CHAPTER X THE SECRET PASSAGE
"Oh, tell Aunt Aggie I think the Winter Palace is the most wonderfulplace in the whole world!" cried Sylvia enthusiastically. "Tell her thatthe ladies-in-waiting are the dearest that ever lived, and the threecourt jesters are the funniest. Tell her I'm so happy I feel as though Iwere going to burst! And be _sure_ and tell her that I'm going to getwell!"
Sylvia had not been able to conceal her rapture for a minute afterHinpoha had told her the news the day before. They all knew she knew it,and when they saw her rapture they did not scold Hinpoha for letting thecat out of the bag before the time set. To have given her those two extradays of happiness was worth the sacrifice of their surprise. All morningshe had filled the house with her song and chattered happily of the timewhen she would go camping with the Winnebagos.
"We've made more plans than we can carry out in a hundred years!" shetold Nyoda gleefully. "Oh, _please_ live that long, so you can help us doall we've planned." Nyoda smiled back into the starry eyes, and promisedfaithfully to live forever, if need be, to accommodate her.
"I'll give Aunt Aggie all your messages," she said now, stopping in theact of drawing on her gloves to pat the shining head.
"You're _so_ good to go and see Aunt Aggie!"
Nyoda patted her on the head again and then started cityward with her bigbox of delicacies for Mrs. Deane. With her went Migwan and Gladys andHinpoha, who wanted to do some shopping in the city.
Sahwah and Katherine refused to give up their search for the passage evenfor one afternoon. Sahwah had an idea that possibly there was a secretdoor in the back of one of the built-in bookcases in the library, and hadNyoda's permission to take out all the books and look. Justice and Slimand the Captain had promised to help take out the books. Sylvia waswheeled into the library where she could watch the proceedings, and thework of removing the books began. Sherry looked on for a while and thenwent out to tinker with the car.
Section by section they took the books from the cases and examined thewall behind them, but it was apparently solid. Sahwah and the Captainworked faithfully, taking out the books and replacing them, but Katherinewould stop to read, and Slim soon fell asleep with his head against theseat of a chair. Justice spied Slim after a while and began to throwmagazines at him. Slim wakened with an indignant grunt and returned thevolley and then the two engaged in a good-natured wrestling bout.
"I know a new trick," said Justice. "It's for handling a fellow twiceyour size. A Japanese fellow down in Washington taught it to me. Let mepractice it on you, will you? You're the first one I've seen since Ilearned it who was so much heavier than I."
Slim consented amiably enough and Justice proceeded with a series ofoperations that rolled his big antagonist around on the floor like a mealsack.
"Don't make so much noise, boys!" commanded Katherine, putting a warningfinger to her lips. "Don't you see that Sylvia has fallen asleep? Go onout into the hall and do your wrestling tricks out there."
Slim and Justice removed themselves to the hall and continued theirwrestling, and the Captain abandoned the books to watch them and cheerthem on.
"Bet you can't back him all the way up the stairway!" said the Captain,as Justice forced Slim up the first step.
"Bet I can!" replied Justice, and then began a terrific struggle, scienceagainst bulk. Slim fought every inch of the way, but, nevertheless, wentup steadily, step by step. Sahwah and Katherine, drawn by the Captain'sadmiring exclamations at Justice's feat, also abandoned the books andcame out to watch.
Justice got Slim as far as the landing, and there Slim got his arms woundaround the stair post and anchored himself effectively. One step abovethe landing was as far as Justice could get him. Justice leaned over himand tried another trick to break his grip on the post and the two weresee-sawing back and forth when suddenly the Captain gave a yell that madeJustice loosen his hold on Slim and ask in a scared voice, "What's thematter?"
"The landing!" gasped the Captain. "Look at the landing!"
Justice looked, and the others looked, and they all stood speechless withamazement, for the stair landing was doing something that they had neverin all their born days seen a stair landing do before. It was sliding outof its place, sliding out over the bottom flight of stairs as smoothlyand silently as though on oiled wheels. The five stood still and blinkedstupidly at the phenomenon, unable to believe their eyes. The landingcame out until there was a gap of about two feet between it and the wall,and then noiselessly came to a stop. In the opening thus made they couldsee the top of an iron ladder set upright against the wall below.
