Whatever his suspicions, he found her in the same spot on the hall floor making Widgy find his way out of the butterfly net, when he got back. He had no thought-reading machine, so he could not know that she had found nothing in his room either. She was so completely discouraged that she accepted Jane’s invitation that afternoon to rewind the rolls of the player piano.
“Maybe,” said Jane, “Aunt Louise likes the old thing so much she might have it fixed.”
The way they did it was for Edie to stand out on the balcony holding one end of the paper while Jane came toward her from the boathouse door rolling as tight as she could. It was quite a success, and after they had done six or seven rolls, Edie wanted to try one.
“It’s had two weeks to dry,” she said. “It might go without fixing.”
It went as if it had asthma, choking in places and wheezing in others. The music came out as it should, but the piano’s insides complained loudly through it.
“I can’t stand it,” said Jane, putting her fingers in her ears. “It sounds like torture to me.”
“Go away, then,” said Edie. “You can’t torture things that aren’t alive. Go away. I’m going to make Widgy sing. It’s just the kind of noises he likes to do it for.”
Now she knew where to look! In the boathouse of course, and probably in the piano. It sounded exactly as if diamonds and pearls wrapped round its insides were giving it spasms. But she had a hard time getting rid of Jane who thought her playing would tear it to pieces.
“It won’t either,” said Edie. “It’ll just warm it up like a good canter. Come on, Widge. Yow, yow, yow. Begin, you dumb dog.”
Widgy and the piano did the trick. Edie waited until Jane should have had time to get back to the house, keeping Widgy going with the loud pedal and her own accompaniment. Then she let the piano groan to a stop and started her investigation full of hope and excitement. It was true that James might have come and got them during the night, but then, he might not; as long as someone remembered it, the boathouse was locked at night, and besides Theodore was not so far away, asleep in Shaw Wells’s sloop.
Edie very nearly spoiled all her plans by getting stuck in the player piano. Its works were so far down that she had to go in head first through the top and leave her legs kicking, and, once in, there seemed no way to get out and no noise to make that would bring any help. Jane, she knew, would think—and tell them—it was more and worse Widgy. She was there long enough to remember Mr. Lumsden and his rush of blood to the head and to make a short prayer that she would not get that. She also prayed that no one would find her in this position, and both her prayers were answered. She managed to find a thin ledge with her groping hands and to push herself up enough to get one arm into freedom, but the experience had shaken her. She sat on the piano stool disconsolately. If the jewels were in there, they would have to stay until she could get a searchlight or some matches and, feeling it tenderly, she was sure that waving it in the air hadn’t done her knee any good either. She limped half-heartedly here and there looking without much hope in the pockets of the billiard table and in the drawer where the mouse nest had been. No more mice, poor things. Only some seaweed with shells in it washed in by the hurricane. She stood at the balcony door looking the room over as if she might see jewels hung up on the walls. Not a sapphire or ruby was to be seen unless that thing that glinted behind the boathouse door was one. She hurried over. It might at least be a ring! It wasn’t of course. It was a key. It probably belonged to something of Cousin Blade’s, put there ages ago and forgotten. It was a padlock key, and there weren’t any padlocks around that she could remember. And then she did remember where she had seen one. On the afterhatch of Shaw Wells’s sloop. Ha, ha, so this was where Theodore kept the key, and he came and got it every night just before going to bed.
“Widgy, we’ve got it,” said Edie to his panting face. “Do you know that, dumb dog? We’ve got the key to the sloop. Only you can’t come. You’ll have to stay here awhile. I’ll be back in two shakes.”
The first thing to do was to see what everyone else was doing. It seemed bad luck to find three of them in the chintz parlor eating so big a tea they would never be through.
“We were just going to get you,” said Jane.
“Thanks,” said Edie. “You might have come before you ate all the sandwiches.”
“We weren’t coming to get you for tea,” said Hubert. “Prima donnas are always too fat anyhow. We’ve all been invited to a picnic on the outer beach by the Harlows. Do you want to come?”
“No, thanks very much,” said Edie, feeling the key in her pocket. “Do I have to?”
“Well, if you don’t Si thinks he better stay at home with you.”
“Oh no! Why?”
