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Updated: April 30, 2025
I called with all my might, and was rewarded by a piercing shriek from Liddy and the slam of the trunk-room door. I felt easier after that, although the room was oppressively hot and enervating. I had no doubt the search for me would now come in the right direction, and after a little, I dropped into a doze. How long I slept I do not know.
"And now, dear," Miss Clyde said, "perhaps you and Carita would better go up to your rooms and get your things out of your trunks. Miss North wanted them emptied as soon as possible, so that they could be taken to the trunk-room." "All right, Aunt Lucinda. Good-by then good-by! No, Uncle Cliff, I'm going to be good now. My love to everybody on the ranch everybody, remember."
"I've got to go to the trunk-room for her at this hour, and it next door to the mortuary!" As the first rays of the summer sun came through the window, shadowing the fire-escape like a lattice on the wall of the little gray-walled room, Carlotta sat up in her bed and lighted the candle on the stand. The night assistant, who dreamed sometimes of fire, stood nervously by.
I could hear it strike on something with a sharp, metallic sound, but it was impossible for me to tell how far it had gone. I gave up finally and went down the ladder again, getting in through the ball-room window without being observed. I went back at once to the trunk-room, and, sitting down on a box, I gave my mind, as consistently as I could, to the problem before me.
I knew Liddy would want my heliotrope poplin, and she's a fright in lavender. Once or twice I heard mice in the partitions, and so I sat on the table, with my feet on the chair. I imagined I could hear the search going on through the house, and once some one came into the trunk-room; I could distinctly hear footsteps. "In the chimney! In the chimney!"
His expression was very odd when he looked at it, and the first thing he did was to try to discover what object, if any, such a hole could have. He got a piece of candle, and by enlarging the aperture a little was able to examine what lay beyond. The result was nil. The trunk-room, although heated by steam heat, like the rest of the house, boasted of a fireplace and mantel as well.
Could it have been Thomas? The key to the east entry made this a possibility. But why was he there, if it were indeed he? Who had made the hole in the trunk-room wall? It was not vandalism. It had been done quietly, and with deliberate purpose. If I had only known how to read the purpose of that gaping aperture what I might have saved in anxiety and mental strain!
There was an open fireplace in my dressing-room, but none in the bedroom, and as I lay there, looking around, I thought of something that made me sit up suddenly. The trunk-room, just over my head, had an open fireplace and a brick chimney, and yet, there was nothing of the kind in my room. I got out of bed and examined the opposite wall closely.
One end, however, over the east wing, had been left only roughly finished, the intention having been to convert it into a ball-room at some future time. The maids' rooms, trunk-room, and various store-rooms, including a large airy linen-room, opened from a long corridor, like that on the second floor. And in the trunk-room, as Liddy had said, was a fresh break in the plaster.
So it was Alex, Jack Bailey, who had been our ghost. Not only had he alarmed Louise and himself, he admitted on the circular staircase, but he had dug the hole in the trunk-room wall, and later sent Eliza into hysteria.
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