Читать книгу The Hermit of Proud Hill - Lilian Garis - Страница 4

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“Take it easy. Take it easy.”

“I am, of course,” grumbled Kay, as the boy tried to pull the spokes apart so she could slip her foot out. “However did I jab that in there?”

“They spring,” the boy said crisply. “Good thing it didn’t cut any deeper. There, now just—wait a minute,” he ordered, as she cringed and cried out again. “Oh!” He was trying to hold the main shaft of the bicycle steady with his foot upon it while he pulled open the spokes of the wheel into which Kay’s foot, with its silly sock and her tennis sneaker, had plunged so precipitately.

“It’s only a scratch,” the girl said finally, “but it felt as if it were cutting to the bone. Thanks. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along. How did you hear me?” she asked, just realizing he seemed to have dropped from nowhere.

“Hear you? I didn’t hear you,” the boy replied.

“You didn’t? But I called and I heard an answer.”

“It wasn’t me. I didn’t answer you, I answered him.”

“Him? Who was that?”

“The Voice, I guess,” the boy said, lowering his own voice and glancing around furtively.

“The Voice! What do you mean?” demanded Kay.

“Take it easy, take it easy,” the boy almost whispered. “What do you care? You’re all right, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose I am,” Kay said slowly. She was on her feet now and even the scratch didn’t hurt as much as she had expected it would. She looked at the boy critically. Just a regular rough and tumble boy with accent on the rough, she was thinking. His thick, tangled dark hair marked him as an urchin who might live far away from a barber shop; across the track likely. But his eyes were full of merriment and he knew how to square his shoulders if he didn’t know how to darn his sweater.

“What’s your name?” Kay asked cautiously.

“I’m Henri Gros,” he replied. “I’d better spell it. Mother’s fussy about that Henri. It’s H-E-N-R-I and G-R-O-S. French, you know,” he finished.

“I see,” said Kay. “Well, Henri, you did me a good turn; wait, don’t run away,” for he was darting off before he heard what she was trying to say to him.

“You’re all right? Don’t need me any more. You can ride your wheel——”

“Yes, I can. But, Henri, listen.” She wanted to detain him but he wanted to get away. “What’s your hurry? Wait just a minute,” she begged. If he got away now she might not easily find him again.

“I gotta go,” he grumbled. But he did tramp back a few steps through the tall grass. “What do you want?” he asked.

“Who told you to help me? Who saw me fall,” Kay demanded quickly.

“Just—just—Why nobody told me. It was just the Voice,” he answered.

“The Voice? What voice?”

“I knew you’d ask me that; that’s why I was goin’; because I can’t answer. When the Voice calls and I hear it I do what it asks. That’s all I have to do,” he said vaguely. “Your wheel O.K.?”

“I guess so.” Kay was stalling for time. She must not scare the boy off. “But see, here’s why I fell. See this neat little dug-out, covered up and hiding a nice big log to trip a fellow up? Wonder who put that there?”

“Oh, there’s traps all over these fields. I often tumble over them myself. But don’t worry. There’s no bear traps nor things like that,” the boy scoffed. “He doesn’t know how to set real traps.” There was scorn in his voice as he said that.

“Do you mean Tom Johnson? He owns most of this land, doesn’t he?” Kay shot out suddenly, hoping to take the boy by surprise and so get an answer.

“Spike?” Henri shifted about and stuck his hand in the hole in his sweater by the pocket, making it bigger. “Oh, I don’t know anything about Spike nor his business either. And what’s more, I don’t care,” he snapped. “And it isn’t healthy for girls to go buttin’ in either,” he warned. “I’m goin’ this time. S’long!” he called starting off on a run which defied even Kay’s trick of delaying him.

The accident, so obviously planned to stop whoever might try to go to the Morgan house by the path commonly used for that direction, only served to increase the girl’s determination.

“When they resort to tricks,” she was telling herself, “it’s because they’ve got a lot to hide. I wish that mere scratch on my left leg didn’t feel like a cut to the bone, but it does. I’ll have to push the wheel back, I guess.”

As she prepared to do the pushing she heard her name called, and she knew this time to whom the voice belonged. It was Cecy Duncan, loping like a wild deer down over the hill.

“Oh, Kay! Kay!” she called. “Wait, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“Hel-low, Cecy!” greeted Kay, “and am I glad to see you! You haven’t, by any chance, an old ambulance out on the road, have you?”

“What happened? Your leg is bleeding,” exclaimed Cecy, as Kay tried to tie a clean handkerchief over the scratch.

