EVE looked at me and I looked at Eve. “The front windows,” I whispered.
“Maybe——” I raced back down the hall as I spoke, back to the big
front parlor. The only place from which the outside world was visible
was the broken front blind I have mentioned. I applied my eyes to the
hole. But what I saw only made my heart sink several fathoms deeper: it
was the round-shouldered back of Mr. Bangs already making good progress
down the road. “He’s g-gone!” I faltered, my voice ragged.
Eve didn’t answer for a minute. I guessed she was getting hold of
herself. “I disliked that man the moment I set eyes on him,” she said
at last.
“But wh-what,” I demanded weakly, “are we going to do?”
“Get out, of course. There’s always some way, a cellar window or
something.”
“But suppose there isn’t? S’pose they’re all nailed fast like these?
Suppose we have to—to spend the night here!”
Eve did not seem to have heard me. She was now hurrying back down the
hall to the cellar door. I listened with my heart in my throat—if that
was locked too! Then with a scraping noise, I heard it open.
I didn’t really like the idea of the cellar at all and I liked it even
less as I watched Eve’s figure disappear into the cobwebby dimness. But
I had no mind to stand waiting alone in that awful empty house. So
gathering what shreds of courage I possessed, I plunged down after her.
It was worse even than I had imagined. The floor was dirt under our
feet and the dampness which hung about the upstairs seemed intensified
a hundredfold. I was sure it would choke me in a minute.
But Eve was pushing ahead. I could just make out the outline of two
smudgy windows above what was probably a coal bin. But they were miles
above our heads and looked as if they had not been open for years.
We made a tour of the rest of the cellar. I was clutching Eve’s hand
now, half paralyzed with fright, I might as well admit. Once a cobweb
brushed against my face and I screamed. In a particularly dark corner
where Eve climbed onto a barrel to examine a nearby window, I
distinctly heard a rat scurry away into the shadows. “Oh, do let’s go
back!” I cried at last with a shudder. “I’m positive there’s no way out
down here.”
Eve was still tugging at the window. “Nailed fast,” she announced.
“This place is sure burglar proof!”
All the rest of them were the same. Finally we went back upstairs. Eve
had a smudge across one cheek. At any other time I would have laughed.
“Well,” she said quite cheerfully, “there are still the upstairs’
windows.”
“Eve,” I said, “have you thought of this? No one knows we’re in this
house. Not even Mr. Bangs. What I mean is that when they start looking
for us, they’ll never think of looking here!” Already I was imagining
searching parties and headlines in the newspapers. There would be
descriptions of our appearance: “Eve Fordyce, brown eyes, short wavy
hair, when last seen was wearing a blue cotton skirt and white slipover
blouse; Sandra Hutton, green eyes, lightish hair, wearing faded gingham
dress——”
“Mrs. Trapp or whatever her name is knows we came up here,” Eve was
saying. “And Mr. Bangs saw us outside.”
“You can’t depend on him for any help,” I declared emphatically. “Oh,
Eve, do you think they’ll broadcast us among the missing persons on the
radio?”
“Of course not! Oh, do cheer up, Sandy. Think what an adventure we’ll
have to tell the girls about next fall. Why, it’ll go over big.
Especially,” she added calmly, “if we spend the night here.”
This view of the situation did not serve to cheer me in the slightest
degree. I was not concerned with the dim and distant fall but with what
was going to happen to us right now. The thought of the night coming
on, of the darkness catching us there in that big echoing house already
sent shivers running up and down my spine. “Oh, dear, why did we ever
come in at all?” I wailed. “It serves me right for being so snoopy.”
“It was more my fault than yours,” Eve declared consolingly. “At least
it was my fault that we stayed so long. Now I’m going to take a look
round upstairs. Very likely they weren’t so particular about fastening
those windows.”
But even if we did find one unfastened, how were we going to get down
to the ground? As I remembered the spacious lines on which the house
was built, I felt that escape that way was hopeless from the outset.
