How Did It Happen?
Having carried the unconscious man out of the cellar, the men stood at
the top of the steps leading down into the darkness, awkwardly holding
their burden. The girls had a momentary glimpse of Jim Danton’s face.
There was blood on it. With a little shudder and murmur of horror Dorothy
turned away.
“Poor fellow!” murmured Sim.
“Can’t we do something to help?” asked Terry.
“You ought to put him down—lay him down flat!” commanded Arden. “There
may be broken bones! It isn’t doing him any good to hold him all crumpled
that way.”
“He ought to have a doctor!” declared the contractor. “I wonder if it’s
best to try to get him home and have the doctor there or get a doctor
here? Where’s a telephone?”
“There isn’t one anywhere near here,” Betty volunteered.
“Then we’d best take him home,” decided Mr. Callahan. “But how to do it?
I let my partner take my car after he dropped me off here, and I don’t
know when he’ll be back.”
“I have a car!” Sim quickly interposed. “If one of you men will sit in
the rumble seat and hold this man, I’ll drive him home—if it isn’t too
far.”
“Oh, he lives right here in Jockey Hollow,” said the tall thin worker.
“About two miles from here, down by Primrose Brook.”
“I’ll take him in my car, then,” decided Sim. “One of you girls had
better ride with me,” she added in a lower voice.
“I will,” Arden offered. “And I know a little about first aid, so maybe
we can be of some help when we get this man home—before the doctor
comes.” The unfortunate man hadn’t moved, nor did he seem even to
breathe.
“That’s right,” agreed Sim. “But about a doctor?” she asked, turning to
the contractor and the men gathered about him. “How are you going to get
a doctor?”
“I’ll run to the nearest telephone, miss, as soon as you start with Jim,”
the tall thin man offered. “I know the location of Jim’s house. I can
direct the doctor there.”
“All right,” Sim assented. “Take him to my car. Come on, Arden. We
certainly have run into something all right—whether or not it’s a mystery
will develop later. But about you girls?” she asked, looking at Dot and
Terry and, incidentally, at Betty.
“We’ll wait here until you two come back,” Terry suggested.
“Please come with me and have some tea at our cottage,” invited Betty.
“You can wait there.”
“That will be better,” Arden accepted. As the men started to carry Jim to
Sim’s car, she inquired, of no one in particular: “Where did you find
him, and is there any explanation of how he got into the cellar?”
“He was at the bottom of an old ash-chute,” said Mr. Callahan. “It opens
into the cellar and connects with that big fireplace on the third floor,
in the room next to the one with the closet in—the closet they say Jim
disappeared from, only he couldn’t. It’s a very big ash-chute—big enough
for a man to slide down. They must have burned whole trees in the old
days, in that fireplace. And when the fire was out, instead of carting
the ashes downstairs in a hod, they just opened a sort of trapdoor on the
bottom of the hearth and dumped the ashes down. Only the trapdoor is
rusted away now, and, somehow, Jim must have got into the ash-chute and
he slid down to the cellar, bumping his head, cutting himself and
knocking himself out on the way. That’s all there is to the mystery. And
I’m glad of it.”
His men looked relieved. One of them said:
“Then I guess Jim couldn’t have gone into that closet like Nate thought
he did. Though he may have gone in there, and have come out without Nate
seeing him. Next he went into the fireplace room and, somehow or other,
he slipped down the ash-chute.”
“That’s the way of it,” said Mr. Callahan. “It explains everything, boys,
and tomorrow we’ll get on this job and clean it up. The mystery is all
solved.”
“In my eye!” someone muttered.
“What makes you say that, Nate Waldon?” asked the contractor.
“Because Jim did disappear right out of the closet. I know it. I didn’t
see him disappear, of course, but he didn’t come out and go in the
fireplace room.”
“This is worse and more of it!” sighed the contractor. He looked at the
men carefully getting Jim into the rumble seat of Sim’s car and asked:
“Well, what do _you_ say happened, Nate?”
“All I know is I saw Jim go in that closet. I heard a noise. I heard him
yell, and when I ran to the closet he wasn’t to be seen. He didn’t slip
out into the other room. I was close enough to have seen him if he’d done
that. And we didn’t find any holes in the closet. The next we know we
find Jim in the cellar. Talk about mysteries being cleared up—this one
isn’t; not at all!”
“Oh, well, don’t let’s talk about it!” begged Mr. Callahan. “All of you
report for work tomorrow. We’ll knock off now. And I’m a thousand times
obliged to you young ladies for all you’ve done—and are doing,” he added
as he saw Arden and Sim getting into the car, while in the rumble seat a
man was carefully holding the still unconscious Jim, supporting his head
very gently as the car started.
“We’ll be back as soon as we can,” Sim called to Terry and Dot as they
walked, with Betty, toward the little cottage.
“Don’t hurry,” was the answer. “We’ll be all right. And do all you can
for the poor man.”
“This will be a surprise for Granny,” said Betty as she led the way to
the cottage.
