“Colder tomorrow and fair—ought to give us a good track, but Fortune is good under any track conditions,” he thought.
He resisted the urge to pace the floor of the library as he waited for his call to go through; he forced himself into a chair in front of the desk. His roaming eyes stopped at the portrait of the Puritan. The great idea Jed had worked out of frightening the truth out of Rousseau by having the phantom, who “walked when treachery was afoot,” appear at stated intervals hadn’t been worth the film it was printed on. It had been a kid trick at best. The only time they had used it they had frightened Sandra almost to death. When Jed had told him that he believed she had seen their “movie”—as he called it—they had agreed not to try it again. They weren’t out to frighten women and children.
“Hulloa! Hulloa! That you, Jed? Nick speaking. Any one near? Keep your voice low. They’ve shanghaied Sharp!”
The wire faithfully recorded Langdon’s gasp of horror. “What do you mean, shanghaied?”
“Some one, using your name, told him I wanted him at the Club.”
“Where is he now?”
“Be your age, Jed! If I knew, would I stop to ’phone you?”
“Keep your shirt on, old man. Where are you?”
“Stone House.”
“I’ll burn up the road getting there. Shall I bring B.D.?”
“No. Leave him to look after Sandra.”
“Sandra! She doesn’t need him. She has a stag line a mile long. I’ll be with you!”
Nicholas replaced the instrument with a bang. Why couldn’t he have been with Sandra tonight? That would do for that! He had better keep his mind on the problem of Eddie Sharp. Where was he? Who had him? He sprang to his feet as Bond entered the room. The man’s crossed eyes were ludicrously terrified.
“Well! Well! Don’t stand there like a dummy! Found the boy?”
“Just come, sir.”
“What about it?”
“He says that he drove to the side entrance of the Club, as he was told, and that—”
“If you gulp again, Bond, I’ll, I’ll—Go on! Go on!”
“Sure I’m tellin’ it as fast as the words’ll come, Mr. Hoyt. The boy said—”
“That he drove to the side entrance. I know that What next?”
“You scare the words out of my mind, sir, your face is terrible. He said, when Sharp jumped out of the car, a couple of fellas with hats pulled low over their eyes—the way you see ’em in the movies—stepped up, linked their arms in his an’ says:
“ ‘Here you are, Eddie.’ ”
“Then what?”
“Our jock says, ‘What’s the big idea’ … ?”
“One of the fellas cut in: ‘We’ll explain—your boss wants you.’ They walked toward the Club House an’ one of them turned and called to the boy in the fliv: ‘Don’t wait!’ ”
“And he didn’t wait!”
Bond shifted uneasily at Nicholas’ sombre laugh. “I don’t know as it has anything to do with our jock’s goin’, Mr. Hoyt, but as I was comin’ from the stables I remembered that that man Huckins ’phoned Sharp.”
“When?”
“I’d say it was about fifteen minutes before the other one called. As Eddie came away from the ’phone, he says:
“ ‘That butler at the big house was asking for a tip on the races. He must take me for a sucker.’ ”
“So Huckins ’phoned!”
“What’ll I do next, sir?”
“Go back and stand guard at the stables. You realize, don’t you, that this settles the question of the winner tomorrow? Fortune is beaten without Sharp in the saddle.” The crossed eyes stared at Nicholas blankly as he added:
“Who has the most interest in seeing my horse lose, Bond? Answer that, and we’ll know where to look for Eddie Sharp.”
CHAPTER XXII
On hands and knees Sandra crept up the dark stairs behind the panel at Stone House. She would wait an hour perhaps and then she would shout and pound for release.
She crouched on the top stair and leaned her head against the wall. Her heart was quieting down and she could breathe without feeling as if she were pumping fire up from her lungs. Plenty of air. It crept through cracks somewhere; it wailed and shrieked like radio static which always made her think of the cries of witches as they whipped up their broomstick steeds. If only there wouldn’t be any mice! She could bear anything but mice. Was the man, who had been shouting behind her, trying to pick up her trail? Had a man shouted? Had footsteps followed? Locked in. In her zeal to help Nicholas Hoyt she had landed in a mess.
