The Works of Andre Norton (12 books)

by Andre Norton

  "This--this is rather a darkish place, isn't it?"

  "Not so bad." Val considered the hall below, which seemed suddenly peopled by an overabundance of oddly shaped shadows.

  "No," her voice grew stronger, "not so bad. We're together anyway, Val. Last year I thought I'd die, shut up in that awful school, and then coming home to hear--"

  "About me making my first and last flight. Yes, not exactly a rest cure for any of us, was it? But it's all over now. The Ralestones may be down but they're not out, yet, in spite of Mosile Oil and those coal-mines. D'you know, we might use some of that nice gilt-edged stock for wall-paper. There's enough to cover a closet at least. Here we are, Rupert from beating about the globe trying to be a newspaper man, you straight from N'York's finest finishing-school, and me--well, out of the plainest hospital bed I ever saw. We've got this house and what Rupert managed to clear from the wreck. Something will turn up. In the meantime--"

  "Yes?" she prompted.

  "In the meantime," he went on, leaning against the banister for a moment's rest, "we can be looking for the Luck. As Rupert says, we need it badly enough. Here's the upper hall. Which way now?"

  "Over to the left wing. These in front are what Rupert refers to as 'state bedrooms.'"

  "Yes?" He opened the nearest door and whistled softly. "Not so bad. About the size of a small union station and provided with all the comforts of a tomb. Decidedly not what we want."

  "Wait, here's a plaque set in the wall. Look!" She ran her finger over a glass-covered square.

  "Regulations for guests, or a floor plan to show how to reach the dining-room in the quickest way," her brother suggested.

  "No." She read aloud slowly:

  "'This Room Was Occupied by General Andrew Jackson, the Victor of the Battle of New Orleans, upon the Tenth Day after the Battle.'"

  "Whew! 'Old Hickory' here! But I thought that the Ralestones were more or less under a cloud at that time," commented Val.

  "History--"

  "In the making. Quite so. Now may I suggest that we find some slumber rooms slightly more modern? Rupert is apt to become annoyed at undue delay in such matters."

  They went down the hall and turned into a short cross corridor. From a round window at the far end a ray of sun still swept in, but it was a sickly, faded ray. The storm Rupert had spoken of could not be far off.

  "This is the right way. Mr. Harrison had these little numbers put on the doors for his guests," Ricky pointed out. "I'll take 'three'; that was marked on the plan he sent us as a lady's room. You take that one across the hall and let Rupert have the one next to you."

  The rooms they explored were not as imposing as the one which had sheltered Andrew Jackson for a night. Furnished with chintz-covered chairs, solid mahogany bedsteads and highboys, they were pleasant enough even if they weren't chambers to make an antique dealer "Oh!" and "Ah!" Val discovered with approval some stiff prints of mathematically correct clippers hung in exact patterns on his walls, while Ricky's room held one treasure, a dainty dressing-table.

  A small door near the end of the hall gave upon a linen closet. And Ricky, throwing her short white jacket and hat upon the chair in her room, set about making beds, having given Val strict orders to return to the lower hall and sort out the luggage before bringing it up.

  As he reached the wide landing he stopped a moment. Since that winter night, almost a year in the past, when a passenger plane had decided--in spite of its pilot--to make a landing on a mountainside, he had learned to hobble where he had once run. The accident having made his right leg a rather accurate barometer, that crooked bone was announcing the arrival of the coming storm with a sharp pain or two which shot unexpectedly from knee to ankle. One such caught him as he was about to take a step and threw him suddenly off balance.

  He clutched at a dim tapestry which hung across the wall and tumbled through a slit in the fabric--which smelled of dust and moth balls--into a tiny alcove flanking a broad, well-cushioned window-seat under tall windows. Below him in a riot of bushes and hedges run wild, lay the garden. Somewhere beyond must lie Bayou Mercier leading directly to Lake Borgne and so to the sea, the thoroughfare used by their pirate ancestors when they brought home their spoil.

  The green of the rank growth below, thought Val, seemed intensified by the strange yellowish light. A moss-grown path led straight into the heart of a jungle where sweet olive, banana trees, and palms grew in a matted mass. Harrison might have done wonders for the house but he had allowed the garden to lapse into a wilderness.

  "Val!"

  "Coming!" he shouted and pushed back through the curtain. He could hear Rupert moving about the lower hall.

  "Just made it in time," he said as the younger Ralestone limped down to join him. "Hear that?"

  A steady pattering outside was growing into a wild dash of wind-driven rain. It was dark and Rupert himself was but a blur moving across the hall.

  "Do you still have the flash? Might as well descend into the lower regions and put on the lights."

