"What's the matter?"
"I thought—I wasn't sure—but I thought I saw one of those oak panels slide as I came up the stairs," answered Tom.
"You thought you saw a panel slide!" exclaimed Ned. "Say, this is like a moving picture mystery."
"Maybe it was only the shadow of your flashlight," went on Tom.
He advanced to the rear wall and tapped on it. The lower part was made up of what had once been beautifully carved, quartered oak panels. But as far as the two adventurers could discover, all of them were in place and none seemed movable.
"It must have been a shadow," said Ned.
"I guess so," agreed his chum.
The rooms upstairs, like those below, were bare and deserted, devoid of furniture, but with the same festoons of drooping wall paper. In some of the chambers there were piles of old bags and leaves in some corners showing plainly that tramps had been sleeping there.
"It was probably these hoboes, who made this place a hang-out, that gave rise to the stories about ghosts and bootleggers on Dismal Mountain," commented Ned, and Tom agreed that this might be so.
The number and arrangement of the upper rooms confirmed the ideas of the young men that this mansion had once been the home of persons who lived in luxury and moved in high society. There were a number of bedchambers, each with a private bath. But the latter rooms were in worse ruin than any other part of the house, for the fixtures had been torn out, probably by those who wanted the lead and brass piping to sell to junkmen. Some of the porcelain bath tubs had been wantonly cracked and broken.