It was Helen Adams who made the next suggestion. “If a stairway goes up, mightn’t it go down too? Perhaps you can enter from the cellar.”
And sure enough half-way down the cellar stairs Jim discovered a little door.
“May be a snap lock that’s kept her in,” he muttered irritably. “Hold it open, Eleanor. Here, Thomas, let’s have your electric bug. Hello, Betty! Betty, I say!”
“Here I am,” called a faint, frightened little voice from up above. “Here I am, but where I am I don’t know, and I think I’ve sprained my ankle.”
Ensconced on the couch in John’s den Betty had her belated tea, while Babe rubbed the turned ankle vigorously, and the others stood around listening to the tale of ghostly adventures.
“I got in up-stairs,” Betty explained, “through a sliding panel sort of thing that opens out of that curved part of the hall.”
“Of course,” Jim put in. “We looked on the other side.”
THE OTHERS STOOD AROUND LISTENING
“I shut the door so no one else would find it,” explained Betty, “and of course it was pretty dark, though there is a little high window opening into the hall to light the first part of the passage.”