“If I could dream,” said Mr. Parker, “that you’d keep out of trouble—”
“Mr. Parker,” said Edie very seriously, “if I make you a solemn promise I won’t leave this place, will you go?”
Hubert sat back and put his hands behind his head.
“Don’t do it, Si; she’s too anxious to get rid of you.”
“How about it, Mr. Parker,” said Edie. “I’d feel very badly if I spoiled your fun, and I won’t go further than the end of the lawn. Shake on it!” She got up and offered her hand.
“You better add not on the roof either, or up a chimney, or down a well,” said Hubert.
“Yes?” said Mr. Parker to Edie.
“Yes,” said Edie. “Anyhow there aren’t any wells.”
They shook hands and Edie ate all that was left of the tea cakes, which in the end she considered was a very wise thing to have done. One thing, however, was not yet settled.
“Where’s Ted?” she asked, as they got up to get ready. “Isn’t he going?”
“Mrs. Palmer’s got him again,” said Jane. “And he won’t be home for ages probably. She takes him swimming after they play golf.”
“Well, I won’t bother him,” said Edie righteously. “I’m going on with Widgy’s singing lessons. In the house,” she said, looking at Mr. Parker.
“Quick,” said Hubert, “let us fly.”
Edie watched them safely away from the shore and rowing across the harbor. She blew a kiss to them from the dining-room window, not so they could see, naturally, otherwise they would be back to see what was the matter, and then she hobbled as fast as she could to the ladder that leaned against the sloop. Once in the cabin she thought it only a good precaution to shut the doors and pull the hatch to. If anyone went by, they would probably not notice that the padlock was not in its hole. As another slight precaution she had hung it back on the brass latch. She wanted to take her time. This was the kind of boat she herself wished with all her heart that she could have, and she was going to look at every part of it.
When she had examined the bunks and lain down on them, the racks above them and what was in them, the little toilet, and the miniature curtains that pulled across the portholes, Edie moved quietly and reverently into the galley. Nothing had disappointed her. Everything was better than she had expected it would be. She might not love Shaw Wells since he had refused to lend her an oar, but he knew a good kind of boat, and in spite of having been through a hurricane, it was as clean as a hundred whistles. She could not help running her hand along the polished wood and touching at least once everything she saw.
The galley was small, smaller than she would have thought a place to cook in could be. You would have had to shave Cook down on all sides to get her in at all. There was just room for a stove with a rack around it, in case of bad weather, and a chest opposite you could sit on—it was probably full of provisions. Yup. She opened the cover and saw a bag of flour and boxes of hardtack. There were cupboards wherever there could be a cupboard, and all of them were lined with things to eat. Mostly baked beans, baked beans, baked beans. She thought Theodore had said how good the food was on Shaw Wells’s boat. He had probably made it up because he had been cook. If she ever had a sloop, she would line it with flagiolet
te beans, cranberry sauce, and fish chowder.
Beyond the galley was an open space with a ladder that led up to the forward hatch. That, she could see, was locked on the inside with a fat brass hook that fitted into a fat eye. On either side were recesses where the sails were kept and two long water tanks. She sighed. It had everything. If she had had a boat like this, she could have stayed at Millard’s Cove for a lifetime. As she backed into the galley again, she lifted up the small kettle to admire it. It was so perfectly round and squatty, it would sit through any storm. And heavy too, no doubt with an extra bottom, like extra lead on a boat’s keel. She still had it in her hand and was going to take off the cover when through her interest she gradually heard voices—men’s voices, Theodore’s voice. Drat! Now she was in a fix. Mrs. Palmer must have let him off early and he had come home to dinner. Well, she was not going to come out to be called names in front of everybody he had brought with him. She would wait till they went into the house. She put the kettle with infinite care back on the stove, but it was so heavy it made a tiny clunk just the same. Nothing happened, so she sat down on the chest opposite holding her breath. What was Ted bringing a lot of men home for anyway? She bet Cook didn’t have enough to eat for a crowd; anyhow, her nerves were still bothering her, she said, and she would only be expecting Theodore.
Edie waited to hear the veranda door slam. Instead she heard a man quite close to the boat say: “We can work till dark, if that’s agreeable to you.” And another man said: “Get out them rollers, Jim. It won’t take so long at that. She’s trick and trim enough and it’s downhill all the way.”
