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Page 48
Carrying the box nearer the light, I pulled off its already
loosened string and lifted the cover. In doing this I suffered
from no qualms of conscience. My duty seemed very clear to me, and
the end, a totally impersonal one, more than justified the means.
A folded paper met my eyes--one--not of the kind I expected; then
some letters whose address I caught at a glance. "Elizabeth
Brainard"--a discovery which might have stayed my hand at another
time, but nothing could stay it now. I opened the paper and looked
at it. Alas! it was only her marriage certificate; I had taken
all this trouble and all this risk, only to rescue for her the
proof of her union with one John Silverthorn Brainard. The same
name was on her letters. Why had Bess so strongly insisted on a
secret search, and why had she concealed her license in so strange
a place?
Greatly sobered, I restored the paper to its place in the box,
slipped on the string and prepared to leave the cellar with it.
Then I remembered the brick on the floor and the open hole where it
had been, and afterward the something which had fallen over within
and what this space might mean in a seemingly solid wall.
More excited now even than I had been at any time before, I thrust
my hand in again and tried to sound the depth of this unexpected
far-reaching hole; but the size of my arm stood in the way of my
experiment, and, drawing out my hand, I looked about for a stick
and finding one, plunged that in. To my surprise and growing
satisfaction it went in its full length--about three feet. There
was a cavity on the other side of this wall of very sizable
dimensions. Had I struck the suspected passage? I had great hope
of it. Nothing else would account for so large a space on the
other side of a wall which gave every indication of being one with
the foundation. Catching up my stick I made a rude estimate of its
location, after which I replaced the brick, put out the gas, and
caught up Bess' box. Trembling, and more frightened now than at my
descent at my own footfall and tremulous pursuing shadow, I went
up-stairs.
As I passed the corridor leading to the converted vestibule which
had so excited my interest in the afternoon, I paused and made a
hurried calculation. If the stick had been three feet long, as I
judged, and my stride was thirty inches, then the place of that
hole in the wall below was directly in a line with where I now
stood,--in other words, under the vestibule floor, as I had
already, suspected.
How was I to verify this without disturbing Mrs. Packard? That
was a question to sleep on. But it took me a long time to get to
sleep.
CHAPTER XIV
I SEEK HELP
A bad night, a very bad night, but for all that I was down early
the next morning. Bess must have her box and I a breath of fresh
air before breakfast, to freshen me up a bit and clear my mind for
the decisive act, since my broken rest had failed to refresh me.
As I reached the parlor floor Nixon came out of the reception-room.
"Oh, Miss!" he exclaimed, "going out?" surprised, doubtless, to see
me in my hat and jacket.
"A few steps," I answered, and then stopped, not a little
disturbed; for in moving to open the door he had discovered that
the key was not in it and was showing his amazement somewhat
conspicuously.
"Mrs. Packard took the key up to her room," I explained, thinking
that some sort of explanation was in order. "She is nervous, you
know, and probably felt safer with it there."
The slow shake of his head had a tinge of self-reproach in it.
"I was sorry to go out," he muttered. "I was very sorry to go
out,"--but the look which he turned upon me the next minute was of
a very different sort. "I don't see how you can go out yet," said
he, "unless you go by the back way. That leads into Stanton
Street; but perhaps you had just as lief go into Stanton Street."
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