Читать книгу The Adventure of the Seven Keyholes - Augusta Huiell Seaman - Страница 5

Table of Contents

“Go away from here . . . straight . . . at once!” Barbara exclaimed in an indignant voice. “I simply cannot have you here, bothering me, while I’m busy.” She stood waiting for the twins to leave. The key was still in her hand and she was conscious that Kit and Kat were staring at it with all their eyes.

“What’s that funny little key for?” they demanded in unison, hanging still farther over the window-sill. They certainly were infuriating. And Barbara was becoming every minute more exasperated.

But as she bent to examine it now, it exhibited very evident signs of a diamond-shaped lock

“I can’t tell you,” she retorted. “I am not going to, anyway. If you don’t get off the window-sill this minute,” she went on, “I am going to shut the window down—right on your heads.” This was a terrible threat, and Barbara knew it. She also knew that she would never in the world carry it out, but she was desperate and something desperate had to be done or said. Here was the secret waiting at her fingertips to be solved and these wretched children persisted in getting in the way!

The twins, however, regarded her threat with unexpected seriousness. Slowly and watchfully Kit and Kat unhinged themselves from the window-sill and with dragging footsteps disappeared from the veranda. But Barbara, though relieved at their departure, was left with the uneasy feeling that she had not been very wise, and that the Carroll twins in an unfriendly mood were somewhat to be dreaded.

But once they were out of sight she forgot them and returned joyfully to her task. The little brass key fitted perfectly into the lock of the drawer in the carpenter’s bench and smoothly turned in its socket. Grandpa Fairfax was certainly a good locksmith. Barbara had time to think of that, even as she jerked open the drawer and peered within.

If this compartment had once contained nails and tools, there was nothing of the sort in it now. On the contrary, it was quite empty, save for a sheet of paper folded and addressed on one side, in Grandpa Fairfax’s small, shaky handwriting, to Barbara. She laid down the key and opened the folded sheet wonderingly, standing to read it right where she was.

“Dear Little Granddaughter” (it ran):

“If you have the energy and interest to persist in the quest on which I have started you, I think you will not regret it. You will think it very queer and so will every one else. But, then, I am a queer old man and I do things in a queer way, I suppose.

“I have watched you for several years and have realized that you are a little girl with a very good mind—the kind of mind that likes to know about things and with interest enough to think and ask questions and put together what you find out, till you have satisfied your curiosity. That is a very fine kind of mind to have and will get you somewhere in this world some day, if you keep up the good work.

“All my life I have loved locks and keys—in which I have been like ‘Louis the Locksmith.’ Perhaps if I had attended more closely to other matters, I might have been more of a success in this world. At any rate, I have had a happy life, after my fashion, and now I am leaving to you the key to the same kind of happiness, if you care to avail yourself of it. You won’t understand what all this means till you reach the seventh keyhole. When you do, turn back and read this letter again and you will realize why I sent you on this quest.

“The keyholes are all in plain sight and plainly numbered. If you search in the proper way and use your reasoning powers a bit, you will have no difficulty in discovering them.

“And now I will close by saying that I had a very good time fashioning them and planning this little adventure for you. With much love to you, my little Barbara, I am

“Your affectionate “Grandpa Fairfax.”

Barbara read the letter through three times before she got the real meaning of it. Then she sat down on the nearest chair, to think it all over. That letter was so like Grandpa Fairfax! She remembered now how he would never answer a question of hers if he could possibly make her guess or reason out the answer herself. But what could it be that he had so carefully hidden away behind the seventh keyhole, and where was the seventh keyhole? And where were all the rest?

She started up to begin the search for the second keyhole, when she suddenly realized, from the appearance of the sun, that it must be quite late in the afternoon. She realized further that she had promised her Aunt Lucreech that she would be on hand to shell several quarts of peas for supper that night and would have to hurry straight home if they were to be done in time. So, with a regretful sigh, she went about and closed all the windows and doors, put the now precious little brass key in her sweater pocket and scampered back through the pine woods to Mrs. Bentley’s, feeling that at least she had accomplished something important that day.

