THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MRS. DOVE
A yawning hole was in the center of the kitchen floor.
“Jasper,” I called, “where are you?”
“Here!” answered a far-off voice.
The kitchen oilcloth had been torn up and rolled to one side, exposing
a trap-door. I leaned over the edge and peered into a pit.
“Are you there, Jasper?”
“Yes.”
“Is Mrs. Dove there?”
“No.”
“Anybody else?”
“No, nobody but me; come on down.”
But on learning that he was safe, my fears leaped to the finding of
Mrs. Dove. If it was she who had opened up that trap-door, or if some
one had unfastened it from underneath, I was terror-stricken. What had
burst forth, and what had happened to her?
“Mrs. Dove!” I called out. “O Mrs. Dove!”
There was chowder scorching in the bottom of a kettle on the stove,
which she must have forgotten. I ran through the house, looking into
corners and stairways for her and crying everywhere, “Mrs. Dove!”
But there was no one in them; the rooms were so quiet that they seemed
to have been deserted for a long time.
Jasper’s voice followed me. “Come here!” he kept shouting.
I let myself backward through the trap-door in the kitchen floor and
felt the top rung of a ladder under my feet. The next rung was gone,
and I slid. Jasper caught me.
We were in a circular underground room, like a dry cistern, about
twelve feet across, with plastered sides and a damp earth floor. The
first thing I saw was a mattress, strewn with clothing, overalls,
shirts, and trousers. On a hanging shelf were quantities of cans, some
of them empty. A portable stove with dozens of boxes of condensed
cubes showed how cooking had been done. I remembered the coffee I had
smelled, not made by human hands. There was a can of oil and a pail
half-full of water. I picked up a ship’s lantern with a red bull’s-eye.
“The aura,” said I, handing it to Jasper.
“The what?”
“The aura.”
But he had never seen it; the red light meant nothing to him.
“Look!” he said; “he got out that way!”
In the gloom I made out double wooden doors halfway up the further wall
of the round room, one of which was open, but through which came no
light. I followed his lead up over a box that had been placed beneath
them, and found myself in the “under.” We crawled out from behind a
boat which concealed and darkened the entrance, and discovered that we
were banked in on every side by the stuff that had been stored there.
“What is it all about?” asked Jasper.
“I hardly know myself,” said I, “but those doors must have been in
plain sight at the back of the house, if they were there before the
captain’s wing was built. The rubbish thrown in here from year to year
has covered them up. Perhaps they used that place for something.”
“Some one is using it now, all right,” said Jasper. “Who do you think
it is?”
“Oh, don’t ask me.”
I doubled up in a heap on an old wheelbarrow. Neither of us could stand
upright, or we would have bumped our heads on the flooring. Jasper was
leaning over me, uncertain what to do.
“Go and find Mrs. Dove!” I wept. “Run down to her house on the back
street; she may have gone there, if she got away at all. And bring her
husband back with you.” I pointed out the direction from beneath the
house. “Run! We’ve got to find her. Hurry!”
Jasper, with a perplexed glance at the chaos he was leaving, dashed
off down the yard. If I had had my wits about me, I should never have
sent him. He had no sooner left than I heard something moving. Peeping
between the heaps of piled-up furniture, I saw two legs vanishing
upward at the further end of the “under.”
“Mrs. Dove!” I called wildly. But Mrs. Dove did not wear red rubber
boots.
I began crawling over to where they had disappeared, and found a well
defined path in that direction, as if the broken beds and old chests
had been drawn aside to make it possible for some one, crouching, to
reach the further end of the “under” without being seen.
Standing upright at last, in the higher part beneath the chimney, I
suddenly realized that I had raised myself much too far. What was I
looking at? My head had passed the floor and my eyes were on a level
with the captain’s room. There was the old rosewood desk and the cat
asleep in the rocking-chair. Wheeling about, I confronted the back
entrance to the secret stairs.
