It was true. The room in which she stood, while comfortable and charming, seemed unusually accessible to the night prowler. A row of French windows at the rear gave upon a little terrace; below the terrace, the drive curved about and beneath the billiard-room windows in a hairpin loop, drawing up again at the main entrance on the other side of the house. At the left of the French windows (if one faced the terrace as Miss Cornelia was doing) was the alcove door of which she spoke. When open, it disclosed a little alcove, almost entirely devoted to the foot of a flight of stairs that gave direct access to the upper regions of the house. The alcove itself opened on one side upon the terrace and upon the other into a large butler's pantry. The arrangement was obviously designed so that, if necessary, one could pass directly from the terrace to the downstairs service quarters or the second floor of the house without going through the living-room, and so that trays could be carried up from the pantry by the side stairs- without using the main staircase.
The- middle pair of French windows were open, forming a double door. Miss Cornelia went over to them - shut them - tried the locks. Humph! Flimsy enough! she thought. Then she turned toward the billiard room.
The billiard room, as has been said, was the last room to the right in the main wing of the house. A single door led to it from the living-room. Miss Cornelia passed through this door, glanced about the billiard room, noting that most of its windows were too high from the ground to greatly encourage a marauder. She locked the only one that seemed to her particularly tempting - the billiard-room window on the terrace side of the house. Then she returned to the living-room and again considered her defenses.
Three points of access from the terrace to the house - the door that led into the alcove, the French windows of the living room - the billiard-room window. On the other side of the house there was the main entrance, the porch, the library and dining-room windows. The main entrance led into a hall-living-room, and the main door of the living-room was on the right as one entered, the dining-room and library on the left, main staircase in front. "My mind is starting to go round like a pinwheel, thinking of all those windows and doors," she murmured to herself. She sat down once more, and taking a pencil and a piece of paper drew a plan of the lower floor of the house.
And now I've studied it, she thought after a while, I'm no further than if I hadn't. As far as I can figure out, there are so many ways for a clever man to get into this house that I'd have to be a couple of Siamese twins to watch it properly. The next house I rent in the country, she decided, just isn't going to have any windows and doors - or I'll know the reason why.
But of course she was not entirely shut off from the world, even if the worst developed. She considered the telephone instruments on a table near the wall, one the general phone, the other connecting a house line which also connected with the garage and the greenhouses. The garage would not be helpful, since Slocum, her chauffeur for many years, had gone back to England for a visit. Dale had been driving the car. But with an able-bodied man in the gardener's house -
She pulled herself together with a jerk.
"Cornelia Van Gorder, you're going to go crazy before nightfall if you don't take hold of yourself. What you need is lunch and a nap in the afternoon if you can make yourself take it. You'd better look up that revolver of yours, too, that you bought when you thought you were going to take a trip to China. You've never fired it off yet, but you've got to sometime today - there's no other way of telling if it will work. You can shut your eyes when you do it - no, you can't either - that's silly.
"Call you a spirited old lady, do they? Well, you never had a better time to show your spirit than now!"
And Miss Van Gorder, sighing, left the living-room to reach the kitchen just in time to calm a heated argument between Lizzie and Billy on the relative merits of Japanese and Irish-American cooking.
Dale Ogden, taxiing up from the two o'clock train some time later, to her surprise discovered the front door locked and rang for some time before she could get an answer. At last, Billy appeared, white-coated, with an inscrutable expression on his face.
"Will you take my bag, Billy - thanks. Where is Miss Van Gorder - taking a nap?"
"No," said Billy succinctly. "She take no nap. She out in srubbery shotting."
Dale stared at him incredulously. "Shooting, Billy?"
"Yes, ma'am. At least - she not shoot yet but she say she going to soon."
"But, good heavens, Billy - shooting what?"
"Shotting pistol," said Billy, his yellow mask of a face preserving its impish repose. He waved his hand. "You go srubbery. You see."
