Previously:

“I need some information,” she told him, rushing past him to the sofa and plonking down on it. “What were your parents’ names?”

Dan scowled at her for a few moments. “Timothy and Rowena Mangan. Mom’s maiden name was Regan.”

Slowly, Trixie let out a breath and shut her eyes. “I just knew it.”

“What is it?” His voice was so soft that she could barely make out the words, and the fear in it caused her heart to ache. All at once, she remembered that this would be a difficult thing for Dan to hear and that he might find it painful, too.

Gently, she began to explain about the hidden cache. She added, “Mr. Wheeler wanted me to investigate something in the register, but I took the other things, too. When I read them, I was pretty sure your mother had hidden them there, and that these were her diaries.”

The next thing she knew, he was gripping her arm. “What do you know?” he demanded. “What did you find out in there?”

His fingers were digging into her flesh and she was sure he would leave a mark, but she was reluctant to continue. “Those weren’t their real names,” she told him, watching the disbelief wash across his face. “Rowena was her sister, but Rowena was already dead when you were born.”

“That can’t be right, Trixie.” His voice was filled with confusion. “Those were their names. I should know.”

Wordlessly, she opened the battered notebook to the entry she had read earlier and let him read. As he did so, she spread out the two birth certificates and the newspaper clippings. He stared at each, without seeming to see them, then jumped up and raced across the room. His fingers punched the numbers on his telephone so hard that Trixie feared he would break something. It was apparently answered after only a couple of rings.

“I need to see you. Now.” There was a short pause. “I don’t care! I need information and I need it right now. They lied to me!… No, my parents. Her name wasn’t Rowena, it was Sheena.… Yes, of course I mean that.… Fine.… Thanks.… Bye.”

Slowly, he replaced the receiver. “He’ll be over as soon as he can.”

“Your uncle?” Trixie asked.

Dan only nodded.

When Regan arrived, Trixie wondered how he had managed to get there so quickly. It did not seem possible to travel as far as he had in the time he had taken. He was silent and serious as he entered, greeting Trixie with only a slight nod. Just as she had done for Dan, she summed up the earlier events and let him read the documents for himself. To her surprise and horror, tears began to run down his face at the sight of the first little diary. In all of the time she had known him, she had never seen Regan display so much emotion.

Trixie watched in silence as he hurriedly read through to the last entry. He gently ran a work-calloused hand over the last few written words, then clutched the book to his chest. He fumbled for his handkerchief, before roughly rubbing it over his face. Unashamed of his still-streaming tears, he took a long look at Dan, as if for the first time.

“Sheena’s son,” he whispered. “Sheena’s and Alan’s. Why did I never see that?”

Dan still looked wary and hurt. “You tell me. That’s why you’re here.”

Regan nodded and began to explain. “According to my sisters, our father was an old man. He married for the first time pretty late in life; I think he was about fifty or sixty. He and his first wife had Rowena and maybe another child, I’m not really sure. I don’t know Rowena’s mother’s name. She died pretty soon after Ro was born and he married my mother. Then they had Sheena and, a lot later, me. He had a heart attack or something and died when I was very young. My mother wasn’t real well after that, didn’t cope well with being left with the kids – not all of them her own. I don’t really know what happened to her; Ro and Sheena never told me. One day, she just wasn’t there any more. Ro was about twelve, I think, and she looked after Sheena and me.”

His expression darkened and Trixie had a hard time holding back the questions that fought to escape. She tried to keep in the background., to allow the two men to deal with this together.

“After a while, Ro got in with the wrong crowd,” Regan continued. “She started doing drugs. One of the neighbours complained about us and Ro and I got taken off to the children’s home while Sheena was out. Ro was only there a few weeks before she ran away to get married. I found out that Sheena was living with them, and I kind of hoped that I could go to live with them too, but Tim – her husband – was worse than Ro. They’d visit me sometimes, but they came less and less until the day the nuns told me that Sheena was dead. Rowena never came back. I heard from her later. She promised me that she’d straightened out her life, had a kid. I tried to send her some money once I started at the Wheelers and had a little to spare, but it came back and I never heard from or saw her again.”