Sahwah rallied her stunned senses first. "The secret passage!" she criedtriumphantly.
"Daggers and dirks!" exclaimed the Captain.
"What made it open up?" asked Katherine curiously. "Where is the springthat works it?"
Justice and the Captain shook their heads.
"The post!" exclaimed Slim, mopping the perspiration from his brow. "Iwas pulling at it for dear life when all of a sudden something clickedinside of it. Then the Captain yelled that the stair landing was comingout. The spring that works it is in the landing post!"
Slim reached out and tugged away at the post again, but nothing happened.Then he got hold of the carved head and began to twist it and it turnedunder his hands. There was a click, faint, but audible to the eagerlylistening ears, and the landing began to slide smoothly back into place.In a moment the opening was closed, and the landing was apparently asolid piece of carpentry.
"Whoever invented that was a genius!" exclaimed Justice in admiration."And all the while we were trying to find a secret passage through thewalls by tapping on the panels! If it hadn't been for Slim we could havespent all the rest of our lives looking for it and never would have foundit, for we never in all the wide world would have thought of twisting thehead of that stair post. Slim, you weren't born in vain after all."
"See if you can make it open up again," said Sahwah.
Slim twisted the head of the post, and presently there came the nowfamiliar click and the floor slid out with uncanny quietness.
"Let's go down!" said the Captain, going to the edge of the opening andlooking in.
"What's down there?" asked Katherine.
"Nothing but space," replied the Captain, straining his eyes to peer intothe darkness, "at least that's all I can see from here. Give me yourflashlight, Slim, I'm going down."
Slim handed him his pocket flash and the Captain began to descend theladder. He counted twelve rungs before he felt solid footing under him.He found himself in a tiny room about six feet square, whose walls andfloor were of stone. The top was open to allow the passage of the ladder.The Captain figured out that he was standing level with the floor of thebasement and that the space above the opening at the top of the littleroom was the space under the stairway. There was a door in the outsidewall, next to the ladder.
"What's down there?" asked Sahwah from above.
"Just a little place with a door in it," replied the Captain, retracinghis steps up the ladder.
"The passage isn't inside the house at all," he reported when he reachedthe top. "It's _outside_. There's a door down there that probably opensinto it. I'm going to get my coat and see where the passage leads to."
"We'll all go with you," said Sahwah, and it was she who went down theladder first when the expedition started.
The Captain came next, carrying a lantern he had found in the kitchen. Atthe bottom of the ladder he lit the lantern. The first thing its lightfell upon was a broken glass jar, lying in a corner, and from it thereextended across the floor a bright red stream. Sahwah recoiled when shesaw it, but the Captain stooped over and streaked his finger through it.
"Paint!" he exclaimed. "Red paint."
"Oh!" said Sahwah. "It looked just like blood. Why--that's what must havemade the footprints on the stairs! The man must have stepped in thispaint! He came in through this passage!"
The other thr
ee had come down by that time, and they all looked at eachother in dumb astonishment. How clear it all was now! The footprintsbeginning under the stair landing--the mystery connected with theentrance of the intruder--they all fitted together perfectly.
"The paint's still sticky," said the Captain, examining his finger, whichhad a bright red daub on the end. "It must have been spilled there quiterecently."
"The burglar must have spilled it himself," said Katherine.
"But how on earth would a burglar know about this secret entrance?"marveled Sahwah.
The others were not prepared to answer.
"Maybe Hercules told somebody," said Justice.
"But Hercules doesn't seem to know about it himself," said Katherine.
"He _says_ he doesn't, but I'll bet he does, just the same," saidJustice.
"Hercules wouldn't tell any burglar about this way of getting into thehouse!" Sahwah defended stoutly. "He's as true as steel. If anybody toldthe burglar it was somebody beside Hercules."
"Maybe the burglar discovered the other end of the passage himself, byaccident, just as we did this end," said Slim.
"Come on," said the Captain impatiently, "let's go and see where thatother end is."
"Wait a minute, what's this," said Justice, spying a long rope of twistedcopper wire hanging down close beside the ladder. This rope came throughthe opening above them; that was as far as their eyes could follow it.Its beginning was somewhere up in the space under the stairs.
