Mystery Behind the Wall (2 page)

Benny said, “Come in my room and I’ll show you.”

The two boys ran into Benny’s room. Benny opened the closet door and pushed his clothes out of the way.

“See? It’s the same wall,” Benny said. He knocked on it.

Rory said, “Let me run back to my room. I’ll knock on my side.”

“OK,” Benny said. Soon he heard Rory knocking. But it wasn’t as loud as he had thought it would be. He knocked, and in a minute Rory was back.

“Benny, did you hear me?” he asked. “I could hear you knock, but it wasn’t very loud.”

“Too bad,” Benny said. “I was thinking we could signal to each other in the morning.”

Rory looked thoughtful. Then he asked, “Do you think we could make a telegraph between our rooms?”

“A telegraph?” Benny asked, and began to see that having Rory around was going to be fun. “You mean run heavy cord from one room to the other?”

“Well, the back walls of the closets are just wood. Maybe there’s a crack or a hole we could run a cord through,” Rory said.

“And we could hang something heavy that would knock against the wall,” Benny said. “Or even a bell.”

“That’s it,” Rory said. “If I pull the rope on my side, it would make a noise on your side.”

Benny got his flashlight and the two boys looked at the wooden wall from top to bottom. There was no hole or crack on Benny’s side.

The boys ran back to Rory’s closet. They found a small crack and a loose board, but no room to run any rope through.

“Do you suppose we could make a hole?” Rory asked. “Would Granda Alden mind?”

Benny laughed and said, “No, he won’t mind. But why do you say Granda Alden?”

“Well,” answered Rory, “we say Granda in the part of Canada I come from. It’s natural for me to say Granda, just as you say Grandfather.”

The two boys raced down to the cellar and raced back with a saw, a hammer, and other tools. They made so much noise that Henry came up to see what was going on.

“We’re going to rig a telegraph,” Benny explained. “But we will have to cut out a piece of the closet to get the rope through.”

“How will you work this, Ben?” Henry asked.

Benny said, “Well, this is how we think it will work. We will hang something like a piece of iron on each end of the rope. If I pull the rope on my side, there will be a knock on Rory’s side.”

Rory added, “It will be a telegraph because we will have signals. One knock means, ‘Are you awake?’ Then the answer can be two knocks for yes.”

“We don’t need a signal for no,” Benny said. “If there’s no answer, Rory is asleep.”

Henry laughed. He said, “I’ll ask Grandfather if he is willing to have you cut that hole. If I don’t come right back and let you know, you can go ahead.”

No one came to stop them. The boys succeeded in cutting a very rough round hole through the double wood. It was a bigger hole than they needed, big enough to poke a finger or almost a hand through.

Next, the boys hunted for a rope to run through the hole. They found two old iron hooks in the tool chest. Rory tied one to the end of a rope in his room. Benny did the same thing with the other in his room.

Before the boys knew it, several hours had passed.

“There!” said Rory. “There is a fine telegraph to use tomorrow morning.”

The boys called Mrs. McGregor to come up to see their new invention. She had heard the noise and was worried that Rory was doing some damage to the house.

She said, “Rory, I thought you were pounding this house down. You must remember this is not your house.” Then she admired the new telegraph with its loud bangs. But soon she said, “Benny, Rory has not seen the rest of the house yet, or the yard.”

So Benny and Rory walked all around the house and tried out the bicycles. Rory knew how to ride because at home he had to ride a bike to school.

Jeffrey and Sammy Beach, who lived next door to the Aldens, were gone for the summer. But Benny and Rory went up the ladder to see the tree house the Aldens had built with some help from their neighbors.

At dinner, Rory said, “Granda Alden, there seems to be a picture of this house in my room. It looks like a photograph.”

“That is just what it is, Rory,” replied Mr. Alden. “It is a photograph.”

“And there’s a family coming down the front walk,” continued Rory. “It looks like a father and mother and their little girl.”

“Just right again, my boy,” said Mr. Alden, smiling. “You seem to want to know everything.”

“That I do!” agreed Rory. “Do you know who the people are?”

“Yes, I do,” answered Mr. Alden. “That is the family who lived here before I bought the house. You see I lived on this same street, not far away. I didn’t know the people in this house very well. Their name was Shaw, and the child’s name was Stephanie. Mr. Shaw sold me this house, and they all went to France to live. I have never heard from them since. Maybe someone else has, but I haven’t. I paid them for the house, and that’s all there was to it.”

“Then the picture of the pretty little girl is Stephanie Shaw?” insisted Rory.

“That’s right,” said Mr. Alden again.

“But our house looks so funny,” Benny objected. “The front door and the porch are the same, though.”

Grandfather nodded. “That is because I had rooms added to the house to make it bigger. The work took a long time. It was nearly a year before the house was ready and I could move in.”

“Was there any trouble?” asked Rory. “I mean between you and the Shaw family?”

Grandfather thought a minute. Then he said, “No, not exactly trouble. I did think the Shaws could have written to me from France.”

“That is a little sad,” Jessie said.

“It was almost as if the Shaws had never lived here at all,” Mr. Alden said. “After a time everyone forgot that this had been the Shaw house once. It seemed as if it was always the Alden house.”

Mrs. McGregor brought the dessert in. “That’s right,” she said. “It’s been the Alden house for years now.”

“And yet,” Violet said, “little Stephanie called it home. I do wonder what happened to her.”

“I suppose it will always be a mystery,” Rory said.

