Baffled
Still, no one wanted to be the first to enter, and they stood on the
step, frightened but intensely curious.
Arden gave Terry a little push, hinting that she should lead, but Terry
sidestepped. Sim sneaked around the others until she was on the edge of
the step, nearer the car.
“Do you think it could be so terrible?” she questioned.
“We ought to find out. Besides, if it’s someone dead—” Dorothy
stopped—“it couldn’t hurt us anyway.”
She started cautiously just a few steps, but at least they had begun to
move. The other three, in close formation, followed. At the foot of the
stairs they stopped; listened. There was not a sound. The daylight
filtering in through a stained-glass window at the first landing cast
eerie shadows and even made the girls’ faces take on a sickish pale
color.
Dorothy put her hand on the worn old stair rail and slid it up ahead of
her as though to pull herself after it. A deep indentation checked the
sliding hand and acted like a brake.
Then Terry, growing a little braver, deliberately went up a few steps,
and in this fashion, by starting and stopping every second or two, and
listening, cautiously they reached the first landing.
There they halted. But only for a second, for something drew them on;
some power they could not resist urged them up almost against all reason,
until they were on the second floor of the weird old house.
There the hall ran the length of the house. All furnishing was gone from
the hall except an old dusty chest that stood in a dark, dingy corner.
Rooms were on either side of the passage, but the doors were all closed
except one. Somehow Dorothy felt this was The Room. But to look in would
be another matter. What was in there? Nothing at all or——?
They must find out. The old adage, “safety in numbers,” came back to
Dorothy. She motioned to the other frightened girls. They crept forward
on tiptoe.
Now in line with the opened doorway, Dorothy forced herself to look in.
She saw a large square room with shuttered windows through which the
morning light barely seeped in splintered blades. There was the bed.
The bed! That dreadful possibility!
How could she look? No longer brave, she shut her eyes. Her buzzing head
seemed not to belong to her. But the next moment, of its own accord, it
turned again to that dreadful resting place. A deep sigh, a gasp, from
one of the girls behind Dorothy startled her further, and she could delay
no longer. She opened her eyes.
The bed was empty!
A four-poster that must once have boasted a canopied top, the huge old
bed stood stark and sinister. A dark bedraggled cloth covered the
mattress, but happily—and how glad they were—nothing else was there.
“Whew!” Terry ran a trembling hand across her forehead. “I feel as if I
had just gone through a clothes wringer.”
“Such suspense! I lived a hundred years coming up those stairs,” declared
Sim. “Is my face white?”
Arden did not feel like joking. She went closer to the bed.
“Absolutely empty! Those men must have very vivid imaginations,” she
declared with a little laugh. “Seeing things, that way.”
“This time three men saw the same thing, or claim they did. The other
time it was two who saw and who also claimed they heard the thudding of
the soldier’s boots. Some complications even for ghosts,” Sim remarked.
“It’s very queer. The spirits of the departed owners of the Hall must be
rising in protest against the invasion of the wreckers,” Terry suggested,
not too merrily.
“Are you sure, my dear friends, you had nothing to do with this?” Dorothy
asked, once more skeptical.
That question brought a storm of protest.
“Dorothy!” exclaimed Arden, “do you really think _we_ could have scared
away those workmen?”
“Well, if you feel that way, Dot,” began Terry. But she didn’t; she told
them so. And once more it was a united party that looked for further
evidence of ghosts, real or imaginary.
The inevitable fireplace was built in the wall not far from the suspected
bed. An old squat rocker stood lonely and forlorn in the center, and a
packing box had gathered dust under a window—that was all. The floor was
also dusty, but Dorothy stooped down and, with royal disregard, swept a
spot clean with a dainty lace-trimmed handkerchief.
“Look at the floor, girls,” she said. “See how wide the boards are and
the pegs to hold them down. They don’t make floors that way any more. All
these boards were cut and planed and the pegs made and fitted in by
hand.”
“I wish I knew more about such things,” Terry remarked, inspecting the
floor. “All I know is that this must have been a fine old house, and I
wish it wasn’t going to be torn down.”
“It reminds me of an impending execution.” Sim sighed. “It did its duty,
and now it has to give up its life for its country.” That trite remark
brought on a giggle, but Sim didn’t mind.
Arden and Dorothy were snooping about, looking through the cracks in the
shutters, and even peered under the bed.
“If they succeed in demolishing the Hall, I’m going to try and buy the
picture of that girl downstairs,” announced Terry. “She fascinates me!
I’d like to find out more about her.”
“Probably Dick’s grandmother could tell you. We must look her up,” said
Arden, dusting her hands. “Who’s that?” she asked suddenly as voices in
dispute were heard from somewhere.
“Someone downstairs,” Dorothy answered. They listened. One voice, a
man’s, seemed just very ordinary, not the least bit ghost-like.
“Let’s go down and see what’s happening,” Terry suggested. “We’re not
afraid of workmen.”
They all trooped down in much different spirits than they had come up in.
Now, like weather vanes turning in the wind, their interest was veering
to the commotion below.
In the hallway stood the three workmen who had so recently rushed out of
the old mansion. There was another, an older man, obviously their
employer, with them now.
“Are you men telling me that you’re quitting, too?” asked the boss
sharply.
“Yes, sir,” the leader of the three stated emphatically. “I don’t like
this place. I’d rather chop down trees all winter than go up on the top
floor for a day and start tearing this place down.”
“But, man, you’re wrong! There’s nothing there. You told me this same
story last week, and when I looked in, the room was empty,” the wrecking
contractor declared.
The girls were on the landing above, and he turned to them, seemingly
surly and surprised.
“That your car outside? What are you doing in here?” he asked bruskly.
“Yes,” answered Sim. “We heard someone shout as we were going past and
stopped to see—if we could help.”
“Well—what did you find?” the contractor asked, apparently hoping that
the statement of disinterested young ladies would impress the frightened
men favorably.
“Nothing,” Arden admitted. “The room was empty when we looked in.
Although _he_ said,” Arden indicated the man she had questioned, “that
there was an old lady up there, dead on the bed.”
“Yeah—_he_ said,” the contractor shrugged. “I know! He had the same story
last week. All right,” he continued, now addressing the men, “go to the
office and get your pay. You’re finished! But this house comes down if I
have to pull it down myself!”
The laborers turned away and, talking among themselves, gathered up their
lunch boxes and coats and hurriedly walked away.
“You girls want to be careful in here,” the contractor warned. “Not that
I worry about ghosts, but you might get hurt if something fell on you.
They were working on the roof today. This is the second time men have
laid down on this job. But I’ll have this place leveled to the ground if
I have to get my own family to help me.” He looked angrily at the ceiling
above him and then, taking a big black cigar from his pocket, he bit the
end savagely. Glancing about once more he finally strode after the men,
leaving the little group of wondering girls to puzzle it out.