The Bandbox, Louis Joseph Vance [little red riding hood ebook free .TXT] 📗

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 balustrade. 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 identity, 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 unobserved 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 knob 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 knob 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 anticipated 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 furnishings of the room were simple and characteristic of country kitchens—including even the figure of the sturdy 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, coarsely featured countenance, oddly contending with a suggestion of implacable obstinacy and tenacious purpose.

“Here you are,” she said presently, extending a glass 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 glass.

“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 shore. 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 shore—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 nobody 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 butter 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 nobody.”

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.

So she took her place and ate—ate ravenously, enjoying every mouthful—even though her mind was obsessed with doubts and fears and burning anger.

“You are the caretaker here?” she asked as soon as her hunger was a little satisfied.

“Reckon you might call us that, me and Eph; we’ve lived here for five years now, taking care of the island—ever since your pa bought it.”

“Eph is your husband?”

“That’s him—Ephraim Clover.”

“And—doesn’t he do anything else but—caretake?”

“Lord bless you, he don’t even do that; I’m the caretakeress. Eph don’t do nothing but potter round with the motor-boat and go to town for supplies and fish a little and ’tend to the garden and do the chores and—”

“I should think he must keep pretty busy.”

“Busy? Him? Eph? Lord! he’s the busiest thing you ever laid your eyes on—poking round doing nothing at all.”

“And does nobody ever come here ...?”

“Nobody but the boss.”

“Does he often—?”

“That’s as may be and the fit’s on him. He comes and goes, just as he feels like. Sometimes he’s on and off the island half a dozen times a week, and again we don’t hear nothing of him for months; sometimes he just stops here for days and mebbe weeks, and again he’s here one minute and gone the next. Jumps round like a flea on a griddle, I say; you can’t never tell nothing about what he’s going to do or where he’ll be next.... My land o’ mercy, Mr. Searle! What a start you did give me!”

The man had succeeded in startling both women, as a matter of fact. Eleanor, looking suddenly up from her plate on hearing Mrs. Clover’s cry of surprise, saw him lounging carelessly in the hall doorway, where he had appeared as noiselessly as a shadow. His sly, satiric smile was twisting his thin lips, and a sardonic humour glittered in the pale eyes that shifted from Eleanor’s face to Mrs. Clover’s, and back again.

“I wish,” he said, nodding to the caretaker, “you’d slip down to the dock and tell Eph to have the boat ready by seven o’clock.”

“Yes, sir,” assented Mrs. Clover hastily. She crossed at once toward the outer door. From her tone and the alacrity with which she moved to do his bidding, no less than from the half-cringing look with which she met his regard, Eleanor had no difficulty in divining her abject fear of this man whom she could, apparently, have taken in her big hands and broken in two without being annoyed by his struggles.

“And, here!” he called after her—“supper ready?”

“Yes, sir—quite.”

“Very well; I’ll have mine. Eph can come up as soon as he’s finished overhauling the motor. Wait a minute; tell him to be sure to bring the oars up with him.”

“Yes, sir, I will, sir.”

Mrs. Clover dodged through the door and, running down the pair of steps from the kitchen stoop to the ground, vanished behind the house.

“Enjoying your breakfast, I trust?”

Eleanor pushed back her chair and rose. She feared him, feared him as she might have feared any loathly, venomous thing; but she was