Hunter's Green

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

The driver was Alicia Daven. Their meeting had a swift and secretive air, yet it had not been managed with surreptitiousness. Anyone who looked could see.

  I let the curtain fall, but I did not switch on a light again. The fire lent enough radiance to the room as I got into bed. It was not very late, but I felt less accessible between the covers. I had been half-afraid that Dacia, when she parted from Marc, would come running to my room to tease and cajole in an effort to find out what Alicia had said about the picture. If she came now, I would simply call to her that I had gone to bed.

  Once between the sheets, with the hot-water bottle at my feet, and a slippery English puff atop the covers, I began to find how weary I was. There had not been enough time to catch up on the change of hours after my flight across the Atlantic, and I had been at high tension most of the day. Perhaps tonight I would sleep straight through and forget about that tower door with the bureau shoved against it, forget about the faithless Cynthia Langley and the unhappy Mr. Dunscombe—even forget the present inhabitants of Athmore, with their equally besetting problems.

  I slept indeed, but not through the night. At two o’clock the tapping began. My first nightmare thought was that the green rook was after me. I struggled awake and sat up in bed to listen. Someone or something was rapping on the tower door. The sound was not that of knuckles against wood, and I reached in alarm for the cord of my bed lamp and blinked into the resulting brightness of the room. Everything was quiet. I thought of calling out to Mr. Dunscombe that his Cynthia no longer slept here, no longer awaited her lovers in the blue lady’s room, but I thrust the impulse back in time.

  There was no further sound. My watch showed me ten minutes past two when I switched out the light and slipped down beneath the covers. Had I dreamed the knocking? What had I been dreaming? Not more than five minutes more passed before the rapping came again, reverberating through the tower. I propelled myself from the bed, still half-asleep, and stumbled to where the bureau blocked the tower entrance.

  “Who’s there?” I called. “What do you want?”

  Except for the wind in the sentry slots high above, there was no sound. I called again, more loudly, but nothing answered me. Yet the moment I started back to bed, the pounding on my door returned, demanding something of me in no uncertain terms. The sound seemed like that of metal against wood, though I did not think poor Mr. Dunscombe went about in clanking chains.

  This time I pushed the bureau slightly aside and stood in silence with my hand upon the knob of the door. This knocking was mischievous, meant to alarm me, and I would not endure it the whole night through.

  There was a long interval in which I waited motionless beside the door before metal struck sharply upon the wood. I thrust the door open promptly upon tower darkness, mellowed by pale moonlight from above, and by the glow from my room below. There was a flash of something above, and then nothing more to be seen. Nothing crouched in the small space at the foot of stone steps. No one was visible on the steps themselves, although an intruder would have been silhouetted against the door-framed sky above. The opening into the tower stood empty, and the sound of the wind was louder as it came whooping across the rooftops. Some superstitious part of my brain warned me that only Mr. Dunscombe could disappear into thin air so quietly, but I would have none of that. There was an answer to this, and I did not mean to be kept awake all night by such tormenting.

  I closed the door and went to my wardrobe. Hurriedly I pulled on warm slacks and stuffed my nightgown into the trouser legs as I put them on. Then came a sweater and my green trench coat. I pulled rainboots on my feet, tied a kerchief over my head. While I dressed, the thumping came again, but I did not answer it, growing increasingly indignant.

  Before I opened the tower door again, however, I took the billfold that held my negative from my bag and looked about the room for some safe hiding place. After all, the room had been searched before, and someone might be trying to frighten me out of it now. The coal scuttle offered a good hiding place, providing I retrieved the wallet before Nellie built her fire in the grate. With a poker I knocked a cranny into the coals and thrust the billfold into it, toppling a few black lumps to hide it securely.

  Then I picked up my flashlight and was ready for the tower, still far more indignant than frightened. At dinner tonight there had been talk about patrolling the roof, keeping a guard on watch up there all night, so I knew it would not be empty. Though if Leo Casella was behind the mischief which had been taking place around Athmore, Marc’s remark about bottles would probably have warned him away. Nevertheless, I would find Marc, or Nigel, or Justin up there on the roof, and if I saw nothing myself, I would simply report this new mischief and go back to bed.

