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“Secrets are the kind of adventure she needs.”

So said Basil E. Frankweiler of Claudia Kincaid, the young runaway who hides out at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in E.L. Konigsburg’s celebrated book “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.”

“Secrets are safe,” Frankweiler said, “and they do much to make you different.”

The classic 1967 children’s novel is one of the touchstones of “The Layaway,” a series of cabaret performances that will be staged in a secret room of Philadelphia’s legendary Wanamaker Building, now cavernously empty since Macy’s left last March.

“We had fun thinking of ourselves as kids running around in a department store after it closes,” said Sally Ollove, associate artistic director of the Bearded Ladies Cabaret. “The idea of what we, as grown-up kids, could get away with.”

The cabaret is part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, which is partnering with Opera Philadelphia to activate the dormant department store with performances and an art installation this fall.

Every Saturday and Sunday for three weekends, from Sept. 13 to Sept. 28, “The Layaway” will take over Greek Hall, a small auditorium on the 3rd floor originally used to showcase pianos and stage music performances. It has not been accessible to the public in decades.

The room’s wood-paneled walls, tall, stained-glass windows and ornamented ceiling panel moldings reflect John Wanamaker’s extravagant, fin-de-siècle tastes when it was opened in 1911.

For “The Layaway,” the room has been outfitted with cabaret tables, each fitted with a tasseled lamp. The walls are adorned with strings of moon-and-star silhouettes cut out of perfume advertisements. The stage is built as a round platform with 360-degree uplighting, illuminating the singer from all sides.

The cabaret bar is actually a large, three-sided desk that the Bearded Ladies’ set designers salvaged from the old office of the Army Corps of Engineers, which vacated the 6th floor nearly three years ago.

“We asked people what would be the reason for us doing something like this, like, what is needed right now,” Ollove said. “We kept hearing that people wanted a place of retreat, a place that they could go to and not ignore what’s happening in the world, but where they could take off their armor for a little bit, crack open their hearts and be treated softly and gently.”

“We’ll still have drag and a lot of camp, of course, but we’re trying to be very intentional to make sure that we’re choosing things that will sound very luxurious and luscious in this space,” she said.

When it opened 114 years ago, Wanamaker’s Department Store was the largest retail store in the world. Its luxurious interiors set a high bar for the shopping experience.

Jess Conda will act as emcee for some performances. She plans to lean into the building’s historic reputation for customer care going hand-in-hand with transactional commerce. Her songs span the James Bond romantic lament “Diamonds Are Forever,” Steve Winwood’s more transcendent “Higher Love,” and the profane rebellion of Rage Against the Machine.

“We’re trying to create opulence inside of failed consumerism,” Conda said. “What happens when our commercial spaces start to fail us as we get more digital? What can we do inside of them?”

“‘The Layaway’ is a cheeky way in,” she said. “There’s nothing to buy here.”

Conda has a history at Macy’s: She used to perform in the annual Dickens’ Christmas Village living holiday tableau. Before that, as a young child, she crawled on Macy’s marble floors.

“Do you remember when you were a little kid and you’d go into the department store and go under the rack to pretend that all the clothes were a little umbrella?” Conda asked. “Your mom might be, like, ‘All right, come back in 5 minutes,’ and you’d hide under the clothes and pretend you were in another world.”

“That’s the kind of freedom of taking over a space like this,” she said.

“The Layaway” begins Sept. 13, running three weeks with adult-themed shows on Saturday and family-friendly shows on Sunday. The lineup of artists changes with each performance; no two will be the same.

Like the best secrets, after it is shared, “The Layaway” will disappear.

“We think of it as a jewel box,” Ollove said. “A music box that opens and, crucially, it also will close.”