Читать книгу The Rest Hollow Mystery - Rebecca N. Porter - Страница 8

Table of Contents

The one idea which possessed Kenwick after dragging himself back through the broken window was to find out if the woman upstairs was safe. The journey out to the big gate and back had consumed almost an hour, and as he pulled himself in between the wide board and shattered glass he felt that it must have been years since he had gone on that painful quest. He rested for a few moments and then went into the front hall.

To his amazement he found it ablaze with light. Brilliant too was the living-room beyond. In the latter he had never used anything but the shaded lamp upon the table. Now the chandeliers in the ceiling had been lighted from the switchboard button. It was evident that some one had been all over the lower part of the house while he was gone. It must have been the woman upstairs. There was no one else on the premises except that half-witted garden boy.

Grimly resolved to discover whether his mysterious companion was still concealing herself behind locked doors or whether her apartment had been stormed by some prowler he made his way up to the room in the front of the right wing. As he approached it he called to her asking if she was all right. There was no response. He knocked. The sound echoed dully down the handsome stairway. Then in a futile sort of way he tried the knob.

This time it yielded to his touch and swung slowly open. For a moment he hesitated, dreading to snap on the light. Then the stillness grew oppressive. His quick, impatient fingers groped along the wall, found the switch-button, and pressed it. The mysterious apartment flashed into sudden reality.

Kenwick looked about him, bewildered. The light revealed a large handsome room furnished in golden oak. There was a massive double bed, bureau, dressing-table, and several luxurious chairs. A heavy moquette carpet deadened every footfall, and the rose-colored draperies at the windows admitted only a restricted view of the outer world. But it was the condition of the room, not its furnishings, that puzzled the man upon the threshold. Dust covered every polished surface. The hearth was swept clean. There had been no fire on it for months, perhaps years. On the bed was a mattress but no coverings. The mirrors on bureau and dressing-table showed a thin veil of dust. There were no toilet articles, no personal belongings of any kind. The room was evidently a woman's but there was no hint of a woman's presence, except that in the air hung a faint perfume of heliotrope. He remembered suddenly that it was the perfume that Marcreta Morgan had always used.

Kenwick went over to one of the chairs and sat down. He felt intensely relieved. If the woman had gone away she would certainly send some one back to the house, for she knew that he was alone and injured. But how had she gone? Was there another entrance to these somber grounds? For half an hour he sat there trying to think it out. The room grew very cold. It had apparently been shut off from the furnace connection. He arose at last, stiffly, and went back downstairs, switching off the lights. In the living-room and hall he turned them off too, for they gave to the solemn rooms a garish, incongruous splendor.

He went into the den and took his old place on the upholstered window-seat. It may have been twenty minutes later that he heard the sound of wheels crunching the gravel of the driveway. He listened intently. No, this time he was not mistaken. Some vehicle was approaching the house. The stranger in goggles had been true to his promise and had sent back help, or perhaps returned himself. At last this hideous bondage was to end. He limped into the living-room and without turning on the light, peered out. There was no one in sight and no sound of voices, but at the foot of the front steps stood a long black car. It recalled to him in a flash the beetle-black limousine that he had seen in the tank-house garage.

Impelled by his entry into the room upstairs to try the front door, he turned the knob. It was unlocked. Whoever had come in or gone out had been in too much of a hurry to fasten it this time.

And then, standing there at that half-open door, Kenwick suddenly lost his headlong impatience. For the realization came to him at last that his experiences of the last twenty-four hours were no casual adventure. This was a game, perhaps even a trap. He had inadvertently stepped into a carefully laid plot. That it had been obviously prepared for somebody else did not alter the seriousness of his present position. Whoever was engineering the thing had assumed that he would do and say certain things. And now, he reminded himself angrily, he had probably done and said them all. Certainly his every move had been direct, impetuous, glaringly obvious. He would have to change his course unless he wanted to die in this accursed house. This game, whatever it was, couldn't be won by throwing all the cards face up on the table and demanding a reckoning. The other players wore masks. If he was to have any chance against them he must adopt their tactics.

He assured himself of all this while he limped down the shallow porch steps. He hadn't the faintest notion of what he was going to do next, but decided to trust to impulse. He had reached the lowest step when all at once he recoiled. Almost with his hand upon the beetle-black limousine he discovered that it was not a limousine at all. It was a hearse.

