It was about five
o'clock when Liddy left me for a nap before dinner, having put me
into a gray silk dressing-gown and a pair of slippers. I
listened to her retreating footsteps, and as soon as she was
safely below stairs, I went up to the trunk-room. The place had
not been disturbed, and I proceeded at once to try to discover
the entrance to the hidden room. The openings on either side, as
I have said, showed nothing but perhaps three feet of brick wall.
There was no sign of an entrance--no levers, no hinges, to give a
hint. Either the mantel or the roof, I decided, and after a
half-hour at the mantel, productive of absolutely no result, I
decided to try the roof.
I am not fond of a height. The few occasions on which I have
climbed a step-ladder have always left me dizzy and weak in the
knees. The top of the Washington monument is as impossible to me
as the elevation of the presidential chair. And yet--I climbed
out on to the Sunnyside roof without a second's hesitation. Like
a dog on a scent, like my bearskin progenitor, with his spear and
his wild boar, to me now there was the lust of the chase, the
frenzy of pursuit, the dust of battle. I got quite a little
of the latter on me as I climbed from the unfinished ball-room
out through a window to the roof of the east wing of the
building, which was only two stories in height.
Once out there, access to the top of the main building was
rendered easy--at least it looked easy--by a small vertical iron
ladder, fastened to the wall outside of the ball-room, and
perhaps twelve feet high.
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