  Picking up the old lady in his arms (and now she appeared to be reviving), Harry Pangborn, preceded by Sim and Betty with flashlights gleaming to show the way, started for the stairs. The others followed, Arden and Sim bringing up the rear. Suddenly from behind them sounded a grating, rumbling noise. They turned in surprise and some fear, just in time to see several stones fall out of the old chimney that was part of the fireplace above. The chimney had its foundation on the bottom of the cellar. Out toppled the loose stones, falling with a crash that brought nervous screams from Terry and Dorothy. “What happened?” Harry called back, pausing with his burden. “Looks as if the old place were falling apart,” Dick answered. “The chimney is crumbling. Perhaps we had too hot a fire on the hearth. I guess we’d better get out of here.” “That chimney will never fall!” declared Granny Howe. “It was built to last forever, and will, unless it’s torn down. There is no danger.” Arden paused to flash her light within an opening revealed by the falling stones. It was a smooth recess in the great stone chimney, not a rough aperture such as might happen by accident if some of the stones had merely crumbled away. It was only the few small outer stones, what, virtually, constituted a door to the hidden chamber, that had toppled away revealing a secret place. And a hiding place it was, as Arden discovered a moment later when her light flashed and gleamed upon a small metal box within. “Oh, look! Look what I’ve found!” she cried. “It’s a metal chest hidden away.” “Bring it upstairs and we’ll have a look!” called Harry. Arden put her hand in and grasped the box. But it resisted her first effort to wrench it out. “I’ll help you,” offered Dick. Together they pulled, and the box came forth. It was about a foot long, eight inches in width and about six in depth. It was closed by a heavy brass padlock. Their first care, on reaching the warm and light room where the Christmas party had come to such a strange end, was to put Viney down on an improvised couch and give her some hot coffee. She had regained her senses, but a great fear and wonder seemed to be upon her. “Have they—have they gone?” she faltered. “Who?” asked Granny. “Those real ghosts—the ghosts I used to be myself.” “Viney, have you been up to ghost tricks here in Sycamore Hall?” Granny’s voice was stern. Viney Tucker looked up, more defiant now. She was rapidly recovering from her fall, which was not so much of a fall as a slide down a smooth wooden chute. It wasn’t the ash-chute, but one forming part of a secret passage, as they learned later. “Yes,” Viney confessed, “I was the ghosts. But I’ll never be one again. I did it to save the Hall for you, Hannah. I remembered the old stories of Nathaniel Greene and Patience Howe. And when I found you were going to be cheated out of the money you should have had for the sale of this property I decided to stop it from being demolished if I could. So I secretly made a red cloak, and from a masquerade costumer in a distant city I got the Continental soldier’s uniform. I hid them away here in the chest. At times I would slip in here and scare the workmen, by pretending to be either dead Patience on the bed or the tramping soldier, with a red rag around my head and my hat pulled down over my face. It worked, too!” she said, not a little proudly. “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 Dick 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 documents. 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 title 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 Dick and Betty.” “Oh, how wonderful it all is!” Betty murmured. “Like a story book!” added Dick. “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 passage, did you, Viney?” asked her cousin. “I never could.” “Well, I did!” Once more Viney smiled. “And I kept it secret. There are two passages,” 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 passages. 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 passage 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 Dick, 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 passing 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 Dick 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. And then, while faintly from the churches came the peal of the Christmas chimes, the girls said goodnight to their visitor and to one another. So was solved the secret of Jockey Hollow. There was no longer any need for Viney Tucker to play the ghost. Granny Howe removed such of her last belongings as she wanted to preserve, giving some really valuable antiques to the girls and to Arden the picture of Patience Howe. Harry asked for and was given the old brass box in which were found the papers so long lost. For the papers in the box Arden Blake’s eyes had lighted upon in the chimney hole were the very ones needed to prove Granny Howe’s claim to the money. It was not necessary for the Pangborn lawyers or the Park Commission to engage in any involved proceedings. The holidays passed all too quickly for Arden and her friends. They went riding several times again, between Christmas and New Year’s and in that week work was again started on tearing down the Hall. But no longer did men rush out yelling that they had seen a dead woman on a bed, and no more was heard the tramp of the soldier’s boots on the stairs. All the ghosts had vanished. And with them vanished much of Viney Tucker’s queerness. She let the better side of her nature show itself, and now, when Granny had the girls in for tea, Viney joined them. Arden and her friends had tea with Granny the day before the holiday season ended. She thanked them again and again, for it was through their instrumentality that everything had happened as it did. “And to think,” murmured Dot as they left Granny’s little cottage, “that we’ll soon be back at Cedar Ridge. Nothing ever happens there!” “But think of all that did happen!” laughed Arden. THE END (Endpaper image)
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