CHAPTER XI

BAB OPENS A DOOR

Bab Winters found the boys and Gerry impatiently awaiting her.

“Haven’t lost the keys, have you, Bab?” the latter greeted her.

Wordlessly, Bab revealed the key ring.

“I haven’t the least idea which key fits which lock,” she said. “I suppose we might as well try the front door first.”

They approached the broken front steps slowly. The house, depressed in a glen and hemmed in by trees as it was on all sides but one, seemed oddly aloof from the rest of the world. A feeling of gloom, a strong disinclination to entering that dreary, tumble-down old dwelling, settled upon them depressingly.

Before the porch some rambler roses had been planted. Now the bushes struggled pitifully for existence among a riot of weeds.

“I see where somebody will have to get busy with a garden hat and a trowel,” remarked Gerry.

“Don’t look at me,” returned Gordon. “Besides, I thought we came out here to use a spade and shovel, not a trowel.”

Key ring in hand, Bab went on up the squeaking porch steps and approached the front door.

As she fitted one of the keys in the lock, choosing at random, Gordon was close at her side.

“A great moment, Bab,” he said. “Here’s luck!”

Bab smiled unsteadily.

The key did not fit and she tried another.

Through her mind ran the words of Seth Wiggley:

“I’d burn the house down before I’d open the door to a lovely young lady like you!”

Another key. Still the lock refused to turn. She tried another--with no better success.

Now there was only one key left on the ring.

An odd, unpleasant fancy came to Bab that the blank windows on either side the obdurate door leered at her mockingly. She drew her gaze away from them with an effort and took up the last key.

“Anyway, it _is_ my house,” she said aloud, defiantly.

“Shall I try?” asked Gordon, seeing that her hand was not quite steady.

Bab made a gesture of denial and grasped the last key firmly.

It fitted!

Bab stood very still. The door was about to open. What mystery might it not disclose to them? Was she to know, perhaps, the meaning of that strange codicil to the will of Uncle Jeremiah?

“Bab, be merciful and open that door!”

The whisper came urgently from Gerry Thompson, close at Bab’s elbow.

Automatically, Bab obeyed. The key turned harshly, scraping in the rusty lock. The door swung inward, disclosing a cavernous space, filled with shadows.

“The halls of these old houses are always so immense,” said Gerry. “Perhaps we should have gone around to the back door.”

“Nonsense! Come on!”

With Bab, Gordon pushed through the yawning doorway.

Mrs. Fenwick flitted past them like a prim, silent shadow. Nothing ever seemed to annoy or upset her.

“An excellent chaperon to have,” thought Gerry. “One scarcely knows she’s about!”

Rosa Lee followed, groaning with the heat and depositing her bundles helter-skelter about the floor at her feet.

“Lawsy, lawsy, Ah declares Ah’s plain done up!” she moaned.

She sank down on one of the lower steps of the staircase, raising a cloud of dust.

“De coolness ob dis house am a blessin’, sho’ ’nough. Dat sun am prepostiferous hot.”

The laugh that followed this assertion cleared the air for all of them.

“I can see,” murmured Gerry, “where Rosa Lee will be a blessing to us in more ways than one!”

The cavernous hall, even the shadows lurking in the corners of it, suddenly lost power to depress them. The young folks raced through it, dropping small bags and bundles as they went, eagerly examining the rooms that lay on either side of the central apartment.

These rooms were not as bare and dreary as the girls had imagined they would be, judging from the exterior of the house.

The two apartments at the front had evidently both been used as sitting rooms in the days of the dwelling’s prosperity. They were furnished in an old-fashioned way. The prints and chromos on the wall were atrocious from an artistic viewpoint, but there was an indefinably livable air about both rooms that went far toward reassuring the young folks and reviving their spirits.

“Look here!” said Bab.

She drew back a pair of portières that hid the cozy nook and disclosed a small room, hardly more than an alcove and raised above the main apartment by one shallow step. Running the entire width of this room, or alcove, was a broad window seat, covered with cushions of faded and dusty chintz. The only other furnishings were a small, round table and a wicker chair.

“What an adorable place!” cried Bab, her eyes shining. “Why, I’ve always wanted a house with little unexpected cozy corners like this. I love it!”

Gerry regarded Bab’s alcove with a delight that matched her own.

In fact, it seemed, as they hurried through the house on a tour of interesting discovery, that the dwelling that they had come to regard as a dreary, even sinister place, was a gold mine of unexpectedness and old-fashioned comfort.

However, they could not spend too much time in exploration. The sky, overcast with clouds that presaged a heavy thunder shower, made the hour seem much later than it actually was. The house was filled with mysterious shadows so that the girls were content to postpone a more thorough examination of Bab’s property until the morrow.

“We’ll have hours to-morrow,” said Bab. “And we’ll explore every nook and cranny of the old house----”

“Beginning in the cellar and on upward to the attic,” finished Gerry. “Your house has possibilities, Bab. Just a little sunshine and fresh air and it will be almost habitable.”

Rosa Lee had flown, or, rather, sailed magnificently, straight as a homing pigeon, to the kitchen. The girls followed her there, curious to see what tools their cook would have to work with.

One look, and the old colored woman compressed her lips and raised suppliant hands to heaven.

Gerry and Bab were vaguely sympathetic, though they did not guess, as yet, the hardships to which poor Rosa Lee was to be subjected during the progress of their “treasure hunt.”

In the first place, there was an old-fashioned oil stove. Rosa Lee, for all her poverty, had been accustomed to the luxury of gas.

There was an iron sink, relic of barbarism. And there was no way of drawing water except from a well--they supposed there must be a well, somewhere.

“Ah declares to goodness,” said Rosa Lee, “looks like yo’-all was gwine live on canned goods fo’ de next few days, leastways till dis sink and stove strikes up a speakin’ acquaintance wiv dis ole woman. Jest now Ah’s pretty skittish and Ah don’t mind tellin’ de world Ah is!”

“Never mind, Rosa Lee,” consoled Bab. “While the doughnuts hold out to burn, we don’t care whether the old stove does or not.”

“Dat may be a refrection on mah doughnuts, Ah don’t know!” grumbled the old woman, as she laid aside her hat and began to undo her numerous packages. “But one thing Ah’m certain sure of, Ah ain’t nebber burned no doughnuts yet!”

Gordon and Charlie went out in search of the well and a bucket of water for Rosa Lee, while the girls continued their hasty inspection of the house.

On the left of the hall, behind the sitting room, they found a long, low, oak-paneled apartment. The rows of bookshelves that lined three sides of it and were filled with dog-eared, musty-looking books told them that they had stumbled upon the library of Jeremiah Dare.

“Nice place to come when it rains,” said Gerry.

“And a fireplace!” said Bab.

She removed a Japanese screen from one end of the room, disclosing a roomy grate. The ashes of the last fire built in it were still scattered over the hearth.

As Bab looked down at this tangible manifestation of the occupancy of the late owner, a curious chill, as much mental, perhaps, as physical, enveloped her from head to foot. So real was the sensation of a cold draught blowing across her back that she turned, thinking to discover an open window behind her.

There was no open window. But suddenly Gerry’s fingers clutched at her arm. Gerry looked startled, peering at her through the dimness of the old library.

“What on earth, Bab,” she cried, “is that?”

Already startled and unnerved, Gerry Thompson’s whispered sentence set Bab aquiver from head to foot.

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