"Pull it and see what happens," said Slim.
"I bet it works the slide opening from below here," said Justice. He gaveit a vigorous pull and they heard the same click that had followed thetwisting of the stair post. In a moment the light that had come downthrough the opening vanished, and they knew that the landing had goneback into position. Another pull at the rope and it opened up again.
"Pretty slick," commented Justice. "It works two ways, both coming andgoing. A fellow on the inside could get out, and a fellow on the outsidecould get in, without the people in the house knowing anything about it."
"Are you coming now?" asked the Captain. "I'm going to start."
He opened the door in the outer wall as he spoke. It swung inward,crowding them in the narrow space in which they stood. A rush of cold airgreeted them. The Captain held the lantern in front of him and peered outinto the darkness.
"There are some steps down," he said.
He stepped over the threshold and led the way. Six steps down broughtthem to the floor of a rock-lined passage, a natural tunnel through thehill.
"Carver Hill must be a regular stone quarry," said Justice. "All thecellar walls of Carver House are made of slabs of stone like this, and sois the foundation."
"There are big stones cropping out all over the hill," said the Captain."It's a regular granite monument. What a jolly tunnel this is!"
"And what a gorgeous way of escape!" remarked Justice admiringly.
"But what need would there be of an underground way of escape?" askedKatherine wonderingly. "What were the people escaping from?"
"This house was built in the days of the Colonies," replied Justicesagely, "and the Carvers were patriots. That probably put them in apretty tight position once in a while. No doubt they concealed Americansoldiers in their home at times. This passage was probably built as ameans of entrance and escape when things got too hot up above. Britishtroops may have been quartered in the house, or watching the outside.What a peach of a way this was to evade them!" he exclaimed in a burst ofadmiration.
"I wish I'd lived in those times," he went on, with envy in his tone."They didn't keep fellows out of the army on account of their throatsthen. What fun a soldier must have had, getting in and out of this house,right under the nose of the British! Suppose they suspected he was in thehouse and came in to search for him? He'd just turn the post on thestairs, and click! the landing would slide open and down the ladder he'dgo and out through this passage. The enemy would never discover where hewent in a million years."
"Come on, let's see where this passage comes out," urged the Captain, andstarted ahead with the lantern.
The passage sloped steeply downward, with frequent turns and twists.
"We're going down the hill," said the Captain.
"Whoever heard of going down the _inside_ of a hill," said Sahwah.
"It's like going through that passage under Niagara Falls," said Slim,"only it's not quite so wet."
After another sharp turn and a steep drop they came out in a good-sizedchamber whose walls, floor and ceiling were all of rock.
"It's a cave!" shouted the Captain, and his voice echoed and re-echoedweirdly, until the place seemed to be filled with dozens of voices. Acold draught played upon them from somewhere, and, although they all hadon sweaters and caps, they shivered in the chilly atmosphere. There wasno glimmer of light anywhere to indicate an opening to the outside.
The light of the lantern fell upon a wooden bench and a rough table, bothpainted bright red. On the table stood two tall bottles, thickly coveredwith dust, and between them was a grinning human skull with two crossbones behind it. Katherine and Sahwah involuntarily jumped and shriekedwhen they saw it.
"Somebody died down here!" gasped Sahwah.
"Nonsense!" said Justice. "It was Uncle Jasper playing pirate. See,there's his chest over there."
Against the rocky wall stood a large wooden chest, likewise paintedbright red, with a huge black skull and cross bones done on its lid.
"That must be Uncle Jasper's 'Dead Man's Chest,' that he mentions in hisdiary," said Sahwah. "Of course, this is the pirates' den where he andTad played."
The five looked around them with interest at this playroom of the twoboys of long ago, its treasures living on after they were both dead andgone. Truly the den was a place to inspire terror in the heart of aluckless captive. Skulls and cross bones were painted all over the rockywalls, grinning reflections of the one on the table. Sahwah and Katherineclung to each other and peered nervously over each other's shoulders intothe darkness beyond the radius of the lantern light.
"What a peach of a pirate's cave!" exclaimed the Captainenthusiastically. "Captain Kidd himself couldn't have had a better one.It seems as if any minute we'll hear a voice muttering, 'Pieces of eight,pieces of eight.'" He picked up one of the bottles from the table and setit down again with a resounding bang.
