CHAPTER XXI

A MIDNIGHT VISITOR

The theory of a secret chamber gave the girls and boys plenty to think about during the next few days. They not only theorized; they worked, and worked hard. Of course, the main scene of their labors was the library. They searched the library wall in the neighborhood of the secret opening with an almost feverish diligence in the hope of finding a spring or button that would release another secret opening--a panel or a door that would lead to the secret chamber. A wonderful phrase, a mystic, challenging phrase! And yet they found--nothing.

When they sounded the wall it seemed to them to have a hollow ring, as though there were space beyond it, but they could not find that space.

They tried to put the sapajou through the secret opening they had found, but the little animal would have none of it. He evidently preferred the society of his new friends.

“You’re bad,” scolded Bab, scratching the little creature’s ear. “Of all the disappointing animals, you are certainly the worst. Why can’t you do what’s expected of you, anyway?”

At this the sapajou wound a furry arm about her neck and laid his funny little face against her soft cheek coaxingly.

“You’re bad. You’re a wheedler,” chided Bab. “But I can’t help loving you just the same.”

“Some monkeys have all the luck,” said Charlie.

“Why not you, eh, Charles?” Gerry added wickedly.

Bab chuckled and put the monkey down.

“We’ll have to find out what--if anything--is behind this door by some other means,” she said, watching Gordon as he felt along the wall for perhaps the hundredth time in search of a possible secret panel.

The boy nodded.

“Probably have to use an ax before we get through,” he said. “But we don’t want to do that until we have to.”

Evening found them still searching the house in the glen and with no better result.

Bab was tired, discouraged, uneasy. The shadows of mystery were gathering more thickly about her. She began to hate the old house that had come to her for an inheritance, to hate and to fear it. Uncle Jeremiah with his mysterious Hindu servant, his sapajou pet, his grim old house, his legendary hidden fortune, began to seem to her like some grotesque old ogre, laughing at her vain attempts to extricate herself from the net in which she was enmeshed.

Her one comfort was that she still had the lucky ring!

It was later that night--very much later--when everybody had been in bed and, presumably, asleep for several hours, that Bab started up in her bed. She was suddenly and fully wide awake, though what had startled her, she could not tell.

She sat motionless, gripping the coverlet with tense fingers. It came then, what she had been waiting for--an odd, tapping noise, faint but insistent, coming, apparently, from somewhere underground.

Bab’s flesh crept. Her scalp tingled and she was sure each separate hair tried to stand on end. The faint, ghostly tapping continued.

How she found the courage to fling back the covers and get out of bed, Bab never afterward could tell. But the fact remains that she did manage to slip her shivering feet into mules and draw a dressing gown about her.

Then she touched Gerry on the shoulder.

“Don’t make any noise,” she whispered, as the other started up, rubbing sleep-filled eyes. “Th-there’s something in the cellar!”

Gerry was instantly wide awake. She listened for a moment, her hand gripping Bab’s, to that faint, fear-inspiring tapping. It stopped for a moment, then began again--now very soft--now a little louder----

Gerry slipped out of bed, groped for her robe, drew it about her.

“What s-say, Bab?” she chattered. “Shall we go d-down?”

Bab answered softly in the affirmative, and together the two girls stole downstairs. They clung to each other, horribly afraid, yet ashamed--and too eager and curious--to turn back.

They crept into the blackness of the hall, felt carefully past obstacles in their path. It was pitch black--a blackness thick, tangible. As they descended, the tapping grew steadily louder.

“It’s in the cellar!” stammered Gerry. “Oh, Bab, let’s go back!”

“We--we can’t!” said Bab through chattering teeth. “Sh--don’t make a noise!”

On through the blackness of the kitchen, somehow avoiding objects in their path, on to the door that led to the cellar. If they could only have a light--just the least little glimmer of a light!

With her hand on the knob of the door, Bab hesitated. Gerry tried to draw her back. The tapping was louder now. Other noises could be heard, too--the soft padding of feet, the groping of a hand, perhaps, across a wall. There was a sudden sound, muted, but louder than the others. Some one down there had stubbed his toe--some one had given voice to a muttered cry of pain.

“Anyway,” whispered Gerry hysterically, “it isn’t a ghost!”

