After leaving her cousin, Jannet went straight to the front room whose great fireplace was a duplicate of hers. Unlocking the door, she stepped inside, finding herself in a large, shadowy room, whose shades were down and whose furniture was draped in coverings. From these swathed chairs, perhaps, came that smell of moth balls.
A large mirror between two windows revealed dimly her own figure. Jannet put up the shades and opened a window. She intended to look thoroughly for any evidences of the “ghost.” Here was a possibility. Perhaps from this side there could be found some opening. There had been funny noises in that wall, at any rate.
But never did walls look more innocent. She scanned them closely.
There was a little closet which corresponded to the one in her room. Another, high and deep, corresponded to her clothes closet. They certainly were large closets, the depth of the big chimney, she supposed.
Jannet examined the walls of the closets and of the room. She even looked at the ceiling for a possible trap door, though how the ghost could have flown so quickly out of her own room she could not imagine. This was a fine old room, but it offered no solution of her problems, so far as she could see. One thing, however, confirmed her in her idea of some secret passage,—the space between the rooms, the size of that great chimney.
CHAPTER XII
THE OLD ATTIC
Jingling her keys happily, Jannet went up the attic stairs, which led from the second floor back hall by a door not far from Paulina’s room. More than once she had heard Jan and Chick clattering down the two flights, first the attic stairs, banging the door shut, then the back stairs from the second floor to the first. If they were not afraid to be up there, why should she be afraid of the attic?
She did wish for Nell, though on second thought she came to the conclusion that it was just as well for her to investigate alone first. There might be things that some one outside the family could not appreciate. Family was a big thing to Jannet just now. Had she not just acquired one?
Inserting her key in the lock of the door opposite Jan’s den, she found that it did not turn anything in the right direction to unlock it. She immediately tried the door and found that it was already unlocked. “H’lo, P’lina,” she said, for there was Paulina, bending over a small trunk, her own, without doubt. “Do you keep some things up here, too? Aren’t you afraid of the ghost?” Jannet was laughing as she spoke, but Paulina straightened up and favored Jannet with a stony stare. Then without a word she bent again and locked her trunk.
Jannet stood quietly, looking around at boxes and trunks neatly placed in this part of the attic, and at dim shapes further along, where boards had been laid over the rafters and lath.