Suppose she had to stay here all day? Cheerful thought! Even so, what was one day out of a lifetime? She wouldn’t smother and she wouldn’t starve, thanks to Bridie’s sandwiches—but—she would miss the race; the big horses would start on the stroke of three! Oh, she couldn’t! She wouldn’t! She must get out! She must! How like her to plunge into this impasse. It was amusing—she might as well think of that side—that she, who had known of the Hoyt family only as it had figured in her father’s reminiscences until a few weeks ago, really had no connection with it now, should be in jeopardy because of it.
No connection with it? That was not true. Didn’t she love Nick? Love him! Something had flown from his eyes to her that day by the paddock. It had come with a sense of shock, she hadn’t known what it was. The thought of him set her pulses throbbing, made her wildly eager for the feel of his arms, she had loved them without knowing it the night he had carried her upstairs at Stone House. It would be heaven if he cared, agony if he were indifferent. It was so like her to love like that. She, who had been disdainful of matrimony. But Nicholas Hoyt would not be like many of the husbands she had seen; even if he ceased to love a woman—it would be the woman’s fault if he did—his self-respect, self-respect and decency and loyalty, would keep him true, through struggle and endurance, sunshine and shadow, dreams shattered and visions realized, sickness and health, new lives coming and lives passing, gorgeously happy days and dull days—all of which she had learned from observation could be summed up in one word, marriage.
She tried to force him out of her mind. What use loving him? Hadn’t he side-stepped taking her to the ball last night? Was it last night—it seemed months ago. If he had not taken her, he had not taken any one else, for he had not been there. Where’s Nick?”—if she had heard that inquiry once she had heard it fifty times. Conjecture had buzzed through the Club House, but no one could answer the question. Mrs. Pat, looking white and old, had admitted her surprise at his absence.
Estelle Carter had arrived with a ruddy-faced, vacant-eyed man who was the impregnable bachelor of the hunting-set. She had danced with one white arm about his neck. Later Sandra had seen her with Curtis Newsome in the shadow of a cypress near the garden fountain. His hands had been clenched behind him while she pretended to adjust his tie. Adjusting ties seemed her specialty. He was such a boy, a boy sensitive to the humiliations his wife heaped on him when enraged. Was Estelle really in love with him? Estelle, with her wealth, her social background? Incredible as it seemed, such attraction happened occasionally. She had tried her wiles on Nicholas Hoyt last night. Had she wanted to hurt Curtis Newsome? Whether she had or not she had succeeded in making Sandra Duval jealous. She burned now with the memory. Silly to have been so excited over it. If rumor were true, up to now Estelle had picked lovers up and dropped them, with no more conscience than a lady hawk snitching chickens in a poultry yard. How would this infatuation end?
She couldn’t keep her mind on them; they faded into shadows; only Nick seemed real. The thought of him brought the sense of the worthwhileness of life which swept through her whenever he looked at her, and he had looked at her as if he cared last night—she ought to know; she had had some experience with men. Always happy ones for her—for the men too, she hoped; she had let them know before it was too late that what she felt for them was merely friendship.
The nearest she had come to love was the man she had met that spr
ing in Seville, the Stanford University graduate with whom she had looked out from the bell tower of La Giralda over the city with its fertile plains and the shining Guadalquivir flowing half around it. Her liking for him had reached fever heat that morning, but later, when he had gluttonously revelled in a bull fight which had brought the chic world out en masse but which had turned her sick with horror, it had dropped to zero, and even though she told herself that most men would have been like that, she never went out with him again.
That vignette of the past had been like a magic carpet; it had transported her from the dark stairs behind the panel into the world of light and color and sound. How long ought she to wait before she pounded for release? She had no way to tell the passing of time. Could she hear the old clock in the hall when it struck the hour? She must listen carefully.
Lucky the air was fresh. Evidently it seeped in under the crack of the door which closed off the underground passage. Sometime she meant to explore the river. She loved all waterways. Brooks and streams spelled romance to her, and in spite of the age in which she lived, she was incurably romantic. She could remember as if it were yesterday the hours she had spent punting on the Thames with the Oxford man. They had discussed every subject in the world; nothing had been too profound for their youthful courage to tackle nor their supreme confidence to settle as they glided along in the shade of majestically drooping willows and under arched bridges.
