第18章

Aloud, he said: "I'll go first, and if the spook ma-terializes you two can beat it back into the room." And to the two tramps: "Come on, boes, we'll all take a look at the lower floor together, and then we'll get a good fire going in the kitchen and warm up a bit."Down the hall they went, Bridge leading with the boy and girl close at his heels while the two yeggs brought up the rear.Their footsteps echoed through the deserted house; but brought forth no answering clank-ing from the cellar.The stairs creaked beneath the unaccustomed weight of so many bodies as they de-scended toward the lower floor.Near the bottom Bridge came to a questioning halt.The front room lay entirely within his range of vision, and as his eyes swept it he gave voice to a short exclamation of surprise.

The youth and the girl, shivering with cold and ner-vous excitement, craned their necks above the man's shoulder.

"O-h-h!" gasped The Oskaloosa Kid."He's gone," and, sure enough, the dead man had vanished.

Bridge stepped quickly down the remaining steps, entered the rear room which had served as dining room and kitchen, inspected the two small bedrooms off this room, and the summer kitchen beyond.All were empty;then he turned and re-entering the front room bent his steps toward the cellar stairs.At the foot of the stair-way leading to the second floor lay the flash lamp that the boy had dropped the night before.Bridge stooped, picked it up and examined it.It was uninjured and with it in his hand he continued toward the cellar door.

"Where are you going?" asked The Oskaloosa Kid.

"I'm going to solve the mystery of that infernal clank-ing," he replied.

"You are not going down into that dark cellar!" It was an appeal, a question, and a command; and it quivered gaspingly upon the verge of hysteria.

Bridge turned and looked into the youth's face.The man did not like cowardice and his eyes were stern as he turned them on the lad from whom during the few hours of their acquaintance he had received so many evidences of cowardice; but as the clear brown eyes of the boy met his the man's softened and he shook his head perplexedly.What was there about this slender stripling which so disarmed criticism?

"Yes," he replied, "I am going down.I doubt if Ishall find anything there; but if I do it is better to come upon it when I am looking for it than to have it come upon us when we are not expecting it.If there is to be any hunting I prefer to be hunter rather than hunted."He wheeled and placed a foot upon the cellar stairs.

The youth followed him.

"What are you going to do?" asked the man.

"I am going with you," said the boy."You think I am a coward because I am afraid; but there is a vast differ-ence between cowardice and fear."

The man made no reply as he resumed the descent of the stairs, flashing the rays of the lamp ahead of him;but he pondered the boy's words and smiled as he ad-mitted mentally that it undoubtedly took more courage to do a thing in the face of fear than to do it if fear were absent.He felt a strange elation that this youth should choose voluntarily to share his danger with him, for in his roaming life Bridge had known few associates for whom he cared.

The beams of the little electric lamp, moving from side to side, revealed a small cellar littered with refuse and festooned with cob-webs.At one side tottered the remains of a series of wooden racks upon which pans of milk had doubtless stood to cool in a long gone, happier day.Some of the uprights had rotted away so that a part of the frail structure had collapsed to the earthen floor.A table with one leg missing and a crippled chair constituted the balance of the contents of the cellar and there was no living creature and no chain nor any other visible evidence of the presence which had clanked so lugubriously out of the dark depths during the vanished night.The boy breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief and Bridge laughed, not without a note of relief either.

"You see there is nothing," he said--"nothing except some firewood which we can use to advantage.I regret that James is not here to attend me; but since he is not you and I will have to carry some of this stuff upstairs,"and together they returned to the floor above, their arms laden with pieces of the dilapidated milk rack.The girl was awaiting them at the head of the stairs while the two tramps whispered together at the opposite side of the room.

It took Bridge but a moment to have a roaring fire started in the old stove in the kitchen, and as the warmth rolled in comforting waves about them the five felt for the first time in hours something akin to relief and well being.With the physical relaxation which the heat in-duced came a like relaxation of their tongues and tem-porary forgetfulness of their antagonisms and individual apprehensions.Bridge was the only member of the group whose conscience was entirely free.He was not 'wanted' anywhere, he bad no unexpiated crimes to harry his mind, and with the responsibilities of the night removed he fell naturally into his old, carefree manner.

He hazarded foolish explanations of the uncanny noises of the night and suggested various theories to account for the presence and the mysterious disappearance of the dead man.

The General, on the contrary, seriously maintained that the weird sounds had emanated from the ghost of the murdered man who was, unquestionably, none other than the long dead Squibb returned to haunt his former home, and that the scream had sprung from the ghostly lungs of his slain wife or daughter.

"I wouldn't spend anudder night in this dump," he concluded, "for both them pockets full of swag The Oskaloosa Kid's packin' around."Immediately all eyes turned upon the flushing youth.

The girl and Bridge could not prevent their own gazes from wandering to the bulging coat pockets, the owner of which moved uneasily, at last shooting a look of defi-ance, not unmixed with pleading, at Bridge.