was thumping wildly in my ears, but I nodded to him to go ahead. I was perhaps eight or ten feet away—and then he threw the bolt back. 

 “Come out,” he said quietly. There was no response. “Come—out,” he repeated. Then—I think he had a revolver, but I am not sure—he stepped aside and threw the door open. 

 From where I stood I could not see beyond the door, but I saw Mr. Jamieson’s face change and heard him mutter something, then he bolted down the stairs, three at a time. When my knees had stopped shaking, I moved forward, slowly, nervously, until I had a partial view of what was beyond the door. It seemed at first to be a closet, empty. Then I went close and examined it, to stop with a shudder. Where the floor should have been was black void and darkness, from which came the indescribable, damp smell of the cellars. 

 Mr. Jamieson had locked somebody in the clothes chute. As I leaned over I fancied I heard a groan—or was it the wind? 

 

CHAPTER VII. A SPRAINED ANKLE

 I was panic-stricken. As I ran along the corridor I was confident that the mysterious intruder and probable murderer had been found, and that he lay dead or dying at the foot of the chute. I got down the staircase somehow, and through the kitchen to the basement stairs. Mr. Jamieson had been before me, and the door stood open. Liddy was standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding a frying-pan by the handle as a weapon. 

 “Don’t go down there,” she yelled, when she saw me moving toward the basement stairs. “Don’t you do it, Miss Rachel. That Jamieson’s down there now. There’s only trouble comes of hunting ghosts; they lead you into bottomless pits and things like that. Oh, Miss Rachel, don’t—” as I tried to get past her. 

 She was interrupted by Mr. Jamieson’s reappearance. He ran up the stairs two at a time, and his face was flushed and furious. 

 “The whole place is locked,” he said angrily. “Where’s the laundry key kept?” 

 “It’s kept in the door,” Liddy snapped. “That whole end of the cellar is kept locked, so nobody can get at the clothes, and then the key’s left in the door? so that unless a thief was as blind as—as some detectives, he could walk right in.” 

 “Liddy,” I said sharply, “come down with us and turn on all the lights.” 

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