Chapter 7 The Hidden Staircase by Carolyn Keene
Frightening Eyes
Within five seconds Nancy had reached the second floor. The violin playing suddenly ceased.
She raced into Miss Flora’s room, from which the sounds had seemed to come. The radio was not on. Quickly Nancy felt the instrument to see if it were even slightly warm to prove it had been in use.
“The music wasn’t being played on this,” she told herself, finding the radio cool.
As Nancy dashed from the room, she almost ran into Helen. “What did you find out?” her friend asked breathlessly.
“Nothing so far,” Nancy replied, as she raced into Aunt Rosemary’s bedroom to check the bedside radio in there.
This instrument, too, felt cool to the touch.
She and Helen stood in the center of the room, puzzled frowns creasing their foreheads. “There was music, wasn’t there?” Helen questioned.
“I distinctly heard it,” Nancy replied. “But where is the person who played the violin? Or put a disk on a record player, or turned on a hidden radio? Helen, I’m positive an intruder comes into this mansion by some secret entrance and tries to frighten us all.”
“And succeeds,” Helen answered. “It’s positively eerie.”
“And dangerous,” Nancy thought.
“Let’s continue our search right after breakfast tomorrow,” Helen proposed.
“We will,” Nancy responded. “But in the meantime I believe Miss Flora and Aunt Rosemary, to say nothing of ourselves, need some police protection.”
“I think you’re right,” Helen agreed. “Let’s go downstairs and suggest it to the others.”
The girls returned to the first floor and Nancy told Mrs. Hayes and her mother of the failure to find the cause of the violin playing, and what she had in mind.
“Oh dear, the police will only laugh at us,” Miss Flora objected.
“Mother dear,” said her daughter, “the captain and his men didn’t believe us before because they thought we were imagining things. But Nancy and Helen heard music at two different times and they saw the chandelier rock. I’m sure that Captain Rossland will believe Nancy and send a guard out here.”
Nancy smiled at Miss Flora. “I shan’t ask the captain to believe in a ghost or even hunt for one. I think all we should request at the moment is that he have a man patrol the grounds here at night. I’m sure that we’re perfectly safe while we’re all awake, but I must admit I’d feel a little uneasy about going to bed wondering what that ghost may do next.”
Mrs. Turnbull finally agreed to the plan and Nancy went to the telephone. Captain Rossland readily agreed to send a man out a little later.
“He’ll return each night as long as you need him,” the officer stated. “And I’ll tell him not to ring the bell to tell you when he comes. If there is anyone who breaks into the mansion by a secret entrance, it would be much better if he does not know a guard is on duty.”
“I understand,” said Nancy.
When Miss Flora, her daughter, and the two girls went to bed, they were confident they would have a restful night. Nancy felt that if there was no disturbance, then it would indicate that the ghost’s means of entry into Twin Elms was directly from the outside. “In which case,” she thought, “it will mean he saw the guard and didn’t dare come inside the house.”
The young sleuth’s desire for a good night’s sleep was rudely thwarted as she awakened about midnight with a start. Nancy was sure she had heard a noise nearby. But now the house was quiet. Nancy listened intently, then finally got out of bed.
“Perhaps the noise I heard came from outdoors,” she told herself.
Tiptoeing to a window, so that she would not awaken Helen, Nancy peered out at the moonlit grounds. Shadows made by tree branches, which swayed in a gentle breeze, moved back and forth across the lawn. The scent from a rose garden in full bloom was wafted to Nancy.
“What a heavenly night!” she thought.
Suddenly Nancy gave a start. A furtive figure had darted from behind a tree toward a clump of bushes. Was he the guard or the ghost? she wondered. As Nancy watched intently to see if she could detect any further movements of the mysterious figure, she heard padding footsteps in the hall. In a moment there was a loud knock on her door.
“Nancy! Wake up! Nancy! Come quick!”
The voice was Miss Flora’s, and she sounded extremely frightened. Nancy sped across the room, unlocked her door and opened it wide. By this time Helen was awake and out of bed.
“What happened?” she asked sleepily.
Aunt Rosemary had come into the hall also. Her mother did not say a word; just started back toward her own bedroom. The others followed, wondering what they would find. Moonlight brightened part of the room, but the area near the hall was dark.
“There! Up there!” Miss Flora pointed to a corner of the room near the hall.
Two burning eyes looked down on the watchers!
