The House with the Twisted Chimneys/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
It ended in my deciding to stop on at the inn, while Terry Burns went into lodgings. I felt that he was right. I had to stand by!
It wasn't only the romance of Terry falling out of love with his princess and in love with a face which held me. There was more in the affair than that. The impression I had received when the old servant first opened the door of Dun Moat came back to me sharply—and, indeed, it had never gone—an impression that there was something wrong with the house.
I didn't for a moment believe that Terry had “seen a ghost” or had an optical illusion. He'd distinctly beheld a girl at the window, evidently the same window from which the Scarlett boy had looked at me. Though he had seen her for a moment only, by questioning I got quite an accurate description of her appearance: large, dark eyes in a delicate, oval face; full, red lips, the upper one very short; a cleft chin; a slender, little aquiline nose, and auburn hair parted madonna fashion on a broad forehead. She had worn a black dress, Terry thought, cut rather low at the throat. In order to look out she had held back the gray curtain, and, recalling the picture she made, it seemed to him that she had a frightened air. His eyes had met hers, and she had bent forward, as if she wished to speak. He had paused, but as he did so the girl started and drew hastily back. It was then that Terry started to run to the door, thinking a rejuvenated, rebeautified Margaret Revell was making a tour of exploration without him.
Now that he was out of love with the Princess Avalesco, there was no longer a pressing reason to keep me in the background. For all he cared, she might misunderstand the situation as much as she confoundedly pleased. It was decided, therefore, that I should promptly call. I would be nice to her, and try to get myself invited often to Dun Moat. I would wander in the garden, where I must be seen by the Scarletts, and, as their presence in the “suite of the garden court” was no secret from me, it seemed that there would be no indiscretion in visiting Lady Scarlett. Once in that wing, it would go hard if I didn't get a peep at all its occupants!
I knew that the Scarletts kept up communication with the outer world, so far as getting food was concerned, through the old servant woman, whose name was Hedwig Kram. She lived in the main part of the house, and was ostensibly in the service of the tenant, but most of her time was spent in looking after her master and mistress. I thought that she might be handy as a messenger.
I went next day to Dun Moat, Terry having explained me as a friend who'd helped get the house ready for guests and deserved gratitude from them. If I had inwardly reproached him for fickleness when he confessed his volte face, I exonerated him at sight of his old love. On principle, regard for a woman shouldn't change with her looks. But a man's affection can't spread to the square inch!
Not that the Princess Avalesco's inches were square. They were, on the contrary, quite, quite round. But there were so terribly many of them, mostly in the wrong place! And what was left of her beauty was concentrated in a small island of features at the center of a large sea of face, one of those faces which ought to wear stays! Luckily, she needed no pity from me. She didn't know she was a tragic figure, if you could call her a figure! And she didn't miss Terry's love, because she loved herself overwhelmingly.
I succeeded in my object. She took a fancy to me as—so to speak—a fellow princess. I sauntered through garden paths, hearing about all the men who wanted to marry her, and was able to get a good look at the window. There was, however, nothing to see there. An irritating gray curtain covered it like a shut eyelid.
“Captain Burns has put some sort of old retainers into that wing, it seems,” said Princess Avalesco, seeing me glance up. “He has a right to do so, of course, as I'm paying a ridiculously low rent for this wonderful house; and I've more rooms, anyhow, than I know what to do with. He tells me it's comparatively modern and not interesting, so I don't mind.”
I rejoiced that she was resigned! I'm afraid if I'd been the tenant of Dun Moat, I should have felt about that “suite of the garden court” as Fatima felt about Bluebeard's little locked room. In fact, I did feel so, and although I was able to say “Yes” and “No” and “Oh! really?” at the right places, I was thinking every moment how to find out what that dropped curtain hid.
At first I had planned to send Lady Scarlett a message by Kram; but I reflected that a refusal to receive visitors would raise a barrier difficult to pass except by force. And force, unless we could be sure of an affair for the police, was out of the question.
“L'audace! Toujours l'audace!' was the maxim which rang through my head, and before I had been long with the Princess Avalesco that day I'd resolved to try its effect.
My hostess and her companion had arranged to motor to Dawlish directly after tea. They invited me to go with them, or, if I didn't care to do that, offered to put off the excursion rather than my visit should be cut short. I begged them to go, however, asking permission to remain in their absence to chat with the housekeeper and learn whether various things ordered at Captain Burns' request had arrived.
With this excuse I got rid of the ladies, and as the new servants had been engaged by me, I was persona grata in the house. Five minutes after the big car had spun away, I was hurrying through a long corridor which led to the end wing. As it had been built for bachelors, there was only one means of direct communication with the house. This was on the ground floor, and all I knew of it by sight was a door of red baize. I judged that it would be locked, and that Kram would have a key. If I could make myself heard on the other side, I hoped the Scarletts would think Kram had mislaid her key.
I was right. The red door was provided with a modern Yale lock. This looked so new that I fancied it had been lately supplied, and if so, the Scarletts, not Terry, had provided it! Now, a surface of baize is difficult to pound upon with any hope of being heard at a distance. I resorted to tapping the silver-ball handle of my sunshade on the doorframe, and this I did again and again without producing the effect I wanted.
The sole result was a horrid noise, which I feared might attract the attention of some servant. With each rap I threw a glance over my shoulder. Luckily, however, this long passage, with its stone floor, its row of small, deep windows, and its dark figures in armor, was far from any part of the house where servants came and went.
At last I heard a sound behind the baize. It was another door opening, and a child's voice squeaked:
“Who's there? Is that you, Krammie?”
For an instant I was taken aback, but only for an instant.
“No,” I confessed in honeyed tones, “it isn't Krammie, but it's some one with something nice for you. Can't you open the door?”
A latch turned, and a cautious crack revealed one eye and half a freckled nose.
“Oh, it's you, is it?” was my greeting. “I saw you in the garden.”
“And I saw you at the window,” said I. “That's why I've brought you a present. I like boys.”
“What have you brought?” was the canny question.
Ah, what had I brought? I must make up my mind quickly, for to cement a friendship with this boy might be important.
“A wrist watch,” I said, deciding on a sacrifice. “A ripping watch, with radium figures you can see in the dark. It's on a jolly gray suède strap. I'll give it to you now; that is, if you'd like it.”
“Ye-es, I'd like it,” said the boy. “But my mother and father don't want any one except Kram to come in here. I'd get a whopping if I let you in.”
The door was wider open now. I could easily have pushed past the child, but I was developing a plan more promising.
“Are your parents at home?” I primly asked.
“Yes. They're home, all right. They're never anywhere else these days! But they're in the garden court. I was going up to my room when I heard the row at this door. I thought it would be Krammie.”
“Look here,” I said, “would your mother mind if you came out with me? I know her, so I don't see why she should object. I'd give you the watch, and a tip, too. I think boys like tips! What do you say?”
“I'll come for a bit,” he decided. “Mother'd be in a wax if she knew, and so'd father. But what I was going upstairs for when I heard you was a punishment. I was sent to my room. Nobody'll look for me till food time, and then t'will only be Kram. She's all right, Krammie is! She won't give me away. She'll let me in again with her key, and they won't know I've been out. But we've got to find her.”
“I'll find her,” I promised. “Come along!”
He came, stealing out softly. I caught a glimpse of two steps leading down to a stone vestibule, and beyond that a heavy wooden door which the boy had shut behind him before beginning to parley with me. As gently as I could, I closed the baize door, which locked itself automatically, and, the child being safely barred out from his own quarters, I broke it to him that we must delay seeing Kram. She'd be sure to fuss, and want to bundle him back, We'd better have our fun first. There was time.
The boy agreed, although with reluctance which showed his fear of that “whopping.” But he brightened when I proposed foraging in the big hall for some cakes left from tea. To my joy they were still on the table, and, seizing a plate of chocolate éclairs, I joined the boy on the terrace. We sat on a cushioned stone seat, and the boy—who said that his name was “the same as his father's, Bertie”—began industriously to stuff. He did not, however, forget the watch or the tip. With his mouth full he demanded both, and got them.
