“Why!” she exclaimed, “we must have come to the wrong place.  All these houses are shut.  Their doors and windows are boarded up!”

CHAPTER XX

THE CLOSED HOUSE

“It’s all right,” said Lily.  “Don’t you remember I told you the house was lent to my artist friend by the folks who own it and who’ve gone away for the summer to the seashore?  The front door and windows were boarded up, I guess, like they always are, before the house was lent.  My friend lives in the back part, and the caretaker looks after everything, but it’s awful nice.  You needn’t be afraid you’re goin’ to waste your grand dress.  Say, it’s some swell street, ain’t it?”

Lily talked fast and slid an arm through Win’s in the thin silk kimono cloak, encouraging her to mount the steps.  But Win objected to being hustled.  She paused to look up at the house front which—­like all its neighbours except a big, lighted building at the corner, that had the air of being a club—­had apparently been put to sleep for the summer months.

The dark-brown facades were expressionless as the faces of mummies.  Smooth boards had been neatly fitted into the window frames and made to cover front doors.  There seemed at first glance to be no way in, but as Winifred slowly ascended the steps of the fourth house from the corner, she made out the lines of a little door cut in the boards which protected the big one.  There was no handle to break the smooth, unpainted surface of wood—­old, well-seasoned wood which had evidently served the same purpose year after year—­but there was a small, inconspicuous keyhole, and into this Miss Leavitt deftly fixed a key which she took from her hand bag.

“My friend sent me this,” she explained, “to save us waiting, ’cause there’s only one servant, and he might be busy.  Say, this is real fun, ain’t it?”

“It’s—­it’s quite like a sort of adventure,” Win answered “I had no idea the house would be shut up, or—–­”

“It’ll make it all the cooler,” said Lily.  She had got the little door open, and the space between it and the house door it protected could be seen in the street lights, like a miniature vestibule.  “Squeeze in and feel around till you find the electric bell,” she went on.  “Some one’ll open the real door, and I can lock up behind us.”

“Why lock up?” argued Win, hesitating.  “Aren’t there others coming?”

“My, yes, unless they’re all here.  But it wouldn’t do to leave a cover-up door like this standing open.  If the police happened along and saw, they’d think there was something wrong and make my friend a whole lot of bother.”

Win saw the force of this explanation, and stooping to pass through the low aperture, found herself close to a pretentiously carved portal.  The electric bell revealed itself to groping fingers, and to her surprise a few seconds after she had touched it, without hearing a sound, the door opened.