That was the summer the Harvard boy had gazed adoringly at her over the table at the charming thatched tea house across the road from Sulgrave Manor. She could see the blue and pink, pale yellow and lilac perennial bordered path as plainly as if she were on it, could smell the flower fragrance through which stung the spicy scent of lavender.
Color always had been meat and drink to her and now in memory it was irradiating this dark place. April in Holland, miles and miles of tulip fields, orderly patches of red and yellow, white and pink and purple; Egypt and a deep blue sky with the Great Pyramid rising, that heavenly pinkish gray, above golden sands. Color everywhere.
Had it been in Marrakech where gaily blossoming vines had flung themselves from the top of a high wall across a narrow street to the roofs and lacy iron balconies of the houses opposite? Of course not; that had been in Seville.
She was dull to have mixed those two. Dull! She was sleepy, tired too, after her race to Stone House on top of hours of dancing. What a yawn! Not surprising that she was heavy-eyed. She had not slept a minute last night, she, who usually put in eight hours of dreamless sleep. The clock! Chiming the quarter hour!
She had been here fifteen minutes! It had seemed a lifetime. She would wait thirty more before she battered at the panel. By that time the person in pursuit of her—had some one been pursuing her, or had those shouts been but a figment of her inflamed imagination—would have given up the hunt.
Perhaps if she closed her eyes the time would go more quickly; with her feet braced against one wall and her shoulders against another, she was fairly comfortable. The letter was safe over her heart. What was in it? Was Philippe an impostor? He had waited until after Mark Hoyt’s death before trying for the great estate. It had been done before. Hadn’t he said that a recent cause célèbre had had thirteen “rightful heirs” fighting for a fortune? Had he gotten his idea of claiming the Hoyt estate from that?
Another yawn like the last one would dislocate her jaw. Where had she been in her travels? Curious, her thoughts were all loose ends, she couldn’t seem to tie them together. She had been walking along that narrow street in Seville. It had been in a garden there that she had heard a stringed orchestra playing:
“Good night, Sweet-heart, till we meet tomorrow.
Good night, Sweet-heart, sleep will banish sorrow.
Good night, …”
No, that had been at the ball. The music, and the lights among the palms strung like luminous, creamy pearls on a glistening chain, had caught at her throat, but not as had the lights along the water front of New York as the ship upon which she was returning without her father approached the country her ancestors had fought and died for. They had glimmered and shone with rainbow colors as she had seen—them—through … a … blinding … mist … of … If she yawned like that … again … the top … of her head … would split.…
Rap! Rap! Rap!
Sandra forced up heavy lids.
Rap! Rap! Rap!
Nothing but that spooky vine against the library window. There it was again—what was she doing here at this time of night? Pitch dark—she had come to—
Rap! Rap! Rap!
The sound again! She wasn’t in the library! The witches? They didn’t rap; they shrieked. She was dreaming to the sound of raps.
Memory surged over her in a life-giving tide. Her mind went ice-clear. She had been asleep! Trapped behind the panel at Stone House. Sandra Duval trapped! For how long? She had no idea of the time. The situation wasn’t real; it was something straight out of an Edgar Poe story.
She jumped up as if yanked erect by invisible cords. Ooch! Her feet prickled intolerably.
Rap! Rap! Rap!
The sound which had wakened her. Her breath caught. Where was it coming from?
“Hi! Hi-i-i!”
The hollow call rose, fell to a groan, and reached a new high. Sandra shivered. No static about that! Was it the Stone House ghost? Silly! Hadn’t she pricked that spooky bubble? But nothing could be too fantastic to believe after the experiences of the early morning. Was it still morning? If only she knew the time.
“Hi! Let me o-u-t!”