  I waited for no more knocking but pulled open the door and turned my flashlight beam upon dark steps. The light made less impression than I’d hoped—being only a small flicker against luminous darkness. Still, it showed me the steps as I followed their turning ascent to the tiny room at the top. Once, during a lull in the wind as I climbed, I thought I heard running on the roof overhead—which might mean that I had frightened off my tormentor.

  The tower gave onto the flat roof through a narrow, arched doorway, and as I stepped to the opening I saw my flashlight would not be needed. The full moon shed a pale, intense light upon the rooftops of Athmore. Only when wind-driven clouds blew raggedly across its face did darkness return—to vanish again as clouds shredded past.

  Once before I had been up here on the roofs, but then it was by daylight. By night they looked monstrously different and far vaster than before. From where I stood, the rough underfoot surface stretched the full equivalent of the corridor below, parapet-rimmed, and joined at its center by the connecting bar that duplicated the area of the long gallery and reached across to the roof of the south wing. At each of the four outer corners of the H rose a black, slope-roofed tower, and in between were numerous chimney banks which cast long, confusing shadows across my path. Only these shadows, so sharply etched, gave evidence of how strong a light could be cast by the moon. All else was bathed in a luminous radiance that seemed unearthly, unreal. And all across the rooftops nothing moved. If there were watchers they were well hidden, silent and motionless. The chimney shadows looked almost human—like the shadows of tall men, but they too stood a motionless guard, and there was no sound but the wind.

  I stepped out from the protection of my tower, suddenly less than confident of my ability to track down the mischief-maker. There were too many places to hide, with all these numerous chimney banks set about. The four towers stood dark, and Justin’s guards, if any, were invisible.

  Then, as I hesitated, I caught faraway movement. Diagonally across the top of Athmore toward the front of the opposite wing, someone stepped boldly from shadow to bright moonlight, though I could not recognize the moving figure from this distance.

  I took another step forward and my foot struck something that clattered with a sound that crashed through the roaring of the wind. I bent to see what I’d stumbled over, but before I could find it, a challenge ran across space: “Who’s there?”

  I recognized the voice. That was Nigel, patrolling his area, and I stood very still, hoping he would not investigate. My quarry must still be on this side of the house, and I did not want to be delayed by questions and explanations. I had a feeling that whoever had come down my tower steps must have melted into the shadow of some nearby chimney bank, or at least had escaped no farther away than the tower which led to Dacia’s room. Had he run across the bar to Nigel’s side I would have seen him.

  By crouching below parapet level, I found that I could creep along the roof, bent over and uncomfortable, but without betraying myself to Nigel’s view. I wished it had been Justin on the roof. Then I might have gone directly to him.

  When I neared the first bank of four chimney stacks rising from a wide brick base, I stepped gratefully into their shadow and straightened my body. I had covered nearly half of my wing of the roof and was close to the conn
ecting bar. Cautiously I peered around the chimney base and saw that Nigel had marched to the opening of the bar and stood looking down it in my direction. I kept very still—and if my companion in hiding was on the roof, he was equally quiet. I wanted to see him, make certain of him before I shouted for Nigel.

  As I waited, Nigel came partway along the bar and then apparently decided that he must have been mistaken for he swung about and returned to his post in the shadow of the far front tower of the house.

  I loped into my crouching run again, crossed the opening to the bar and was into the front portion of my own wing. Once more I stepped into chimney shadow, not at all sure of my invisibility, but at least bringing no further challenge from Nigel, who was himself once more invisible.

  Cautiously I looked about me, studying the chimney banks and the shadows they cast upon the roof, and finding nothing irregular except my own shadow which, I suddenly discovered, protruded in a sharply human silhouette among straight chimney stacks. I crouched again, erasing the pattern, and melted into a darkness from which I could peer once more toward Dacia’s tower.

