They told us where in the palace the various ingredients were likely to be found. Red mosquito-netting, perhaps, in the cellar—at this time of day fairly safe. Red and violet ink in the library—very dangerous indeed at this hour. Cold coffee—almost unobtainable. Green tissue paper, to be taken from the flower-pots in the dining-room—exceedingly dangerous. Blue and orange, if discoverable at all, then in the Christmas tree box in the trunk room—attended by few perils as to meetings en route, but in respect to appropriating what was desired, by the greatest perils of all.
This last adventure the Rodmans themselves heroically undertook. It was also conceded that, on their return from their quest—provided they ever did return alive—it would be theirs to procure the necessary cold coffee. The other adventures were distributed, and Mary Elizabeth and I were told off together to penetrate the cellar in search of red mosquito-netting. The bottles had already been collected, and these little Harold Rodman was left to guard and luxuriously to fill with water and luxuriously to empty.
There was an outside cellar door, and it was closed. This invited Mary Elizabeth and me to an expedition or two before we even entered. We slid from the top to the bottom, sitting, standing, and backward. Then, since Harold was beginning to observe us with some attention, we lifted the ring—the ring—in the door and descended.
“Aladdin immediately beheld bags of inexhaustible riches,” said Mary Elizabeth, almost reverently.
First, there was a long, narrow passage lined with ash barrels, a derelict coal scuttle, starch boxes, mummies of brooms, and the like. But at this point if we had chanced on the red mosquito-netting, we should have felt distinctly cheated of some right. A little farther on, however, the passage branched, and we stood in delighted uncertainty. If the giant lived one way and the gorgon the other, which was our way?
The way that we did choose led into a small round cellar, lighted by a narrow, dusty window, now closed. Formless things stood everywhere—crates, tubs, shelves whose ghostly contents were shrouded by newspapers. It occurred to me that I had never yet told Mary Elizabeth about our cellar. I decided to do so then and there. She backed up against the wall to listen, manifestly so that there should be nothing over her shoulder.
Our cellar was a round, bricked-in place under the dining-room. Sometimes I had been down there while they had been selecting preserves by candle-light. And I had long ago settled that the curved walls were set with little sealed doors behind each of which He sat. These He’s were not in the least unfriendly—they merely sat there close to the wall, square shouldered and very still, looking neither to right nor left, waiting. Probably, I thought, it might happen some day—whatever they waited for; and then they would all go away. Meanwhile, there they were; and they evidently knew that I knew they were there, but they evidently did not expect me to mention it; for once, when I did so, they all stopped doing nothing and looked at me, all together, as if something used their eyes for them at a signal. It was to Mary Gilbraith that I had spoken, while she was at our house-cleaning, and the moment I had chosen was when she was down in the cellar without a candle and I was lying flat on the floor above her, peering down the trap doorway.
“Mary,” I said, “they’s a big row of He’s sitting close together inside the wall. They’ve got big foreheads. Bang on the wall and see if they’ll answer—” for I had always longed to bang and had never quite dared.
“Oh, my great Scotland!” said Mary Gilbraith, and was up the ladder in a second. That was when they looked at me, and then I knew that I should not have spoken to her about them, and I began to see that there are some things that must not be said. And I felt a kind of shame, too, when Mary turned on me. “You little Miss,” she said wrathfully, “with your big eyes. An’ myself bitin’ on my own nerves for fear of picking up a lizard for a potato. Go play.”
“I was playing,” I tried to explain.