“It must have been a surprise for you,” suggested Terry, “coming upon
what you thought was a dead man in the cellar.”
“Oh, I was scared stiff!” admitted Betty. “And I was so glad when I ran
up and saw Arden. I suppose it seems presuming on such a short
acquaintance to call you girls by your first names,” she added with a
little smile, “but, somehow, I feel as if I had known you a long time.”
“Of course,” Terry agreed, “we feel that way about you, too.”
“Excitement makes time pass rapidly,” declaimed Dot. “And there certainly
has been a lot of excitement since I arrived here.”
“Indeed there has been,” Terry agreed.
At the cottage Granny welcomed them with her usual happy smile but asked
at once:
“What has happened?”
“How did you know anything had happened?” asked Betty.
“I can tell by your faces.”
“Well, I believe we do show something of it,” her granddaughter admitted.
“But nothing a cup of your nice tea will not help to straighten out,
Granny. You know Terry and Dot?”
“Oh, yes. And we shall have tea at once. Now tell me.”
They told her. Granny listened with an enigmatic look on her face, now
and then her eyes showing flecks of pity as the wounded man was spoken
of.
“Very strange!” she said at the end. “I can’t understand it. There must
be secrets about the Hall I never dreamed of. Perhaps when it is all torn
down some of the secrets will come to light.”
“There is some as will never see the light!” suddenly exclaimed a sharp
voice from somewhere back of the hall. A woman, hard featured as to face
and with straggling gray hair, suddenly poked her head out. She quite
startled the girls, but Betty smiled reassuringly.
“Oh, Cousin Viney!” murmured Betty, “why do you say such things?” as if
dismissing this woman.
“Did you want anything, my dear?” asked Granny kindly.
“I only want to tell you that you’re having too many visitors, Hannah
Howe!” was the answer. “Too many altogether! You know tea costs money,
and so does cream and sugar, though I never use either.”
“Won’t you sit down with my company, Viney, and have a cup of tea—clear,
as you always like it?” invited Granny sincerely.
“No. I’ve got other things to do. There’s lots of work in this cottage.
Not as much as there was in the Hall—but enough!”
At that she flounced herself out, slamming the door.
Granny and Betty exchanged glances. So did Dot and Terry: it was their
introduction to Viney Tucker. Arden had already met her, as Betty
announced. She added:
“Don’t mind her. She’s Granny’s cousin—just a little odd—though I don’t
need to tell you that. But she’s kind and good,” she explained as Mrs.
Howe went out to get more hot water. “She thinks the world and all of
Granny and of Dick and me. But there is no use denying she is a bit
trying at times, and she often embarrasses us when we have company—which
isn’t as often as I’d like,” and Betty smiled at her two new friends to
make them sure of their welcome.
“I believe,” she continued, “that Cousin Viney feels and resents, as one
has a right in the circumstances, our loss of Sycamore Hall, more than
even Granny does. She is a creature always given to solitude and—well,
you know how lonely women can be,” she finished.
“It does seem too bad to have such a wonderful and historic piece of
property pass out of the family,” Terry said. “One can hardly blame Miss
Viney.”
“And just to make a national park,” added Dot. “Doesn’t seem altogether
right.”
“Oh, we’re all glad to have Jockey Hollow Park here in Pentville,” Betty
was quick to say. “It will put us on the map,” and she laughed prettily.
“And of course, if they decide to take in this cottage, which isn’t quite
sure, Granny will get something from the state for that. But she would
get a lot more money, and so would Cousin Viney and Dick and I, if we
could find the papers that prove we are the rightful heirs to the old
Hall. As it is, it has reverted to the state. But I believe there is
something about holding the estimated value of the place in court for a
certain number of years to give us a chance to prove ownership. Only I’m
afraid we never can.”
“No,” chimed in Granny entering the room just then with fresh tea, “I’m
afraid we never can. There was a time when I had hope, and I did all I
could to hold this man Callahan—who isn’t a bad sort—from proceeding with
the demolishing of the Hall. But now I have about given up. Only I don’t
dare tell Cousin Viney that,” she added with a little laugh. “She is a
die-hard and last-ditcher.”
The girls enjoyed their visit, though they were a little anxious about
the return of Sim and Arden. After a while they decided they would walk
around and wait rather than stay indoors, for the air outside was
bracing.
“Are you going back to look for those books, Betty?” asked Terry as she
and Dot took their leave.
“Not alone!” was the answer, given with a little shrug of her shoulders.
Then, pleasantly thanking her, they left.
Dot and Terry walked on, back toward the Hall. The afternoon was waning.
It would soon be dusk. They hoped Arden and Sim would not be too late.
“What do you think of it all, Dot?” Terry asked.
“You mean about the queer old lady? Potty, if you ask me.”
“Oh, yes, a bit eccentric. But I mean about things that have happened
here in Jockey Hollow.”
Dot did not answer for several seconds. Then she said:
“Terry, I believe there is something mysterious here, but it isn’t
ghosts, though that’s what you can call them.”
Terry wondered what Dot meant.