Pete Stearns marveled. Why had she turned on him thus? Had he not been playing the hero since mid-afternoon? Had he not brought her out of the jaws of Larchmont and into the sanctuary of Aunt Caroline's back yard? And now she taunted him, mocked him, dared him to take a senseless hazard.
"Are you going to stand on that wall all night?" she demanded. "Everybody in the street can see you."
He turned and faced the window desperately. He stepped back a pace and viewed it again. He considered the relative advantages of a standing or a running jump and decided upon the former. He crouched. He straightened and again measured the distance with his eye.
"Well?" asked the pitiless voice from below.
"Oh, give me a chance to figure it out," he retorted. "Stop staring at me. You make me nervous."
So Mary looked away. She even walked away. Her steps carried her to an asphalt driveway, where she paused, staring down at a metal disk that lay directly in front of her. It was about two feet in diameter, and fitted closely into an iron rim that was embedded in the pavement. She recognized the thing instantly. It was the cover of the coal hole. Aunt Caroline had objected to coal wagons unloading at her curb; and being the possessor of a back yard, into which wagons could be driven, she had built a chute from that point directly into the bins. Mary remembered that she had seen ton after ton of coal poured down that very hole.
She turned and glanced toward the adventurer on the wall. He was still staring up at the window, now crouching, now standing erect, now advancing, now retreating, but never leaping. With an exclamation of disdain, she stooped and laid hold of the cover of the coal chute.
As she tugged at the handle it moved. She applied both hands to the task. The disk came out of its rim and she dragged it clear of the aperture. She glanced downward into the depths. She might as well have closed her eyes, for the darkness within that coal chute was total. It was spooky. Yet her common sense told her that there was nothing spooky about it; it was merely a coal chute that sloped at an easy angle into a cellar bin.
She looked again to see what progress Pete had made; she could not observe that he had made any. He was still standing on top of the wall, making calculations and having visions of a little white cot in an emergency ward.
"He's afraid," she said. "I'm not!"