Mandie and the Secret Tunnel (7 page)

“Unbutton you? What for? There’s more acomin’ from where that one came from. Now you just keep it on and enjoy it, my child.” The old woman patted her on the head.

“More, Aunt Lou?”

“Sho’ ’nuff. Next one will be ready ’fore you git that one dirty,” Aunt Lou assured her. “Gonna be the lady of the house, you is. And you gotta look like the lady of the house—no more countrified looks. You’se a city girl now. Gotta dress like city folks.”

“But, Aunt Lou, I hate to make so much work for you. You have other things to do, I know.”

“Ain’t just me working on these dresses. Got help from old Miz Burnette over on the hill, too.”

“Mrs. Burnette makes my clothes too, Mandie,” Polly told her. “Mother says she does the best work in town.”

“Somebody has to pay her,” Mandie said.

“Oh, never you mind about pay. Mr. Bond done arranged all that. Now git on ’bout your business. I’se got other things to do,” Aunt Lou gave the two girls an affectionate shove out the door.

Thank you, dear God, Mandie whispered to herself. Thank you for all these nice things.

That night, when Mandie met Uncle Ned in the summerhouse nearby, she wore her new blue dress. The old Indian was happy when she told him about all the nice things that had happened to her, but he was greatly disturbed when he heard that her Uncle John had died and Bayne Locke had come to the house saying he was his nephew.

“Bayne Locke. You know where he come from?” he asked.

“He said he had come all the way from Richmond, Uncle Ned,” Mandie told him. “I suppose he must have lived there before he came here.”

“Cherokee go to Richmond. Find out. I know by next full moon,” he promised.

“Thank you, Uncle Ned. I seem to ask you for so many things, but I don’t have anyone else to ask,” the girl said.

“No, no—is all right. You one of us. Cherokee keep watch over Papoose. I promise Jim Shaw. Anything you ask, I do,” Ned reminded her. “You Cherokee, too.”

“Isn’t that wonderful, Uncle Ned? That I have such people, people who will always look out for me. Tell all the Cherokees I am grateful. I’m happy that I’m one of you and I long for the day when I can visit my people.”

Not only was Mandie planning to check up on Bayne Locke, but Mr. Bond had immediately sent a messenger to Lawyer Wilson’s office, requesting information concerning the young man.

Later that night when he thought everyone was sound asleep, Mr. Bond climbed the stairs to the third story in a determined effort to locate John Shaw’s will and settle the matter once and for all as far as Bayne Locke was concerned.

John Shaw’s library was directly over the room that Mandie and Polly occupied on the second floor and he tried to be very quiet, but despite his efforts, he stumbled into a chair in the darkness.

“Polly, did you hear that?” Mandie shook her sleeping friend.

“Yes,” Polly said, sitting straight up in the bed.

“A ghost!” Mandie whispered.

“In Uncle John’s library! Let’s go see what it is,” Polly said, jumping from the bed.

“This time of night?” Mandie was leery of such adventures.

“Ghosts only walk at night. Didn’t you know
that?” Polly informed her. “I read a book about ghosts once. They can’t do you any harm. So why be afraid? We’re more powerful than they are. Want to go see what one really looks like?”

“Oh, Polly, you aren’t afraid of anything, are you?” Mandie reached for her slippers. “Let’s go, if you insist.”

Polly led the way up the dark stairs while Mandie carried the oil lamp from her room. They crept along the hall and found the door open to Uncle John’s library. As they cautiously peeped in, Mandie began to laugh.

“Some ghost that is!”

Mr. Bond turned at the sound of her voice. “Why, what are you two doing up this time of night?”

“We heard a noise, so we came up to see who it was,” Polly answered. “We had kinda hoped it was a ghost.”

“Well, I’m not a ghost,” Mr. Bond chuckled. “But I’d advise you two to be quiet and not disturb the rest of the house. I don’t want that Mr. Locke poking his nose in here.”

“No, that wouldn’t do,” Mandie agreed, “He might find the will before we do. Can we do anything to help?”

“Well, start at the corner there and look through every book on the shelves. If you find any piece of paper at all, or any handwriting in the books, let me see it,” Jason Bond told them.

So the real work began on the search for the important paper.

Chapter 7 - Search for the Will

“
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me
—”

The search for the will was more involved than anyone had dreamed. Jason Bond and the two girls covered every inch of the house—except the tunnel. The missing key had not been found either, after it had disappeared from Mandie’s bureau.