“I guess that explains your attitude to me,” Dan muttered. “Dead-beat parents who abandoned you. Good-for-nothing kid who took after them.”

“I’m sorry,” Regan replied, in a scratchy voice. “I’m so sorry, Dan. I didn’t know. And by the time I knew you well enough to know you weren’t like them, it was too late to fix what I’d already done.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me this at the time?” Dan’s angry expression did nothing to hide the hurt he was also feeling.

Regan shrugged. “I told you the gist of it. I just left out a few things.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “It never occurred to me that you could be Sheena’s. She was only fifteen when I heard she’d died.”

Dan scrabbled for the birth certificate and his face creased in dismay. “She was still pretty young when I was born – a lot younger than I am now. I don’t think this can get much worse.” He frowned. “But you must have noticed I didn’t look like Tim, whoever he was?”

Regan shrugged. “Who says I even remember what Tim looked like? I only met him a few times when I was a kid.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t looking for a resemblance in you, but now that I know who to look for, it’s there.”

“And who was he? My father, I mean. If he wasn’t really Tim Mangan, who was he?”

Regan shrugged once more. “I don’t know. I only knew him as Alan, Sheena’s boyfriend. I didn’t even know his last name.” He shut his eyes, seemingly lost in the past. “Ro might have been the oldest, the one who kept house and found the money to pay the rent, but it was Sheena who really cared for me. I remember Alan helping her, too. It’s funny, but I never thought about what happened to him after she was supposed to be dead.”

“Well, how am I supposed to find anything out if you can’t tell me?” Dan demanded, rather unreasonably. “Can’t you think of anything else?”

Trixie could hold her silence no longer. “You’ve got his birth certificate,” she pointed out. “That’s a starting point.”

Dan turned to the document and stared at the information inscribed there. Names, a date and a location. “Okay, then, Trix,” he muttered. “If you think that’s enough to go on, you can find out more about him.”

She dropped a hand onto his shoulder. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I will.” Reaching towards her pile of papers, she pulled out the photograph and handed it to Dan.

“I’m supposed to know who this is?” he asked, frowning at it.

“I was kind of hoping you’d know,” she answered, hiding her disappointment. “How about you, Regan? Any ideas?”

The older man took the photo and examined it carefully. “That’s your Dad,” he told Dan, who looked very surprised to hear it. “I think that’s his mother, and that it used to have his father in the picture as well, but Alan had argued with him and that’s why he’d run away from home. I guess he was angry enough to cut him out of the family portrait. You never saw this before?”

Dan shook his head. “I don’t remember Dad ever talking about his childhood or his family at all. I never really knew any family history from either side. There’s nothing I know from before the time I can remember for myself, except what you told me. It was all a blank – until now.”

“And how about this?” Trixie asked, holding out the hand which held the ring. “Either of you recognise it?”

Both men shook their heads. Seeing that they were ready to move on, she decided to raise the matter of the hotel register.

“What about this?” she asked, opening the final diary to the appropriate page. “What can you tell me about this?”

For a moment there was silence as they both read, then Regan reached for the register. “It looks a little familiar,” he admitted, running his hands over the cover. “I wouldn’t have known there was anything special about it, though.”

He opened it up and looked through its pages. Dan simply shook his head and looked on.

“What about you, Dan?” Trixie prompted.

“Never seen it before, as far as I remember,” he told her. “Never knew there was a secret hiding place in our apartment, either. Don’t remember my mother ever saying anything about the building, except that she wished she could afford better.”

Regan, meanwhile, was giving the old book a more thorough examination. A faint smile appeared on his face as he remembered playing with it long ago. Bending its covers backwards, he gave the book a hard shake. The edge of a piece of paper was now visible where the spine had come adrift from the binding, making a small cavity.

With trembling fingers, Trixie withdrew the small, crumpled scrap. The pencilled words and markings were in an angular, old-fashioned hand. In a few words, it told that those marked with a cross or added to the margins were present in the speakeasy on the night in question, but neglected to say which night that might have been.

Trixie stared at the scrap, bewildered. “What does this mean? Which night?”

Dan let out a short laugh. “Three guesses what your father was planning to do with this,” he offered his uncle.

Regan held up his hands. “I don’t remember the man, so I couldn’t say.” There was a twinkle in his eyes as he continued, “Maybe he wanted to hold a reunion of loyal customers and associates.”

“Of the speakeasy,” Trixie added with a grin. “This is exactly what I needed to know. Thanks, Regan. I owe you one.”

“I’ll remember that the next time the stables need mucking out,” he replied, with a straight face. “And on that note, I think I’ll be off.”

He rose and strode to the door, exchanging brief words of farewell with his nephew and disappearing into the night. Dan sank into the sofa and closed his eyes. The worry-lines now visible on his face made him look older than his twenty-three years.

“I’m sorry, Dan. I didn’t really think through how this was going to affect you.”

Without opening his eyes, Dan shook his head. “I needed to know,” he told her, in a soft voice. “I think Uncle Bill did, too. Maybe it’ll help us put a few things behind us and move on.” He looked at her and smiled. “You’ll help me, won’t you?”

Smiling back, she nodded. “Just try stopping me.”

The following day, a Friday, the Bob-Whites began to converge upon the Wheeler’s apartment for a few days together. The first to arrive were Trixie, Honey, Di and Jim, who had each had at least one day free since finishing their studies. Mart and Dan would join them after finishing work for the week and Brian was expected late in the evening, having had a prior commitment.

“So, who wants to go and have a look at the speakeasy?” Trixie asked, once the four were settled in. “I’ve got the key.”

“I’d like to,” Jim replied at once. “Mart’s pictures were great, but I’d like to see it first hand. Shall we all go together?”

Honey and Di exchanged a look and Honey shook her head violently. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no! Didn’t I tell you I wouldn’t go down there, Trixie?”

“It’ll be fine, Hon,” her friend wheedled. “Jim will protect you. Please?”

Jim smiled at his sister and gave her arm a reassuring pat. “It’s broad daylight, Honey. No ghosts out at this time of day.”

She rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh. “Oh, all right. But it had better not be too dark down there, or I’m coming straight back.”

Grabbing a couple of large flashlights, Jim ushered the group towards the door. Some time later, they arrived at the adjoining building and Trixie led the way to a janitor’s closet.

“Apparently, the secret passage is in here,” she explained, unlocking the door. “I’ve been dying to try this out. I’ve only just gotten the key and I haven’t had time to come down here, yet.”

Behind the usual contents of such a place, the bare back wall sported a rather incongruous padlock. Wheeling aside a trolley, Trixie fitted the key in the lock and soon opened the door. She ushered her friends onto the stairs revealed and then pulled the closet door closed, taking the padlock with her.

“It’s dark in here, Trixie,” Honey complained with a note of warning to her voice. “If you don’t get a light on soon…” She trailed off as Jim flicked on his high-powered flashlight.

Smiling down at her, he gave her arm a little squeeze. “Let’s get moving. Can you see your way now?”

Honey nodded and the four made their descent. They emerged into a long, straight passageway which stretched into the darkness ahead. Their footsteps sounded strangely loud as they walked, and the journey seemed to take more time than it should, but they arrived at the other end, to see a bank of shelves along the left-hand side of the passage and a blank wall up ahead.

“Just look at this!” Trixie cried, rushing forward. “There’s still some stuff here from before the doorway was blocked off.”

“Why didn’t you see these things when you were down here the last time?” Honey wondered, wrinkling her nose as her best friend rummaged through partly-eaten papers and boxes of old junk.

Wiping her hands on her jeans, Trixie turned to the door mechanism and, with the ease of experience, swung the shelf unit around. “We turned the other one all the way around,” she explained, “but this one only got turned halfway like this, so we could get into the passageway. I must have turned it back the same way when I closed it.”

