The Siege of the Seven Suitors

by Meredith Nicholson

The opening in the wall engaged my attention at once, and I was steadied by the thought that here was a practical matter susceptible of investigation. I stepped within the door and lighted a candle; and just as the wick caught fire, click went a switch somewhere, and out went the hall lamps. But having, so to speak, put my foot to the mysterious stair I would not turn back, and I continued on down the steps.

Great was my astonishment to find that I had apparently stepped from a new into an old house. The stair treads were worn by long use, the plaster walls that inclosed them were battered and cracked, and I seemed to have plunged from the glory of Hopefield into some dim lost passage of a domicile of another era, that lay within or beneath the walls of the Manor. As I slowly descended, holding high my candle, I recalled, not without a qualm, the story of the British soldier whom tradition or superstition linked to the site of Miss Hollister's property. This stairway might certainly have been built in the early days of the republic, and it refuted my disdain of the ghost-myth on the theory that new houses are inhospitable to spirits.

At the foot of the stair I found two rooms, one on either side of a small hall, and these, also, were clearly part of an old house that seemed to be somehow merged into the Hollister mansion. I remembered now that the mansion stood wedged against a rough spur of rock, and that the front and rear entrances were upon different levels, and it was conceivable that the back part of the mansion might inclose these rooms of an earlier house that had occupied the same site; why they should have been retained was beyond me.

Through the carefully-preserved windows, many-paned and quaint, of these hidden rooms, the infolding walls of the new house were blank and black. An odd thing indeed, that Pepperton should have lent himself to the preservation of a commonplace and thoroughly uninteresting relic, for beyond doubt he must have countenanced it; and Miss Hollister's prompt removal of the plans from the architect's office became more enigmatical than ever.

One door only remained in this shell of the old house, and I hastened to fling it open, still lighting my way with a candle. Before me lay the coal cellar, at which I had merely glanced on the morning after my installation at Hopefield. I now began to get my bearings. I remembered two iron lids in the cemented surface of an area on the east side of the house where fuel was deposited, and mounting a few steps that were of recent construction, and had evidently been built to afford communication between the remnant of the old house and the subterranean portion of the new, I found to my relief and satisfaction beneath one of these openings a short ladder, through which the court might be reached. Here, then, the manner of ghostly ingress was illustrated by perfectly plausible means. The lid of the coal-hole was entirely withdrawn, and a bar of moonlight lay brightening upon a pile of anthracite at the foot of the ladder.

The ghost I believed to be still in the upper halls of the house, and now that I was in a position to watch the ladder by which he had entered I felt confident that I had cut off his retreat. I was surveying the cellar, when I heard faint sounds in a new direction. Far away under the house, and remote from the secret steps, some one was moving toward me, and rapidly, too! The ghost that I believed to have disappeared into the fourth-floor hall must then have changed the line of his retreat and descended by one of the regular stairways.

I blew out my candle and stood with my back to the wall of the long corridor on which opened the various store-rooms, the heating plant, laundry and other accessories of the modern house. My ghost was coming in haste,—a haste that did not harmonize with the stately tread of the spooks of popular superstition. A slower pace and I should doubtless have fled before him; but quick light steps echoed in the dark corridor, and I gathered courage from the thought that ghosts create echoes no more than they cast shadows.

As the steps drew nearer I prepared myself to spring upon him. I must unconsciously have taken a step, for he paused suddenly, stood still for a moment, then turned and scampered back the way he had come. After him I went as fast as I could run. The cement-paved corridor was four or five feet wide, and I plunged through the dark at my best speed. At the end of the corridor I was pretty certain of my quarry, and I made ready to grapple with him. Then as I plunged into the wall my hands touched a man's face and for a moment clutched the collar of his coat. He had been waiting for me to strike the wall, and as he slipped out of my grasp he ran back toward the coal cellar. I had struck the wall with a force that knocked the wind out of me, but I got myself together with the loss of only an instant and renewed pursuit. I had no fear but that, if he attempted to reach the open by means of the coal-hole, I should catch him on the ladder, and I sprinted for all I was worth to make sure of him.

My fleeting grasp of the man's collar and the agility with which he had slipped from my clasp had settled the ghost question, and I had now resolved the intruder into a common thief. As we neared the coal cellar I increased my pace, and felt myself gaining on him; though in the dark I saw nothing until I glimpsed the faint light from the coal-hole.

It had evidently occurred to him by this time that if he tried to climb the ladder I could easily pull him down by the legs; and when he reached the cross hall, he turned quickly and dived through the opening into the hidden chambers. I lost no time in following, but the fellow put up a good race, and as I reached the old stairway he was mounting it two steps at a time, as I judged from the sound. I had hoped to catch and dispose of him without alarming the house, but it seemed inevitable now that the chase would end in such fashion as to arouse the company assembled in the library.