With their faces turned toward the ceiling they listened. Faintly they heard the wailing.
"That's not a ghost; that's Foster!" declared Mrs. Blake, running for the stairs. Her husband and daughter were close behind.
"In your room," Portia directed, and when they entered it, her father and mother were as puzzled as she had been.
"But there's nobody.... Foster!" called Mrs. Blake. "Where are you, darling? Can you hear me?"
"We—we're in here. In the elevator thing," gulped Foster's voice, right behind the sheep-lady's picture.
"Oho!" said Mr. Blake, with the tone of one who is inspired. He leaped across the room to the picture and ran his fingers along the heavy gilt frame. "Fake!" he exclaimed. "I thought so! It's not a picture hanging on a wall; it's a door!"
His searching fingers found the partially concealed latch on the right side of the frame, and after the usual struggle of wrenching and tugging, managed to open the picture door. Foster and Davey, two dirty owls, blinked in the sudden light, tear tracks shining on their cheeks.
"Oh, darling!" cried Mrs. Blake, hugging Foster out of the dumb-waiter; then she reached for Davey and hugged him out, too.
"Great Scott, those ropes are ancient!" said Mr. Blake. "Thank the Lord they didn't fail! Luckily they were closed away from the weather all this time. Otherwise—" But he left the sentence unfinished.
Mrs. Blake was so relieved that she began to scold. "Never again, Foster, do you hear? Never! It was a dreadfully stupid thing to do! Those ropes are more than fifty years old: maybe even sixty or sixty-five! They might very well have broken and then—" But she, too, left the sentence unfinished and gave her son another hug instead.