“What do you say we take a run out there anyhow?” suggested Rogers. “It’s a swell day for a ride and we can go swimming; the water’s elegant; I was in yesterday!”
“Bully idea, Red,” applauded Tapley. “Come on, Weary! Crank up the old flivver!” he cried, as he stirred up the recumbent Wilbur with his toe.
Thus appealed to, Dave arose lazily to back the little car out of the garage, and piling in, the boys settled themselves as best they could upon its lumpy cushions.
“What do you reckon we’ll find out there, Ned?” asked Wat Sanford a bit anxiously, when the flivver after sundry protesting coughs and sputters, had finally gotten under way.
“Oh, dirt and lonesomeness, mostly,” laughed Ned. “They’re the usual furniture of a deserted house—especially if it’s supposed to be haunted.”
Lonesomeness seemed, in truth, to pervade the very air and to settle like a pall upon the spirits of the boys, as the flivver coughed its way up the weed-grown drive and came to a halt before the tall, gloomy, brick front.
Charlie Rogers sprang out, and mounting the weatherbeaten steps leading to the broad porch, rattled the great iron knob of the massive front door. “It’s locked, all right,” he reported, “and these window-shutters seem pretty solid.”
Further investigation proved this to be true of all the openings of the lower story, but at the rear of the house one window-shutter of the story above had broken from its fastenings and swung creakingly in the breeze.
“If we only had a ladder—” began Wat Sanford.
“That’s not necessary,” interrupted Ned. “The question is who’s got the nerve to go through that window and find his way down to open one of these lower shutters?”