Free Disappearing Staircase Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner

CHAPTER 1
The Bugaboo House
    The Alden House was jumping. Every few minutes, people on the front porch rang the doorbell. And every few minutes on the back porch, the family dog, Watch, whined to come in. The Alden children were in the kitchen baking cookies. Watch didn’t want to miss any of the fun—or any of the crumbs, either!
    Mrs. McGregor, the Aldens’ housekeeper, handed Violet Alden two china plates. “I know you’ll make a pretty pattern of cookies on these plates.”
    Ten-year-old Violet had careful hands. One by one she arranged the cookies into perfect circles. “I love when we have a lot of company,” she told everyone in the Alden kitchen.
    “And I love when we have a lot of cookies,” Benny added. He was six. His job was to let Jessie know if the cookies were browning too fast. He and his five-year-old cousin, Soo Lee Alden, stared through the oven door window. They liked watching the lumps of cookie dough turn into round, crispy shapes.
    The oldest children, fourteen-year-old Henry and twelve-year-old Jessie, watched the kitchen clock.
    “Ten more minutes,” Jessie announced. She was busy counting cups and saucers on a tray. “That’s when Mabel said the meeting would start.”
    “Who’s Mabel?” Soo Lee asked.
    “Mabel Hart is Grandfather’s good friend, Soo Lee,” Jessie answered. “She runs a group called House and Hands. The helpers from her group fix up old houses for people who need homes. We’re going to be helpers, too,” Jessie explained, peeking in the oven. “Looks like those cookies are done.”

    “At the meeting tonight, Mabel is going to introduce the volunteers to one another,” Henry added. “We’ll find out what jobs we’ll be doing with the House and Hands group.”
    “Eating cookies is my job,” Benny said when Jessie slid out the cookie sheet.
    A few minutes later, the children joined Grandfather’s guests in the living room. Nearly every chair was taken, even the creaky one next to the fireplace. The children carefully set the refreshments down on the coffee table. Then they found places to sit on the floor.
    “Welcome to our home, everyone,” Grandfather Alden began. “These are my grandchildren, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny, and my grandniece, Soo Lee. Mabel Hart, our founder, has invited them to work on our first House and Hands project. They are hard workers. They fixed up a boxcar in the woods before I brought them here to live with me. You never saw such a cozy home as that boxcar. As for fixing things, they even fixed these cookies.”
    “Even though the cookies weren’t broken,” Benny added.
    Everyone in the living room chuckled.
    When the laughter died down, Mabel Hart stood up to speak. She was a tall woman with friendly blue eyes and a cloud of curly white hair. “As Mr. Alden said, our House and Hands group has a new fix-up project. This time around, we’re fixing up a large house for twenty of our senior citizens to live in. The last owner left the estate to House and Hands. It used to be called the Bugbee House.”
    Everyone shifted and murmured.
    “The Bugaboo House!” Benny whispered. “Wow!”
    “Isn’t the Bugaboo House haunted?” someone asked.
    Mabel Hart smiled. “I knew that would come up. For years, there have been stories about the Bugbee House being haunted. But our House and Hands engineers have checked out the property. They haven’t found a single ghost! The place is just old and creaky. It just needs a lot of TLC.”
    Soo Lee raised her hand. “What’s TLC?”
    “Tender loving care,” Mabel answered. “That’s what we give to all our House and Hands projects. We have lots to do,” she continued. “In a few days there will be an auction of everything in the Bugbee House. The money we make will help us buy building materials to fix up the property.”
    “I can’t wait to get home to tell my wife and my grandkids about the auction,” a man sitting nearby said.
    “What’s an auction?” Soo Lee