Silence again followed for a period, succeeded by the sound of music in the garden below the windows, soft and very sweet.
"Oh, is that the ghost?" demanded Frances in great excitement.
"Your mother will bless me for letting you stop awake all night," said Constance. She sat up, wrapped a white robe about her and stuck her feet into slippers. Upon the music came the sudden unearthly miaow of a cat.
The noise sounded directly in the room and all three girls jumped.
Constance laughed again.
"I might have known Max did not come into that passage for nothing," she sighed. "Where's that electric torch?"
Having turned on the flash-light, Connie approached the large oil painting set into one side of the gloomy room, its base about a foot above the floor. She touched a knob on its frame and the portrait became a door opening outward and revealing a narrow, dusty winding stair descending to the floor below. On its top step sat the big cat, just opening its mouth for another howl.
"Come in, Grayfur," said Constance. "Max brought you, didn't he? If he hadn't sneezed and given himself away, he'd have opened the door a crack and let you in."
"Is it a secret stair?" asked Frances, her eyes big with excitement.
"Where does it go? Wouldn't Roger be crazy over it?"
"We will let him go up it," answered Connie, swinging the portrait into place again. "The passage comes out below in the library. Max thought he would provide one ghost anyway."
Putting the cat into the hall, she locked the door again and then stuck her pretty head from the window.