"'Fifteen men on a dead man's chest, Yo! ho! ho! And a bottle of rum!'"
he shouted in a fierce voice which the echoes gave back from all around."This must have been the life!"
"Those must have been the bottles from which they drank the molasses andwater that they used for rum," said Katherine. "What fun it must havebeen!"
"I wish I'd known Uncle Jasper Carver when he was a boy," sighed theCaptain. "He must have been no end of a chap, and Tad, too."
"Let's have a look at what's in the chest," said Justice.
He raised up the heavy oak lid and the Captain held the lantern downwhile they all crowded around to see. One by one he lifted out thepirates' treasures and held them up; wooden swords, several tomahawks, awhite flag with a skull and cross bones done on it in India ink, astuffed alligator, a ship's compass, a section of a hawser, a heavy ironchain, deeply rusted, a pocket telescope, a brass dagger, a pair of bowsand a number of real flint-headed arrows, and a box of loose arrow headswhich the Captain seized eagerly.
"Glory! what wouldn't I have given for a bunch of real Indian arrow headswhen I was a kid," he said enviously.
"They look like Delawares," said Justice knowingly, pawing them over.
"How can you tell?" asked the Captain.
Justice explained the characteristics of the dreaded weapon of theLenni-Lenape.
Slim and the Captain could not dispute him because they didn't knowanything about arrow heads, so they listened to him in respectfulsilence.
"They must have had fun, those two," sighed the Captain enviously. "Ithought _I_ had fun when I was a kid, but Uncle Jasper Carver had it
allover me with this cave and secret passage of his."
Slim and Justice echoed his envious sigh. In their minds' eye they toohad traveled back with Uncle Jasper to his lively boyhood and saw apanorama of delightful plays passing in review, with the secret passageand the pirate's cave as the background.
The last thing that came out of the chest was a flat stone on which hadbeen carved the names "Jasper the Feend" and "Tad the Terror," bracketedtogether at both ends and surmounted by a wobbly skull and cross bones,under which was carved the legend, "Frends til Deth." When Sahwah saw itshe could not keep back the tears at the thought of this wonderful boyishfriendship which had endured through thick and thin, and then had endedso bitterly. To Sahwah the breaking up of a friendship was the most awfulthing that could happen. There were tears in Katherine's eyes, too, andthe three boys looked very solemn as the stone was laid back in thechest.
"Now let's go and see where the passage leads on to," said the Captain,when the treasures of the two youthful pirates had been replaced in thechest. At a point opposite to the passage by which they had entered thecave another passage opened, or rather, a continuation of the first one,for the cave was merely a widening out of this subterranean tunnel.
"This way out," said the Captain, lighting the way with his lantern.
"Why, there's a door here!" exclaimed the Captain, when they had gonesome thirty or forty feet into the passage.
The door was just like the one beside the ladder in Carver House;tremendously heavy, bound in brass and studded thickly with nails. It hadbeen painted over with bright red paint, but here and there the paint hadchipped off, showing the metal underneath. It was set into a doorway ofbrick and mortar. Over the knob was a curious latch, the like of whichthey had never seen. To their joy it snapped back without greatdifficulty and they got the door open.
Several stone steps down, and then they saw they were in a cellarpassage.
"The passage comes out in another house!" said the Captain. "I wonderwhose?"
"It must be that old empty brick cottage that stands at the foot of thehill," said Sahwah, who knew the lay of the land from the previoussummer. "We often used to poke around in it and wonder who had lived init. In the old days it must have been a place of safety for the Americansoldiers. It's at the back of the hill, toward the woods. The soldiersprobably escaped through the woods."
"Let's go on into the cellar proper and up into the house," said theCaptain, eager to continue his exploration.
But what he proposed was impossible, for they discovered that the end ofthe passage was blocked by a huge stone that had fallen out of the wall.It filled up the space from the floor to the low ceiling, all but a fewinches at the top and a few inches at the one side, where an irregularityin its contour did not fit against the straight side of the wall. A veryfaint light from the cellar showed through these crevices, and a colddraught of air played like a thin stream down the backs of their necks.
