Into the far corners, under the eaves, soon went the flashlight rays. What they disclosed was innocent enough, chiefly cobwebs and dust. Shrouded shapes of the few old things left around lay here and there. Most of the central part was floored. In a few places the girls were obliged to be careful where the boards seemed to be laid across loosely. Jannet said that the ghost had laid the track for itself, and Nell remarked that they could follow the trail, then.
Jannet had expected to see some evidences of some one’s walking through dust, but the boards had been swept since she was first in the attic, she thought. “I tell you what, Nell, I ought to have done this right at first, before the ‘ghost’ had a chance to cover up her—his—its—tracks.”
“Probably you ought, Jannet.”
They were obliged to look out for bumps upon their heads in places, but finally they reached what was Jannet’s chief objective, the great chimney between her room and the front bedroom. There were the bricks, rough and red. But that whole end of the attic was boarded off with a rough partition. “I thought so!” exclaimed Jannet. “Now for a door!”
But there was no sign of a door in the boards. Certainly, if there had been a secret passage there, it could not have been concealed, the girls thought. “If Jan or somebody got in your room, Jannet, it must have been by the window,” said Nell.
“All the same,” declared Jannet, “there is something in my wall. It may not connect with the attic. I suppose now that it doesn’t. But I believe that if we can’t find it out, Uncle Pieter will let a carpenter take away the panels on that side, to satisfy me, and himself, too. He looked awfully interested, Nell.”
“The queer thing,” said Nell again, “is that it all seemed to begin in the attic and then come nearer. Could it really be ghosts, that can go in or out of walls?” Nell half believed it, Jannet thought.
“What ghost would carefully take a blue comforter through walls and finally deposit it neatly, well folded, in the closet where it belongs?”
“Well,” laughingly declared Nell, “Paulina told you that ghost did take one once, you said.”
“Yes, she did,” Jannet acknowledged.