  This time my watchful gaze was rewarded. From that distant corner I caught a faint flicker of light, quickly extinguished—as though someone had gone down those stairs and stepped into a light room below, quickly closing the door behind him. I was sure now that my tormentor was Marc, and my indignation grew. I ran across the roof, not troubling to crouch this time. If Nigel saw me and came to investigate, it would not matter. I would be close on Marc’s heels, and I might even need Nigel’s help.

  The wind tore at me as I ran, buffeted me, tried to beat me back from the tower as though there were purpose in its thrust. Breathlessly I stepped into the relief of the small room at the top of Dacia’s tower stairs, where the wind could claw at me only through sentry slots. There I stood utterly still and listening. There was no pursuit by Nigel from the other part of the roof, no sound at all from below. I did not use my flashlight on the steps, but clung to damp stone walls, my fingers brushing over the rough dust of years as I descended. At the foot of the steps a line of light etched Dacia’s door. I pulled it abruptly open, hoping to catch Marc before he escaped.

  The room within was bright and empty. I stood blinking in the glare, staring about me at plentiful evidence of Dacia’s occupancy. Bright-colored clothing was strewn about, and shoes and boots cluttered the floor—as if she had dropped everything wherever she happened to step out of it. The tape recorder stood open, but for once it was silent. Dacia herself was not to be seen, nor was Marc, if it had been he who had climbed down from the roof.

  I crossed the cluttered room, but before I could open the corridor door, Dacia herself came bursting in. She looked as keyed up and excited as I had seen her last night during the fire. Her cropped hair was ruffled out of its chrysanthemum cap, her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes shining as though with high fever. She still wore her half-figured dress and no coat. When she saw me she came to a surprised halt, then closed the door quickly behind her.

  “Well!” she said. “Fancy meeting you here! A bit cheeky, aren’t you, luv—just walking in and making yourself at home? How did you get here anyway? I was right out in the hall and—”

  “I came across the roof,” I said. “Someone has been rapping on the door of my tower, and I went up on the roof and followed him across. I saw someone come down your tower, so he must have gone through your room. Was it Marc?”

  She stared at me in continued astonishment. “You mean you came across that spooky roof in the pitch dark? You must be crackers!”

  “There’s bright moonlight,” I said.

  She glanced at her open window. “So there is. I hadn’t noticed.”

  Her words sounded ingenuous enough, but how could one ever be sure with Dacia?

  “If you were out in the corridor you must have seen whoever came through your room,” I said. “Who was it?”

  “I haven’t seen a thing. I only crossed over to the bath,” she told me. “It’s a bit late and I thought I’d better wind up the day and turn in.”

  Her words surged out with an excitement which made it clear that something had titillated her to the high pitch she loved.

  “I remember,” I said dryly. “You like danger, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do—but I wouldn’t go running around those roofs up there—not for nothing. I don’t like high places—they scare me in a different way from fast cars. A nasty sort of way.”

  She meant to tell me nothing useful, and I went to the corridor door and opened it.

  “I don’t know what you and Marc are up to,” I said over my shoulder, “but he’d better watch out on the roof. Justin has his patrols up there tonight, you know.”

  “Of course I know,” said Dacia tartly. “Marc’s one of ’em, so you can’t pin a thing on him for being up there tonight, now can you?”

  I stepped into the corridor and closed the door. The sparse lighting of the hall seemed far dimmer than the moonlight, and somehow more ominous. I had begun to feel uneasy. My room, I thought—I had left it alone too long. Sudden anxiety drove me as I ran down the long corridor and pushed open my door. The light was out, although I was sure I had left it on. I fumbled for the switch and the room sprang to life in all its shocking turmoil—as untidy as Dacia’s room, but for a different reason.

  Whoever had searched this time had been in a hurry and careless of covering his tracks. My dresses had been pulled from their hangers and left where they fell. My suitcase had been tumbled out and emptied over the floor. The packet of pictures and film Nellie had brought me were strewn about. I turned my back on disorder and knelt by the scuttle, to thrust my fingers down among lumps of coal. The leather wallet was there. I brought it out and unzipped the inner pocket. The negative was safely in place. I thrust it back into hiding amidst the coal and hurried from the room.

