The Mystery of Jockey Hollow Part 34

"Yes, it worked," admitted Harry. "Especially the screams coming up out of the fireplace. You are a good screamer, Mrs. Tucker."

"I always was," she admitted with a grim smile. "Though I didn't know it was you in the house that day. I thought it was one of the workmen. But I meant no harm. I just wanted to delay the tearing down of this place. I was always hoping the missing papers would be found."

"Well, I think they have been," Arden said. "Let's open the box that I found when the stones fell. I wonder what caused them to fall out and open the hiding place?"

"It might have been the heat, as d.i.c.k suggested. We had a pretty hot fire," said Harry. "Though the concussion of Mrs. Tucker's slide down the chute and the vibration caused by something slamming up in the closet may have done the work. At any rate, let's see what the box holds."

A heavy poker served to break the lock, though Betty said it was a shame to destroy such an antique. But they could not wait to get a locksmith.

And when the lid was raised, there, covered with much dust, were a number of legal-appearing doc.u.ments. Harry glanced hastily through them.

"Well, I think this settles everything," he said. "You won't need the advantage of any long court delay, Mrs. Howe. These deeds, copies of wills, and other papers, will easily prove, I think, your t.i.tle to this place, and the money paid for it by the Park Commission can now be released to you and your relatives."

"Viney shall have her share!" exclaimed the happy old lady.

"I don't want any, Hannah! I only played ghost for you. I didn't want anything myself."

"You shall have your share, Viney, and so shall d.i.c.k and Betty."

"Oh, how wonderful it all is!" Betty murmured.

"Like a story book!" added d.i.c.k.

"And to think," said Arden, "that if it hadn't been for the little prank of Dot and Harry all this would never have been discovered."

"My part as a ghost wouldn't have," said Viney grimly, "for I was planning to keep on scaring those men away if I could. I wasn't going to give up until the Hall was so torn apart I couldn't work my tricks any more. But I didn't know anything about those hidden papers."

"I guess no one did except the foolish man, now long dead, who hid them there," said Granny. "Oh, why didn't he have sense enough to put them in a bank or give them to a lawyer and then we wouldn't have had all this trouble!"

"It wasn't really trouble, Granny!" laughed Sim.

"No, we've had a wonderful time!" agreed Terry.

"I suppose you did play tricks in this ghost masquerade, Mrs. Tucker,"

Harry said. "But how did you manage to get in and out of the house without being seen-especially when there was snow on the ground."

"I went in and out through a secret tunnel that ends here in an old wine bin and outside in the smokehouse," Mrs. Tucker said with a smile at the girls, who had once surprised her in the place where hams and bacon were cured.

"Oh, so you found the old secret pa.s.sage, did you, Viney?" asked her cousin. "I never could."

"Well, I did!" Once more Viney smiled. "And I kept it secret. There are two pa.s.sages," she went on. "One the tunnel and the other the chute I fell down just now."

"That's a part of the mystery I don't yet understand," said Arden. "Why did you come over here tonight? Was it to play a ghost when you knew we were giving Granny a Christmas party?"

"Oh, no, my dear! I'd never do a thing like that, cross and cranky as I know I am. Forgive me-but I've been so worried about Hannah going to lose the inheritance she should have had. I came over here tonight, secretly, as I always come, to save any of you from harm."

"Save us from harm?"

"Yes. I thought some of you might take a notion to roam and wander around the old house. I was afraid you would go in that closet through which a person who knows the trick can slide down the smooth wooden chute to the cellar. I was afraid lest someone might by accident work the spring of the trapdoor and fall. But I was the one who fell.

"You see it's this way. In the old days I suppose it was often necessary for those who were enemies of the British king to escape in a hurry. So Sycamore Hall, like many another old Colonial mansion, contained secret pa.s.sages. The one from the wine bin to the smokehouse is quite simple.

The other is more complicated. The closet has a false bottom. In it is a trapdoor so well fitted into the floor that one not in the secret would have difficulty in finding it. By pressing on a certain place in the wall, the trapdoor opens, a person can jump or slide down the chute, which is curved in such a way that no harm results from its use. Then the trapdoor closes."