In his delight, he warmed to something more than fox, and I snatched the auspicious moment. Delicately, as if walking on eggs at sixpence each, I questioned him. How did he like being mewed up in one wing of his own home? What did he do to amuse himself? Wasn't it dull with no one to play with?
“Well, of course, there's Cecil,” he said, munching. “I liked her at first. She's pretty; about as pretty as you are or maybe prettier. And she brought me presents, just like you have. But she's in bed most of the time now, so she's no fun any more. I sit with her sometimes, to see she keeps still and doesn't go to the window. She did go one day, when I went out for a minute, because I thought she was asleep. But mother came and caught her at it.”
“Oh, yes, Cecil!” I echoed. “That pretty girl with dark eyes and hair the color of chestnuts. What relation is she to you?”
“I s'pose she's my cousin,” said Bertie. “That's what she told me the day she came, when she brought the presents. But mother says she's no proper relation. How do you know about her hair and eyes? You didn't see her, did you? Mother'll have a fit if you did? She and father don't want any one to see Cecil. The minute she told them about herself they made her hide.”
I was thinking hard. “Cecil” was the girl's name! That Lord Scarlett who died in Australia had been Cecil. Grandmother had talked about him, and said he was the “only decent one of the lot, though a ne'er-do-well.” Now, the likeness of the name and the boy's babblings made me suspect the plot of an old-fashioned melodrama.
“Oh, I guessed about her hair and eyes, because you said she was so pretty, and dark eyes and auburn hair are the prettiest of all,” I assured him gayly. 'I'm great at guessing things. I can guess like magic! Now, I guess the presents she brought you came from Australia.”
“So they did!” laughed Bertie. “That's what she said. And she told me stories about things out there, before she got so weak.”
“Poor Cecil! What's the matter with her?” I ventured.
“I don't know,” mumbled the boy, interested in an éclair. “She cries a lot. Mother says she's in a decline.”
“Oughtn't she to see a doctor?” I wondered.
“Mother thinks a doctor'd be no good. Besides, I don't expect she'd let one see her, anyhow. I told you she won't let any one in.”
“Why does your mother give Cecil a room whose window looks over the moat, if it's so important she should hide?” I persisted.
“All the rooms in that wing where we live are like that,” Bertie explained. “They've windows on the little court inside and windows outside, on the moat. But the outside window in Cecil's room is nailed shut now, so she couldn't open it if she tried. And those old panes set in lead are thick as thick! I don't believe you could smash one unless you had a hammer. Father says you couldn't. I mean, he says Cecil couldn't. And since the day mother scolded Cecil for looking out, the curtian's nailed down. It doesn't matter, though. Plenty of light comes from the garden side.”
“Where was Cecil before you went to live in the wing?” I asked. “Was she in the house?”
“Oh, she'd been in that wing for weeks before father and I moved in,” said the boy. “Mother slept there at night. And Cecil could look out as much as she liked, because there was no one about except us and Krammie. Krammie doesn't count! She's the same as the family, because she's so old she nursed mother when mother was a baby. Seems funny she could have been a baby, doesn't it? But Krammie loves her better than any one, except me. She never splits on me to them if I do anything. But now I've eaten all the cakes, so we'd better go and find Krammie. If we don't, she may go into the wing first. There'd be the devil to pay then!”
It seemed to me that there was the devil to pay already, a devil in woman's form, unless my imagination had made a fool of me. I shivered with disgust at the thought of these two witches, the middle-aged witch and the old one.
If I did hand over my prize to the elder witch, he was lost to me. I should never get a second chance to catch my fox with cake! And even were I sure that he wouldn't blab, or that Kram wouldn't, the secret of our meeting was certain to leak out. In that case, the red-baize door would never again open to my knock, so what was I to do?
“Come along,” urged the boy. Having got all he could out of me, he began to sulk. “I don't want to stay with you any more.”
“Wait a minute,” I pleaded. “I'm thinking of something—something to do for you.”
Though I wasn't a villainess as yet, the most diabolical plot had just jumped into my head.