Persons Unknown Part 39

She was answered only by the endless repet.i.tion of some phrase, and unlocking the door, she went in.

She stepped into a charming, simple, sunny room, comfortably appointed, the windows open toward the road and their thin, flowery curtains stirring in the low, sultry wind. But on the inside of these curtains the windows were completely screened with poultry wire, and, over the door, the transom was wired, too. In the bed a young, slight girl half lay, half sat; her dark red curls had been gathered into a heavy braid and her blue eyes were blank with fever; she rocked her head from side to side upon the pillow with an indescribable weariness, and without breath, without change, with a monotonous and yet agitated inflection, she repeated over and over again the same phrases: "No, no, no, no! I don't believe it! Oh, Will, Will, Will, I don't believe it! You did it yourself! You did it yourself! You did it yourself! Ask Nancy Cornish!"

And then, always with a little listening pause, "I'll promise anything!"

Christina shrank back against the door-jamb as if she were going to fall.

"Whatever does this mean? How came she like this? Oh, G.o.d!" she breathed, "what shall I do? What can I do?"

"Oh, Will, Will, Will!" said the other voice. "No, no, no, I don't believe it!"

"Ah, me!" Christina breathed. "Nor I! If only I hadn't been there, and seen!"

"You did it yourself! You did it yourself! You did it yourself! Ask Nancy Cornish!"

Christina sank on her knees beside the bed, in an agony of terror and tenderness, and for the first time since she had seen the lock of hair, her tears poured forth. But she took the girl's hand and held it; and she tried to master those feverish eyes with the eyes of her own despair. "Nancy!" she said, "Nancy! It's Christina. Nancy dear, it's Chris. Oh, try to know me. Look at me. Listen to me. You must know me.

You shall. Nancy, stop it! Stop it and look at me!--Oh, G.o.d!" Christina prayed. "Help me! Help me!" She caught the sick girl in her arms and covered the young little face with tears and kisses.

And as she held Nancy on her breast she became aware of a thin ribbon round the girl's neck, with a key to it. She picked up this strange ornament, and immediately Nancy's fingers came creeping in search of it and she cried out. Christina dropped it and rose to her feet. "Why!" she said aloud. "It's the key to my desk!" The desk stood against the wall and she tried it. It was locked. Nancy lay almost quiet clutching the key. Christina stood there, puzzled.

In a drawer of the dressing-table there was a key much the same in shape and size. Christina took it out, drew the ribbon from Nancy's neck, and, steeling her heart, plucked open Nancy's hand. The girl set up a shrill cry but was instantly quieted by the subst.i.tute key; the old woman could be heard rattling with a tray at the foot of the stairs.

Christina sprang to the desk and opened it; it was in order and almost empty, containing no object that Christina did not know. She pulled open one after the other of the three little drawers. And thus she came, with an amazed start, upon a bulky envelope bearing an address which was the last she could have expected. The envelope was addressed to the District-Attorney of New York.

Christina appropriated it without pause or scruple, slipped it into her little handbag and restored Nancy's property almost with one swift movement. She was sitting on the edge of the bed in an att.i.tude of listless dejection when the housekeeper entered with the tray.

"Well," said the old woman, "why don't you take her? Mebbe everything ain't just as you expected. What'd she yell out like that for?"

"I touched that ribbon round her neck. What has she got clutched in her hand?"

"Oh, just some old trash! Better leave it be. She yells blue murder if you try to take it away from her."

These two truthful ladies looked down together on the turning head and chattering lips and the eyes burning with fever. "Ain't it a sight?"

said the old woman. "It's wonderful what frettin' 'll do. She ain't been like this but since Wednesday. She kep' up surprisin' until then. Guess her not hearin' anything from you set her off. She counted on that. I'd know why she sh'd be so terrible set on gettin' away from here. She's been well treated. When there's been anybody here fit to keep an eye on her, she ain't even been locked up. Nicola fastened down the window in the closet where you had the sink put in--y' know, under the stairs?--in case she sh'd take to carryin' on. But mercy me, we found out soon enough that wa'n't the idea. She's had the best in the house.--Well, you 'bout scalded yerself."

"I'm in a hurry," said Christina, setting down the empty coffee-cup.

"Where are some loose clothes for her?"

"Land sakes!" said the old woman. "You want to kill her!"

Christina went to a closet and found some skirts and a cloak.

"Please go down," she said, "and tell Nicola to put the hood up and let down the rain curtains."

