Ransom (6 page)

“Oh, but Mr. Kershaw,” said Marie anxiously, “I just took a few things over to give them a cleaning and mending so that everything would be in good order in case you wanted me to pack them away.”

Marie was clever. She was regaining her confidence. She almost smiled at her master. But Mr. Kershaw did not smile. He seemed to be looking straight through her. He stalked gravely along with her, keeping time with her quick nervous feet as she hurried to do his bidding.

Marie made one more stand at the swing door.

“You just wait here, please, Mr. Kershaw,” she said in suave tones. “My room's not in such good order as I'd like it to be when you see it. These have been busy days you know—” She tried to put across another smile. “I'll bring everything to you.”

For his answer, the householder held open the door for her to pass. Christobel followed like a silent shadow behind, giving her brother a signal as she passed the top of the back stairs and saw him look up in wonder.

So Randall Kershaw came nimbly and silently up and joined the procession into the short side hall that led to the servants' rooms.

It was quite a surprise to the cook and the parlormaid, arrayed as they were in some of their dead mistress's garments. The cook had stuffed herself into a delicate evening affair of thread lace over a pale rose lining, and her bulk had promptly split the frail French seams from neck to hem. But the cook had not discovered the damage yet and went sailing up and down the little hall, one hand waving a pink ostrich feather fan back and forth, the other fingering joyously a long chain of amethysts that hung about her fat red neck. She had her head turned, watching the train coming after and admiring herself like a child, and thus she came face-to-face with the master of the house as he stood at the entrance to the hall.

She let forth such a scream as might have aroused the neighborhood. It brought the parlormaid out of her bedroom, arrayed in Charmian's black velvet and the short white evening wrap of ermine. She stood there guiltily, too frightened to even scream, and while they faced their master, caught red-handed, Marie dived like a shadow into her own room and brought forth the sable coat, holding it out with one hand and its big cardboard box in the other.

“It's here, all safe,” chirped Marie in a high, unnatural voice. Then she turned on her two confederates.

“And you all, what are you doing with Mrs. Kershaw's things? Parading around like so many children? What business have you to be touching the things I brought to my room to clean, I'd like to know?”

“I was only tryin' it ta see how I would look,” whined Mary, the cook. “I've allus hankered fer a black lace dress. I just wanted to see how becomin' it might be! And anyhow, it's tore!” she said, suddenly getting a view of herself in Marie's mirror through the doorway. “Mrs. Kershaw give this ta Marie because 'twas tore, and I knew Marie wouldn't mind. It's Marie's dress, this is, Mr. Kershaw.” Mary felt that she was doing well, not only providing an excuse for herself, but getting in well with Marie, for now the dress would be Marie's.

But the master was not deceived.

“Take it off!” he demanded. “Go to your room and take that dress off. But first, take off that necklace and give it to me.”

“Aw, but Mr. Kershaw,” protested Mary glibly, “this is me own string of beads that Mrs. Kershaw gave me for a keepsake.”

“You can't put anything like that over on me,” said the master of the house sternly. “Hand them to me at once. That is not a string of beads. Those are valuable stones, and you know it. Now, go into your room and take off that dress, and bring it to me with everything else you have taken that belonged to my wife. No, Clara, you can't go until you have given me the ermine wrap, and then you may go and take off that velvet dress.”

He put out a heavy hand and caught the frightened parlormaid by the arm, stripping the lovely satin-lined wrap from her shoulders and handing it to Christobel.

He turned back to the huddled servants. Marie stood sullenly in her doorway, and Clara and the cook were crying. “Now,” he said sternly, “you may bring me everything you have taken from my wife's apartment. If there is a single thing missing, your rooms will be searched, and you will be prisoners until it is done. Randall, call up the police station and ask them to send a couple of officers over here at once. Let them wait downstairs until I call for them.”

The three frightened women scuttled into their rooms and hurried out of their borrowed finery, hastening to get together every scrap of anything that had ever belonged to the house. They even burrowed deep into their trunks and brought out things taken months before and so long hidden that they had been forgotten.