As she had expected, Barbara found herself not on speaking terms with the twins that night. They ignored her at supper and afterward wandered off by themselves on some mysterious affair from which she was pointedly excluded. She felt rather lonely and disconsolate for a while, but consoled herself by thinking over her adventure of the afternoon and planning where she would begin to hunt for the second keyhole.

Much to her relief, she discovered that the mother of the twins intended to take them to the ocean beach, next day, on a picnic, and keep them there till evening. Very kindly Mrs. Carroll asked Barbara to join the party, but, much to every one’s astonishment, the little girl politely declined the invitation, saying she had some work that must be done that day, which could not wait. Wisely she saw the Carrolls off first and then scurried through the woods to her grandfather’s old house, which now seemed bursting with mysterious secrets for her.

But the search was not destined that day to be as successful from the very start as the former one had been. Evidently Grandpa Fairfax had not intended to make the undertaking too easy for her. She had decided, before beginning, that it would be wisest to conduct the search in a systematic way, thoroughly exhausting the possibilities of one room or location before moving on to another. And as she had begun with the living-room, she concluded that she would finish with that first and move on to the room across the hall only when there seemed nothing more to be discovered where she was.

She began by opening all the living-room windows as she had done the day before, letting in the sweet warm outside air. The day was extremely hot and there were high-piled thunder-clouds rising slowly out of the west, but Barbara had no time to notice these as she hurried about her task. Every bit of furniture in the cluttered and dusty old room she examined with the greatest care, but though there were a number of keyholes, in various drawers and doors, not one would receive the key or seemed related to it in any respect.

After she had gone over all the keyholes twice, to no avail, she sat down once more on the carpenter’s work-bench and read Grandpa Fairfax’s letter again. She noted particularly the line where he had said that she had a good mind and was able to reason things out.

“But I’m afraid he wouldn’t think so if he could see me now!” she said ruefully, aloud. “I don’t seem able to reason a thing out about where that second keyhole can be.” And again she sat gazing down at the letter in her lap as if seeking inspiration. As she studied the cramped, shaky handwriting, she could almost see Grandpa Fairfax as he wrote, stroking his long white beard with one hand as he sat at his old secretary desk in the corner, laboriously penning the lines meant for her guidance. She had seen him sit there many times, his spectacles down nearly at the end of his nose, where they always seemed to slide when he was occupied with anything.

Her eyes unconsciously traveled over to the old desk—and then she had a brand-new inspiration

Then her eyes unconsciously traveled over to the old desk—and then she had a brand-new inspiration. That desk was somehow very closely associated with Grandpa Fairfax, almost as much so as the work-bench. Had she given it all the attention it deserved? She decided she hadn’t, and with renewed hope she sprang across the room to it.

The secretary was, like everything else in the Fairfax mansion, very rickety and out of repair. One of the prettily curved mahogany legs was broken clean off and its place was supplied by two or three bricks piled together. Several brass knobs were missing from its drawers, and the desk had long since lost every vestige of polish. Above the desk part were glass doors with curious little diamond-shaped panes, several of which were broken.

Barbara pulled out all the drawers and threw open the glass doors, but save for Grandpa’s rusty pens and some blotting-paper, the secretary was quite empty. She was about to slam the glass doors to with a bang, in sheer disgust at the uselessness of this hunt, when her eye suddenly caught the gleam of a bit of brass on the side between two shelves, well up beyond her reach. Seizing a chair and placing it so she could climb up, she stood on tiptoe and got a closer view.

Yes, sure enough, there was a diamond-shaped brass keyhole like the one on the work-bench, and close beside it a paper pasted, on which was a tiny figure 2. This time Barbara did not shout, but she gave a happy little chuckle to think that she had succeeded again. Before she could turn to get the key, however, a terrific clap of thunder startled her so that she all but fell off the wooden chair on which she was perched. And almost at the same moment a great black cloud blotted out the sun, filling the room with a kind of dim twilight.