Читать книгу The Disappearance of Anne Shaw - Augusta Huiell Seaman - Страница 7
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MERCEDES awoke next morning, after some fitful naps toward daylight, to find that her brother had departed before dawn on a fishing excursion down the beach and had said not to expect him back till he got there. She felt rather impatient to think that he would go off unconcernedly fishing when an unsolved mystery of the night before awaited his attention. But that was like Ken! She ate a solitary breakfast, and before she had finished, Captain Matson came in to invite her to go through the Coast Guard Station and see its working and become acquainted with some of the boys.
She became deeply interested in the thrilling description of how the lifeboats and breeches-buoys were worked, and almost forgot for a time the affair that had so occupied her thoughts the night before. But when the Captain took her up to the lookout tower and she had discovered much the same view as from the cupola of the Shaw house, only with a better one of the beach, and found that the particular Coast Guard who was on lookout duty was young Dane of the night before, she could no longer restrain her curiosity and asked:
“Please tell me, Captain Matson, did they find out anything more about old Mrs. Shaw? I’m so anxious to hear.”
The Captain laughed a rather sceptical laugh. “Nary a sign of her last night, and she ain’t back this morning. But don’t you worry none, miss. That old lady’s hard as hickory and independent as all get out. There ain’t nothing happened to her, you can take my word for it. She’s done queer things before now and got us all stirred up thinkin’ something’d happened to her and always turned up again, right as a trivet. Those boys combed the whole place last night, and apart from those spectacles of hers, which she might have dropped anytime (she probably has more than one pair), they didn’t find one livin’ thing. I’ve always thought she’s got some queer hiding places around somewheres and goes into one of ’em occasionally for the Harry only knows what reason. She’ll come back in a day or two, and meanwhile Sanford can go over and milk her cow and look after her chickens and see no harm comes to the place.” And with this optimistic theory, the Captain led her downstairs to show her the dormitory and kitchen.
A little later Mercedes met Sanford coming out of his own house. It was the first time she had seen him that day. “I’m going over to the Shaw place,” he informed her, “to look after things a bit. Want to come? Maybe we can find out something in daylight that we couldn’t last night.” She assented joyfully and joined him.
“I don’t agree with Dad,” he remarked as they proceeded through the lane. “He thinks this is just one of her usual capers and that she’ll come back all right pretty soon, just as she’s done before. Well, maybe she will, but somehow it struck me different. Nothing ever happened quite like this before. Once or twice, they say, she’s disappeared for a couple of days or so—just left the house standing like it was. No one knew where she went, or asked, and she’d just appear back again after a while and go on as usual, and no one thought much about it. But we were there evidently when she went, this time, and there were some pretty queer things about it.”
While they were talking, they had come to the gate of the Shaw place and turned in to ascend the veranda steps.
“Wouldn’t it be queer if she had come back again in the meantime?” suggested Mercedes.
“Yes, but she hasn’t,” Sanford replied, shaking his head. “The place is just as it was last night. I passed here a little while ago. I’ll go out and feed the chickens now, and you can be looking around, if you want. Don’t be afraid. There isn’t a thing here that can hurt you.”
“But suppose she were to come back suddenly—or even if she didn’t,” objected Mercedes, “wouldn’t she be indignant to have a perfect stranger prowling around her house?”
“No chance her coming back just now,” said Sanford. “And you aren’t prowling around her house just out of curiosity—you’re doing it to try and help find out what’s happened to her. That makes it different.”
Mercedes had to agree that maybe it did, and, while Sanford found the chicken feed and went outside to tend the hens, she embarked on a cautious tour of the house. She did not spend much time in the parlor to the left of the entrance. An old square piano, two or three uncomfortable rockers, a center table, and some large marine pictures on the walls composed its furniture and offered nothing of interest in connection with her search. It was obvious that it was merely an apartment of ceremony and never entered by its owner except to arrange or clean it.
She passed on into the unused dining room (old Mrs. Shaw herself undoubtedly ate in the kitchen) and found nothing of interest in it either, except for the pair of spectacles that had been found the night before, which had been left by someone, probably the Coast Guardsman who found them. There they lay, on the bare long dining table, awaiting the problematical return of their owner. Somehow it gave Mercedes a creepy feeling just to see them, and, without touching them, she passed around the table to investigate a closed door on the other side of the room. In the hasty search of the night before and the semi-darkness it had escaped, apparently, both her notice and Sanford’s.
It opened at her touch, and she found herself in a semi-dark room, one glance at which was sufficient to reveal it as a bedroom, and one in use, at that. It was undoubtedly the one where Mrs. Shaw slept. The shades were drawn nearly to the bottoms of the windows, the bed was made but had not been slept in, and a variety of articles, boxes, and piles of old newspapers were stored in all the four corners of the apartment. But there was no sign of any very recent occupation of it by the old lady—not at least within the last twenty-four hours. Mercedes felt that here she had no business to pry any further, so she went out, softly closing the door behind her.
