“What have you to report, my darling scouts?” she asked gravely.
“Nothing,” replied the captain, rather sheepishly.
Sahwah rubbed her fingers tenderly. “There are miles of oak paneling in this house,” she remarked wearily, “and I’ve rapped on every inch of it with my knuckles, until they’re just pulp, but not one of those panels sounded hollow.”
“Poor child!” said Nyoda sympathetically.
“You should have done the way the captain did,” said Slim. “He used his head to knock with instead of his knuckles; it’s harder.”
A scuffle seemed imminent, and was only averted by Sahwah’s next remark. “Nyoda,” she asked, “where does that door at the head of the stairs lead to, the one that is locked? It was locked last summer when we were here, too.”
“That,” replied Nyoda, “is the room Uncle Jasper used as his study. I’ve been using it as a sort of store room for furniture. There were a number of pieces in the house that didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the furniture and I set them in there until I could make up my mind what to do with them. I didn’t want to dispose of them without consulting Sherry, and as he has been away from home ever since we have lived here until just now, we have never had time to go over the stuff together. As the room looks cluttered with those odd pieces in there I have kept it locked.”
“Your uncle’s study!” exclaimed Sahwah. “Oh, I wonder if there wouldn’t be a concealed door in there! It seems such a likely place. Would you care very much if we went and looked there?”
Nyoda laughed at Sahwah’s eagerness in her quest. “You’re a true Winnebago,” she said fondly. “Never leave a stone unturned when you’re looking for anything. I might as well say yes now as later, because I know you will never rest until you have investigated that room. You’re worse than Bluebeard’s wife. I have no objections to your going in if you’ll excuse the disorderly look of the place and the dust that has undoubtedly collected by this time. I’ll get you the key.”
With the prospect of a fresh field for investigation the others revived their interest in the search and followed Nyoda eagerly as she led the way upstairs and unlocked the closed door at the head. A faint, musty odor greeted their nostrils, the close atmosphere of a room which has been shut up, although the moonlight flooding the place through the long windows gave it an almost airy appearance. Nyoda found the electric light button and presently the room was brilliantly lighted from the chandelier. The Winnebagos trooped in and looked curiously about them at the queer old desks and tables and cabinets that stood about. Sahwah’s attention was immediately drawn to the window at the far end of the room. She knew it was a window because it was framed in a mahogany casement like the other windows in the house, but instead of a pane of glass there was a dark, opaque space inside the casement. Sahwah ran over to it at once, and a little exclamation of astonishment escaped her as she examined it. On the inside of the glass—if there was a pane of glass there—was a heavy black iron shutter fastened to the casement with great screws.
“What did you put up this shutter for, Nyoda?” asked Sahwah wonderingly.
The others all came crowding over then to exclaim over the iron shutter.
“I didn’t put it up,” replied Nyoda. “It was there when I came here.”
“But what’s it for?” persisted Sahwah. “Is the window behind it broken?”
“No, it doesn’t seem to be,” replied Nyoda. “I looked at it from the outside.”
“Then what can it be for?” repeated Sahwah.
“I don’t know, I can’t imagine,” replied Nyoda. A note of wonder was creeping into her voice. “To tell the truth,” she said, “I never thought anything about it. I noticed that there was an iron shutter over that window when we first came here, but I was too much taken up with Sherry’s going away then even to wonder about it. The room has been closed up ever since and I had forgotten all about it. It does seem a queer thing, now that you call my attention to it. But Uncle Jasper did so many eccentric things, I’m not surprised at anything he might have done. We’ll take the shutter off in the morning and see if we can discover any reason for having it there.
“Now, aren’t you going to hunt for the secret passage after I’ve opened the door for you?” she said quizzically. “There’s still an hour or so before bedtime; long enough for all of you to complete the destruction of your knuckles.”
Again the house resounded with the tapping of knuckles against hardwood paneling, until it sounded as though an army of giant woodpeckers were at work, but the eager searchers continued to bruise their long suffering knuckles in vain. The paneling in Uncle Jasper’s study was as solid as the Great Wall of China.