"It didn't close after you slid down tonight," Harry said.

"I realized something was wrong as soon as I pushed the spring," admitted Viney. "Before I had hardly time to get into the chute, the trapdoor closed and struck me a light blow on the head. But it must have sprung open immediately afterward."

"That's probably what happened to Jim Danton," said Arden. "Only he got a severe blow, and the secret trapdoor remained closed."

"Probably did," admitted Viney. "I wasn't there to see, but very likely that man accidentally touched the spring and shot down the chute, getting heavily struck by the trapdoor as he slid down. The wooden chute really merges into the ash-chute at the lower end, so that's why they thought this Jim fell down the ash-chute. But he didn't-he went down the secret pa.s.sage out of the closet."

"No wonder it seemed like a real mystical disappearance," said Arden.

"Tonight," went on Viney Tucker, "when I feared some of you would roam about the place, I slipped over here through the tunnel to lock that closet door so you couldn't get in. I heard footsteps up here. I looked out in the hall and saw the two ghosts-ghosts whose parts I had often played myself. I was so frightened that I screamed and ran back in here to hide. I couldn't understand it. Then in my fright I touched the hidden spring and fell down the chute. But the trapdoor, through some defect, closed down on me and then sprang open again. And that ends the mystery.

I suppose the tearing down of the Hall can now go on, and the chute and trapdoor will be destroyed with all the other things. Well, I don't care, now that Hannah will get her money."

"There is no further need for ghosts," said Arden.

"Viney, I don't know what to say to you!" exclaimed Granny. Her face was serious but not for long. She laughed and added: "What will people think when all this comes out?"

"There is no need for it to come out," said Harry. "There is no need for anyone except ourselves knowing that Mrs. Tucker was the ghost. As for the old stories, they will always be told, I suppose-stories of Nathaniel Greene and Patience Howe. But they will gradually die down when the Hall is gone. So there is no reason why Mrs. Tucker need be exposed. We can keep the secret among ourselves."

"I think that would be best," Granny said. "Oh, what a wonderful Christmas this has been!" and again her eyes were suspiciously bright.

"Just wonderful! Thank you all, my dear friends. For it was you who brought all this about. Thank you, so much!"

The fire was dying. The simple little gifts had been presented. The candles were spluttering down into the sockets. It was growing cold. The party was over.

Granny gave the precious papers to Harry Pangborn to keep for her. Then, when Granny and her cousin, with Betty and d.i.c.k, had departed for the little cottage, over the moonlit snow, just an hour before it would be Christmas, Arden Blake and her friends left the old Hall.

"There's only one thing I'm still puzzled over," Arden said as they gathered in Sim's house to quiet down a bit. "Of course, I suppose we all, at different times, suspected different persons of playing the ghost-for we knew that's what the mystery was-some tricky human. But at one time I heard some talk as I was pa.s.sing some men in the street, which made me think Mr. Ellery might be the guilty one. Mention was made of a man named Nick."

"I think I can explain that," said Harry. "I talked to d.i.c.k about it. It seems that there were some rather valuable fittings, like hand-made locks, closet hooks and other things, in the Hall that a contractor would, very likely, save out to sell. Ellery was trying, as the boys say, to double-cross Mr. Callahan and get some of these antiques. Nick was in with him and once or twice tried his game with some cronies. But the ghost scared them away as it did the contractor's honest workmen. So I think it's all cleared up now."

"Another mystery ended," sighed Arden Blake. "I wonder if it will be the last in our lives?"

"I hope not," said Sim.

And Sim's wish came true, as is evidenced in the succeeding volume of this series to be called: _Missing at Marshlands_. That will be another Arden Blake mystery story.

"Well, mystery or no mystery, I think it's time we all went to bed," said Dorothy after much talk.

Harry looked at his watch. He held it up for the girls to see. The hour was past midnight.

"Merry Christmas!" he cried.

"Merry Christmas!" echoed the girls.

Dorothy, with a characteristic mischievous gleam in her eyes, put a bit of the "mistletoe" in her hair. And then, waving her hand at Harry, she ran upstairs.

"I'll catch you sometime!" laughed Harry.