Mandie spoke to Mr. Bond about it, “I’ve asked Aunt Lou, Liza, Jenny, and even Abraham, and nobody has seen a key of any kind.”

“Could be that Mr. Bayne Locke has been in your room, Mandie, but don’t ask him about it. We don’t want him involved in what we’re doing around here. The less he knows the better,” Jason Bond told her. “You two girls just keep your eyes peeled. Maybe it’ll turn up somewhere.”

No one had been able to find the entrance to the tunnel from the inside of the house, and with the key lost, the door could not be opened from the outside.

Mr. Bond was leaving the dining room after breakfast one morning, when there was a knock on the front door. He went to see who it was, followed closely by the two girls.

A tall, middle-aged woman with gray, staring eyes, and a tall, brunette girl were standing there.

“I’m Mrs. Gaynelle Snow and this is my daughter, Ruby. I’ve come to claim my part of my uncle’s estate,” the woman announced to Mr. Bond.

“Well, dad-blast it! If everyone in the continent ain’t gonna try to claim John Shaw’s property!” he shouted angrily.

“What did you say?” The woman stared at him with her sharp eyes, then peered to get a glimpse of Mandie and Polly behind him in the hall. “
Well
, if you’re not going to invite me in, I guess I’ll just walk in!” She pushed the old man aside and stepped into the hallway. “Where are the servants? Tell one of them to show me to my room!”

“Room! You’d think we was running a hotel here!” Mr. Bond stood there ruffling his white hair, trying to resolve the situation.

Liza was crossing the hall just then and the woman, followed by her daughter, yelled at her, “Hey, you there, find me a room in this mansion!”

Liza stopped and stared at the woman and the girl and then looked at Mr. Bond.

“Might as well take them up to a room,” he sighed. “Claim they’re kinfolk. I’ll have to prove them a lie before I can throw them out.”

The girl turned her nose up at Polly and Mandie as she followed Liza and her mother up the stairs.

“Stupid ain’t the word!” Polly exclaimed.

“Right you are!” Mandie agreed.

After the unexpected arrival of Mrs. Gaynelle Snow and her daughter, Ruby, things took on an even livelier pace at the John Shaw house.

Mandie and Polly took the notion to move into a bedroom on the third floor. They had grown tired of the room on the second floor where Bayne Locke always seemed to be lurking in the hallway watching their every move. Jason Bond warned they would be too frightened up there and wouldn’t stay one night, if that long. But they in turn said they would stay no matter what happened.

Polly’s mother, young, widowed, and longing for companionship, saw her chance for a trip to Philadelphia without her daughter, as long as the mystery seemed to be prolonged. Polly eagerly moved more of her things over to join Mandie in their new room on the third floor. Liza thoroughly cleaned the large bedroom for them, but was anxious to get back downstairs. All the servants were leery of the third floor and the attic.

The two girls were putting their things away in the drawers and the wardrobe, when Polly handed Mandie a cut glass jar full of powder. “Here’s your powder, Mandie.” Just as she reached for it, it slipped and fell to the floor, sprinkling the carpet and dusting Snowball, who gingerly jumped across the room, shaking his feet and licking his fur.

Mandie and Polly were doubled up in giggles at Snowball’s action, when Mandie suddenly bent closer to the floor. “Hey, look! The key! Here’s the key to the tunnel!” She picked it up from the carpet.

“The key to the tunnel!” exclaimed Polly. “You mean it was in the powder jar?”

“It must have been, it’s right here in this pile of powder,” Mandie told her. “I wonder where Liza got this jar, anyway.”

And at that precise moment, Liza came through the doorway, carrying an armful of Mandie’s belongings.

“Say, Liza, where did you get this jar of powder?” Mandie questioned, holding up the jar.

“Land sakes! You done went and spilled powder all over this here rug just after I cleaned it! Now why you want to do that?” Liza scolded her as she dropped the things onto the bed and stood there staring at the powder on the carpet.

“Sorry, Liza, it was an accident,” Mandie told her, “but look what was in this jar—the key we’ve been looking for! Where did you get the jar, Liza?”

“Now let me see,” she pondered. “I think it was on the bureau in the room that Mr. Locke is staying in. Yes, that’s where it was,” Liza went on. “I didn’t think he needed that good-smelling powder, so I took it for you.”

