“Where do you want to put these?” asked Laurie.
“Anywhere, I guess. Hold on; let’s dump ’em on the shelves in the closet there. Then they’ll be out of the way. Some day we’ll clean the cans all out, and maybe we’ll get enough to paint that arbor we’re going to build. Here you are.”
Bob led the way to a small room built against the rear wall of the big cellar. Designed for a preserve closet, its shelves had probably long been empty of aught save dust, and the door, wide open, hung from one hinge. It was some six feet broad and perhaps five feet deep, built of matched boards. Before Bob entered the cobwebby doorway with his load of cans, its only contents were an accumulation of empty preserve-jars in a wooden box set on the cement floor beneath a lower shelf at the back. There were eight shelves across the rear wall, divided in the center by a vertical board into two tiers. Bob placed his load on a lower shelf and Laurie put his on the shelf above. As he drew away he noticed that the shelf appeared to have worked out from the boards at the back, and he gave it a blow on the edge with the flat of one hand. It slipped back into place, but, to his surprise, it came forward again an inch or two, and all the other shelves in that tier came with it!
“Hey!” said Laurie, startled.
Bob, at the doorway, turned. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing, only—” Laurie took hold of the shelf above the loosened one and pulled. It yielded a little, and so did the other shelves and the rear wall of the cubicle, but it was only a matter of less than an inch. Bob, at his side, looked on interestedly.
“That’s funny,” he said. “Push on it.”
Laurie pushed, and the tier went back a couple of inches. “Looks like this side was separate from the rest,” said Laurie. “What’s the idea of having it come out like that?”
“Search me!” answered Bob. “Pull it toward you again and let me have a look.” A second later he exclaimed: “The whole side is loose, Nod, but it can’t come out because the ends of the shelves strike this partition board! Try it again!” Laurie obeyed, moving the tier back and forth three or four times as far as it would go. Bob shook his head in puzzlement, his gaze roving around the dim interior. Then, “Look here,” he said. “The shelves on the side aren’t on a level with the back ones, Nod.”
“What of it?”