I seemed bound to be the prey of a divided duty. As I crossed the street, I asked myself which of the two experiments I had in mind should occupy my attention first. Should I proceed at once with that close study and detailed examination of the house, which I contemplated in my eagerness to establish my theory of a secret passage between it and the one now inhabited by the Misses Quinlan, or should I wait to do this until I had recovered the box, which might hold still greater secrets?
I could not decide, so I resolved to be guided by circumstances. If Mrs. Packard were still out, I did not think I could sit down till I had a complete plan of the house as a start in the inquiry which interested me most.
Mrs. Packard was still out — so much Nixon deigned to tell me in answer to my question. Whether the fact displeased him or not I could not say, but he was looking very sour and seemed to resent the trouble he had been to in opening the door for me. Should I notice this, even by an attempt to conciliate him? I decided not. A natural manner was best; he was too keen not to notice and give his own interpretation to uncalled for smiles or words which contrasted too strongly with his own marked reticence. I therefore said nothing as he pottered slowly back into his own quarters in the rear, but lingered about down-stairs till I was quite sure he was out of sight and hearing. Then I came back and took up my point of view on the spot where the big hall clock had stood in the days of Mr. Dennison. Later, I made a drawing of this floor as it must have looked at that time. You will find it on the opposite page.
floor plan
Near the place where I stood (marked A on the plan), had occurred most of the phenomena, which could be located at all. Here the spectral hand had been seen stopping the clock. Here the shape had passed encountered by Mr. Weston’s cook, and just a few steps beyond where the library door opened under the stairs Mr. Searles had seen the flitting figure which had shut his mouth on the subject of his tenants’ universal folly. From the front then toward the back these manifestations had invariably peeped to disappear — where? That was what I was to determine; what I am sure Mayor Packard would wish me to determine if he knew the whole situation as I knew it from his wife’s story and the record I had just read at the agent’s office.
Alas! there were many points of exit from this portion of the hall. The drawing-room opened near; so did Mayor Packard’s study; then there was the kitchen with its various offices, ending as I knew in the cellar stairs. Nearer I could see the door leading into the dining-room and, opening closer yet, the short side hall running down to what had once been the shallow vestibule of a small side entrance, but which, as I had noted many times in passing to and from the dining-room, was now used as a recess or alcove to hold a cabinet of Indian curios. In which of these directions should I carry my inquiry? All looked equally unpromising, unless it was Mayor Packard’s study, and that no one with the exception of Mr. Steele ever entered save by his invitation, not even his wife. I could not hope to cross that threshold, nor did I greatly desire to invade the kitchen, especially while Nixon was there. Should I have to wait till the mayor’s return for the cooperation my task certainly demanded? It looked that way. But before yielding to the discouragement following this thought, I glanced about me again and suddenly remembered, first the creaking board, which had once answered to the so-called spirit’s flight, and secondly the fact which common sense should have suggested before, that if my theory were true and the secret presence, whose coming and going I had been considering, had fled by some secret passage leading to the neighboring house, then by all laws of convenience and natural propriety that passage should open from the side facing the Quinlan domicile, and not from that holding Mayor Packard’s study and the remote drawing-room.
This considerably narrowed my field of inquiry, and made me immediately anxious to find that creaking board which promised to narrow it further yet.
Where should I seek it? In these rear halls, of course, but I hated to be caught pacing them at this hour. Nixon’s step had not roused it or I should have noticed it, for I was, in a way, listening for this very sound. It was not in the direct path then from the front door to the kitchen. Was it on one side or in the space about the dining-room door or where the transverse corridor met the main hall? All these floors were covered in the old-fashioned way with carpet, which would seem to show that no new boards had been laid and that the creaking one should still be here.
I ventured to go as far as the transverse hall — I was at full............