Forgetting the mess on the other side, she stepped into the storeroom and from there into the speakeasy itself. The other three followed. The room had been cleaned thoroughly since she had last seen it. The debris of the old brickwork was gone, as was the dust and dirt which had coated everything. A safety barrier blocked off the stairway, as this room was not a part of the work site above. With a view to discovering the last couple of hidden spaces, Trixie headed toward those same stairs and ran her hand across the wall adjoining them.

“Hop up on the stage, Di, and give us a number,” Jim joked, as he leaned against the bar. “Something from the twenties.”

“I don’t know anything from the twenties,” Di objected with a nervous laugh, “and even if I did, I wouldn’t stand up there and sing for anything! I’d probably be knocked off the stage by the ghost.”

A shiver ran up Trixie’s spine and she was certain she felt a cold breeze cross the still, dim room. Setting her shoulders, she turned once more to her task. It was almost as if she could feel someone watching her as she searched for a way into the hidden room that she knew must be behind this wall. Seeing a spot which reminded her of the hidden door to the secret passage, she used the same method as before and managed to open the panel.

“Oh, that’s just great,” she grumbled, when the light shone into the cavity. “There’s a great big lock on it. Jim, do you think you could break it? It looks pretty rusty.”

He approached and gave the lock a cursory examination. “Not a chance, I’d say,” he told her cheerfully. “Dad can get a locksmith down sometime and get it open. But isn’t there another space to find? Maybe there’ll be something interesting in it.”

Shrugging off her disappointment, Trixie crossed the room to the stage, and headed for one of the dressing rooms. Seeing that Honey and Di were staying where they were, she called, “Aren’t you coming?”

“Not on your life,” Di replied, clutching her flashlight as if it were a life preserver. “We’ll be fine out here, thank you very much.”

Without another thought, Trixie entered the dingy little room. Her first impression was that it had a strange smell – slightly sweet, and just a little unpleasant – but in an instant it was gone. She felt cold, and rubbed her bare arms with her hands before surveying the scene. There was little here to conceal a hiding place, so it did not take her long to find a door that was quite similar to some of the ones she had seen upstairs. The space revealed was quite small, and had a hanging rail for garments, as if it had once been used as an extra closet. It was otherwise empty.

Trixie was about to shut the door again in disappointment when something caught her eye. Hanging on a nail in the darkest corner was a key. Her fingers trembled slightly as she took it down, noting with a cold shiver that there was a piece of paper attached. Reading it was a little anti-climactic, as the only writing on it was a single numeral: 2.

With quick steps, she left the stage area and headed for the padlock she had found earlier. The other three sensed her excitement and gathered around to see what was happening. Trixie struggled for a few moments with the lock before Jim gently took the key from her.

“It may need a little help after all these years,” he explained. “I didn’t think to bring graphite powder, but I think I might have a pencil.”

Producing a small stub from one of his pockets, Jim set to work making shavings of the lead and had soon lubricated the lock well enough to get it open. With a smile, he stepped back and let Trixie open the door to her discovery. Cold air flowed in, renewing the staleness of the long-closed space. As the light picked out the features of the room, Honey and Di took a few steps backwards and even Trixie wrinkled her nose.

“I’m glad I don’t have the job of cleaning this out,” she muttered, taking a tentative step into the room and leaning closer to what had once been a richly-upholstered chair. “I guess some of this damage is from rats.”

“Don’t talk to me about rats!” Di begged.

Honey gave an elaborate shudder and gestured from a decrepit chaise longue to the chair and on to the abstract pictures and mirrors on the walls. “There’s worse things to think about than just the rats. Like why is this room even here?”

Di gave her a look. “Didn’t you hear Dan’s story? I think it’s pretty obvious why it’s here. This is the owner’s private sitting room, where he tried to take the girl that he killed.”

