CHAPTER XXIII
THE SECRET STAIRWAY
All the time the chief actor in this tense drama had been looking from one to the other of the crowd, tear-dimmed eyes studying them wistfully.
Now he spoke with a quiet emphasis that struck home the truth and rendered them speechless.
“I am not a boy,” he said simply. “I am a girl. My name is Barbara Winthrop.”
It was some time before Barbara Winters could be made to credit the amazing statement of the forlorn-looking child; but when she accepted it at last, there followed the inevitable question, “Why?”
For this the sheriff, now beaming with triumph, had a plausible explanation.
“The picture of this Barbara Winthrop has been in the papers, Miss,” he said. “And when she was wearin’ her hair and was all washed up, she did, beggin’ your pardon, Miss, bear a remarkable resemblance to yourself. I was struck by it that time I met you in the woods.”
“And this Hindu--the servant of my great-uncle--kidnaped her!” Bab exclaimed eagerly. “Do you think he meant to kidnap me all the time, and--and simply made a mistake?”
“That’s what I think, Miss. And a mighty costly mistake it’s apt to be,” with a grim look at the Hindu. “He’s been prowlin’ around that old house in the glen for some time, lookin’ for somethin’ he must think’s hid there. He got wind some way, Miss, of the fact that your uncle had left the place to you, and so he kidnaped you--or the person he thought was you--to git you out of the way, so’s he could find whatever ’twas he was lookin’ fer.”
“And now he’ll never find it,” said Bab, in an unsteady voice, turning and turning the lucky ring on her finger. “And--neither shall I.”
She looked at the dirty girl with the shorn hair and tear-marked face while every one looked at her. Bab suddenly laughed, choked, and went down on her knees beside the poor little ragged figure, clasping it in her arms.
“Oh, Barbara Winthrop, what you have been through for my sake! You even risked your life there in the burning building to warn us of danger! Oh, I’ll try to make it all up to you. I’ll try!”
The fire was out at last. The house stood, a ghastly skeleton against the faint, gray background of early dawn, pointing gaunt fingers toward the sky.
Looking at it and the ruin of her hopes, Bab was suddenly flooded with desolation.
“Oh, Granddaddy! Oh, dear Grandmother!” she cried in her heart. “I have done my best and I have failed, failed, failed! How can I go home and tell you so?”
The sheriff took them all, even Mrs. Fenwick and Rosa Lee, to his big house on the outskirts of the town where his wife, a good-natured, motherly woman, took charge of them. They were put to bed immediately and fell into exhausted slumber.
In the morning Mrs. Rawson provided Bab and Gerry and Mrs. Fenwick with articles of clothing borrowed from the wardrobes of her two daughters who were, luckily, about the same age as the girls from Scarsdale.
Gerry Thompson had hard work to suppress her giggles at sight of prim, mouse-colored, unimpressive Mrs. Fenwick attired in the gay, flapperish dress of the younger Miss Rawson; but Rosa Lee was herself in a bright-flowered bungalow apron belonging to the stout wife of the sheriff.
Gordon and Charles had saved their money belts from the conflagration and the boys, clad in various cast-offs of the sheriff, set out to the village shortly after breakfast to telegraph to their families concerning the catastrophe and ask that more funds be sent immediately.
Sheriff Rawson also sent a telegram, but this was to the half-distracted parents of Barbara Winthrop, telling of the safe recovery of their child. The reward for the capture of the Hindu and the return of the kidnaped girl would naturally come to him, and the family of the sheriff were in a state of incredulity well-seasoned with rapture over this unexpected windfall.
When the boys returned from the village Gordon suggested that they and the two girls visit the scene of the fire.
“Anything will be better than just staying around here, thinking,” he urged, when Bab shook her head. “Come along, Bab, we don’t want to go home without one more look at the old place.”
“I think I hate the place--and I never want to see it again,” said Bab, her lips quivering. “I wouldn’t go there at all, only there’s the poor little sapajou. I thought so much of him, Don. I--I even dreamed of him last night.”
Gordon tucked Bab’s hand consolingly within his arm.
“Shouldn’t wonder if the little beggar was hiding out somewhere about the place,” he said. “Won’t hurt to take a look-see, anyway.”
It was a long walk through the woods to the site of the burned house, but the young folks found the happenings of the preceding night so absorbing a topic of conversation that they reached the scene of the catastrophe almost before they were aware of it.
Bab looked at the charred skeleton with a shudder.
If that old house in the glen had seemed gloomy to them on former occasions, how much more gloomy was it now--a ghastly ruin, the skeleton rooms choked knee-high with sodden débris.
The girls and boys made their way gingerly through the wreckage, wandering from room to room. Although Bab called again and again on the soft little cooing note that the sapajou had come to recognize as her own special summons, there was no rush of tiny feet now, no swift leap to her shoulder, no clinging of furry arms about her neck.
Tears came to Bab’s eyes and she wiped them away quickly, hoping no one had noticed the weakness.
Suddenly Gerry gave a little scream. She pointed to what had once been the library, only a few beams left standing, the floor thick with débris.
But what the girls and boys saw was something beyond the ruined library wall--indestructible, everlasting--a stairway of stone, leading downward!
“Bab! Boys!” cried Gerry. “Do you see what I see?”
They scrambled across the intervening sea of débris, falling over one another, half wild with excitement.
“The stairway! The hidden stairway!” cried Bab. “Get out of my way, Gerry Thompson!” almost fiercely, as her best friend tried to pass before her. “It’s my house! It’s my stairway! I’m going first!”
They half ran, half fell down the slippery steps and found themselves in a damp, dark place, smelling like a dungeon.
“The subcellar!” cried Gordon. “This was what the Hindu was trying to find with his hammer. Anybody got a match?”
Charlie found and produced a precious box of them.
“Let me!” begged Bab. “Let me be the first to make a light!”
“You bet you shall!” cried Gordon, groping for her. “Oh, here you are. Now, then!”
So it was Bab’s hand that first pushed back the shadows of that secret place. The match wavered in her trembling fingers; the flame threw a flickering and uncertain light over the scene. They could see nothing but the strained, expectant faces of each other.
Bab dropped the match with an impatient exclamation.
“It burned my fingers. We’ll have to feel----”
“Wait a minute,” said Gordon. “I saw a lamp on this shelf here. Strike another match, will you, Bab?”
They found to their joy that there was oil left in the lamp and enough wick to produce a feeble light. Gordon raised the lamp high above his head, piercing the shadows.
Suddenly Bab gave a wild cry.
“That old chest! Over there in the corner! Oh, Gerry, Gordon, Charlie, can that be the treasure?”
Without waiting for answer, she darted forward, fell to her knees beside an ancient strong box that had been pushed into a far corner of the cavernous place. The others followed, fascinated, breathless.
What were they to see?
Bab tried the lid impatiently, tugging at it with her eager hands.
“It’s stuck!” she cried. “Probably locked.”
“We’ll have to pry it up----” began Gordon, when Gerry interrupted by pushing something into his hand.
“I stumbled over this hatchet just now,” she said. “I guess you can break the lock with that. I almost broke my head.”
After a few moments of heartbreaking tension, the lock cracked, then yielded.
“There you go, Bab!” cried Gordon in a voice harsh with excitement. “Up with the lid!”
“Hurry, Bab, hurry!” cried Gerry, half sobbing in her excitement.
“Oh, I daren’t!” whispered Bab. “I daren’t!”
Slowly--slowly--the lid was pushed back.
Bab looked--gasped--then began to laugh wildly, hysterically.
“Gold!” she babbled. “Gerry, boys, a sea of it! See! I’ve got my hands in it, almost up to the elbow. It isn’t real, is it? I’m dreaming--I----”
The two boys and Gerry flung themselves to their knees beside her, staring down at the contents of that old, battered strong box.
“Bab, Bab!” cried Gordon. “Why, you’re rich! There must be hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gold here!”
“Look!” Gerry pulled out a small compartment and revealed something that shimmered and gleamed entrancingly in the lantern light.
“Jewels!” said Charlie incredulously. “Emeralds, Bab--rubies, diamonds, sapphires----”
“Oh, stop!” cried Bab. “I can’t--I can’t believe this! It isn’t happening to me!”
“Oh, but it is, Bab, it is!” Gordon’s fine, young face was alight with a joy and wonder almost as keen as Bab’s. “Here is where the old gentleman stored that hoarded wealth of his, here in this old subcellar at the foot of a secret stairway.”
“This is what the Hindu was looking for,” broke in Charlie Seymour. “It was for this he threatened the old man and had to be discharged from his service!”
“And this,” said Gerry dramatically, her hands full of sparkling gems, “is the secret chamber!”
“It’s too much,” whispered Bab, staring at that gleaming mass of gold. “There _was_ a panel, then, in the library wall----”
“So cleverly concealed as to be almost impossible of detection,” concluded Gordon.
“And the Hindu, in trying to drive us out of the house so that he could have a clear field for himself, did us the greatest service of all----”
“By showing us the secret stairway,” finished Charlie.
“It’s rich,” said Gordon, bending over the chest. “Rich!”
“And so is Bab!” cried Gerry.
Bab nodded and, reaching into a small compartment, scooped up a handful of shimmering, gleaming gems.
“I want you each to take one,” she said, her voice not quite steady, “as a souvenir of this wonderful time and--and as a pledge of friendship.”
When she put it that way they could not refuse. Gravely, with the air of a ritual, they each chose a glittering jewel, saying, as they did so:
“To our undying friendship, Bab!”
When it was done tears glittered on Bab’s lashes. She raised the lucky ring and looked at it wonderingly--the little grinning Buddha with the glittering, jeweled eyes.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “Oh, Uncle Jerry, thank you!”
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