At that same moment, he heard, coming from the near distance, the voice of some one speaking with unaccustomed restraint. It was a raucous voice talking in a harsh whisper. And then there was a sound of footsteps approaching.

Without an instant's hesitation Kenwick opened the door of the hearse, pulled himself inside, and drew it shut, unlatched behind him. There was no definite plan in his mind except to escape. And the woman had apparently fled so he felt no further responsibility for her.

The steps came nearer. In another minute some one might jerk open the door and discover him. And he remembered uneasily that now he was not armed. He had left the revolver on the table in the den. The footsteps stopped close to his head and a man's voice called to somebody at a distance.

"My orders was to come out here. That's all I know about it. But I'm not goin' to get myself tied up in any mess like this. It's up to the coroner first. It just means that I'll have to make another trip out here to-morrow."

Kenwick heard him clamber to the high seat, and heard him jam his foot against the starter, heard its throbbing response. And then he started away on his long weird drive through the black night.

He had expected his conveyance to be almost as close and stifling as a tomb, but was relieved to find that sufficient air came in through the crack of the door to make the trip endurable. The only provident thing that he had done during the whole adventure, he decided, was to put on his overcoat and hat before leaving the den. One journey bareheaded into the November night had been sufficient to warn him against a repetition of such rashness. He was dressed now as he had been when he first took stock of himself outside the tall iron gate.

The road was smooth asphalt all of the way, and the passenger, stretched at full length on the hard floor of the hearse, felt more comfortable than he had all that ghastly day. During the ride he tried to formulate some definite course of action. For now that the solitary desolation of the last twenty-four hours was ended, he was able to detach himself from its events and to view the whole experience as a spectator.

His vivid imagination pictured the somber house in a dozen different lights. But he discarded them one by one, and his interest centered about the identity of the woman upstairs and the single shot which had pierced the stillness of a few hours before. Of only one thing he was certain—that he was going to get out of Mont-Mer as speedily as possible. It was all very well to conjecture that the house might be the disreputable retreat of some Eastern capitalist, or a rendezvous for radicals, but he preferred to solve the riddle from a distance. He had no intention of being called as a witness in an ugly exposé. It would be easy enough to write to Old Man Raeburn and explain that it hadn't been possible for him to stop off on his way to San Francisco. He fervently hoped that he would never see Mont-Mer again. Without ever having really seen it he had come to loathe it.

He had ridden for twenty minutes or more when he felt the vehicle slow down. It made a sharp turn and came to a stop. Kenwick wondered if the driver would open the doors, and he lay there waiting, staring into the dark, impassive in the hands of fate. He heard the man climb down from his seat and then the sound of his footsteps growing fainter in the distance.

Ten minutes later Kenwick cautiously pushed open the flimsy doors and worked himself out of his hiding-place. He was in an alley enclosed on three sides by the backs of buildings. Half hopping, half crawling he reached the dimly lighted street. It was almost midnight now and the little town was deserted. At the corner he found a drug-store. It looked warm, companionable, inviting. Drawing his fur-collared overcoat about his ears he hobbled to the door and pushed it open.

Inside two men were leaning against a glass show-case talking with the clerk. At Kenwick's entrance the conversation stopped abruptly like the dialogue of movie actors when the camera clicks the scene's end. The intruder, clutching at one of the show-cases for support, forced a comradely smile. "If I can't put one over here," he told himself, "I don't deserve to be called a fiction-writer."

But before he had time to speak one of the men came forward with a startled questioning. "You look all in, man; white as a sheet. Sit down here. What's the idea?"

"Pretty close call," Kenwick told him. "A fellow in a car bowled me over as I was crossing the street. He went right on, but I doubt if I'll be able to for a while."

"Well, what do you know about that?" the drug clerk challenged, as he helped his visitor into a chair behind the prescription-desk. "Say, this is gettin' to be one of the worst towns on the coast for auto accidents. Didn't get his number, I suppose?"

"No. And I'm just a stranger passing through here. I don't know many people."

"Hard luck." It was evident that the trio were disappointed in the meagerness of his story. One of them stooped and was probing the swollen leg with skilful fingers. Kenwick winced.

"You've got a bad sprain there all right," the doctor told him. "It's swollen a good deal, too, for being so recent. Have you walked far?"

"Yes, rather." Kenwick watched in silence while the physician bound up the injured member in a stout bandage. In spite of his best efforts one sharp moan escaped him.

"Your nerves are badly shaken, I can see that," the doctor decided. "Fix him up a little bromide, Gregson."