Edie blew out her breath until she was entirely empty. Theodore had not been with Mrs. Palmer at all; he had been at the boat yard persuading the men to get Shaw Wells’s sloop into the water after regular working hours. He had been saying for days that it had been on the lawn long enough, but he had not been able to get anyone to come because they had been too busy repairing their own damage. She was caught this time. Still, she would wait. They might not come into the cabin and after the sloop was in the water she could swim ashore. Shaw Wells’s mooring was not so awfully far out in the harbor and it would be low tide.
For a long time Edie was kept in the galley while she felt and tried to figure out the movements of the sloop. Now they were lifting the cradle with the block and tackle; now they let it down on the rollers; now it began to move away from the front door, she was sure. The wait then was so long and it was so still that she thought she might risk an escape, but she looked cautiously out a porthole first. She could tell that she had reached the boathouse and that now they would have to turn to go down the ravine. They must have gone off to get something to clean out the blueberry bushes. She took a careful step toward the hatch. Heavens no! There were all their voices again telling each other to “take it easy,” “make it taut.”
“Don’t let her get away from you, whatever you do,” she heard Theodore say anxiously.
She sat down again on the chest. The little kettle was all she had to look at, so she considered it with her chin in her hand. It was a cute kettle all right, but she would like to know how they made it so heavy. From here she couldn’t see any extra bottom, and if that was inside, there would hardly be room for water. It was so near she hardly needed to lean forward to get it by the handle and lift it onto her lap. Very noiselessly and slowly she took off the lid. Bother! It was too dark in here to see a thing. She put in her hand and pulled it right out again. Rocks! Somebody had filled it with sharp rocks. That was a joke on Shaw Wells. Or had he put them in himself to keep the kettle steady? Because she had nothing better to do, her fist closed on a handful and brought them out. In the dim light she thought they were queer-looking things. They had strings on them and they were not gray or black, they were—Edie’s heart almost stopped. They had white strings on them and they glinted. With her left hand she steadily and quietly put the kettle back on the stove. She took her right hand just as it was, dripping with something, into the cabin and held it up to a porthole.
It was fat Mrs. Johnson’s jewelry all right. The white strings were the pearls, it was a diamond bracelet that glinted, and her fist was full of rings. Her first thought was to pop out the hatchway with the jewels in her hands and show them to Theodore, and she might have done it except that the sloop began to move just then and tip forward, so that she sat down hard against the foot of the bunk. The men must be doing the ticklish job of sliding her down the ravine hill. She better leave them alone till they got her to the shore. It wouldn’t take long.
By the time she could hear water, Edie had had another and better idea. She would take the jewels back to fat Mrs. Johnson herself. She had had all the trouble and done all the work and had James come in and look at her from the hall. Her insides laughed as she thought of Theodore’s sleeping every night with them nearly on top of his nose. He wasn’t going to get them now and spoil everything with one of his fierce scoldings. She leaned back on the bunk cushions to enjoy the last part of the trip. The boat was on an even keel now and the worst was over. All they would have to do was roll the cradle into the water and float her off—a lucky thing because it was nearly dark. She heard Theodore pointing out the right mooring and realized that the men from the boat yard meant to tow her out and tie her up. Gander must have come out and fussed at him to come in and eat. What luck! She wouldn’t have to be afraid of him any more.
The last part of the trip was a pleasure and so was listening to the boat yard men row away talking to each other in the dusk. Edie took the kettle off the stove, opened the afterhatch, and sat enjoying the evening air a hundred yards or so out in the harbor while she considered how many clothes to take off for her swim ashore. As she began to think of it, she had a nasty doubt. That kettle was heavy. She hefted it once more. It wasn’t so much its heaviness, but how could she swim with that kind of thing attached to one hand? It would be like trying to drag an anchor. She hung her head, seeing her beautiful triumph go up in smoke because there was one thing she was not going to do, and that was let Mrs. Johnson’s jewels sink to the bottom of the harbor after she had had the luck to find them. If she could only take them without the kettle. Why not, she thought, sitting up again. She could wear them like Mrs. Johnson herself. Slowly and experimentally, after taking off her dress, she took the jewels out. The bracelets she fastened on her ankles, the rings she put on her thumbs and the pearls around her waist, knotting them up because they were so long. Three or four chains she wound around her wrists and some pins she stuck through a reef knot she had seen in the bunk rack. This she tied around her neck. When she stood up, it was a shock to be pulled at by such a lot of things, but she made herself think it wasn’t really so bad and anyway she was sure she could do it. There was still some waiting to do; she could still be seen from the shore. She would relax on the hatchway steps to be rested for her last great endeavor. While she waited, she put up her nose to catch that wonderful perfume of the sea and shore, and she listened to the utter, utter stillness. Everyone must be in their houses after dinner. I’m starved, she thought. It was just about time to go, and yet she hardly wanted to get under way.
