Читать книгу Mystery Behind Dark Windows - Mary C. Jane - Страница 11

IF ONLY there were someone she could talk to about the sound she had heard in the mill and about Jeff Purdy’s queer behavior! The girls at school were like strangers to Ellie. She certainly couldn’t confide in them. She realized with an odd, alarmed beat of her heart that she couldn’t confide in Tony, either. Not about this. He didn’t want her to wonder about it or try to find out.

She would have to fall back on Hank Littlefield, that was all. Hank lived across the river from the Pride mansion. When Ellie and Tony used to come home from Harris Hill School, in their summer vacations, he often rowed over to their back lawn to play with them. Both she and Tony had always been able to count on Hank.

He sat next to her at school now. As soon as she settled into her seat she turned to whisper to him. He bent his head toward her at the same moment and began to speak before she had a chance.

“Say, Ellie, did you know there were going to be two satellites passing overhead tonight at the same time? I’m going to watch for them. Don’t you and Tony want to see them? Iťs really going to be something!”

Ellie was so taken aback she stared at him blankly for a second or two. She had been thinking of something entirely different, and at first she hardly understood what he was whispering about. She had forgotten Hank was so crazy about planets and rockets and outer space.

At last she managed to ask, “What time will it be?”

“Eight-thirty. And listen—I’ll come over to your house and watch with you and Tony. I think we could see them better from your side of the river.”

Then the last bell rang and they had to stop talking. But Ellie was satisfied. She would have a chance to see Hank tonight. If Tony didn’t want to watch for the satellites—and he probably wouldn’t—she could tell Hank everything that had happened.

When she explained Hank’s plan at the dinner table that night, her brother shook his head. “The track team is meeting at the gym at eight o’clock and I’ve got to be there. I don’t believe I’ll get home in time to watch the satellites.”

In the light from the tall, flickering candles in the middle of the table Aunt Rachel’s face was partly shadowed, but Ellie saw the quick, disturbed glance she cast at Tony, and the troubled frown that settled on her face afterward. Was she worried about him, more than anyone realized? Did she know more than he thought she did about how often he was away from home in the evenings?

Ellie was glad to escape to her own room when dinner was over and the dishes were done. At quarter-past eight she put on her warm jacket and ran outdoors to wait for Hank. He pedaled into the yard on his bicycle just as she was stepping off the porch.

“I thought you’d row over,” she said in surprise.

“Heck, no. My boat is pulled up for the winter,” he said. “Let’s go down on the riverbank, though. Thaťs the best place to watch from.”

Long ago Grandfather Pride had built a circular bench around an apple tree on the bank. They picked their way toward it over the dark lawn and settled down to wait for the appearance of the satellites.

“Where’s Tony?” Hank asked.

Ellie explained about him and then seized the chance to tell Hank about the strange sound she had heard in the mill. “There wasn’t a broken window anywhere, so it couldn’t have been the wind that made that door slam,” she finished excitedly.

“Gee, Ellie—somebody must have been in there,” he exclaimed. “I wonder what he was doing?”

She hesitated. “I don’t know. I’ve been wondering about it all day. Hank, do you know Jeff Purdy?”

“Of course. Whaťs he got to do with it?”

She told him how strangely Jeff had acted that morning. “He tried to make me think he didn’t care whether I looked at the windows of the mill, or what I did. But when he looked back, I could tell he was worried. Do you think—maybe—he knows something about it?”

Hank squirmed uneasily on the bench.

“I don’t know. Of course—Jeff’s father used to have a good job at the mill—he was a foreman, I think. His grandfather worked there too. They were lots better off when the mill was open. Probably they don’t like your aunt very well. But that’s nothing—half the town feels that way.”

“I know.”

There was an uncomfortable silence for a few minutes while they studied the dark, star-sprinkled sky and listened to the ripple of the river.

Hank bent forward, suddenly, and clasped his arms across his stomach. “O-ooh, but I’m hungry,” he groaned.

“Hungry,” Ellie echoed, staring at him as if he had gone crazy. “What’s the matter? Didn’t you have your dinner?”

