“Another whoop-de-do going on in the private room,” said Kipper darkly. “I ain’t ever been ’lowed in there, but from the looks o’ the crew what is, that Cap’n Scurlock being one, I ain’t missing much. You know, Emily, once I—”
Kipper was interrupted again by another burst of ugly laughter, one that this time caused him and Emily to turn to one another with looks of dismay and horror. For somewhere in that laughter, they had heard the unmistakable, blood-chilling, all-too-familiar sound of a hisssss!
“I aim to go see what’s up,” Kipper whispered. “There ain’t much light in the passageway, and plenty o’ kegs to hide behind.” Without even waiting for Emily’s opinion of this plan, Kipper darted for the door. A moment later, he had disappeared.
Emily had no intention of waiting there alone. She raced after him, following as he slipped like an eel from keg to keg toward a sharp shaft of light that stabbed through a partly open door. Crouching behind a large keg, they peered into the room.
Around a long, scarred oak table laden with a ham, a roast beef, a turkey, and all sorts of puddings, cakes, and custards (a collection, in fact, of the delectable foods Emily was used to seeing in the locked icebox), sat the grisly Captain Scurlock, his crew of rough officers, and two other persons. One of these, as they had guessed it would be, was Mrs. Meeching. With one hand under her sharp chin, and the fingers of another coiled around a long pipe, whose smoke glided silkily up her thin nose, she lounged in a carved black chair at the foot of the table.
But, unlike the first day she had entered Sugar Hill Hall, it was not Mrs. Meeching that caused Emily’s blood to turn to ice in her veins. This time it was a second person, a person who sat in a chair raised from all the others as if on a platform at the head of the table. The face of the person was one Emily had loved. No, not the face of Uncle Twice, but the face of a woman. Vanished, however, was the sweet expression, the soft eyes, and the gentle mouth. The face was now a curiously twisted hard mask, the eyes glittering like blue glass marbles, and the mouth no more than a black hole lined with red, opened wide to pour out a howl of ugly laughter.
Emily turned to Kipper with horror. “Aunty Plum!”
“Locked up there in the Remembrance Room remembering her bad deeds, oh, it does my tender heart good!” shrieked Mrs. Plumly. “And when I think of her sitting there prim as you please drinking her Aunty Plum’s nice, warm t-t-tea-hee-hee!” She exploded again with coarse laughter. “Never suspecting what was in it and pouring out all her tender little secrets about Mama’s thimble and Papa’s cap, getting tipsier and tipsier, and spilling out her nasty little tricks regarding the fish syrup, the old buzzards in the attic, that filthy cat, and her nineteen gold coins. ‘Sewn up in my mattress, Aunty Plum,’ she whispered to me, pleased as pleased could be.”
So Mrs. Plumly was the evil behind the evil, the eyes and ears of Sugar Hill Hall, which had been told nothing, but seen and heard everything. And now it was known how!
As Mrs. Plumly spoke, her face grew uglier and uglier until she was spitting out the words. “Meal-mouthed, meddling little brat! I’d like to have my hands on those precious clothes of hers so I could have the pleasure of hurling them into this fireplace all over again. Well, she’ll come out of the Remembrance Room a different child than she went in, mark my words. And if she gets any more dangerous ideas, there’s always another cup of tea in Aunty Plum’s room, eh, Meeching?”
“Indeed, Plumly!” said Mrs. Meeching in a fawning voice.
Then a poisonous smile spread over Mrs. Plumly’s face. “I must say I’ve never done a finer acting job. But then I didn’t earn my title of Queen of the Dance Halls for nothing, eh?”
“That was a splendid drop you did in the parlor, Plumly. Sssimply sssplendid!” hissed Mrs. Meeching.
“Ah yes!” mused Mrs. Plumly. She went into a trance, but quickly collected herself. “Well, perhaps on that note we had better take leave and be on our way.”
The two ladies rose, the officers stumbled to their feet, and Emily felt a sharp tug on her arm. “Ain’t got time to lose! Let’s get back to the tunnel!”
Numb with horror and shock, Emily could barely make one leg follow the other as she slipped silently down the passageway with Kipper. It was not until they were back in the tunnel with the trapdoor safely down overhead, that her throat unlocked enough for her to speak. “Oh Kipper, how could I have been so stupid as to believe her!”
“Now see here, Emily,” said Kipper sternly as they began their journey back up the tunnel, “anyone would o’ believed her. She’s a perfessional actress. And how was you to know you was guzzling tea which weren’t just tea? There ain’t any use banging your head ’gainst a wall to punish yourself for what ain’t your fault. Anyways, we learned a couple o’ somethings out o’ this visit. ’Pears as how Mrs. Plumly is chief viper ’round Sugar Hill Hall, and not the snake lady. And also ’pears as how she ain’t the one your Aunt Twice is pertecting.”
“Which means that—that it might be Uncle Twice after all!” Emily’s voice broke.
“Maybe,” said Kipper. “More’n maybe, most likely.”
“But how does Aunt Twice know he’s really alive?” Emily cried. “Suppose he isn’t and they’ve just been lying to her all along!”
“There you go with more supposings, Emily,” said Kipper.
“Yes, but—but if he’s alive, then where
