Coming Through the Rye (3 page)

The steady eyes of Sherwood did not waver nor show special interest. His voice was just as quiet as he said, “Yes? Well, can you open them for me?”

“Why certainly!” said Romayne, walking briskly over to the fireplace and touching the little spring knob.

But the door did not open as she expected.

She looked at it puzzled.

“Oh, I remember! Father had a lock put on. He said there were valuable papers here and he did not want them disturbed. Perhaps I can find the key. Of course Father wouldn't object to my opening it for you to see.”

She searched in the drawers of the desk, the men meanwhile noting every movement, and taking in at a glance the contents of every drawer, without seeming at all to be looking.

Romayne came upon a bunch of keys and tried several but without success. She lifted somewhat mortified eyes to the young man at last.

“Well, we'll have to wait till Father comes, I suppose. But there really is nothing in there but papers.”

“I see,” said Sherwood gravely, as if the matter were dismissed. “Now, this house, it's a double house, is it not? Do you happen to know what is on the other side of this mantel? Have you ever been in the other house?”

“I have not,” said Romayne haughtily. “The house is vacant, of course, you know.”

“Yes?” Sherwood lifted his eyebrows in that maddening way he had done before, as if he doubted her word. “Is the house for rent?”

“I believe it is,” said Romayne, vexed. She felt somehow that he was making game of her, yet his tone and manner were entirely respectful. There was about him an air of knowing more than she did about the things she told him. If he knew things, why did he ask? Was he trying to get her tangled up? Oh, if Father or Lawrence would only come home. It was outrageous! But perhaps she ought to play the game and keep them here till one of them did walk in, so that these intruders might be brought to justice.

“Do many people come to look at the house?”

“I really don't know,” haughtily again. “I've noticed an agent once or twice. It may be rented now for all I know.”

“Yes?” And then quite irrelevantly, it seemed to her, “And your father's business is?”

“He is a manager of a corporation. It has to do with ore and oil products.” She waved her hand toward the bits of rock and oil tubes on the desk. She had the air of endeavoring to graciously satisfy an insatiable curiosity on his part, endeavoring to show him how contemptible he was. But his quiet, grave manner did not alter.

“Miss Ransom, have you ever been down to the cellar in your own house?”

“Really!” she shrugged. “How absurd! Of course.”

“Can you tell me what it contains?”

“Why certainly. A furnace, and a coal bin, and a woodpile.”

“Where is the furnace located?”

What possible interest could that be to these strangers? “Why, almost directly under this room, I think.”

“Yes? And the coal bin? Is it located on the right wall or the left?”

Romayne stopped to think. This was rather interesting, like a game. What could the man possibly be driving at? Or was he merely trying to kill time and asking any question that came into his head?

“It is on the right wall, just in front of the fireplace, I believe. Yes, I know it is. They fill it from the basement window on the sidewalk, just under that window over there, I think. We haven't been here long, and haven't needed to get coal yet.”

“Did you ever examine the coal bin?”

“Well no. I couldn't possibly take any interest in a coal bin. Father always looks after those things.”

“Then you have no knowledge of a door or passageway leading from that coal bin into the cellar of the next house?”

Romayne gave a startled glance from one intent face to the other. For the first time it seemed to her the men were off their guard and openly watching her.

“Of course not,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. Oh, if Father or Lawrence would only come. “You must have been reading dime novels or mystery stories.”

The young man controlled a desire to smile. She could see it in the quiver of his lip. He had a nice mouth. But how outrageously impertinent.

“Did you ever notice anything else in the cellar?” went on the steady voice.

“Nothing but some boxes and barrels that came from the mine and have to do with the business,” she said wearily. Would this inquisition never end?

“I'm hungry,” she said suddenly. “I don't suppose you'll mind if I go and get something to eat, will you? In my own house?”

“I'm sorry, Miss Ransom, but you'll have to remain right here in this room for the present.” She had a strange sensation as she swept him a glance of disdain that his eyes were asking her pardon. “Hollister here will go where you direct him,” he added, “and get something for you. You can trust him to find what you want, I'm sure.”

“No!” said Romayne contemptuously. “I certainly cannot trust a person who had done what he is doing to an old friend. Thank you! I will remain hungry!”

The color swept in a crimson wave up to the roots of Chris's hair and he turned swiftly toward the window once more.

“I'm sorry,” said Sherwood with genuine concern in his voice. “It was no part of my plan to drag you into this mess, Miss Ransom!”

“Oh, yes, you're very sorry!” retorted Romayne angrily, and suddenly sat down in the chair he had offered her several times, with a defeated look on her face, and stormy eyes. Oh, if her father and brother would only come. It was ten minutes after six! Surely they must come soon!

And then there was a sound of a key in the latch, a tense silence in the room; the front door opened, and Mr. Ransom, followed by his son, entered and looked around with white, startled faces.

I
n future years when Romayne looked back on that silence that followed her father's entrance into the room, it seemed to her to have lasted for years, and to have encompassed three distinct eras of emotion.

There was the first instant of relief that her father had come and that now all would be set right. During that instant her own firm little chin was lifted just the slightest, haughtily, with an assurance, the perfect assurance that she had always felt in her father to dominate any situation; an almost pity for the cocksure young man who had been so condescending and so dictatorial to her in her own house, and she swept him a brief glance of contempt that included the whole room. The boy, Chris, seemed suddenly to have been submerged in the amber-colored curtains. She had forgotten that he existed.

