The Girl at Central Part 25

When we pa.s.sed the Riven Rock Road and I could see the Firehill one, making a curving line through the country beyond, I had a creepy feeling, thinking of what had happened there eight weeks ago.

"Where's the place?" I said, almost in a whisper, and Babbitts pointed ahead with his cane.

"A little further on, where the bushes grow thick there."

Right along from the station, clumps and bunches of small trees had edged the way like a hedge. After we pa.s.sed the Riven Rock Road they grew thicker, making a sort of shrubbery higher than our heads. I remembered that just before the murder men had been cutting these for brushwood and even now we pa.s.sed piles of branches, dry and dead, with little leaves clinging to them like brown rags. Where the Firehill Road ran into the turnpike the growth was tangled and close, almost a small wood.

It wasn't far beyond that Babbitts pointed out the place. There was an edge of shriveled gra.s.s and on this she had been found with the branches piled over her. He drew with his cane where she had lain between the trees and the road.

"You can see just how the murderer worked," he said. "He attacked Miss Hesketh here, burst out of the darkness on her and killed her with one blow-you remember there was no sign either about her or the surroundings of a struggle-and almost immediately heard the Doctor's auto horn. We can place that by the scream the Bohemian woman heard."

"Do you think he was there when the Doctor pa.s.sed?" I asked.

"Of course he was. He hadn't had time to arrange the body. That was done after the Doctor had gone by-done after the moon came out. Reddy said it was as bright as day when he got there. By that brightness the murderer did the work of concealment."

I stepped back into the mud and looked down to where the Firehill Road entered the turnpike a few yards farther on.

"He must have heard Mr. Reddy's horn before the car came in sight. By that time he had probably finished and stolen away."

"I don't think so," said Babbitts. "He couldn't have done it without some noise and Reddy, who was listening and watching for Sylvia, was positive there wasn't a sound. That human devil was back among the bushes when Reddy's car came round the turn. And he must have stayed there-afraid to move-watching Reddy, first as he waited, then as he slowly ran back and forth. G.o.d, what a situation-one man looking for the woman he loved, her murderer hidden a few yards from him, and between them both her dead body!"

I seemed to see it: the road bathed in moonlight, the murderer huddled down in the black shadow, and Reddy in the car looking now this way and now that, expecting her to come. How terribly still it must have been, not a sound except the rustling of the withered leaves. I could imagine the light from the racer's lamps, shooting out in two long yellow rays, showing every rut and ridge, so that that grim watching face had to draw down lower still in the darkness of the underbrush. Did he know who Reddy was waiting for? What did he feel when the auto moved and one swerve sideways would have sent those yellow rays over the heap of branches on the gra.s.s? As Babbitts said, he must have been afraid to move, must have cowered there and seen the racer glide away and then come back; and still bent behind the network of twigs have watched the man at the wheel, as he looked up and down the road, waited and listened, every now and then sounding the horn, that broke into the silence like a weird, hollow cry.

"Oh, come on," I said suddenly, seizing Babbitts' arm. "Let's go up to Cresset's where it's bright and cheerful."

We had a lovely time at Cresset's. My, but they were a nice family!

Farmer Cresset, a big, kind, jolly man and his two sons, splendid, sun-burned chaps, and his little daughter, as fresh as a peach and as shy as a kitten. I loved them all, and Mrs. Cresset best. She made me think of my mother, not that she looked like her, but I guess because she had something about her that's about all women who've had families they loved.

They gave us tea and cake and they joked Babbitts good and hard about coming out there and pretending to be a tourist.

"Never mind, son," Farmer Cresset said, "you got it out of the old woman. I couldn't make her tell; seemed like she thought she'd be arrested for the crime if she up and confessed about that feller."

It was getting on for evening when we left to go to the Wayside Arbor.

We'd planned to have our supper there and then go back by the branch line, catching a train at the Crossing at eight-thirty. The Cressets were real sorry to have us go, especially there.

"It ain't a nice place," said Mrs. Cresset, as she kissed me good-bye, "but we're hoping to see it cleared out soon. Tom's stirring Heaven and earth to get Hines' license revoked."

"I guess Heaven's lending a hand," said the farmer, "for I hear Hines'

business is bad since the fatality. We've a lot of foreign labor round here and they're mighty superst.i.tious and are giving his place the go-by."

It was dark when we saw the lights of the Wayside Arbor, shining out across the road. We'd expected a moon to light us home, but the clouds, though they weren't as thick as they had been, were all broken up into little bits over the sky, like Heaven was paved with them.

The Arbor was quiet as we stepped up and opened the bar door, and there, just like on the night of the murder, was Hines, sitting by the stove reading a newspaper. He jumped up quick and greeted us very cordial and you could see he was glad to get a customer. He sure was a tough looking specimen with a gray stubble all over his chin, and a dirty sweater hanging open over a dirtier shirt that had no collar and was fastened with a fake gold b.u.t.ton that left a black mark on his neck. If I thought his looks were bad that day in the summer I thought they were worse now, for he seemed more down and dispirited than he was then.

We asked him if we could have supper and he went out, calling to Mrs.

Hines, and we could hear someone clattering down the stairs and then a whispering going on in the hall. When he came back he said they'd get us a cold lunch, but they didn't keep a great deal on hand, seeing as how they hadn't much call for meals at that season.

