They got through the kitchen. Eddie’s eyes were adjusted to the dark; he could see the white rectangle of the table’s surface, so there was no problem in avoiding it. He kept expecting to bump into something invisible, though. Or to kick some pan or dish left for the dog to eat or drink from.

Where was the dog?

He wanted to ask Karen, but she was ahead of Skip and his voice might carry, might rouse the old woman upstairs.

The hall was darker, closed in and stuffy. The house was old; you could smell age in it, old varnish and dead wax and underpinnings touched with mold, all clean and swept on the surface. There was none of the familiar effluvium of home, where the choking goiter and a palpitating heart kept his mother all but bedridden, and flies and dirt grew thicker day by day. Eddie’s shoes brushed the carpet, roused no smell of dust, just that of old wool and mothproofing. He all but ran into Skip. Skip and Karen had paused before a door.

“Where’s the dog?” Eddie got out.

“Upstairs. I shut him in my room.”

Skip said, “What the hell’s the matter with the door?”

“It doesn’t open!”

“Here, let me try it.” Skip moved; Eddie heard his soft dry step on the wood beyond the carpet; he heard a sort of grunt and a faint click of metal. “For Chrissakes, it’s locked!”

“No, it couldn’t be!” Karen whispered in a positive way.

“Well, it goddamn well is. Here, Eddie, have a go at it and see if it isn’t locked.”

Eddie tried the knob, warm from Karen and Skip’s hands. “Sure it’s locked.” He said in Karen’s direction, “Maybe she’s always locked it at night and you didn’t know it.”

“It’s never been locked before,” Karen said positively. Her voice was beginning to quiver.

“What about the windows?” Skip asked.

“You’d need a ladder.”

“Well, for Chrissakes get me a ladder!” Skip was angry and he was losing control, forgetting to keep his voice low. Eddie expected at any moment to be bathed in light, to find the old woman standing and looking at them from the other end of the hall.

“The ladder’s in the garage. I’ll have to get the garage key from the hook in the kitchen.”

After agonizing minutes of creeping back through the dark house, of delay while Karen put on her shoes and got the garage key and opened the garage and found the ladder, of the risk of noise and exposure, of Skip’s climbing the high old wall of the house above the basement windows, it came out——

The windows of Stolz’s room were locked as tight as its door.

CHAPTER EIGHT