Читать книгу Mystery Behind Dark Windows - Mary C. Jane - Страница 10

ELLIE squeezed Kim so tightly that he let out a loud, bloodcurdling me-ow. The cry was terrifying at that moment, when nothing seemed so important as to slip away without being seen.

She raced up the alley, hardly stopping to watch for traffic on Main Street before darting across to the safety of home. There she leaned against one of the columns of the front porch to catch her breath. As soon as she got up strength to open the door, she dropped Kim inside on the hall rug.

“I found him,” she called shakily.

Making a beeline for his mistress, Kim jumped into her lap and sat there like a prim statue. His blue eyes stared accusingly at Ellie as if she were the one who had been naughty, leaving him out in the darkness so long.

Aunt Rachel noticed her pale face.

“I’m afraid you’re cold, Elinor. The kettle is boiling for my tea. Why don’t you make some for both of us?”

Ellie looked longingly toward the hall stairway. What she really wanted was to get safely to her room and not to have to worry about Aunt Rachel or Tony or Kim any more tonight. But she dragged her still-shaky legs toward the kitchen and got out the cups and saucers.

“What about Tony?” her aunt called. “Wouldn’t he like a hot drink too?”

“He’s probably asleep or he’d be down here by now,” Ellie shouted back.

She was thankful, even though it wasn’t right to be, that Aunt Rachel had a lame ankle and hardly ever went upstairs. She slept in a small room off the hall that had once been Grandfather Pride’s study.

Ellie put the teacups and a plate of crackers on a tray and carried it to the living room. In the lamp-light, with Kim washing his naughty face on Aunt Rachel’s lap, the huge, high-ceilinged room seemed almost cozy. Almost like a real home.

They were just finishing their tea when the back door banged. Tony called from the kitchen, “It’s only me!” and came sauntering into the lamplight.

Aunt Rachel turned an accusing glance upon Ellie. “Why didn’t you tell me Tony had gone out? Didn’t you know—”

He spoke up quickly. “Oh, I just slipped down the back stairs a little while ago. I wanted to get some fresh air. I wasn’t gone long.”

Aunt Rachel continued to look questioningly at Ellie. “I should think you would have known he was out,” she said. Then her glance turned to her tall, dark-eyed nephew and her face softened. “Elinor will get some tea for you,” she said.

Ellie sighed as she plodded toward the kitchen. She was glad Aunt Rachel wasn’t cross, but gee, Tony sure did get away with murder. Now he would think it was safe to keep on slipping out of the house whenever he felt like it.

She couldn’t stay cross with him, though, any more than Aunt Rachel could. When they were ready for bed that night, he came tiptoeing into her room, bundled up in his bathrobe. He sat down on the edge of her bed.

“I hope I didn’t get you into trouble, Ellie,” he said. “It’s just that I can’t stand hanging around this gloomy house every night. I have to get out and have some fun.”

Ellie’s voice was wistful. “Don’t you wish we were back at Harris Hill School? It still seems more like home to me and this old house never will.”

Tony shook his head. “I kind of like Darkwater Falls, especially now that I’m on the track team and everything. Anyway, Aunt Rachel can’t afford to keep us in private school any longer.”

“She could afford it if she would sell the mill,” Ellie muttered. “She would have money enough for anything, then.”

Tony frowned. “She won’t sell it, you know that. Darkwater Mill has belonged to the Pride family for almost a hundred years and she thinks it’s always got to. She thinks I’ll run it someday, when I’m grown up.”

“Would you want to?” Ellie asked.

He hesitated. “No. I don’t know what I want to do, but I know it isn’t that. Anyway, the machinery will be old and rusty by that time, and the mill will be a ruin. Mr. Joslin said so.”

Ellie’s eyes widened in surprise. Mr. Joslin was Aunt Rachel’s lawyer. He was a tall, handsome man, but so very dignified and aloof she couldn’t imagine chatting with him. “Do you mean—you talked about it with him—alone?”

Tony nodded. “He called me into his office one day last week and talked a long time. He thinks Aunt Rachel ought to sell the mill. He says the taxes she has to pay on it every year use up a big part of her income. He wants me to talk to her and try to persuade her to sell.”

“Gee, do you think it would be any use?”

He shook his head. “Aunt Rachel isn’t”—he paused —“she just isn’t reasonable about Darkwater Mill. Daddy was killed while he was on a trip to get business for the mill, you know, and Aunt Rachel has never been like herself since. And then there was the strike. She thinks it broke Grandfather Pride’s heart. She hates people in this town because of it.”

