Читать книгу Mystery Cases of Letitia Carberry, Tish - Mary Roberts Rinehart - Страница 11

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Tish sent Miss Lewis in to sit with Aggie, and the three of us, including Tommy, met in Tish's room. She had brought her alcohol tea-kettle with her, and she insisted on making a cup of tea all around before we talked things over.

"Besides," she remarked, measuring out the tea, "it's about a quarter of twelve now, and we may need a little tea-courage by midnight."

"If that's the way you feel," Tommy said, from the bed, holding his empty cup ready for the tea. "I can get something from the medicine cupboard outside that has tea knocked out in the first round."

"Not whiskey. Tommy!" Tish said with the tea pot in the air.

"Certainly not! Spiritus frumenti," Tommy said with dignity, and Tish was reassured. But I knew what he meant, my great uncle having conducted a country pharmacy and done a large business among the farmers in that very remedy.

When we'd had our tea and some salted wafers, Tish drew up a chair and faced Tommy and myself.

"Now," she said, "what did Aggie see?"

"Personally," Tommy remarked, balancing his teaspoon across the bridge of his nose, and holding his head far back to do it, "personally, I'm glad she only saw—or felt—a foot. It proves her really remarkable quality of mind. The ordinary woman, in a stew like that, would have seen an entire corpse, not to mention smelling sulphur." r

Tish took the spoon off his nose and gave him a smart slap on the ear.

"Thomas!" she said, "you will either be serious or go home. Do you remember what we told you about the room upstairs, a foot-mark on the wall not three feet from the ceiling?"

Tommy nodded, with both hands covering his ears.

"Do you realize," Tish went on, "that that room is directly over the one Aggie is occupying?''

"Hadn't thought of it," said Tommy. "Is it?"

"Yes. Tommy Andrews, Aggie may or may not have dreamed of that ice-cold foot, but one thing she did not dream; Lizzie and I both saw it. The pipe molding over Aggie's bed is pulled loose from the wall and bent down."

Tommy stared at us both. Then he whistled.

"No!" he said, and fell into a deep study, with his hands in his heavy thatch of hair. After a minute he got off the bed and sauntered toward the door.

"I'll just wander in and have a look at it," he said, and disappeared.

It was Tish's suggestion that we put the light: out and sit in the dark. Probably Tommy's nearness gave us courage. As Tish said, in five minutes it would be midnight, and almost anything might happen under the circumstances.

"And as honest investigators," she said, "we owe it to the world and to science to put ourselves en rapport. These things never happen in the light."

We could hear Tommy speaking in a low tone to Miss Lewis, but soon that stopped, although he did not come back. Even with the door open, a dimly-outlined rectangle, I wasn't any too comfortable. Tish sat without moving. Once she leaned over and touched my elbow.

"I've got a tingle in both legs to the knee," she whispered. "Do you feel anything?"

"Nothing but the slat across the back of this chair," I replied, and we sat silent again. I must have dozed almost immediately, for when I roused, the traveling clock was striking midnight, and Tish was shaking my arm.

"What's that light?" she quavered.

I looked toward the hall, and sure enough the outline of the door was a pale and quavering yellow.

The door frame is moving!" gasped Tish. "Fiddle!" I snapped, wide awake. "Somebody's out there with a moving light. Where's-Tommy?"

"He hasn't come back. Lizzie, go and look out. I can't find my cane."

"Go yourself!" I said sourly.

Well, we went together, finally, tiptoeing to the door and peering out. The light was gone; only a faint gleam remained, and that came down the staircase to the upper floor.

"Damnation!" said Tommy's voice, just at our elbow. And with that he darted along the hall and up the stairs, after the light.

Now Tish is essentially a woman of action. She's only timid when she can't do anything.'

And now she hobbled across to the foot of the stairs, with me at her heels.

"That was no earthly light, Lizzie!" she said in a subdued tone. "Do you remember what Aggie said, about the light when Mr. Wiggins died?"

I'd been thinking about it myself that very moment.

"I'd feel better with some sort of weapon, Tish," I protested, as we started up, but Tish only looked at me in the darkness and shook her head. I knew perfectly well what she meant: that no earthly weapon would be of any avail. Considering what we thought, I think that we got up the staircase at all is very creditable.

The light was there, coming from one of the empty rooms, and streaming out into the dark hall. There was somebody moving in the room. We heard a window closing, and then the footsteps coming toward the door. The next moment the light itself came into the hall. It was a candle, and Miss Blake was carrying it!

I made out Tommy's figure flattened in a doorway, and then the light disappeared again as Miss Blake went into the next room, the one where Johnson had been found. She was there a long time, and once we heard her exclaim something and the light from the doorway wavered, as if the candle had almost gone out.

She went into each private room, then into the ward, and finally there remained only the mortuary. Tish clutched my arm. Would this bit of a girl, in her long white wrapper, her childish braid, her small bare feet thrust into bedroom slippers, would she dare that grisly place?"

She did not keep us in doubt long. She went directly to the foot of the mortuary steps and stood, her candle held high, looking up. Then she began to mount them, slowly, as if every atom of her will were required to urge her frightened muscles. Tommy stirred uneasily in his doorway.

The large double doors to the mortuary stood partly open. She pushed them back quietly and hesitated, candle still high. Then she went in, and by the paling light we knew she had gone to the far end of the room. Tommy came out from the doorway and tiptoed down the hall. We could see his outline against the gleam.

The stillness was terrible. We could hear her moving around that awful place, could hear, even at that distance, the soft swish of her negligee on the floor. And then, without any warning, she spoke. It was uncanny beyond description, although we heard nothing she said.

"My God!" said Tish, forgetting herself.

There was a sound immediately after. Tish said it was a thud, as if a chair had been upset, but I insisted that it sounded more like a window thrown up with terrific force. The light went out immediately, and we heard footsteps running away from us.

"Tommy!" Tish called. But nobody answered. We were left there alone in the darkness, shivering with fright.

I am very shaky about what happened next. I remember Tish fumbling for her cane, and saying she was going to follow Tommy, and my holding her back and telling her not to be a fool—that the boy was safe enough. And I remember seeing a light behind us and the old night watchman coming up the staircase with his electric flash, and trying to tell him something was wrong in the mortuary.

And then, as my voice gave way, we heard a shout overhead, and immediately the crash of broken glass and a thud into the hall just ahead of us. The watchman pushed us aside and ran.

Tommy was lying unconscious on the floor with the pieces of a broken skylight all around him.