It was so dark in the house that she could barely see Christopher’s pale face at an arm’s-length distance, but at least they were no longer standing in the rain.
“How’d you get in?” she whispered at him fiercely. Then, “Whose house is this?”
“Broken latch on a window down there,” he whispered back. Then he added in a more normal voice, “It was awful dark in the cellar; I barked my shin on something trying to find the stair.”
It was a good thing, Carrie congratulated herself in passing, that neither of them had ever been especially afraid of the dark. Already her eyes were growing accustomed to the deep gloom; enough light strayed in from the street, around the fringes of curtain, to reveal the fact that the front hall where they were standing was hardly furnished at all, nor was the parlor, just beyond a broad archway. More clearly than ever, the house said
“Let’s try the gas,” she whispered. Chris, fumbling in the drawer of a built-in sideboard, soon came up with some matches. Carrie, standing on tiptoe, was tall enough to reach a fixture projecting from the wall. In a moment more she had one of the gaslights lit.
“Is anyone here?” Now her voice too was up to normal; the answer seemed to be no. The sideboard drawer also contained a couple of short scraps of candle, and soon they had lights in hand to go exploring.
Front hall, with an old abandoned mirror still fastened to the wall beside a hat rack and a shelf. Just in from the hall, a wooden stair, handrail carved with a touch of elegance, went straight up to the next floor. Not even a mouse stirred in the barren parlor. The dining room was a desert also, no furniture at all. And so, farther back, was the kitchen, except for a great black stove and a sink whose bright new length of metal pipe promised running water. An interior cellar door had been left open by Chris in his hurried ascent, and next to it a recently walled-off cubicle contained a water closet. A kitchen window looked out on what was no doubt a back garden, now invisible in gloom and rain.
Carrie was ready to explore upstairs, but Christopher insisted on seeing the cellar first, curious as to what object he had stumbled over. The culprit proved to be a cheaply constructed crate, not quite wide or long enough to be a coffin, containing only some scraps of kindling wood. Otherwise the cellar—damp brick walls; floor part pavement, part dry earth—was as empty as the house above.
Now for the upstairs. Holding the candle tremulously high ahead of her, while dancing shadows beat a wavering retreat, Carrie returned to the front hall, and thence up the carved wooden stair. Two bedrooms, as unused as the lower level of the house and as scantily furnished. The rear windows looked out over darkness, the front ones over the street—side walls were windowless, crammed as they were against the neighbors on either side.
From an angle in the hallway on the upper floor, a narrow service stair, white-painted, went up straight and steep to a trapdoor in the ceiling.
“What’s up there?” she wondered aloud.
“Couldn’t be nothin’ but an attic.” Only a short time on the street had begun to have a serious effect on Christopher’s English, of which a certain Canadian schoolmaster had once been proud.
Carrie spotted fresh footprints in the thin layer of dust and soot that had accumulated on the white-painted stairs. A clear image of the heel of a man’s boot. Only one set of footprints, coming down.
The trapdoor pushed up easily. The space above was more garret than attic; it might once have been furnished, maybe servants’ quarters. The floor entirely solid, no rafters exposed, though now there were dust and spiderwebs in plenty. The broad panes of glass in the angled skylight, washed by rain on the outside, were still intact, and it was bolted firmly shut on the inside; if you stood tall enough inside, you could look out over a hilly range of slate roofs and chimney pots, with the towering dome of St. Paul’s visible more than a mile to the east.
On one side of the gloomy space rested an old wardrobe, door slightly ajar to reveal a few hanging garments. But the most interesting object by far was a great wooden box, somewhat battered by much use or travel, which had been shoved against the north wall.
Chris thought it looked like a coffin, and said so.
“No. Built too strong for a poor man’s coffin, not elegant enough for a rich man’s.” What was it, though? There were two strong rope handles on each side, and a plain wooden lid, tightly fitted by some competent woodworker.
Christopher, ever curious, approached the box and tried the lid. To his surprise, and Carrie’s, it slid back at once.
“Look here, Sis!”
“Why, it’s full of dirt.” She was aware of a vague disappointment in her observation, and not sure why. Only about half-full, actually, but that was no less odd. Stranger still was the fact that the neat joinings of the interior seemed to have been tarred with pitch, as if to make them waterproof. Of course so tight a seal would also serve to keep the soil from leaking out. But
The earth was dry. When Carrie picked up a small handful and sifted it through her fingers, it gave off a faintly musty, almost spicy smell, with a suggestion of the alien about it.
Christopher was downstairs again, moving so silently on his bare feet that Carrie had not realized he was gone, until she heard him faintly calling her to come down. She slid the lid back onto the box, and carefully lowered the trapdoor into place behind her.
Her brother had turned on the gaslight in the kitchen and discovered some tins of sardines abandoned in the pantry. Presently they remembered the box of kindling in the cellar, and it was possible to get a wood fire started in the kitchen stove.
The sardines were soon gone. Brother and sister were still hungry, but at least they were out of the rain.
That night they slept in a house, behind locked doors, curled up in a dusty rug on the kitchen floor, where some of the stove’s warmth reached them. Barely into October, and it was cold.
Next day, waking up in a foodless house and observing that the rain had stopped, they were soon out and about on the streets of London, trying to do something to earn some money, and keep out of trouble. But in each endeavor they had only limited success. Carrie was certain that the neighbors had begun to notice them, and not in any very friendly way. So had the bobby who walked the beat during the day.
There was one bright spot. On the sideboard, as if someone had left it there deliberately, they found a key which matched the locks on both front door and back.
Vincent still had his eye on them too, or at least on Carrie. And “Don’t see your parents about,” one of the neighbors remarked as she came by. She answered with a smile, and hurried inside to share with Christopher the handful of biscuits she had just stolen from a shop.
Shortly after sunset, threatening trouble broke at last. The rain had stopped, and people were ready to get out and mind each other’s business. One of the neighbors began it, another joined in, followed by the walrus- mustached policeman, who, when voices were raised, had decided it was his duty to take part.
And joined at a little distance by the nasty Vincent, who before the policeman arrived boldly put in a word, offering to place Carrie under his protection. He had some comments on her body that made her face flame with humiliation and anger.
Carrie could not slam the door on Vincent, because he had his foot pushed in to hold it open. He withdrew the foot as the bobby approached, but Carrie did not quite dare to close the door in the policeman’s face.
“What’s your name, girl?” he wanted to know, without preamble.
“Carrie. Carrie Martin. This’s my brother Chris.”
“Is the woman of the house in?” demanded the boldest neighbor, breaking in on the policeman’s dramatic pause.
Carrie admitted the sad truth, that her mother was dead.
Another neighbor chimed in. “Your father about, then?”
The girl could feel herself being driven back, almost to the foot of the stairs. “He’s very busy. He doesn’t like to be disturbed.”
Somehow three or four people were already inside the door. There was still enough daylight to reveal the shabbiness and scantiness of the furnishings, and of the children’s clothes, once quite respectable.
“Looks like the maid has not come in as yet.” That was said facetiously.
