Mandie Collection, The: 4 (23 page)

“Well, that was abrupt,” Mandie declared as she watched the couple
disappear down the corridor. “Let’s give them time to get ahead and then we can follow them without being seen.”

“What for, Mandie?” Celia asked.

“Oh, Celia!” Mandie exclaimed. “That’s what we’ve been sitting here waiting for, to see if they go into the servants’ room we were in this afternoon. If you’d rather stay here and wait for us, it’ll be all right.”

“No, no, I am going with you,” Celia replied.

“All right. Let’s go. Remember to be very cautious and quiet,” Jonathan told the girls. The three headed in the same direction the couple had gone.

They finally spied the couple walking ahead of them—down the long corridor that led into the servants’ quarters. Jonathan motioned for the girls to step inside an open doorway with him where they could watch and see where the Bagatelles went. Slowly and silently, the three moved along a few doorways at a time until the strangers boldly opened the door to the servants’ sitting room where the young people had been earlier. The couple entered and shut the door.

As the young people hovered in a nearby doorway, Mandie exclaimed, “How are we going to know what they’re up to in that room?”

“Maybe there’s a keyhole,” Jonathan whispered.

“Come on,” Mandie whispered, leading the way to the big, heavy door to the room.

Celia and Jonathan followed and they quickly examined the door for a keyhole. There was a big keyhole, but there was evidently a key in it on the other side, filling up most of the space in the hole.

Mandie leaned over and put her eye to the hole. “I can’t see anything,” she whispered. “The key is in the way.”

Jonathan tried it and agreed.

“I have an idea,” Mandie suggested. “Let’s get a key from another room and poke the key out by sticking the other key in from this side.” She hurried around to examine nearby doors. After three doors, she found a key.

She rushed back to the closed door and slowly poked the key into the keyhole. For a moment, the key on the other side of the door did not budge. But then it turned in the lock and fell out on the other side, thuding on the hard floor. The young people gasped and ran for hiding.

Evidently the strangers ignored the key and didn’t come out, so Mandie once again peeked through the keyhole. This time she could see. The man and woman stood looking out the window. Mandie moved away and motioned for Jonathan to look and then Celia. The three looked at each other, silently puzzled about what was going on inside.

Mandie signaled for the others to follow her to the room where she had borrowed the key. She pushed the door almost shut and slipped the key into the keyhole.

“I don’t understand what they’re doing, just standing there, do y’all?” she whispered.

“No, not unless they are watching for someone or something below in the yard,” Jonathan said.

“Or they could just be standing there figuring out what they plan to do next,” Celia said.

Suddenly there were footsteps in the hallway. The three young people peeped out just as Helga stepped into a room nearby.

“Thank goodness this isn’t Helga’s room,” Mandie said, looking about. “In fact I don’t believe anyone stays here. I don’t see any personal belongings.”

The others agreed.

They heard the couple open the door to the sitting room.

“I thought I locked this door,” the man said.

“But the key is on the floor. Maybe it just fell out,” the woman said.

“I’ll just take this key with me,” declared Mr. Bagatelle. “That way no one can lock this door so we can’t get in.”

“We may not need to get inside again,” Mrs. Bagatelle replied.

The youngsters carefully withdrew into the room where they were hiding as the couple walked past and on down the corridor toward the main staircase.

When they were out of sight, Mandie said, “Now, Helga is in her room right down there, so we’ll have to be careful and not let her hear us.”

The others silently nodded their heads as Mandie led the way to the room the Bagatelles had just left. She pushed open the door and they went inside. The curtain was pushed back completely away from the
window. The group looked around but found nothing different from their previous visit. It just looked like a normal sitting room.

Mandie pushed open a door leading to an adjoining room and found a bedroom, furnished but evidently unoccupied.

“Look! I don’t believe anyone lives in these rooms,” Mandie said softly.

The others looked around and agreed. The three walked back to the window to look outside. At that moment, the hall door opened and they spun around, fearing they had been caught where they should not have been. It was Helga, who seemed as startled at finding them in the room as they were at being discovered.