Into the stillness, like a bird chuckling, came the sound of oars. Edie almost felt her ears stand up like a dog’s. Yes! It was, and getting nearer quickly. She could hear them squeak against the oarlocks. She pushed herself up to look and saw a blacker shape on the water and, besides that, some phosphorescence. She could not see who it was, but she realized it was a good rower; he made almost no noise and came on steadily. James! Mrs. Johnson’s finished dinner and he’s gotten away. He had seen the boat being put out, of course, and had come to get the jewels. I’m a goner, thought Edie. If the jewels had only still been in the kettle, she might have saved herself at least, but they were all over her. She could never get them off in time, and he would certainly tear her apart to get them. Her panic almost made her jump into the water there and then, but she saw that by turning the boat a little he could catch her an
d, if he wanted, hit her with an oar. She slid into the cabin, closed the hatch, and then, groping through the galley, got to the forward ladder. There she undid the hook that held the doors together and opened them a slit so that she could hear. The rower was near by this time. He would certainly come in by the cockpit, though, and while he was tying up the rowboat, she could crawl out and let herself into the water. If she could do it silently enough, she could get a good head start.
Edie waited, hardly able to breathe. Gee, I mustn’t be like this in the water she warned herself. She heard James ship his oars and get aboard, and she waited even then; when he got to the cabin, she would go. With great care she pulled the doors back and got through on her hands and knees, having to move with dreadful slowness on account of the rings and chains. Even then, they nicked the deck and made small sounds. She went into the water with a soft slop, but it wasn’t much; it wouldn’t have been anything if one of the chains had not struck a cleat and made a chink. Perhaps he hadn’t heard, as he was moving round himself. She set off anyhow as fast as she could, swimming breast stroke to make less noise. In fact, she found it impossible to swim any other way because her arms and legs were so loaded with bangles.
Whether he had heard or not, she could hear that James was on deck and she had to wonder, as she breathed long breaths and pushed herself steadily forward like an old tug, how much he could see. She had not expected him to dare to use a light, and when it shone behind her, she was appalled, until with a hurried look she saw that he was pointing it toward the harbor side. He was not sure where the sounds were coming from—that was it. Then she heard his quick steps toward the bow and the light shone in her direction. She did not think it reached her, but her swimming was not so quiet now; she was getting tired and had begun to splash. The light went off, there was some sound, maybe swearing, and then the noises became quite plain. He was yanking the boat in and then fitting the oars in the oarlocks entirely recklessly just as he had used the light. He must be desperate, and she would have to go faster. She thrashed and splashed with the jewels clogging her every stroke, but she made more headway. I’m dying, she thought, I’m almost dead, and then like paradise, as James came on with deadly long pulls of the oars, her feet touched bottom. Getting out of the water was like being in a nightmare. If he shone his lights now, he could see her easily and shoot her with no trouble at all while her feet were stuck in the sand, but he didn’t stop for that. He was evidently quite sure he was going to catch her, so much so that by the time she was at the top of the beach and his boat grounded, he stopped to pull it up out of the way of the tide. Edie thought even as she ducked into the black path that it was a stupid thing to do. Why should he care about Mrs. Johnson’s boat? Perhaps he meant to take the jewels out to sea because he was going to get them after all. The path was all uphill, and though the bushes had been partly cleared when the sloop came down, she hadn’t any more breath and her knee wouldn’t hold her. She was having to help herself along with her hands.
Terrible, Horrible Edie Page 16
