THE ROOM OF MYSTERY
It was, indeed, Goliath. He was an enormous cat, and his purr was as
oversized as his body. That was the hoarse sound that they had thought
was heavy breathing. His footfalls too could be distinctly heard when
all else was quiet, and he had evidently rubbed against some light
article of furniture in the outer room and moved it. In the reaction of
relief, Cynthia seized Goliath, sat down on the floor, and--cried!
having first deposited her candlestick carefully on the table. Joyce did
quite the opposite, and laughed hysterically for several minutes. The
tension of suspense and terror had been very real.
"How _did_ he get in here?" sobbed Cynthia, at length.
"Why, through the window, of course. And he must have been in before we
came. Don't you remember, we found the door at the head of the cellar
steps open? I closed it when we came up, so he couldn't have got here
afterward." Joyce bent down and scratched Goliath's fat jowls, at which
he purred the louder.
"Well, let's let him stay, since he's here," sighed Cynthia, wiping her
eyes. "He'll be sort of company!" So Goliath was allowed to remain, and
the two girls, escorted by him, proceeded on their voyage of discovery.
Back across the drawing-room and hall they went, and through the
dining-room. There for a moment they stood, surveying anew the curious
scene.
"Does it strike you as strange," Joyce demanded suddenly, "that there's
no silver here, no knives, forks, spoons, sugar-bowls, or--or anything
of that kind? Yet everything else in china or glass is left. What do you
make of it?"
"Somebody got in and stole it," ventured Cynthia.
"Nonsense! Nobody's been here since, except ourselves, that's perfectly
plain. No, the people must have stopped long enough to collect it and
put it away,--or take it with them. Cynthia, why _do_ you suppose they
left in such a hurry?" But Cynthia, the unimaginative, was equally
unable to answer this query satisfactorily, so she only replied:
"I don't know, I'm sure!"
A room, however, beyond the dining-room was awaiting their inspection.
In a corner of the latter, two funny little steps led up to a door, and
on opening it, they found themselves in the kitchen. This bore signs of
as much confusion as the neighboring apartment. Unwashed dishes and
cooking utensils lay all about, helter-skelter, some even broken, in the
hurry with which they had been handled. But, apart from this further
indication of the haste with which a meal had been abandoned unfinished,
there was little to hold the interest, and the girls soon turned away.
"Now for up-stairs!" cried Joyce. "That's where I've been longing to
get. We will find something interesting there, I'll warrant." With
Goliath scampering ahead, they climbed the white, mahogany-railed
staircase. On the upper floor they found a wide hall corresponding with
the one below, running from front to back, crossed by a narrower one
connecting the wings with the main part of the house. Turning to their
left, they went down the narrow one, peering about them eagerly. The
doors of several bedrooms stood open.
Into the first they entered. The high, old-fashioned, four-post bed with
its ruffled valance and tester was still smoothly made up and
undisturbed. The room was in perfect order. But Joyce's eye was caught
by two candlesticks standing on the mantel.
"Here's a find!" she announced. "We'll take these to use for our
candles. They're nicer and handier than our tin one. We will keep that
for an emergency."
"But ought we disturb them?" questioned Cynthia.
"Oh, you are _too_ particular! What earthly harm can it do? Here! Take
this one and I'll carry the other. This must have been a guest-room,
and no one was occupying it when--it all happened. Let's look in the one
across the hall." This one also proved precisely similar, bed untouched
and furniture undisturbed. Another, close at hand, had the same
appearance. They next ventured down a narrower hall, over what was
evidently the kitchen wing. On each side were bedrooms, four in all,
with sparse, plain furnishings and cot-beds. Each room presented a
tumbled, unkempt appearance.
"I guess these must have been the servants' rooms," remarked Cynthia.
"That's the first right guess you've made!" retorted Joyce,
good-naturedly, as she glanced about. "And they all left in a hurry,
too, judging from the way things are strewn about. I wonder--"
"What?" cried Cynthia, impatient at the long pause.
"Oh, nothing much! I just wonder whether they went off of their own
accord, or were dismissed. I can't tell. But one thing I can guess
pretty plainly--they went right after the dinner-party and didn't stay
over another night. 'Cause why? Most of their beds are made, and they
left everything in a muss down-stairs. But come along. This isn't
particularly interesting. I want to get to the other end of the hall.