The scene that met Dale's eyes when she finally found the "srubbery" was indeed a singular one. Miss Van Gorder, her back firmly planted against the trunk of a large elm tree and an expression of ineffable distaste on her features, was holding out a blunt, deadly looking revolver at arm's length. Its muzzle wavered, now pointing at the ground, now at the sky. Behind the tree Lizzie sat in a heap, moaning quietly to herself, and now and then appealing to the saints to avert a visioned calamity.
As Dale approached, unseen, the climax came. The revolver steadied, pointed ferociously at an inoffensive grass-blade some 10 yards from Miss Van Gorder and went off. Lizzie promptly gave vent to a shrill Irish scream. Miss Van Gorder dropped the revolver like a hot potato and opened her mouth to tell Lizzie not to be such a fool. Then she saw Dale - her mouth went into a round 0 of horror and her hand clutched weakly at her heart.
"Good heavens, child!" she gasped. "Didn't Billy tell you what I was doing? I might have shot you like a rabbit!" and, overcome with emotion, she sat down on the ground and started to fan herself mechanically with a cartridge.
Dale couldn't help laughing - and the longer she looked at her aunt the more she laughed - until that dignified lady joined in the mirth herself.
"Aunt Cornelia - Aunt Cornelia!" said Dale when she could get her breath. "That I've lived to see the day - and they call US the wild generation! Why on earth were you having pistol practice, darling - has Billy turned into a Japanese spy or what?"
Miss Van Gorder rose from the ground with as much stateliness as she could muster under the circumstances.
"No, my dear - but there's no fool like an old fool - that's all," she stated. "I've wanted to fire that infernal revolver off ever since I bought it two years ago, and now I have and I'm satisfied. Still," she went on thoughtfully, picking up the weapon, "it seems a very good revolver - and shooting people must be much easier than I supposed. All you have to do is to point the - the front of it - like this and - "
"Oh, Miss Dale, dear Miss Dale!" came in woebegone accents from the other side of the tree. "For the love of heaven, Miss Dale, say no more but take it away from her - she'll have herself all riddled through with bullets like a kitchen sieve - and me too - if she's let to have it again."
"Lizzie, I'm ashamed of you!" said Lizzie's mistress. "Come out from behind that tree and stop wailing like a siren. This weapon is perfectly safe in competent hands and - " She seemed on the verge of another demonstration of its powers.
"MISS DALE, FOR THE DEAR LOVE O' GOD WILL YOU MAKE HER PUT IT AWAY?"
Dale laughed again. "I really think you'd better, Aunt Cornelia. Or both of us will have to put Lizzie to bed with a case of acute hysteria."
"Well," said Miss Van Gorder, "perhaps you're right, dear." Her eyes gleamed. "I should have liked to try it just once more though," she confided. "I feel certain that I could hit that tree over there if my eye wouldn't wink so when the thing goes off."
"Now, it's winking eyes," said Lizzie on a note of tragic chant, "but next time it'll be bleeding corpses and - "
Dale added her own protestations to Lizzie's. "Please, darling, if you really want to practice, Billy can fix up some sort of target range - but I don't want my favorite aunt assassinated by a ricocheted bullet before my eyes!"
"Well, perhaps it would be best to try again another time," admitted Miss Van Gorder. But there was a wistful
look in her eyes as she gave the revolver to Dale and the three started back to the house.
"I should never have allowed Lizzie to know what I was doing," she confided in a whisper, on the way. "A woman is perfectly capable of managing firearms - but Lizzie is really too nervous to live, sometimes."
"I know just how you feel, darling," Dale agreed, suppressed mirth shaking her as the little procession reached the terrace. "But - oh," she could keep it no longer, "oh - you did look funny, darling - sitting under that tree, with Lizzie on the other side of it making banshee noises and - "
Miss Van Gorder laughed too, a little shamefacedly.
"I must have," she said. "But - oh, you needn't shake your head, Lizzie Allen - I am going to practice with it. There's no reason I shouldn't and you never can tell when things like that might be useful," she ended rather vaguely. She did not wish to alarm Dale with her suspicions yet.
"There, Dale - yes, put it in the drawer of the table - that will reassure Lizzie. Lizzie, you might make us some lemonade, I think - Miss Dale must be thirsty after her long, hot ride."
