Secret door

“ But I soon recovered some remnants of self-possession, and began feeling for the knob I could no longer see. Finding it after a few futile attempts, I was relieved to discover that this door at least was not locked; and, opening it with a careful hand, I listened intently, but could hear nothing save the smothered sound of men talking in the room below.
Should I signal for my companions? No, for the secret was not yet mine as to how men passed from this room into the watery grave which was the evident goal for all wearers of the blue ribbon. ”

“ This is the hidden closet to which we have no key, for the very good reason that the door opens from within. In the silence of the night, in the peace of lovely gardens, when men are far and nature is near, listen to the melody singing from within that secret recess, and open the door. ”

“ Driven by some secret impulse, I flew, without a moment’s reflection, to the closet door, lifted the tapestry within, unfastened the second door, and stood in the great waste echoing hall, amid the touches, light and ghostly, of the cobwebs set afloat in the eddies occasioned by my sudden entrance. ”

“ In one of the most innocent-looking walls in the tower the guard showed me a secret door which opened into a secret staircase. Such a staircase in the “brave days of old” occasionally came in handy in enabling one to reach an underground passage and make good one’s escape from one’s warrior neighbors. Beneath the tower is a semi-circular dungeon where these neighbors were at times locked when they were caught. ”

“ The door of the secret has remained unopened for so long. The door is not one which can be forced, and the key is missing. It would be worse than sanguine to hope for its discovery after a light search. ”

“ Only a few of the Secret Council have ever gained admittance here, and the secret of opening the inner door is known only to myself and one other—Francisco Paola.”
“Paola!” I exclaimed.
“Yes; it was he who conceived the idea of this vault; it was his genius that planned a door which defies any living man to open without a clear knowledge of its secret. Even he, its inventor, could not pass the door without my assistance; for although he understands the method, the means are in my possession. For this reason I alone 80am responsible for the safe-keeping of our records and treasure.” ”

“ There is no possibility of a secret door, and the windows are quite thirty feet from the ground. Both of them were fastened on the inside. The carpet prevents any possibility of a trap-door, and the ceiling is of the ordinary whitewashed kind. I will pledge my life that whoever stole my papers could only have come through the door."
"How about the fireplace?"
"They use none. There is a stove. The bell-rope hangs from the wire just to the right of my desk. Whoever rang it must have come right up to the desk to do it. But why should any criminal wish to ring the bell? ”

“ A secret spring was discovered which opened a concealed door in the wall. In the space behind, a quantity of James II. guineas, a bed, a mattress, and a flask of rum were found. A former student of this famous Jesuit college, who was instrumental in the discovery of a "priest's hole," has provided us with the following particulars: "It would be too long to tell you how I first discovered that in the floor of my bedroom, in the recess of the huge Elizabethan bay window, was a trap-door concealed by a thin veneering of oak ”

“ They went over the rooms above stairs, and then descended the staircase, and through the lower rooms in the same manner. However, they overlooked the closet, in which the fatal secret was concealed; the door was covered with tapestry, the same as the room, and united so well that it seemed but one piece. ”

“ The modern utility of a convenient secret panel or trap-door occasionally is apparent from the police-court reports. The tenements in noted thieves' quarters are often found to have intercommunication; a masked door will lead from one house to the other, and trap-doors will enable a thief to vanish from the most keen-sighted detective, and nimbly thread his way over the roofs of the neighbouring houses. ”

“ Opposite to the window was a small fireplace, and the only entrance to the room was from the big dining-hall. The hall was panelled, and one of the panels formed the door into the secret chamber. I believe this kind of thing is fairly common in old houses dating back to the times of religious and political trouble, when hiding-places were constantly wanted. ”

“ There is no one alive who has been in it, that I am aware, except myself." Brandeston Hall, Suffolk, is also said to have a hiding place known only to two or three persons.
CHAPTER XIII CONCEALED DOORS, SUBTERRANEAN PASSAGES, ETC.
Numerous old houses possess secret doors, passages, and staircases—Franks, in Kent; Eshe Hall, Durham; Binns House, Scotland; Dannoty Hall, and Whatton Abbey, Yorkshire; are examples. The last of these has a narrow flight of steps leading down to the moat, as at Baddesley Clinton. ”

“ It was a double hiding-place, one situated beneath the other; the lower one being so arranged as to receive light and air from the bottom portion of a large mullioned window—a most ingenious device. A secret passage in the hall had communication with it, and entrance was obtained through part of the flooring of an apartment, the movable part of the boards revolving upon pivots and sufficiently solid to vanquish any suspicion as to a hollow space beneath. ”

“ It is certain at such a moment even the rattling of the keys in their locks makes a deep and mysterious impression; that when the door is forced open, one feels at the grating of the rusty hinges as if he were committing a fearful crime, and is glad to linger on the threshold before he enters into the dark abode of the dead. ”

“ Dropping the key into my pocket, I went back into the outer room, and leaving word that I had remembered a little shopping which would take me again up-town, I left the building and returned to —— Street.
I was out of breath with suspense, as well as with my rapid movements, when I reached the shut-in staircase and carefully unlocked its narrow door. But by the time I had reached the fourth floor, and unlocked, with the same key, the only other door that had a streak of light under it, I had gained a certain degree of tense composure born of the desperate nature of the occasion. ”

“ Henry Wood, down to the latest up-to-date novelists of to-day, the secret chamber (an ingenious necessity of the "good old times") has afforded invaluable "property"—indeed, in many instances the whole vitality of a plot is, like its ingenious opening, hinged upon the masked wall, behind which lay concealed what hidden mysteries, what undreamed-of revelations! The thread of the story, like Fair Rosamond's silken clue, leads up to and at length reveals the buried secret, and (unlike the above comparison in this instance) all ends happily! ”

