The City of Fire Part 8

Billy, he hasn't come home at all last night! I'm frightened to death!

I've sat up all night! I can't think what's happened--! There's so many hold-ups and Mark will carry his money loose in his trousers pocket--!"

Billy blanched but lied beautifully up to the occasion even as he would have liked to have somebody lie for him to Aunt Saxon:

"Aw! That's nothing! Doncha worry. He tol' me he might have t'stay down t'Unity all night. There's a fella down there that likes him a lot, an'

they had somekinduva blowout in their church last night. He mightuv had ta take some girl home out of town ya know, and stayed over with the fella."

Mrs. Carter's face relaxed a shade:

"Yes, I've tried to think that--!"

"Well, doncha worry, Mizz Carter, I'll lookim up fer ya, I know 'bout where he might be."

"Oh, thank you Billy," her face wreathed in wavering smiles brought another thought of school days and life and how queer it was that grown folks had been children sometime and children had to be grown folks.

"Billy, Mark likes you very much. I'm sure he won't mind your knowing that I'm worried, but you know how boys don't like to have their mothers worry, so you needn't say anything to Mark that I said I was worried, need you? You understand Billy. I'm not _really_ worried you know. Mark was always a good boy."

"Aw sure!" said Billy with a knowing wink. "He's a prince! You leave it t'me, Mizz Carter!"

"Thank you, Billy. I'll do something for you sometime. But how's it come you're up so early? You haven't had your breakfast yet have you?"

She eyed his weary young face with a motherly anxiety:

"Naw, I didn't have no time to stop fer breakfast," Billy spoke importantly, "Got this call about the sick guy and had to beat it. Say, you don't happen to know Mark's license number do you? It might help a lot, savin' time 'f'I could tell his car at sight. Save stoppin' to ast."

"Well, now, I don't really--" said the woman ruminatively, "let me see.

There was six and six, there were a lot of sixes if I remember--"

"Oh, well, it don't matter--" Billy grasped his wheel and prepared to leave.

"Wait, Billy, you must have something to eat--"

"Aw, naw, I can't wait! Gotta beat it! Might miss 'im!"

"Well, just a bite. Here, I'll get you some cookies!"

She vanished, and he realized for the first time that he was hungry.

Cookies sounded good.

She returned with a br.i.m.m.i.n.g gla.s.s of milk and a plate of cookies. She stuffed the cookies in his pockets, while he drank the milk.

"Say,--" said he after a long sweet draught of the foaming milk, "Ya, aint got enny more you cud spare fer that sick guy, have ya? Wait, I'll save this. Got a bottle?"

"Indeed you won't, Billy Gaston. You just drink that every drop. I'll get you another bottle to take with you. I got extra last night 'count of Mark being home, and then he didn't drink it. He always likes a drink of milk last thing before he goes to bed."

She vanished and returned with a quart of milk cold off the ice. She wrapped it well with newspapers, and Billy packed it safely into the little basket on his wheel. Then he bethought him of another need.

"Say, m'y I go inta the g'rage an' get a screw driver? Screw loose on m'wheel."

She nodded and he vanished into the open barn door. Well he knew where Mark kept his tools. He picked out a small pointed saw, a neat little auger and a file and stowed them hurriedly under the milk bottle. Thus reinforced without and within, he mounted his faithful steed and sped away to the hills.

The morning sun had shot up several degrees during his delay, and Sabbath Valley lay like a thing new born in its glory. On the belfry a purple dove sat glistening, green and gold ripples on her neck, turning her head proudly from side to side as Billy rode by, and when he topped the first hill across the valley the bells rang out six sweet strokes as if to remind him that Sunday School was not far off and he must hurry back. But Billy was trying to think how he should get into that locked house, and wondering whether the kidnappers would have returned to feed their captive yet. He realized that he must be wary, although his instinct told him that they would wait for dark, besides, he had hopes that they might have been "pinched."

Nevertheless he approached the old house cautiously, skirting the mountain to avoid Pleasant Valley, and walking a mile or two through thick undergrowth, sometimes with difficulty propelling the faithful machine.

Arrived in sight he studied the surroundings carefully, harbored his wheel where it would not be discovered and was yet easily available, and after reconnoitering stole out of covert.

The house stood gaunt and grim against the smiling morning. Its shuttered windows giving an expression of blindness or the repellant mask of death. A dead house, that was what it was. Its doors and windows closed on the tragedy that had been enacted within its ma.s.sive stone walls. It seemed more like a fortress than a house where warm human faces had once looked forth, and where laughter and pleasant words had once sounded out. To pa.s.s it had always stirred a sense of mystery and weirdness. To approach it thus with the intention of entering to find that still limp figure of a man gave a most overpowering sense of awe.

Billy looked up with wide eyes, the deep shadows under them standing out in the clear light of the morning and giving him a strangely old aspect as if he had jumped over at least ten years during the night. Warily he circled the house, keeping close to the shrubbery at first and listening as a squirrel might have done, then gradually drawing nearer. He noticed that the down stairs shutters were solid iron with a little half moon peep hole at the top. Those upstairs were solid below and fitted with slats above, but the slats were closed of all the front windows, and all but two of the back ones, which were turned upward so that one could not see the gla.s.s. The doors, both back and front, were locked, and unshakable, of solid oak and very thick. A Yale lock with a new look gave all entrance at the front an impossible look. The back door was equally impregnable unless he set to work with his auger and saw and took out a heavy oak panel.

