Mary Roberts Rinehart & Avery Hopwood (12 page)

A lightning flash—a shadow cast abruptly on the shade of one of the
French windows, to disappear as abruptly as the flash was blotted
out—the shadow of a man—a prowler—feeling his way through the
lightning-slashed darkness to the terrace door. The detective?
Brooks? The Bat? The lightning flash was too brief for any observer
to have recognized the stealing shape—if any observer had been there.

But the lack of an observer was promptly remedied. Just as the shadowy
shape reached the terrace door and its shadow-fingers closed over the
knob, Lizzie entered the deserted living-room on stumbling feet. She
was carrying a tray of dishes and food—some cold meat on a platter, a
cup and saucer, a roll, a butter pat—and she walked slowly, with
terror only one leap behind her and blank darkness ahead.

She had only reached the table and was preparing to deposit her tray
and beat a shameful retreat, when a sound behind her made her turn.
The key in the door from the terrace to the alcove had clicked.
Paralyzed with fright she stared and waited, and the next moment a
formless thing, a blacker shadow in a world of shadows, passed swiftly
in and up the small staircase.

But not only a shadow. To Lizzie's terrified eyes it bore an eye, a
single gleaming eye, just above the level of the stair rail, and this
eye was turned on her.

It was too much. She dropped the tray on the table with a crash and
gave vent to a piercing shriek that would have shamed the siren of a
fire engine.

Miss Cornelia and Anderson, rushing in from the hall and the billiard
room respectively, each with a lighted candle, found her gasping and
clutching at the table for support.

"For the love of heaven, what's wrong?" cried Miss Cornelia
irritatedly. The coffeepot she was carrying in her other hand spilled
a portion of its boiling contents on Lizzie's shoe and Lizzie screamed
anew and began to dance up and down on the uninjured foot.

"Oh, my foot—my foot!" she squealed hysterically. "My foot!"

Miss Cornelia tried to shake her back to her senses.

"My patience! Did you yell like that because you stubbed your toe?"

"You scalded it!" cried Lizzie wildly. "It went up the staircase!"

"Your toe went up the staircase?"

"No, no! An eye—an eye as big as a saucer! It ran right up that
staircase—" She indicated the alcove with a trembling forefinger. Miss
Cornelia put her coffeepot and her candle down on the table and opened
her mouth to express her frank opinion of her factotum's sanity. But
here the detective took charge.

"Now see here," he said with some sternness to the quaking Lizzie,
"stop this racket and tell me what you saw!"

"A ghost!" persisted Lizzie, still hopping around on one leg. "It came
right through that door and ran up the stairs—oh—" and she seemed
prepared to scream again as Dale, white-faced, came in from the hall,
followed by Billy and Brooks, the latter holding still another candle.

"Who screamed?" said Dale tensely.

"I did!" Lizzie wailed, "I saw a ghost!" She turned to Miss Cornelia.
"I begged you not to come here," she vociferated. "I begged you on my
bended knees. There's a graveyard not a quarter of a mile away."

"Yes, and one more scare like that, Lizzie Allen, and you'll have me
lying in it," said her mistress unsympathetically. She moved up to
examine the scene of Lizzie's ghostly misadventure, while Anderson
began to interrogate its heroine.

"Now, Lizzie," he said, forcing himself to urbanity, "what did you
really see?"

"I told you what I saw."

His manner grew somewhat threatening.

"You're not trying to frighten Miss Van Gorder into leaving this house
and going back to the city?"

"Well, if I am," said Lizzie with grim, unconscious humor, "I'm giving
myself an awful good scare, too, ain't I?"

The two glared at each other as Miss Cornelia returned from her survey
of the alcove.

"Somebody who had a key could have got in here, Mr. Anderson," she said
annoyedly. "That terrace door's been unbolted from the inside."

Lizzie groaned. "I told you so," she wailed. "I knew something was
going to happen tonight. I heard rappings all over the house today,
and the ouija-board spelled Bat!"

The detective recovered his poise. "I think I see the answer to your
puzzle, Miss Van Gorder," he said, with a scornful glance at Lizzie.
"A hysterical and not very reliable woman, anxious to go back to the
city and terrified over and over by the shutting off of the electric
lights."

