Mary Roberts Rinehart & Avery Hopwood (5 page)

"Oh, Miss Dale, dear Miss Dale!" came in woebegone accents from the
other side of the tree. "For the love of heaven, Miss Dale, say no
more but take it away from her—she'll have herself all riddled through
with bullets like a kitchen sieve—and me too—if she's let to have it
again."

"Lizzie, I'm ashamed of you!" said Lizzie's mistress. "Come out from
behind that tree and stop wailing like a siren. This weapon is
perfectly safe in competent hands and—" She seemed on the verge of
another demonstration of its powers.

"MISS DALE, FOR THE DEAR LOVE O' GOD WILL YOU MAKE HER PUT IT AWAY?"

Dale laughed again. "I really think you'd better, Aunt Cornelia. Or
both of us will have to put Lizzie to bed with a case of acute
hysteria."

"Well," said Miss Van Gorder, "perhaps you're right, dear." Her eyes
gleamed. "I should have liked to try it just once more though," she
confided. "I feel certain that I could hit that tree over there if my
eye wouldn't wink so when the thing goes off."

"Now, it's winking eyes," said Lizzie on a note of tragic chant, "but
next time it'll be bleeding corpses and—"

Dale added her own protestations to Lizzie's. "Please, darling, if you
really want to practice, Billy can fix up some sort of target
range—but I don't want my favorite aunt assassinated by a ricocheted
bullet before my eyes!"

"Well, perhaps it would be best to try again another time," admitted
Miss Van Gorder. But there was a wistful look in her eyes as she gave
the revolver to Dale and the three started back to the house.

"I should never have allowed Lizzie to know what I was doing," she
confided in a whisper, on the way. "A woman is perfectly capable of
managing firearms—but Lizzie is really too nervous to live, sometimes."

"I know just how you feel, darling," Dale agreed, suppressed mirth
shaking her as the little procession reached the terrace. "But—oh,"
she could keep it no longer, "oh—you did look funny, darling—sitting
under that tree, with Lizzie on the other side of it making banshee
noises and—"

Miss Van Gorder laughed too, a little shamefacedly.

"I must have," she said. "But—oh, you needn't shake your head, Lizzie
Allen—I am going to practice with it. There's no reason I shouldn't
and you never can tell when things like that might be useful," she
ended rather vaguely. She did not wish to alarm Dale with her
suspicions yet.

"There, Dale—yes, put it in the drawer of the table—that will
reassure Lizzie. Lizzie, you might make us some lemonade, I
think—Miss Dale must be thirsty after her long, hot ride."

"Yes, Miss Cornelia," said Lizzie, recovering her normal calm as the
revolver was shut away in the drawer of the large table in the
living-room. But she could not resist one parting shot. "And thank
God it's lemonade I'll be making—and not bandages for bullet wounds!"
she muttered darkly as she went toward the service quarters.

Miss Van Gorder glared after her departing back. "Lizzie is really
impossible sometimes!" she said with stately ire. Then her voice
softened. "Though of course I couldn't do without her," she added.

Dale stretched out on the settee opposite her aunt's chair. "I know
you couldn't, darling. Thanks for thinking of the lemonade." She
passed her hand over her forehead in a gesture of fatigue. "I AM
hot—and tired."

Miss Van Gorder looked at her keenly. The young face seemed curiously
worn and haggard in the clear afternoon light.

"You—you don't really feel very well, do you, Dale?"

"Oh—it's nothing. I feel all right—really."

"I could send for Doctor Wells if—"

"Oh, heavens, no, Aunt Cornelia." She managed a wan smile. "It isn't
as bad as all that. I'm just tired and the city was terribly hot and
noisy and—" She stole a glance at her aunt from between lowered lids.
"I got your gardener, by the way," she said casually.

"Did you, dear? That's splendid, though—but I'll tell you about that
later. Where did you get him?"

"That good agency, I can't remember its name." Dale's hand moved
restlessly over her eyes, as if remembering details were too great an
effort. "But I'm sure he'll be satisfactory. He'll be out here this
evening—he—he couldn't get away before, I believe. What have you
been doing all day, darling?"

Miss Cornelia hesitated. Now that Dale had returned she suddenly
wanted very much to talk over the various odd happenings of the day
with her—get the support of her youth and her common sense. Then that
independence which was so firmly rooted a characteristic of hers
restrained her. No use worrying the child unnecessarily; they all
might have to worry enough before tomorrow morning.

