CHAPTER III

THE SHUTTERED WINDOW

"Nyoda, isn't there a secret passage in this house somewhere?" asked

Sahwah eagerly, pausing with the nutcracker held open in her hand. "There

generally was one in these old houses, you know."

Christmas dinner was just drawing to a close in the big, holly hung

dining room at Carver House, and the merry group of young folks who

composed Nyoda's Christmas house party, too languid after their strenuous

attack upon the turkey and plum pudding to rise from their chairs,

lingered around the table to hear Nyoda tell stories of Carver House,

while the ruddy glow from the big log in the fireplace, dispelled the

gloom of the failing winter afternoon.

It was a jolly party that gathered around the historical old mahogany

dining table, which had witnessed so many other festivities in the one

hundred and fifty years of its existence. At the head sat Sherry, Nyoda's

soldier husband, still pale and thin from his long illness; and with a

long jagged scar showing through the closely cropped hair on one side of

his head. He had never returned to duty after the wreck in which he had

so nearly lost his life. While he was still in the military hospital to

which he had been removed from the little emergency hospital at St.

Margaret's where the sharp battle for life had been fought and won, there

came that day when the last shot was fired, and when he was ready to

leave the hospital he came home to Carver House to stay.

Opposite him, at the foot of the table, sat Nyoda, girlish and

enthusiastic as ever, with only an occasional sober light in her

twinkling eyes to tell of the trying year she had passed through. Along

both sides of the table between them were ranged five of the

Winnebagos--Katherine, Sahwah, Migwan, Hinpoha and Gladys, and in among

them, "like weeds among the posies," as the captain laughingly put it,

were Slim and the captain, Slim filled to the bursting point as usual,

and looking more than ever like an overgrown cherub. Across from these

two sat a third youth, so slender and fine featured as to seem almost

frail in comparison with Slim's overflowing stoutness. This was Justice

Dalrymple, Katherine's "Perfesser," now engaged in his experimental work

at Washington, whence Nyoda had invited him up for her Christmas house

party as a surprise for Katherine.

Agony and Oh-Pshaw, whom Nyoda had also invited to come over to the house

party, were spending the holidays with an aunt in New York and could not

come, much to Sahwah's disappointment, who had not seen them since the

summer before. Veronica was ill at her uncle's home and also could not be

with them.

Enthroned beside Katherine in a great carved armchair that had come over

from England with the first Carvers, sat Sylvia Deane, looking very much

like a story book princess. With their customary open-heartedness, the

Winnebagos had already made her feel as though she were an old friend of

theirs. The romantic way in which Katherine had found her appealed to

their imaginations and added to their interest in her. Beside that, there

was a fascinating something about her dark eyes and light hair that kept

drawing their eyes to her face as though it were a magnet. There was so

much animation in her voice when she talked that the most commonplace

thing she said seemed extremely diverting. Her eyes had a way of suddenly

lighting up as though a lamp had been kindled inside of her, and when she

talked about other people her voice would take on a perfect mimicry of

their intonations and expressions.

She showed not the slightest embarrassment at being thus transplanted

into a strange household, so much more splendid than anything she was

accustomed to. She was entirely at her ease in the great house, and acted

as though she had been used to luxurious surroundings all her life.

Katherine was secretly surprised to find her so completely unabashed. She

herself was still prone to make ridiculous blunders in the presence of

strangers, and was still ill at ease when anyone looked critically at

her.

They were all surprised to learn that Sylvia was eighteen years old,

instead of fourteen as they had all thought when they first saw her. Her

slender, childlike form, and her short, curly hair made her look much

younger than she really was.

The animated talk that had accompanied the first part of the dinner

gradually died away, as a sense of repleteness and languor succeeded to

eager appetites, and conversation had begun to lag, when Sahwah stirred

it into life again by asking if there was not a secret passage in Carver

House. A ripple of interest went around the table, and all the girls and

boys began to sit up and take notice.

"Haven't you had enough adventures yet to satisfy you?" asked Sherry

quizzically. "Aren't you content with fishing a lieutenant out of the

Devil's Punch Bowl the last time you were here, that you must begin again

looking for excitement? By the way, where is this young Allison?"

"Still across," replied Sahwah. "His last letter said he would be there

for six months yet. He's going on into Germany. He isn't a lieutenant any

more. He's a captain."

"Captain Allison?" asked Justice. "Captain Robert Allison? You don't mean

to say that you know Bob Allison?"

"Does she know Captain Allison!" echoed Hinpoha. "Who sent her that

spiked helmet, and that piece of marble from Rheims Cathedral and that

French flag with the bullet holes in it, to say nothing of that package

of French chocolates? But, of course, you didn't know," she added,

remembering that Justice had only met Sahwah the day before.

"Do you know Captain Allison?" asked Sahwah.

"Best friend I had in college," replied Justice. "He was dreaming of

flying machines then. Bob Allison, the fellow you pulled out of the

water! It seems that all my friends, as well as my family, are going to

get mixed up with you girls. It seems like fate."

"Wherever the Winnebagos come there's sure to be something doing," said

the captain. "I wonder what the next thing will be. What's this about

secret passages now?"

"With so much paneling," continued Sahwah, "it seems as if there must be

a hollow panel somewhere that would slide back and reveal a passage

behind it. Isn't there one, Nyoda?"

"There may be one, for all I know," replied Nyoda, "but I have never

found it if there is. I have never looked for any such thing. It takes

all my time," she proclaimed with a comic-tragic air, "to keep all the

open passages in this place clean, without looking for any more behind

panels."

"Do you care if we try to find one?" asked Sahwah eagerly. "I just feel

it in my bones that there is one somewhere."

"Search all you like," replied Nyoda, with an amused laugh.

"O goody!" exclaimed Sahwah. "Let's begin right away."

She rose from the table and the rest followed, much taken up with this

new quest, and the search began immediately. Upstairs and downstairs they

tapped, peered, pried and investigated, but without success. One by one

they abandoned the quest and drifted into the library where Nyoda and

Sherry and Sylvia sat in a close group before the fire; Sherry smoking,

Nyoda reading aloud, and Sylvia watching the images in the fire. Sahwah

and the captain were the last to give up, but finally they, too, drifted

in and joined the ranks of the unsuccessful hunters.

Nyoda paused in her reading and looked up with a smile as Sahwah and the

captain came in.

"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.