“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.