But her husband did not approve of her going out or of her having company. The Larches was too far away, and as for Mr. and Mrs. Talcott, they were meddlesome people, whom he had never liked; besides, Mrs. Talcott was delicate, and the night threatened storm. It seemed hard to subject her to this ordeal, and he showed that he thought so by his manner, but, as circumstances were, she would have to stay alone, and he only hoped she would be brave and go to bed like a good girl, and think nothing about the money, which he would take care to put away in a very safe place.
“Or,” said he, kissing her downcast face, “perhaps you would rather hide it yourself; women always have curious ideas about such things.”
“Yes, let me hide it,” she murmured. “The money, I mean, not the bag. Every one knows the bag. I should never dare to leave it in that.” And begging him to unlock it, she began to empty it with a feverish haste that rather alarmed him, for he surveyed her anxiously and shook his head as if he dreaded the effects of this excitement upon her.
But as he saw no way of averting it he confined himself to using such soothing words as were at his command, and then, humoring her weakness, helped her to arrange the bills in the place she had chosen, and restuffing the bag with old receipts till it acquired its former dimensions, he put a few bills on top to make the whole look natural, and, laughing at her white face, relocked the bag and put the key back in his pocket.
“There, dear; a notable scheme and one that should relieve your mind entirely!” he cried. “If any one should attempt burglary in my absence and should succeed in getting into a house as safely locked as this will be when I leave it, then trust to their being satisfied when they see this booty, which I shall hide where I always hide it—in the cupboard over my desk.”
“And when will you be back?” she murmured, trembling in spite of herself at these preparations.
“By one o’clock if possible. Certainly by two.”
“And our neighbors go to bed at ten,” she murmured. But the words were low, and she was glad he did not hear them, for if it was his duty to obey the orders he had received, then it was her duty to meet the position in which it left her as bravely as she could.
At supper she was so natural that his face rapidly brightened, and it was with quite an air of cheerfulness that he rose at last to lock up the house and make such preparations as were necessary for his dismal ride over the mountains to Fairbanks. She had the supper dishes to wash up in Tennie’s absence, and as she was a busy little housewife she found herself singing a snatch of song as she passed back and forth from dining-room to kitchen. He heard it, too, and smiled to himself as he bolted the windows on the ground floor and examined the locks of the three lower doors, and when he finally came into the kitchen with his greatcoat on to give her his final kiss, he had but one parting injunction to urge, and that was that she should lock the front door after him and then forget the whole matter till she heard his double knock at midnight.
She smiled and held up her ingenuous face.
“Be careful of yourself,” she murmured. “I hate this dark ride for you, and on such a night too.” And she ran with him to the door to look out.
“It is certainly very dark,” he responded, “but I’m to have one of Brown’s safest horses. Do not worry about me. I shall do well enough, and so will you, too, or you are not the plucky little woman I have always thought you.”
She laughed, but there was a choking sound in her voice that made him look at her again. But at sight of his anxiety she recovered herself, and pointing to the clouds said earnestly:
“It is going to snow. Be careful as you ride by the gorge, Ned; it is very deceptive there in a snowstorm.”
But he vowed that it would not snow before morning, and giving her one final embrace he dashed down the path toward Brown’s livery stable. “Oh, what is the matter with me?” she murmured to herself as his steps died out in the distance. “I never knew I was such a coward.” And she paused for a moment, looking up and down the road, as if in despite of her husband’s command she had the desperate idea of running away to some neighbor.
But she was too loyal for that, and smothering a sigh she retreated into the house. As she did so the first flakes fell of the storm that was not to have come till morning.
It took her an hour to get her kitchen in order, and nine o’clock struck before she was ready to sit down. She had been so busy she had not noticed how the wind had increased or how rapidly the snow was falling. But when she went to the front door for another glance up and down the road she started back, appalled at the fierceness of the gale and at the great pile of snow that had already accumulated on the doorstep.
Too delicate to breast such a wind, she saw herself robbed of her last hope of any companionship, and sighing heavily she locked and bolted the door for the night and went back into her little sitting-room, where a great fire was burning. Here she sat down, and determined, now that she must pass the evening alone, to do it as cheerfully as possible, and so began to sew. “Oh, what a Christmas eve!” she thought, and a picture of other homes rose before her eyes, homes in which husbands sat by wives and brothers by sisters, and a great wave of regret poured over her and a longing for something, she hardly dared say what, lest her unhappiness should acquire a sting that would leave traces beyond the passing moment. The room in which she sat was the only one on the ground floor except the dining-room and kitchen. It therefore was used both as parlor and sitting-room, and held not only her piano, but her husband’s desk.
Communicating with it was the tiny dining-room. Between the two, however, was an entry leading to a side entrance. A lamp was in this entry, and she had left it burning, as well as the one in the kitchen, that the house might look cheerful and as if all the family were at home.
She was looking toward this entry and wondering whether it was the mist made by her tears that made it look so dismally dark to her when there came a faint sound from the door at its further end.
