"I know just how you feel, darling," Dale agreed, suppressed mirth shaking her as the little procession reached the terrace. "But--oh,"
she could keep it no longer, "oh--you did look funny, darling--sitting under that tree, with Lizzie on the other side of it making banshee noises and--"
Miss Van Gorder laughed too, a little shamefacedly.
"I must have," she said. "But--oh, you needn"t shake your head, Lizzie Allen--I am going to practice with it. There"s no reason I shouldn"t and you never can tell when things like that might be useful," she ended rather vaguely. She did not wish to alarm Dale with her suspicions yet.
"There, Dale--yes, put it in the drawer of the table--that will rea.s.sure Lizzie. Lizzie, you might make us some lemonade, I think--Miss Dale must be thirsty after her long, hot ride."
"Yes, Miss Cornelia," said Lizzie, recovering her normal calm as the revolver was shut away in the drawer of the large table in the living-room. But she could not resist one parting shot. "And thank G.o.d it"s lemonade I"ll be making--and not bandages for bullet wounds!"
she muttered darkly as she went toward the service quarters.
Miss Van Gorder glared after her departing back. "Lizzie is really impossible sometimes!" she said with stately ire. Then her voice softened. "Though of course I couldn"t do without her," she added.
Dale stretched out on the settee opposite her aunt"s chair. "I know you couldn"t, darling. Thanks for thinking of the lemonade." She pa.s.sed her hand over her forehead in a gesture of fatigue. "I AM hot--and tired."
Miss Van Gorder looked at her keenly. The young face seemed curiously worn and haggard in the clear afternoon light.
"You--you don"t really feel very well, do you, Dale?"
"Oh--it"s nothing. I feel all right--really."
"I could send for Doctor Wells if--"
"Oh, heavens, no, Aunt Cornelia." She managed a wan smile. "It isn"t as bad as all that. I"m just tired and the city was terribly hot and noisy and--" She stole a glance at her aunt from between lowered lids.
"I got your gardener, by the way," she said casually.
"Did you, dear? That"s splendid, though--but I"ll tell you about that later. Where did you get him?"
"That good agency, I can"t remember its name." Dale"s hand moved restlessly over her eyes, as if remembering details were too great an effort. "But I"m sure he"ll be satisfactory. He"ll be out here this evening--he--he couldn"t get away before, I believe. What have you been doing all day, darling?"
Miss Cornelia hesitated. Now that Dale had returned she suddenly wanted very much to talk over the various odd happenings of the day with her--get the support of her youth and her common sense. Then that independence which was so firmly rooted a characteristic of hers restrained her. No use worrying the child unnecessarily; they all might have to worry enough before tomorrow morning.
She compromised. "We have had a domestic upheaval," she said. "The cook and the housemaid have left--if you"d only waited till the next train you could have had the pleasure of their company into town."
"Aunt Cornelia--how exciting! I"m so sorry! Why did they leave?"
"Why do servants ever leave a good place?" asked Miss Cornelia grimly.
"Because if they had sense enough to know when they were well off, they wouldn"t be servants. Anyhow, they"ve gone--we"ll have to depend on Lizzie and Billy the rest of this week. I telephoned--but they couldn"t promise me any others before Monday."
"And I was in town and could have seen people for you--if I"d only known!" said Dale remorsefully. "Only," she hesitated, "I mightn"t have had time--at least I mean there were some other things I had to do, besides getting the gardener and--" She rose. "I think I will go and lie down for a little if you don"t mind, darling."
Miss Van Gorder was concerned. "Of course I don"t mind but--won"t you even have your lemonade?"
"Oh, I"ll get some from Lizzie in the pantry before I go up," Dale managed to laugh. "I think I must have a headache after all," she said. "Maybe I"ll take an aspirin. Don"t worry, darling."
"I shan"t. I only wish there were something I could do for you, my dear."
Dale stopped in the alcove doorway. "There"s nothing anybody can do for me, really," she said soberly. "At least--oh, I don"t know what I"m saying! But don"t worry. I"m quite all right. I may go over to the country club after dinner--and dance. Won"t you come with me, Aunt Cornelia?"
"Depends on your escort," said Miss Cornelia tartly. "If our landlord, Mr. Richard Fleming, is taking you I certainly shall--I don"t like his looks and never did!"
Dale laughed. "Oh, he"s all right," she said. "Drinks a good deal and wastes a lot of money, but harmless enough. No, this is a very sedate party; I"ll be home early."
