“Do you suppose the Taits are ready?”
“They said they’d be. Funny thing about artistic people. They’re never as dumb as they look. We’ll drive up your road, cut through the lower woods on foot, and come down from the other end. Can’t afford to have Ella May worrying.”
Amos came back with two cartons. “Two dozen,” he said. “Jumbo. No charge. Violet’s a nice girl and she’s been through a lot. She can put them on the grocery bill and keep the money for herself. . . . You ain’t going already! You didn’t tell me what happened!”
“There’s nothing new, Amos,” Wilcox said. “The Colonel says Morey’s Morey and that Stoneman was just what he claimed to be, an archæologist. I’m going to use the ’phone. Want to talk to my sister.”
“So that paper was trash. Trash with a coincidence. The county won’t pay for that Perley. You’re sticking our necks out, Perley, with election coming up.”
Wilcox had the operator on the ’phone. “Maudie?” he said. “Just wanted to thank you. The calls came in fine and you did a good job. But then I knew you would, girl. Listen. Anybody try to get my house to-night? No? That’s fine. Keep it up. Maudie, I don’t know when I’ll get home and I sure would appreciate it if you’d send somebody around to tell Pansy. Just tell her not to worry and look for me when she sees me.”
Amos followed them to the door and watched them drive off.
“I seen that sledge you hid on the back seat,” he called after them.
The wind was howling down the mountain and they didn’t hear him.
Some minutes later they felt their way through the shrubbery that screened the studio at the foot of the Taits’ back garden. No light showed; the windows were heavily curtained, by request.
Mark talked to the Taits and gave them a list of measurements. They listened gravely, huddled in their ridiculous capes. When he had finished he turned to Wilcox. “You’d better stay here. I’ll walk back home.”
He went back the way he had come, still bent on separating Ella May from worry.
Beulah waylaid him in the upper hall. “Where have you been! It’s after midnight!”
“Midnight? It feels like next year. . . . Where’s Bessy?”
“Asleep, I’m sorry I had to bother you, but she was crying. She wanted to see you. It was awful.”
“That’s all right. Violet in bed too?”
“Hours ago. Look here, Mark. I heard something on the gadget this afternoon and this is the first chance I’ve had to tell you. Mrs. Morey sent five thousand dollars to Florrie’s mother and the woman refused it. I heard Mr. Morey tell her when he came back from the funeral.”
“I know. It’s unimportant, except for the crown it puts on Mrs. Simmons’ head. Run along to bed and lock up. You don’t have to listen to that thing any longer.”
“You—know?”
“Practically.”
“But listen!” She told him about the labels and the laundry marks. “Does that prove anything? I mean does it help?”
“Honey, I’ve got French laundry marks myself. On handkerchiefs. And I’ve heard of unpatriotic people who rip the labels out of their clothes to fool the customs. It’s plain dastardly. Now go to bed.”
He waited until he heard her key turn. Then he went to his own room. He sat by the window, planning. Once he whispered softly and if Amos had heard him he’d have gone crazy again. He said: “So she bites her finger-nails when she—thinks!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
ON his way to breakfast the next morning Mark met Morey leaving the dining room.
Morey’s hands were ringed with silver pots and pitchers. He didn’t look happy. “I always say,” he said grimly, “if you want a thing done right, do it yourself. We nearly left these trinkets for the landlord. . . . Did you see Bittner about the trucks?”
“They’ll be here at three. How’re you doing?”
“My bones are coming through my skin. That Pond woman sent down seven trunks and a list of more to come. I can travel around the world in a suitcase. Women!”
“Any plans about Stoneman’s stuff?”
“Sort of. I wanted to ask you first. Do you think it’ll be all right if I send it along to storage with our things?”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t want to do anything that might raise a howl. Would you—I mean do you mind getting it together for me? And what about the book?”
“Sure. I’ll do it after I eat. There isn’t much. Two suitcases, one for clothes and one for manuscript; one typewriter. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to keep the manuscript.”
“Do you think he’ll come back for it?”
“I’m not guessing. He has my address. If he turns up some night he’ll know where to find me.”
“According to local rumour, if he turns up you’ll hear him coming. Like this.” He rattled his silver and wailed like a banshee. . . . “They’re getting blasé around here. In the old days that would have started something. How did you and Wilcox make out with your report?”
“So-so. I think he’ll convince his betters that he did all he could. Election coming up next year, and you know what that is.”
“I’d put in a good word for him if I knew where to put it. . . . Say, do you know what happened last night? When La Petty looked for her dear boy and couldn’t find him she came down with a crying jag. My good port again. Which gives me an idea. I’ve got about a dozen bottles left, and she might as well have them. I’ll call it a Christmas present and Wilcox’ll call it impairing the morals of minors.”
“She’ll love it, but don’t give it to her now!”
Morey shut one understanding eye. “Bring Stoneman’s stuff to the cellar when you can.” He clanked down the bare hall.
Mark stood in the doorway and surveyed the room. The rugs and curtains were gone; it was warm and clean, but at the same time it was cold and cheerless. Davenport’s hunting scenes still hung on the walls and his heavy glass decanters stood on the sideboard. It was his room now, his house. He was emerging for the first time.
He snapped his fingers suddenly, swore under his breath, and went across the hall to the library. That floor was bare also, but the heavy red curtains still covered the windows. He prowled around.
“That’s more than I deserve,” he told himself. He went back to the dining room.
Violet came in with scrambled eggs and muffins. “I heard you stamping around,” she said. “These floors. Make a person sound like a horse. Thanks for bringing the eggs. How much?”
“A present from Amos, but don’t start dreaming girlish dreams.” He regarded her with pleasure. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks red; he could almost see a Love Lyric gathering in her round young throat.
“Youth,” he commented. “It gives me a pain. You can get over anything, can’t you?”
“Our business is with the living, not the dead,” she said solemnly. “We’re taught that.” She poured his coffee from a kitchen pot. “Looks kind of terrible, don’t it, but what comes out is just the same.” She stood first on one foot, then on the other, swallowed a few times, and burst into speech. “Oh, Mr. East, I got a fur coat! Mrs. Morey give it to me this morning! It’s a grey Persian, she said, and I look like nothing in this world, you ought to see!”
“I’m going to,” he said. “When we have that dinner. Little green orchids, I think. Anybody can wear purple.”
“Where?” she demanded.
“You’ll see. Maybe New York. Chaperoned, of course.”
“Of course,” she repeated doubtfully. “Of course! A party, like! And Miss Petty and Miss Pond!”
“You’ll see.”
She fussed with the table, found nothing to do, and started off.
“Holler if you want anything,” she said over her shoulder. “I haven’t got time for manners.” The first notes of “Less Than the Dust” bubbled forth. She choked them back. He watched the struggle in her eyes as she weighed grief with happiness. It didn’t take long; bef
ore she reached the pantry door she was on the second line.
Mark went to his own room and packed his suitcase. He knew the dictograph would have to wait until later. He packed Stoneman’s few belongings and put the manuscript with his own things. Then, with Stoneman’s case in his hand, he went to the nursery. It was bedlam.
In one corner, “Old King Cole” bellowed from the depth of a portable phonograph already tagged for travelling. In another, Anne and Ivy were throwing toys into a wooden packing case, oblivious to warning thuds and premonitory crashes. In the centre of the room Beulah was being resisted by a wardrobe trunk.
Ivy, her head and arms swathed in bandages, gave a welcome shriek and dropped a set of dishes.
Beulah ran her fingers through her scant locks and gave him a look.
“Get out,” she said through her teeth.
He embraced the trunk and slammed it shut. “There,” he said. “Now why don’t you sit down and rest.”
“Why? Because at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near. Meaning Bittner’s trucks. If I don’t get out of this house soon they’ll have to take me in a straight jacket. Look me in the eye, Mark. You and Perley Wilcox aren’t up to anything, are you? Because if you are—”
“Nothing to worry about. You may proceed as directed. Where’s Bessy?”
“Where I’ll be to-morrow—in bed with aspirin. . . Ivy, that doll cost enough money to feed a poor child for a year. Drop it. No! No! I mean—!” She was too late.
Mark drew Anne out into the hall.
“How would you like to go to a tea party before you leave?”
“All of us?”
“No. Just you and Ivy. I might drop in later. Some people I know are having ice cream and cake at five o’clock. You could go, have fun, and be back in plenty of time for your train.”
“I’ll have to ask Mother.”
“Now, Anne! Be your age! Do you want to bother your mother at a time like this? Here I go to a lot of trouble getting you a nice invitation and you turn it down. I thought we were friends.”
She regarded him gravely. “You mustn’t say things like that, Mr. East. You’re much too sensitive. Of course we’re friends. . . . Do you think it will be all right?”
“I give you my word. Just don’t say anything to anybody. It’s—it’s a kind of surprise party. We’ll fix the details later.” He patted her cheek and smiled into her eyes, and was disproportionately pleased when she smiled back.
His next stop was the cellar. Perrin was there alone, hammering the last nails into the box that held silver.
“Here are Mr. Stoneman’s things,” Mark said. “They’re to go with the storage consignment. . . . Where’s Mr. Morey?”
“In Bear River, sir.”
Mark watched while he drove the final nail home.
“You have good hands, Perrin. I’ve noticed them before. Strong hands. I don’t blame you for taking care of them.” He left without looking back.
Violet sat at the kitchen table with a battered cook book, desperately scanning the section devoted to eggs. She held up a small piece of cheese.
“I never thought I’d thank God for cheese,” she said. “You wouldn’t be planning to eat lunch somewhere else, would you?”
“I would. At Wilcox’s. I should have told you before. Listen, do you want to do me one more favour? It’s the last I’ll ever ask, honest.”
She looked down. “I know. Something else I got to keep my mouth shut about.”
“You’re learning to read my mind and that’s not going to do you any good. At four-thirty I want you to dress the children and take them for a walk down by the garage. There’ll be a car waiting for them. Pop them in, make sure the curtains are drawn, and then come back to the house. I don’t think they’ll be missed, but if anyone asks you where they are, you don’t know.”
She drew back. “Where—where will they be?”
“Violet, you little goat, they’ll be perfectly safe! Florrie’s brother is the driver. Doesn’t that make it all right?”
“No, sir.” Her voice was unsteady. “I’d have to know more. I like those children.”
“I know you do. That’s why I picked you for the job. You do what I tell you and you’ll save them a lot of nightmares. They’re going over to have tea with Mrs. Wilcox. After that the curtain comes down to loud applause and we all go back where we belong. And some of us will undoubtedly get plastered.”
“Can’t—can’t I go with them?” She twisted her hands. “I can get off easy. Nobody’s eating here to-night. They’re having dinner on the train.”
“Sorry,” he said carelessly, “but we need you here. At five-thirty Mr. Wilcox is coming up to make a statement. He wants everybody present.”
“Not servants? Not me and Perrin?”
“Everybody. After the kids go, you come up to the library and take a nice chair by the fire. Don’t talk, just sit. And after it’s all over you can go home.”
Violet was learning fast. “I know!” she gasped.” It’s got to do with—!”
“It’s got to do with something you never heard of and don’t know anything about; and after it’s over you’ll be the most popular girl in Bear River, take my word for it. You may even be asked for interviews, like a movie star. And why not? Haven’t you got a grey Persian?”
“W-w-ell. . . . I just sit and don’t talk?”
“That’s it. But when I say don’t talk I mean no heckling from the gallery. You’ll answer when you’re spoken to, like a little lady.”
“Would you wear the grey Persian if you was me—then, I mean?”
“I certainly would!” He made a nonchalant exit.
Up in the lower hall he took his wraps from the closet and opened the front door. He looked and listened before he closed the door softly and started down the drive. To anyone watching from the rows of staring windows he was a young man with an afternoon to kill. He dawdled. He flicked snow from the shrubbery, examined fallen branches, and whistled. He eyed the sullen sky with frank disapproval, indicated by head wagging and shrugs. Halfway down and still in sight of the house he discovered a footpath leading off into the woods. This evidently surprised him. He hesitated, looked right and left, and sidled forward in the manner of a nervous tourist entering a catacomb. Once hidden from view he scuttled like a rabbit who knows a better ’ole.
Sometime later he turned up at the station and had sandwiches and coffee with Wilcox and Amos. He stayed there until four-thirty.
Up at the house Bittner’s trucks had come and gone. In the front hall a pile of hand luggage, rugs, and thermos bottles stood waiting.
Beulah got Bessy ready for departure. When that was behind her, she carried their suitcases downstairs and went hunting for Violet and a possible cup of tea.
Upstairs in the morning-glory room, now stripped bare, Bessy huddled in a chair by the window. She had wrapped a knitted shawl about her head, for the house was slowly growing cold. It was growing dark too, inside and out. The current was still on, but someone had taken most of the bulbs. Lights burned in the kitchen and in Mrs. Morey’s room but nowhere else.
The house was growing colder and colder. Bessy shivered and tightened her shawl. Suddenly she remembered she hadn’t seen the children since lunch. She got up and went down the dim hall to the nursery. There was one bulb there. She pressed the button. The room was empty.
Coming back she met Beulah. “I can’t find the children,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve heard them either, for a long time. I—I want to go home.”
“Violet took them out. Come on and lie down, Bessy. I know how you feel, but we can’t go until Mark comes. We’ll stay until everybody leaves and then we’ll say goodbye properly. Besides, we haven’t been paid yet and I think Mr. Morey has a present for you.”
“Oh.” Bessy brightened. “Just as you say, dear.” She let herself be led back to her room. “Beulah, do you think walls can talk?”
“What!” Beulah gave her a sharp look. “You
haven’t been hearing any, have you?”
“No-o-o. Not exactly. But I’ve had the queerest feeling all afternoon. As if somebody was saying, ‘Go—go—go!”
“Hush.” Beulah looked over her shoulder and shivered. “Here, I brought a bulb up from the kitchen.” She screwed it into a socket. “This will cheer you up. I never saw such penny-pinching. Taking out bulbs and turning off heat while the house is still full of people!” She settled Bessy on the stripped bed and covered her with a coat. “Now be sensible and relax. I’ll stay here with you.” She sat on the edge of the bed and stared fixedly at the door.
Morey entered his wife’s room with a sheaf of tickets in his hand. “Here they are,” he said. “We’ve given ourselves too much time. What are we going to do, sit around?”
She was standing at the window and she didn’t turn.
“A strange car came in a little while ago. It went in the direction of the garage. When it left it had the curtains drawn. What was it?”
“I don’t know. Probably the man from Scott’s. He’s going to turn off the water and so on. Lock up.”
“He didn’t stay more than fifteen minutes. He drove too fast.”
“He’ll be back, and if he wants to break his neck that’s his business. Where are the kids?”
She turned quickly. “Where? Aren’t they with Miss Petty and Miss Pond?”
“Calm down. I suppose they are. I only asked because the place is so damn quiet.”
“Go at once! Find them and bring them here! I won’t have—”
The ’phone rang.
“Just a minute,” he said. He went to the ’phone. “Hello?”
She moved over to the bare dressing table and stood there, applying rouge with a shaking hand.
“Another complication,” he said, turning from the ’phone. “That was Wilcox. He’s on his way here. Says he has to see us.”
She moistened her lips. “W-why?”
“Search me. You know how he talks. ‘I have to do this, Mr. Morey.’ Maybe he wants to seal the house after we leave it. I think they do that—when there’s been trouble. Don’t worry.”
Violet, wearing her good silk and the grey Persian, added a straw suitcase and lumpy bundle to the pile of luggage in the hall. She scowled at the one weak bulb that burned at the foot of the stairs, found a stronger one in the socket of the dining-room door, and stood under it with her pocket mirror. She turned her face this way and that, and liked what she saw.
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