They found the front door open and made their way inside. The interior of the house was in inky blackness.
"Careful, now," warned Garry. "Whistle at the first sign of trouble, no matter how slight it is."
Phil and Dick sprang up the stairs, noiselessly, yet speedily. There was not a sign of noise, all was as quiet as a cemetery at midnight.
Left alone, Garry went along the hall, stopping at each door and listening intently. He was unrewarded until he came to the end door.
Here he thought he heard a sound of scuffling and squealing. Cautiously he tried the door, holding a flashlight ready in his hand. As he opened the door and stepped into the darkness, he saw the gleam of two small eyes, then heard a frightened scampering across the floor.
Garry snapped on his flashlight and then gave a relieved laugh. The noise had been caused by nothing more than a pair of rats, who had been feasting on the remains of a supper on a rickety old table.
The broken bits of food, the unwashed dishes, and the empty cans showed that someone evidently lived in the house, and only recently and probably surrepticiously as the thick dust that lay everywhere seemed to indicate that the house had not been regularly occupied for some time.
Garry saw a door at one side of the kitchen, for that was the room into which he had penetrated, and carefully opened it. The door led into a long room, with a half a dozen tables, bare of cloth, and with chairs stacked on them.
From the appearance of this room, and judging by the big range in the kitchen from which he had just come, Garry decided that the house was used in the winter as a boarding house for lumberjacks.
He went back to the kitchen and opened the only other door. A cool draft told him this was the cellar, and he listened intently, then flashing his light, went down the steps. A few moments' investigation showed him that there was no living person down there. The air was musty, and the cellar seemed damp.