“They may be very useful, very useful indeed,” repeated Di, with great emphasis.
“What do you mean?” asked Andrew, nervously.
“Well, you see,” said Di, slowly, “we’re not quite sure what or who we may find inside this mysterious chamber; anyway I think that we may as well be armed, both of us.”
“But Di,” said Andrew, very distinctly alarmed now, “you don’t really suppose that there’s anyone really alive in there?”
“I’m not so sure. I heard Libbie telling that man—a man who came about some cheeses, I think—that there were very odd customers inside there. Yes, really that was what she said.”
“What did she say, tell me exactly,” insisted Andrew.
“Oh, well, it was when Libbie and the man were coming downstairs from the cheese-room,” said Di. “The man asked—he was joking, you know—if she dealt in cobwebs as well as cheese, for he had never seen such a sight as over that door.”
“Yes, and what did Libbie say?” asked Andrew, breathlessly.
“Oh, she said the spiders had had a good time there, for the door hadn’t been opened for fifty years or more.”
“And didn’t the man ask why?”