THE MYSTERIOUS OLD HOUSE
Micky O’ Brien drove the school bus that was now on runners and
twenty-five of the warmly wrapped, hilariously joyful girls were crowded
in.
A barrel of apples was strapped to each side of the bus where baggage
was often placed. The big, rough farm wagon, which had been converted
into a sleigh, with straw deep on the bottom of it, was filled with the
primary pupils. Betsy had so arranged things that she and her particular
friends were the last to enter the bus and so they were nearest the
door. Too, she had asked Micky to drive very slowly when he reached the
woods on the County Farm road.
Luckily Mr. O’Brien was in the lead with his load and so he did not
notice when Betsy and Babs slipped out at the edge of the woods.
“I don’t in the least approve of their going,” Virginia said to her
companion, “but I think we should accompany them. I’d be terribly
worried if they went alone.”
Micky, who knew that Betsy wished to remain there until the sleigh
returned, had brought his team to a very slow walk, and so Virginia,
Megsy and Sally had no trouble whatever in stepping from the low step to
the road. If the other girls were curious, they had no time to make
inquiries for the young driver at once whipped up his horses and was
soon close behind his father’s sleigh.
“We must find a wider hole in the hedge if we are all to get through,”
Virginia remarked. Betsy, hand in hand with Babs, was wading through
unbroken drifts. It was their intention to follow the hedge to the back
of the large estate. Micky had told them that it would be an hour, at
least, and perhaps longer, before he would be returning, and in that
time surely they ought to be able to closely examine the grounds and the
outside of the old house. Suddenly Betsy cried out joyfully, and
turning, she beckoned to the three who were following in the track they
had made.
“Goody for us!” Babs exclaimed. “One of the cypress trees in the hedge
is dead and we can easily break through here.”
Betsy was already doing this and in a few moments, with united effort, a
narrow passage appeared.
“Ooh!” Megsy shuddered when they all stood within the high hedge. “How
dismal and silent it is, except for the sighing of the little wind in
the pine trees.”
“Follow me,” Betsy called over her shoulder. “I’ll take you to the
circling drive. It’s blown clear of snow and leads right up to the old
house.”
Margaret glanced at her wrist watch. “It’s three now. In half an hour we
must start back for the main road. I certainly wouldn’t want to be here
after dark, and the twilight comes so early these days.”
“I can just imagine how lovely it must have been here once upon a time,”
Virginia said. “That old summer house is covered with rose vines. Can’t
you picture how pretty it will be in June?”
“Let’s all come over and see it then, shall we?” Sally suggested.
Virginia, who had never before seen a rustic garden house, was much
interested and she stopped at the open door. Megsy, Sally and Babs were
with her. A rustic table with four chairs made of small trees with the
bark on were within.
“Isn’t it fun to think pictures?” the romantic Sally remarked. “Can’t
you fancy the Lady Burgess, her daughters and friends all dressed in the
pretty styles of long ago as they sat about that table drinking tea?”
Margaret nodded. “I can see them, too,” she agreed, “and there’s a
gentleman wearing a bottle green broadcloth coat with gilt buttons and
knee breeches. At least that was what my grandfather wore. He is
standing up behind the ladies and passing the tea.”
Virginia smiled. “And yet you won’t either of you try to write a story
for the Manuscript Magazine.” Then turning away, she inquired: “Why,
where is Betsy? She isn’t with us.”
That would-be young detective had not cared to linger at an open summer
house, which she was sure contained no mystery (for, could not one see
all that was in it at a glance?) and so she had skipped ahead. They soon
found her standing in the drive gazing as one fascinated at an upper
window in a big, rambling old Colonial house.
“What are you looking at so steadily?” Virginia asked. She, too, glanced
up. The windows were covered with heavy green blinds and the front door
was boarded up.
“I’m not so sure that the old place is deserted,” Betsy said in a low
voice as the girls gathered close about her. “I was positive a moment
ago that I saw that upper left blind open a little, but now it seems to
be fastened as securely as before.”
“Betsy, you, too, must be unusually imaginative today,” Margaret
declared. “If anyone were living here, why should the house be boarded
up?”
“I suggest that we walk around the place,” Barbara, who liked mysteries
almost as much as Betsy, suggested.
This they did, but the right side of the house was so bleak as the front
had been. Babs was first around the corner and she beckoned to the
others. “Look!” she cried. “An old-fashioned cellar door, just the kind
my grandfather had. How I adored sliding down it when I was very small.
See, this one is covered with ice. Watch me while I return to my
childhood sport.”
