Читать книгу The Shadow on the Dial - Augusta Huiell Seaman - Страница 6

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She sat, robed in a pink satin negligée trimmed with swan’s-down, rocking disconsolately in a somewhat decrepit rocker, on her lap a magazine devoted to moving-picture interests, one hand traveling mechanically at regular intervals to a huge box of chocolates on the table at her side. On the wide old hearth under the mantel, a log fire was dying down into embers, and a small kerosene lamp on the table furnished but feeble light to eyes used to the judiciously shaded brilliance of electricity. Miss Leila Speer snorted contemptuously as she glanced at it.

“Expect a person to see with a light like that!” she muttered, turning up the wick till it smoked, then hastily turning it down again. “I call it downright outrageous! What can Dad be thinking of?” She searched among the chocolates for her particular nut-centered favorite and found none, which incident only served to add another grievance to her rapidly increasing list. “Can’t even get any more candy in this dump when these are gone, I suppose.” She solaced her woes with a large piece of nougat which kept her inarticulate for a few moments, but did not interfere with her thoughts.

And, from her own point of view, she certainly had some very real woes to endure. Early that morning her father had announced that pending negotiations for the purchase of Pettigrew’s Folly, which transaction would probably take a week or more, he wished his son and daughter to remain at Grandma Fletcher’s home and have the benefit of the delightful outdoor life it offered. He himself would be obliged to travel back and forth between Burton and Savannah frequently, and he felt that his children would be in a more wholesome environment at Burton than they would be in a hotel in the city. He was anxious about his son, whose health was far from robust, and for whose sake he was selecting this pleasant region as a winter home, in the hope that its delightful climate would have a bracing effect on the boy.

All this Leila realized, quite as well as any one, but it in no wise altered her firm conviction that her own convenience outweighed all other considerations. Why couldn’t they have stayed just as well in the comfortable hotel in Savannah where they had spent two nights? There she would have had at hand everything she most enjoyed—unlimited shopping in the stores on Broughton Street, chocolates, ice-cream, and the most soul-satisfyingly elaborate “sundaes” at the confectioners’, and a different movie three times a day if there were time to get them in. Also there was an orchestra at the hotel in the evening, and dancing which she could have watched, and her father would probably have been too much occupied to bother about what time she retired to bed.

And in contrast to all these delights, just see what she had to endure in “this dump,” as she had slangily and irreverently christened it. A cold, ill-lighted, and inconvenient bedroom. There was neither a telephone nor electricity in the town. No movies, no shops except two or three depressing “general stores,” nothing to look at, nothing to do except to sit all day long on the veranda and stare through ragged streamers of dirty-gray Spanish moss at some flat marsh islands out in the river.

True, there were two girls in the house with whom she might fraternize if she chose, but they didn’t seem to be her kind at all. They were always dressed in middy blouses, and spent their time galloping around on a pair of shaggy ponies, when they weren’t at school, and they appeared to be totally uninterested in most of the things that absorbed her mind.

Moreover, they persistently haunted the ramshackle old “ranch” her father had been foolish enough to insist on purchasing, and she felt sure that there was something about it that they were hiding and didn’t want the Speers to know. For Leila was quick-witted and observant, and she had noticed the uneasy glance that passed between Naomi and Enid when her father announced his intention of buying the plantation and tearing down the house. You couldn’t fool her!

Worst of all, Ronny seemed eager to make friends with them. He took particular pains to be nice to them and evidently was trying to cultivate their acquaintance. It was all very provoking. Leila shivered and cast a glance at the open fire, which she discovered to have died down to gray ashes.

“No use sitting up any longer!” she groaned. “I’m not going to dirty my hands building the old thing up again. Might as well crawl into bed. Oh dear! What a life!” Ten minutes later she was comfortably asleep, her grievances temporarily forgotten.

She started on another dreary day the next morning when she arose (at a quarter before ten) and breakfasted in solitary state. The girls had long since departed for school. Ronny was off somewhere on a tramp by himself and Mr. Speer had shut himself up in his room to go over many business papers. For a while Leila sat disconsolately on the veranda and surveyed the horizon and indulged in regretful thoughts of Savannah and the moving-pictures. Then suddenly, of sheer boredom, an inspiration was born.

The blue limousine was housed in the barn. It was standing idle and there wasn’t any reason in the world why she shouldn’t take it out and have a run. True, her father didn’t particularly approve of her driving the car alone, though he had had both his children taught to run it very skilfully. But he was busy now and wouldn’t notice, and she would only take it up the road a bit. She hurried to the barn and got the car out with as little noise as possible. Grandma Fletcher was busy baking, and, besides, it was no affair of hers if the girl chose to take the car out. Ronny was away and couldn’t interfere, and the Shoe King was so immersed in a mass of figures that he never even heard it. Unhampered by any unwelcome objections, Leila drove, rejoicing, through the gate.

For one wild moment she contemplated taking a run in to Savannah and at least replenishing her supply of candy and movie magazines. But Savannah was over thirty miles away and she knew that her father would be furious if she were to venture alone on such a jaunt. So she turned the big car in the other direction and, for lack of any more definite destination, decided to run out to Pettigrew’s Folly. On the way, a brilliant idea occurred to her. As she was going to be there without any inconveniently curious small brother to annoy her, she would do a little exploring for herself and see if she could discover what it was about the “rickety old hole” (her own description of the lovely spot!) that attracted the two girls who said they spent so much time there.

