The sound of his own feet moving about in this long deserted place affected him strangely. It seemed as if they were the feet of some one else, unseen but near him. When his foot encountered a crumpled piece of old copper concealed in the weeds, it emitted a kind of flat ringing sound as if the ghost of some cheery old dinner bell were faintly trying to call the departed household to supper.
Emerson was not in the least timid. It is customary to associate timidity, even cowardice, with such demeanor as his. It is true that he did not face the horde of mockers and force an issue with them. But that was because he did not fully realize that there was any issue or that he was regarded with such humorous disdain. If he was too “grown-up” (and unfortunately he was) he had at least the poise and self-possession of a grown person. Any one of the Bridgeboro boys would have found something excruciatingly funny in this little gentleman tripping about in that grim old ruin. But none of them would have been less sensitive to the ghostly surroundings than he.
He paused in his exploration of the chaotic place and glanced about. Some small creature of the night, a rat, perhaps, scurried away, breaking the solemn stillness with its flight.
“Is there any one here?” Emerson asked aloud. He waited a few seconds, then spoke again, his voice emphasized by the stillness and darkness. “Is there any one here?”
There was no answer but a flutter of the drooping ivy which hung on a broken chimney near by.
CHAPTER XX
THE DEPTHS
And now Emerson became troubled with doubts. He saw his quest as something absurdly romantic—like an adventure in the “cinema.” What relation was there between a public speaker’s mention of ivy, and a small girl turning and whispering to her neighbor, and this spooky old ruin? “There isn’t any logical connection,” said Emerson in his prim, nice way.
He emerged and clambered up a heap of masonry which might once have been a flight of stone steps. It brought him to the top of a wall which was one of four forming a square enclosure like a great well. These walls were fairly even on top and wide enough to walk on.
The bottom of this enclosure, which might once have been a vault (possibly a wine vault) in the cellar was perhaps ten feet below the level of the ground; the top of its walls was perhaps five or six feet above the level of the ground. So that Emerson, where he stood, looked down into a dank enclosure about fifteen feet deep.
As he stooped forward slightly, peering down into the depths, he looked exactly as he had looked that very morning when Pee-wee had encountered him gazing down through the grating in front of the vacant store. He had said then that the loss of his tickets was “exasperating” and he might have used the same word now, as he looked into the baffling enclosure and saw no way to explore it.