"Well, in that case," said her aunt, "I shall stay here with my Lizzie and my ouija-board. Lizzie deserves some punishment for the very cowardly way she behaved this afternoon--and the ouija-board will furnish it. She"s scared to death to touch the thing. I think she believes it"s alive."
"Well, maybe I"ll send you a message on it from the country club," said Dale lightly. She had paused, half-way up the flight of side stairs in the alcove, and her aunt noticed how her shoulders drooped, belying the lightness of her voice. "Oh," she went on, "by the way--have the afternoon papers come yet? I didn"t have time to get one when I was rushing for the train."
"I don"t think so, dear, but I"ll ask Lizzie." Miss Cornelia moved toward a bell push.
"Oh, don"t bother; it doesn"t matter. Only if they have, would you ask Lizzie to bring me one when she brings up the lemonade? I want to read about--about the Bat--he fascinates me."
"There was something else in the paper this morning," said Miss Cornelia idly. "Oh, yes--the Union Bank--the bank Mr. Fleming, Senior, was president of has failed. They seem to think the cashier robbed it.
Did you see that, Dale?"
The shoulders of the girl on the staircase straightened suddenly. Then they drooped again. "Yes--I saw it," she said in a queerly colorless voice. "Too bad. It must be terrible to--to have everyone suspect you--and hunt you--as I suppose they"re hunting that poor cashier."
"Well," said Miss Cornelia, "a man who wrecks a bank deserves very little sympathy to my way of thinking. But then I"m old-fashioned.
Well, dear, I won"t keep you. Run along--and if you want an aspirin, there"s a box in my top bureau-drawer."
"Thanks, darling. Maybe I"ll take one and maybe I won"t--all I really need is to lie down for a while."
She moved on up the staircase and disappeared from the range of Miss Cornelia"s vision, leaving Miss Cornelia to ponder many things. Her trip to the city had done Dale no good, of a certainty. If not actually ill, she was obviously under some considerable mental strain.
And why this sudden interest, first in the Bat, then in the failure of the Union Bank? Was it possible that Dale, too, had been receiving threatening letters?
I"ll be glad when that gardener comes, she thought to herself. He"ll make a MAN in the house at any rate.
When Lizzie at last came in with the lemonade she found her mistress shaking her head.
"Cornelia, Cornelia," she was murmuring to herself, "you should have taken to pistol practice when you were younger; it just shows how children waste their opportunities."
CHAPTER FOUR
THE STORM GATHERS
The long summer afternoon wore away, sunset came, red and angry, a sunset presaging storm. A chill crept into the air with the twilight.
When night fell, it was not a night of silver patterns enskied, but a dark and cloudy cloak where a few stars glittered fitfully. Miss Cornelia, at dinner, saw a bat swoop past the window of the dining room in its scurrying flight, and narrowly escaped oversetting her gla.s.s of water with a nervous start. The tension of waiting--waiting--for some vague menace which might not materialize after all--had begun to prey on her nerves. She saw Dale off to the country club with relief--the girl looked a little better after her nap but she was still not her normal self. When Dale was gone, she wandered restlessly for some time between living-room and library, now giving an unnecessary dusting to a piece of bric-a-brac with her handkerchief, now taking a book from one of the shelves in the library only to throw it down before she read a page.
This house was queer. She would not have admitted it to Lizzie, for her soul"s salvation--but, for the first time in her sensible life, she listened for creakings of woodwork, rustling of leaves, stealthy steps outside, beyond the safe, bright squares of the windows--for anything that was actual, tangible, not merely formless fear.
"There"s too much ROOM in the country for things to happen to you!" she confided to herself with a shiver. "Even the night--whenever I look out, it seems to me as if the night were ten times bigger and blacker than it ever is in New York!"
To comfort herself she mentally rehea.r.s.ed her telephone conversation of the morning, the conversation she had not mentioned to her household.
At the time it had seemed to her most rea.s.suring--the plans she had based upon it adequate and sensible in the normal light of day. But now the light of day had been blotted out and with it her security.
Her plans seemed weapons of paper against the sinister might of the darkness beyond her windows. A little wind wailed somewhere in that darkness like a beaten child--beyond the hills thunder rumbled, drawing near, and with it lightning and the storm.
She made herself sit down in the chair beside her favorite lamp on the center table and take up her knitting with stiff fingers. Knit two--purl two--Her hands fell into the accustomed rhythm mechanically--a spy, peering in through the French windows, would have deemed her the picture of calm. But she had never felt less calm in all the long years of her life.