“We meant no harm,” twittered the cook as she produced a handful of small jewelry purloined from time to time when she happened to be left alone in the house.

“Bring everything!” said the master of the house sternly. “Your rooms will be thoroughly searched, and if there is found a thread of anything that does not belong to you, you will be imprisoned.”

With a moan of mingled hope and fear, the cook bounced back into her room and looked for more ill-gotten gain, and presently a generous pile of dry goods, jewelry, and even table linen and silver were assembled in a heap in the outer hall. When the three burly officers arrived and stalked past the subdued women, they stood humiliated in a row, the parlormaid and the cook weeping convulsively. Marie, with her shrewd eyes cast down, had a sullen look on her pretty, clever face.

“Now,” said Mr. Kershaw when the officers had searched each room carefully and found only a few questionable things that the women said they had “forgotten,” “I'll give you three just half an hour to pack your belongings and get out. The officers will remain on guard outside your doors while you are doing it.”

Mary and Clara began to whine and plead and promise all sorts of things for the future, if he would only let them stay. Not Marie. She knew her work was over in that house, her mistress dead. She had planned a big scoop on a large scale with her confederates, had failed, and now all she wanted was to slip away into the unknown and begin a new life in a new place. She cast withering looks of scorn at the other two, who wept copious tears as they packed, hurrying with trembling fingers and furtive glances at the watching officers. She had only resentment and contempt for them. If it hadn't been for their careless clumsiness, she might have gotten away with her own story. But those two had to appear all decked out! They had not been careful at all, in spite of her warning after she found the keys were gone and after the eerie ringing of the bell from the apartment of a dead woman. They should have known and been on their guard. There was vengeance in Marie's eyes as she packed.

When the half hour was over, the policemen escorted the three crestfallen women out of the house, with orders to see each to her own place wherever that was, in the taxi that had been ordered, and they departed bag and baggage.

Then the three Kershaws stood in the front hall of their deserted home and looked at each other. They felt closer to each other than they had for the past ten years.

I
t was the father who first recovered his equilibrium.

“There remains the butler!” he said with a sad smile, the first breaking of a gloom that had been on his face since his children had come back from school. “We might as well make a clean sweep of it and get rid of him, too, though I'm sure I don't know what good it will do. Their successors will probably be just as bad, if not worse. I suppose I ought to have had them all arrested.”

“D'ya think Hawkins was mixed up in this mess?” asked Randall, keen for another sensation.

“Perhaps not,” said the father, passing his hand wearily over his eyes. “He wouldn't likely have cared for fur coats and velvet gowns except as merchandise with a possible profit, but no doubt he has helped himself to some of the stores in the cellar. I guess there was plenty!” He sighed heavily.

“Should I go and put out those lights?” asked Christobel practically, hoping to turn her father's attention and wishing she knew how to lift some of the burden from his shoulders.

“Oh, I'll do that,” he said. “I had forgotten.”

“We'll all go,” said Randall. “Better give a once-over to the rooms again. There might be something hidden away they've forgotten.”

So the young people followed their father up the stairs and back to the servants' rooms.

It was after they had been carefully over the closets and bureau drawers again and had put out the light behind them, that Kershaw paused in a new kind of dismay before the heap of his dead wife's clothes lying in a quivering mass of velvets and chiffons and fur.

“We oughtn't to leave these things here I suppose,” he said, looking at them helplessly, with sad distaste. “I don't know why I made such a fuss about it, after all. I suppose I might as well have let the poor things take them. Nobody would have cared. If it hadn't been for the principle of the thing. I can't bear to be robbed, even of something that is of no further use to me!”

“Let's put them back!” said Randall energetically, stooping over the heap with a wide basketball reach and scooping up a great armful. “You get the rest, Chris, an' we'll stow 'em away.”

The father gathered up the little white ermine coat that Clara, the parlormaid, had shed, and touched its whiteness pitifully.