Bab agreed that it was not. No ghost had ever been known to stub his toe and gasp about it. It just wasn’t done in the best ghost society! thought Bab a little wildly.

She opened the door a crack, then a little wider crack. Her desire for light was gratified immediately--but this light came from below.

Suddenly impatient, Gerry pushed her chum aside and peered downward. What she and Bab saw in that fantastic moment of revelation was to remain forever branded upon their memory.

The source of the flickering light was a candle. The light illumined the face of a man. It stood out, cameo-like, against the black background of shadows. In the hand of this man was a hammer with which he was tap-tapping against the cellar wall.

But the thing that made the girls catch their breath and shrink back into the sheltering shadows of the kitchen was the identity of this midnight visitor, an identity instantly revealed by the headdress he wore. This was a turban, a turban that gleamed white above a swarthy, lowering face--the face of the Hindu!

“Hey, what’s the row?”

Gerry screamed and whirled about. Bab leaned, shaking, against the door. It was Gordon Seymour who had cried out. He and Charlie rushed into the kitchen a second later.

“The Hindu! In the cellar! Don’t--_don’t_ go down there!” Bab gasped.

But she was too late. Gordon brushed past her, quickly followed by Charlie.

“The light has disappeared!” screamed Gerry. “Oh, boys, be careful!”

The cellar was suddenly in complete darkness.

“Oh, something dreadful will happen!” cried Bab. “Gordon, Charlie, come back!”

All the time she and Gerry were stumbling blindly after the boys, resolved not to leave them to their fate but, as Gerry afterward declaimed, “to die with them if necessary.”

The cellar was in pitch blackness. No--not quite! There was the gleam of light from Gordon’s electric torch. The girls clung together while Gordon flashed the light about the cellar.

“Empty! Empty as a rubbish can on street cleaning day!” muttered Gerry half hysterically.

“But how, why----” cried Bab incoherently. “Where can he have gone?”

“Through this window, probably,” replied Charlie, beckoning to them. “See, here’s one open!”

They examined the window and afterward made a round of the cellar to assure themselves that it was empty. Also, they closed and bolted the open window and saw to it that the others were fastened just as securely.

“Let’s get out of here,” suggested Gerry, vainly trying to stop the chattering of her teeth. “I--I don’t l-like this cellar!”

“Mrs. Fenwick and Rosa Lee are still asleep, thank goodness,” said Bab as they again entered the kitchen; but the words had barely left her lips before they were contradicted by Rosa Lee herself.

“Indeed _Ah’s_ not asleep!” The rich voice came with some asperity from the doorway.

Gordon turned his light in that direction to discover the bulky figure of Rosa Lee, hastily attired in a shapeless dressing gown. Mrs. Fenwick, frightened and still half asleep, just then came up and peered over Rosa Lee’s shoulder.

“Have to be daid to sleep through that rumpus!” grumbled Rosa Lee. “What yo’-all doin’? Holdin’ a party in de middle of de night?”

Gerry giggled wildly.

“It’s a f-funny kind of a party,” she cried. “Sort of--unplanned, you might say!”

“Some one was in the cellar, Mrs. Fenwick,” Bab explained. “It was the Hindu. We could tell by the turban on his head. He--he was tapping at the cellar wall with a hammer.”

“Well, Ah declares to goodness!” put in Rosa Lee, hugely disgusted. “Seems like he could do that jes’ as well in de mo’nin’ and let hones’ folks get dere rest--yassir, seems like he picked out a funny time to do dis yere tappin’ of hisn. Ah’s gwine to bed an’ so’s yo’-all. Come on--scat! Or would you laks Ah take de kitchen broom to yo’-all young scamps?”

There was no arguing with Rosa Lee in this mood, especially when she was whole-heartedly supported by Mrs. Fenwick, and the boys and girls knew better than to attempt it.

Before they went upstairs again, Bab whispered to Gordon:

“Be sure to lock the kitchen door, Don!”

“It’s locked and bolted. Don’t worry, Bab,” the boy answered reassuringly. “I hardly think we’ll have another visitation--not to-night, anyway.”

Upstairs in their room, snuggled close together in bed, Bab and Gerry discoursed excitedly upon recent events.

