Her hands actually trembled as she paid the bill, she was in such haste to be off. She hadn’t time to go back to the hotel and inform Mrs. Hilliard of her plan. Later on she was to wish desperately that she had taken that precaution.
Instead, she hurried to the agency and hired the same car she had driven the previous day. Then she set off on the road which was by this time becoming familiar.
It was after five o’clock when Mary Louise reached Center Square. The twilight was deepening; already the short winter day was almost at a close.
“I’ll need a flashlight,” she decided and she stopped in at a country store to buy one.
When she came out of the store she drove directly to the abandoned house. This time she did not want to take the constable with her, for he would forbid her breaking into the place. Yet that was exactly what Mary Louise meant to do, if she could not be admitted by knocking at the door!
She turned into the driveway, past the “No Trespassing” sign, mounted the steep incline, and parked her car in an inconspicuous spot behind the house and at the side of the barn.
“Here’s hoping I don’t get hit with a rock!” she thought recklessly, as she jumped out of the car. The darkness was becoming deeper; the silence was broken only by the moaning of the tree branches in the wind. The place seemed completely deserted.
With her heart beating fast, Mary Louise ran to the back door of the house and tried it. As she had anticipated, it was securely locked. A moment later she encountered the same condition at the front door. At both entrances she knocked loudly; at neither was there any response.
“Just the same, I’m going to get in!” she muttered resolutely. “If I have to climb over the porch to a second-story window!”
She walked around the house again, more slowly this time, examining each window as she passed it. Everywhere she found boards nailed over the glass. On only one window at the side did she discover a partial opening. It was the window through which she had seen the face of the young girl with the ugly woman beside her.