She turned in the hall to the stairs and ascended to the second floor for another inspection of the numerous bedrooms on it. They all opened into a T-shaped hall and were all equally empty of interest. Most of them contained dismantled beds and huddled furniture long out of use, and a dismal air of unoccupation pervaded them all. It was the same on the third floor, to which she next ascended, only that the bedrooms were smaller, and two or three were empty of any furnishings. They all smelt musty and dank from having been shut up for doubtless an indefinite period. Mercedes left them and climbed the ladderlike stairs to the cupola. She felt a great curiosity to see by daylight what she had had only a brief glimpse of the night before, from this high perch.
Her first glance was out of the four windows at the breath-taking view in the dazzling morning sunlight. On the ocean side a five-masted schooner stood out on the horizon, every white sail spread. She could actually see the dip of the prow to the turquoise ocean and the break of foam under its foot. To the south Barnegat Light stood out, a slender shaft illumined by the morning sun. Mercedes drew in a long breath of delight at the sheer beauty of it all. But the scenery was not that for which she had climbed to this height, and reluctantly she tore her gaze from it and glanced about the tiny space. A moment after she had done so, she uttered a little gasp and dropped to her knees for a closer look at something on the floor.
Then she scrambled down the ladder and hurried to the lower floor calling, “Sanford! Sanford, come here!” as she got to the kitchen door.
“What’s the matter?” he replied from the chicken yard where he stood surrounded by a flock of pecking hens. “Has the old lady come back?”
“No, no! but I’ve something to show you—in the cupola. Do come up right away. I can’t make out just what it means.”
He dropped the now empty pan of chicken feed and hurried after her as she climbed the stairs once more and clambered into the cupola. Once there, she merely stood and pointed to the floor, demanding, “What do you make of that?” He dropped to his knees for a better view and presently uttered a long low whistle.
“When did this get here, do you suppose?” he asked, staring at the spot. “I’m almost positive it wasn’t here last night. One of the C. G. fellows had an electric torch, and we examined all around here. I don’t think there was anything of the kind here then.”
Mercedes bent down to examine it again. It was the impression of a hand, clear and distinct, all five fingers well outspread, on the painted boards of the flooring of the cupola. But the most startling thing about it was that the impression on the worn gray paint of the boards was in a faint dull red.
“Can it be blood?” whispered Mercedes, shivering slightly. “That color—what else could it be?”
“It looks mighty like it,” admitted Sanford, shaking his head. “But the question is—whose hand print is it? It’s a left hand—you can tell that, of course. And somehow it doesn’t seem to me like a man’s hand. It’s not quite big enough—or the right shape. I’d be willing to bet my hat it’s old Mrs. Shaw’s. But what could have been the matter—and why that one print—and on the floor of all places?”
“Did you notice one other thing?” questioned Mercedes. “The telescope isn’t here this morning. It was last night—lying on the floor. I saw it and left it just where it was.”
“I saw it too,” cried Sanford excitedly, “when I came up here with the C. G.’s afterward. It was lying right over here. They didn’t touch it, either. Now what could have become of it? Could it be that it’s been taken downstairs and I didn’t know it? Let’s go through the house again and see if it’s been left around there.”
They clambered down once more and made another tour of inspection through the deserted house, but found no telescope in any visible corner of it.
“It’s gone—that’s all there is to it!” declared Mercedes as they stood staring about the deserted kitchen. “Somebody must have come back and taken it later in the night—and—and left that print of a hand. But—why? Has—has anything dreadful happened, do you think?”
“Beats me!” admitted Sanford, jamming his hands into his pockets and wandering over to stare out of one of the partly shuttered windows. “To tell you the truth, it looks kind of black to me. That print of a hand—in what seems like blood—I don’t know——”
Mercedes was suddenly inspired with a new idea. “Tell you what! Let’s look around and see if there’s any other print we mightn’t have seen. Perhaps that isn’t the only one. If there are any more, we may be able to tell something else from them.” Without even discussing it further, they commenced a fresh tour through the house, glancing swiftly but keenly at every free surface, beginning at the lower floor and gradually working upward. But there was no further sign of a sinister print till they came to the dark and narrow staircase leading up to the third story. At this point Sanford used his flashlight, which he seemed to carry with him day and night, to illumine the dimly lighted ascent. And just near the top Mercedes, who was following close behind him, uttered a half-smothered little gasp:
“Look here:—down near the step—just over that one next to the top!”
Sanford turned his flashlight down in that direction. On the blue-white plaster of the wall, not far from the wooden surbase, stood out the faint unmistakable prints of five finger tips, likewise in the same sinister dark red!
