“Suppose the whole side wall swings out,” he thought. “Suppose this wall between his house and the next—swings like a door,—no, that’s too wide,—suppose it swings on a pivot,—a central pivot,—oh, shucks, it couldn’t! Well, suppose the whole hall door came out in one piece,—frame and all. Suppose the frame is hinged on like a door,—then the bolted door wouldn’t matter.”
But this ingenious plan likewise failed to work, because the door wasn’t built that way. It was just an ordinary, regular made and regular hung door.
The windows, too, failed to prove themselves freak windows of any sort but insisted on remaining the regulation, prosaic windows of commerce.
Coe had peered up this so many times; poked up it with so many rods and poles; invented and discarded so many clever schemes of how it might work; that he felt no hope of further light from this source.
He glared at the great fireplace with an air of righteous indignation. Why,—oh, why couldn’t it obligingly turn out to be some sort of a mechanism that would solve his puzzle.
All he got for his trouble was the conviction that certain parts of it had been recently touched up with gilding,—where the gilt iron filigree work decorated the edges of the wide opening. Moreover, the newer gilding was of a slightly different shade and lustre from the old.
Of course, all this meant, that in their housekeeping zeal the Webbs or their servants had touched up some points of the oak leaf design that needed such renovation.
They were here and there among the leaves and acorns that surrounded the opening of the fireplace.
Grasping at any straw Coe went downstairs and made inquiry, learning that there had been no such gilding done.
Coe went back and sat looking at the oak leaves.
It seemed more conspicuous now,—indeed, he wondered how he could have missed seeing it sooner.
Then he realized it was not really conspicuous,—it had doubtless been done last housecleaning time.
But it was too bright for that theory. No, sir, that gilt had been applied to those scratched or marred leaves lately, and it had been done carefully and well. Done by somebody who knew how,—not a professional decorator, necessarily, but some one who knew about that sort of thing.