CHAPTER IV
AN INTERVIEW WITH HERCULES
Among the furniture stored in the study was one piece which Nyoda had pounced upon with an exclamation of joy the night before when she opened the room to please the Winnebagos. That was an invalid’s wheel chair.
“Just the thing for Sylvia!” she exclaimed delightedly. “She can get around the house by herself in this. It’s a good thing you got curious about this room, Sahwah dear; I’m afraid I wouldn’t have thought of opening it until spring. I remember now, Uncle Jasper had a paralytic stroke some months before he died which left him lame, and he went about in a wheel chair during his last days. This certainly comes in handy now.”
The morning after Sahwah had discovered the iron shutter Sylvia was set in the wheel chair and rolled into the study, and the rest came flocking up to watch Sherry and the boys remove the shutter. It was no easy job, taking that shutter off, for the screws had rusted in so that it was almost impossible to turn them. Nyoda gave an exclamation of dismay at the holes left in the mahogany casement. The Winnebagos were too much absorbed in the window which was revealed by the removal of the shutter to pay any attention to the damaged casement. Unlike the other windows in the room, which were of clear glass, this one was composed of tiny leaded panes in colors. It was so dirty on the outside that it was impossible to see what it really was like. Sahwah hastened out and got cleaning rags and washed it inside and out, standing on the roof of the side porch to get at it on the outside, because it did not open. When it was clean, and the bright sun shone through it, the beauty of the window struck them dumb.
The leaded panes were wrought into a design of climbing roses, growing over a little arched gateway, the rich red and green tints of the flowers and leaves glowing splendid in the mellow light that streamed through it.
After a moment of breathless silence the Winnebagos found their voices and broke into admiring cries. Hinpoha promptly went into raptures.
“Why, you can almost smell those roses, they’re so natural! Oh, the darling archway! Did you ever see anything so beautiful? Don’t you just long to go through it? O why did your uncle ever have that horrible old shutter put over it?”
“Maybe he was afraid it would get broken,” suggested Gladys.
“But why would he put the shutter on the inside?” asked Sahwah shrewdly. “There would be more danger of the window’s getting broken from the outside than from the inside, I should think.”
“There wouldn’t be with Slim around,” said the captain, and prudently barricaded himself behind a bookcase in the corner. Slim gave him a withering glance, but did not deign to follow him and open an attack. He could not have squeezed in behind the bookcase, so he ignored the thrust.
“I wonder why he didn’t put shutters on the other windows also,” said Katherine.
“Mercy, I’m glad he didn’t!” said Nyoda with a shiver, eyeing the ugly screw holes in the smooth mahogany casement with housewifely horror at such marring of beauty. “One set of holes like that is enough. Isn’t it just like a man, though, to put screws into that woodwork! It’s time a woman owned this house. A few more generations of eccentric bachelors and the place would be ruined.”
“But,” said Sahwah musingly, “didn’t you tell us once that this house was the pride of your u
ncle’s heart, and he never would let any children in for fear they would scratch the floors and furniture?”
“That’s so, too,” replied Nyoda. “Uncle Jasper was so fond of this house that it was a byword among the relations. He loved it as though it were his own child. How he ever allowed anyone to put screws into that mahogany casement is a mystery.”
“Don’t you think,” said Sahwah shrewdly, “that there must have been some great and important reason for putting up that shutter? A reason that made him forget all about the holes he was making in the woodwork?”
A little thrill went through the group; all at once they seemed to feel that they were standing in the shadow of some mystery.
“What kind of a man was your uncle Jasper?” asked Sahwah.
“He was a queer, silent man,” replied Nyoda, sitting down on the edge of a table and rubbing her forehead to aid her recollection. “He was an author—wrote historical works. I confess I don’t know a great deal about him. I only saw him twice; once when I was a very little girl and once a few years ago. He never corresponded with any of his relations and never visited them nor had them come to visit him. Most everybody was afraid of him; he was so grim and stern looking. He couldn’t have been very sociable here either, for none of the people of Oakwood seemed to have been in the habit of calling on him. None of those that called on me had ever been inside the house before. The old man didn’t mix with the neighbors, they said. He seldom went outside the house. No one seems to know much about him. Of course,” she added, “living up here on the hill he was sort of by himself; there are no near neighbors.”
