I feel that I ought to make that the end of the chapter, and leave you to wonder till the next how Elfrida got out, and how she liked the not getting out, which certainly looked as though it were going to last longer than any one could possibly be expected to find pleasant.
But that would make the chapter too short—and there are other reasons. So I will not disguise from you that when Elfrida put her hand to her pocket and felt something there—something hard and heavy—and remembered that she had put the key of the parlour there because it was such a nice safe place, where it couldn’t possibly be lost, she uttered what is known as a hollow groan.
“Aha! you see now,” said Edred outside. “You see I’m not so stupid after all.”
Elfrida was thinking.
“I say,” she called through the panel, “it’s no use my standing here. I shall try to feel my way up to the secret chamber. I wish I could remember whether there’s a window there or not. If I were you I should just take a book and read till something happens. Mrs. Honeysett’s sure to come back some time.”
“I can’t hear half you say,” said Edred. “You do whiffle so.”
“Take a book!” shouted his sister. “Read! Mrs.—Honeysett—will—come—back—some—time.”
So Edred got down a book called “Red Cotton Nightcap Country,” which he thought looked interesting; but I don’t advise you to try it. And Elfrida, her heart beating rather heavily, put out her hands and felt her way along the passage to the stairs.
“It’s all very well,” she told herself, “the secret panel is there all right, like it was when I went into the past, but suppose the stairs are gone, or weren’t really ever there at all? Or suppose I walked straight into a wall or something? Or perhaps not a wall—a well,” she suggested to herself with a sudden thrill of terror; and after that she felt very carefully with each foot in turn before she ventured to put it down in a fresh step.
The boards were soft to tread on, as though they had been carpeted with velvet, and so were the stairs. For there were stairs, sure enough. She went up them very slowly and carefully, reaching her hands before her. And at last her hands came against something that seemed like a door. She stroked it gently, feeling for the latch, which she presently found. The door had not been opened for such a very long time that it was not at all inclined to open now. Elfrida had to shove with shoulder and knee, and with all the strength she had. The door gave way—out of politeness, I should think, for Elfrida’s knee and shoulder and strength were all quite small—and there was the room just as she had seen it when the Chevalier St. George stood in it bowing and smiling by the light of one candle in a silver candlestick. Only now Elfrida was alone, and the light was a sort of green twilight that came from a little window over the mantelpiece, that was hung outside with a thick curtain of ivy. If Elfrida had come out of the sunlight she would have called this a green darkness. But she had been so long in the dark that this shadowy dusk seemed quite light to her. All the same she made haste, when she had shut the door, to drag a chair in front of the fireplace and to get the window open. It opened inwards, and it did not want to open at all. But it, also, was polite enough to yield to her wishes, and when it had suddenly given way she reached out and broke the ivy-leaves off one by one, making more and more daylight in the secret room. She did not let the leaves fall outside, but on the hearthstone, “for,” said she, “we don’t want outside people to get to know all about the Ardens’ secret hiding-place. I’m glad I thought of that. I really am rather like a detective in a book.”