Before the maid could speak, Mandie quickly said, “We were admiring the grounds from up here. It’s such a beautiful place.”

Helga looked at them suspiciously and said, “Yes, it is. But, miss, this is the servants’ quarters. I do not believe the housekeeper would like it if she found you here.”

“We’re sorry,” Jonathan quickly told her, and the three started toward the door, leaving the curtain pushed back.

“We really are sorry,” Mandie added. “You see, while my grandmother has visitors tonight, we were told we could look around the house.”

“Yes, miss, that’s fine,” Helga said. “But I really think you should stay out of this part of the house. The servants wouldn’t like it if they found you snooping in their rooms.” She stood inside the room watching them.

“We truly are sorry if we’ve offended you. We’ll leave right away,” Celia said as the three went into the hallway.

Helga stood in the doorway and watched them until they went through the heavy dividing door down the corridor. The young people kept looking back to see what she was doing.

Once they were out of Helga’s view, they stopped to talk.

“What do you suppose Helga was doing in that room?” Jonathan asked.

“I don’t know, unless she was checking to see if it was clean and done up right,” Mandie said. “But, you know, she might just have a secret too. Remember, Jonathan, she knew who you were as soon as we got here, and who your father is.”

“Oh, Mandie, everyone here can’t have a secret,” Celia said.

Jonathan smiled and said, “You never know.”

“Let’s go see if the Bagatelles went back to their suite,” Mandie suggested, and she led the way back toward their wing.

When they came to the Bagatelles’ suite, they found the doors closed, and even when they stood close by and listened they couldn’t hear a thing.

“If they’re in there they aren’t talking,” Mandie whispered.

“Why don’t we go back up to the observation room and look it over again?” Celia asked.

“That’s a good idea,” Mandie agreed.

“It’s getting dark outside and we probably won’t be able to see much outdoors from up there,” Jonathan told the girls, and then with a mischievous tone he added, “But we could explore the whole room inch by inch.”

“I don’t know what we’d be looking for, because we found out that it isn’t connected to the tower,” Mandie said, but they started back the way they had come anyway. “I guess we could decide if we want to go out on that roof to get over to the window of the tower.”

Celia shivered and said, “Not me. I’ll just watch out for y’all if y’all decide to do that.”

When they arrived at the observation room, they were surprised to find the Bagatelles sitting on the settee. The Bagatelles were also surprised to see them. The young people hesitated in the doorway and after saying “hello” to the couple, they walked across the room to the windows on the front of the chalet.

The Bagatelles returned the greeting and carried on a conversation in rapid French. Jonathan looked over his shoulder at them now and then, but they didn’t seem to notice.

“I wonder if that gardener is down there somewhere,” Mandie said, as the three gazed down onto the dusky grounds.

“Probably,” Jonathan said, turning his head slightly to listen to the French couple.

“I can’t see anything. It’s already too dark and all the trees make it even darker,” Celia remarked.

The Bagatelles soon stood up and left the room, still carrying on a rapid conversation in French. Jonathan stepped softly to the doorway to be sure they were gone. He took a look down the stairway to see if they were out of earshot.

“What were they saying, Jonathan?” Mandie quickly asked.

Jonathan smiled and said, “They think none of us understands French because of what you said to them before. But I got an earful. The woman was saying, ‘We don’t have to worry about these young people because they can’t understand a word we’re saying if we speak in French.’ Then the man said he thought
it
could be done.”

“What could be done?” Mandie asked.

“He didn’t say, he just said, ‘Yes, I think it can be done.’ And then the woman said, ‘If we take our time, I don’t believe anyone will realize what we’re doing.’ That’s about all they said,” Jonathan reported.

“They are definitely up to something,” Mandie decided. “We’ll have to watch those people. They might have figured out how to get into the tower.”

“But we don’t know for sure that they are trying to get into the tower,” Jonathan reminded her.

“Everything sure sounds like it,” Celia spoke up.

“And if it’s not the tower they’re talking about, then they’re up to something else that they don’t want anyone to know about,” Mandie said.

