Excavating a Husband

by Ella Bell Wallis

Miss Katherine had not yet made a sufficiently exhaustive study of Poe’s Prose tales and was thus employed in the library the next morning, when, happening to glance up from her book, her eyes fell upon the great fireplace that occupied almost the entire end of the room. Miss Katherine received an inspiration. She sat up, straight and alert.

“It is a most likely place,” she said aloud.

She went over to the fireplace, looked at it carefully and began a careful examination of the old-fashioned iron ornamentations. In the centre of the mantle was a dog’s head in gilded iron. She pinched and pushed him, trying to find a spring in his eyes, nose, ears or tail. He remained immovable, however, as did everything else pertaining to the mantle. But there was still hope. She lightly tapped the brick walls for she had been reading Poe’s frightful tale of the black cat, and she had learned that an unusual space in a wall could be detected by a light rap upon it. Miss Katherine’s ear was not trained to this sort of divination, but she persevered, testing first a wall she was certain was solid and then working on a suspected area.

Mrs. White had not forgotten her suspicions of the previous day and was on the alert. She knew Miss Boulby was in the library and when she caught the sound of a gently repeated, mysterious rapping in that room, she tiptoed to the door and applied her eye to the keyhole. What she saw would have made anyone inquire whether Miss Boulby were in possession of her senses or if she never had had any. She was down upon her knees before the hearth, gently tapping the bricks and listening intently to the sound she produced.

“My stars alive!” whispered Mrs. White to herself as she rose on trembling limbs, “what’s she after or is she crazy? It’s my belief she’s stark crazy.”

Unable to satisfactorily answer her own query she crept back to the kitchen, where she sat down and faced the situation. Was she not in danger by remaining there with a lunatic? She shivered when she thought that she very likely had been within an inch of death when Miss Boulby had taken to following her around. Thank goodness, she had taken to tearing the house to bits and not her! Mrs. White resolved to have a bad attack of sciatica that very night and to leave the next morning. Meanwhile she would be constantly on guard.

All unsuspecting this attitude on Mrs. White’s part, Miss Katherine was preparing for bed that night and thinking about the unfortunate impression she had made upon Mrs. White.

“She is a good and sensible woman,” said Miss Katherine to herself. “I should be very sorry to hurt her feelings or awaken any suspicions in her, but—I declare to goodness I’ve never searched the cellar and that’s one of the likeliest places. I can’t possibly do it in the daytime for she goes there so frequently. I’d just better slip down now and have a look.”

So saying, Miss Katherine slipped a heavy wrapper over her night dress, drew on her stockings and slippers, and with the extreme caution that makes every board in a floor creak and every joint in one’s body crack, she proceeded down the stairs.

Now this stealthy tread was just what Mrs. White’s ears was expecting.