Laughingly Barbara climbed up to the highest point of the sloping cellar
door. Suddenly there was a crash, followed by a frightened cry. Babs had
disappeared.
The frightened girls lifted the other half of the sloping door and saw
Babs lying in the underground entrance to the cellar. They hurried down
damp, slippery steps and lifted her. Almost at once she opened her eyes,
“I’m all right,” she said. “I guess this house is rather old and
crumbly.” She rose, and, as no bones were broken, Betsy suggested that
they take a look about the cellar which lay beyond them, dark, damp and
undoubtedly rat infested.
“I’d rather not.” Sally hugged her white furs closely about her and
shivered more from fear than cold.
“Well, then, you all stand here in the entrance,” the would-be detective
suggested. “I see a faint ray of light coming from somewhere off there
in the darkness and I’m going to see what it is.”
“I don’t know as we ought to let her go.” Virginia turned to Margaret.
“I’ve read of old cisterns being in cellars.”
Betsy heard and turned back to reply, “My eyes are used to the darkness
now. Honest Virg, I can see where I step.”
Cautiously feeling her way, she slowly advanced toward what seemed to be
daylight coming through a crack under a door.
“I’ve reached it,” Betsy sang out. They could hear her voice plainly,
though they could not see her. “It is a door. Wait until I open it.” As
she spoke she pushed against it and the door opened silently as though
it had been unlatched. Beyond was the typical stairway leading from a
farm house kitchen to the cellar. A small high window in the wall was
letting in a dim light.
“If one of us wasn’t such a fraid cat,” Betsy informed them, “I’d like
to climb this stairway and see where it leads.”
“If you mean me, Betsy Clossen,” Sally, for once, flared up, “go ahead.
If Virginia isn’t afraid to go, neither am I.”
The girls had no difficulty in crossing the uneven cellar floor in the
dim light from the stairway, but after they had glanced up and had seen
a closed door at the top, Virginia drew back. “Girls,” she said, “I
question if we ought to prowl about other people’s houses.”
“But Virg, we wouldn’t harm anything,” Barbara protested. “Peyton is
always telling of some haunted house he once visited and I’ve been wild
to see one for myself.”
After much persuasion, Virginia agreed to go to the top of the stairs if
the girls would consent to go back then. “Surely the hour is nearly up
and what would we do if the bus had passed and we were stranded so far
from school and after dark.”
The picture was not a pleasing one and Sally clung to Virginia’s arm,
though she would not openly acknowledge that she was frightened.
Betsy and Babs were the first to reach the top of the stairs. Barbara
turned the knob and the door opened just a bit, but then closed again,
and Betsy was sure that it was being held by someone on the other side.
“How silly!” she thought. “Of course no one is holding it.” Then she put
her shoulder against the door and pushed with all her strength, Babs
helping. The door swung open easily, but the girls were all sure that
they heard soft hurrying footsteps.
“Of course it couldn’t be, since the place is so plainly unoccupied,”
Margaret declared. “I believe that the sound we heard is the rush of
snow. You remember, Micky said there would surely be a snowstorm tonight
and I believe that it has begun.”
They found themselves not in an old-fashioned kitchen as they had
expected, but in a long, wide dark hall which extended, after the
fashion of Colonial houses, through the entire center with doors on
either side.
It was bitterly cold and down a chimney, above a fireless hearth, the
wind whistled and moaned.
“Come, we must hurry away,” Virg said. “I feel just ever so guilty in
having entered this house at all” Then turning to her foster sister, she
anxiously inquired: “Margaret, can you see the time?”
Megsy glanced at her faithful little wrist watch. Her exclamation of
dismay startled the group about her. “It’s quarter to five. The sleighs
must have passed long ago.”
Virginia, feeling, because she was oldest, as though she were
responsible, walked quickly back to the door through which they had
come. To her dismay she found that when Margaret had closed it, it
automatically had locked.
They were evidently prisoners in that old deserted house. Moreover, it
was bitterly cold. They would be nearly frozen if they remained there
all night, and yet, how could they get away? Even if Micky O’Brien found
a way to get into the grounds, they would not be able to hear him
however loud he shouted.
Betsy, who had led them into all this trouble, felt properly contrite
for a moment. Then she said hopefully, “Girls, Micky will surely find
the trail we made in the snow and he’ll follow it. That will lead him to
the broken cellar door and——”
But Margaret shook her head dolefully. “Not if the snowstorm has come.
Our tracks will soon be covered.”
“Perhaps we can find another way out,” Babs said. “I suggest that we try
first one of these closed doors and then another.” But just at that
moment something most unexpected happened.