The old woman's suspicion and resentment had never been allayed, but she kept them choked under. "Well," said she, "I s'pose it's all right. I guess she's goin' t' die anyhow. An' I guess it's 'bout the best thing she can do. I dunno what on earth we're goin' t' do with her if she don't. I ain't goin' to stand for any o' them Dago actions. But I dunno as I can always put a veto on 'em!--Well, I don't see as you got any call to make such a face as that--seems to me that Denny fellow got a long way ahead o' anything any o' our boys done, if they are Dagoes!"

"Take my message to Nicola, please," Christina said, "and don't stand there talking. Hurry!"

The old woman got as far as the door. "I s'pose you know's well as anybody why she's here!" she said, intently studying Christina's face.

She went out and downstairs muttering. "But I'd jus' like to know why you're takin' a hand in it! The idea! I guess that Denny feller--" The front door closed after her; Christina looked out of the window and saw her speaking with Nicola.

She had Nancy partly dressed, and now wrapped her in the cloak. "What am I to ask you, my poor Nancy? Do you know what he never would tell me--how that door came to be bolted?" The girl's babble kept on undiminished. "G.o.d forgive me!" Christina cried, "if I do wrong!" With a strong effort, she lifted the girl in her arms.

And then she was struck still by a sudden sound. It was the sound of the automobile racing down the road.

She laid Nancy down and ran to the window; she flew downstairs and opened the front door. The rear of the car in which she had arrived, speeding in an opposite direction, was still visible in its own dust.

Had Nicola gone to borrow rain curtains or some tool? Puzzled, Christina called to the old woman. "Mrs. Pascoe!" Getting no answer she went into the dining-room and from thence to the kitchen; they were empty. Her glance scoured the weedy homeliness of the backyard. She went to the shed, to the barn; they were deserted. A strange silence had fallen upon the place. In the hot lowering sunshine the girl stood still, and for the first time the cold fingers of suspicion began to creep along her pulse.

She had been very sure of her position, and she felt, as yet, nothing that could be called fear. But the defiance of her authority was amply evident. She knew now that she had been a fool to come here alone, to depend entirely on her personal force. But her mouth set itself in a smile like light on steel. Did they know what they were doing when they pushed her to the wall like this? Perhaps, in some way, they counted on the time it would take her to leave Nancy behind her and go for help--the nearest house was half a mile away. Leave Nancy behind her!

For reply Christina sped into the hall, and caught up the New York telephone book. She ran her finger down a column until, having come to the number 3100 Spring, she picked up the receiver. Something said, in her little steely smile, that with the utterance of that number she would throw a world away. The number was that of Police Headquarters.

The exchange was a long time answering. Christina shook the receiver hook vigorously. Still silence. As she gave an impatient movement something brushed, swinging, against her wrist. It was a loose end of dark green cord from the receiver in her hand. The wire had been cut.

Christina remained there quite quiet, while that cold hand of the suspicion that was now certainty seemed to stop her heart. She remembered that, in the world of help she was cut off from, not a living human being knew where she was. Well, she was a strong girl. She said to herself, "It is better Nancy should die on the road in my arms than that I should leave her here!" She ran up to Nancy's room. When she had first descended to the road, some one must have mounted the back stairs.

Nancy's door was locked.

With a firm step Christina entered the kitchen and opened the table-drawer. They had thought of that, too. Everything with which a lock might be pried open had been swept up and away. Christina lifted a dining-room chair and carried it upstairs.

She brought it down with all the force she had upon the lock. Failing in this, she held the chair in front of her and charged the door with it.

But whereas in anything requiring swiftness, elasticity, endurance even, Christina was as strong as wire, she had absolutely no weight. After half a dozen of these batteries every one of which seemed to strike through her own heart on Nancy's fever, she decided that whether or no she might shatter the door in time, time was the last thing she had to waste. And she could run half a mile like an arrow. She had all along retained her hold on the little bag which held her purse and she thanked heaven for the money in it. She had her hand on the front door when she was arrested by the sound of voices and approaching footsteps; Mrs.

Pascoe's, Nicola's and the heavier step of an older man.

From her earlier confidence Christina had now jumped to an extreme of accusation in which any violence seemed probable. Mad to get away for help, it seemed better to delay for a moment or two than to be caught.