"There doesn't seem to be any way of getting out around that rock," saidthe Captain. "Can you see any way?"
They all looked diligently for some way to get over, or around it, orthrough it, and soon admitted that it was impossible.
"How on earth did that fellow ever get in from this end?" asked Justicein perplexity. "There isn't a ghost of a show of getting through."
"He _couldn't_ have," said Katherine decidedly, "unless he really _was_the devil, as Hercules believed."
"Or unless the stone fell after he was in," suggested the Captain.
"But if he came in this way and went out again, how does it happen thatthe door here was fastened on the other side?" asked Sahwah.
"I give it up," said Justice. "I don't believe he came in this way."
"Maybe he didn't come in through the secret passage at all," said Slim."Maybe he _did_ come in through the upstairs window, as we thought atfirst."
"But how about the paint?" objected Sahwah. "He stepped into it andtracked it down the stairway. He _must_ have come in through this way."
Just then Katherine reached up to brush her hair out of her eyes, and hercold hand brushed Slim's neck. He jumped convulsively, lost his footing,and pitched over against the door, which went shut with a bang. He was upagain immediately, and stretched out his hand to open the door, but itresisted his attempt.
"I guess she's stuck," he remarked. Justice and the Captain both lent ahand, but not a bit would the door budge. They gave it up after a fewminutes, and stared at each other in perplexity.
"The door's locked!" said Justice in a voice of consternation.
"The lock must have snapped over from the jar when the door banged," saidSahwah.
"I don't see how it could," said Justice skeptically.
"Oh, yes, it could," replied Sahwah. "The same thing happened to me oncewith our back screen door at home. It slammed on my skirt one day, when Iwas going out, and the latch latched itself, and there I was, caught likea mouse in a trap. I couldn't pull my skirt loose and I couldn't unlatchthe door from the outside. There was nobody at home and I had to standthere a long while before someone came and set me free. Latches _do_latch themselves sometimes, and that's what this one has done now!"
"Well, we're caught like mice in a trap, too," said Justice gloomily."With the passage blocked at this end, and the door locked, how are wegoing to get out of here?"
"Break the door down," suggested Sahwah.
"Easier said than done," replied the Captain. "What are we going to breakit down with? You can't knock down a door like that with your barehands."
Nevertheless they tried it, pounding frantically with their fists, andkicking the solid panel furiously.
"No use, we can't break it down," said Slim crossly, nursing his achinghand. "My knuckles are smashed and my toes are smashed, but there's nevera dent in the door. You'd think the old thing would be rotten down herein this hole, but it's so covered with paint that it's waterproof. Itisn't wet enough to rot it," he finished unhappily, scowling at the pilesof dust at his feet.
"We'll have to call until somebody hears us and comes down," said Sahwah.
"Nobody'll ever hear us down here," said Justice. "We're on the lonesomeside of the hill, remember!"
Nevertheless they did shout at the tops of their lungs, and called againand again until their ears ached with the racket their voices made in theclosed-in little place, and their throats ached with the strain.
"_Nobody can hear us!_"
The disheartening realization came to them all at last.
"Do you suppose we'll have to stay down here until we starve to death?"asked Sahwah in an awe-stricken voice, after a terrified hush had reignedfor several minutes.
"We'll freeze to death before we starve," said Justice pessimistically,shivering until his teeth chattered.
"Nonsense!" said Katherine severely. "We'll get out somehow. Sherry andNyoda will find the stair landing open and will come after us," shefinished, and the rest shouted aloud, so great was their relief at thethought.
Then Justice struck them cold again with his next words. "No, they won'tfind it open, because I closed it several times, but I left it closed.They'll never find that spring in a million years."
A groan of disappointment went up at his words and their hearts sank likelead.
"We'll get out somehow," repeated Katherine determinedly, after a minute."We were shut up in a cave once before, and we got out all right."
"Yes, but that time Slim and I were on the outside, not on the inside_with_ you," the Captain reminded her.
"Yes, and that time it wasn't so cold," said Sahwah, vainly trying tostop shivering, "and we had eaten so many strawberries that we could havelasted for days. I'm hungry already."
"So'm I," said Slim decidedly. "I've been hungry for an hour."
"You're always hungry," said Justice impatiently. "I guess you'll last aslong as the rest of us, though."