“You’re telling me,” joked Kay. “I just fell off my wheel and put my foot through the front spokes. It still hurts but it isn’t bad. You know how a scratch can sting. But, Cecy, I’ve got to hurry. There are things to do. Let’s get back to a clearing somewhere and I’ll tell you.”

“About your real estate plan? Have you done something about it?”

“You bet I have. And I was just on my way to see old Johnson, you know, the man I told you owns all this land that must have been left to him when Noah swam out of the ark, for I’m sure he never bought it.”

“Let me push the wheel?”

“Go ahead. I’m off wheels today. Here, let’s sit down. This is a good place to size up the layout. And listen, Cece. Here’s what happened up to now.”

What had happened lost none of its importance in Kay’s telling of it. She just couldn’t get over the evasive boy who was too smart for her. She made that plain to Cecy.

“Oh, maybe he was just making things up,” Cecy commented. “Boys like to be smart.”

“And are,” Kay assured her. “He didn’t make up the rich, ringing voice that called out to me when I got tangled up in the wheel. And he didn’t imagine the gutter that is dug out straight across the path, either. If I’d been walking it wouldn’t have mattered, but a bicycle doesn’t hop across barriers.”

“Is that the big house on the hillside over there?” Cecy asked. “I can just see the bricks through the trees.”

“Yes, that was called Morgan Manor once, Mother says. It isn’t really old, perhaps twenty-five or thirty years. Not old for a house.”

“But it would be for a girl,” chirped Cecy. “And you believe you can actually sell that place and get a commission on it? Carol says commission business in real estate has to go through a lot of red tape,” Cecy suggested cautiously.

“I know. But, you see, Mother is in a brokerage office that handles all sorts of financial matters. They have bonds and business transfers and settle real estate deals, too. Since the bank had to give it up the Stanley Burke Company took it on,” said Kay, again being very expert.

“But look, Kay,” confided Cecy, “what’s the big idea back of this? I know you’re not doing it just for the business, although it does look very good to me; a big house like that on a five percent commission would bring a whole lot of money.”

“Now who’s being businesslike?” joked Kay. “Yes, you’re right, Cecy. There is something else. I’ve lived here since I was born and I claim to know the place from treetop to——”

“The earth’s depths?”

“Just about,” agreed Kay. “But this old Morgan place has been growing more mysterious for a long time. Every once in a while someone wants to buy it; they even go so far as to pay a deposit, Mother says, then they give it up without any explanation.”

“But it’s only a house or at least a big estate,” Cecy argued. “Why do you care what happens to it?”

“It’s more than an estate, Cecy. It’s the missing link in the one big tragedy of Melody Lane. And it has all the dramatic angles— Well, listen, Cecy, it’s a long story, and the old scratch on the ‘busted’ leg is stinging.” Kay very cautiously smoothed out the handkerchief bandage. “Let’s move along. I’ll have to give up looking for old Johnson today, I suppose,” she complained. “But we can go along to the little office I was telling you about. It’s just over there in the group of maples. Won’t it be sweet for you and me and your sister Carol if she can spare time, to actually have a telephone and a typewriter there?” Kay speculated. “I’ve always longed for a nice little office—just like playing house.”

“Yeah,” drawled Cecy. “But if you start out to sell the Morgan place from that office, when you know, as you have just said, that buyers run for their lives, isn’t it a bit risky to take up quarters away out here in the woods?”

“You ask me that!” derided Kay. “When you girls for years formed the famous Melody Lane braves, afraid of nothing and up to everything? Cecy Duncan, if we have to have guns on our polished desk and keep the bullets in Jane Halliday’s cracked vase, I mean to get into that office.”

“Looking for something in an old safe, maybe?”

“No old safe in that office. But I might be looking for something, Cecy. You’re quite smart yourself. How’s Carol? Did she get her children all moved out from the city safely?”

The girls, who had lately been separated because Cecy and Carol had been away from Melody Lane, had plenty to talk about and many confidences to exchange. The stories of Melody Lane, the Mystery of Stingyman’s Alley and the Secret of the Kashmir Shawl were the most recent of the “Braves’” adventures and had been important enough to make two new volumes in this series. Kay demanded more details than even Cecy could so quickly give her, but being assured that Carol and Cecy would surely join in working out the present summer’s mysteries, had to satisfy Kay for the time being.

“There’s our office,” Kay announced as they turned into a newly made road and the little white cottage came into view. Isn’t it cute?”

“Oh, isn’t it, darling?” Cecy exclaimed. “I don’t blame you for wanting to play house in that.”

“We can look in the windows, anyway. Jane forgot to draw the shades,” mocked Kay as the two girls laughingly went toward the little window that looked out of the model office toward the West.