“He was tapping on the cellar wall,” said Gerry, in a thrilled tone. “Bab, don’t you see what that means? This terrible Hindu servant of the old man is after the fortune, too!”

“It looks that way,” Bab agreed. “And that would account for the lights people have seen and for some of the mysterious noises we have heard,” she added, tingling. “It would account for--oh, heaps of things!”

“Probably the servant suspected his master had money hidden in the house, even before your uncle died, Bab,” Gerry took her up excitedly. “In his letter, you know, he said that the Hindu threatened him and for that reason he had to give him the air----”

“Such slang!” chuckled Bab. “You mean discharge him, I suppose----”

“A rose by any other name----” began Gerry, but Bab interrupted.

“How we must be in that Hindu’s way!” she said softly, sitting up in bed. “If he really believes my uncle hid money in this house--and, as his servant, he probably was in a position to suspect, if not to know--then our being here must have spoiled his lovely hope of finding it and making himself rich. Oh, yes, we’ve bothered him a lot!”

“Not half as much as he’s bothered us.”

“And he won’t stop at anything, probably, to drive us out,” Bab continued, without noticing the interruption. “Especially if he has reason to believe that we, too, are on the trail of the hidden fortune.”

Gerry sat bolt upright in bed, her eyes wide in the darkness.

“Bab!” she breathed, “what do you mean?”

“I mean,” returned Bab earnestly, “that if we are going to find my eccentric uncle’s hidden legacy we had better be quick about it. Because, to be perfectly frank, I’m scared to death of what that Hindu may do. He has a--an awful face.”

“You put it mildly,” returned Gerry, frowning. “I suppose I shall see that Hindu’s face in my dreams for the rest of my natural life! Anyway,” she added, comfortingly, “you have something the Hindu hasn’t, Bab. _You_ have the lucky ring.”

“Yes,” said Bab, smiling oddly in the darkness, “I have the lucky ring!”

“Maybe it really will bring you luck,” proceeded Gerry. “Anyway, we can believe it will if we try hard enough.”

Morning did nothing to dispel the girls’ forebodings. Nor did Rosa Lee’s decision, formed overnight, tend to reassure them.

“Ah’s had enough ob de goin’s on in dis house,” declared Rosa Lee darkly. “Ah’m not afraid fo’ mah own se’f----”

“Sure of that, Rosa Lee?” teased Gordon, and Bab chuckled.

“But even if Mis’ Fenwick don’t mind, Ah refuses to share the responsibility fo’ a pack o’ scatter-brained younguns like yo’-all is----”

“Rosa Lee, you wrong us!” protested Gerry.

“Maybe Ah does and maybe Ah doesn’t,” returned Rosa Lee, turning her ebony glance upon the frivolous girl. “But howsomever dat may be, Ah’s takin’ de fust train dat leaves dis place to-morrow mo’nin’ fo’ Scarsdale. An’ Ah’s not goin’ alone, neider!”

With this ultimatum, she resolutely turned on her broad, flat heel and refused to listen to protest or argument.

“This is the end, I guess, Don. Rosa Lee will take us back if she has to carry us!” Bab said to her old playfellow a little while later. She tried to smile, but tears trembled on her lashes. “She’ll take us back in spite of Mrs. Fenwick. Mrs. Fenwick hasn’t the backbone of an angleworm!”

“It should be just the beginning instead of the end,” Gordon said, frowning. “Look here, Bab. I may have had my doubts before about something being hidden in this house. But after last night and that Hindu tapping on the wall with his hammer, I haven’t a doubt left.”

“You mean----” cried Bab.

“I mean that that discharged servant of your uncle’s has given us a clew, Bab--a real, red-hot clew at last. I believe there is a cellar behind that cellar down there, a cleverly concealed storeroom where your uncle hid whatever money or valuables he had.”

“A subcellar!” breathed Bab. “Oh, Gordon, if that could only be true!”

“It is true, I know it is,” insisted the boy with great earnestness.

“Oh, Gordon!” breathed Gerry frivolously, “subcellars don’t grow outside of detective and adventure stories, you know they don’t.”

“Please hush, Gerry,” pleaded Bab. “I believe Gordon is right and I want to hear what he has to say.”

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