  Down the corridor I ran, to rap hard on Dacia’s door. There was no answer and I tried the knob. She had locked herself in, but unless she had joined Marc on the roof she was there, refusing to respond.

  “I want to speak to you,” I said. “Let me in!”

  Her voice finally answered me, mock-sleepy. “Do give over and stop waffling around, Evie old dear. Go to bed and let me sleep.”

  I walked back to my room, considering what must have happened. The pattern seemed clear. Alicia could have had second thoughts and phoned asking for Marc. Then, too impatient to wait, she had driven over herself, perhaps not trusting her message to the telephone. I could guess what it must have been: “Get me that negative!” If Marc was so thoroughly in debt to the Club Casella, it was likely that he would do what Alicia wished. Tonight he had undoubtedly connived with Dacia in this prankish effort to recover the scrap of film. It was the sort of trick she would love, and, as she herself had said, she must play Marc’s game.

  Between the two of them they had played it well, and I had almost stepped into their trap. Almost, but not quite. I had taken care to hide the negative where it would not be found, but I had obligingly got out of the way for one or the other to search my room. Probably it had been Dacia, while Marc had performed his tantalizing knocking and led me a wild goose chase across the roof. So now I must talk to Dacia, get the truth out of her, learn if possible why my negative was of such consequence to Alicia Daven. Anything concerning Alicia might have bearing on my relationship to Justin—whether he liked it or not.

  By this time Dacia was uneasy about me, surprised by my willingness to brave the roof, and wanting only to be rid of me. But I knew very well how to reach her. Those tower doors boasted no locks, and her room was as accessible to me as mine had been to her. I need only climb my flight of stone steps and go straight across the roof again.

  My hand was on the knob of the tower door before I stopped. Did I want to go up there for a second time? I remembered the roof shadows and I knew the hiding places they might offer. The thought of facing the roof again bred uneasiness in my mind—an uneasiness all too ready
to turn to terror.

  I tried to remind myself that there was no need for fright Marc had finished leading me a chase, and with a guard set upon the roof the mischief-maker of the past weeks was not likely to be abroad. There was no sensible reason behind my sudden conviction that the menace on the rooftop was more ominous than it had been before.

  Nevertheless, uneasy or not, I had to act. Morning would be too late. I sensed strongly that Dacia was vulnerable now—and that by morning she might not be.

  I turned up my coat collar and went up into the blackness of the steep stone steps. The moon had gone behind clouds again, and somewhere I had dropped my flashlight, for it was not in my trench-coat pocket. I reminded myself that Nigel was up there. I had only to call to him for help if I should need it.

  At the top I paused in the turret’s black shelter, listening to the wind as it hurled itself upon the chimneys of Athmore. In spite of all reason, I was fearful—where I had not been before. A sense of evil seemed loosed upon the night.

  The black, windy rooftops stretched ahead of me, and there were no individual shadows. Everything was shadow. I cast a glance at the sky and saw silver etching a cloud—though it would be a minute or two before the moon sailed into the clear. At least, if I could not see, neither could I be seen. Or so I thought.

  I stepped into the open and at once my foot struck the clattering object I had stumbled over before, and from which I had been distracted by Nigel’s challenge. This time I bent to pick up the heavy thing and found that I held some sort of long shaft with a blade at one end. A lance, perhaps, from the Hall of Armor? But I had no time to puzzle over its presence on the roof.

  At least it offered me a weapon of sorts, if that was what I might need. Carrying it with me I started down the long corridor of the north roof, able to make my way through gray shadow, avoiding the denser chimney banks. I never saw the thing that tripped me. I knew only that my foot caught some obstruction and I went flying. My temple struck stone as I fell, and I plunged full-length, my head ringing, bright pain flashing before my eyes. Half-stunned, I lay there, unable to get to my feet. Steps rang through the haze and I felt hands touch me, found myself lifted in arms well able to carry me. Yet I had no sense of rescue, but only a certainty of danger and the need to struggle back to full consciousness. A trace of self-preservation was left to me, and warnings seemed to scream through the enveloping fog. Whoever carried me meant me harm, yet I could do nothing to save myself.