  They crossed the Long Hall, passing through another large chamber where furniture huddled under dust covers, and then into a small cupboard-lined passage. This gave upon a dark cavern where Val's hand scraped a table top only too painfully as he went. Then Rupert found the door leading to the cellar, and they went down and down into inky blackness upon which their thread of torch-light made little impression.

  The damp, unpleasant scent of mold and wet grew stronger as they descended, and their fingers brushed slime-touched walls.

  "Phew! Not very comfy down here," Val protested as Rupert threw the torch beam along the nearest wall. With a grunt of relief he stepped forward to pull open the door of a small black box. "That does it," he said as he threw the switch. "Now for the topside again and some supper."

  They negotiated the steps and found the button which controlled the kitchen lights. The glare showed them a room on the mammoth scale suggested by the Long Hall. A giant fireplace still equipped with three-legged pots, toasting irons, and spits was at one side, its brick oven beside it. But a very modern range and sink faced it.

  In the center of the room was a large table, while along the far wall were closed cupboards. Save for its size and the novelty of the fireplace, it was an ordinary kitchen, complete to red-checked curtains at the windows. Pleasant and homey, Val thought rather wistfully. But that was before the coming of that night when Ricky walked in the garden and he heard something stir in the Long Hall--which should have been empty--

  "Val! Rupert!" A cry which started valiantly became a wail as it echoed through empty rooms. "Where are yo-o-ou!"

  "Here, in the kitchen," Val shouted back.

  A moment later Ricky stood in the doorway, her face flushed and her usually correct curls all on end.

  "Mean, selfish, utterly selfish pigs!" she burst out. "Leaving me all alone in the dark! And it's so dark!"

  "We just went down to turn on the lights," Val began.

  "So I see." With a sniff she looked about her. "It took two of you to do that. But it only required one of me to make three beds. Well, this is a warning to me. Next time--" she did not finish her threat. "I suppose you want some supper?"

  Rupert was already at the cupboards. "That," he agreed, "is the general idea."

  "Beans or--" Ricky's hand closed upon Val's arm with a nipper-like grip. "What," her voice was a thin thread of sound, "was that?"

  Above the steady beat of the rain they heard a noise which was half scratch, half thud. Under Rupert's hand the latch of the cupboard clicked.

  "Back door," he said laconically.

  "Well, why don't you open it?" Ricky's fingers bit tighter so that Val longed to twist out of her grip.

  The key grated in the lock and then Rupert shot back the accompanying bolt.

  "Something's there," breathed Ricky.

  "Probably nothing but a branch blown against the door by the wind," Val assured her, remembering the tangled state of the garden.

  The d
oor came back, letting in a douche of cold rain and a black shadow which leaped for the security of the center of the room.

  "Look!" Ricky laughed unsteadily and released Val's arm.

  In the center of the neat kitchen, spitting angrily at the wet, stood a ruffled and oversized black tom-cat.

  CHAPTER II

  THE LUCK OF THE LORDS OF LORNE

  "Nice of you to drop in, old man," commented Rupert dryly as he shut the door. "But didn't anyone ever mention to you that gentlemen wipe their feet before entering strange houses?" He surveyed a line of wet paw prints across the brick floor.

  "Did he get all wet, the poor little--" Ricky was on her knees, stretching out her hand and positively cooing. The cat put down the paw he had been licking and regarded her calmly out of round, yellow eyes. Then he returned to his washing. Val laughed.

  "Evidently he is used to the strong, silent type of human, Ricky. I wonder where he belongs."

  "He belongs to us now. Yes him does, doesn't him?" She attempted to touch the visitor's head. His ears went back and he showed sharp teeth in no uncertain manner.

  "Better let him alone," advised Rupert. "He doesn't seem to be the kind you can cuddle."

  "So I see." Ricky arose to her feet with an offended air. "One would think that I resembled the more repulsive members of my race."

  "In the meantime," Rupert again sought the cupboard, "let's eat."

  Half an hour later, fed and well content (even Satan, as the Ralestones had named their visitor because of his temperament, having condescended to accept some of the better-done bits of bacon), they sat about the table staring at the dishes. Now it is a very well-known fact that dishes do _not_ obligingly leap from a table into a pan of well-soaped water, slosh themselves around a few times, and jump out to do a spot of brisk rubbing down. But how nice it would be if they did, thought Val.

  "The dishes--" began Ricky in a faint sort of way.

  "Must be done. We gather that. How utterly nasty bacon grease looks when it's congealed." Her younger brother surveyed the platter before him with mournful interest.

  "And the question before the house is, I presume, who's going to wash them?" Rupert grinned. "This seems to be as good a time as any to put some sort of a working plan in force. There is a certain amount of so-called housework which has to be done. And there are three of us to do it. It's up to us to apportion it fairly. Shall we say, let everyone care for his or her own room--"

  "There are also the little matters of washing, and ironing, and cleaning," Ricky broke in to remind him.