She compromised. "We have had a domestic upheaval," she said. "The
cook and the housemaid have left—if you'd only waited till the next
train you could have had the pleasure of their company into town."

"Aunt Cornelia—how exciting! I'm so sorry! Why did they leave?"

"Why do servants ever leave a good place?" asked Miss Cornelia grimly.
"Because if they had sense enough to know when they were well off, they
wouldn't be servants. Anyhow, they've gone—we'll have to depend on
Lizzie and Billy the rest of this week. I telephoned—but they
couldn't promise me any others before Monday."

"And I was in town and could have seen people for you—if I'd only
known!" said Dale remorsefully. "Only," she hesitated, "I mightn't
have had time—at least I mean there were some other things I had to
do, besides getting the gardener and—" She rose. "I think I will go
and lie down for a little if you don't mind, darling."

Miss Van Gorder was concerned. "Of course I don't mind but—won't you
even have your lemonade?"

"Oh, I'll get some from Lizzie in the pantry before I go up," Dale
managed to laugh. "I think I must have a headache after all," she
said. "Maybe I'll take an aspirin. Don't worry, darling."

"I shan't. I only wish there were something I could do for you, my
dear."

Dale stopped in the alcove doorway. "There's nothing anybody can do
for me, really," she said soberly. "At least—oh, I don't know what
I'm saying! But don't worry. I'm quite all right. I may go over to
the country club after dinner—and dance. Won't you come with me, Aunt
Cornelia?"

"Depends on your escort," said Miss Cornelia tartly. "If our landlord,
Mr. Richard Fleming, is taking you I certainly shall—I don't like his
looks and never did!"

Dale laughed. "Oh, he's all right," she said. "Drinks a good deal and
wastes a lot of money, but harmless enough. No, this is a very sedate
party; I'll be home early."

"Well, in that case," said her aunt, "I shall stay here with my Lizzie
and my ouija-board. Lizzie deserves some punishment for the very
cowardly way she behaved this afternoon—and the ouija-board will
furnish it. She's scared to death to touch the thing. I think she
believes it's alive."

"Well, maybe I'll send you a message on it from the country club," said
Dale lightly. She had paused, half-way up the flight of side stairs in
the alcove, and her aunt noticed how her shoulders drooped, belying the
lightness of her voice. "Oh," she went on, "by the way—have the
afternoon papers come yet? I didn't have time to get one when I was
rushing for the train."

"I don't think so, dear, but I'll ask Lizzie." Miss Cornelia moved
toward a bell push.

"Oh, don't bother; it doesn't matter. Only if they have, would you ask
Lizzie to bring me one when she brings up the lemonade? I want to read
about—about the Bat—he fascinates me."

"There was something else in the paper this morning," said Miss
Cornelia idly. "Oh, yes—the Union Bank—the bank Mr. Fleming, Senior,
was president of has failed. They seem to think the cashier robbed it.
Did you see that, Dale?"

The shoulders of the girl on the staircase straightened suddenly. Then
they drooped again. "Yes—I saw it," she said in a queerly colorless
voice. "Too bad. It must be terrible to—to have everyone suspect
you—and hunt you—as I suppose they're hunting that poor cashier."

"Well," said Miss Cornelia, "a man who wrecks a bank deserves very
little sympathy to my way of thinking. But then I'm old-fashioned.
Well, dear, I won't keep you. Run along—and if you want an aspirin,
there's a box in my top bureau-drawer."

"Thanks, darling. Maybe I'll take one and maybe I won't—all I really
need is to lie down for a while."

She moved on up the staircase and disappeared from the range of Miss
Cornelia's vision, leaving Miss Cornelia to ponder many things. Her
trip to the city had done Dale no good, of a certainty. If not
actually ill, she was obviously under some considerable mental strain.
And why this sudden interest, first in the Bat, then in the failure of
the Union Bank? Was it possible that Dale, too, had been receiving
threatening letters?

I'll be glad when that gardener comes, she thought to herself. He'll
make a MAN in the house at any rate.

When Lizzie at last came in with the lemonade she found her mistress
shaking her head.

"Cornelia, Cornelia," she was murmuring to herself, "you should have
taken to pistol practice when you were younger; it just shows how
children waste their opportunities."