Still there was nothing else to do so I again followed Eve, this time
up the broad curving stairway.
We found ourselves in a square hall from the rear end of which ran a
narrow passage. At our right was a large bedroom, containing a big
double bed, minus mattress or coverings. Instead of springs, there were
wooden slats. “Fancy sleeping on those!” said Eve.
“We may come to it!” I returned miserably.
The blinds were closed as they had been below, and the two windows in
the bedroom were nailed fast. The windows in the other rooms—there
were five in all—were the same. Whoever had been assigned the task of
closing up the old Craven House had made a thorough job of it.
We returned finally to the large front room. I slumped down on a wooden
rocker by the window. My legs felt extraordinarily weak and if I had
been fasting for a week, I could not have been hungrier. I was amazed
to see by my wrist watch that it was only a little after two. I had
thought it hours later.
Eve had gone back to the window. I watched her dismally as she fussed
with the fastening. “I’m going to look for a hammer,” she announced
presently.
“Hammer?” I repeated dully as if I were unfamiliar with the implement.
She nodded. “You’ve noticed of course the difference between these
windows and the ones downstairs?”
“I noticed that they’re all nailed down—isn’t that enough?”
“Yes, but the ones below are nailed from the outside but these are done
from within. Consequently the nails are all in plain sight.”
“You mean——” I jumped up. She was right. “How clever of you to notice
that,” I exclaimed. “But do you think we can ever get ’em out—they
look awfully deep in and they’re rusty besides?”
“I’m going to try anyway,” she returned. “Let’s go downstairs and take
a look for some tools.”
For the first time since I had heard that back door close, I felt a
faint glimmer of hope. In a little room off the kitchen filled with all
manner of household odds and ends, we found a tool box and in it a
hammer, brown and rusty with disuse, but still a hammer.
Well, it was exactly a quarter of three when Eve set to work on those
nails. It was five minutes past before the first one even budged. And
it was nearly four before we got the second one out. Then followed a
long struggle with the window itself. “I’ll bet those old Cravens never
did have any fresh air,” I panted. “No wonder they’re all dead—” I was
pounding the sash with my fist in an effort to loosen it.
“How d’you know they’re all dead? Here, let me have another try.” Eve
pushed me aside.
At last with a groan of protest, it moved—an inch, two. I reached
through and unfastened the blinds and the sweet warm air rushed in. My,
how good it smelled!
The window opened onto the gently sloping tin roof of a narrow side
porch. After we had succeeded in raising it far enough, we climbed
through. It was not at all clear to either of us what we were going to
do next. But anything, we felt, was better than staying cooped up in
that house any longer.
Making our way cautiously to the edge of the roof, we saw that it was,
as I had anticipated, a goodish drop to the ground. Moreover, there
were no adjacent tree branches or any of those convenient trellises
that are always so handy in the story books.
We sat down with our feet braced against the gutter to consider the
situation. “Marooned on a tin roof!” giggled Eve. The spirits of both
of us had risen enormously with our escape from the house. Some one was
bound to pass along the road sooner or later, we decided. And though
the house stood a considerable distance back from it, still our lung
power was good.
The road to Old Beecham, however, was off the main artery of travel and
so far as we could see from our perch, there was simply no sign of life
anywhere. “I can’t think,” I said, “why anyone should want to build a
house way off here, unless he was a hermit or something. I tell you,
Eve,” I added with conviction, “those Cravens were a queer lot!”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Eve returned musingly. “It’s awfully peaceful and
sort of—well, self sufficient. And I shouldn’t wonder if, when the
leaves are off the trees, you could get a glimpse of the sea off there
somewhere.”
“Um—maybe.” I was wondering what Aunt Cal was thinking by now. Any
remaining shred of character which I might have still possessed in her
eyes, must quite have vanished by this time. And if we did not get home
that night—well with a woman like Aunt Cal, I just couldn’t imagine
what would happen. It was within the realm of possibility that she
might send us both packing after such an escapade!
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V