Ghost! The call was real; she was not hearing it in a nightmare. It came from the undergound passage. If she remembered correctly, the door at the foot of the stairs had been bolted the day she had investigated the region behind the panel. She wasn’t sorry for that! Who was shouting? Friend or foe? Sounded like a movie caption. She set her teeth in her lips to suppress an hysterical ripple. A sense of humor was all right in its place but this was the time for thought. The captive might shout his head off where he was and no one would hear him, while she could easily make herself heard now. She would at least parley with the door bolted on her side.
Stiffly, on hands and knees, she backed down the steps, repeating under her breath her father’s counsel:
“Remember, Sandy, that the future holds nothing that your unconquerable soul, your faith, your trust cannot meet.”
She held her breath as she reached the door. No sound on the other side. Had the person fainted? She put her lips close to the crack and whispered:
“Who’s there?”
Not even a creak. Had the muffled voice been part of her dream? Fortified by the feel of the bolt under her hand, she repeated softly:
“Who’s there?”
The door shook like a rat in the jaws of a vicious cat.
“For the love of Mike, open the door! I’ve got to get out!”
A man! That settled it. He could stay where he was. There was not room for both of them on her side of the door. Thank heaven for the bolt!
Fists pounded. “Let me out! I gotta get out!” The last word was a sob. “I’ve gotta ride in the race!”
Sharp! Eddie Sharp here on race day! What did it mean?
“Stop pounding, Sharp! Sandra Duval speaking. I can’t pull the bolt unless you stop. It’s com-ing! It’s stuck! Wait! Wait! You can’t help by shaking. It’s mov-ing! There!”
The door creaked open. She could see nothing. She could hear hard breathing. Why didn’t the man speak? Suppose—suppose it were not … She reached out. Her hand touched cloth.
“You are Sharp, aren’t you?”
“I’m Sharp, Miss. For the love of Mike, I can’t see! Where am I? I heard a door open. Have I gone blind?”
“No, no! It’s pitch dark here. You’re in the underground passage at Stone House. At the foot of the steps which lead to the little room behind the portrait. I’m shut in too.”
“Who shut you in, Miss? What difference does it make about you? I g
otta get out! Understand? Mr. Nicholas is depending on me to ride Fortune! What time is it? I gotta get out.” His voice broke in a harsh sob.
“I don’t know the time, Sharp. I want to get out too. Do you think I mean to miss the race? That tricky secret panel locked me in. Feel your way up the stairs. Hear my grand five-year plan! We’ll shout through the eyes of the old Puritan. You knew they were peepholes, didn’t you?”
Chatter! Chatter! Chatter! How she was chattering to keep up her courage! And Sharp’s too. Suppose no one should hear them? Something uncommonly like a hand of steel squeezed her heart. What time was it? Perhaps every member of the household would be at the track! She must get out. The King of France act again. She had rushed to Nicholas Hoyt, thinking him here. Now every nerve, every inch of her was pushing her back to Seven Chimneys with the precious letter. He would go there after the races. The person who had kidnaped Eddie Sharp might come back here. Then what chance would she have of getting to Nicholas?
She could hear the jockey’s heavy breathing as he felt his way up on hands and knees. She crawled across the landing. It was not safe to stand; she might pitch down the stairs to the panel. She looked up to where she thought the portrait would be.
“Sharp! Sharp! See that crack of light? Nothing but canvas over the opening which used to be a window. We’ll pull the picture from the frame. I’ll jump down into the room. You come after me. Can you see? Can you feel? The canvas is tacked in. I’ve pulled out one tack. Ooch! That hurt! Found one, Eddie? Found one?”
“Sure, Miss. Here’s another! Can’t reach the top ones.”
“Pull the picture down! It’s coming! Coming! Easy! Don’t bend it! Keep it straight! We’ve got it!”
The portrait slipped free from the frame with a suddenness which upset the balance of the two tugging at it. Light streamed in through the opening. It set the diamonds in Sandra’s bracelet sparkling, revealed the streaks of dust on the blue velvet pyjamas, the spider-like eyes in the blood-streaked face of the jockey. The girl shivered. What had happened to him? Treachery, of course; some one had tried to prevent his riding Fortune. The fiend would have the disappointment of his life. Sharp was sound and sober. He would ride!
Uncharted Seas Page 21