“Maybe he put up that shutter for protection,” suggested Hinpoha.
“With all the other windows in the house unshuttered?” asked the captain derisively. “A lot of protection that would be! Besides, do you think the neighbors were in the habit of shooting pop guns at him?”
“Well, can you think of any other reason?” retorted Hinpoha.
“Why don’t you ask old Hercules?” suggested Sahwah. “He might know.”
“To be sure!” cried Nyoda, springing down from the table. “Why didn’t I think of Hercules before? Of course he’d know. He was with Uncle Jasper all his life. I’ll call him in and ask him and we’ll have the mystery cleared up in a jiffy. Will one of you boys go out and bring him in?”
The captain and Justice sprang up simultaneously in answer to her request and raced for the stable. In a few minutes they were back, bringing old Hercules with them. Hercules had a somewhat forlorn air about him like that of a dog without a master. Nyoda said he was grieving for Uncle Jasper; Sherry said it was the goat he was mourning for. At any rate, he was a pathetic figure as he hobbled painfully up the stairs one step at a time on his shaky, stiff old limbs. His eyes brightened a bit as he saw the door into Uncle Jasper’s study standing open, and he looked around the room with an affectionate gaze as the boys piloted him in. Nyoda saw his eyes rest on the window from which the shutter had been removed, and it seemed to her that he gave a start and gazed through the window apprehensively.
“Hercules,” said Nyoda briskly, “we’ve just taken this ugly old shutter off that stained glass window, and we’re curious to know why it was put up. It seems such a pity to have put those great screws into that mahogany casement. Why did Uncle Jasper put it up?”
Hercules scratched his head and shifted his corn cob pipe to the other side of his mouth. “That shutter’s been up a good many years, Miss ’Lizbeth,” he quavered.
“I see it has, from the way the screws were rusted in,” replied Nyoda. “But why was it put up?”
“That shutter’s been there twenty-five years,” reiterated the old man solemnly, still looking at it in a half-fascinated, half-apprehensive way.
“Yes, yes,” said Nyoda, trying to control her impatience. “But why has it been there all this time? Why did Uncle Jasper put it up?”
Hercules scratched his head again, and replaced his pipe in its original position. “I disremember, Miss ’Lizbeth,” he said deprecatingly. “It’s been so long since. My memry’s been powerful bad lately, Miss ’Lizbeth. Seems like I caint remember hardly anything. It’s the mizry, Miss ’Lizbeth; it’s settled in my memry.” He carefully avoided her eyes.
“Please try to remember!” said Nyoda, trying hard to hold on to her patience, but morally certain that Hercules was trying to sidestep her questions. “Think, now. Twenty-five years ago Uncle Jasper put up an iron shutter to cover the most beautiful window in Carver House. Why did he do it?”
Nyoda turned so that she looked right into his face, and her compelling black eyes held his shifty gaze steady. There was something strangely magnetic about Nyoda’s eyes. People could avoid answering her questions as long as they did not look into her eyes, but once let her catch your gaze, and things she wanted to know had a habit of coming out of their own accord. Hercules seemed to be on the point of speaking; he cleared his throat nervously and shifted the pipe once more. Nyoda cast a triumphant glance at Sherry. In that instant Hercules shifted his gaze from her face and met another pair of eyes, eyes that seemed to look at him accusingly, and sent a chill running down his spine. These were none other than the eyes of Uncle Jasper, who, hanging in his frame on the study wall, seemed to be looking straight at him, in the way that eyes in pictures have. When Nyoda glanced back at Hercules he was staring uneasily at Uncle Jasper’s picture and there was a guilty look about him as if he had been caught in a misdemeanor.
