The Secret of the Haunted Mirror - M. V. Carey [3]
“We know how he got in,” said Jean Parkinson. “He broke the lock on the kitchen door.”
The policeman nodded. “Old story,” he said. “Back doors never have good locks.”
“My back door has … that is, it did have a very good lock,” said Mrs. Darnley. “I am careful about these things. You may have noticed that all the windows in this house are covered with iron grill-work. There are only two doors, the front one and the one from the kitchen out to the garage. They both have double dead-bolt locks.
The man forced the door with a crowbar. Jeff, take the officers to the kitchen and show them!”
The men retreated, led by Jeff, and very shortly they returned. One of them was carrying the crowbar which the burglar had used to get into the house.
“The fingerprint men may be able to do something with this,” he said.
“The man was wearing gloves,” said Pete.
“You sure?”
“I’m certain. I ought to know. He took a swipe at me.”
The policemen left then, promising to contact Mrs. Darnley if they had any leads which might enable them to identify the burglar. Worthington left, too, to return the Rolls to the auto rental company.
“That’s probably the last we’ll hear about that,” said Mrs. Darnley. “Well, no great harm done. Would you like to see the house? It used to belong to Drakestar, the magician. He built it.”
“Drakestar’s house?” Jupiter, who knew a great deal about theatrical people, suddenly sat straighter. “So this is Drakestar’s house? I’ve read about it.”
Mrs. Darnley nodded. “Drakestar died here, and the place is supposed to be haunted. I’ve never seen or heard anything odd, myself. But come along, if you like old, interesting things.”
She crossed the living-room and opened a pair of double doors. Uncle Titus, The Three Investigators, and Jean and Jeff Parkinson followed her into a huge dining-room. Here the curtains were open, and the afternoon sun shone in and touched walls which were covered with a heavy red damask. Over the sideboard was a looking-glass framed with gilt scrolls. It appeared to be very old, and in several places the silver backing had pulled away from the glass.
“That’s one of my special treasures,” said Mrs. Darnley. “It came from the palace of the czars in St Petersburg. One can’t be sure, of course, but perhaps Catherine the Great saw herself in it. That’s the fascinating thing about mirrors. They’ve held so many images, and it’s easy to imagine that a little bit of each person stays in the mirror.”
Beyond the dining-room there was a butler’s pantry and beyond that the kitchen, where the boys met John Chan, Mrs. Darnley’s houseman. He was slender, somewhere in his mid-twenties, and although it was plain that his ancestors had come from the Orient, he spoke English with a Boston accent. He reported that a carpenter and a locksmith had been called and that the kitchen door would be fixed before dark.
“Good,” said Mrs. Darnley. She waved towards a doorway. “John’s room is there,” she said, “and he won’t let me put any mirrors in it.”
The houseman smiled. “I see myself coming and going too much as it is,” he explained.
“So we’ll go on to some of my other treasures.” She opened another door and stepped into the long, narrow corridor that the visitors had seen when they first entered the house.
“In Drakestar’s day,” she said, “this front half of the house was a ballroom. I’ve had interior walls put in and made a series of . . . well, I suppose you could call the rooms historical displays.”
They crowded into a corner room which had walls painted the colour of adobe clay. There was a narrow bed, a leather-covered trunk, one wooden chair, and a table made of hand-hewn boards. Over the table was a simple mirror in a maple frame.
“That mirror was brought to California during the gold rush,” she said. “It was ordered from New England by an American man who wanted to marry the daughter of a Spanish don. It was a courting present for the girl.”
“Did she marry him?” asked Bob.
“Yes, she did, and that was a tragedy. He turned out to be a gambler and he lost everything. This is a reproduction of the