Her eyes went back to her father's face, expecting to find a certain look, the expression of an aristocrat who had arrived in time to discomfort interlopers. She knew the look, he had worn it often through the years in protecting herself and her mother from impudence or presumption on the part of servants or officials. It became him well, that look of righteous indignation, tempered with severity. She was always a little sorry for anybody who had incurred his displeasure when her father was really roused. He had a command of fine, terse sarcasm that was really withering to listen to. That he would use it now she did not doubt. She waited to hear him speak and realized that the silence had been long, with something vitally terrible in it that she did not understand. Of course, her father would be much disturbed that she had been here alone in the house with a company of men of this sort. He would be fairly overwhelmed.

She turned her attention fully to his face again. Was it something in the expression of the uniformed man who stood at his elbow that made her look more closely? Why, her father's face was ashen! His eyes! There was nothing haughty in them. They looked—why, almost
frightened!
Perhaps he was sick. The doctor had said there was a little weakness of the heart—nothing serious. It was not good for him to be excited. She flashed a glance of condemnation toward the leader of the men, who stood just ahead of her to the right. Then her eyes went again to her father's face.

Mr. Ransom was a handsome man as the world counts beauty in a man. He had regular features and a fine old-fashioned bearing, which his silver hair and well-clipped pointed beard accentuated. He habitually bore himself as one who respected himself and dealt gently, almost reverently, with himself. He was the embodiment of lofty sentiments, and his well-groomed person was always an object of observation and admiration as he walked the streets and went about his daily business. One thought of him as a man who wore glasses attached to a fine gold chain over his ear and carried a gold-headed cane. He was the kind of man who was always well dressed, carried his papers in a fine cloth bag, and wore silk hats whenever there was the slightest excuse for them. He might have been an elder in a church, or even a minister, so dignified, so conventional, so altogether fitting was everything about his appearance. People had always looked upon him as a good man, well-born, well-bred, and upright to the core. This was the general essence of the character that his daughter had always revered, and that more than anything else in her life she had been most proud of. And now she turned eyes that were accustomed to watching him proudly, tenderly, to his face once more, and all those things that she had been accustomed to see in his beloved face had vanished. Instead the lips had grown more ashen, the eyes wild, like a hunted animal, as they glanced from one intruder to another, the skin of his face white like death as he stood perfectly still looking slowly around that room, only his eyes moving in their ghastly setting. He did not seem to be aware of her presence—or—was he?

She sprang to her feet.

“Father!” and instinctively reached out her hands toward him.

It was just at that instant that he crumpled and went down.

You have seen a balloon that was pricked suddenly lose its inflation, or a tent, let loose from its holdings, sink slowly to the earth. It was like that. The thing that had made the man what he had always been seemed suddenly to have gone out of him. He lay on the marble floor of his entrance hall, a limp heap of cloth. A white face, from which the inhabitant seemed to have departed, and the white skin, withered and lying in loose folds as though that which had held it buoyant and plastic had been suddenly withdrawn from beneath. There was something drawn about the features, as if they had been misplaced and had nothing to give them form or continuity. The thought flashed through the girl's consciousness as she flew toward him that that could not possibly be her father, lying there, collapsed, inanimate. She must reach him quickly. She must lift him up, as if the life and buoyancy would return to him once more if she could but lift him quickly enough.

She was by his side, and her strong young arms about his neck, lifting, lifting with all her might. And now the thing she lifted was like lead. She could not get a hold with her trembling hands. She could scarcely breathe as she forced his head from the floor and into her lap. She lifted wild angry eyes to the face of the young man, Sherwood, who came forward now and tried to help her loosen the collar of the fallen man.

“Don't touch him!” she said in a terrible suffering young voice. “You have killed him! Oh!
Father!
”

That one anguished cry stabbed the young man's heart as if it had been a bayonet. He stepped back sharply.

“Go for a doctor!” he said to Chris in a low tone. But the girl's senses seemed to be abnormally alert.

“No,” she said sharply. “Don't one of you stir from this room! You are all going to stay right where you are and answer for this. My brother will go! Lawrence! Where are you?”

She turned her head sharply to look up and back where her brother had stood, but Lawrence had vanished. His white face had disappeared from the doorway almost as soon as it had appeared.

Romayne lifted a proud head.

“He is going for the doctor!” she said in a clear, high voice, calm with a terrible excitement. “He will be here in a moment.”

Sherwood motioned to Chris to go, and the boy stepped out from the curtains with a low murmured expression of horror. In order to get out he had to step over her feet as she sat huddled with what was left of her father in her arms. He went stumbling out into the darkened street with tears rolling down his nice boyish face. He had always like Romayne. He had always looked up to her. She had been the head of his class, and he the foot. He had looked upon her as a sort of angel. And now this! And he having to go against her. But he knew what to do in an emergency. He darted across a hedge and two back fences, and was soon ringing the bell of the nearest physician.

Inside the house Sherwood had quietly organized his forces. Water was brought, and someone produced aromatic ammonia. Stern faces stooped gravely, but the girl's slender hand took the water from them and held it to the still-ashen lips that somehow seemed like lips no longer.

Frantically the girl applied the remedies that were brought and held in her aching, eager young arms the form that was so dear.

“Father!” she called, “Father!” as if she were crying to him to return from a great distance. “It is all right, Father, you needn't worry! They did me no harm. It was only a ridiculous mistake. They intended to go somewhere else, of course. You needn't mind, Father! Of course, when they know, they will be very much ashamed!”

But there was no sign or stir from the limp form in her arms.

Finally she lifted great eyes of appeal to Sherwood's face.

“If you ever have been a gentleman, I beg that you will go to the telephone and call my father's friend, Judge Freeman. He will explain it all to you, and then perhaps you will have the grace to apologize and withdraw. When my father becomes conscious, if I tell him it was a mistake and that you have apologized and withdrawn, he will be calmer, and perhaps he may get over this. You must get Judge Freeman quickly! There is no time to waste! Tell him I beg that he will come to us at once. We are in great trouble!”