The long summer afternoon wore away, sunset came, red and angry, a
sunset presaging storm. A chill crept into the air with the twilight.
When night fell, it was not a night of silver patterns enskied, but a
dark and cloudy cloak where a few stars glittered fitfully. Miss
Cornelia, at dinner, saw a bat swoop past the window of the dining room
in its scurrying flight, and narrowly escaped oversetting her glass of
water with a nervous start. The tension of waiting—waiting—for some
vague menace which might not materialize after all—had begun to prey
on her nerves. She saw Dale off to the country club with relief—the
girl looked a little better after her nap but she was still not her
normal self. When Dale was gone, she wandered restlessly for some time
between living-room and library, now giving an unnecessary dusting to a
piece of bric-a-brac with her handkerchief, now taking a book from one
of the shelves in the library only to throw it down before she read a
page.

This house was queer. She would not have admitted it to Lizzie, for
her soul's salvation—but, for the first time in her sensible life, she
listened for creakings of woodwork, rustling of leaves, stealthy steps
outside, beyond the safe, bright squares of the windows—for anything
that was actual, tangible, not merely formless fear.

"There's too much ROOM in the country for things to happen to you!" she
confided to herself with a shiver. "Even the night—whenever I look
out, it seems to me as if the night were ten times bigger and blacker
than it ever is in New York!"

To comfort herself she mentally rehearsed her telephone conversation of
the morning, the conversation she had not mentioned to her household.
At the time it had seemed to her most reassuring—the plans she had
based upon it adequate and sensible in the normal light of day. But
now the light of day had been blotted out and with it her security.
Her plans seemed weapons of paper against the sinister might of the
darkness beyond her windows. A little wind wailed somewhere in that
darkness like a beaten child—beyond the hills thunder rumbled, drawing
near, and with it lightning and the storm.

She made herself sit down in the chair beside her favorite lamp on the
center table and take up her knitting with stiff fingers. Knit
two—purl two—Her hands fell into the accustomed rhythm
mechanically—a spy, peering in through the French windows, would have
deemed her the picture of calm. But she had never felt less calm in
all the long years of her life.

She wouldn't ring for Lizzie to come and sit with her, she simply
wouldn't. But she was very glad, nevertheless, when Lizzie appeared at
the door.

"Miss Neily."

"Yes, Lizzie?" Miss Cornelia's voice was composed but her heart felt a
throb of relief.

"Can I—can I sit in here with you, Miss Neily, just a minute?"
Lizzie's voice was plaintive. "I've been sitting out in the kitchen
watching that Jap read his funny newspaper the wrong way and listening
for ghosts till I'm nearly crazy!"

"Why, certainly, Lizzie," said Miss Cornelia primly. "Though," she
added doubtfully, "I really shouldn't pamper your absurd fears, I
suppose, but—"

"Oh, please, Miss Neily!"

"Very well," said Miss Cornelia brightly. "You can sit here,
Lizzie—and help me work the ouija-board. That will take your mind off
listening for things!"

Lizzie groaned. "You know I'd rather be shot than touch that uncanny
ouijie!" she said dolefully. "It gives me the creeps every time I put
my hands on it!"

"Well, of course, if you'd rather sit in the kitchen, Lizzie—"

"Oh, give me the ouijie!" said Lizzie in tones of heartbreak. "I'd
rather be shot and stabbed than stay in the kitchen any more."

"Very well," said Miss Cornelia, "it's your own decision,
Lizzie—remember that." Her needles clicked on. "I'll just finish
this row before we start," she said. "You might call up the light
company in the meantime, Lizzie—there seems to be a storm coming up
and I want to find out if they intend to turn out the lights tonight as
they did last night. Tell them I find it most inconvenient to be left
without light that way."

"It's worse than inconvenient," muttered Lizzie, "it's criminal—that's
what it is—turning off all the lights in a haunted house, like this
one. As if spooks wasn't bad enough with the lights on—"

"Lizzie!"

"Yes, Miss Neily—I wasn't going to say another word." She went to the
telephone. Miss Cornelia knitted on—knit two—purl two— In spite of
her experiments with the ouija-board she didn't believe in ghosts—and
yet—there were things one couldn't explain by logic. Was there
something like that in this house—a shadow walking the corridors—a
vague shape of evil, drifting like mist from room to room, till its
cold breath whispered on one's back and—there! She had ruined her
knitting, the last two rows would have to be ripped out. That came of
mooning about ghosts like a ninny.