If looks could slay, his characterization of Lizzie would have laid him
dead at her feet at that instant. Miss Van Gorder considered his
theory.

"I wonder," she said.

The detective rubbed his hands together more cheerfully.

"A good night's sleep and—" he began, but the irrepressible Lizzie
interrupted him.

"My God, we're not going to bed, are we?" she said, with her eyes as
big as saucers.

He gave her a kindly pat on the shoulder, which she obviously resented.

"You'll feel better in the morning," he said. "Lock your door and say
your prayers, and leave the rest to me."

Lizzie muttered something inaudible and rebellious, but now Miss
Cornelia added her protestations to his.

"That's very good advice," she said decisively. "You take her, Dale."

Reluctantly, with a dragging of feet and scared glances cast back over
her shoulder, Lizzie allowed herself to be drawn toward the door and
the main staircase by Dale. But she did not depart without one
Parthian shot.

"I'm not going to bed!" she wailed as Dale's strong young arm helped
her out into the hall. "Do you think I want to wake up in the morning
with my throat cut?" Then the creaking of the stairs, and Dale's
soothing voice reassuring her as she painfully clambered toward the
third floor, announced that Lizzie, for some time at least, had been
removed as an active factor from the puzzling equation of Cedarcrest.

Anderson confronted Miss Cornelia with certain relief.

"There are certain things I want to discuss with you, Miss Van Gorder,"
he said. "But they can wait until tomorrow morning."

Miss Cornelia glanced about the room. His manner was reassuring.

"Do you think all this—pure imagination?" she said.

"Don't you?"

She hesitated. "I'm not sure."

He laughed. "I'll tell you what I'll do. You go upstairs and go to
bed comfortably. I'll make a careful search of the house before I
settle down, and if I find anything at all suspicious, I'll promise to
let you know."

She agreed to that, and after sending the Jap out for more coffee
prepared to go upstairs.

Never had the thought of her own comfortable bed appealed to her so
much. But, in spite of her weariness, she could not quite resign
herself to take Lizzie's story as lightly as the detective seemed to.

"If what Lizzie says is true," she said, taking her candle, "the upper
floors of the house are even less safe than this one."

"I imagine Lizzie's account just now is about as reliable as her
previous one as to her age," Anderson assured her. "I'm certain you
need not worry. Just go on up and get your beauty sleep; I'm sure you
need it."

On which ambiguous remark Miss Van Gorder took her leave, rather grimly
smiling.

It was after she had gone that Anderson's glance fell on Brooks,
standing warily in the doorway.

"What are you? The gardener?"

But Brooks was prepared for him.

"Ordinarily I drive a car," he said. "Just now I'm working on the
place here."

Anderson was observing him closely, with the eyes of a man ransacking
his memory for a name—a picture. "I've seen you somewhere—" he went
on slowly. "And I'll—place you before long." There was a little
threat in his shrewd scrutiny. He took a step toward Brooks.

"Not in the portrait gallery at headquarters, are you?"

"Not yet." Brooks's voice was resentful. Then he remembered his pose
and his back grew supple, his whole attitude that of the respectful
servant.

"Well, we slip up now and then," said the detective slowly. Then,
apparently, he gave up his search for the name—the pictured face. But
his manner was still suspicious.

"All right, Brooks," he said tersely, "if you're needed in the night,
you'll be called!"

Brooks bowed. "Very well, sir." He closed the door softly behind him,
glad to have escaped as well as he had.

But that he had not entirely lulled the detective's watchfulness to
rest was evident as soon as he had gone. Anderson waited a few
seconds, then moved noiselessly over to the hall door—listened—opened
it suddenly—closed it again. Then he proceeded to examine the
alcove—the stairs, where the gleaming eye had wavered like a
corpse-candle before Lizzie's affrighted vision. He tested the terrace
door and bolted it. How much truth had there been in her story? He
could not decide, but he drew out his revolver nevertheless and gave it
a quick inspection to see if it was in working order. A smile crept
over his face—the smile of a man who has dangerous work to do and does
not shrink from the prospect. He put the revolver back in his pocket
and, taking the one lighted candle remaining, went out by the hall
door, as the storm burst forth in fresh fury and the window-panes of
the living-room rattled before a new reverberation of thunder.

