“I ring the front doorbell? No,” Mr. Bobbsey answered. “I thought you might be asleep and I didn’t want to disturb you. So when I felt in my pocket and found I hadn’t my key—on account of changing my wet trousers for dry ones before supper—I just went to the back door and let myself in.”
“It’s very strange,” said Mrs. Bobbsey, listening to make sure that none of the twins was stirring upstairs.
“What is strange?”
“The way the front doorbell rang. Twice! And each time I looked out I saw no one. If you didn’t ring it, who did?”
“Perhaps you heard something rattling because of the heavy thunder,” suggested Mr. Bobbsey. “The knives and forks in the pantry, maybe.”
“No, it was the bell,” his wife insisted. “The children heard it upstairs and came out in their nighties.”
“Um!” mused Mr. Bobbsey. “I’ll take a look out myself. It couldn’t be any boys playing pranks on a night like this, could it?”
“Hardly, I should think,” his wife said. “But the bell certainly rang.”
Mr. Bobbsey looked through the glass of the door—he did not open it because the rain would have blown in—but he came out of the hall, as his wife had done, without having seen any one.
“No one there,” he said.