The frame appeared as though it had not been moved from its place for years, its dull burnished gold seemingly embedded in the wall and the ivory tint of the paper behind it was unsullied by even a finger mark. She approached the portrait again and held her candle so that its rays swept the oiled surface of the painting, bringing out each brush stroke in clear relief. No crevice showed in its broad expanse and it seemed as securely fastened in its frame as though a part of it.
The portrait in its entirety was too heavy and cumbersome to be moved without tackle. If it were indeed a blind for something which lay behind, it must be turned by means of leverage on some secret mechanism operated with a touch upon a spring or button, but no such article was visible.
Betty turned her attention to the frame. It was old-fashioned and heavily carved with a continuous scroll-work with innumerable protuberances, but none stood out more prominently than the rest and no flaw or disjointure appeared to the most minute scrutiny. The raised edges of the scrolls and high convex points of the decoration between were brightly burnished, the background lustreless and deepened to a brownish shade resembling bronze.
The candle had burned low and was guttering in her fingers when Betty suddenly observed that one of the smaller knob-like anaglyphs which projected from the lower right hand corner of the frame was more highly burnished than the others and the gilt seemed worn as if by friction. Impulsively she pressed it.
It gave beneath her hand and she stepped back quickly as the portrait itself lurched and swung widely out from the frame, grazing her shoulder before she could spring aside from its path. At the same instant a bell shrilled loudly through the sleeping house and its echo had not died away before a hubbub of voices arose from above.
Betty paused only to give a maddened push with all the strength of her terror behind it, to the picture which yawned from the wall, then turning, she fled wildly to the stairs.
Her candle was extinguished in the sudden draught, but she had found the banisters and glided up as swiftly and silently as a ghost. Lights appeared behind her as she rounded the corner of the hall, but she reached her room without encountering anyone and turned the key softly in the lock behind her.
The steady gleam of the live coals in the grate illuminated the room with a rosy glow and Betty thrust her candle end deep into the smoldering embers. Then, taking a fresh, unused one from the many-branched sconce above the mantel, she placed it in the candlestick upon her dressing-table from which she had taken the first.
Loosening her robe, she jumped into bed, and pulling the covers about her, lay listening to the hubbub outside. She could clearly distinguish in the general uproar the high-pitched staccato voice of Madame Cimmino and Welch's deep-throated bellow of rage.
The sounds came nearer and she heard a thundering knock upon a door down the hall. A startled cry from Mrs. Atterbury answered it and a door was slammed back. An excited babel arose once more, and high above it Madame Cimmino shrilled: