The Velvet Room (20 page)

Robin stood up stiffly and pulled her lips into a smile. “I understand,” she said. “I understand, but I have to go now. It’s dark, and my folks will be worried.”

Bridget started to get up. “Wait,” she said. “I’ll go part of the way with you. You shouldn’t be out alone so late at night.”

“Oh no,” Robin said quickly. “I’m not afraid. If I run, I can be there in a minute.”

Outside the gate she turned and looked back. She watched the slice of light narrow and disappear as Bridget closed the cottage door. Then she turned away, but not toward the orchard and the Village. As fast as she could, in the misty darkness, Robin made her way toward Palmeras House and the Velvet Room.

W
HEN ROBIN REACHED THE GROVE OF TREES
, she had to slow to a walk and feel her way with outstretched hands. The air was so thick and damp it was like walking through rain clouds that had fallen to the ground. She couldn’t even see Palmeras House until she reached the patio, and even then it was only a great blurry mass of deeper darkness against a dark sky.

Like a blind person, she found her way to the well. Her feet told her the way over the bricks of the patio floor, and her fingers remembered how to turn the key in the padlock. Then, at the bottom of the ladder, her groping hands found the candle and matches, and at last her eyes were useful again.

Inside the empty rooms of Palmeras House it was even darker than it had been the night before. But as Robin tiptoed through the house, shielding the flame of her candle with her cupped hand, a fear hovered somewhere in the back of her mind that had nothing to do with the dark shadows that filled the corners. Just as the candle’s light held back the shadows, a part of her mind was holding back the fear — keeping it nameless and shapeless until she reached the Velvet Room.

She got to the top of the stairs and glided down tie long hall to the door. She opened it with a feeling of triumph. She’d made it! But this time it didn’t work.

Instead of fading, the fear grew and took shape. Something had happened to the magic of the Velvet Room. It was not the same. It didn’t look any different. It was all there just as it had always been. As she moved forward, the candle’s light fell on the same familiar things: the tiny inlaid game table, the chair with roses on it, die curving back of the velvet couch. But somehow there was a difference.

Feeling dazed and desolate, she drifted into the alcove and sat down. In the velvet circle, if anywhere at all, she might be able to recapture the missing magic. But nothing happened, and she found herself thinking instead of Bridget’s story. As she went over in her mind all the things that Bridget had told her, she began to feel again the excitement she had felt in the cottage. And then, without realizing it, she was thinking about what Bridget meant when she asked if Robin understood. Reluctantly at first, and then more eagerly, she began to explore some ideas that she had been carefully avoiding.

Before Robin noticed that her candle was burning low, she had discovered some pretty amazing things. She had discovered, she thought, what Bridget had meant when she had talked about good and bad reasons and the importance of counting on people. And she had also found out what it was that was different about the Velvet Room. Tonight, for the first time, she understood what the Velvet Room really was, and maybe even more important, what it wasn’t and never could be. What it really was, was just what you could see by the candle’s light: a beautiful room full of lovely old things. It wasn’t what Robin had tried to make it: an enchanted refuge, a private dream world.

As she moved slowly toward the door, Robin stopped to look at everything and say good-bye.

She knew she would never forget even the tiniest thing. But she also knew now that leaving it would only be the end of an adventure, not the end of everything. And it
had
been a wonderful adventure — meeting Bridget, exploring the tunnel, finding the Velvet Room. There must be hundreds of people who grew up and grew old without ever having —

Suddenly Robin froze into rigid attention. Into the midst of her musing had come a strange sound. For a moment she couldn’t tell what it was or from what direction it came. As it grew louder and nearer, it became recognizable as the sound of tires on gravel, and she hurried back to look out the window. Below, on the gravel driveway, a car was approaching. It was going very slowly, and it had no headlights on. Like a giant night beetle, it crept up the road and stopped at the foot of the stairs that led to the main entrance of Palmeras House.

Robin could barely see the three shadowy figures that got out of the car, but she clearly heard the thuds as the car doors shut behind them. She pressed her nose against the window and peered downward. Just as the figures disappeared beneath the portico, a light flashed on. Someone had turned on a flashlight.

“Robbers!” she thought in terror. There could be no other reason for anyone to arrive at a deserted house at night in a car with headlights out. But then her panic subsided. Surely they wouldn’t be able to get in. There was the big extra padlock on the front door, and all the other doors and windows were boarded up as well as locked.

She jumped off the window seat and tiptoed across the room to the door. She opened it and leaned out into the hall, listening. Almost immediately she heard the squeak of the hinges of the heavy double doors of the main entry. Somehow the robbers had gotten inside the house, and they had done it as quickly as if the front door had not been locked at all.

In blind panic Robin dashed back to the alcove. The candle went out in the rush of wind, but her groping hands found the heavy drapes and she slipped behind them. Fear was a great knot filling her throat and almost strangling her as she pressed herself back against the wall and listened to the footsteps on the stairway leading to the second floor.

The footsteps got nearer and louder, and then the door to the Velvet Room opened. Through the drapery Robin could see a faint glow of light. A voice said, “Here it
is.
Over this way.”

Robin stifled a gasp of surprise. The voice was familiar. For a moment she couldn’t think to whom it belonged, but as the footsteps came toward her, muffled now by the thick rug, she suddenly remembered. It was Fred Criley!

The footsteps stopped. From somewhere on the window side of the room a voice said, “That them?”

“Yeah.” It was Fred again.

A third voice asked, “You got the key to this thing?”

“No,” Fred said. “Old man McCurdy hangs onto that.”

“Well, that ain’t hard to fix.”

