And went up.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE HIDDEN ROOM
A few moments later Jack Bailey, seeing a thin glow of candlelight
from the attic above and hearing Lizzie's protesting voice, made
his way up there. He found them in the trunk room, a dusty, dingy
apartment lined with high closets along the walls--the floor
littered with an incongruous assortment of attic objects--two
battered trunks, a clothes hamper, an old sewing machine, a
broken-backed kitchen chair, two dilapidated suitcases and a shabby
satchel that might once have been a woman's dressing case--in one
corner a grimy fireplace in which, obviously, no fire had been
lighted for years.
But he also found Miss Cornelia holding her candle to the floor and
staring at something there.
"Candle grease!" she said sharply, staring at a line of white spots
by the window. She stooped and touched the spots with an
exploratory finger.
"Fresh candle grease! Now who do you suppose did that? Do you
remember how Mr. Gillette, in Sherlock Holmes, when he--"
Her voice trailed off. She stooped and followed the trail of the
candle grease away from the window, ingeniously trying to copy the
shrewd, piercing gaze of Mr. Gillette as she remembered him in his
most famous role.
"It leads straight to the fireplace!" she murmured in tones of
Sherlockian gravity. Bailey repressed an involuntary smile. But
her next words gave him genuine food for thought.
She stared at the mantel of the fireplace accusingly.
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