Her friend let out a little groan. “Which means, if the story is true, that this is also the scene of the murder. I think I’ve seen enough here, thank you Trixie. I think I’d like to go back to the apartment now.”

“We don’t really know that,” Jim soothed. “Why don’t the three of us let Trixie explore in here and we’ll wait outside of this room? Will that make you feel a little better, Honey?”

Giving him a dubious look, she consented and stepped away from the partition. Trixie set to searching through the small room. She paced it out as best she could and decided that it almost certainly accounted for all of the space. Then, she started looking for hiding places. There was only one side table with a single drawer and it was quickly searched to reveal nothing of interest. The frame of the table held no secrets that she could find, either. She checked the backs of the pictures and the mirror, under the chair and chaise longue and all along the walls.

Stepping back through the doorway, she stared into the room, thinking hard. There was a lull in the others’ conversation at that point and they all paused to watch her work. A strange, low grating sound cut through the silence.

“What was that?” Honey wondered, her voice so soft it was barely audible.

Trixie took a tentative step forwards. “I don’t know. It sounded close by, whatever it was.” Leaning down, she grasped the edge of the moth-eaten carpet and tried to pull it up. Something sticky was holding it down in places and she soon gave up the attempt. As she rose to stand straight once more, she caught a flash of movement in the corner of her eye, but when she looked at the place directly there was nothing to see. Diana must have noticed her look of surprise.

“Did you just see something, Trixie?” she demanding, with an accusing tone to her voice. “Don’t you think it’s time you admitted that there’s something weird going on down here?”

“Oh, please, Di,” Trixie answered, putting every ounce of scepticism she possessed into her voice. “You don’t really believe in the ghost, do you? It’s just movement in an old, rather run-down building. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“I don’t think I believe that.” Di gave the hidden room an apprehensive look. “There’s something about that room that I don’t really like. It’s creepy.”

“It’s just dirty and gross,” Trixie contradicted, trying to sound brisk. “Mr. Wheeler will get it cleaned out and it will be fine.”

“I’d really like to go back to the apartment now, Trixie,” Honey told her in a most insistent voice. “Right now.”

Trixie cast her a wild-eyed look, but it was to no avail.

“I’m with Honey,” Di added, grabbing Jim by the arm. “The apartment is sounding better and better by the second!”

“At least let me call Mr. Wheeler and let him know what’s happened,” Trixie begged.

“From the apartment,” Honey promised. “You can call whoever you like from there. Call everyone you know, just let us get out of here.”

With good grace, Trixie gave in and followed her friends back outside, but not before giving the little room a long, scrutinising look. She memorised as much of the detail as she could, knowing that the next time she was here everything was likely to be gone.

By early afternoon, Trixie was ready to climb the walls. Mr. Wheeler had set a crew on clean-up in the newly-reopened room and had promised to let her know immediately of any interesting discoveries. In spite of the distasteful nature of the work, she was a little disappointed not to be there herself.

“You need something to keep your mind off things,” Honey suggested, after her friend had paced past her for the fifth time. The heat of the day had kept the pair inside, while Jim had run an errand and Di soaked herself in a bubble bath, having claimed to feel dirty all over after their brief visit to the old speakeasy.

Trixie sighed and dropped down onto the sofa next to Honey. “I can’t keep my mind on anything else.”

Honey smiled. “So, how about we try to find out about your ghost? Maybe someone has researched her already.” She walked over to the table where she had left her laptop and started it up. “What do you think I should search on?”

After several minutes’ debate and a few false starts, they began to get results that were promising. A number of different sites had references to their ghost, along with varying reports of the original story, and even a picture or two. By the fourth or fifth site, however, it began to seem as if all of them had gotten most of their material from one of the others. Even the wording was the same in some cases.

With a sigh, Trixie returned to the search results and adjusted the criteria once more. “One last try?” she suggested.

