The Rest Hollow Mystery

by Rebecca N. Porter

  CHAPTER II

  When Kenwick came to himself he was lying on a cavernous divan with agorgeous Indian blanket over him and a tabouret drawn close to his side.In a far corner of the room a rose-shaded lamp was burning. It gave tothe handsome drawing-room a rosy glow that seemed to envelop its everyobject in subtle mystery. For long minutes the sick man stared about theapartment without trying to move. Slowly the events of the last fewhours came back to him. Very cautiously, like a man who has justrecovered his sight after prolonged blindness, he felt his way backalong the path that he had just traveled. It brought him at last to thedoor of the garage and the beetle-black limousine grinding over hisneck.

  He reached out and touched the spindle-legged table at his side. On itwere his collar, tie, and a long-stemmed glass partly full of whisky.Very slowly he drained the remaining contents. Then he sat upright andgently touched his injured leg. It felt hard and tight. Whoever had donethe bandaging had made up in force what he had lacked in skill, but thenumbness of a too tight wrapping was an intense relief after his hour ofagony. He limped across the long room to the entrance-hall and stood atlength in the doorway of the mahogany-furnished dining-room guarded bythe row of gendarme chairs.

  This last evidence was conclusive. In some way he had gained admittanceto the house with the barred gate. Evidently there had been some oneclose at hand when he fainted; some one who had authority to carry himthrough those impregnable doors. The thought gave him an uncannyfeeling. But where was this gum-shod combination of mystery and mercy?In the curious way that the senses convey such intelligence he felt thatthe house was empty.

  "Well, if I've got to stay here alone all night," he said to himself,"I'm going to see what this place looks like."

  And so, using two light willow chairs as crutches, he started upon aslow tour of exploration. Through the swinging doors he passed into abutler's pantry and then into the kitchen. It was a large cheerful roomwith laundry in the rear. But although there were no soiled dishesabout, it had an undefinable air of untidiness and neglect. A crumpleddish-towel was under the table. The sink was grimy and the stovespotted with grease. Even to Kenwick's inexpert eyes the room appearedsomehow dirty and repellant.

  He set the wine-glass that he had brought from the front room on thetable and tried the back door. It was locked on the outside. Every doorand window that he had tested so far was similarly barred. With a vaguefeeling of misgiving he returned to the drawing-room. It was very late.The alabaster clock on the mantel was ticking its way toward midnight.He felt ravenously hungry but shrank from touching any of the food uponthe pantry shelves. He decided that until his host arrived he would sitin the den, a companionable little room, whose deep leather chairsinvited him. The porte-cochere was on this side of the house and thehome-comers, whoever they were, would doubtless enter there. No fireburned on the hearth but the house was comfortably and evenly warm. Itwas apparent that the caretaker was an expert furnace-man.

  Kenwick was about to sink into one of the big chairs opposite the hugeantlers of a deer when suddenly an object caught his eye. He struggledover to the telephone and took down the receiver. For five minutes hestood there holding it to his ear listening for the familiar hum thatassures telephonic health. But the thing was dead. As he hung it up, itstruck Kenwick all at once that it might be disconnected. The ideabrought him a sense of unaccountable resentment. "My Lord!" he muttered."I might as well be in a jail!"

  He sank into one of the Morris-chairs and gazed out into the blacknessof night. He could, he reflected, smash a window and make his escapethat way. But why escape from comfort into bleakness? Jail or no jail hewas lucky to have found such a haven. By morning somebody would havearrived and he could be taken to old man Raeburn's. He was probablyworrying about him at this very moment. "I didn't break into this placethough," Kenwick reassured himself. "Somebody in authority brought mein, so there's nothing criminal about staying on. And since there had tobe an invader, better myself than some unscrupulous beggar who mightmake off with the family plate."

  The reading-lamp upon the table was equipped with a dimmer. He drew thechain half its length, pulled the Indian blanket over him, and, in spiteof the dull ache in his leg, was soon wrapped in the dreamless slumberof utter exhaustion.

  When he awoke it was broad daylight and the dimly burning bulb of thereading-lamp shone with a futile bleary light. He extinguished it anddrew up the window-shades. Sleep had refreshed him and he felt healthilyhungry. The pain in his leg returned with almost overwhelming force whenhe attempted to walk, but a sharp-edged appetite impelled him to seekthe pantry. He found the dining-room wrapped in the same somberstillness that it had worn the night before, the bowl of walnuts showingdully in the center of the table. From the kitchen table where he hadset it the night before the empty wine-glass stared back at him. Butthere was something reassuring in its presence. It seemed to give muteevidence of the reality of this adventure.

  From the butler's pantry Kenwick brought a can of coffee and half a loafof bread. "Whatever my bill in this caravansary amounts to," he toldhimself as he measured out the coffee, "it's going to include breakfast.I've decided to sign up on the American plan."

  On his trip back to the pantry he discovered upon the ledge inside thewindow half a dozen fresh eggs. They gave him a little shock ofsurprise. For he was certain that they had not been there before. Thewindow was small and narrow, much too tiny to admit a human body. Butwhoever was detailed to take care of this place was apparently on thejob. Kenwick resolved to be on the alert for the egg-hunter. In twentyminutes he had cooked himself an ample breakfast and carried it into thedining-room on an impressive silver tray. Memories of long-ago campingtrips with his elder brother in the Adirondacks recurred to him as heate. Everett was a master camper but had always hated to cook. In orderto even things he had been willing to do much more than his share of therougher work. Now as Kenwick drank his coffee and ate the perfectlybrowned toast and fluffy eggs, he blessed those camping trips and theeducation which they had given him.

