IV Prisoners

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

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. 

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