"Yes, Miss Cornelia," said Lizzie, recovering her normal calm as the revolver was shut away in the drawer of the large table in the living-room. But she could not resist one parting shot. "And thank God it's lemonade I'll be making - and not bandages for bullet wounds!" she muttered darkly as she went toward the service quarters.
Miss Van Gorder glared after her departing back. "Lizzie is really impossible sometimes!" she said with stately ire. Then her voice softened. "Though of course I couldn't do without her," she added.
Dale stretched out on the settee opposite her aunt's chair. "I know you couldn't, darling. Thanks for thinking of the lemonade." She passed her hand over her forehead in a gesture of fatigue. "I AM hot - and tired."
Miss Van Gorder looked at her keenly. The young face seemed curiously worn and haggard in the clear afternoon light.
"You - you don't really feel very well, do you, Dale?"
"Oh - it's nothing. I feel all right - really."
"I could send for Doctor Wells if - "
"Oh, heavens, no, Aunt Cornelia." She managed a wan smile. "It isn't as bad as all that. I'm just tired and the city was terribly hot and noisy and - " She stole a glance at her aunt from between lowered lids. "I got your gardener, by the way," she said casually.
"Did you, dear? That's splendid, though - but I'll tell you about that later. Where did you get him?"
"That good agency, I can't remember its name." Dale's hand moved restlessly over her eyes, as if remembering details were too great an effort. "But I'm sure he'll be satisfactory. He'll be out here this evening - he - he couldn't get away before, I believe. What have you been doing all day, darling?"
Miss Cornelia hesitated. Now that Dale had returned she suddenly wanted very much to talk over the various odd happenings of the day with her - get the support of her youth and her common sense. Then that independence which was so firmly rooted a characteristic of hers restrained her. No use worrying the child unnecessarily; they all might have to worry enough before tomorrow morning.
She compromised. "We have had a domestic upheaval," she said. "The cook and the housemaid have left - if you'd only waited till the next train you could have had the pleasure of their company into town."
"Aunt Cornelia - how exciting! I'm so sorry! Why did they leave?"
"Why do servants ever leave a good place?" asked Miss Cornelia grimly. "Because if they had sense enough to know when they were well off, they wouldn't be servants. Anyhow, they've gone - we'll have to depend on Lizzie and Billy the rest of this week. I telephoned - but they couldn't promise me any others before Monday."
"And I was in town and could have seen people for you - if I'd only known!" said Dale remorsefully. "Only," she hesitated, "I mightn't have had time - at least I mean there were some other things I had to do, besides getting the gardener and - " She rose. "I think I will go and lie down for a little if you don't mind, darling."
Miss Van Gorder was concerned. "Of course I don't mind but - won't you even have your lemonade?"
"Oh, I'll get some from Lizzie in the pantry before I go up," Dale managed to laugh. "I think I must have a headache after all," she said. "Maybe I'll take an aspirin. Don't worry, darling."
"I shan't. I only wish there were something I could do for you, my dear."
Dale stopped in the alcove doorway. "There's nothing anybody can do for me, really," she said soberly. "At least - oh, I don't know what I'm saying! But don't worry. I'm quite all right. I may go over to the country club after dinner - and dance. Won't you come with me, Aunt Cornelia?"
"Depends on your escort," said Miss Cornelia tartly. "If our landlord, Mr. Richard Fleming, is taking you I certainly shall - I don't like his looks and never did!"
Dale laughed. "Oh, he's all right," she said. "Drinks a good deal and wastes a lot of money, but harmless enough. No, this is a very sedate party; I'll be home early."
"Well, in that case," said her aunt, "I shall stay here with my Lizzie and my ouija-board. Lizzie deserves some punishment for the very cowardly way she behaved this afternoon - and the ouija-board will furnish it. She's scared to death to touch the thing. I think she believes it's alive."
"Well, maybe I'll send you a message on it from the country club," said Dale lightly. She had paused, half-way up the flight of side stairs in the alcove, and her aunt noticed how her shoulders drooped, belying the lightness of her voice. "Oh," she went on, "by the way - have the afternoon papers come yet? I didn't have time to get one when I was rushing for the train."
