Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 36, No. 6, June 1991

“Well, will you look at that,” Jack exclaimed. “A secret room. I just touched the corner of the mirror there, and the fireplace swung out. Shine your flashlight in there.”

Polly did as she was told, and they both spotted the piles of money stacked in a far corner.

“Come on!” Jack whooped, stooping to enter the room, Polly right behind him.

Miss Evangeline scurried mouselike out into the dark living room, expertly dodging furniture. “It’s no good!” she shouted gleefully. “It’s Confederate money!” Then she slammed the fireplace back into position, flush with the rest of the wall.

The muffled shouts and the pounding from behind the wall gave her a keen sense of satisfaction. She switched on the lights and picked up the phone to call Sergeant MacReynolds.

“Drat!” she exclaimed in annoyance when she remembered that the instrument had been disconnected. She left the house and her helpless prisoners locked in the secret room and walked to where she had earlier parked the Packard. Conscientiously observing the speed limit, she drove to the police station.

The next day she sat in her rocker on the front porch and waited for them to come for her. It had all been so exciting. She didn’t sleep a wink the whole night through, after the police had come back to her house with her and had released Polly and Jack from the secret room behind the fireplace that had once served to hide runaway slaves when the house, which had been in Miss Evangeline’s family for years, had been a station on the underground railroad.

Sergeant MacReynolds had come back later and congratulated her, after taking Polly and Jack to the jail in the courthouse. She told him she had just been doing her duty. After all, she couldn’t tolerate such goings-on right under the nose of the mayor. It could ruin his career, and she wanted to see him elected for another term.

Ah, there they were, just pulling up in front of the house in their squad car. She got up and went down the drive to meet them.

Sergeant MacReynolds got out, and she took his arm and sat beside him in the back seat while Patrolman Carson drove them to Mulberry Mall and through the wrought-iron gates that led to the mayor’s mansion.

The mayor took Miss Evangeline’s hand and kissed it, precisely as she had known a gentleman of his stature would do under the circumstances.

“I wanted very much to meet you, Miss Evangeline,” he said, “after Sergeant MacReynolds told me all about you. He told me you were a staunch supporter of mine. He told me, too, how you caught the kidnappers—”

“They were dognappers, too,” Miss Evangeline interjected.

“Yes, that too. Well, thanks to your presence of mind and, if I may say so, your daring, Sonny Emory is back safe and sound with his parents once again. They found him, as you know, sound asleep in that terrible man’s room at the Queen’s Arms Hotel.”

“And Mr. Michelson and his little boy have Mitzi back.”

“Yes, Mitzi, too. You are a remarkable woman, Miss Evangeline.”

“A woman, yes,” Miss Evangeline said softly. “But remarkable? Oh, dear me, no.”

“Tush,” said the mayor. “You’re far too modest.”

Later, over tea served in the Robert E. Lee Room, the mayor informed Miss Evangeline that her antebellum home had been, at his direction, designated a city landmark. “I had no idea that your lovely house had a secret room or that the room had served as a station on the underground railroad. Now that just might raise a few eyebrows in this town, still—”

Miss Evangeline said, “If the legends are true, Mr. Mayor, it also provided a hiding place for retreating Confederate soldiers on more than one occasion.”

“We’ll emphasize that fact in our press release about the house.” He went on to explain to Miss Evangeline that her property would be tax-exempt from now on as a result of the executive order he had issued. He explained that her telephone would be reconnected and paid for, of course, by the city, as befitted her home’s newly-declared status. He told her that she would be appointed official caretaker of the newly-created city landmark and that she would be paid a modest but, he hoped, a satisfactory monthly salary, quite in keeping with the latest cost-of-living index issued by the federal government.

He was so kind and the room was so pleasant and MacReynolds and Carson were so full of smiles Miss Evangeline simply could not resist making the most of her opportunity. She leaned over and whispered something to the mayor.

His eyes widened, then narrowed. He started to smile and then thought better of it. “MacReynolds!” he said in his mayor’s voice. “Miss Evangeline has just given me a report on what she calls the Mulberry Mall Monster. It seems that it is some sort of... of—”

“Sea serpent,” Miss Evangeline supplied helpfully. “I’ve seen it twice in our river next to the mall. Most unsightly, especially considering the neighborhood.”

“A sea serpent!” Carson spluttered. “She couldn’t have seen a sea serpent! Not in our river!”

MacReynolds silenced him with a fierce glance.