The Motor Maids in Fair Japan Part 31

"Papa," said Billie, after a while, "let's send Cousin Helen and Nancy and Elinor to the mountains, because they need the trip more than the rest of us, and suppose you and Mary Price and I stay here and ferret out the whole thing. Of course the person who did it, and I know Nancy had nothing to do with it," she added almost fiercely, "but the real person will be coming back for the rest of the drawings, and that will be our chance. A detective in the house would give the alarm, but Mary and I might turn watchmen without arousing any suspicion, especially if some of the servants are mixed in it."

Mr. Campbell ended by taking his daughter's advice.

The very next morning Miss Campbell and two of the Motor Maids were packed off to Myanos.h.i.+ta, a summer resort in the mountains, with Komatsu to look after them, while the other two Motor Maids remained with Mr. Campbell.

"We'll follow you by the end of the week," he said. "I hope you don't begrudge a lonely man his daughter for that short time, Cousin."

"I hope you won't keep her in this awful heat any longer than you can help," was his cousin's reply. For Miss Campbell had grown to regard Billie as her especial property.

CHAPTER XX.

THE TYPHOON.

The three conspirators had formed no particular plan for a campaign. Mr.

Campbell was certain of only one thing: if poor Nancy Brown had foolishly got herself involved in this business, it would be better to keep the secret in the family, as it were.

"We'll just give the child a good lecture and take her home," he said to himself, biting off the end of his cigar and frowning at the disquieting thought. "Whatever she did was through innocence, I am certain of that.

She may have been flattered or cajoled into it. Who knows? The little thing is miserable enough without being made more unhappy. I suppose I should have sent for her and asked for a confession, but I hadn't the nerve and that's the truth."

Several uneventful days pa.s.sed after the departure of the others. It was very hot and the girls kept indoors until after sunset. But it was a dull, dispiriting time, and one morning they decided to take a spin in the "Comet," leaving Mr. Campbell at home to look after things. They had hardly gone when he was summoned to Tokyo by a messenger, and there was no one but the servants left in the house.

The girls motored into town and spent the morning shopping. From one curio shop to another they wandered in the quest of nothing except diversion.

"There is no end to the beautiful things here," sighed Mary, wis.h.i.+ng in her heart that she could carry the most beautiful and priceless thing in Tokyo home to her mother.

"Yes, everything is beautiful except the weather," remarked Billie, pointing to the black clouds which had gathered while they were in a shop. "We are going to have one of those red-letter storms, Mary. I think we'd better hurry home as fast as we can."

But the "Comet," who never had any luck all the time he was in j.a.pan, proceeded to burst one of his tires and the explosion mingled threateningly with a low roll of thunder in the distance.

"We'd better take him to a garage and go back in a 'riksha," announced Billie, much annoyed. "Poor old 'Comet,' it wasn't his fault, but the prologues of these storms do put one in a bad temper."

"They frighten me," said Mary. "They give me evil forebodings."

The "Comet" was accordingly left at the garage to be repaired, and the girls were well on their way home in a jinriksha before anything worse had happened than rumblings and strange mutterings at what seemed a great distance away. It sometimes takes hours for a great storm in j.a.pan to reach a head; which, in a way, is rather fortunate, because it gives people a chance to prepare for the struggle. A house is usually completely closed with storm shutters. Not even the smallest opening is left, through which the demon wind can find its way and so carry off the roof, or even the house itself. Every detachable object out of doors is taken inside. The gardener is seen hurrying about protecting his most valuable plants, and by the time the storm bursts upon the scene, filled with demoniacal shrieks and howls like an army of barbarians pursuing the enemy, it finds its victims prepared for the attack.

When the 'riksha turned in at the Campbell gate, it had grown so dark that only the dim outlines of the house were visible at the end of the driveway. No one saw them arrive. The servants were probably at the back putting on the storm shutters, which were all in place at the front.

Billie invited the 'riksha man to go around to the servants' quarters and wait until the storm had pa.s.sed, but he nodded cheerfully and took his way down the road.

"Let's go in by the pa.s.sage door," suggested Mary. "Everything is closed up here."

Billie followed her wearily. The heat and oppression were almost beyond endurance. She felt she might be suffocated at any moment. It was like trying to breathe under a feather mattress or in a total vacuum, for that matter.

"Shall we put on our kimonos and lie on the floor in the library?" she suggested as they slipped into the pa.s.sage. And this they accordingly did without another word or a moment's delay. It was too hot to think or sleep or eat or speak. All they desired was to stretch out on the rug in a cool dark room and keep perfectly still.