“Wait, Rand,” cried his sister, “you're dragging that sable coat, and it's got to go back, hasn't it, Father?” She looked, half frightened toward her father, wondering if he would consider her words presumptuous.

“Why, yes,” he said, brightening. “I suppose that will be possible, if it is a recent purchase. Both of those furs can be returned. That ought to be looked after tomorrow morning. Could you call them up, Chrissie, and ask them about it? Here. Here's the sales slip. But—oh, I forgot! Perhaps you ought to be going back to school in the morning,” he said with another of those deep sighs. “I haven't had time to think about anything yet.” And again that look of depression came over his face and made it look almost ashen.

“No, not tomorrow,” said Christobel, “of course not. Tomorrow is Saturday, anyhow. Come, let's get these things put away. What are you going to do with them, Father? Pack them away somewhere, or give them to somebody, or sell them? If you'd like me to I'll attend to that for you, and you needn't bother any more about it.”

They had reached the door of Charmian's rooms now, and Randall had flung it wide and dumped his armful down on a chaise longue. His eager, breezy youth seemed somewhat to dispel the gloom from this room where one couldn't help but be conscious that the inhabitant had gone out, never to return. Randall had little reverence for anything. He dashed in where any angel would have feared to tread, but on this occasion it was a relief to them all.

“Now, where d'ya want this junk put? Gimme the hangers, Chris, an' I'll stick 'em in.” Christobel handed him a bunch of hangers from the rod in the wardrobe, and he proved himself not so awkward in putting them into the dresses.

“You musn't be so rough with those delicate laces and chiffons, Rand,” warned his sister, coming to the rescue.

Mr. Kershaw was forcing himself to go about the room.

“I don't think you ought to be doing all this, Chrissie, little girl,” he said suddenly with a new tenderness that made the girl's heart leap. “There are some friends I suppose who would look after it for us, though I'm not sure whom I would want here. I didn't care much for some of the people who have been coming to this house. There would be Mrs. Romayne. I suppose she would come in, but your stepmother never liked her. It seems rather crude.”

“No, Father, don't get anybody. This should be my work,” said Christobel, suddenly filled with longing to get all such matters out of the way before that perfumed woman of many words should come around. “I'll not mind doing it at all. But—don't you know what you want to do with them? Of course, those coats. Here, I'll fold them in their boxes and they'll be ready to go back. But the rest. There are some lovely things here, Father. And they ought to go to someone. Aren't there people who would like them?”

“Yes, plenty!” said her father sternly. “But they are not the sort of people I care to please. I would rather burn them all. Those people are of another world. A wild sort. No, I don't know anybody I would want to have them. You couldn't use any of them yourself, I suppose? No. I wouldn't want you to. They are not your type of things. I would rather you had things of your own that fitted your character.”

Christobel was silent a moment, thinking this over.

“No, I would rather not have them!” she said gravely, trying to keep her utter distaste for them out of her voice. “Why don't you send them—or some of them at least—to her mother? Wouldn't she like to have them?”

The father looked at her thoughtfully.

“I hadn't thought of her. What could she do with them? Take that for instance.” He touched with his toe the lovely red velvet that poured itself in a brilliant pool on the floor. “How would Mrs. Harrower look in that?”

Christobel's lips almost quivered into a smile to think of the meek, petted little old woman, with her faded eyes and hair and her indifference to the world in general, arrayed in that sophisticated frock.

“She could sell it,” said Christobel practically. “It is a lovely frock and imported, I guess. There are places where they pay good prices for such things. I know, because the girls at school get most of their evening dresses at such places. They'll get a dress that originally sold for a hundred or two hundred sometimes for forty or fifty dollars.”

“Well, Mrs. Harrower wouldn't know how to make any such deal, and I'm not sure under the circumstances that I care to assist her financially any more than I have been compelled to already. If you can discover anybody who will buy any of these things, you have my permission to sell them. Just pick out a few plain things that the old lady might like and put them in a box, and we'll ship it to her. For the rest, I don't care what you do with it. Come. Let's get out of here. Suppose we go over to my room and talk things over.”