an old picture painted on a panel.  She looked at this without speaking:  the wall was wainscoted in oak, as it had always been, six feet up from the floor.  Then an idea came to her:  she tilted the picture on one side.  But there was no more to be seen than a cracked panel, which, it seemed to her, had once been nearer the door.  She rapped upon this, but it gave back the dull sound as of wood against stone.

She turned to the young man, smiling.  He smiled back.

“Come into the bedroom, mistress.”

He led her in there, through the passage outside into which the two doors opened at the head of the outside stairs; but here, too, all that she could see was that a tall press that had once stood between the windows now stood against the wall immediately opposite to the painted panel on the other side of the wall.  She opened the doors of the press, but it was as it had always been:  there even hung there the three or four dresses that she had taken from it last night and laid on the bed.

She laughed outright, and, turning, saw Mistress Alice Babington beaming tranquilly from the door of the room.

“Come in, Alice,” she said, “and see this miracle.”

Then he began to explain it.

* * * * *

On this side was the entrance proper, and, as he said so, he stepped up into the press and closed the doors.  They could hear him fumbling within, then the sound of wood sliding, and finally a muffled voice calling to them.  Marjorie flung the doors open, and, save for the dresses, it was empty.  She stared in for a moment, still hearing the movements of someone beyond, and at last the sound of a snap; and as she withdrew her head to exclaim to Alice, the young man walked into the room through the open door behind her.

Then he explained it in full.

The back of the press had been removed, and then replaced, in such a manner that it would slide out about eighteen inches towards the window, but only when the doors of the press were closed; when they were opened, they drew out simultaneously a slip of wood on either side that pulled the sliding door tight and immovable.  Behind the back of the press, thus removed, a corresponding part of the wainscot slid in the same way, giving a narrow doorway into the cell which he had excavated between the double beams of the thick wall.  Next, when the person that had taken refuge was inside, with the two sliding doors closed behind him, it was possible for him, by an extremely simple device, to turn a wooden button and thus release a little wooden machinery which controlled a further opening into the parlour, and which, at the same time, was braced against the hollow panelling and one of the higher beams in such a manner as to give it, when knocked upon, the dullness of sound the girl had noticed just now.  But this door could only be opened from within.  Neither a fugitive nor a pursuer could make any entrance from the parlour side, unless the wainscoting itself were torn off.  Lastly, the crack in the woodwork, corresponding with two minute holes bored in the painted panel, afforded, when the picture was hung exactly straight, a view of the parlour that commanded nearly all the room.