At the bottom of the first page of results was a book preview. Without much hope, Trixie clicked on the link, but soon let out a gasp. At the top right corner of the page was a photograph of the hotel, taken somewhere in the first two decades of its existence. The corresponding text was located further down the page. Only a short excerpt was available to preview, but it was enough to make Trixie want the book right away.

At that point, the preview abruptly ended.

“Where can we get a copy?” Trixie wondered aloud, frowning at the screen. “By mail only? I can’t wait that long!”

Honey picked up the phone and dialled her father’s number. “Maybe Daddy can help us,” she suggested, before the call was answered. A few minutes later she related the results of the short conversation. “He’s onto it. Hopefully we’ll get a copy before the end of the weekend and in the meantime, maybe, we can do some more searching since we have a little more information.”

“Not enough, really,” Trixie grumbled. “An assumed name, and no clue to her own; a rough date… I guess we can try, though.”

Their next few searches, however, yielded nothing new or useful. Sighing in frustration and impatience, Trixie gave up the search for the time being and looked for something else to capture her attention. Not finding anything in the apartment, she decided to go for a walk.

“Come with me?” she asked her best friend, as she headed for the door.

“Huh uh!” Honey shook her head emphatically. “In this mood? I don’t think so. I’ll see you when you get back.”

With a careless shrug, Trixie left her friend alone and went outside to walk off her bad mood.

After Dan and Mart arrived that evening, the six headed out for dinner in a nearby restaurant. Just as they were about to leave the building, a package was delivered for Honey by courier. Without delay, she began to rip into the wrapping and had soon opened it to reveal the book they had wanted.

“Honey, your Dad is a genius!” Trixie declared, giving her friend an impromptu hug. “Quick! What does it say about the hotel?”

While Jim, Dan and Mart impatiently waited, the two young women flicked through to find the right place and began to read.

“Let’s leave them behind,” Mart suggested loudly. “They’re obviously not hungry, but I’m starved. I haven’t had a bite to eat since lunch.”

Honey glanced upwards with a guilty expression. “I’m sorry, Mart. I didn’t mean to keep you waiting. Come on, Trix. We can read it later.”

Sighing with disappointment, Trixie nodded and followed along. After they were seated in the restaurant, but before the meals arrived, however, she managed to get the book and read a bit more while the others talked. They must have noticed this, but none of them challenged her. She was forced to stop a short time later when her food arrived, and reluctantly put down the book in the middle of the story. When they had finished eating, she took it up once more, gripped by what she had been reading.

Reaching the end of the relevant chapter, she set the book down and announced, “Now we’ll be able to find out what happened for sure!”

The others, who had been discussing the performance of New York’s current mayor, looked at her blankly for a moment before realisation set in. Dan voiced the question that each was thinking: “How do you think you’ll do that?”

“Easy!” Trixie leaned forward. “According to this book, Dan’s ghost was a woman by the name of Ada Kriescher. Her stage name was Clara Brown, which we found out earlier from that web site. She went missing on August twenty-fourth, 1928, which was the same day as a terrible subway accident at Times Square, and at first they thought she must have been on the train that derailed, but a few people who knew her saw her after the accident. In the book, there’s an account of an interview that the author had with an anonymous former patron of the speakeasy, who said that she was still there at closing time when he left, and that he heard the owner sending everyone else home. No one ever saw her again – which just about has to mean that she never left at all, and her body must still be there!”

“After all this time?” Mart objected with a frown. “Why? There were at least three ways out in those days – up the stairs into the hotel, through the secret passage into the next building and out the door into the subway entrance, either up onto the street or down onto the subway platform. Why would the body still be there?”

Trixie looked at her brother incredulously. “Why should he risk getting caught with a dead body? If he really killed her down there, she’s still there somewhere and I know just how to find her.”

“If this plan involves us going down there in the dark,” Honey warned, “you can count me out right now!”

“How about we go back to the apartment and see if Brian has arrived?” Jim suggested diplomatically. “He’s due any time now and we could save time by discussing it all together.”