Knowing that her husband must have taken peculiar pains with the fastenings of this door, as it was the one toward the woods and therefore most accessible to wayfarers, she sat where she was, with all her faculties strained to listen. But no further sound came from that direction, and after a few minutes of silent terror she was allowing herself to believe that she had been deceived by her fears when she suddenly heard the same sound at the kitchen door, followed by a muffled knock.
Frightened now in good earnest, but still alive to the fact that the intruder was as likely to be a friend as a foe, she stepped to the door, and with her hand on the lock stooped and asked boldly enough who was there. But she received no answer, and more affected by this unexpected silence than by the knock she had heard she recoiled farther and farther till not only the width of the kitchen, but the dining-room also, lay between her and the scene of her alarm, when to her utter confusion the noise shifted again to the side of the house, and the door she thought so securely fastened, swung violently open as if blown in by a fierce gust, and she saw precipitated into the entry the burly figure of a man covered with snow and shaking with the violence of the storm that seemed at once to fill the house.
Her first thought was that it was her husband come back, but before she could clear her eyes from the cloud of snow which had entered with him he had thrown off his outer covering and she found herself face to face with a man in whose powerful frame and cynical visage she saw little to comfort her and much to surprise and alarm.
“Ugh!” was his coarse and rather familiar greeting. “A hard night, missus! Enough to drive any man indoors. Pardon the liberty, but I couldn’t wait for you to lift the latch; the wind drove me right in.”
“Was—was not the door locked?” she feebly asked, thinking he must have staved it in with his foot, that looked only too well fitted for such a task.
“Not much,” he chuckled. “I s’pose you’re too hospitable for that.” And his eyes passed from her face to the comfortable firelight shining through the sitting-roo
m.
“Is it refuge you want?” she demanded, suppressing as much as possible all signs of fear.
“Sure, missus—what else! A man can’t live in a gale like that, specially after a tramp of twenty miles or more. Shall I shut the door for you?” he asked, with a mixture of bravado and good nature that frightened her more and more.
“I will shut it,” she replied, with a half notion of escaping this sinister stranger by a flight through the night.
But one glance into the swirling snow-storm deterred her, and making the best of the alarming situation, she closed the door, but did not lock it, being more afraid now of what was inside the house than of anything left to threaten her from without.
The man, whose clothes were dripping with water, watched her with a cynical smile, and then, without any invitation, entered the dining-room, crossed it and moved toward the kitchen fire.
“Ugh! ugh! But it is warm here!” he cried, his nostrils dilating with an animal-like enjoyment that in itself was repugnant to her womanly delicacy. “Do you know, missus, I shall have to stay here all night? Can’t go out in that gale again; not such a fool.” Then with a sly look at her trembling form and white face he insinuatingly added, “All alone, missus?”
The suddenness with which this was put, together with the leer that accompanied it, made her start. Alone? Yes, but should she acknowledge it? Would it not be better to say that her husband was upstairs. The man evidently saw the struggle going on in her mind, for he chuckled to himself and called out quite boldly:
“Never mind, missus; it’s all right. Just give me a bit of cold meat and a cup of tea or something, and we’ll be very comfortable together. You’re a slender slip of a woman to be minding a house like this. I’ll keep you company if you don’t mind, leastwise until the storm lets up a bit, which ain’t likely for some hours to come. Rough night, missus, rough night.”
“I expect my husband home at any time,” she hastened to say. And thinking she saw a change in the man’s countenance at this she put on quite an air of sudden satisfaction and bounded toward the front of the house. “There! I think I hear him now,” she cried.
Her motive was to gain time, and if possible to obtain the opportunity of shifting the money from the place where she had first put it into another and safer one. “I want to be able,” she thought, “of swearing that I have no money with me in this house. If I can only get it into my apron I will drop it outside the door into the snowbank. It will be as safe there as in the bank it came from.” And dashing into the sitting-room she made a feint of dragging down a shawl from a screen, while she secretly filled her skirt with the bills which had been put between some old pamphlets on the bookshelves.
She could hear the man grumbling in the kitchen, but he did not follow her front, and taking advantage of the moment’s respite from his none too encouraging presence she unbarred the door and cheerfully called out her husband’s name.
The ruse was successful. She was enabled to fling the notes where the falling flakes would soon cover them from sight, and feeling more courageous, now that the money was out of the house, she went slowly back, saying she had made a mistake, and that it was the wind she had heard.
The man gave a gruff but knowing guffaw and then resumed his watch over her, following her steps as she proceeded to set him out a meal, with a persistency that reminded her of a tiger just on the point of springing. But the inviting look of the viands with which she was rapidly setting the table soon distracted his attention, and allowing himself one grunt of satisfaction, he drew up a chair and set himself down to what to him was evidently a most savory repast.
“No beer? No ale? Nothing o’ that sort, eh? Don’t keep a bar?” he growled, as his teeth closed on a huge hunk of bread.
She shook her head, wishing she had a little cold poison bottled up in a tight-looking jug.
“Nothing but tea,” she smiled, astonished at her own ease of manner in the presence of this alarming guest.
“Then let’s have that,” he grumbled, taking the bowl she handed him, with an odd look that made her glad to retreat to the other side of the room.