“I had space rations. I shouldn’t really need anything more, but gee—I’m hungry.”

“What do you mean—space rations?” she demanded.

“Oh, you know—pills, and tablets and stuff that men eat when they travel in a space ship and can’t carry a lot of supplies.”

Ellie’s voice was skeptical. “Huh. Where would you get pills like that?”

“Well, maybe I didn’t have real space rations,” he admitted defensively, “but I made up my own. I had a bouillon cube and three vitamin pills and some powdered milk. It should have been enough, but it didn’t fill me up.”

Ellie bent down and fumbled in the grass and leaves at their feet. “Here,” she said unsympathetically, holding out a frosty apple. “Eat this and you’ll feel better!

Hank pushed her hand away. “I can’t eat it. I’m trying to prove I can get along all right on pills and stuff. I’ve got to shrink my stomach first—see?”

Ellie wanted to push the apple into his hands and tell him to eat it and stop being silly. Boys had such crazy ideas!

“It will be at least ten years before you’re old enough to be an astronaut,” she scolded. “I don’t see why you have to start this soon to shrink your stomach.”

She eyed him thoughtfully in the dim light. Hank was a little on the stocky side. He was almost plump, and his face was so round and cheerful it always looked kind of beaming, like the sun. Maybe it would be good for him to slim down a bit.

She threw the apple into the river. The sound of its splash in the dark water could barely be heard above the ripple of the current. Then she and Hank leaned their heads back against the tree and watched the sky in silence for a while.

All at once Ellie became aware of a new sound. A creaking and dipping of oars came faintly from the shadows on the far side of the stream.

“Somebody’s rowing up the river,” she whispered.

“He’s not going up the river,” Hank whispered back. “He’s going down, toward the bridge. I wonder who it is?”

“I hope he knows about the falls,” she said.

“Gee, that’s right.”

Hank stood up and called, “Hello!”

There was no answer from the person in the boat. Hank ran to the edge of the bank and shouted again. “Hey—whoever you are—you’d better watch out for the falls!”

A sudden rattling, scraping sound, as if an oar had slipped and been jerked back, was the only answer to Hank’s call. The regular dipping sound grew faster and fainter as the boat moved on downstream.

“That’s—queer,” he muttered, peering into the darkness.

The liquid surface of the river reflected light enough to make the outline of a boat visible, but neither Hank nor Ellie could catch sight of it. For a moment Ellie wondered if there really was a boat there on the water. The regular creak and dip of the oars was an eerie sound, growing fainter as they listened.

“He’s hugging the shadows of the other bank,” Hank said. “Now—who would do that? Why would anybody row down the river on a cold, dark night like this, anyway?”

Ellie felt the coldness, suddenly, right through to her bones. She shivered, and wrapped her jacket more tightly across her chest. She opened her mouth to say, “Let’s go in the house and get warm,” but at that very moment Hank pointed to the horizon and shouted, “There they are. Two of them! See?”

The bright satellites began to climb the sky, drifting slowly below the twinkling stars. It was strange to see two of them at the same time, like twin planets gleaming in the heavens. Hank forgot the unseen row-boat while he watched them drift past the Milky Way like candles seen in a snowstorm.

“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” he said, when the lights had disappeared on the northern horizon.

Ellie nodded. “It makes you wonder, all right.”

But it wasn’t the two satellites that she was wondering about. The sound of a slammed door inside the empty mill and the creak of invisible oars on the river were far more mysterious to her.

Hank seemed to be lost in outer space. He didn’t say anything as they walked slowly toward the house. But when he climbed onto his bicycle, he came back to earth once more.

“We’ll have to find out about that boat,” he said.

“Oh, Hank, do you think we can?”

“Easily,” he assured her. “Most people who own boats have put them up for the winter. All we’ve got to do is look up and down the bank, and if we find a boat that’s still in the water it will probably be the one.

“And then we can find out whose it is,” Ellie exclaimed. “Gee, Hank, that’s a great idea!”