Mrs.Packard was well but preferred to eat up-stairs.

I did not fret at this; I was really glad, for now I could think and plan my action quite unembarrassed by her presence.

The opening under the vestibule floor was to be sounded, and sounded this very morning, but on what pretext?
I could not take Mrs.Packard into my counsel, for that would be to lessen the force of the discovery with which I yet hoped to dissipate at one blow the superstitious fears I saw it was otherwise impossible to combat.

I might interest Ellen, and I was quite certain that I could interest the cook; but this meant Nixon, also, who was always around and whose animosity to myself was too mysteriously founded for me to trust him with any of my secrets or to afford him any inkling of my real reason for being in the house.
Yet help I must have and very efficient help, too.

Should I telegraph to Mayor Packard for some sort of order which would lead to the tearing up of this end of the house?
I could not do this without fuller explanations than I could give in a telegram.