I had stood up directly under the chimney-closet, whose whole floor was
lifted against the wall. There it was, to one side, with the hasp that
had fastened it from underneath hanging loosely. In the hasp was an
open padlock.
I had no time to wonder how it came to be that way or why I had never
noticed it before. Some one had just opened this door and gone through
it. He was still going. I could hear him on the secret stairs.
We were not so far behind the ghost as I had thought. I swung myself
up into the opening, but could climb no further. Horror held me and
gripped me from above and from below. What was I chasing? What would I
find? I slammed the trap at my feet, which comprised the entire floor
of the closet, and, stepping on it firmly, wired shut the door of the
secret stairs. It would be futile to lock the door of the closet that
led into the captain’s room. I wondered how many times that strong
looking copper wire had been unfastened and fastened again, while I
remained oblivious beyond the further door. As I wound the wire around
the hook all was silent, but when I had finished and had withdrawn I
heard footsteps crossing overhead. I ran through the kitchen, skirting
the great rolled-up oilcloth and avoiding the opening in the floor,
and climbed the kitchen companionway three steps at a time. I must be
sure that the little door above was still nailed shut, and as a double
precaution I shoved the bureau once more in front of it.
“If you can’t get out by night,” I muttered, “you won’t get out by day!”
The footsteps came to the inside door of the eaves closet, tried the
latch, shook it furiously, and, leaning against it, shoved with mortal
might. But the mirror of the bureau did not move, the door on the
further side of the eaves closet held, and the frail partition remained
firm. I heard the footsteps start the other way, and ran down to watch
results.
In the kitchen doorway two men were standing, open-jawed. I did not
even pause to see who they were, but dashed on into the captain’s room,
and was in time to see the latch of the secret door raised stealthily,
then dropped, then clicked again. Some one rattled and shook it, but it
would not open.
I smiled grimly.
“It’s different, isn’t it,” I said, “when some one wires it up after
you get in? You’re human, you are; you can’t get out of there any more
than I could!”
“Who are you talking to?” asked the judge. It was he who had arrived
with his arm in a sling, and Alf had followed him.
“I don’t know,” said I. “Wait a while and we will all find out.”
They seemed in doubt as to how to take this information.
“What’s up?” asked Alf, pointing to the kitchen floor.
“You can see,” I answered.
“I see the door open to the round cellar, but what for?”
“You know as much about it as I do! Why would any one build a round
cellar?”
“So the sand can’t wedge off the corners. You know,” Alf reminded me,
“I told you they didn’t build cellars on the cape. Well, they don’t,
not regular ones, but that’s the kind they do build. Round, like a well
under the kitchen, to keep food cool.”
“Sure,” said the judge, seeing the doubt in my eyes. “All the good
houses have them. I’ve got one myself.”
“I never heard of such a thing,” said I. “But then,” I added, “there
are so many things I never heard of.”
“That reminds me,” said the judge. “I heard you was leaving. We came to
say good-by.”
“I haven’t got time to go just now,” I answered.
“I brought this back.” The judge showed me a wooden sign he was
carrying--“For Sale. Enquire Within.”
Much good it had ever done any one to enquire within!
“I’m glad we got here when we did,” said Alf. “Looks as if we was in on
the killin’.”
I winced. I was strung so taut that every word vibrated on naked
nerves. I could hear the footsteps over my head, pacing back and forth,
as they always did, trying one door and then the other, and I knew,
with nameless dread, that whatever they were, this would be the last
hour they would walk that floor.
“What became of Mrs. Dove?” asked the judge.
“Oh,” I broke down, “I don’t know! I wish I knew!”
He picked up the great iron poker that had once mounted the secret
stairs with me and weighed it speculatively.
“I guess that’s all right,” he said, “for a one-armed man to handle.”
Jasper came running back across the yard with Will Dove, who carried a
shotgun, and Caleb Snow, whom they had annexed with his winkle-fork.
“Did you find any one?” shouted Jasper.