After a minute’s silence he went on sadly, “That’s why I don’t think it would do any good to talk to her. She wants to keep the mill closed. She thinks it serves the men right to be out of work and to have the town go downhill. She wants it to be that way.”

“No wonder the kids around here don’t like me much,” Ellie said. “I thought it was because I had been to private school and all, but I guess it’s because of Aunt Rachel.”

She remembered, suddenly, the sound she had heard in the big, echoing building.

“I went down the alley looking for Kim tonight, and I got an awful scare,” she said. “I heard a noise in the mill.”

“A noise?” her brother asked sharply. “What kind of a noise?”

“A door slammed,” she answered, almost in a whisper. “It sounded away up near the top of the building.”

Alarm showed plainly in Tony’s dark eyes. “Are you sure it was inside the mill?”

“Where else could it have come from? The empty mill and the warehouse were all there were on either side of me.”

He hesitated. “It could have been the wind. It’s blowing hard tonight. Maybe there was a broken window somewhere and the wind blew through it and slammed a door.”

“Maybe,” Ellie admitted. “But I don’t think so. I’ve never noticed any broken windows.”

Tony stood up. “You didn’t tell Aunt Rachel about it, did you?” he asked as he moved toward the door.

When she shook her head he said, in a relieved tone, “Well, don’t. There’s no use worrying her.”

With a yawn and a mumbled “G’night” he was off down the hall.

Ellie propped herself up on her elbows, her stubborn chin in her hands, and stared after him. Well! It certainly wasn’t like Tony to brush aside a strange happening like that slammed door and to try to make her think it was nothing. What was the matter with him, anyway?

She snuggled down in her bed again, with a sigh. “I suppose it’s because he’s so grown up, all of a sudden. He doesn’t care about the things I do any more—like playing games and stuff. I suppose he thinks he’s too big, now, to be scared by a noise in an empty building.”

As she switched off her light she whispered resentfully, “Anyway—I don’t believe it was the wind that slammed that door. I think there was a person inside the mill.”

She slept late the next morning. Tony was up before her and was ready to leave for school by the time she came down to breakfast. His school began earlier than hers, so they seldom went together any more.

It was a clear, calm day after the windy night. When Ellie stepped outdoors she found dry leaves drifted across the front porch and heaped against the wall of the house. The uneven old bricks in the walk were slippery with frost.

She paused at the gate in the iron fence to look across at the mill. It didn’t look a bit scary now. Sunlight glittered on the dark windows and streamed into the alley. Would there be time, before school, for her to walk through there and have a look for broken windows? She decided to try it.

There were certainly no broken panes at the Main Street end of the building. She walked slowly down the alley toward the river, craning her neck to scan the long rows of windows on the third and fourth floors. As far as she could see, they were all whole.

The other end of the mill was in shadow. She went on beyond it a short distance, almost as far as the bowling alley. This was a part of town she didn’t like, with its pool hall and café and rows of shabby houses, all alike, where some of the millworkers lived. She hoped nobody was noticing her as she turned to study the windows at the end of the mill.

There wasn’t a broken pane of glass anywhere. Tony had certainly been mistaken. The wind couldn’t have got into that tightly closed building. There had to be some other explanation for the sound she had heard in the night.

As she hesitated, lost in thought, a jeering voice startled her.

“What are you looking for—Christmas?”

Ellie whirled and stared at the tall, frowning boy who had spoken. She recognized him at once. He was Jeff Purdy and his grandfather was janitor at Ellie’s school. She had seen Jeff many times when he came in to work with Mr. Purdy in the late afternoons. She was quite sure he was in Tony’s high-school class.

“Oh—hi,” she said. She couldn’t think of any answer to his question so she added lamely, “Aren’t you late for school?”

“So what?” he asked, giving her a scornful glance as he strode past her up the alley. The careless swing of his shoulders seemed to make it plain that he didn’t care whether he was late to school or not. Or what Ellie Pride thought about it.

She pursed up her lips and made a face at his back. She started to say, under her breath, “Phooey to you, Jeff Purdy,” when, to her surprise, she saw him turn and glance at her.

It was a furtive look, and he turned away quickly when he saw that she noticed. But it made Ellie stare after him in surprise.

Why should Jeff Purdy care if she chose to study the windows of Darkwater Mill?