There were sudden tears in Nann’s eyes as she spoke. “Oh, you poor, poor girl,” she said as she bent above the pictured face, “how you have suffered since that long-ago day when some artist painted your portrait.”
“Even then she wasn’t happy,” Dories put in softly. “See that little half-wistful smile? It’s as though she felt much more like crying.”
“And now she is a woman and over in Europe somewhere with a little girl and boy,” Nann took up the tale; but Gib amended: “Not so very little. Didn’t we cal’late that if they’re livin’ the gal’d be about sixteen, an’ the boy eighteen or nineteen?”
“Why, that’s so.” Nann looked up brightly. “When I spoke I was remembering the story as you told it, and how sad the young mother looked when she landed from the snow-white yacht and led a little boy and girl up to this very house to beg her father to forgive her. But I recall now, you said that was at least ten years ago.”
“What shall we do with this beautiful picture?” Dories inquired. “It doesn’t seem a bit right to leave it here in all this rubbish, now that we’ve found it.”
“Let’s take it into the next room,” Dick said; “maybe we’ll find a better place to leave it.”
They had reached an opening in the rear partition, but the heavy carved door still hung on one hinge, obstructing their passage.
“We must get through somehow,” Nann, the adventurous, said. “I feel in my bones that the next room holds something that will help solve the mystery of the air pilot’s visits.”
Dories held the painting while Nann flashed the light where it would best aid the boys in removing the debris that held the old door in such a way that it obstructed their passage into the room back of the salon.
A long half-hour passed and the boys labored, lifting stones and heavy pieces of ceiling, but, when at last the floor space in front of the heavy door was cleared, they found that something was holding it tight shut on the other side.