The four sat in the car, no one speaking for a while. Their own imaginings had gotten the best of them, evidently, though no one would admit it.
Then, suddenly, the quiet and peace surrounding the old Hall was broken, by the loud squeaking of ancient nails being pulled from hundred-year-old wood, and the shrill sounds were like the shrieks of frightened women. It startled the girls into activity.
"The workmen are back!" Arden said disappointedly. "I guess the ghost won"t dare come out."
"Too bad, girls. You almost had me believing you. But let"s go in and look around, anyway. I like old houses, with or without ghosts." Dot was still skeptical.
So they climbed out of the car and picked their way over the tangled vines and low bushes to the door: a dignified, paneled old piece decorated with a handsomely discolored bra.s.s knocker.
Dorothy, in a spirit of bravado, lifted the knocker up and rapped it down smartly. They waited a second and, still defiant, Dorothy put her hand on the bronze k.n.o.b to open the door.
No one knew just how it happened. Dorothy said she had not yet tried to open the door when it swung back of its own motion, and instantly the dim old hallway stretched before them. At that the rea.s.suring sound of hammering suddenly stopped and, gathering courage, the girls were about to enter when a shout-half scream, half moan-echoed through the old mansion.
The girls stood transfixed with terror, almost breathless. Another cry quickly followed, and then the sound of loud, hurrying footsteps could be heard. There was a rush of bodies, and three men in working clothes, powdered white with plaster dust, literally jumped down the last few steps of the great staircase and continued their maddened race out of the big front door, brushing by the astonished girls without a word.
"There!" cried Sim triumphantly. "Something"s happening now!"
"I should say so!" gasped Terry, looking at Dot, whose eyes showed wonder and who seemed too surprised to speak.
"Hey! Wait!" Arden shouted, and she turned to pursue the last of the three frightened men still wildly running away. "Wait! Tell us what"s the matter!"
The workman, beating his hands on his trousers to knock out some of the dust, barely hesitated.
"Lady, I can"t wait!" he exclaimed. "We saw the dead body of an old woman stretched out on a bed. We saw her in a room below where we were working-saw her through a hole I tore in the floor and that went into the ceiling of her room. We saw her plain! I"m finished on this job!" He had to wait to say all that, but then turned and ran on.
"Oh, please!" begged Arden. "Just where did you see her? Tell us! Is she really dead?"
"I didn"t go near her," he said breathlessly. "I don"t want to get mixed up in no murder case. But she sure looked dead to me-lying flat on her back-in a red dress-or something-and pale-pale as--" He looked toward his retreating companions, now some distance down the road, and then, with a frightened glance up at the old Hall, he turned again and ran away.
"Well, what do you think of this?" demanded Sim. "Shall we go in?" She turned to Dorothy as though asking her permission.
"I-er-why, of course!" the visitor decided, perhaps a bit hesitantly. "If there"s anything wrong we ought to notify the police. Yes, we must do that."
It was a bold decision. It rather pleased Arden and her chums.
CHAPTER V Baffled
Still, no one wanted to be the first to enter, and they stood on the step, frightened but intensely curious.
Arden gave Terry a little push, hinting that she should lead, but Terry sidestepped. Sim sneaked around the others until she was on the edge of the step, nearer the car.
"Do you think it could be so terrible?" she questioned.
"We ought to find out. Besides, if it"s someone dead-" Dorothy stopped-"it couldn"t hurt us anyway."
She started cautiously just a few steps, but at least they had begun to move. The other three, in close formation, followed. At the foot of the stairs they stopped; listened. There was not a sound. The daylight filtering in through a stained-gla.s.s window at the first landing cast eerie shadows and even made the girls" faces take on a sickish pale color.
Dorothy put her hand on the worn old stair rail and slid it up ahead of her as though to pull herself after it. A deep indentation checked the sliding hand and acted like a brake.
Then Terry, growing a little braver, deliberately went up a few steps, and in this fashion, by starting and stopping every second or two, and listening, cautiously they reached the first landing.
There they halted. But only for a second, for something drew them on; some power they could not resist urged them up almost against all reason, until they were on the second floor of the weird old house.
There the hall ran the length of the house. All furnishing was gone from the hall except an old dusty chest that stood in a dark, dingy corner.
Rooms were on either side of the pa.s.sage, but the doors were all closed except one. Somehow Dorothy felt this was The Room. But to look in would be another matter. What was in there? Nothing at all or--?
They must find out. The old adage, "safety in numbers," came back to Dorothy. She motioned to the other frightened girls. They crept forward on tiptoe.
Now in line with the opened doorway, Dorothy forced herself to look in.
She saw a large square room with shuttered windows through which the morning light barely seeped in splintered blades. There was the bed.
The bed! That dreadful possibility!
How could she look? No longer brave, she shut her eyes. Her buzzing head seemed not to belong to her. But the next moment, of its own accord, it turned again to that dreadful resting place. A deep sigh, a gasp, from one of the girls behind Dorothy startled her further, and she could delay no longer. She opened her eyes.
The bed was empty!
A four-poster that must once have boasted a canopied top, the huge old bed stood stark and sinister. A dark bedraggled cloth covered the mattress, but happily-and how glad they were-nothing else was there.
"Whew!" Terry ran a trembling hand across her forehead. "I feel as if I had just gone through a clothes wringer."
"Such suspense! I lived a hundred years coming up those stairs," declared Sim. "Is my face white?"
Arden did not feel like joking. She went closer to the bed.
"Absolutely empty! Those men must have very vivid imaginations," she declared with a little laugh. "Seeing things, that way."
"This time three men saw the same thing, or claim they did. The other time it was two who saw and who also claimed they heard the thudding of the soldier"s boots. Some complications even for ghosts," Sim remarked.
"It"s very queer. The spirits of the departed owners of the Hall must be rising in protest against the invasion of the wreckers," Terry suggested, not too merrily.
"Are you sure, my dear friends, you had nothing to do with this?" Dorothy asked, once more skeptical.
That question brought a storm of protest.
"Dorothy!" exclaimed Arden, "do you really think _we_ could have scared away those workmen?"
"Well, if you feel that way, Dot," began Terry. But she didn"t; she told them so. And once more it was a united party that looked for further evidence of ghosts, real or imaginary.
The inevitable fireplace was built in the wall not far from the suspected bed. An old squat rocker stood lonely and forlorn in the center, and a packing box had gathered dust under a window-that was all. The floor was also dusty, but Dorothy stooped down and, with royal disregard, swept a spot clean with a dainty lace-trimmed handkerchief.
"Look at the floor, girls," she said. "See how wide the boards are and the pegs to hold them down. They don"t make floors that way any more. All these boards were cut and planed and the pegs made and fitted in by hand."
"I wish I knew more about such things," Terry remarked, inspecting the floor. "All I know is that this must have been a fine old house, and I wish it wasn"t going to be torn down."