Читать книгу Wadsworth Camp Mysteries - Charles Wadsworth Camp - Страница 19

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Anderson brought the table and the cards. It was difficult at first, but finally they grew interested in the game. Before they realised he had had time to complete his errand, Tony was back. He explained briefly that he had hired a good boat, and described its location at the river end of the island.

They resumed their game. It held them until the sun had set, until the dejection that came with the twilight drove their minds from the cards.

“I must think of dinner,” Molly sighed, listlessly scoring a hand.

“Tell Tony what to do and look upon it as done,” Miller suggested. “0r better yet, why not all of us pitch in and get dinner! It will be good fun. Tony can clean up afterwards while we finish this rubber.”

Molly and Anderson agreed uninterestedly.

Tony, who had been sitting on the steps, arose, and, as a matter of course, entered the house with them.

They kept close to each other in the cold, dark interior until Anderson had struck a match and lighted the diningroom lamp.

While Tony made a light in the kitchen Miller brought the lamps from the parlour and the library, and placed them with the one already in the diningroom. They left no shadowed corners there. He called to Molly and Anderson, who were in the kitchen :

“Where’s the spirit substantial enough to face this battery of kerosene?”

Tony looked at him disapprovingly. Miller laughed.

“Set the table, Tony, then fill that fireplace as full of wood as you can and set it blazing. Do you mind, Molly, my taking your castle thus by storm?”

“Mind!” she called. “If you had been here every night!”

Miller wandered back to the kitchen. The size of the room made it appear bare, unfurnished in spite of the old-fashioned stove, the iron pump and sink, the table, and the two or three chairs scattered around. There were two windows in the rear wall. One of them was open. Walking over to it. Miller gazed out for a moment, then slammed it shut and locked it.

“I don’t see,” he said to Anderson, “why you didn’t have this brushwood cleared out. It’s against this back wall. It’s a definite menace. Give me an axe and I’ll start on it myself in the morning. If the wind’s right we might set fire to it.”

He paused.

“For that matter,” he resumed thoughtfully, “we might fire that unholy piece of woods.”

“Too dry,” Anderson said. ” There’s been no rain here in more than a month. The whole island might go.”

“What of it! Small loss!” Miller muttered.

He took off his coat. He rolled up his sleeves.

“Molly, pin an apron on me. I’m to be queen of the kitchen while Andy there does alchemy with bottles. Those chops won’t take long. Hurry your magic, Andy.”

As she leaned over the stove a little colour came to Molly’s face. The sizzling of the meat and the clinking of glass from the table, where Anderson was trying to discount the lack of ice, combined with Miller’s constant chatter to raise their spirits.

“It’s like a studio feast in the Eue d’Assass,” Molly said.

“Remember,” Miller said, “the night I came in from Saint Cloud with the new bull pup? We called him Buffalo Bill because his chief aim was the breaking of china and glass.”

So they went on, reminiscing almost contentedly until dinner was ready, and they had carried the steaming dishes into the diningroom. Tony spoiled their illusion. He leaned against the mantel, uncomfortably near the fire he had built, staring at the open door to the hall. There was a tortured expression on his face.

“See here, Tony—” Miller began.

But he recalled what the man had suffered last night. He went on more kindly :

“Sit in the kitchen doorway if you wish. Now, Molly, Andy, we’ll drink to good health, peaceful minds, and victory,”

The meal went better than they had hoped. They toasted themselves with a semblance of laughter. They drank enthusiastically to the carefree party they would have—if nothing happened—in the most crowded, most brilliant restaurant in New York. Afterwards they arranged the table in front of the fireplace and returned to their game.

After a few hands, however, Anderson looked around.

“May in the South!” he said significantly. “All the windows closed and a blazing fire! Is any one too warm?”

They glanced at each other. Molly shivered.

“Good heavens, Andy!” Miller said with an effort. “I don’t know whether the blue ribbon belongs to you or Tony. Morgan’s the only man on the island you can talk to without hearing the rustle of spirit wings, and even he’s tainted. It’s your cut. Deal, Molly.”

They played late. Long after the cards had ceased to interest them they went on, cutting, dealing, bidding, making beginner’s mistakes.

Tony, on his chair in the kitchen doorway, had fallen asleep. The fire had died down. One of the lamps was out of oil. Its wick spluttered as the flame little by little expired.

Miller glanced at his watch. After eleven! He threw down his cards and arose.