For a moment, in the living-room, except for the thunder, all was
silence. Then the creak of surreptitious footsteps broke the
stillness—light footsteps descending the alcove stairs where the
gleaming eye had passed.

It was Dale slipping out of the house to keep her appointment with
Richard Fleming. She carried a raincoat over her arm and a pair of
rubbers in one hand. Her other hand held a candle. By the terrace
door she paused, unbolted it, glanced out into the streaming night with
a shiver. Then she came into the living-room and sat down to put on
her rubbers.

Hardly had she begun to do so when she started up again. A muffled
knocking sounded at the terrace door. It was ominous and determined,
and in a panic of terror she rose to her feet. If it was the law, come
after Jack, what should she do? Or again, suppose it was the Unknown
who had threatened them with death? Not coherent thoughts these, but
chaotic, bringing panic with them. Almost unconscious of what she was
doing, she reached into the drawer beside her, secured the revolver
there and leveled it at the door.

A key clicked in the terrace door—a voice swore muffledly at the rain.
Dale lowered her revolver slowly. It was Richard Fleming—come to meet
her here, instead of down by the drive.

She had telephoned him on an impulse. But now, as she looked at him in
the light of her single candle, she wondered if this rather dissipated,
rather foppish young man about town, in his early thirties, could
possibly understand and appreciate the motives that had driven her to
seek his aid. Still, it was for Jack! She clenched her teeth and
resolved to go through with the plan mapped out in her mind. It might
be a desperate expedient but she had nowhere else to turn!

Fleming shut the terrace door behind him and moved down from the
alcove, trying to shake the rain from his coat.

"Did I frighten you?"

"Oh, Mr. Fleming—yes!" Dale laid her aunt's revolver down on the
table. Fleming perceived her nervousness and made a gesture of apology.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I rapped but nobody seemed to hear me, so I used
my key."

"You're wet through—I'm sorry," said Dale with mechanical politeness.

He smiled. "Oh, no." He stripped off his cap and raincoat and placed
them on a chair, brushing himself off as he did so with finicky little
movements of his hands.

"Reggie Beresford brought me over in his car," he said. "He's waiting
down the drive."

Dale decided not to waste words in the usual commonplaces of social
greeting.

"Mr. Fleming, I'm in dreadful trouble!" she said, facing him squarely,
with a courageous appeal in her eyes.

He made a polite movement. "Oh, I say! That's too bad."

She plunged on. "You know the Union Bank closed today."

He laughed lightly.

"Yes, I know it! I didn't have anything in it—or any other bank for
that matter," he admitted ruefully, "but I hate to see the old thing go
to smash."

Dale wondered which angle was best from which to present her appeal.

"Well, even if you haven't lost anything in this bank failure, a lot of
your friends have—surely?" she went on.

"I'll say so!" said Fleming, debonairly. "Beresford is sitting down
the road in his Packard now writhing with pain!"

Dale hesitated; Fleming's lightness seemed so incorrigible that, for a
moment, she was on the verge of giving her project up entirely. Then,
"Waster or not—he's the only man who can help us!" she told herself
and continued.

"Lots of awfully poor people are going to suffer, too," she said
wistfully.

Fleming chuckled, dismissing the poor with a wave of his hand.

"Oh, well, the poor are always in trouble," he said with airy
heartlessness. "They specialize in suffering."

He extracted a monogrammed cigarette from a thin gold case.

"But look here," he went on, moving closer to Dale, "you didn't send
for me to discuss this hypothetical poor depositor, did you? Mind if I
smoke?"

"No." He lit his cigarette and puffed at it with enjoyment while Dale
paused, summoning up her courage. Finally the words came in a rush.

"Mr. Fleming, I'm going to say something rather brutal. Please don't
mind. I'm merely—desperate! You see, I happen to be engaged to the
cashier, Jack Bailey—"

Fleming whistled. "I see! And he's beat it!"