“Maybe,” Benny added. “With us you never know.”

CHAPTER
3

Surprise from the Past

T
he next morning it was raining very hard. The sky was filled with black clouds.

“It’s teeming,” said Rory.

“It’s pouring,” said Benny. “We can’t play outdoors very well.”

“That’s OK,” Rory said. “We can work some more on our telegraph.”

As the boys worked, Rory had an idea. He said, “We made that hole pretty big, Ben. Maybe we could pass messages through it.”

Benny looked at the hole. He said, “Yes, I think we could. Let’s make the hole a little bigger. If I knock three times, it means I’ve tied a message around the rope. Then you can pull it over to your side.”

The boys tried out the new idea right away. But they ran into trouble.

“Ouch!” Rory exclaimed. “The rope is stuck. Look, this hole is full of splinters.”

“I tell you what we can do, Rory,” said Benny. “Let’s make the hole square and sand the edges. It will be all right with Grandfather.”

“Let’s do that,” Rory agreed. “We’ll need the tools.”

“That’s easy,” replied Benny. “We’ll just go down to the cellar and get the tools again.”

The boys picked out a short saw, a steel plane, a pair of pliers, and some sandpaper. Then they raced upstairs again.

“Don’t you ever walk, Rory?” Jessie asked, laughing. She was going upstairs to her room.

“No, I don’t walk when I can run,” answered Rory. “What’s the use of waiting around?” And by that time he was out of sight.

Mrs. McGregor said, “I do hope Rory isn’t doing anything he shouldn’t.”

“No, he isn’t,” answered Henry. “I’ve watched the boys. They are just going to make a larger hole between their rooms through the closet wall. It’s all right.”

Rory was busy sawing the round hole into a square one. “Lots more room, Ben, to let the rope through. And it will look better, too, when we begin to smooth it off.”

“Let me sandpaper,” said Benny. “When I get tired, I’ll hand it over to you.”

Benny went to work. Then in a few minutes Rory took his turn.

It was not long before their arms were tired. It was hard work smoothing off the oak wood.

“We can rest a while,” said Rory. “Did you notice that the wooden wall is double? There’s quite a space between the two walls.”

Benny said, “Yes, there’s a grand little hidey-hole between these boards. If anyone wanted to hide a paper or a letter, nobody would ever find it.”

“Who could hide a paper there?” said Rory. “Girls don’t hide papers.”

“Oh, don’t they!” exclaimed Benny. “My sisters had a time when they hid the strangest things.”

“Look if you want to,” said Rory. “You might find an old will or something. I read about somebody finding a will in a mystery story. That would be exciting!”

“My fingers won’t go in that space,” said Benny after trying for a minute. “My hand is too big.”

“Make your fingers as flat as you can,” directed Rory. “You might at least touch something.”

“No,” said Benny at last. “You try. Your hand is smaller.”

Benny came out of the clothes closet and Rory went in. He made his fingers as flat as he could and slipped them into the space.

“I can’t feel a thing,” he said.

“Nothing at all?” Benny asked. “I just feel that there must be something there.”

Rory made one last try, moving his fingers as much as he could.

“Oh, Ben!” he cried, “I do feel something! There’s something in here.”

“What does it feel like? Paper?” asked Benny.

“Not paper. It feels like cloth. But I simply can’t get it between my fingers,” said Rory.

“Here, try the pliers. Take your fingers out. The pliers are longer and thinner,” said Benny.

“But what if I drop them?” Rory said.

“Let me tie a string on them first,” said Benny. “Like this.”

Then both boys held their breath as the long, slim pliers went into the slot.

“I’ve got something, Ben!” shouted Rory after several tries.

“Well, pull!” commanded Benny. “Try and pull it out, Rory. What could be in there?”

Rory twisted the pliers this way and that. He twisted his face the same way, too. He was a comical looking sight. But Benny did not laugh.

Then very slowly Rory drew out the pliers holding something strange made of thin blue cloth.

“What in the world is it?” asked Rory, holding it up by the pliers. “It’s but a wee bit of cloth.”

Benny answered, “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

The boys smoothed the cloth out on the floor and found it was old and torn in some places. But across the cloth in neat rows were bands of darker blue cloth sewed on very carefully by hand with odd uneven stitches.

The stitching seemed to make a row of little pockets. It was a big puzzle.

Benny turned the cloth over. He looked at the back and ran his finger along the stitches. What could this be for? Who could have made it? And why was it hidden between the closet walls?

Rory looked at the cloth, too. For once he did not find a thing to say.

At last Benny said, “I can guess just two things about this. It’s been hidden for a long time. It must have been important to the person who made it.”

“How do you know?” asked Rory.

“Because someone took the trouble to hide it,” Benny said. “Oh, I wish I knew what it was for.”

Jessie walked past the door and the boys called, “See what we found, Jessie!”

Jessie turned the cloth over and looked at it for a while. She said, “Looks like a man’s sewing. No woman ever sewed like that.”

“But what in the world is it?” Rory asked.

“I don’t know,” said Benny. “But Grandfather might. This thing was surely hidden or we wouldn’t have found it in such a funny place. Nobody would look for anything pushed down between the boards.”

“I’d dote on knowing what it is,” Rory said.

“Grandfather will know,” said Benny. “He knows just about everything. I’ll ask him at dinnertime.”

“What time is that?” asked Rory.

“Well, at different times. When Grandfather gets home from work, Mrs. McGregor has dinner all ready to put on the table.”