The Hidden Staircase - Carolyn Keene [12]
“The ghost again!” Miss Flora cried out. She looked as if she were about to faint.
Nancy’s eyes quickly swept the room. Nothing else in it was moving, so vibration was not causing the chandelier to sway. As it swung back and forth, a sudden thought came to the young sleuth. Maybe someone in Miss Flora’s room above was causing the shaking.
The chandelier suddenly started to sway
“I’m going upstairs to investigate,” Nancy told the others.
Racing noiselessly on tiptoe out of the room and through the hall, she began climbing the stairs, hugging the wall so the steps would not creak. As she neared the top, Nancy was sure she heard a door close. Hurrying along the hall, she burst into Miss Flora’s bedroom. No one was in sight!
“Maybe this time the ghost couldn’t get away and is in that wardrobe!” Nancy thought.
Helen and her relatives had come up the stairs behind Nancy. They reached the bedroom just as she flung open the wardrobe doors. But for the second time she found no one hiding there.
Nancy bit her lip in vexation. The ghost was clever indeed. Where had he gone? She had given him no time to go down the hall or run into another room. Yet there was no denying the fact that he had been in Miss Flora’s room!
“Tell us why you came up,” Helen begged her. Nancy told her theory, but suddenly she realized that maybe she was letting her imagination run wild. It was possible, she admitted to the others, that no one had caused the chandelier to shake.
“There’s only one way to find out,” she said. “I’ll make a test.”
Nancy asked Helen to go back to the first floor and watch the chandelier. She would try to make it sway by rocking from side to side on the floor above it.
“If this works, then I’m sure we’ve picked up a clue to the ghost,” she said hopefully.
Helen readily agreed and left the room. When Nancy thought her friend had had time to reach the parlor below, she began to rock hard from side to side on the spot above the chandelier.
She had barely started the test when from the first floor Helen Corning gave a piercing scream!
CHAPTER VI
The Gorilla Face
“SOMETHING has happened to Helen!” Aunt Rosemary cried out fearfully.
Nancy was already racing through the second-floor hallway. Reaching the stairs, she leaped down them two steps at a time. Helen Corning had collapsed in a wing chair in the parlor, her hands over her face.
“Helen! What happened?” Nancy asked, reaching her friend’s side.
“Out there! Looking in that window!” Helen pointed to the front window of the parlor next to the hall. “The most horrible face I ever sawl”
“Was it a man’s face?” Nancy questioned.
“Oh, I don’t know. It looked just like a gorilla!” Helen closed her eyes as if to shut out the memory of the sight.
Nancy did not wait to hear any more. In another second she was at the front door and had yanked it open. Stepping outside, she looked all around. She could see no animal near the house, nor any sign under the window that one had stood there.
Puzzled, the young sleuth hurried down the steps and began a search of the grounds. By this time Helen had collected her wits and come outside. She joined Nancy and together they looked in every outbuilding and behind every clump of bushes on the grounds of Twin Elms. They did not find one footprint or any other evidence to prove that a gorilla or other creature had been on the grounds of the estate.
“I saw it! I know I saw it!” Helen insisted.
“I don’t doubt you,” Nancy replied.
“Then what explanation is there?” Helen demanded. “You know I never did believe in spooks. But if we have many more of these weird happenings around here, I declare I’m going to start believing in ghosts.”
Nancy laughed. “Don’t worry, Helen,” she said. “There’ll be a logical explanation for the face at the window.”
The girls walked back to the front door of the mansion. Miss Flora and Aunt Rosemary stood there and immediately insisted upon knowing what had happened. As Helen told them, Nancy once more surveyed the outside of the window at which Helen had seen the terrifying face.
“I have a