“ Reed up above. The terror, whatever it was, seemed to lie below.
Access to the third floor was not easy. The main staircase did not go up. To get there I was obliged to unlock the door at the rear of the hall with my own keys. I was working in bright light, trying my keys one after another, and watching over my shoulder as I did so. When the door finally gave it was a relief to slip into the darkness beyond, ghosts or no ghosts.
I am always a silent worker. Caution about closing doors and squeaking hinges is second nature to me. ”

“ Again, here there is a communication with the outside world. An oblong aperture in the top oak beam of the entrance gateway to the house, measuring about four inches across, is the secret opening—small enough to escape the most inquisitive eye, yet large enough to allow of a written note to pass between the captive and those upon the alert watching his interests. [1]
[Footnote 1: N.B.—In addition to the above hiding-places at Harvington, one was discovered so recently as 1894; at least, so we have been informed. This was some years after our visit to the old Hall.] ”

“ He had to come back here with the Cadger and Gannet in a little while, and he dared not risk anything that would imperil his rôle in the eyes of the underworld. Even a number of people coming and going from the house, if they acted naturally, entering by the door as though they had a right to enter, would never attract the slightest notice from either neighbors or passers-by. That was what doors were for! But a man leaping out through one of the front windows would invite certain attention, suspicion, and instant investigation. ”

“ You would have thought, on a windy night, some of the old Leaguers were tramping and clanking about the apartment in their huge boots and rattling spurs. A door which stood ajar, and like a true French door would stand ajar, in spite of every reason and effort to the contrary, opened upon a long, dark corridor, that led the Lord knows whither, and seemed just made for ghosts to air themselves in, when they turned out of their graves at midnight. ”

“ The opening and closing of doors are the most significant actions of man's life. What a mystery lies in doors!
No man knows what awaits him when he opens a door. Even the most familiar room, where the clock ticks and the hearth glows red at dusk, may harbor surprises. ”

“ There may be nothing to blush about in that cellar, but the key may be lost and the door-frame may have gripped the door above, or the footstone jammed it from below, and such fungus-growth as the darkness has bred has a claim to freedom from the light. ”

“ But scarcely had the clock finished striking when I was disturbed by the shutting of a door downstairs. Fearing that some one was coming, and that the light might betray me, I blew out my candle and waited to hear more. But all was silent in the house. I turned to go down, but as I did so I saw with astonishment that a thin streak of light shone from under the black door. I stood like one petrified. Was there any one inside the room? Listening intently, I waited for full five minutes without stirring a limb. Silence the most profound upstairs and down. ”

“ Peep of day or set of sun, his croaking’s never done
Of the Red Wolf of Despair at my door.
But when the night is old, and the stars begin to fade,
And silence walks the path by my door,
Then is his dearest hour, his most unbridled power,
And low comes his “Wolf!” at the door.
I turn me in my sleep between the night and day,
While dreams throng the yard at my door.
In my strong soul aware of a grewsome terror there
Soon to knock with command at my door.
41 Is it the hollow voice of the census-taker Time
In his old idle round from door to door? ”

“ Light thus breaking from beneath our feet like a soundless explosion, showed that the trapdoor just lifted was clogged with dust and rust, and had doubtless been long disused until the advent of my enterprising friend. But I did not look at this long, for the sight of the shining room underneath us had an almost unnatural attractiveness. To enter a modern interior at so strange an angle, by so forgotten a door, was an epoch in one’s psychology. ”

“ But behind the brick walls that strange romance was being worked out, and the mystery of the girl's identity remains unsolved to this day.
Here is a house that looks like a private residence, standing in its own grounds. There is a wall in front of it, and the door in this wall is solid and shuts out a view of the garden.
It stands in a broad, busy thoroughfare, and thousands of people pass it daily on foot or by 'bus and tram. They glance at the house carelessly, perhaps, but very few of them know what lies behind the hiding walls. ”

“ The dreary silence is broken only by birds and cats, polecats, rats, and mice, free to scamper round, and fight, and eat each other. An invisible hand has written over it all: ‘Mystery.’
“If, prompted by curiosity, you go to look at this house from the street, you will see a large gate, with a round-arched top; the children have made many holes in it. I learned later that this door had been blocked for ten years. Through these irregular breaches you will see that the side towards the courtyard is in perfect harmony with the side towards the garden. The same ruin prevails. ”

“ This door opened out instead of in,—this I also knew when planning this surreptitious intrusion, but, after pulling it open and reaching for the curtain, which hung completely across it, I found it not so easy to proceed as I had imagined. The stealthiness of my action held back my hand; then the faint sounds I heard within advised me that she was not alone, and that she might very readily regard with displeasure my unexpected entrance by a door of which she was possibly ignorant. ”

“ That somebody was haunting the Room with the Tassels who had to open the door to get in. No ghost would need to turn a knob and open the door. They splash right through walls or anything, or they ought to, if they know their business! But this lock, as well as the knob, was oiled, and, as you know, the door was opened though locked on the inside. Clever fingers can turn a key from the other side, if they have a certain implement, used by burglars. Also, if the key was not in the door, clever people could provide a duplicate key. ”

“ There are trapdoors, sliding doors, double doors, stage doors, prison doors, glass doors. But the symbol and mystery of a door resides in its quality of concealment. A glass door is not a door at all, but a window. The meaning of a door is to hide what lies inside ”