The Bandbox Part 35

No longer fastened to her wrist by the loop of its silken thong, she found the bag in plain sight on the top of a cheap pine bureau. With feverish haste she examined it. The necklace was gone.

Dropping the bag, she stared bitterly at her distorted reflection in a cracked and discoloured mirror.

What a fool, to trust the man! In the clear illumination of unclouded reason which she was now able to bring to bear upon the episode, she saw with painful distinctness how readily she had lent herself to be the dupe and tool of the man she called her father. Nothing that he had urged upon her at the St. Simon had now the least weight in her understanding; all his argument was now seen to be but the sheerest sophistry, every statement he had made and every promise fairly riddled with treachery; hardly a phrase he had uttered would have gained an instant's credence under the a.n.a.lysis of a normal intelligence. He could have accomplished nothing had she not been without sleep for nearly twenty-four hours, with every nerve and fibre and faculty aching for rest. But, so aided--with what heartless ease had he beguiled and overreached her!

Tears, hot and stinging, smarted in her eyes while she fumbled with the fastenings of her attire--tears of chagrin and bitter resentment.

As soon as she was ready and composed, she opened the door very gently and stepped out into the hall.

It was a short hall, set like the top bar of a T-square at the end of a long, door-lined corridor. The walls were of white, plain plaster, innocent of paper and in some places darkly blotched with damp and mildew. The floor, though solid, was uncarpeted. Near at hand a flight of steps ran down to the lower floor.

After a moment of hesitation she chose to explore the long corridor rather than to descend at once by the nearer stairway; and gathering her skirts about her ankles (an instinctive precaution against making a noise engendered by the atmosphere of the place rather than the result of coherent thought) she stole quietly along between its narrow walls.

Although some few were closed, the majority of the doors she pa.s.sed stood open; and these all revealed small, stuffy cubicles with grimy, unpainted floors, grimy plaster walls and ceilings and grimy windows whose panes were framed in cobwebs and crusted so thick with the acc.u.mulated dust and damp of years that they lacked little of complete opacity. No room contained any furnis.h.i.+ng of any sort.

The farther she moved from her bedroom, the more close and stale and sluggish seemed the air, the more oppressive the quiet of this strange tenement. The sound of her footfalls, light and stealthy though they were, sounded to her ears weirdly magnified in volume; and the thought came to her that if she were indeed trespa.s.sing upon forbidden quarters of the mean and dismal stronghold of some modern Bluebeard, the noise she was making would quickly enough bring the warders down upon her. And yet it must have been that her imagination exaggerated the slight sounds that attended her cautious advance; for presently she had proof enough that they could have been audible to none but herself.

Half-way down the corridor she came unexpectedly to a second staircase; double the width of the other, it ran down to a broad landing and then in two short flights to the ground floor of the building. The well of this stairway disclosed a hall rather large and well-finished, if bare.

Directly in front of the landing, where the short flights branched at right angles to the main, was a large double door, one side of which stood slightly ajar. Putting this and that together, Eleanor satisfied herself that she overlooked the entrance-hall and office of an out-of-the-way summer hotel, neither large nor in any way pretentious even in its palmiest days, and now abandoned--or, at best, consecrated to the uses of caretakers and whoever else might happen to inhabit the wing whence she had wandered.

Now as she paused for an instant, looking down while turning this thought over in her mind and considering the effect upon herself and fortunes of indefinite sequestration in such a spot, she was startled by a cough from some point invisible to her in the hall below. On the heels of this, she heard something even more inexplicable: the dull and hollow clang of a heavy metal door. Footsteps were audible immediately: the quick, nervous footfalls of somebody coming to the front of the house from a point behind the staircase.

Startled and curious, the girl drew back a careful step or two until sheltered by the corridor wall at its junction with the bal.u.s.trade. Here she might lurk and peer, see but not be seen, save through unhappy mischance.

The man came promptly into view. She had foretold his ident.i.ty, had known it would be ... he whom she must call father.

He moved briskly to the open door, paused and stood looking out for an instant, then with his air of furtive alertness, yet apparently sure that he was un.o.bserved and wholly unsuspicious of the presence of the girl above him, swung back toward the staircase. For an instant, terrified by the fear that he meant to ascend, she stood poised on the verge of flight; but that he had another intention at once became apparent. Stopping at the foot of the left-hand flight of steps, he laid hold of the turned k.n.o.b on top of the outer newel-post and lifted it from its socket. Then he took something from his coat pocket, dropped it into the hollow of the newel, replaced the k.n.o.b and turned and marched smartly out of the house, shutting the door behind him.

Eleanor noticed that he didn't lock it.

At the same time three separate considerations moved her to fly back to her room. She had seen something not intended for her sight; the knowledge might somehow prove valuable to her; and if she were discovered in the corridor, the man might reasonably accuse her of spying. Incontinently she picked up her skirts and ran.

The distance wasn't as great as she had thought; in a brief moment she was standing before the door of the bedroom as though she had just come out--her gaze directed expectantly toward the small staircase.

If she had antic.i.p.ated a visit from her kidnapper, however, she was pleasantly disappointed. Not a sound came from below, aside from a dull and distant thump and thud which went on steadily, if in syncopated measure, and the source of which perplexed her.