Kenwick took the glass, furious to note that it trembled in his hand. The druggist attempted to joke him back to normal poise. "A little more of a jolt and you'd have had to pass him up to Gifford, Doc. Gifford, here," he went on by way of introduction, "is shipping a body north to-night on the twelve-thirty. Bein' two of you, he might have got the railroad to give your folks a special rate if you're goin' his way."

The patient evinced mild interest. "San Francisco?" he inquired. The undertaker nodded.

"That's the train I hoped to make," Kenwick sighed. "But my money seems to have been jolted out of me and——" He went carefully through his pockets as he spoke. And then Gifford came over and stood beside him. "If you don't mind," he began, "I'd like to know your name."

Kenwick's reply was glibly reassuring. "Kenneth Rogers."

"Oh! You that young Rogers that's been visiting for a few days at the Paddington place, 'Utopia'?" It was the doctor who asked this question.

Kenwick nodded warily.

The physician extended his hand. "I'm Markham. Had an engagement to play golf with you out at the country club this afternoon. Awfully sorry you couldn't make it but I got the message all right from your sister that you were having trouble with your car out near Hillside Inn and you couldn't get away."

As Kenwick wrung his hand with easy cordiality there flashed before his mental vision the picture of the wayfarer in goggles. Could a malign fate have trapped him into taking the name of that visitor to Mont-Mer, or any visitor, who might some day arise and challenge him? He had got to get out of this place before the net that the gods were weaving about him should bind him hand and foot.

"Say, listen." Gifford forced himself to the front again, speaking with a mixture of eagerness and hesitation. "If you're goin' up to the city to-night, I wonder if——You see, it's like this. I've got a big masonic funeral on here for Thursday morning. It'll be a hell of a rush for me to get back in time if I have to make this trip. But I promised a little woman that I'd see personally to this shipment; send a responsible party or go myself. I haven't got a soul to send, but if you——."

Kenwick shook his head. "I won't be able to leave now until to-morrow. I'll have to wait and get some money."

Gifford waved aside the objection. "Your expenses will be paid, of course, as mine would have been. I'll advance you the funds. And you don't have to do a thing, you know. Wellman's man will meet the train at the other end. Wait and see the casket in his hands and then you're through."

He watched the other man eagerly. For a moment Kenwick didn't trust himself to meet his gaze. He hoped that he was not betraying in his face the jubilant conviction that his guardian angel had suddenly returned from a vacation and had renewed an interest in him. In order not to appear too eagerly acquiescent he asked casually: "Who is the fellow? Or who was he?"

"Man by the name of Marstan. He wasn't known around here. His wife had to come down from the city to identify him." He glanced at his watch. "There's just about time to make the train now. I've got my car outside. It's luck, your stumbling in here like this. Sheer luck."

"Luck is too mild a word for it," Kenwick assured himself as he crawled into his Pullman a few moments later. "It's providence, old boy. That's what it is."

The bromide had begun to do its work. And his leg, properly bandaged, gave him no pain. Almost hilarious over the knowledge that daylight would find him among familiar surroundings again, he fell into the delicious slumber that follows sudden surcease of mental strain.

When he awoke the train was speeding through the oak-dotted region of San Mateo. He had refused to accept any expense-money from Gifford except enough for his breakfast, and after a cup of coffee in the diner, he sat gazing out of the window, not caring to open conversation with any of his fellow-travelers, completely absorbed in the business of readjusting himself to this environment that he had loved and from which the war had so abruptly uprooted him.

It was glorious to be back again, to catch up the loose threads of the old life. And in spite of the stark bareness of winter, the landscape had never seemed so appealing. The wide level stretches of pasture, cut by ribbons of asphalt, the prosperous little towns which the Coast Company's fast train ignored on its thunderous dash northward, the children walking to school, the pruners waving their shears to him as he sped by—all these breathed a healthy normal living that made the neurotic adventures of the past day seem remote and unreal.

Under the long shed of the Third and Townsend Depot he lingered only until he had carried out Gifford's instructions. Then he went on down the open corridor to the waiting-rooms. Outside the voices of taxi-drivers and hotel busmen made the radiant winter morning hideous with their cries. The waiting-room was warm and bright. There was no better place, Kenwick reflected, to map out his program. The air was a tonic, crisp and tipped with frost. It was too cold to be without an overcoat and yet, if Everett did not make punctual reply to the message that he was about to send, he might have to part with it for a time.