Читать книгу The Doom of Stark House - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 4

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Jacques Bonner yanked the reins with a swift, almost fierce, gesture as the sleigh slid abreast of the young men. Then he proceeded to get his unwieldy body down to the ground. Hal was astonished and moved to secret merriment as he beheld the man standing before him, for this was no giant as he had been led to believe when he saw him sitting in the sleigh. Bonner was a vast torso; his tiny, stumpy legs, giving him a height of little more than five feet, seemed to have been an afterthought of Mother Nature’s.

His dark, opaque eyes were observant, however. Hal realized this at once, and he knew instinctively that the man had sensed his amusement and had already set out to dislike him. Chester Stark seemed to have sensed it also for he immediately threw himself into the breach.

“Jacques,” he was saying with that wistful smile that had so endeared him to Hal, “this is my friend, Hal Keen—my great big American college chum.” He laughed pleasantly. “He looks big enough to save me from any runaway horse, hey? But he almost didn’t save himself.”

“I’m here as proof that I did save myself though, Ches,” Hal laughed.

“And how! We’re both here to prove what you did, Hal. The main thing is that neither one of us feels the effects of that shake-up so much that we can’t enjoy this convalescence in a great big way. Just think how that accident opened up the heart of our dear old Alma Mater and gave us a nice long pre-Easter vacation to recuperate in. In a way you ought to feel grateful to me, really you ought!”

“Did I say I didn’t feel grateful!”

They had almost forgotten Jacques who stood before them looking more grotesque than ever with his immobile face and his dull eyes watching them intently and yet always seeming to look elsewhere. Suddenly he made a swift movement toward the young men’s baggage and Hal noticed that his hands too were tremendous. As he gathered up the luggage he muttered:

“We get back B’yond, M’sieu Chester. Snow come soon.”

“Yes, I know, Jacques. That’s why the plane had to leave us here. Sky’s so thick with snow the pilot couldn’t take the chance of trying to make a landing at Beyond. Besides, he couldn’t take the chance of losing any more time—he had to cover a lot of sky toward Quebec before night.”

Jacques Bonner was piling the luggage into the sleigh by this time. He gave no sign whatsoever that he had heard Chester’s remarks but motioned both young men into the back seat peremptorily. Then without further ado he edged his unwieldy bulk into the front seat among the baggage and took up the reins.

“Say,” Hal said in a deep-throated whisper, “that bird doesn’t happen to be deaf or anything like that, does he?”

Chester shook his head and tucked the heavy robes about them.

“It isn’t deafness; it’s Jacques,” he whispered, scarcely moving his lips.

Bonner had not heard, however; he had already turned the horses about and the tinkling bells on their harness soon vied with the low moaning of the wind that came rushing toward them out of the north. Hal sank lower under the warm robes until all but his strong chin was covered.

“It’s weather what I mean, Ches!”

“This is nothing. Wait and watch if we have a nice long spell of snow and wind.”

“We’ll have something to look forward to then.”

“There’s not much else I can promise you at Beyond,” Chester said wistfully. He, too, was chin deep in the robes. “We can ski plenty, of course, and skate, and...”

“Quit your worrying about how you’re going to entertain me, Ches. I’m an entertainment all to myself—I’ll whoop things up at Beyond. Just leave it to me.”

Chester did leave it to him and the result exceeded his wildest expectations.