Once more the key turned in the lock, and Diana was a prisoner. At eight o'clock Miss Beverley, in strict silence, brought in a tray with supper, placed it on the table, departed, and secured the defences. After that nobody else even came up the stairs.
"They might some of them have managed to push a note under the door," sighed Diana. "I guess I'd have got a message in somehow if it had been Wendy shut up here. What a set of thick-heads they are! There isn't one of them ever has a decent brain-wave. Wonder how long I'll have to stick in this attic? I've not lost my bounce yet. But I guess, all the same, I'll go to bed now."
Miss Beverley, with the supper tray, had also brought Diana's night-gear in a small bundle. As there was no candle in the attic, it seemed wise to disrobe while there was still light enough to see by. The little bed was rather hard, the pillow was a lumpy one, and the spring mattress squeaked when she moved. Diana watched the room grow gradually darker and darker till stars appeared through the skylight. It was a very long time before she slept. The early sunshine, however, woke her in the small hours of the morning. There was no blind to the window, and the room faced east. Diana sat up in bed. Her eyes fell on the pictureless walls. Perhaps the very fact of their bareness made her look at them more particularly. She did not admire the pattern of the paper. In places it had been badly fitted together, especially in that corner. Why, the magenta roses actually overlapped! They did it in a sort of curve, almost as if they were outlining the top of a door. Was it by any chance a door?
At this stage of her inspection she sprang out of bed, went over to the corner, and ran her hand along the portion in question. It certainly felt as if the edge of a door were beneath. She rapped, and there was a hollow sound, very different from that given forth from the wall when she tried it a few yards farther on.
"I'm going to solve the problem for myself," she decided.
There was a knife left on the supper-tray. She thrust it through the paper, and began to cut round the seeming door. And most undoubtedly it was a door, though only a small one, with a curved top that came to the height of her shoulder.
"It must lead somewhere!" she thought excitedly. "Suppose I could get out on to the leads, climb down the ivy, and go off to Petteridge. Cousin Coralie wouldn't let me be brought back here to be shut up in an attic, I know!"
She worked away laboriously, tearing at the paper to free the door. It flashed across her mind that Miss Todd might have something to say about the disfigurement of the wall, but as she had gone so far, that did not deter her.
"Might as well finish it now," she smiled.
More hacking and tearing, then a gigantic shove, and the door suddenly opened inwards. She was looking into another attic, a larger and much darker room, lighted only by a tiny little skylight in the corner. It seemed full of furniture—chairs and tables piled together, and something that looked like a small grand piano. They were so thickly coated with dust that it was difficult in the dim light to distinguish more than upturned legs and general outlines. There did not appear to be the least possibility of escape in this direction. The skylight was more inaccessible than the one in her own attic. She sighed, went back, washed her dusty hands, and got into bed again.