“Jest listen to the howling wind,” he went on between the huge mouthfuls of bread and cheese with which he was gorging himself. “But we’re very comfortable, we two! We don’t mind the storm, do we?”
Shocked by his familiarity and still more moved by the look of mingled inquiry and curiosity with which his eyes now began to wander over the walls and cupboards, she took an anxious step toward the side of the house looking toward her neighbors, and lifting one of the shades, which had all been religiously pulled down, she looked out. A swirl of snow-flakes alone confronted her. She could neither see her neighbors, nor could she be seen by them. A shout from her to them would not be heard. She was as completely isolated as if the house stood in the center of a desolate western plain.
“I have no trust but in God,” she murmured as she came from the window. And, nerved to meet her fate, she crossed to the kitchen.
It was now half-past ten. Two hours and a half must elapse before her husband could possibly arrive.
She set her teeth at the thought and walked resolutely into the room.
“Are you done?” she asked.
“I am, ma’am,” he leered. “Do you want me to wash the dishes? I kin, and I will.” And he actually carried his plate and cup to the sink, where he turned the water upon them with another loud guffaw.
“If only his fancy would take him into the pantry,” she thought, “I could shut and lock the door upon him and hold him prisoner till Ned gets back.”
But his fancy ended its flight at the sink, and before her hopes had fully subsided he was standing on the threshold of the sitting-room door.
“It’s pretty here,” he exclaimed, allowing his eye to rove again over every hiding-place within sight. “I wonder now”—He stopped. His glance had fallen on the cupboard over her husband’s desk.
“Well?” she asked, anxious to break the thread of his thought, which was only too plainly mirrored in his eager countenance.
He started, dropped his eyes, and turning looked at her with a momentary fierceness. But, as she did not let her own glance quail, but continued to look at him with what she meant for a smile on her pale lips, he subdued this outward manifestation of passion, and, chuckling to hide his embarrassment, began backing into the entry, leering in evident enjoyment of the fears he caused, with what she felt was a most horrible smile. Once in the hall, he hesitated, however, for a long time; then he slowly went toward the garment he had dropped on entering and stooping, drew from underneath its folds a wicked-looking stick. Giving a kick to the coat, which sent it into a remote corner, he bestowed upon her another smile, and still carrying the stick went slowly and reluctantly away into the kitchen.
“Oh, God Almighty, help me!” was her prayer.
There was nothing for her to do now but endure, so throwing herself into a chair, she tried to calm the beating of her heart and summon up courage for the struggle which she felt was before her. That he had come to rob and only waited to take her off her guard she now felt certain, and rapidly running over in her mind all the expedients of self-defense possible to one in her situation, she suddenly remembered the pistol which Ned kept in his desk. Oh, why had she not thought of it before! Why had she let herself grow mad with terror when here, within reach of her hand, lay such a means of self-defense? With a feeling of joy (she had always hated pistols before and scolded Ned when he bought this one) she started to her feet and slid her hand into the drawer. But it came back empty. Ned had taken the weapon away with him.
For a moment, a surge of the bitterest feeling she had ever experienced passed over her; then she called reason to her aid and was obliged to acknowledge that the act was but natural, and that from his standpoint he was much more likely to need it than herself. But the disappointment, coming so soon after hope, unnerved her, and she sank back in her chair, giving herself up for lost.
&nbs
p; How long she sat there with her eyes on the door, through which she momentarily expected her assailant to reappear, she never knew. She was conscious only of a sort of apathy that made movement difficult and even breathing a task. In vain she tried to change her thoughts. In vain she tried to follow her husband in fancy over the snow-covered roads and into the gorge of the mountains. Imagination failed her at this point. Do what she would, all was misty in her mind’s eye, and she could not see that wandering image. There was blankness between his form and her, and no life or movement anywhere but here in the scene of her terror.
Her eyes were on a strip of rug that covered the entry floor, and so strange was the condition of her mind that she found herself mechanically counting the tassels that finished its edge, growing wroth over one that was worn, till she hated that sixth tassel and mentally determined that if she ever outlived this night she would strip them all off and be done with them.
The wind had lessened, but the air had grown cooler and the snow made a sharp sound where it struck the panes. She felt it falling, though she had cut off all view of it. It seemed to her that a pall was settling over the world and that she would soon be smothered under its folds. Meanwhile no sound came from the kitchen, only that dreadful sense of a doom creeping upon her—a sense that grew in intensity till she found herself watching for the shadow of that lifted stick on the wall of the entry, and almost imagined she saw the tip of it appearing, when without any premonition, that fatal side door again blew in and admitted another man of so threatening an aspect that she succumbed instantly before him and forgot all her former fears in this new terror.
The second intruder was a negro of powerful frame and lowering aspect, and as he came for-ward and stood in the doorway there was ob-servable in his fierce and desperate countenance no attempt at the insinuation of the other, only a fearful resolution that made her feel like a puppet before him, and drove her, almost without her volition, to her knees.
“Money? Is it money you want?” was her desperate greeting. “If so, here’s my purse and here are my rings and watch. Take them and go.”
The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack Page 189
