The Automobile Girls Along the Hudson Part 13

The library of Ten Eyck Hall was, to Bab, the most beautiful of all the rooms. The walls were literally lined with books from floor to ceiling, and there were little galleries halfway up for the convenience of getting books that were too high to reach from the floor. Big leather chairs and couches were scattered about and heavy curtains seemed to conceal entrances to mysterious doors and pa.s.sages leading off somewhere into the depths of the old house.

"This is just the place for a secret door or a staircase in the wall,"

exclaimed Grace.

"There is a secret door, I believe, in this very room," replied the major; "but it is really a secret, for the location was lost long ago and n.o.body has ever been able to find it since."

"How interesting!" said Ruth. "Can't you thump the walls and locate it by a hollow sound?"

"But, even if you discovered a hollow sound, you wouldn't know how to open the door," said Martin.

"Press a panel, my boy. That is all that is necessary," replied Jimmie.

"With a wild shriek Lady Gwendolyn rushed through the portals of the lofty chamber. With trembling hands she pressed a panel in the wainscot.

Instantly it flew back and disclosed a secret pa.s.sage. Another instant and she had disappeared. The panel was restored to its place and Sir Marmanduke and her pursuers were foiled."

All this, the irrepressible Jimmie had acted out with wild gesticulations.

They all laughed except Alfred Marsdale, who stood looking at Jimmie in a dazed sort of way.

"Wake up, Al, old man! What's the matter with you?"

"Oh, nothing," replied Alfred, "I was only wondering where I had read that before."

There was another laugh, and the major led the way to the red drawing room. It had been the ball room in the old days.

"It's a long time," observed the major, "since anyone has danced on these floors."

The room took its name, evidently, from the red damask hangings and upholstering of the furniture. The walls were paneled in white and gold and there was a grand piano at one end.

"We'll have to take turn about playing," said Ruth. "Grace and I each play a little."

"Oh, Jimmie can play," replied Martin. "Is there anything Jimmie can't do?"

"Jimmie, you're a brick," said Alfred.

Back of the red drawing room was another smaller room which, the major said, had always been called a morning parlor, but it had been a favorite room of the family when he was a young man, and had been used as a gathering place in the evening as well as after breakfast.

"This is the prettiest room of all, I think," observed Mollie.

And it was certainly the most cheerful, with its brightly flowered chintz curtains and s.h.i.+ning mahogany chairs and tables.

After that came a billiard room, a small den used as a smoking room, and a breakfast room.

"Who wants to see the attic?" said Martin.

"We all do?" came in a chorus from the young people.

"Now, girls," protested Miss Sallie, "remember you were to take your rest this afternoon."

"Oh, we shan't be up there long," said Martin. "We promise you to bring them back in time for the beauty sleep."

"Very well," answered Miss Sallie; "go along with you. It's very hard to be strict, Major. Don't you find it so!"

"I never even tried the experiment, Sallie," replied the gentle old soldier, "because I always found it harder on me than on the boys. It's really a certain sort of selfishness on my part, I suppose. Cut along now, boys, and don't keep the girls from their rest too long."

The pilgrimage started up the great front staircase, led by Martin and his older brother, who together had made many excursions to the attic and knew the way by heart.

On the second floor the explorers followed a pa.s.sage that led to another flight of stairs, and this in turn to another pa.s.sage, and finally to one last narrow flight of steps with a mysterious door at the top.

"This reminds me of the House of Usher," said Jimmie, "only it goes up instead of down. Can't you imagine all these doors opening and closing, and the sound of footsteps on the stairs, down, down?"

Just then Martin opened the door and a gust of wind blew in their faces.

Something flashed past that almost made the whole party fall backwards down the steps.

Mollie gave a little shriek.

"Don't be frightened," said Jose, who was standing just behind her. "It is only a bird."

"Somebody must have left the window open," exclaimed Stephen in surprise. "I wonder who it was? The servants are afraid to come up here.

They believe it is haunted. Lights have been seen at midnight, s.h.i.+ning through some of these windows, and the only persons who are not afraid are the housekeeper and the butler, who come twice a year, and clean out the dust."

The young people found themselves in a vast attic whose edges were hidden by dense shadows. The center was lighted by dormer windows, here and there, that gleamed like so many eyes from the high sloping roof.

Scattered about were all sorts of odds and ends of antiquated furniture, chests of drawers, hair trunks, carved boxes and spinning wheels.

"Isn't this great!" cried Jimmie Butler. "Just the place for handsprings," and he began to turn somersaults like a professional, while the girls looked on delighted.

"Stop that, Jim," protested Stephen. "You'll get yourself filthy and break your neck into the bargain. You are much too old for such child's play. You'll have rush of blood to the head and strain a nerve, and heaven knows you've got enough to strain."

"'In my youth, Father William replied to his son, I feared it would injure the brain, But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none; Why, I do it again and again!'"

sang Jimmie as he wheeled over the floor toward a part.i.tion wall which cut off one end of the great room. Over and over he circled, without looking where he was going, until suddenly, bang, his heels. .h.i.t against the wall.

There was a curious grating noise, a creaking of rafters, and before their amazed eyes the wall slid along and disclosed another attic as large as the first.

Jimmie was so bewildered he forgot to pull himself up from the dusty floor, and lay with his head propped against an old trunk looking across the enormous s.p.a.ce.

Then everybody began talking at once.

"This looks to me like smugglers," cried Alfred. "I was in an old house in England, where there was the same sort of wall, only not so large."

"And look," called Bab, "there are footsteps in the dust. Who could have been here lately, to have left those marks. Do you see? They come from over there in the right hand corner."

"Yes, is it not curious," replied Jose, "that they are going away from the wall and not approaching it? He must have walked out of the wall.

Perhaps there is a secret door there, too."

They rushed across pell mell, and began thumping the walls, but nothing happened.

"I say, Stephen," said Martin, "do you suppose we had smugglers in our family?"

"I don't know," answered Stephen. "They managed to keep it secret if they had."