“We’ll just have to beat them into the tower,” Jonathan said, turning to look out the windows again.

Mandie asked him, “You aren’t thinking about going out on that roof tonight, are you?”

“It would be better if we could do it at night. That way we would be less likely to be seen, and if the moon is out, we’d have plenty of light to find our way over to the tower,” Jonathan said.

“But we don’t even have any ropes,” Mandie reminded him.

“That’s right. We can’t do it tonight, but tomorrow I’ll borrow some rope from the stables, bring it up here, and hide it while you girls attract Eckart’s attention somewhere else,” Jonathan told them. “We can take the rope back later.”

“I don’t think I want to go out on that roof,” Celia said.

“You don’t have to, Celia,” Mandie said, and with a sudden flash of inspiration she added, “You can watch for us from down in the yard and signal if anyone shows up.”

“All right, I’ll do that,” Celia agreed.

Jonathan bent over to look outside and said, “We can anchor the rope around this beam between the windows here, and after we get
outside we can loop it around that chimney over there.” He pointed out the window along the roof. “And from there we can swing over to that window you can see there in the tower.”

“I suppose you’ve given up on trying to find an entrance to the tower somewhere around that room in the servants’ quarters,” Mandie said, straightening up to look at him.

“There just isn’t an entrance there,” Jonathan said. “We won’t be able to get out on the roof here until tomorrow night, so we could keep looking around that room tomorrow if you girls want to.”

“Let’s keep looking for a safer way, at least,” Mandie replied.

But they went ahead with their plans for the next night just in case they didn’t find an entrance in the servants’ quarters. In the middle of their planning, Uncle Ned appeared at the doorway of the observation room to tell them Mrs. Taft had sent him in search of them.

“Uncle Ned,” Mandie said, “have Grandmother’s visitors gone home?”

“Gone,” the old Indian assured her. “Papoose come now to parlor.”

They followed him back to the parlor where Mrs. Taft and the senator waited to bid them good-night.

“It’s late, dears,” Mrs. Taft said, rising to return to her suite. “I just want to say ‘sleep well’ now. We’ll be up early in the morning.”

They all went up the staircase to their various rooms. Back in their suite, Mandie and Celia got ready for bed. Snowball was so excited about seeing Mandie after being shut up so long that he cut capers around the room.

As she slipped into the big bed with Celia, Mandie said, “I hope Grandmother doesn’t have plans to take up our whole day tomorrow. We need some time to explore those rooms. We might find some way that wouldn’t be as dangerous as climbing out on the roof.”

Celia plumped up her pillow and said, “Are you afraid to go out on the roof, Mandie?”

“Well, not really,” Mandie said, hesitatingly. “But I’d like to find another way.”

“Are we going to tell Uncle Ned so he can help us?” Celia asked.

“Oh, no, no,” Mandie quickly turned over to look at her friend.

“We can’t tell him. He might tell my grandmother, and she’d probably put a stop to it all.”

“I just hope we don’t get into trouble,” Celia said, snuggling sleepily under the covers.

The girls had drifted off to sleep and Mandie was dreaming of home again when the singing she had heard the night before came suddenly into her dream. She blinked her eyes and realized she was not dreaming any longer; she was really hearing singing. She nudged Celia, who immediately sat up and listened.

“That’s the same singing I heard last night,” Celia whispered.

“That’s what I heard, too,” Mandie replied, turning to get out of bed.

“Where are you going, Mandie?” Celia asked. She went over to where Mandie was quickly putting on a robe.

“To see if I can tell where it’s coming from. Come on.”

Celia grabbed her robe and followed Mandie as she silently opened the door to the hallway.

The two girls stopped in the hallway and listened. The singing seemed to come from the other end of the house. They crept down the dimly lit hallway. When they came to the heavy door dividing the east wing from the center section of the chalet, the singing grew louder.

“It sounds like someone in the west wing,” Mandie whispered while they continued.

But when they passed through the doorway into the west wing, the sound grew much fainter. The girls stopped for a moment.

“It’s back that way,” Mandie told Celia softly, leading the way back into the center section of the house.