“Molly!” he called sharply. “Keep your eyes from that door. There’s no use going on with this farce of cards. Reminds me of one stormy night my nurse filled my infant mind with banshees.”

He gripped the back of his chair.

“Children, I’m ready for whatever horrors the coquina house can afford.”

While Molly arose reluctantly Anderson remained in his chair, staring at the smouldering logs.

“Jim,” Molly pleaded,” don’t hear anything tonight. Don’t let your mind be filled with awful things. If only you could come down in the morning and look us in the eyes and say you had slept well.”

“I’ll do that,” he answered, “or if I’m disturbed I’ll disturb back as hard as I can.”

Anderson looked up, shaking his head.

“I’ve tried it. There’s nothing we can disturb. Perhaps tonight, though—There are nights when one sleeps peacefully.”

“If there weren’t,” Molly breathed.

“But you can’t tell,” Anderson went on. “One waits.”

“Doubtless a newcomer won’t fail of entertainment,” Miller said.

He walked over and shook Tony, who sprang to his feet.

“Start your fire again,” he suggested, “and draw that sofa over. You’ll be all right here. He can keep one of these good lamps, Molly?”

She nodded.

“Then, Andy, please take the other and show me to my room.”

Anderson obeyed slowly. With lagging steps he led them to the hall. The hall was cold after the heated diningroom. Anderson started up the steps. Molly followed him. Miller went last, curbing a strong desire to glance over his shoulder. At the landing he did look back. Tony had come to the door, where he stood staring after them hungrily.

The stairs swung back from the landing to a square hallway out of which four doors opened. Anderson walked to the one in the farther right hand corner. He put his hand on the knob, waited a moment, then pushed the door open and stepped in. Molly, grasping his arm, followed him. Miller entered after her.

Anderson set the lamp on a bureau which stood between the two windows in the front wall. While he lighted a sconce of candles there. Miller glanced around the apartment where he was to spend the night in an effort to prove to his friends that the supernatural is wholly subjective and chiefly neurasthenic. As he looked, he felt none too confident. The room was huge and dingy. It had an outworn air, the air of a thing past use, a thing dead and decayed. A massive walnut bed-stead stood beneath a canopy opposite the bureau. There was a fireplace set in the wall to its right. A washstand had been placed to its left, and carved chairs stood on either side at the head of the bed. The wall paper, ancient and stained broadly, had a pattern of tarnished bronze arabesques on a green background. Miller fancied it gave out an odour, acrid and unhealthy. In two or three places it had fallen away from the ceiling moulding and hung in pallid tatters. The room chilled him-He turned to the others. Molly had her hand on her husband’s arm. Anderson, ready to go, had taken up the lamp. The lamp shook.

“At least,” Miller said, “the summer heat can’t be blamed for the state of one’s nerves on Captain’s Island.”

He glanced around, again.

“Once this must have been very comfortable—for its period, even luxurious. Evidently Noyer humoured the fair lady. I assume you’ve honoured me. This is the room in which he cut her throat?”

“I don’t know,” Anderson said. “This is the largest room. It is a little harder to sleep here. It’s where the girls said they heard—”

“Jim, I begged Andy not to. There’s a smaller room in the back if you’d rather.”

“I choose to sleep here and remember I’m grown up,” Miller laughed.

His laughter stopped abruptly. In that room it had a hollow sound. It startled them all.

“You see!” Molly said.

Miller tried to hide his own shock.

“Merely disuse,” he answered. “The room is unaccustomed to good spirits.”

He laughed again challengingly.

“Tomorrow I’ll show you how to get rid of the bad ones. I’ll build a fire here and smoke them out. If that doesn’t work I’ll send up to Martinsburg for a vacuum cleaner. From the advertisements the tiniest, most immaterial wraith wouldn’t have a ghost of a chance.”

“No, Jim,” Molly whispered. “Don’t.”

She had assumed that air of strained expectancy. Leaning a little forward, her head to one side, she listened.

Anderson touched her timidly.

“Come, Molly. Let’s give Jim an opportunity to put his will on the firing line.”

“It’s been there all along.” Miller answered.

Molly turned at the threshold.

“We’re just opposite. We’ll leave our door open a crack.”

“Mine, too,” Miller said. “It’s a custom Tony’s foisted upon me on the Dart! Good night, and go to sleep. Let them perform exclusively for me this once.”

As their steps died away across the wide hall the smile Miller had forced to his lips vanished. He turned slowly and, alone, faced the decayed room, again conscious of that disagreeable odour that seemed to come from the wall paper.