  And then his memory wandered from the wholesome sanity of those days tothe first dreadful months of the war. From the chaos of that era, onenight leaped out at him. It was the night that he had parted withEverett at the old Kenwick house, the house that had been the Kenwicks'for sixty years. Perhaps the stark simplicity of that scene, shorn ofobjective emotion by the presence of Everett's wife, was the very thingthat enabled him now to extricate it from the tangle of days thatpreceded and followed it. Everett had laid his hand for just an instantupon the shoulder of the new uniform. "I'm all you've got to see youoff, boy," he had said. "But if mother and dad could see you now they'dbe proud and happy." And then had followed a sentence or two of promise,of affection, of admonition, murmured in a hasty undertone intended toescape the ears of the statuesque creature who was his brother's wife.Kenwick had wondered afterward whether they had escaped her, whether,anything vital ever escaped Isabel Kenwick. And yet his farewell to herhad been a flawless scene. She was always the central figure in someflawless scene. His brother's whole life seemed to him to be enactedupon a perfectly appointed stage. There had been just the properproportion of regret and pride in Isabel's voice as she bade himgood-by; just the right waving to him from the steps and calling afterhim that whenever he returned his old room would be waiting witheverything just as he left it.

  And then he had come back and not found his room the same at all.Everything about the house seemed changed. His room was a guestroom now,and he had been relegated to a place on the third floor withdormer-windows. He hated dormer-windows. When his mother had been headof the home the third floor had been used only for the servants, butunder Isabel's regime it had been converted into extra guestrooms, andthere seemed to be a never-ending succession of guests.

  So it had been no hardship to acquiesce in Everett's suggestion that hecome out to California and recuperate from the war strain in Old ManRaeburn's hospitable Mont-Mer home. It was a splendid idea for Everettwell knew that the West was m
ore like home to him now than New York.Mont-Mer itself was unfamiliar, but only a few hours up coast there wasSan Francisco. And in San Francisco was----He felt in his pocket. Butthe slender flat object around which his fingers had closed duringmoments of desolation and peril in the trenches was not there. Therealization that it had been pitched into the underbrush along with hismoney and watch stabbed him with a new pain. Her picture out there inthat canon where any casual explorer might chance upon it! Why, it wasdesecration!

  He pushed aside the tray and went over to the long mirror in the door ofthe hall closet. In all his twenty-five years he had never given hisphysical appearance such intensive consideration. Vanity had never beenone of his failings. And his fastidious taste in dress was moreinstinctive than consciously cultivated. Now the keen dark eyes traveledslowly from the brown hair brushed back from his forehead to the thinlips and firm square chin. His eyes were the wide-apart eyes of thestudent but it was the nose that gave his face distinction. Thin,sensitive, perfectly molded, it betrayed an eager, intense nature neverquite at peace with itself. The hands with which he tried now to combhis disordered hair into decorum were the long-fingered, hollow-palmedhands of those who are blessed and cursed with the creative,introspective temperament. They were hands impatient of detail, eager tograsp at the garment of great achievement, resentful of the slowerprocess of accomplishment. He had drawn himself to his full six feet.Army training had given him an extra inch, and of this one physicalasset he was proud.

  "Decent appearing," he mused, checking off the credit side of his ledgerin businesslike tones. "Fairly prosperous, sane, and law-abiding. Iwonder if I'll be able to convince my host of any of those things."

  He decided suddenly to explore the upper part of the house. It wouldcost terrific physical effort, but a fury of restlessness possessedhim. On the broad landing the stairway divided and took opposite ways.He turned to the left and a few minutes later found himself standing inthe open doorway of what appeared to be an upstairs sitting-room. It wasobviously a man's apartment. The smell of stale cigar smoke was in theair and on the table a pipe and ash-tray. It was the sight of the latterthat brought Kenwick's fine eyes together in a deep-furrowed frown. Fromthe cold ashes he drew out a half-smoked cigar. For a long moment hestood turning it in his hand. It couldn't have been in that tray formore than a few hours.

  In the room beyond, separated from the sitting-room by portieres, was amassive walnut bed, chiffonier, and shaving-stand. A blue-tiled bathroomcompleted the suite. The windows of all three were closed and locked. Hewent back to the hall, past another bedroom with door ajar, anddescended the stairs to the landing. Here he paused to rest, gazingspeculatively at the closed portals in the opposite wing.

  "The modern American home," he decided. "He has one part of the houseand she has the other."

  His face twitched with the pain of his pilgrimage. It was going to be acrucial experience getting downstairs. While he stood there almostdespairing of the feat of covering the distance back to the den, therecame to his ears a sound that turned him cold. He forgot his pain andclung to the supporting post motionless as a statue.

  The sound came again. He knew this time that it was not thehallucination of overstrung nerves. Dragging himself up by the banister,he knocked on the first door of the right wing. There was no response.He knocked again, then boldly turned the knob. The door was locked. Butthrough the deathly stillness there came, after a moment's pause, thesound that he had heard before. It was the sound of a woman's stifledsobbing.