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Page 45
But alas! at this point I remembered that this, as well as all
other outside doors, had invariably been protected by bolt, and
that these bolts had never been found disturbed. Veritably I was
busying myself for nothing over this old vestibule. Yet before I
left it I gave it another glance; satisfied myself that its walls
were solid; in fact, built of brick like the house. This on two
sides; the door occupied the third and showed the same unbroken
coat of thick, old paint, its surface barely hidden by the cabinet
placed at right angles to it. Enough of it, however, remained
exposed to view to give me an opportunity of admiring its sturdy
panels and its old-fashioned lock. The door was further secured by
heavy pivoted bars extending from jamb to jamb. An egg-and-dart
molding extended all around the casing, where the inner door had
once hung. All solid, all very old-fashioned, but totally
unsuggestive of any reasonable solution of the mystery I had
vaguely hoped it to explain. Was I mistaken in my theory, and must
I look elsewhere for what I still honestly expected to find?
Undoubtedly; and with this decision I turned to leave the recess,
when a sensation, of too peculiar a nature for me readily to
understand it, caused me to stop short, and look down at my feet in
an inquiring way and afterward to lift the rug on which I had been
standing and take a look at the floor underneath. It was covered
with carpet, like the rest of the hall, but this did not disguise
the fact that it sloped a trifle toward the outside wall. Had not
the idea been preposterous, I should have said that the weight of
the cabinet had been too much for it, causing it to sag quite
perceptibly at the base-board. But this seemed too improbable to
consider. Old as the house was, it was not old enough for its
beams to have rolled. Yet the floor was certainly uneven, and,
what was stranger yet, had, in sagging, failed to carry the base-
board with it. This I could see by peering around the side of the
cabinet. Was it an important enough fact to call for explanation?
Possibly not; yet when I had taken a short leap up and come down on
what was certainly an unstable floor, I decided that I should never
be satisfied till I had seen that cabinet removed and the floor
under it rigidly examined.
Yet when I came to take a look at this projection from the library
window and saw that this floor, like that of the many entrances,
was only the height of one step from the ground, I felt the folly
into which my inquiring spirit had led me, and would have dismissed
the whole subject from my mind if my eyes had not detected at that
moment on one of the tables an unusually thin paper-knife. This
gave me an idea. Carrying it back with me into the recess, I got
down on my knees, and first taking the precaution to toss a little
stick-pin of mine under the cabinet to be reached after in case I
was detected there by Nixon, I insinuated the cutter between the
base-board and the floor and found that I could not only push it in
an inch or more before striking the brick, but run it quite freely
around from one corner of the recess to the other. This was surely
surprising. The exterior of this vestibule must be considerably
larger than the interior would denote. What occupied the space
between? I went upstairs full of thought. Sometime, and that
before long, I would have that cabinet removed.
CHAPTER XIII
A DISCOVERY
Mrs. Packard came in very soon after this. She was accompanied by
two friends and I could hear them talking and laughing in her room
upstairs all the afternoon. It gave me leisure, but leisure was
not what I stood in need of, just now. I desired much more an
opportunity to pursue my inquiries, for I knew why she had brought
these friends home with her and lent herself to a merriment that
was not natural to her. She wished to forestall thought; to keep
down dread; to fill the house so full of cheer that no whisper
should reach her from that spirit-world she had come to fear. She
had seen--or believed that she had seen--a specter, and she had
certainly heard a laugh that had come from no explicable human
source.
The brightness of the sunshiny day aided her unconsciously in this
endeavor. But I foresaw the moment when this brightness would
disappear and her friends say good-by. Then the shadows must fall
again more heavily than ever, because of their transient lifting.
I almost wished she had indeed gone with her husband, and found
myself wondering why he had not asked her to do so when he found
what it was that depressed her. Perhaps he had, and it was she who
had held back. She may have made up her mind to conquer this
weakness, and to conquer it where it had originated and necessarily
held the strongest sway. At all events, he was gone and she was
here, and I had done nothing as yet to relieve that insidious dread
with which she must anticipate a night in this house without his
presence.
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