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Whatever they may be when they're sober, they'll be dangerous enough when drunk." But the peaceful quiet of the village, as it lay there some hundreds of feet below, reassured him. "Come on, old boy," he said at last, "we'll chance it." There was little time left to the girls for wondering after the fire against the boarded-up house had been extinguished, for the entire throng burst in upon them.
Joyce sat back on her heels, and looked her companion straight in the eye. "Cynthia," she said, in a tense whisper, "did it ever occur to you that there's something strange about the Boarded-up House?" "No," declared Cynthia, honestly, "it never did. I never thought about it." "Well, I have sometimes, at least and once in a long while, do you know, I've even dreamed I was exploring it.
Weatherley withdrew the cigar from his mouth. "You did that, eh?" "I did," Arnold admitted. "I made my way to the back, and I found a light in the room which presumably had been the kitchen. From a chink in the boarded-up window I saw several men in the room, including the man whom we discovered in your wife's boudoir, and who had been spirited away.
He makes things seem more natural, somehow." They reached the end of the hall, and Joyce fumbled for the handle, this door, contrary to the usual rule, being shut. Then, for the first time in the course of their adventures in the Boarded-up House, they found themselves before an insurmountable barrier. The door was locked! Yes, the door was locked, and there was no vestige of a key.
And long before they came there, long before ever they were born, or Rockridge had begun its mushroom growth as a pretty, modern, country town, the Boarded-up House had stared the passers-by out of countenance with almost irritating persistence.
They made no further discoveries, and to-day even Joyce expressed herself as completely discouraged. "There's just one thing that seems to me thoroughly foolish," Cynthia continued. "It's your still insisting that we keep from mentioning the Boarded-up House to outsiders.
Then he sidled along until, having passed the boarded-up window and two corners, his knees struck the cot. "Don't be afraid," he said, squatting instantly to one side to dodge any bullet or knife that might be guided by his voice. After another short wait he added, "I think he's gone. Light the lamp."
Shepherd, pointer, and Indian dogs trembled when the wind moaned, and answered every whine from without with another. The St. Bernard, separating himself from the pack, sprang at a bound to the boarded-up window and, raising his head, uttered long, dismal howls.
Yet with the exception of a bowie-knife, which had evidently fallen from his own hand, not another object was in the room. In thick dust that covered the floor were some confused footprints near the door and along the wall through which it opened. Along one of the adjoining walls, too, past the boarded-up windows was the trail made by the man himself in reaching his corner.
Ennui, before long, gave place to grumbling, and that to recrimination; and from what the others could not help hearing, through the boarded-up doors and the floor of the loft, Tom and his wife had a cat-and-dog time of it. Gard had moved over to Plaisance with great regret. But nothing else was possible under the altered circumstances at La Closerie, so he made the best of it.
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