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"Something scared him," Bimohit observed, "so badly that he couldn’t even yelp."

I remembered that he loved dogs, but I had other things to worry about just then. "Hold this side of the gate steady," I instructed, and worked the latch off the hook with some difficulty. With a hard push, I managed to open the gate enough for us to squeeze through.

"What if the owner objects?" Bimohit asked.

"Doesn’t look like there is an owner in residence," I answered. "If there is, we just tell him that we’re looking for shelter from the storm."

"I don’t know..." Bimohit’s behaviour was so unlike his usual manner that I glanced at him sharply. He looked deeply unhappy, as if there was something on his mind.

"What’s troubling you?" I asked.

"It’s probably nothing," he replied. "I was just remembering that cobbler of yours who told us to keep away from the big house." He pointed at the mansion which had just come into view along the path. "I suppose this is the big house."

It hulked above us, two stories high, dark brown walls surmounted by a dark green roof. The windows were covered by shutters, and the entire house had a closed-in, forbidding look. It had evidently once been surrounded by gardens, but they were just expanses of vegetation now.

"It’s big and ugly enough," I said, "but I don’t fancy going back out in this rain, do you? Besides, do you really want to make your decisions based on what a cobbler said?"

"I suppose you’re right," he admitted. "But there was the dog. He was terrified of something."

"Have we seen anything to be frightened of?" I asked. "We need a place to rest and put up for the night, and I can’t think of anywhere else we might find."

"The dog must have come from somewhere," he said.

I shrugged. "Where? Do you really want to go wandering around in this looking for shelter when we have this place all ready?"

"Yeah, all right." He was still hanging back reluctantly, so I went up to the front door to see if we could get in that way.

I soon found that wouldn’t be happening. The front door was shut with a huge iron lock, and though it was thick with rust it yielded not at all to my efforts. With a hacksaw or a hammer I could have forced it, I suppose, but we hadn’t brought anything of the sort with us. But I was reluctant to give up at this point, not only because I didn’t want to go back into the rain but because I felt that to do so somehow would validate the cobbler’s warning. "Let’s go round the side," I said. "Maybe we’ll find a window open."

It wasn’t really that big a house, and we’d soon made almost a complete circuit of it. All along the ground floor, the windows were shuttered and there was no apparent way we could enter. There was a back door, but it was firmly shut from the inside. On the off chance that there was a caretaker within, I hammered on it with my fist and then a stone, but nothing happened.

"There’s no way in," Bimohit said, with unmistakable relief. "Let’s get going."

"No, look," I said, pointing. We’d come round the back and were walking along the wall on the far side. The shutters on one of the windows hung loose on one side, leaving an opening full of darkness.

I’ll confess that at that moment I had the strongest impulse to leave the house alone and go back to the summerhouse with Bimohit to wait out the rain. But there was the question of shelter for the night, and there was also the simple and compelling factor of pride. I don’t think Bimohit would have brought it up, but it would have hurt my own self-image if I’d stepped back at that point. Well, one lives and learns.

So I pushed at the shutter and it gave way suddenly and swung free with a crash against the wall, and the way inside lay open.

After that not even Bimohit made any difficulty about entering. Technically, of course, we were committing a crime, we didn’t think about that. First I pushed my rucksack in through the window, and then clambered up and into the room. Bimohit handed me his pack, and I helped pull him inside. He was rather shorter than me, and might have found it difficult otherwise.

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