There was a deadly quiet in the house when presently two little kimonoed forms stole through the halls and crept to the library door. Billie felt for the k.n.o.b in the darkness and turned it. The door was locked. In the dense atmosphere it was difficult for them to realize what this meant at first.

"Mary, it's--it's the-what-do-you-call-'em," said Billie incoherently.

Mary nodded silently. She might have shrieked her answer aloud, for the storm had arrived with a great howling of wind and rain, and with flashes of lightning followed by repeated and deafening cannonades of thunder.

The rain rattled on the roof like iron and all the demons in bedlam seemed to be besieging the house. Then a most sickening thing happened.

The floor appeared to be heaving under their feet. Doors all over the house banged to with loud reports like revolvers shooting off. There was a crash in the library, a loud cry from within, the door flew open and a figure rushed past. Mary, kneeling on the floor at the threshold, involuntarily reached out her hands and seized the flying skirts of the apparition, or whatever it was, which disappeared like a shadow through the pa.s.sage door, leaving Mary still holding the substance of the shadow which seemed to be the skirt she had grasped.

A second shock followed almost immediately, less violent than the first but quite as sickening. For one instant the house tossed and pitched like a s.h.i.+p on a choppy sea. Then it settled down on its foundations. Most j.a.panese houses are built on wooden supports, stout square pillars rounded off at the base and resting in a round socket of stone. This gives a certain elasticity for resisting shocks which a firmly built house would not endure.

The girls lay side by side on the floor of the pa.s.sage, too frightened to speak. There is a horror about an earthquake that is indescribable to those who have never felt it; a feeling of sickening inefficiency and helplessness.

After a while they plucked up courage to rise and totter weakly into the library, where Billie, her hand shaking with nervous excitement, struck a match and lit a candle. The room was in dire confusion. Chairs were upset, books had fallen off the shelves and lay scattered about the floor, and the iron safe had crashed over on its face. On the desk and the floor about it were numbers of loose sheets of paper and a narrow roll of tracing paper, which had uncoiled itself and lay half on the desk, half on the floor like a long white serpent.

Mechanically they began to put things to rights. Mary gathered up the books and set them back on the shelves and Billie stood the chairs on their legs and collected the papers. They were not important ones, she knew, only decoys, as her father had called them. In the mean time the house rocked in the clutches of the storm.

"I don't know why we bother to do this," said Billie laughing hysterically. "We may be flying through the air any minute ourselves along with the chairs and papers and everything else."

"The storm at Nikko was mere child's play to this; just an infant babe in arms," answered Mary, weeping softly while she worked.

It seemed better to be doing something than to sit still and listen to the terrifying fury of the tempest, as again and again it hurled itself against the house.

"It wouldn't have done any good even if we had caught the thief or spy or whatever he is," observed Billie after a while. "There would have been no one to help us."

Suddenly Mary's perturbed mind harked back to what had happened in the hall.

"Billie," she cried, "it wasn't a man; it was a woman. That skirt I caught--that--that something--where is it?"

"What are you talking about, Mary?"

"I tell you I caught hold of something. It came off in my hands."

She ran into the hall and, groping about on the floor, presently found what seemed to be a long coat. Rus.h.i.+ng back she spread it on the desk.

Billie held the candle high and the two girls stood gazing at it for some moments without speaking. Then Billie slowly placed the candle on the desk and sat down.

"I don't understand, Billie," said Mary, clasping and unclasping her hands in her excitement and surprise, "it's Nancy's blue raincoat, but--but I don't understand."

Billie covered her eyes with one hand as if she would like to hide from Mary what they might tell of her feelings and thoughts. There was nothing to say. It _was_ Nancy's blue raincoat, but she refused to think what the explanation might be.

After a long time, it seemed, O'Haru came into the room. She was amazed to find the girls in the library until they explained how they had just escaped the storm.

"Oh, much terrible," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the housekeeper. "Much terrible more worse than since," from which they gathered that it was one of the worst storms ever seen in Tokyo. O'Haru brought in lights and presently returned at the head of a procession of maids with trays of food; though whether it was luncheon or supper time it was impossible to tell. The clocks had all stopped in the earthquake and it was still as black as night. It might have been midnight or midday for all they knew.

The girls preferred to remain in the library, which seemed to them more protection than the other rooms, and O'Haru drew up three tables and arranged the trays with great deftness and celerity.

"Papa didn't come?" asked Billie, noticing the third table.

"No, honorable lady."