Something different's over there!" They turned and retraced their steps,
emerging from the servants' quarters and passing again the rooms they
had already examined.
On the other side of the main hall they entered an apartment that was
not a bedroom, but appeared to have been used as a sitting-room and for
sewing. An old-fashioned sewing-table stood near one window. Two chairs
and another table were heaped with material and with garments in various
stages of completion. An open work-box held dust-covered spools. But
still there was nothing special in the room to challenge interest, and
Joyce pulled her companion across the hall toward another partially open
door.
They had scarcely been in it long enough to illuminate it with the pale
flames of their candles, before they realized that they were very near
the heart of the mystery. It was another bedroom, the largest so far,
and its aspect was very different from that of the others. The high
four-poster was tossed and tumbled, not, however, as if by a night's
sleep, but more as if some one had lain upon it just as it was, twisting
and turning restlessly. Two trunks stood on the floor, open and
partially packed. One seemed to contain household linen, once fine and
dainty and white, now yellowed and covered with the dust of years. The
other brimmed with clothing, a woman's, all frills and laces and silks;
and a great hoop-skirt, collapsed, lay on the floor alongside. Neither
of the girls could, for the moment, guess what it was, this queer
arrangement of wires and tape. But Joyce went over and picked it up,
when it fell into shape as she held it at arm's-length. Then they knew.
"I have an idea!" cried Joyce. "This hoop-skirt, or crinoline, I think
they used to call it, gave it to me. Cynthia, we must be in the room
belonging to the lovely lady whose picture hangs in the library."
"How do you know?" queried Cynthia.
"I don't _know_, I just suspect it. But perhaps we will find something
that proves it later." She held the candle over one of the trunks and
peered in. "Dresses, hats, waists," she enumerated. "Oh, how queer and
old-fashioned they all seem!" Suddenly, with a little cry of triumph,
she leaned over and partially pulled out an elaborate silk dress.
"Look! look! what did I tell you! Here is the very dress of the
picture-lady, this queer, changeable silk, these big sleeves, and the
velvet sewed on in a funny criss-cross pattern! _Now_ will you believe
me?"
Truly, Cynthia could no longer doubt. It was the identical dress, beyond
question. The portrait must have been painted when the garment was new.
They felt that at last they had taken a long step in the right direction
by thus identifying this room as belonging to the lovely lady of the
portrait down-stairs. Joy grew so excited that she could hardly contain
a "hurrah," and Cynthia was not far behind her in enthusiasm. But the
room had further details to be examined.
An open fireplace showed traces of letters having been torn up and
burned. Little, half-charred scraps with faint writing still lay
scattered on the hearth. On the dressing-table, articles of the toilet
were littered about, and a pair of candlesticks were set close to the
mirror. (There were, by the way, no traces of _candles_ about the house.
Mice had doubtless carried off every vestige of such, long since.) A
great wardrobe stood in one corner, the open doors of which revealed
some garments still hanging on the pegs, woolen dresses mostly, reduced
now to little more than rags through the ravages of moths and mice and
time. Near the bed stood a pair of dainty, high-heeled satin slippers,
forgotten through the years. Everywhere a hasty departure was indicated,
so hasty, as Joyce remarked, "that the lady decided probably not to take
her trunks, after all, but left, very likely, with only a hand-bag!"
"And now," cried Joyce, the irrepressible, "we've seen everything in
this room. Let's hurry to look at the last one on this floor. That's
right over the library, I think, at the end of the hall. We've
discovered a lot here, but I've a notion that we'll find the best of all
in there!" As they were leaving the room, Goliath, who had curled
himself up on a soft rug before the fireplace, rose, stretched himself,
yawned widely, and prepared to follow, wherever they led.
"Doesn't he seem at home here!" laughed Cynthia. "I hope he will come
every time we do. He makes things seem more natural, somehow." They
reached the end of the hall, and Joyce fumbled for the handle, this
door, contrary to the usual rule, being shut. Then, for the first time
in the course of their adventures in the Boarded-up House, they found
themselves before an insurmountable barrier.
The door was locked!