Glad of the reprieve, Honey agreed before Trixie could say a word and they were soon on their way back. It was about half an hour later that Brian arrived, looking pale and tired. Almost the instant he was inside, Trixie gathered the group together for an emergency meeting to discuss her plan.

“I think we should go there tonight and see if the ghost will show us the answer,” Trixie proposed, after a brief summary of previous events for Brian’s benefit. “The oldest version of the story apparently says that patrons of the speakeasy who stayed until closing sometimes saw some clue that she was there. I don’t know what time they would have closed in those days, but I guess it would be pretty late.”

“For those of us who don’t believe in ghosts,” Brian asked dryly, “what reason is there for this scheme?”

Dan laughed. “If you don’t believe in ghosts, then what reason is there not to go?”

“Well, I think I believe in ghosts,” Di decided. “Or, at least, I think I believe in this ghost and I really don’t want to meet her.”

“With all of us strong males to protect you, there’s nothing to worry about,” Mart declared. “I think we should go, but I want us to all stay together. Should we vote on it?”

Honey gave a tentative look around the room before nodding her agreement. “Okay, I guess. I want to spend as much time together as we possibly can, and if it has to be there, I suppose I can live with that.”

Seeing general agreement on that point Jim asked, “All in favour of spending tonight at the speakeasy?” Trixie and Mart raised their hands immediately. After a short pause, Brian joined them. “Against?” Honey, Di and Dan raised theirs.

“What are you voting, Jim?” Trixie asked, a note of desperation in her voice.

“I’m in trouble either way, aren’t I?” he asked, running a hand through his hair. “Okay, Trixie, you can have your way this time. I’m voting for the proposal.”

“Yes!” Trixie cried, while Honey and Di cringed.

An hour and a half later, they arrived at the building next door to the old hotel and entered the secret passageway. As she had done before, Trixie took the padlock with her, but this time she secured the door from the inside with a pair of small bolts. They made their way along the long corridor and Trixie opened the doorway into the speakeasy. It seemed colder inside than it had in the passageway. A gust of cold air blew towards them from the direction of the stage.

“I think we’ve seen enough, now,” Honey announced with a shiver. “Let’s get going.”

“It always does that when the door gets opened,” Trixie told her impatiently. “There must be a vent somewhere and whenever the air has somewhere to go, it does. Let’s take a look around.”

She approached the room she had discovered earlier in the day and found that it had been cleared of its distasteful contents. Even the filthy carpet, which she had been unable to lift, had been removed. A brownish mark showed the former positions of the large mirror and the pictures, and some sticky patches showed where the carpet had adhered, but the walls and floor were otherwise featureless.

Trixie stood in the middle of the room and shut her eyes. She could feel the colder air from outside flowing in around her and hear the sound of a rat scrabbling somewhere inside one of the walls. Opening her eyes once more, she walked over to the door and pulled it shut, blocking out the light of the flashlights the others held. The door fit tightly, as she had expected, and no lines of light showed around the edges. She waited for her eyes to adjust, to make out any sources of light, but there was nothing to see. Several minutes had passed when she decided she had seen enough.

With tentative steps, she approached the door and tried to open it, but without effect. Taking a deep breath, she calmed the panic which was rising within her and tried again. Still, the door did not budge. Despite the closeness of the small room and the warmth of the summer night outside, she felt chilled. She rattled at the door ineffectually and called through it in the hope that her friends could help her.

“Can someone open the door? It’s stuck!”

Next

Author’s notes: A big thank you to Mary N. for editing once more, finding my typos and spelling errors and making everything clear and understandable. Your help and encouragement are very much appreciated!

The image of the woman in the title is adapted from a photograph of actress Louise Brooks. According to Wikipedia (where I acquired it), there are no known copyright restrictions on it. Originally, I had quite a different picture there, but while double-checking the details for these notes, I realised that the image was only public domain in the US. Where I live, it won’t be public domain for another forty years (and where you live is what matters in such cases). Oops!

The Stanfield Hotel is not real. Any resemblance to hotels of similar names is pure coincidence.

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