He got down to the ground and began to examine the cellar windows. They seemed to be fitted with iron bars set into the solid masonry. He went all around the house and found each one unshakable, until he reached the last at the back. There he found a bit of stone cracked and loosened and it gave him an idea. He set to work with his few tools, and finally succeeded in loosening one rusted bar. He was much hindered in his work by the necessity of keeping a constant watch out, and by his attempts to be quiet. There was no telling when Link and Shorty might come to feed their captive and he must not be discovered.

It was slow work picking away at the stone, filing away at the rusty iron, but the bars were so close together that three must be removed before he could hope to crawl through, and even then he might be able to get no further than the cellar. The guy that fixed this house up for a prison knew what he was about.

Faintly across the mountains came the echo of bells, or were they in the boy's own soul? He worked away in the hot sun, the perspiration rolling down his weary dirty face, and sometimes his soul fainted within him.

Bells, and the sweet quiet church with the pleasant daily faces about and the hum of Sunday School beginning! How far away that all seemed to him now as he filed and picked, and sweated, and kept up a strange something in his soul half yearning, half fierce dread, that might have been like praying only the burden of its yearning seemed to be expressed in but a single word, "Mark! Mark!"

At last the third bar came loose and with a great sigh that was almost like a sob, the boy tore it out, and cleared the way. Then carefully gathering his effects, tools, milk bottle and cap together, he let them down into the dungeon-like blackness of the cellar, and crept in after them, taking the precaution to set up in place the iron bars once more and leave no trace of his entrance.

Pausing cautiously to listen he ventured to strike a match, mentally belaboring himself at the wasteful way in which he had always used his flash light which was now so much needed and out of commission. The cellar was large, running under the whole house, with heavy rafters and looming coal pits. A scurrying rat started a few lumps of coal in the slide, and a cobwebby rope hung ominously from one cross beam, giving him a pa.s.sing shudder. It seemed as if the spirit of the past had arisen to challenge his entrance thus. He took a few steps forward toward a dim staircase he sighted at the farther end, and then a sudden noise sent his heart beating fast. He extinguished the match and stood in the darkness listening with straining ears. That was surely a step he heard on the floor above!

VII

Laurence Shafton awoke late to the sound of church bells come alive and singing hymn tunes. There was something strangely unreal in the sound, in the utter stillness of the background of Sabbath Valley atmosphere that made him think, almost, just for an instant, that he had stumbled somehow into the wrong end of the other world, and come into the fields of the blessed. Not that he had any very definite idea about what the fields of the blessed would look like or what would be going on there, but there was something still and holy between the voices of the bells that fairly compelled his jaded young soul to sit up and listen.

But at the first attempt to sit up a very sharp very decided twinge of pain caught him, and brought an a.s.sorted list of words which he kept for such occasions to his lips. Then he looked around and tried to take in the situation. It was almost as if he had been caught out of his own world and dropped into another universe, so different was everything here, and so little did he remember the happenings of the night before.

He had had trouble with his car, something infernal that had prevented his going farther--he recalled having to get out and push the thing along the road, and then two loutish men who made game of him and sent him here to get his car fixed. There had been a man, a queer man who gave him bread and b.u.t.ter instead of wine--he remembered that--and he had failed to get his car fixed, but how the deuce did he get landed on this couch with a world of books about him and a thin muslin curtain blowing into the room, and fanning the cheeks of a lovely rose in a long stemmed clear gla.s.s vase? Did he try to start and have a smash up? No, he remembered going down the steps with the intention of starting, but stay! Now it was coming to him. He fell off the porch! He must have had a jag on or he never would have fallen. He did things to his ankle in falling. He remembered the gentle giant picking him up as if he had been a baby and putting him here, but where was _here_? Ah! Now he remembered! He was on his way to Opal Verrons. A bet. An elopement for the prize! Great stakes. He had lost of course. What a fool! If it hadn't been for his ankle he might have got to a trolley car or train somehow and made a garage. Money would have taken him there in time. He was vexed that he had lost. It would have been great fun, and he had the name of always winning when he set out to do so. But then, perhaps it was just as well--Verrons was a good fellow as men went--he liked him, and he was plain out and out fond of Opal just at present. It would have been a dirty shame to play the trick behind his back. Still, if Opal wanted to run away with him it was up to him to run of course. Opal was rare sport and he couldn't stand the idea of Smart-Aleck McMarter, or that conceited Percy Emerson getting there first. He wondered which had won. It made his fury rise to think of either, and he had promised the lady neither of them should. What was she thinking of him by now that he had sent her no word of his delay? That was inexcusable. He must attend to it at once.

He glanced around the pleasant room. Yes, there on the desk was a telephone! Could he get to it? He sat up and painfully edged his way over to the desk.

"Safely through another week, G.o.d has brought us on our way--"

chimed the bells,

"Let us now a blessing seek, Waiting in His courts to-day--"

But Laurie Shafton had never sung those words in his life and had no idea what the bells were seeking to get across to him. He took down the receiver and called for Long Distance.

"Oh day of rest and gladness!"

pealed out the bells joyously,

"Oh day of joy and light!

Oh balm for care and sadness, Most beautiful, most bright--"