She slipped back across the hall and hid herself in the little closet under the stairs. She was scarcely secure there when the front door opened, and Christina hardly dared to breathe lest the click of her own door closing should have betrayed her presence. To her highly wrought nerves the utter darkness, the airless pressure of her sanctuary were terrible, and she found and held the k.n.o.b that at the first stillness she might slip out. She could hear calling and running about; she could hear them talking in Nancy's room. After a while, the men went out and then she heard Mrs. Pascoe come downstairs and the dining-room door close after her. The time had come. Christina, all her life subject to fainting-fits, felt that she scarcely could have borne, for a moment longer, that black airlessness. With infinite softness, she turned the k.n.o.b. And then, indeed, her heart stood still. Mrs. Pascoe had omitted to mention one improvement with which, in preparation for Nancy's occupancy, the outside of the closet-door had been fortified. This improvement was a Yale lock.

CHAPTER VI

THE YELLOW HOUSE AND WHAT THEY FOUND AT IT

It was after midnight when Stanley Ingham stopped his car and yielded up the steering-wheel to Herrick. Besides themselves their car carried three of Kane's detectives and they were followed by the sheriff and a roadster full of armed men.

The detectives had a secondary mission. At the last minute Kane had received a message from a much concerned elderly cousin of Joe Patrick's. This cousin was a waiter at "Riley's," a roadhouse which was not only a cheap edition of the aristocratic Palisades, whence Christina had disappeared, but was kept by a brother-in-law and erstwhile partner of the Palisades' proprietor. The waiter at Riley's declared that a drunken taxi-driver had just turned up with a note from the Palisades urging Riley's to keep him over night. This man was quite drunk enough to talk about having lost his place through obliging the Palisades and Joe's cousin volunteered to keep an eye on him till the arrival of the detectives. These were to return to New York with their prisoners of the yellow house not from Waybridge, but from Benning's Point, stopping on the way to that station at Riley's and telephoning thence all news to Kane.

At Waybridge they had been fortunate in finding the sheriff up and starting forth after some marauders who were reported to have robbed a still burning post-office at Benning's Point; the station agent whom they found with him had seen Nicola, that morning, meet a lady with that old car of his that he had painted black when there was so much talk about those New York Guinees having a gray one; the agent was sure the lady had taken no return train.

From both him and the sheriff it was evident that the Pascoes as foreigners, had been contemptible, but not disliked. The unpopular person was a boarder they had; a woman with red hair who stayed out there to write novels and thought she was so much too good for other people that she never so much as pa.s.sed the time of day with anybody.

Friends of hers did come out from the city to see her sometimes. Going or coming from the city herself she was tied up in one o' those automobile veils--might 'uv been her come back this morning, only she looked kind of shabby-dressed. The sheriff added that there was old Mrs.

Pascoe, Nicola's mother, as nice a little woman as you'd want to see; real neat, trim, gray-haired lady, an American lady. Herrick suddenly turned and stared.

But now they were within half a mile of the Pascoe house. Stanley and the detectives crowded into the sheriff's car. They had been instructed to send Herrick on alone; he was to attempt an entrance by a message of urgent and friendly warning, endeavoring to get the lay of the land and to make his presence known to any watchful captive, but otherwise awaiting reinforcements. One of the detectives said to Herrick, "If they won't let you in, just leave your message. And let them hear you drive off. Then we'll get together."

Herrick ran the car slowly along the unfamiliar road. This was still clogged and rutted with mud, which had begun to stiffen since the rain had stopped; a high wind shouldered the clouds in driving ma.s.ses. His destination was the second house on his left; and, as he peered along the roadside, the deep excitement, the terrible questions which glowed in that dark night, worked in him with a fearful gladness. Certainty was at hand! A bitter exultation rode within him nearer and nearer to whatever stroke Fate stood to deal him in the yellow house. A hundred visions of Christina shone and darkened before him, leaping along his pulse, and his blood sang in him with a kind of madness.--The second house on the left! There it rose, a blot on the blackness! Dark as a stone, it somehow struck cold on his hot hopes.

He brought up the car before the gate and flung a falsely cheerful halloo upon the wind. Nothing answered. The gate yielded to his hand; as he went up the path a fragrance greeted him like Christina's presence--the cold, moist air was filled with the sweetness of old-fashioned, garden flowers. His fingers missed the bell; but, lighting on the bra.s.s knocker, sent loud reverberations through the house. Nothing within it seemed to stir. But the silence echoed horribly and swung, quaking, in his breast. Of a sudden he knew that house was empty.

Nothing else mattered. Discretion ceased to exist. He drew back and scanned the vacant, shuttered windows; he ran round the house; there was still no light; he tried the kitchen door and drew back to listen; it was as though within the house he could hear silence walking and her step was ominous. He put his shoulder to the kitchen door and burst it in.