She vanished and returned with a quart of milk cold off the ice. She
wrapped it well with newspapers, and Billy packed it safely into the
little basket on his wheel. Then he bethought him of another need.
"Say, m'y I go inta the g'rage an' get a screw driver? Screw loose on
m'wheel."
She nodded and he vanished into the open barn door. Well he knew where
Mark kept his tools. He picked out a small pointed saw, a neat little
auger and a file and stowed them hurriedly under the milk bottle. Thus
reinforced without and within, he mounted his faithful steed and sped
away to the hills.
The morning sun had shot up several degrees during his delay, and
Sabbath Valley lay like a thing new born in its glory. On the belfry a
purple dove sat glistening, green and gold ripples on her neck, turning
her head proudly from side to side as Billy rode by, and when he topped
the first hill across the valley the bells rang out six sweet strokes
as if to remind him that Sunday School was not far off and he must
hurry back. But Billy was trying to think how he should get into that
locked house, and wondering whether the kidnappers would have returned
to feed their captive yet. He realized that he must be wary, although
his instinct told him that they would wait for dark, besides, he had
hopes that they might have been "pinched."
Nevertheless he approached the old house cautiously, skirting the
mountain to avoid Pleasant Valley, and walking a mile or two through
thick undergrowth, sometimes with difficulty propelling the faithful
machine.
Arrived in sight he studied the surroundings carefully, harbored his
wheel where it would not be discovered and was yet easily available,
and after reconnoitering stole out of covert.
The house stood gaunt and grim against the smiling morning. Its
shuttered windows giving an expression of blindness or the repellant
mask of death. A dead house, that was what it was. Its doors and
windows closed on the tragedy that had been enacted within its massive
stone walls. It seemed more like a fortress than a house where warm
human faces had once looked forth, and where laughter and pleasant
words had once sounded out. To pass it had always stirred a sense of
mystery and weirdness. To approach it thus with the intention of
entering to find that still limp figure of a man gave a most
overpowering sense of awe. Billy looked up with wide eyes, the deep
shadows under them standing out in the clear light of the morning and
giving him a strangely old aspect as if he had jumped over at least ten
years during the night. Warily he circled the house, keeping close to
the shrubbery at first and listening as a squirrel might have done,
then gradually drawing nearer. He noticed that the down stairs shutters
were solid iron with a little half moon peep hole at the top. Those
upstairs were solid below and fitted with slats above, but the slats
were closed of all the front windows, and all but two of the back ones,
which were turned upward so that one could not see the glass. The
doors, both back and front, were locked, and unshakable, of solid oak
and very thick. A Yale lock with a new look gave all entrance at the
front an impossible look. The back door was equally impregnable unless
he set to work with his auger and saw and took out a heavy oak panel.