The path ended at the rear door, and here, too were more black walnuts. There was also a great pine, one of the largest they had ever seen, which towered up not a dozen feet from the house. Its huge trunk actually touched the wall of a decrepit woodshed, while the lower branches swept across the roof of the main building.
“That’s a corking tree,” said Cavvy admiringly. “But what a crazy place to plant it. It’s a wonder to me there’s any roof left at all, with the needles and all to rot it. The fellow who did it must have been some nut.”
“Regular wal-nut,” murmured Micky from force of habit.
“Help!” groaned Cavanaugh. “Can’t you pull off anything better than that? Besides, it’s the pine I’m talking about. Here; give us that club of yours,” he went on, taking Micky’s hickory staff. “Maybe I can raise him with that.”
The clatter he made would certainly have roused anyone but a deaf person, but apparently it had no effect whatever on the eccentric occupant of the old house. When the hollow echoes died away, all four boys stood motionless, fairly holding their breath as they listened for the sound of footsteps inside. But none came, and presently Cavvy, backing away a little, stared curiously up at the dingy, slatternly windows.
“It’s got me,” he said with a touch of petulance. “I don’t see why the dickens a man wouldn’t answer a knock at his own door, unless— Jingo! I wonder if he would be hiding from something?”
“That’s just it!” put in Ritter in a shrill, nervous whisper. “How do we know he isn’t a criminal, or—or an escaped lunatic, who’s broken in here perhaps? Maybe he’s not the owner of the house at all. Let’s beat it, Cavvy. We’re just wasting time, and it’ll be pouring in a little while. I felt a drop on my face just now.” Cavanaugh did not answer. His own face, still upturned, had taken on an oddly intent, curiously puzzled stare. His gaze, no longer focussed on the windows, had shifted to a point just under the sagging eaves where a long branch of the pine tree stretched across the roof, seeming almost to touch the rotting shingles.
Suddenly his face flushed, his lips half parted, a look at once eager and incredulous flashed into his widening eyes. Swiftly those eager eyes followed the limb to where it joined the massive trunk, then darted upward to the point at which that trunk disappeared in a baffling mask of dark green foliage. Then, of a sudden, there came the grating of a key and the door beside them was flung abruptly open.
“Well?” snarled a voice. “What’s the matter with you? What do you mean trying to pound a man’s door down like this?”
Ritter gasped and stepped swiftly backward, treading on Ferris’s toes. Cavanaugh whirled about, unconsciously tightening his grip on the stick he held. Even Micky felt an unpleasant tingling on his spine as he met the shifting glance of the individual in the doorway.