Instantly Nancy snapped on the wall light and the group gazed upward at a large brown owl perched on the old-fashioned, ornamental picture molding.
“Oh!” Aunt Rosemary cried out. “How did that bird ever get in here?”
The others did not answer at once. Then Nancy, not wishing to frighten Miss Flora, remarked as casually as she could, “It probably came down the chimney.”
“But—” Helen started to say.
Nancy gave her friend a warning wink and Helen did not finish the sentence. Nancy was sure she was going to say that the damper had been closed and the bird could not possibly have flown into the room from the chimney. Turning to Miss Flora, Nancy asked whether or not her bedroom door had been locked.
“Oh, yes,” the elderly woman insisted. “I wouldn’t leave it unlocked for anything.”
Nancy did not comment. Knowing that Miss Flora was a bit forgetful, she thought it quite possible that the door had not been locked. An intruder had entered, let the owl fly to the picture molding, then made just enough noise to awaken the sleeping woman.
To satisfy her own memory about the damper, Nancy went over to the fireplace and looked inside. The damper was closed.
“But if the door to the hall was locked,” she reasoned, “then the ghost has some other way of getting into this room. And he escaped the detection of the guard.”
“I don’t want that owl in here all night,” Miss Flora broke into Nancy’s reverie. “We’ll have to get it out.”
“That’s not going to be easy,” Aunt Rosemary spoke up. “Owls have very sharp claws and beaks and they use them viciously on anybody who tries to disturb them. Mother, you come and sleep in my room the rest of the night. We’ll chase the owl out in the morning.”
Nancy urged Miss Flora to go with her daughter. “I’ll stay here and try getting Mr. Owl out of the house. Have you a pair of old heavy gloves?”
“I have some in my room,” Aunt Rosemary replied. “They’re thick leather. I use them for gardening.”
She brought them to Nancy, who put the gloves on at once. Then she suggested that Aunt Rosemary and her mother leave. Nancy smiled. “Helen and I will take over Operation Owl.”
As the door closed behind the two women, Nancy dragged a chair to the corner of the room beneath the bird. She was counting on the fact that the bright overhead light had dulled the owl’s vision and she would be able to grab it without too much trouble.
“Helen, will you open one of the screens, please?” she requested. “And wish me luck!”
“Don’t let that thing get loose,” Helen warned as she unfastened the screen and held it far out.
Nancy reached up and by stretching was just able to grasp the bird. In a lightning movement she had put her two hands around its body and imprisoned its claws. At once the owl began to bob its head and peck at her arms above the gloves. Wincing with pain, she stepped down from the chair and ran across the room.
The bird squirmed, darting its beak in first one direction, then another. But Nancy managed to hold the owl in such a position that most of the pecking missed its goal. She held the bird out the window, released it, and stepped back. Helen closed the screen and quickly fastened it.
“Oh!” Nancy said, gazing ruefully at her wrists which now showed several bloody digs from the owl’s beak. “I’m glad that’s over.”
“And I am too,” said Helen. “Let’s lock Miss Flora’s door from the outside, so that ghost can’t bring in any owls to the rest of us.”
Suddenly Helen grabbed Nancy’s arm. “I just thought of something,” she said. “There’s supposed to be a police guard outside. Yet the ghost got in here without being seen.”
“Either that, or there’s a secret entrance to this mansion which runs underground, probably to one of the outbuildings on the property.”
Nancy now told about the furtive figure she had seen dart from behind a tree. “I must find out right away if he was the ghost or the guard. I’ll do a little snooping around. It’s possible the guard didn’t show up.” Nancy smiled. “But if he did, and he’s any good, he’ll find me!”
“All right,” said Helen. “But, Nancy, do be careful. You’re really taking awful chances to solve the mystery of Twin Elms.”
Nancy laughed softly as she walked back to the girls’ bedroom. She dressed quickly, then went downstairs, put the back-door key in her pocket, and let herself out of the house. Stealthily she went down the steps and glided to a spot back of some bushes.
Seeing no one around, she came from behind them and ran across the lawn to a large maple tree. She stood among the shadows for several moments, then darted out toward a building which in Colonial times had been used as the kitchen.
Halfway there, she heard a sound behind her and turned. A man stood in the shadows not ten feet away. Quick as a wink one hand flew to a holster on his hip.
“Halt!” he commanded.