"Stop talking about 'lasting,'" said Katherine with a shudder ofsomething besides cold. "You give me the creeps."
; "If we only had something to break the door down with!" sighed Justice."It would take a battering ram, though," he finished hopelessly.
"Too bad Hercules' old goat isn't down here with us," said Sahwah with asudden reminiscent giggle. "He could have smashed the door down in notime with his forehead."
"But he _isn't_ here, and we are," remarked Slim gloomily.
"I wish now I'd waked Sylvia up and shown her the stair landing opening,"sighed Katherine regretfully. "She was so sound asleep, though, Icouldn't bear to waken her. If she only knew about it she could sendSherry after us!" Oh, the tragedy bound up in that little word "if"!
Then to add to their troubles the lantern began to burn out with a seriesof pale flashes, and Slim was so agitated about it that he dropped thebiggest electric flashlight on the floor and put it out of commission.Katherine's small pocket flash had burned out some time before. That leftonly two small flashlights.
"Put them out," directed Justice, "so they'll last. We can flash themwhen we need a light."
It was much worse, being there in the darkness. Sahwah and Katherineclung to each other convulsively and the boys instinctively moved nearertogether. Conversation dropped off after a while and it seemed as if thesilence of the tomb hovered over them. No sound came from any direction.
During another one of these silences, following a desperate outburst ofshouting, a sound burst through the uncanny stillness. It was a slightsound, but to their strained nerves it was as startling as a cannon shot.It was merely a faint pat, pat, pat, coming from somewhere. They couldnot tell the direction, it was so far off.
"It's footsteps!" said Sahwah, starting up wildly.
"No, it's only water dropping," said Justice, cupping his hand over hisear in an attempt to locate the direction of the sound. "I wonder whereit can be."
He flashed the light and looked for the dropping water, but failed tofind it. He turned the light out again. Then in the darkness the soundseemed clearer than before--pat, pat, pat, pat.
"It's getting louder," said Katherine.
"It _is_ footsteps!" cried Sahwah positively. "They're coming nearer!Listen!"
The tapping noise increased until it became without a doubt the sound ofa footfall drawing nearer along the passage on the other side of thecave.
"It's Sherry looking for us; he's found the passage!" shrieked Sahwah,"or maybe it's Hercules!"
"Yell, everybody!" commanded Justice, "and let him know where we are."
They set up a perfectly ear-splitting shout, and as the echoes died awaythey heard the snap of the lock on the other side of the door. Slim, whowas nearest, flung himself upon the door handle and in another instantthe door yielded under his hand and swung inward.
"Sherry!" they shouted, and crowded out into the passage, all talking atonce.
"Sherry! Sherry! Where are you?" Sahwah called, suddenly aware that noone had answered them. Justice and the Captain sprang their flashlightsand looked about them in astonishment. There was no one in the passagebeside themselves.
Who had unfastened the latch and let them out?
Sahwah and Katherine suddenly gripped each other in terror, while thecold chills ran down their spines. The same thought of a supernaturalagency had come into the mind of each. Then they both laughed at theabsurdity of it.
"It couldn't have been a ghost," declared Katherine flatly. "Ghosts don'tmake any noise when they walk."
As fast as they could they ran back through the passage to the door inthe cellar wall, jerked the cable that opened the trap, and came outthrough the landing just as Nyoda, arriving home, was taking off her fursat the foot of the stairs. They never forgot her petrified expressionwhen she saw them coming up through the floor.
"We thought it must be nearly midnight!" said Sahwah in amazement, whenthey found out that they had never even been missed. They had only beengone from the house for two hours.
Sherry came in presently and was as dumbfounded as Nyoda when he saw theopening in the landing and heard the tale of the Winnebagos and the boys.
"We thought you had found the passage and were coming to let us out,"said Sahwah, "but it must have been Hercules, after all!"
"But Hercules was with me all afternoon, helping me overhaul the motor ofthe car," said Sherry. "I just left him now."
"Then--who--unlocked the--door?" cried the five in a bewildered way.
"Thunder!" suddenly shouted Justice. "It was the same man that made thefootprints on the stairs! He got in through that secret passage, andwhat's more, he's down there yet!"