“No, sir,” said Hollis thoughtfully, “I’ve had all sorts of notions, but they’ve all been wrong, and sometimes I’m ready to agree with Mrs. Webb herself that it’s the spirits as done it.”
“Rubbish!” Coe observed, and Hollis really agreed, though he had no wiser suggestion to make.
“How long have you been here?” Coe asked, idly.
“And have you seen or heard anything mysterious?”
“No; not myself, sir. But I’ve heard the other servants’ stories.”
“So have I,” groaned Coe, wearily. “I’ve heard the tales of moans and groans that grew weirder each time,—the tales did, I mean. But I’ve heard nothing definite. Have you, Oscar?”
“No, sir,” said the chauffeur, a taciturn chap. “Nor I’ve never seen anything myself, nor heard anything. But, Mr. Coe, everybody laughs at this, so I haven’t harped on it. You know I did smell bananas as I opened that door, that morning, and I’d swear to that on a stack of Bibles!”
“Yes, sir. And Mr. Kimball Webb didn’t care for bananas. I mean he wouldn’t think of having them in his bedroom to eat! He never did things like that. Now, doesn’t that smell mean something?”
“It’s queer, but I can’t see any indicative evidence in it.”
“No, sir, I s’pose not. But I’d like to know what made it. Maybe ghosts eat bananas.”
“Lord!” he cried, “I’m sick and tired of looking for a mousehole when the mousehole isn’t here! Not a baby mouse could get in or out of this box,—let alone a swashbuckler villain, carrying a drugged unconscious man on his back!”
For that was the way Coe visualized it,—he felt sure the abductor had entered by his confounded secret entrance, had drugged or chloroformed the sleeping Webb, and had returned the way he came, carrying his prey.
For how else could it have been done? And anyway details didn’t matter. Even if Webb had been cajoled,—say by a tale of Elsie in immediate danger,—or her sudden illness,—even so, the secret entrance must have afforded the way in.
And so the secret entrance had to be found, and Coe vowed he wouldn’t leave the room until he left through that entrance itself!
Patiently he went over the walls again,—the floor, the ceiling, noting unmarred decorations that precluded an opening of any sort.
But this he soon finished and set himself to work with his brain, thinking up some other type of entrance than any he had yet thought of.