Astra (28 page)

So Camilla, carrying out a carefully arranged plan, took her way up the street a block, crossed over, and came to the Everson house, mounted the steps, and rang the bell.

And it happened that it was Astra herself, fresh from her walk in the snowy world, her cheeks still glowing from cold and exercise, who opened the door and saw the gorgeous mink coat owned by the lady of her great dislike. And as once before, on Christmas Day, Camilla stepped inside the door and confronted her adversary.

“You are the girl Astra, I believe?” she said, haughtily, chin up, eyes smoldering.

Astra laughed a little trill of a laugh.

“Yes?” she said brightly. “And you are the girl Camilla, isn’t that right?”

“You are still impertinent, I see!” said Camilla.

“Was that impertinent? Why, any more than for you to call me Astra?”

“But you are a servant!” said Camilla, contempt in her whole manner. “You told me yourself you were a servant. Although you certainly were blasphemous when you answered my question about whose servant you were. But that is neither here nor there. My friend Mrs. Harrison is very anxious to get hold of you again, and I volunteered to try and find you. Can we sit down somewhere and talk about it?”

Astra stared at her, and then she grinned for an instant, sobering into an amused smile.

“Why certainly, come right in and sit down,” she said, and swung open the wide door into the newly restored living room, with the wonderful eyes of Dr. Everson, the great scientist, looking down and dominating the room.

Camilla stopped short on the threshold and looked about her, then stepped back.

“Are you quite sure your mistress would be willing
you
should take a caller into
her
living room?”

Astra’s eyes danced, but she answered gravely.

“Oh yes, I’m quite sure she wouldn’t object. She is quite broadminded. Won’t you sit here by the fire? It is cold outside.”

Camilla sat down on the edge of the great chair offered her.

“I will come to the point at once,” said Camilla. “I don’t wish to take any more of your mistress’s time than is necessary. Will you tell me how long your engagement here is supposed to last? Is it merely for a short time or an indefinite period? Because my friend would like you to come to her as soon as possible as a regular nurse for her children.”

Astra’s eyes were dancing again, but she still answered quietly. “I couldn’t possibly take another situation. I am very busy and cannot leave what I am doing, and while I like children very much, I would not be able to take care of anybody’s children.”

“But Mrs. Harrison is willing to pay very high wages if she can be suited.”

“That wouldn’t be the point,” said Astra. “I’m sorry. I can’t do it. I have other obligations here.”

“Then I shall have to ask to see the lady of the house. This is quite important to me, or I should not venture to appeal to her. If she should give you up, I suppose you would be willing to come to my friend.”

Astra’s eyes grew sober now, though the grin still lingered and flitted in the corner of her mouth.

“No,” said Astra. “I would not be willing to come under any consideration. I have other work to do. I think there are agencies where you could probably find servants to please your friend, but I cannot come.”

Camilla considered Astra’s firm young mouth and reflected that after all, it was her friend’s affair. She had found the girl for her. From this point Rosamond Harrison was fully capable of putting on her own siege, and so she rose.

“Well,” she said stiffly, “I must say you are a very foolish girl, for if you suited my friend, you would perhaps be engaged for your lifetime. However, I suppose you feel you are well fixed here. This is a very nice home, of course. But I am sure you would like my friend’s place as well. I think you will see her sometime soon, for she is a very determined woman.”

“Yes,” said Astra, with dancing eyes again, “I shall look forward to seeing her sometime. But as a matter of fact, I am already engaged for life!”

“And how!” she giggled softly to herself as she closed the door behind the departing mink coat.

But the furtive man across the road slunk out from behind his tree and presently overtook the mink coat.

“Lady,” he said in an apologetic tone, “would you kindly tell me something. I saw you go into that house across the way. Would you kindly tell me if there is someone there named Astra?”

Camilla Blair faced the young man with an appraising eye.

“Yes, there is,” she said coldly. “I suppose you are in love with her or something. But I may as well tell you since you have asked about her, that you will be wasting your time going after her. She is a very determined and opinionated young woman, and you really wouldn’t have a pleasant life with her. She’s a servant in that house, you know.”

The man gave Camilla a startled glance.

“Thank you, lady,” he said. She had told him all he needed to know when she told him Astra was living there.

“I would advise you to go away and forget her. She really is not worth wasting your time on.”

“All right, lady. Thank you very kindly, lady.” He slouched off in the opposite direction.

Later that afternoon, the same man could be seen making his way toward the Philadelphia airport and hovering about until a plane from the west came in. Marmaduke Lester, with great pomp and ceremony and many bags, deposited himself on the ground and walked away, following the general direction of the sleuth.

A
n hour after the arrival of the airplane, Marmaduke Lester attired himself inconspicuously and entered a shabby old automobile parked in a desolate spot on the outskirts of the city. The man who had watched outside the Everson house and held conversation with Camilla was driving, and the third passenger was one Tom Hatchley, the unworthy son-in-law of the meek little woman living in the Willow Haven stone cottage that Astra had so lovingly provided for her to use in her declining years. Oddly enough, this son-in-law, still intent upon the purchase of a new car, and ready to take up with anything that would further that end, had been an easy subject of Duke’s henchman, who had rooted out the facts and had sought out his man in a tavern, had watched him awhile, and then approached him with a proposition.

“I don’t want no killin’ job,” said Hatchley with a shift of his cunning eyes. “Understand that! I’m connected with good, respectable people, an’ I wantta live right!”