There was a crash, and then the tinkle of shattered glass. For a moment Robin was almost more indignant than frightened. Someone must have broken the beautiful curved glass of the whatnot case.

“Yeah!” one of the strange voices said. “Pretty nice. I know a place in L.A. where these things will bring a handful of dough.”

For a minute the only sound was the scrape and tinkle of objects being taken from the glass case and dropped into something, perhaps a bag. Then one of the strange voices said, “That just about does it. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“Wait a minute,” Fred’s voice said. “I got something else to do first. If these things just turn up missing, it ain’t going to look too good for my family. Outside of old man McCurdy, my ma’s the only one who ever has the keys to this place. So I’m gonna fix it so no one’s ever gonna know there’s been any robbery.”

“Oh, yeah? How’re you gonna do that?”

“It’s a cinch. We set fire to the. place; it burns down, and nobody’s ever gonna know whether them little things is in all those ashes or not.”

Robin’s heart stood still with dismay. No one spoke for a moment, and then one of the strangers said, “Well, suit yourself, but I ain’t gonna help. This place gives me the creeps. I’ll wait in the car.”

“Me too,” the other voice said. “Ya know, when we first got out of the car down there, I thought I saw a little light in one of the windows up here. I heard tell, lots of times, that this place is haunted. You burn ’er down if you want to, but I’m getting out of here right now.”

Robin heard Fred’s short hard laugh. “What a couple of chicken livers. O.K. Go hide in the car. I’ll be down in a minute.”

Footsteps crossed the room. “Wait a minute,” Fred called. “How’m I gonna see if you take the flashlight?”

“That’s your problem. We gotta get down these stairs, don’t we? You start that there fire, and you’ll have lots of light.”

The footsteps went out the door and down the hall. There was the sound of a match striking and the smell of sulfur. Robin could hear Fred moving around on the other side of the room. With only a match’s flame on the other side of the room, the alcove was left in complete darkness, so it seemed safe to peek around the edge of the drape. Fred was over by the bookshelves. With one hand he was holding a lighted match, and with the other he was pulling books off the shelf and dropping them on the floor. Then he crouched down and shoved the books into a pile. The match burned low and he dropped it. There was a scratching sound, and another match flared up. Robin watched in horror as Fred leaned over and held the flame to the pages of an open book.

Without even knowing that she was going to do it, Robin leaped out from behind the drape and screamed “STOP!” with every ounce of power in her lungs. Fred catapulted into the air and whirled to face the darkness in the alcove, his eyes bulging wildly in his pudgy face. Staggering backward, he tripped over a footstool, and his howl of fear was cut short with a heavy thud as he landed on his back.

If she had stayed in the alcove, Fred might have gotten up and run away without ever knowing what had screamed at him out of the darkness. But the book was burning brightly, and Robin couldn’t bear it. She dashed into the room, and, grabbing the book by the cover, she began to beat it on the floor.

In a moment the fire was out, and the room was once again in darkness, but before the light had died away Fred Criley recognized Robin. Just as she dropped the book and began to back away, he spoke again, not frightened now, but hard and angry. “What are you doin’ here?” Robin heard him move closer in the darkness. “Come here!” He was so near that, as Robin turned to run, she felt the rush of air as his hands swept past her.

He probably would have caught her before she even reached the door if she hadn’t been so familiar with her surroundings. When she got to the door, Fred was still stumbling over furniture and swearing somewhere in the darkness behind her. For a terrible minute she couldn’t find the doorknob, but then her fingers grasped it and she was out the door and on her way down the hall.

She was partway down the staircase to the first floor, feeling her way on the dark stairs with desperate haste, when there was a shout from behind her. “Hank! Jess! Stop her! Head her off!”

Robin stumbled at the bottom of the stairs, picked herself up, and dashed toward the front door. One of the big double doors was open; but just as she almost reached it, a figure appeared ing the doorway, and she was caught in a blinding glare of light. Before she could stop, Robin almost collided with the man who held the light. With a startled yelp, the stranger raised the flashlight as if he meant to hit her with it, and in terror Robin threw up her hand to protect her head. Her upflung hand crashed against the flashlight with painful force, and there was a spinning arch of light as it flew from his hand. Darkness and silence followed the crash of the flashlight to the stone floor of the portico.

Realizing that she must be almost close enough to the stranger to touch him, Robin began to back away as silently as she could. She had gone only a few steps when the stranger shouted, “Hey, Fred! What’s going on? Who’s in there?”

Fred’s voice was close now, too. He must be almost down the stairs. “It’s a little kid from the Village. We got to catch her. Where’s Hank?”

“Right here.” The other one had apparently reached the door.

Only a few feet away Robin continued to edge backward, step by step. She knew that the door to the drawing room was very close. Her fingers touched the wall, and she turned and felt frantically for the door and the doorknob.

“Shhh! Listen, I heard something. Over that way.” Shuffling feet were feeling their way toward her when at last she found the doorknob. The click when it turned brought shouts from her three pursuers, and they lunged toward her. Robin slipped through the door and ran. If she could only find her way to the adobe wing and the secret door behind the bookcase before they caught her!

She had the advantage of knowing her way around in the big house, and she might have eluded them entirely in the darkness except for the old doors. Each time her shuffling, groping pursuers fell a little behind, there was another door to go through, and the squeak of the stiff old hinges brought them after her again in stumbling haste. Then the door into the adobe wing stuck and she had to jerk it several times before it would open. By that time the footsteps were very close. “Here she is,” a voice shouted. “I got her!” But the door came open, and Robin ducked down and slipped through. The three followed very close behind.