Pollyanna, Eleanor H. Porter [the top 100 crime novels of all time txt] 📗

admit you to the side door under the porte-cochère. Do you know what a porte-cochère is?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Auntie has one with a sun parlor over it. That’s the roof I slept on⁠—only I didn’t sleep, you know. They found me.”

“Eh? Oh! Well, when you get into the house, go straight through the vestibule and hall to the door at the end. On the big, flat-topped desk in the middle of the room you’ll find a telephone. Do you know how to use a telephone?”

“Oh, yes, sir! Why, once when Aunt Polly⁠—”

“Never mind Aunt Polly now,” cut in the man scowlingly, as he tried to move himself a little.

“Hunt up Dr. Thomas Chilton’s number on the card you’ll find somewhere around there⁠—it ought to be on the hook down at the side, but it probably won’t be. You know a telephone card, I suppose, when you see one!”

“Oh, yes, sir! I just love Aunt Polly’s. There’s such a lot of queer names, and⁠—”

“Tell Dr. Chilton that John Pendleton is at the foot of Little Eagle Ledge in Pendleton Woods with a broken leg, and to come at once with a stretcher and two men. He’ll know what to do besides that. Tell him to come by the path from the house.”

“A broken leg? Oh, Mr. Pendleton, how perfectly awful!” shuddered Pollyanna. “But I’m so glad I came! Can’t I do⁠—”

“Yes, you can⁠—but evidently you won’t! will you go and do what I ask and stop talking,” moaned the man, faintly. And, with a little sobbing cry, Pollyanna went.

Pollyanna did not stop now to look up at the patches of blue between the sunlit tops of the trees. She kept her eyes on the ground to make sure that no twig nor stone tripped her hurrying feet.

It was not long before she came in sight of the house. She had seen it before, though never so near as this. She was almost frightened now at the massiveness of the great pile of gray stone with its pillared verandas and its imposing entrance. Pausing only a moment, however, she sped across the big neglected lawn and around the house to the side door under the porte-cochère. Her fingers, stiff from their tight clutch upon the keys, were anything but skilful in their efforts to turn the bolt in the lock; but at last the heavy, carved door swung slowly back on its hinges.

Pollyanna caught her breath. In spite of her feeling of haste, she paused a moment and looked fearfully through the vestibule to the wide, sombre hall beyond, her thoughts in a whirl. This was John Pendleton’s house; the house of mystery; the house into which no one but its master entered; the house which sheltered, somewhere⁠—a skeleton. Yet she, Pollyanna, was expected to enter alone these fearsome rooms, and telephone the doctor that the master of the house lay now⁠—

With a little cry Pollyanna, looking neither to the right nor the left, fairly ran through the hall to the door at the end and opened it.

The room was large, and sombre with dark woods and hangings like the hall; but through the west window the sun threw a long shaft of gold across the floor, gleamed dully on the tarnished brass andirons in the fireplace, and touched the nickel of the telephone on the great desk in the middle of the room. It was toward this desk that Pollyanna hurriedly tiptoed.

The telephone card was not on its hook; it was on the floor. But Pollyanna found it, and ran her shaking forefinger down through the C’s to “Chilton.” In due time she had Dr. Chilton himself at the other end of the wires, and was tremblingly delivering her message and answering the doctor’s terse, pertinent questions. This done, she hung up the receiver and drew a long breath of relief.

Only a brief glance did Pollyanna give about her; then, with a confused vision in her eyes of crimson draperies, book-lined walls, a littered floor, an untidy desk, innumerable closed doors (any one of which might conceal a skeleton), and everywhere dust, dust, dust, she fled back through the hall to the great carved door, still half open as she had left it.

In what seemed, even to the injured man, an incredibly short time, Pollyanna was back in the woods at the man’s side.

“Well, what is the trouble? Couldn’t you get in?” he demanded.

Pollyanna opened wide her eyes.

“Why, of course I could! I’m here,” she answered. “As if I’d be here if I hadn’t got in! And the doctor will be right up just as soon as possible with the men and things. He said he knew just where you were, so I didn’t stay to show him. I wanted to be with you.”

“Did you?” smiled the man, grimly. “Well, I can’t say I admire your taste. I should think you might find pleasanter companions.”

“Do you mean⁠—because you’re so⁠—cross?”

“Thanks for your frankness. Yes.”

Pollyanna laughed softly.

“But you’re only cross outside⁠—You arn’t cross inside a bit!”

“Indeed! How do you know that?” asked the man, trying to change the position of his head without moving the rest of his body.

“Oh, lots of ways; there⁠—like that⁠—the way you act with the dog,” she added, pointing to the long, slender hand that rested on the dog’s sleek head near him. “It’s funny how dogs and cats know the insides of folks better than other folks do, isn’t it? Say, I’m going to hold your head,” she finished abruptly.

The man winced several times and groaned once; softly while the change was being made; but in the end he found Pollyanna’s lap a very welcome substitute for the rocky hollow in which his head had lain before.

“Well, that is⁠—better,” he murmured faintly.

He did not speak again for some time. Pollyanna, watching his face, wondered if he were asleep. She did not think he was. He looked as if his lips were tight shut to keep back moans of pain. Pollyanna herself almost cried aloud as she looked at his great, strong body