“Liza!” Mandie laughed. Then she turned to Polly. “Then Bayne Locke must have taken it from my room—the key, that is.”

“I didn’t think we could trust that man,” Polly added.

“Hey, come on. Let’s find Mr. Jason and take him to the tunnel,” Mandie excitedly brushed the white powder off her skirt. “Let’s go!”

They found Mr. Bond on the front porch.

“The key! We found the key! Let’s go to the tunnel!” Mandie called as she and Polly ran on down the steps. Mr. Bond scratched his head and followed.

Breathlessly, the two girls pushed aside the bushes in front of the door. Mr. Bond reached for the door to unlock it, but it was already unlocked and standing wide open.

“Well, how do you like that?” Mr. Bond said, as he stepped inside.

“Now, we go for miles and miles before we come to the door into the main part of the house,” Mandie told him.

And they walked and walked—down halls, up stairs and down again, and no door appeared to lead into the house at all. Instead, they found a panel in the wall slightly ajar.

“Look, that wall is open a little,” Mandie whispered.

As Mr. Bond reached to touch it, the panel closed back into place and they could not even tell it had been open at all.

“Well, looks like it’s not meant for us to get through,” Mr. Bond said.

“I wonder how that panel got loose,” Polly speculated.

“You girls probably knocked something loose
on your travels down through here,” Mr. Bond laughed.

“Guess we’ll just have to go back out the way we came in,” Mandie muttered. “But we’re not going to give up.”

“Nope, we’re not,” Polly confirmed. “Must be somebody on the other side of that wall, the way it closed so fast, and I know it was open, ’cause I saw it.”

“Probably one of those ghosts we’ve been trying to catch up with,” Mandie teased.

“Maybe we can find the other side of this tunnel now that we know the panel opens,” Mr. Bond told them.

They left the tunnel the way they had entered. Mr. Bond locked the door and put the key in his pocket.

The three of them went back into the house and were climbing the steps to the third floor when they met Bayne Locke coming down. He grinned at them and would have gone on down the steps, but Mr. Bond stopped him.

“Look here, fellow, where have you been up that way?”

“Why, I’ve been up to the third floor,” Bayne sarcastically replied. “Where’d you think I’d been?”

“What reason did you have to go up to the third floor?” Mr. Bond wanted to know.

“Hey, mister, you just work here. I am the nephew of the man who owned this house.” Bayne was not grinning any longer.

“And I also happen to be in charge of Mr. Shaw’s affairs until the will is located,” Mr. Bond replied.

At that moment, Mrs. Snow and Ruby appeared at the top of the stairs to the third floor.

Mandie turned to them, “And what were you doing on the third floor?”

Mrs. Snow hurried down the steps, with her daughter at her heels. “What business is it of yours? I have as much right as you do to this house and everything in it. So, don’t bother asking me any questions, because you certainly won’t get any answers.” She kept right on going down to the second floor, her daughter following and turning to make faces at the girls.

“That woman is no relative of mine!” Bayne Locke loudly proclaimed.

The woman turned back. “And Mr. Locke is no relative of mine.” She and her daughter disappeared down the hallway below.

“Well, why don’t you throw her out? She’s certainly not kin to John Shaw!” assured Mr. Locke.

“Same reason I’m not throwing you out right now. I have to prove you’re no kin before I can oust you from this house. But that day will come. You can be sure of that.” Mr. Bond passed the younger man and went on up the stairs, Mandie and Polly following.

“Guess we won that time,” Mandie remarked.

“Yeh, but who’s gonna win the final say-so?” Polly replied.

They climbed the stairs all the way to the attic. It was dark and spooky, even though there were gabled windows to let in the daylight. The floor was covered with boxes, old furniture, trunks, dishes, clothes, and even an old organ.

“Now, the best thing to do is to go around the wall like this and tap on it to see if it will move,” Mr. Bond told them as he rapped the wooden wall with his hand. “You two go around that way and I’ll go this way.”

Mandie and Polly did as he told them, laughing as they went, banging on the wall. They were almost all the way around the attic when they realized Mr. Bond was no longer with them.

“Polly! Mr. Bond! He’s gone!” Mandie cried. “Where did he go?”

“I don’t know. He was here just a minute ago. Maybe he’s behind some of that old furniture. You go that way and I’ll go this way and maybe we can find him,” Polly told her.