Certainly it was the floor of the cabin and she had discovered how the ghost had done his mysterious knocking. His voice from here would have been clearly audible to them, too, just as she could hear the girls now.
“Gale’s gone!” she heard Valerie cry in alarm.
“Gone!” the others echoed.
She was just about to call out to reassure them when a sound in the passageway behind her made her hold her breath in suspense. Someone was coming along the tunnel. That must mean that the mysterious ghost had returned to do some more of his haunting. With quick and as quiet steps as possible, she retreated back the way she had come, and directly toward that unknown. Standing flattened against the earth wall, her heart thumping so she was sure he would hear it, Gale waited for the ghost to pass her. He did so, actually brushing against her in the darkness. He carried no flashlight and it was this fact alone that had saved her from discovery. Evidently he knew his way about in the darkness.
Aided now by fear, she sped along the narrow, low tunnel to where she had had her fall. The man certainly had not been in here when she fell, hence there must be some way he had entered since. She had to find that entrance to gain her freedom. Now that the others had discovered her absence, they would be alarmed and a search would be begun. She must get back and reassure them. She must also send Tom and Jim to find this mysterious stranger.
Flashing on the last faint rays of her flashlight, she saw the wall down which she had fallen and against it hung a crude rope ladder. So this was how he entered and left this lower tunnel! With one foot on the ladder, she slipped her flashlight into her jacket pocket. It had failed entirely now and she would have to depend on her memory to lead her to the entrance. It took but a few moments to climb the ladder and once at the top she pulled it up behind her. That would keep the ghost in the lower passage until Tom and Jim could come along and investigate him. There must be some reason why he “haunted” the cabin with his mysterious knocks.
Swiftly as possible she went along the tunnel and after several minutes stumbled against the steps leading up to the door.
Chapter VII
LANDSLIDE
“But I can’t understand how he got out!” Gale said again with a puzzled frown. “I purposely pulled the ladder up behind me to keep him in there.”
“There must be another way out that’s all,” Tom said.