“I’ll risk it,” she decided.
The basement door opened from an inside wall of the kitchen. Penny groped her way down the steep, dark stairs but could find no light switch.
The cellar room was damp and dirty. As her eyes became accustomed to the dim light which filtered in through two small windows, she saw a furnace surrounded by buckets of ashes and boxes of papers and trash. A clothes line was hung with stockings and silk underwear.
Penny poked into several of the boxes and barrels. All were empty. Then her gaze focused upon another door, which apparently led into a fruit or storage room. It was padlocked.
“The brass is locked in there!” she thought, her heart sinking. “The lantern too! How stupid of me not to expect it.”
Without tools, Penny could not hope to break into the locked room. There was only one thing to do. She must get away from the house, and bring the police!
Starting up the stairs, she stopped short. An outside door had slammed. In the room above she heard footsteps, but no voices.
Frightened, Penny remained motionless on the basement stairs. She could hear Ma Harper tramping about, evidently in search of her, for the woman muttered angrily to herself.
“I don’t dare stay here,” the girl thought. “I’ll have to make a dash for it.”
Penny reasoned that in reentering the house, Ma Harper probably had left the front door unlocked. What had become of the two men she did not know, but she would have to take a chance on their whereabouts.