"If you will sit down, I will show you, not what I expect to find, but
how a detective goes about his work. Whatever our expectations, however
small or however great, we pay full attention to details. Now the detail
which has worried me in regard to this place is the existence of a
certain space in this building unaccounted for by these four walls; in
other words, the portion which lies behind these rugs,"--and throwing
aside the same, I let the flame from my lantern play over the walled-up
space which I had before examined with little satisfaction. "This
partition," I continued, "seems as firm as any of the walls, but I want
to make sure that it hides nothing. If the child should be in some hole
back of this partition, what a horror and what an outrage!"
"But it is impossible!" came almost in a shriek from the woman behind
me. "The opening is completely walled up. I have never known of its
being otherwise. It looked like that when I came here three years ago.
There is no possible passage through that wall."
"Why was it ever closed up? Do you know?"
"Not exactly. The family are very reticent about it. Some fancy of Mr.
Ocumpaugh's father, I believe. He was an odd man; they tell all manner
of stories about him. If anything offended him, he rid himself of it
immediately. He took a distaste to that end of the hut, as they used to
call it in the old days before it was remodeled to suit the house, so he
had it walled up. That is all we know about it."
"I wish I could see behind that wall," I muttered, dropping back the rug
I had all this time held in my hand. "I feel some mystery here which I
can not grasp." Then as I flashed my lantern about in every direction
with no visible result, added with the effort which accompanies such
disappointments: "There is nothing here, Mrs. Carew. Though it is the
scene of the child's disappearance it gives me nothing."
X