We motioned to him to be quiet and pointed to the room above.
“How about Mrs. Dove?” I asked anxiously.
“Oh, she’s all right,” said her husband; “she’s to home.”
The men fell silent, listening to the ominous footsteps that crossed
and recrossed the ceiling.
Will Dove began to whisper. “My wife, she thought”--we all drew closer
together--“she had to find a place to put the beach-plum jelly--she’s
like that! She looked all over the rooms, and then decided she would
rip up the kitchen oilcloth and see what was below. And there it
was--the door to the round cellar! While she was taking up the tacks
she kept hearing noises, so she thought she must be right and kept on
going. Maybe it was rats running around. She ain’t afraid of rats.
“The trap wasn’t locked, just covered over, and she jerked it up and
was going down, when she see a man in there.
“‘Who’s that?’ she yelled.
“He never answered, but he disappeared! He wasn’t there any more! She
looked down, and lit a candle and held it over, but he was gone. She
could see where he had been livin’, but it was empty.
“That was too much for her. My wife ain’t afraid of rats _or_ men, but
that cellar was too much for her. She cleared out by the kitchen door,
and run all the way home. I can tell you I was scairt myself, the way
she looked when she come pantin’ in. She ain’t a hand to carry on; I
never seen her that way; and when she said there was something wrong
over here--why, I believed her. I was just thinkin’ about puttin’ my
hat on, when he,” indicating Jasper, “showed up! Then the missus she
had another fit. She says it must have been the captain livin’ down in
the round cellar the last five years, ever since he was supposed to be
dead, and if it was, he was a crazy man by this time, and it was all
tom-foolishness to leave the lady here in the house with him loose. And
if it wasn’t the captain, it wouldn’t be anything that we could catch
anyhow, but for the Lord’s sake to hurry!”
As he stopped whispering the footsteps upstairs ceased. There was a new
sound. Something was being dragged across the floor.
We did not stand and talk about it any longer. The judge seized the
poker and vanished up the kitchen companionway.
“Even a man with a broken arm can guard a door that’s nailed tight
shut,” he called back.
Will Dove made for the front door.
“I’ll watch outside,” he said. “I’ve got a gun.”
The other three men fell into a single file. Jasper flourished a gourd
that had hung over the sink; Alf had a great glass paperweight; Caleb
Snow came last, with his winkle-fork ahead of him.
“Good-by,” said Jasper. “I may never see you again!”
I laughed, and to my own ears it had a horrid sound.
“It’s more likely,” I answered, “that you won’t see anything up there.”
Simultaneously they turned and frowned at me, as if they did not like
the strangeness of my remark. Jasper leaned down and whispered,
“Steady, dear!”
But what I said was true.
I unwired the door, and as they crept up the secret stairs fear
fastened my feet to the spot on which I stood.
The dragging and pushing noise increased. There was the crash of glass,
and before any one realized what was happening a black shadow slid
down off the roof. I ran to the window and saw a little old man pick
himself up off the ground and crawl quickly under the house.
At the same time Will Dove’s gun went off, wildly. He had aimed for the
skylight, and knocked off two shingles.
“Quit that!” called one of the men above. They were rushing about the
empty room, wrenching open the doors of the eaves closet, trying to
mount through the hole in the roof and getting in each other’s way.
I let myself down the ladder into the round cellar just as the ghost
came scrambling into it by the outside door.
The little scuttling figure wilted down in a heap at my feet upon the
earthen floor. Confronted by me, when he thought he had reached a
haven, the pitiful thing collapsed. Raising hunted eyes, clawing at my
skirt with skinny hands, he moaned in a queer thin voice, “Save me!”
The oilskin hat fell back from the creature’s head, and there was the
scraggly, drawn-back, wispy gray hair of _a woman_. I had seen that
face and heard that voice before, and in spite of the flannel shirt and
rubber boots, in spite of the fact that she was drowned, I knew that I
looked at Mattie!