At length she pulled herself together and warily descended the staircase. It ended in what was largely a counterpart of the hall above: as on the upper floor broken by the mouth of a long corridor, but with a door at its rear in place of the window upstairs. From beyond the door came the thumping, thudding sound that had puzzled Eleanor; but now she could distinguish something more: a woman's voice crooning an age-old melody. Then the pounding ceased, shuffling footsteps were audible, and a soft clash of metal upon metal: shuffle again, and again the intermittent, deadened pounding.

Suddenly she understood, and understanding almost smiled, in spite of her gnawing anxiety, to think that she had been mystified so long by a noise of such humble origin: merely that of a woman comfortably engaged in the household task of ironing. It was simple enough, once one thought of it; yet ridiculously incongruous when injected into the cognisance of a girl whose brain was buzzing with the incredible romance of her position....

Without further ceremony she thrust open the door at the end of the hallway.

There was disclosed a room of good size, evidently at one time a living-room, now converted to the combined offices of kitchen and dining-room. A large deal table in the middle of the floor was covered with a turkey-red cloth, with places set for four. On a small range in the recess of what had once been an open fireplace, sad-irons were heating side by side with simmering pots and a steaming tea-kettle.

There was a rich aroma of cooking in the air, somewhat tinctured by the smell of melting wax, but in spite of that madly appetising to the nostrils of a young woman made suddenly aware that she had not eaten for some sixteen hours. The furnis.h.i.+ngs of the room were simple and characteristic of country kitchens--including even the figure of the st.u.r.dy woman placidly ironing white things on a board near the open door.

She looked up quickly as Eleanor entered, stopped her humming, smote the board vigorously with the iron and set the latter on a metal rest.

"Evening," she said pleasantly, resting her hands on her hips.

Eleanor stared dumbly, remembering that this was the woman who had helped her to bed and had administered what had presumably been a second sleeping draught.

"Thought I heard you moving around upstairs. How be you? Hungry? I've got a bite ready."

"I'd like a drink of water, please," said Eleanor--"plain water," she added with a significance that could not have been overlooked by a guilty conscience.

But the woman seemed to sense no ulterior meaning. "I'll fetch it," she said in a good-humoured voice, going to the sink.

While she was manipulating the pump, the girl moved nearer, frankly taking stock of her. The dim impression retained from their meeting in the early morning was merely emphasised by this second inspection; the woman was built on generous lines--big-boned, heavy and apparently immensely strong. A contented and easy-going humour shone from her broad, coa.r.s.ely featured countenance, oddly contending with a suggestion of implacable obstinacy and tenacious purpose.

"Here you are," she said presently, extending a gla.s.s filmed with the breath of the ice-cold liquid it contained.

"Thank you," said Eleanor; and drank thirstily. "Who are you?" she demanded point blank, returning the gla.s.s.

"Mrs. Clover," said the woman as bluntly, if with a smiling mouth.

"Where am I?"

"Well"--the woman turned to the stove and busied herself with coffee-pot and frying-pan while she talked--"this _was_ the Wreck Island House oncet upon a time. I calculate it's that now, only it ain't run as a hotel any more. It's been years since there was any summer folks come here--place didn't pay, they said; guess that's why they shet it up and how your pa come to buy it for a song."

"Where is the Wreck Island House, then?" Eleanor put in.

"_On_ Wreck Island, of course."

"And where is that?"

"In Long Island Sound, about a mile off 'n the Connecticut sh.o.r.e.

Pennymint Centre's the nearest village."

"That means nothing to me," said the girl. "How far are we from New York?"

"I couldn't rightly say--ain't never been there. But your pa says--I heard him tell Eph once--he can make the run in his autymobile in an hour and a half. That's from Pennymint Centre, of course."

Eleanor pressed her hands to her temples, temporarily dazed by the information. "Island," she repeated--"a mile from sh.o.r.e--New York an hour and a half away ...!"

"Good, comfortable, tight little island," resumed Mrs. Clover, pleased, it seemed, with the sound of her own voice; "you'll like it when you come to get acquainted. Just the very place for a girl with your trouble."

"My trouble? What do you know about that?"

"Your pa told me, of course. Nervous prostration's what he called it--says as you need a rest with quiet and nothing to disturb you--plenty of good food and sea air--"

"Oh stop!" Eleanor begged frantically.

"Land!" said the woman in a kindly tone--"I might 've known I'd get on your poor nerves, talking all the time. But I can't seem to help it, living here all alone like I do with n.o.body but Eph most of the time....

There!" she added with satisfaction, spearing the last rasher of bacon from the frying-pan and dropping it on a plate--"now your breakfast's ready. Draw up a chair and eat hearty."

She put the plate on the red table-cloth, flanked it with dishes containing soft-boiled eggs, bread and b.u.t.ter and a pot of coffee of delicious savour, and waved one muscular arm over it all with the gesture of a benevolent sorceress. "Set to while it's hot, my dear, and don't you be afraid; good food never hurt n.o.body."

Momentarily, Eleanor entertained the thought of mutinous refusal to eat, by way of lending emphasis to her indignation; but hunger overcame the attractions of this dubious expedient; and besides, if she were to accomplish anything toward regaining her freedom, if it were no more than to register a violent protest, she would need strength; and already she was weak for want of food.