Page:Earl Derr Biggers - Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913).djvu/28

12 turn to your left. Elijah lives in a little house back among the trees a mile out—there's a gate you'll sure hear creaking on a night like this."

Billy Magee thanked him, and gathering up his two bags, walked up "Main Street." A dreary forbidding building at the first corner bore the sign "Commercial House". Under the white gas light in the office window three born pessimists slouched low in hotel chairs, gazing sourly out at the storm.

hummed Mr. Magee cynically under his breath, and glanced up at the solitary up-stairs window that gleamed yellow in the night.

At a corner on which stood a little shop that ad- vertised "Groceries and Provisions" he paused. "Let me see," he pondered. "The lights will be turned off, of course. Candles. And a little some thing for the inner man, in case it's the closed sea- son for cooks."

He went inside, where a weary old woman served him.