The two girls found themselves standing side by side in a small space with a landing that opened onto a circular staircase. There was not a lot to be seen in the cramped space except for a large amount of dust and one medium-size bookcase with empty shelves.

“Whoa, check it out!” exclaimed Trixie excitedly. “You found a secret room, Honey!”

Honey, who had just gotten to her feet and was still trying to catch her breath, could only nod in agreement.

The initial excitement of finding the room wearing off, Trixie began to pace around its confines. “Yuck! Would you look at all this dust?” Trixie ran a finger through a layer of dust on one of the shelves. “I don’t know about you, but I have no intention of mentioning this room to Moms or Aunt Alicia. If they get a load of this dust, they’ll just add it to our list.”

“Poor you,” laughed Honey. "We've only just started working on the bedrooms. Besides, look on the bright side. This space is so small; we’d be done cleaning it in no time.”

Trixie let out a huge sigh as she leaned against the bookcase, causing it to tip slightly. “I suppose you’re right.”

Honey’s eyes, which were focused on the bookcase, opened wide. “Look! Do you see this mark in the dust?” She excitedly pointed to the top shelf. “It looks just like a key!” She grabbed Trixie’s arm that had been propped on the shelf and spun her around to face the case. “Do you think the key fell off when you leaned against the case?”

“I thought I heard something, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe I heard the key hitting the floor! Help me move this bookcase so we can look behind it.” Suiting her action to her words, Trixie grabbed one side of the bookcase and began to pull it forward. Honey grabbed the other side and helped pull. Two heads as one eagerly looked on the floor. Trixie was the first to swoop down.

“You were right, Honey! Look!” Trixie stood up and triumphantly held a large brass key. “But what does it open? There isn’t a door with a keyhole in here. The only door is the one we came through as far as I can see.  There's probably a lever inside the wardrobe that pulls the door open on the other side, but it looks like you can only push it open from in here.”  Trixie looked in consternation at the door and then at her friend.  "At least, I hope you can push it open from in here."

Honey went back to the door they had come through so precipitously and pushed on it experimentally. The door swung open a few inches and back shut as soon as she let go. She turned back to face the circular staircase and tapped her fingers against her mouth for a moment.

“Well, since the only other way out of this room is down these stairs, doesn’t it stand to reason that there might be another door down there?”

“There certainly isn’t anything in here! Gleeps, what a bust this room turned out to be,” Trixie grumbled. “Just our luck. We find a secret room, and there’s nothing in here but some empty shelves, a key to nothing, and a lot of dust. Let’s go down these stairs and see where they go!” With that, Trixie bounded down the stairs.

Honey followed Trixie down the stairs and found her standing in front of a door identical to the one they had just left. “What room do you think this will open into?” she asked Trixie.

“I haven’t a clue,” Trixie answered. “You know me—my sense of direction is no better than yours, and coming down that circular staircase has completely messed me up. But there’s one way to find out.” Trixie placed her hand on the door.

“Trixie, shouldn’t you wai...” Before Honey could finish her sentence, Trixie had shoved the door open wide.

Trixie turned around with a wide grin on her face. “Too late!” She turned around again and stepped away from the yawning door. “Hey! Check it out! We’re in the library!”

Honey followed Trixie away from the door and watched it shut. The wall in front of her was lined with bookcases. The secret door/bookcase fit seamlessly with the other shelves. “Gosh, you can’t even tell there’s a secret door behind here.”

Trixie started running her fingertips along the shelves of the secret door. “How are we going to open the door back up, Hon? Do you think we need a secret knock, or maybe we have to pull out the right book?”

Both girls frantically started knocking shelves at random and pulling out every book they could reach. After several minutes, Honey stopped to brush back a lock of hair and sighed. “We could keep this up forever and never figure out how to open this door. I wish I could remember what I did upstairs in the wardrobe.”

Trixie thought for a moment. “Well, you were moving around and cleaning the inside of the wardrobe.  You must have pushed against something, causing the door to swing open! But what are we going to push on here?”