You could see that was true. I never was in such a miserable, poverty-stricken hole. Leaving Babbitts talking to Hines in the bar, I went back into the dining-room, a long, shabby place that crossed the rear of the house. It was as dingy as the rest of it, with the paper all smudged and peeling off the walls and worn bits of carpet laid over the board floor. At the back two long windows looked out on the garden.

Glancing through these I could see the arch of the arbor, with the wet shining on the tables and a few withered leaves trembling on the vines.

When I turned back to the room I got a queer kind of scare-a thing I would have laughed at anywhere else, but in that house on that night it turned me creepy. There was a long, old-fashioned mirror on the opposite wall with a crack going straight across the middle of it. As I caught my reflection in it, I raised my head, wanting to get the effect of my new hat, and it brought the crack exactly across my neck. Believe me I jumped and then stood staring, for it looked just as if my throat was cut! Then I moved away from it, pulling up my collar, ashamed of myself but all the same keeping out of range of the mirror.

In the bar I could hear the voices of Babbitts and Hines, Hines droning on like a person who's complaining. From behind a door at the far end of the room came a noise of crockery and pans and then a woman's voice, peevish and scolding, and another woman's answering back. I don't think I ever was in a place that got on my nerves so and what with the cold of the room-it was like a barn with no steam and the stove not lit-I sat all hunched up in my coat thinking of Sylvia Hesketh coming _there_ for shelter!

Suddenly the door at the end of the room opened and Mrs. Hines came in.

She was the match of it all, with her red nose and her little watery eyes and her shoes dropping off at every step so you could hear the heels rapping on the boards where the carpet stopped. She began talking in a whining voice, and as she set the table, told me how the business had gone off, and they didn't know what they were going to do.

Her hands, all chapped and full of knots like twigs, smoothed out the cloth and put on the china so listless it made you tired to look at them. It was better talking to her than sitting dumb with no company but dismal thoughts, so I encouraged her and between her trailings into the kitchen and her trailings out I heard all about their affairs.

For a while after the murder they'd done a lot of business-it made me sort of shrivel up to see she didn't mind that; anything that brought trade was all the same to her-but now, nothing was doing. Only a few automobiles stopped there and the farmhands had dropped off, so their custom hardly counted. And Tecla Rabine, the Bohemian servant, who was a first-cla.s.s girl, if she did have grouchy spells, had got so slack she'd have to be fired, and she, Mrs. Hines, didn't see how she was to get another one what with the low wages and the lonesomeness.

She trailed off into the kitchen again and I could hear her snapping at someone and that other woman's voice growling back. I supposed it was Tecla Rabine, though it didn't sound like her, my memory of her at the inquest being of a fat, good-natured thing that wouldn't have growled at anybody. And then the door was opened with one swift kick and Tecla came in, carrying a plate of bread in one hand and a platter with ham on it in the other. She didn't look grouchy at all, but gave me that broad, silly sort of smile I remembered and put the things down on the table!

"Well, Tecla," I asked for something to say, "how are _you_ getting on?"

"Ach!" she answered disgusted, and pounded over the creaky floor to a cupboard out of which she took some dishes. "Me? I get out. What for do I stay? No luck here, no money. Who comes-n.o.body. Everything goes on the blink."

She put the things on the table and then stood looking at me, squinting up her little eyes and with her big body, in a dirty white blouse and a skirt that didn't meet it at the waist, slouched up against the table.

"I heard business was bad," I said, and thought that in spite of her being such a coa.r.s.e, fat animal, she was rosy and healthy looking, which was more than you could say for the other two.

"What do I get?" she said, spreading out her great red hands, "not a thing. Maybe five, ten cents. Every long time maybe a quarter. Since that lady gets killed all goes bad. The dagoes say 'evil eye.' They walk round the house that way," she made a half-circle in the air with her arm, "looking at it afraid. Me, too, I don't like it."

"It sure is awful dismal," I agreed.

"No good," she said. "Last year this time all the room full-to-night-_one_ man"-she held up a finger in the air-"one only man, and he have lost what makes us to laugh. When I see him, I say, 'Hein, t.i.to, good luck now you come. Make the bear to dance.' And he says this way"-she hunched up her shoulders and pushed out her hands the way the Guineas do-"'Oh, Gawda, there is no more bear; he makes dead long time.'"

"Bear?" I said, and then I remembered. "You mean the one that went round with the acrobats. It's dead, is it?"

Tecla nodded.

"Gone dead in the country. And he says he starve now with no bear to get pennies. The boss says we all starve, and gave him a drink and cheese and bread. Ach!"-she shook her head, as if the loss of the bear was the last straw-"I no can stand it-nothing doing, no money, no more laughs-I quit."

I didn't blame her. If you gave me two hundred a month I wouldn't have stayed there.

Just then Babbitts came in and we began our supper; cold ham and stale bread and coffee that I know was the morning's heated over. Tecla went into the kitchen and I said to him, low and guarded:

"What's Hines been saying to you?"

He answered in the same key:

"Oh, putting up a hard luck story. Cresset needn't bother. He wants to pull up stakes and go West."

"Will they let him?"

"That's one of the things he's been talking about. He says if he makes a move it'll look suspicious, and if he stays he'll be ruined. He certainly is up against it."

I shot a glance from the kitchen to the bar door and then leaned across the table, almost whispering: