry, uttered by Mr. Steele as I disappeared from before his eyes, was my first conscious realization of what had happened after I had struck the ground below.
“Are you hurt?” he cried, with real commiseration, as he leaned over to look for me in the hollow at his feet. “Wait and I will drop down to you,” he went on, swinging himself into a position to leap.
I was trembling with the shock and probably somewhat bruised, but not hurt enough to prevent myself from scrambling to my feet, as he slid down to my side and offered me his arm for support.
“What did you do?” he asked. “Was it you who made this trap give way? I see that it is a trap now,”—and he pointed to the square boarding hampered by its carpet which hung at one side.
“I pressed one of those round knobs in the molding,” I explained, laughing to hide the tears of excitement in my eyes. “It had a loose look. I did it without thinking,—that is, without thinking enough of what I was doing to be sure that I was in a safe enough position for such an experiment. But I’m all right, and so is the cabinet. See!” I pointed to where it stood, still upright, its contents well shaken up but itself in tolerably good condition.
“You are fortunate,” said he. “Shall I help you up out of this? Your curiosity must be amply satisfied.”
“Not yet, not yet,” I cried. “Oh! it is as I thought,” I now exclaimed, peering around the corner of the cabinet into a place of total darkness. “The passage is here, running directly under the alley-way. Help me, help me, I must follow it to the end. I’m sure it communicates with the house next door.”
He had to humor me. I already had one hand on the cabinet’s edge, and should have pushed it aside by my own strength if he had not interfered. The space we were in was so small, some four feet square, I should judge, that the utmost we could do was to shove one corner of it slightly aside, so as to make a narrow passage into the space beyond. Through this I slipped and should have stepped recklessly on if he had not caught me back and suggested that he go first into what might have its own pitfalls and dangers.
I did not fear these, but was glad, nevertheless, to yield to his suggestion and allow him to pass me. As he did so, he took out a match from his pocket and in another moment had lit and held it out. A long, narrow vaulting met our eyes, very rude and propped up with beams in an irregular way. It was empty save for a wooden stool or some such object which stood near our feet. Though the small flame was insufficient to allow us to see very far, I was sure that I caught the outlines of a roughly made door at the extreme end and was making for this door, careless of his judgment and detaining hand, when a quick, strong light suddenly struck me in the face. In the square hollow made by the opening of this door, I saw the figure of Miss Charity with a lighted lantern in her hand. She was coming my way, the secret of the ghostly visitations which had deceived so many people was revealed.
CHAPTER XV. HARDLY A COINCIDENCE
The old lady’s eyes met ours without purpose or intelligence. It was plain that she did not see us; also plain that she was held back in her advance by some doubt in her beclouded brain. We could see her hover, as it were, at her end of the dark passage, while I held my breath and Mr. Steele panted audibly. Then gradually she drew back and disappeared behind the door, which she forgot to shut, as we could tell from the gradually receding light and the faint fall of her footsteps after the last dim flicker had faded away.
When she was quite gone, Mr. Steele spoke:
“You must be satisfied now,” he said. “Do you still wish to go on, or shall we return and explain this accident to the girls whose voices I certainly hear in the hall overhead?”
“We must go back,” I reluctantly consented. A wild idea had crossed my brain of following out my first impulse and of charging Miss Charity in her own house with the visits which had from time to time depopulated this house.
“I shall leave you to make the necessary explanations,” said he. “I am really rushed with business and should be down-town on the mayor’s affairs at this very moment.”
“I am quite ready,” said I. Then as I squeezed my way through between the corner of the cabinet and the foundation wall, I could not help asking him how he thought it possible for these old ladies to mount to the halls above from the bottom of the four-foot hole in which we now stood.
“The same way in which I now propose that you should,” he replied, lifting into view the object we had seen at one side of the passage, and which now showed itself to be a pair of folding steps. “Canny enough to discover or perhaps to open this passage, they were canny enough to provide themselves with means of getting out of it. Shall I help you?”
“In a minute,” I said. “I am so curious. How do you suppose they worked this trap from here? They did not press the spring in the molding.”
He pointed to one side of the opening, where part of the supporting mechanism was now visible.
“They worked that. It is all simple enough on this side of the trap; the puzzle is about the other. How did they manage to have all this mechanism put in without rousing any one’s attention? And why so much trouble?”
“Some time I will tell you,” I replied, putting my foot on the step. “O girls!” I exclaimed, as two screams rang out above and two agitated faces peered down upon us. “I’ve had an accident and a great adventure, but I’ve solved the mystery of the ghost. It was just one of the two poor old ladies next door. They used to come up through this trap. Where is Mrs. Packard?”
They were too speechless with wonder to answer me. I had to reach up my arms twice before either of them would lend me a helping hand. But when I was once up and Mr. Steele after me, the questions they asked came so thick and fast that I almost choked in my endeavor to answer them and to get away. Nixon appeared in the middle of it, and, congratulating myself that Mr. Steele had been able to slip away to the study while I was talking to the girls, I went over the whole story again for his benefit, after which I stopped abruptly and asked again where Mrs. Packard was.
Nixon, with a face as black as the passage from which I had just escaped, muttered some words about queer doings for respectable people, but said nothing about his mistress unless the few words he added to his final lament about the cabinet contained some allusion to her fondness for the articles it held. We could all see that they had suffered greatly from their fall. Annoyed at his manner, which was that of a man personally aggrieved, I turned to Ellen. “You have just been up-stairs,” I said. “Is Mrs. Packard still in the nursery?”
“She was, but not more than five minutes ago she slipped down-stairs and went out. It was just before the noise you made falling down into this hole.”
Out! I was sorry; I wanted to disburden myself at once.
“Well, leave everything as it is,” I commanded, despite the rebellion in Nixon’s eye. “I will wait in the reception-room till she returns and then tell her at once. She can blame nobody but me, if she is displeased at what she sees.”
Nixon grumbled something and moved off. The girls, full of talk, ran up-stairs to have it out in the nursery with Letty, and I went toward the front. How long I should have to stay there before Mrs. Packard’s return I did not know. She might stay away an hour and she might stay away all day. I could simply wait. But it was a happy waiting. I should see a renewal of joy in her and a bounding hope for the future when once I told any tale. It was enough to keep me quiet for the three long hours I sat there with my face to the window, watching for the first sight of her figure on the crossing leading into our street.
When it came, it was already lunch-time, but there was no evidence of hurry in her manner; there was, rather, an almost painful hesitation. As she drew nearer, she raised her eyes to the house-front and I saw with what dread she approached it, and what courage it took for her to enter it at all.