They stood for a moment, squinting determinedly at the bookcase. Honey, who was few inches taller than Trixie, moved closer and pointed at a smudge on the right side of the shelves. “Trixie, look at that smudge. Doesn’t that look like the finish on the shelf has worn down?”

Trixie stepped next to her, raising up on her toes to see. “You’re right; it does look like someone has touched that spot — a lot.”

As one, both girls raised a hand and pressed the smudged area. The bookcase started to swing open!

“Woo-hoo! We figured it out!” Trixie whooped. “High five, partner!” She held her right hand up in the air, and Honey enthusiastically smacked it. “Not only that, but now we know why we couldn’t find the person that we saw in the window yesterday. By the time we came upstairs, the stranger must have come down this secret staircase and escaped.”

“You’re right! That’s got to be the answer. But now I think it’s time to find the rest of the Bob-Whites and tell them what we’ve found,” said Honey. “Maybe someone has seen a keyhole that would fit this brass key. It’s kind of old-fashioned looking, so the keyhole would look old-fashioned, too.”

“Well, let’s gather everyone together.” Always energetic, Trixie was ready to keep moving. “Then we can show them the secret staircase and ask them if they’ve seen what the key might fit.”

Moments later, all the Bob-Whites were congregated in the bedroom where the secret door was located. Everyone wanted to look at the secret room, but it was too cramped for more than two at a time to fit, so everyone took turns looking at the room and the staircase. Once everyone had satisfied their curiosity, the group sprawled around the bedroom.

Trixie immediately got to the point. “Has anyone seen any place in the house where this key would fit?” Six heads shook negatively.

Trixie’s shoulders slumped dejectedly. Jim, who was sitting next to her, reached over to pat her shoulder. “Cheer up, Trix. I’m sure with all of us on the look-out, we’ll be able to find out where it goes in no time.”

Mart, who often teased his sister, but was also her staunchest supporter, chimed in. “Yeah, after all, we’ve only been here a couple of days. Don’t worry; we’ll figure it out.”

The teens sat contemplatively for a moment.

“You know what I don’t understand,” said Di. “Why would anyone even make a secret room to begin with? I mean, I know about the Underground Railroad and all, but this staircase looks like it was built at the same time as the house, not added afterward.”

Mart, always happy to answer questions no matter how obscure, had a response. “Historically, builders of ancient Egyptian pyramids used secret passages and booby traps to protect the burial chambers from grave robbers. And, early Christians who were persecuted by Roman authorities in the second century used hidden rooms to conceal their religious ceremonies. In more recent times, royalty has used secret rooms and passages to escape their attackers. Then, of course, there was the Prohibition Era...” He assumed an innocent air and looked over at Trixie. “Would you like me to continue?”

“While Mart, the future college professor, has some excellent technical answers,” Dan interrupted dryly, “I think there’s a much more obvious answer. I mean, think about it. Your secret staircase is the perfect way for someone to sneak out of a room in a hurry. That’d come in pretty handy if someone was having an illicit affair.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Not that I would know anything about something like that.”

Everyone burst into laughter.

“Seriously, though,” Brian said after the laughter had died out, “I doubt the original owners were concerned about that. They probably wanted a way to protect their valuables. Remember, not everyone trusted banks back in the day. They might even have kept secret account books on the bookshelf. We’ll probably never know.”

“Unless ...” Trixie stood up. “...we find the diary. Maybe the key will help us find it.”

Author's Notes:

When I started working on my portion of this group story, I immediately started freaking out about the little details. As I told Susan in an email, I’m kind of anal about details. I hit roadblocks until I satisfactorily answer whatever question is bugging me. The detail in this chapter dealt with secret rooms. The first question that got me--why on earth would someone install one? I went around school asking anyone I could find. So I kind of incorporated that into my chapter. One detail problem isn’t enough, of course. I started obsessing about how to open secret doors. So, unfortunately, I spent a great deal of time on the internet researching and not really finding answers. At which point, I started making things up!

Mart’s long winded answer on secret rooms is courtesy of Wikipedia.