As she bowled along the white oyster-shell road, narrowly escaping being mired in unsuspected and treacherous ruts, the notion began to appeal to her more and more. She planned to get the key of the house from the old negro who lived in one of the shanties at the rear, and go all through the place by herself and look through the closets and dig around and see if there were any secret passages or hidden treasure or anything of that sort. She’d find out what it was those girls had “up their sleeves” (as she put it) and beat them at their own game. And, after all, why shouldn’t she, when this was to be her own home? She had a perfect right to know!

She turned expertly into the ancient driveway and whirled up to the stately front door. Old Coosaw, seeing the now familiar big blue car, hobbled around to greet the occupant, politely concealing any surprise he might feel at the unusualness of her visit.

“Yassum, miss, yassum!” he acquiesced when she demanded the key. “An’ Missouri, she go wid yo’ an show yo’ all ’round!” he added, pulling the big key from his pocket and handing it to her.

“But I don’t want her!” cried Leila, exasperated. “I don’t need anybody to show me around. I went around the other day.” Then another thought occurred to her and she quickly reversed her decision. Missouri might be useful in giving her information that she needed and couldn’t get any other way. “Oh, well! Let her come, then,” she hastily amended, and Coosaw went off to send his wife to the house.

It was a singular hour that the Shoe King’s daughter spent in that dilapidated but still beautiful old mansion. From empty room to empty room she wandered, peeping into musty closets, opening doors into unexpected passageways, poking into cracks in the paneled fireplaces, even bending down to stare up the flues of wide old chimneys, and getting thoroughly dusty and disheveled—a state which she abhorred under ordinary circumstances.

When these explorations came to an end and had failed to yield the slightest interesting disclosure, she began to question Missouri, who had followed her about in ever-increasing concern as to what she could possibly be hunting for.

“Yo’ ain’t lost nuffin, Miss Leila, is yo’?” the old woman had asked, after the first ten minutes of hectic search. “ ’Cause Ah done went all ober de place after yo’-all left, tudder day, an’ Ah ain’t found nuffin a-tall.”

“Oh, no! Of course I haven’t lost anything!” exclaimed Leila, impatiently slamming a closet door. “I was just looking over this old d—— I mean place. It’s a queer old ranch, isn’t it? Must have been lots of secret places to hide things, and queer things must have happened here ... and all that. Now, haven’t there?”

A veil of blankness seemed suddenly to descend on old Missouri’s wrinkled countenance.

“Yassum, yassum!” she agreed hastily. “Ah ’spects so. But Ah ain’t know nuffin ’bout ’em. Dey’s t’ings ain’t fo’ black folks to know.” Leila’s quick eyes noticed the old mammy’s change of expression, and she decided to probe further.

“But those girls who are always coming here ... those Fletchers ... they know something, don’t they?” she asked.

“Well, if dey does, Ah ain’t know anyt’ing ’bout it. Dey ain’t nebber tell old Missouri.” And from this position the ancient colored woman could not be budged. So Leila, who was now becoming rather worried about keeping the car out so long, knowing that her father might be wanting it at any minute, decided that it was useless to pursue the quest any longer, and abruptly took her leave.

She was about half-way back to Burton and going at a rattling pace along the narrow white road, when the car suddenly went dead, coughed dismally a couple of times, and stood, an imposing but inert mass, in the center of the road. Leila uttered a despairing groan, flung back the door, and got out to inspect the motor. She had indeed learned to drive, skilfully if somewhat recklessly, but of the workings of the machine she had not the most rudimentary notion and had always firmly refused to learn.

Opening the hood, she began to prod, ignorantly but hopefully, at the complicated mass of coils and screws, but could make nothing of the puzzle. So she finally sat down by the side of the road to wait for the first motorist who should come that way. She was quaking inwardly at the thought that even now her father might be tramping up and down at the Fletchers’, demanding what had become of his daughter and his car. And no motorist appeared from any direction.

When hope of rescue had all but died, and she was considering the feasibility of walking back and leaving the car to its fate, she was suddenly electrified by the sight of a familiar figure tramping down the road. And shrieking, “Ronny! Ronny! oh, Ronny!” she rushed at him and threw herself, sobbing hysterically, against his protesting shoulder.

“What the Harry is the matter, and where have you been with that car?” he demanded irritably. “Dad’ll be wild if he knows you took it out. I bet you didn’t ask him.”

“Oh, no! I didn’t! I didn’t! And I’m scared stiff, Ronny!” wailed his tearful sister. “I took it for a little spin” (she carefully refrained from mentioning her destination), “and ... and she suddenly went dead on me ... and I don’t know what to do. I guess I’ve broken something.”

Ronny gave a disgusted snort and went over to inspect the motor, the hood of which was still up. Then he went around to the back of the car, unscrewed the cap of the gasoline-tank, and gazed at the indicator.

“Just as I thought!” he remarked in tones of withering scorn. “Gas all out, and you never even bothered to turn on the reserve three gallons! Ain’t that just like a girl!”

“I ... I didn’t know there was any reserve,” sniffled Leila.

“Aw ... get in and I’ll drive you back. And for Pete’s sake, learn a little about this car before you try to drive it again!” scolded her brother, climbing into the driver’s seat.

But before they had quite reached the town, he turned to her again, inquiring suspiciously:

“Where you been with the car this morning, anyhow? Something queer about you sneaking off like that.”

“That’s my own affair!” retorted Miss Leila Speer, stiffly, nor would she vouchsafe an explanation. But Ronny had made a mental note of her reticence, and promised himself to investigate the matter.