“I ’clare, I cain’t remember nothin’ ’bout why that shutter was put up, Miss ’Lizbeth,” he said earnestly. “Come to think on it now, Mr. Jasper ain’t never told me why he want it put up,” he continued triumphantly. “He just say, ‘Herc’les, put up that shutter,’ and he ain’t ever say why. I axed him, ‘Mr. Jasper, what for you puttin’ up that shutter over that window?’ and he say, ‘Herc’les, you put up that shutter and mind your business. I ain’t tellin’ why I wants it put up; I just wants it put up, that’s all.’ No’m, Miss ’Lizbeth, I’s often wondered myself about that shutter, but I never found out nothin’.”
He glanced up at Uncle Jasper’s picture as though expecting some token of approval from the stern, grim face.
Nyoda saw it was no use trying to get anything out of Hercules. Either he really did not know anything, or he would not tell.
“You may go, Hercules,” she said. “That’s all we wanted of you.”
Hercules looked unaccountably relieved and started for the door. Half way across the room he turned and looked long through the clear panel of glass underneath the archway of the gate in the stained glass window. He stood still, seemingly lost in reverie, and quite oblivious to the group about him. Finally his lips began to move, and he began to mutter to himself, and Sahwah’s sharp ears caught the sound of the words.
“They’s tings,” muttered the old man, “that folks don’t want ter look at, and they’s tings they dassent look at!”
Still lost in reverie he shuffled out of the room and hobbled painfully downstairs.
CHAPTER V
THE FIRST LINK
“What did old Hercules mean?” asked Sahwah in astonishment. “He said, ‘They’s some tings folks don’t want ter look at, and they’s tings they dassent look at!’”
“I can’t imagine,” said Nyoda, thoroughly mystified. “But there’s one thing sure, and that is, Uncle Jasper had some very potent reason for putting that shutter over that window, and I more than half believe Hercules knows what it was. Hercules’ explanations always become very fluent when he is not telling the truth. If he really hadn’t known anything about it he probably would have said so simply, in about three words, and without any hesitation. The elaborate details he went into to convince me that he knew nothing about it sounds suspicious to me.
“But I don’t believe the exclamation he made when he went out was intended to deceive me. I think it was the involuntary utterance of what was in his thoughts. He seemed to be thinking aloud, and was quite unconscio
us of our presence.
“But what a queer thing to say—‘They’s tings people dassent look at!’ I wonder what it was that Uncle Jasper dared not look at? Was it something he saw through this window? What is there to be seen out of this window, anyway?” She moved over in front of the window with the others crowding after her to see, too.
Uncle Jasper’s study was at the back of the house and the windows looked out upon the wide open meadow which stretched behind Carver Hill, between the town and the woods. The front of Carver House looked out over the town. Nearly half a mile to the east of Carver Hill another hill rose sharply from the town’s edge. Upon its top stood another old-fashioned dwelling. This hill, crowned with its red brick mansion, was framed in the arch of the gateway in the window like an artist’s picture, with nothing between to obstruct the view. A beautiful picture it was, certainly, and one which could not possibly have any connection with Hercules’ muttered words.
“Who lives in that house?” asked Sahwah.
“I don’t know,” said Nyoda. “It’s way up on the Main Street Hill. I’m not acquainted with the people in that end of town.”
Sherry got out his binoculars and took a look through the window. “Nothing but an old house on a hill,” he reported, and handed the binoculars to Sylvia, that she might take a look through them.
“Why,” said Sylvia after peering intently through the glasses for a minute, “it’s the house Aunt Aggie and I live in! What did that old house have to do with your Uncle Jasper?” she asked wondering. “It’s been empty for many, many years.”
“Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was a romance in your Uncle Jasper’s life?” exclaimed Hinpoha eagerly. “A blighted romance. He never married, did he?”
“No, he never married,” replied Nyoda.
“Then I’m sure it’s a blighted romance!” said Hinpoha enthusiastically. “I just know that some deep tragedy darkened the sun of his life and left him shrouded in gloom forever after!”
Even Nyoda smiled at Hinpoha’s sentimental language, and the rest could not help laughing out loud.
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