Тайна загадочной лестницы [with w_cat] | страница 21

[286] "The ghost again!" Miss Flora cried out. She looked as if she were about to faint.

[287] Nancy's eyes quickly swept the room. Nothing else in it was moving, so vibration was not causing the chandelier to sway. As it swung back and forth, a sudden thought came to the young sleuth. Maybe someone in Miss Flora's room above was causing the shaking.

[288] "I'm going upstairs to investigate," Nancy told the others.

[289] Racing noiselessly on tiptoe out of the room and through the hall, she began climbing the stairs, hugging the wall so the steps would not creak. As she neared the top, Nancy was sure she heard a door close. Hurrying along the hall, she burst into Miss Flora's bedroom. No one was in sight!

[290] "Maybe this time the ghost couldn't get away and is in that wardrobe!" Nancy thought.

[291] Helen and her relatives had come up the stairs behind Nancy. They reached the bedroom just as she flung open the wardrobe doors. But for the second time she found no one hiding there.

[292] Nancy bit her lip in vexation. The ghost was clever indeed. Where had he gone? She had given him no time to go down the hall or run into another room. Yet there was no denying the fact that he had been in Miss Flora's room!

[293] "Tell us why you came up," Helen begged her. Nancy told her theory, but suddenly she realized that maybe she was letting her imagination run wild. It was possible, she admitted to the others, that no one had caused the chandelier to shake.

[294] "There's only one way to find out," she said. "I'll make a test."

[295] Nancy asked Helen to go back to the first floor and watch the chandelier. She would try to make it sway by rocking from side to side on the floor above it.

[296] "If this works, then I'm sure we've picked up a clue to the ghost," she said hopefully.

[297] Helen readily agreed and left the room. When Nancy thought her friend had had time to reach the parlor below, she began to rock hard from side to side on the spot above the chandelier.

[298] She had barely started the test when from the first floor Helen Corning gave a piercing scream!

[300] "SOMETHING has happened to Helen!" Aunt Rosemary cried out fearfully.

[301] Nancy was already racing through the second-floor hallway. Reaching the stairs, she leaped down them two steps at a time. Helen Corning had collapsed in a wing chair in the parlor, her hands over her face.