"I don't think so, dear, but I'll ask Lizzie." Miss Cornelia moved toward a bell push.
"Oh, don't bother; it doesn't matter. Only if they have, would you ask Lizzie to bring me one when she brings up the lemonade? I want to read about - about the Bat - he fascinates me."
"There was something else in the paper this morning," said Miss Cornelia idly. "Oh, yes - the Union Bank - the bank Mr. Fleming, Senior, was president of has failed. They seem to think the cashier robbed it. Did you see that, Dale?"
The shoulders of the girl on the staircase straightened suddenly. Then they drooped again. "Yes - I saw it," she said in a queerly colorless voice. "Too bad. It must be terrible to - to have everyone suspect you - and hunt you - as I suppose they're hunting that poor cashier."
"Well," said Miss Cornelia, "a man who wrecks a bank deserves very little sympathy to my way of thinking. But then I'm old-fashioned. Well, dear, I won't keep you. Run along - and if you want an aspirin, there's a box in my top bureau-drawer."
"Thanks, darling. Maybe I'll take one and maybe I won't - all I really need is to lie down for a while."
She moved on up the staircase and disappeared from the range of Miss Cornelia's vision, leaving Miss Cornelia to ponder many things. Her trip to the city had done Dale no good, of a certainty. If not actually ill, she was obviously under some considerable mental strain. And why this sudden interest, first in the Bat, then in the failure of the Union Bank? Was it possible that Dale, too, had been receiving threatening letters?
I'll be glad when that gardener comes, she thought to herself. He'll make a MAN in the house at any rate.
When Lizzie at last came in with the lemonade she found her mistress shaking her head.
"Cornelia, Cornelia," she was murmuring to herself, "you should have taken to pistol practice when you were younger; it just shows how children waste their opportunities."
CHAPTER FOUR
THE STORM GATHERS
The long summer afternoon wore away, sunset came, red and angry, a sunset presaging storm. A chill crept into the air with the twilight. When night fell, it was not a night of silver patterns enskied, but a dark and cloudy cloak where a few stars glittered fitfully. Miss Cornelia, at dinner, saw a bat swoop past the window of the dining room in its scurrying flight, and narrowly escaped oversetting her glass of water with a nervous start. The tension of waiting - waiting - for some vague menace which might no
t materialize after all - had begun to prey on her nerves. She saw Dale off to the country club with relief - the girl looked a little better after her nap but she was still not her normal self. When Dale was gone, she wandered restlessly for some time between living-room and library, now giving an unnecessary dusting to a piece of bric-a-brac with her handkerchief, now taking a book from one of the shelves in the library only to throw it down before she read a page.
This house was queer. She would not have admitted it to Lizzie, for her soul's salvation - but, for the first time in her sensible life, she listened for creakings of woodwork, rustling of leaves, stealthy steps outside, beyond the safe, bright squares of the windows - for anything that was actual, tangible, not merely formless fear.
"There's too much ROOM in the country for things to happen to you!" she confided to herself with a shiver. "Even the night - whenever I look out, it seems to me as if the night were ten times bigger and blacker than it ever is in New York!"
To comfort herself she mentally rehearsed her telephone conversation of the morning, the conversation she had not mentioned to her household. At the time it had seemed to her most reassuring - the plans she had based upon it adequate and sensible in the normal light of day. But now the light of day had been blotted out and with it her security. Her plans seemed weapons of paper against the sinister might of the darkness beyond her windows. A little wind wailed somewhere in that darkness like a beaten child - beyond the hills thunder rumbled, drawing near, and with it lightening and the storm.
She made herself sit down in the chair beside her favorite lamp on the center table and take up her knitting with stiff fingers. Knit two - purl two - Her hands fell into the accustomed rhythm mechanically - a spy, peering in through the French windows, would have deemed her the picture of calm. But she had never felt less calm in all the long years of her life.
She wouldn't ring for Lizzie to come and sit with her, she simply wouldn't. But she was very glad, nevertheless, when Lizzie appeared at the door.
"Miss Neily."
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