  "And we're down to fifty a month in hard cash. But the tenant farmer on the other side of the bayou is to supply us with fresh fruit and vegetables. And our wardrobes are fairly intact. So I think that we can afford to hire the washing done. We'll take turns cooking--"

  "Who's elected to do the poisoning first?" Val inquired with interest. "I trust we possess a good cook-book?"

  "Well, I'll take breakfast tomorrow morning," Rupert volunteered. "Anyone can boil coffee and toast bread. As for dishes, we'll all pitch in together. And suppose we start right now."

  When the dishes were back again in their neat piles on the cupboard shelves, Ricky vanished upstairs, to come trailing down again in a house-coat which she fondly imagined made her look like one of the better-known screen sirens. The family gathered in an aimless way before the empty fireplace of the Long Hall. Rupert was filling a black pipe which allowed him to resemble--in very slight degree, decided Val--an explorer in an English tobacco advertisement. Val himself was stretched full length on the couch with about ten pounds of cat attempting to rest on his center section in spite of his firm refusal to allow the same.

  "Br-r-r!" Ricky shivered. "It's cold in here."

  "Probably just Uncle Rick passing through--not the weather. No, cat, you may not sit on that stomach. It's just as full of bacon as yours is and it wants a nice long rest." Val swept Satan off to the floor and he resignedly went to roost by the boy's feet in spite of the beguiling noises Ricky made to attract his attention.

  "These stone houses are cold." Rupert scratched a match on the sole of his shoe. "We ought to have flooring put down over this stone paving. I saw some wood stacked up in an outhouse when I put the car away. We'll have it in tomorrow and see what we can do about a fire in the evening."

  "And I thought the South was always warm." Ricky examined her hands. "Whoever," she remarked pleasantly, "took my hand lotion better return it. The consequences might not be very attractive."

  "Are you sure you packed it this morning?" Val asked.

  "But of--" Her fingers went to her mouth. "I wonder if I did? I've just got to have some. We'll drive to town tomorrow and get a bottle."

  "Thirty miles or so for a ten-cent bottle of gooey stuff," Val protested.

  "Good idea." Rupert stood with his back to the fireplace as if there really were a flame or two within its black emptiness. "I've some papers that LeFleur wants to see. Then there're our boxes at the freight station to arrange transportation for, and we'll have to see about getting a newspaper and--"

  "Make a list," murmured his brother.

  Rupert dropped down upon the wide arm of Ricky's chair and with her only too willing aid set to work. Val eyed them drowsily. Rupert and Ricky--or to give her her very formal name in full--Richanda Anne, were "Red" Ralestones, possessing the thin, three-cornered faces, the dark mahogany hair, the sharply defined cheek-bones which had been the mark of the family as far back in history as portraits or written descriptions existed. The "Red" Ralestones were marked also by height and a suppleness of body and movement. The men had been fine swordsmen, the ladies noted beauties. But they were also cursed, Val remembered vividly, with uncertain tempers.

  Rupert had schooled himself to the point where his emotions were mastered by his will. But Val had seen Ricky enjoy full tantrums, and the last occasion was not so long ago that the scene had become misty in his memory. Generous to the point of self-beggary, loyal to a fault, and incurably romantic, that was a "Red" Ralestone.

  Val himself was a "Black" Ralestone, which was a very different thing. They were a new growth on the family tree, a growth which appeared after the Ralestones had been exiled to colonial America. His black hair, his long, dark face of no particular beauty marked with straight, black brows set in a perpetual frown--that was the sign of a "Black" Ralestone. They were as strong-willed as the "Reds," but their anger could be controlled to icy rage.

  "Now that you have spent the monthly income," Val suggested as Rupert added up a long column of minute figures scrawled across the first page of his pocket note-book, "let's really get away from economics for one evening. The surroundings suggest something more romantic than dollars and cents. After all, when did a pirate ever show a saving disposition? Would the first Roderick--"

  "The Roderick who brought home the Luck?" Ricky laughed. "But he brought home a fortune, too, didn't he, Rupert?"

  Her brother relit his pipe. "Yes, but a great many lords came home from the Crusades with their pockets filled. Sir Roderick de la Stone thought the Luck worth his entire estate even after he was made Baron Ralestone."

  Ricky shivered delicately. "Not altogether nice people, those ancestors of ours," she observed.

  "No," Val grinned. "By rights this room should be full of ghosts instead of the beat of just one. How many Ralestones died violently? Seven or eight, wasn't it?"

  "But the ones who died in England should haunt Lorne," argued Ricky, half seriously.

  "Well then, that sort of confines us to the crews of the ships our great-great-great-grandfather scuttled," her brother replied.