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Page 44
Near the place where I stood (marked A on the plan), had occurred
most of the phenomena, which could be located at all. Here the
spectral hand had been seen stopping the clock. Here the shape
had passed encountered by Mr. Weston's cook, and just a few steps
beyond where the library door opened under the stairs Mr. Searles
had seen the flitting figure which had shut his mouth on the
subject of his tenants' universal folly. From the front then
toward the back these manifestations had invariably peeped to
disappear--where? That was what I was to determine; what I am
sure Mayor Packard would wish me to determine if he knew the whole
situation as I knew it from his wife's story and the record I had
just read at the agent's office.
Alas! there were many points of exit from this portion of the hall.
The drawing-room opened near; so did Mayor Packard's study; then
there was the kitchen with its various offices, ending as I knew in
the cellar stairs. Nearer I could see the door leading into the
dining-room and, opening closer yet, the short side hall running
down to what had once been the shallow vestibule of a small side
entrance, but which, as I had noted many times in passing to and
from the dining-room, was now used as a recess or alcove to hold a
cabinet of Indian curios. In which of these directions should I
carry my inquiry? All looked equally unpromising, unless it was
Mayor Packard's study, and that no one with the exception of Mr.
Steele ever entered save by his invitation, not even his wife. I
could not hope to cross that threshold, nor did I greatly desire to
invade the kitchen, especially while Nixon was there. Should I
have to wait till the mayor's return for the cooperation my task
certainly demanded? It looked that way. But before yielding to
the discouragement following this thought, I glanced about me again
and suddenly remembered, first the creaking board, which had once
answered to the so-called spirit's flight, and secondly the fact
which common sense should have suggested before, that if my theory
were true and the secret presence, whose coming and going I had
been considering, had fled by some secret passage leading to the
neighboring house, then by all laws of convenience and natural
propriety that passage should open from the side facing the Quinlan
domicile, and not from that holding Mayor Packard's study and the
remote drawing-room.
This considerably narrowed my field of inquiry, and made me
immediately anxious to find that creaking board which promised to
narrow it further yet.
Where should I seek it? In these rear halls, of course, but I
hated to be caught pacing them at this hour. Nixon's step had not
roused it or I should have noticed it, for I was, in a way,
listening for this very sound. It was not in the direct path then
from the front door to the kitchen. Was it on one side or in the
space about the dining-room door or where the transverse corridor
met the main hall? All these floors were covered in the old-
fashioned way with carpet, which would seem to show that no new
boards had been laid and that the creaking one should still be
here.
I ventured to go as far as the transverse hall,--I was at full
liberty to enter the library. But no result followed this
experiment; my footsteps had never fallen more noiselessly. Where
could the board be? In aimless uncertainty I stepped into the
corridor and instantly a creak woke under my foot. I had located
the direction in which one of the so-called phantoms had fled. It
was down this transverse hall.
Flushed with apparent success, I looked up at the walls on either
side of me. They were gray with paint and presented one unbroken
surface from base-board to ceiling, save where the two doorways
opened, one into the library, the other into the dining-room. Had
the flying presence escaped by either of these two rooms? I knew
the dining-room well. I had had several opportunities for studying
its details. I thought I knew the library; besides, Mr. Searles
had been in the library when the shape advanced upon him from the
hall,--a fact eliminating that room as a possible source of
approach! What then was left? The recess which had once served as
an old-time entrance. Ah, that gave promise of something. It
projected directly toward where the adjacent walls had once held
two doors, between which any sort of mischief might take place.
Say that the Misses Quinlan had retained certain keys. What easier
than for one of them to enter the outer door, strike a light, open
the inner one and flash this light up through the house till steps
or voices warned her of an aroused family, when she had only to
reclose the inside door, put out the light and escape by the outer
one.
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