“Oh no, its nothin’ like that!” said the sleuth from the west. “This is only a little persuasive matter, for her own good. To work it right, we have to isolate her for a little and get a chance to make her see reason. Then everything will be fine. Now, what we want of you is to make contact. In the early evenin’, sometime when there won’t be nobody on the street to holler. We want ya to go to the door and put up a story, and then before she can say a word, quick, snap a black cloth over her head and carry her down to our car we’ll have parked handy. There’ll be two of us besides you to watch out and tell ya when ta go, and there won’t be scarcely a bit o’risk. O’ course there’s plenty o’ dough in it fer ya ef ya do the job right. What’s that? Jail? Naw! You look like a bird who could do a slick job, and there’s no cops around in that neighborhood at that hour of the night. We’d liketa pull it off very soon if possible, and we’ll be back of ya and pertect ya. You can vanish as soon as ya get her in the car. There’ll be another fella waiting in the car. He’s the agent from out west, and he’s some bird. He knows his onions, an’ I guess there’s no law he don’t know how ta trip up. He’s a member of one of the biggest racket gangs on the west coast. Now, can we depend on ya? Take it or leave it; we gotta get goin’. The bird that’s bossin’ this comes in on the plane tomorra mornin’!”

“What’s this here girl’s name?” asked Tom cautiously, just before he gave his word he would take the job.

“Everson,” said the other man, “but doncha breathe it to a soul. She’s got high up kin an’ ya might get inta trouble.”

“You don’t mean Miss Astra Everson, do ya?” asked Tom in astonishment. “Because my mother-in-law used ta work fer her mom, and I gotta personal grudge against her. She done me a mean trick. Spoiled my plans. Boy I’d liketa get even with her, all right. Sure, I’ll take the job. How much you say you’ll pay?”

And that was the way Tom got into the matter.

“I got a plan all righty!” he told his new employer the next day. “I’ll tell her my wife’s mother is awful sick, and she sent me ta ask would Miss Astra come and see her. She’s near ta die and has ta tell her something she oughta’ told her long ago. We cud take her right up ta the old lady’s house. It belongs ta Miss Everson, ya know, an’ give her the works there. I’ll have the old ’un out of the way. Nobody’ll ever find out where the girl is till it’s all arranged!”

Thus did the fertile brain of Tilly’s son-in-law help to plot the way for Duke Lester. And so it was that Duke found himself in this sordid company, riding along from the airport in the shabby car. To tell the truth, this whole job was a little out of Duke’s line. He wasn’t used to taking part in what he called the “dirty work” of his own crooked schemes. He usually hired deeper-dyed crooks than himself to carry out his purposes, so now he felt distinctly uncomfortable. What would his persnickety wife and spoiled daughter say if they could see him now, riding away like this, through the city and out into the pleasant suburbs on such a mission?

So that was the ancestral mansion of the Eversons? Not so bad. Then Astra’s money must be a tidy sum, to carry a house like that on its list! She was established there already! Well, he’d soon spoil her plans!

And so they drove on out of sight of the house and into a world of their own to wait for evening shadows to gather, when their plans could be carried out.

Meantime, Rosamond and Camilla were having a telephone talk.

“Well, I found her, but that was all,” Camilla was saying. “She’s a servant all right, and she’s working in a swell house in a swell neighborhood, real old substantial people, I should judge. I’m afraid you’ll have a time getting her away, even if you pay a criminally enormous sum. But you’ll have to do the getting yourself. I’ve exhausted my efforts in finding her, and I did my best to get her to come and see you, but she practically laughed in my face. She said she wouldn’t leave where she was and what she was doing for anybody or anything. And I warn you, if you do get her, you’ll be sorry. She’s an insolent piece, and you never will stand for her.”

But Rosamond took down the address and determined that she would go tomorrow and find out about the girl. She couldn’t go today, because she had a very important meeting of a committee belonging to her club. But she thanked Camilla and laid aside her worries on the score of no nurse for the present. She was sure she could coax any living girl away from her employer if she went about it the right way. And she always knew the right way.

After Astra had closed the door behind her disturbing guest, the day went forward more calmly. She took time to go by herself and snatch a Bible verse to live through its hours, and to talk to her Lord, and ask help and guidance in every happening.

The verse she came upon in her hurried reading startled her, because she had been so upset by Camilla’s visit. It was:
“No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.”

She said it over to herself several times as she went on through the day, glad to rest the matter of this disagreeable enemy of hers entirely in His keeping and just forget it.

So the day came to evening, and evening brought another message from Cameron. He had to take a later train than he had planned and would not get to her house until a little after nine. Might he come to her then?

And the hours crept slowly, happily by.

The shabby car came to find a parking place among a dense patch of shrubbery in the little park across from the Everson house. Cousin Duke, in another car which he had hired for himself, and driven himself, took up his stand at the curb in front of a vacant house a short distance from the point of immediate interest, yet where he could view operations without being observed. He arranged himself in the shadow, with a hat drawn down over his eyes and a collar turned high about his chin.

From where he sat in the darkness, he could see Astra sitting near the window, reading. She looked so bright and happy, that his fury rose. She was going to be a hard customer to deal with, he was afraid. But, of course, she would yield to reason if he worked the thing in the right way. And it must be done quickly, for it wouldn’t do for Miriam to find out about this. Miriam could be pretty determined at times and make the world most uncomfortable for him. This must be done thoroughly and done tonight, for tomorrow was Astra’s birthday. He ought to have started sooner. It was all Miriam’s fault that he didn’t, because she was so slow to remember dates and things.

Once he noticed a police car drive by and turn into the park, but listening, it seemed to him he heard it drive away far in the distance.