Disappearing Staircase Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner Read Free Book Online Page A

their flashlights around the room. The child-sized space had low ceilings and shelves. Everywhere their flashlight beams landed, the children saw toys—heaps of them. Beautiful old dolls and stuffed animals stared back at the Aldens from the shelves. Toy trucks, wagons, old-fashioned roller skates, and even a train track filled another side of the room.

    “Wow, that train set is huge!” Benny said in a loud whisper. “Too bad the electricity isn’t on to make all those train cars go around.”
    Jessie opened the doors of a cabinet. “Look! More old trucks—lots of them,” she said.
    Violet and Soo Lee went over to a large dollhouse displayed on its own special table.
    “It’s a miniature model of the Bugbee House,” Violet said in her soft voice, “only the way it must have looked when the Bugbee children lived here. It even has a secret playroom just like the one we’re standing in.”
    The Aldens gathered around the dollhouse. It was completely furnished right down to many of the very toys the children could see in the actual playroom. For a few seconds, no one spoke. The dollhouse, all furnished and complete with a family of little plastic people, looked like such a happy place. To the Aldens, the real Bugbee House now seemed empty and sad.
    Jessie noticed something else about the dollhouse. “Look. There’s a tiny skylight just like the one we saw where the tree branch fell down.”
    The children looked up at the playroom ceiling.
    “But there’s no skylight in here,” Violet said. “In the dollhouse, the skylight is in a different space—in a room that’s behind the third-floor bathroom.”
    “You’re right, Violet,” Jessie said. “But I didn’t notice any other entrances in the bathroom before. We’d better go back and check.”
    “Oh, dear, one other thing.” Violet pointed to something else in the dollhouse. “Look, there’s a miniature music box in the dollhouse playroom with a tiny bear on it! Maybe that means…” She turned around to face the actual shelf in the actual playroom.
    “My music box!” she said in an excited whisper. She picked it up. “It’s the very one I bid on. There’s even a price sticker on it.”
    “Then take it,” said Jessie. “We’ll tell Mabel we found it after all, then you can pay for it. We have to let her know about this room and all these valuable old toys. Whoever was up here is keeping it a secret, so it’s up to us to tell her.”
    Violet picked up the music box with the dancing bear. “I won’t play it right now. Someone might hear the music just like we did. I wonder who was up here.”
    “That’s what we need to find out.”
    The children took one last look around the hidden playroom. Then, one by one, they climbed down the disappearing staircase to the bottom, where Henry was still keeping a lookout.
    “Okay,” he said after everyone was back down in the hallway again. “Let’s push these stairs back up into the ceiling. Benny and Soo Lee, you two be my lookouts in case anyone comes up here.” Henry folded the steps, then gave the panel a firm push. “Abracadabra. Staircase, disappear.” And so it did!
    “Violet has something special to show you,” Jessie whispered to Henry.
    “The attic up there is really a secret playroom full of old toys,” Violet explained to Henry. “Somebody hid my music box there.”
    “Wow!” Henry said. “So it was stolen.”
    “Just like I said,” Benny cried, excited about that idea.
    The children examined the music box but didn’t play it. They weren’t taking any chances.
    “It must be valuable,” Jessie said. “Otherwise, why did someone go to all the bother of hiding it up in the hidden playroom?”
    “What I wonder is, who knows about that playroom?” Henry asked.
    “A person with big, wet feet,” Soo Lee answered.
    The children tried not to laugh too hard.
    “That could be a lot of people in this house tonight. If I get a chance, I’d like to go up there and look around