Mary Roberts Rinehart & Avery Hopwood (6 page)

BOOK: Mary Roberts Rinehart & Avery Hopwood
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She put down the knitting with an exasperated little gesture. Lizzie
had just finished her telephoning and was hanging up the receiver.

"Well, Lizzie?"

"Yes'm," said the latter, glaring at the phone. "That's what he
says—they turned off the lights last night because there was a storm
threatening. He says it burns out their fuses if they leave 'em on in
a storm."

A louder roll of thunder punctuated her words.

"There!" said Lizzie. "They'll be going off again to-night." She took
an uncertain step toward the French windows.

"Humph!" said Miss Cornelia, "I hope it will be a dry summer." Her
hands tightened on each other. Darkness—darkness inside this house of
whispers to match with the darkness outside! She forced herself to
speak in a normal voice.

"Ask Billy to bring some candles, Lizzie—and have them ready."

Lizzie had been staring fixedly at the French windows. At Miss
Cornelia's command she gave a little jump of terror and moved closer to
her mistress.

"You're not going to ask me to go out in that hall alone?" she said in
a hurt voice.

It was too much. Miss Cornelia found vent for her feelings in crisp
exasperation.

"What's the matter with you anyhow, Lizzie Allen?"

The nervousness in her own tones infected Lizzie's. She shivered
frankly.

"Oh, Miss Neily—Miss Neily!" she pleaded. "I don't like it! I want
to go back to the city!"

Miss Cornelia braced herself. "I have rented this house for four
months and I am going to stay," she said firmly. Her eyes sought
Lizzie's, striving to pour some of her own inflexible courage into the
latter's quaking form. But Lizzie would not look at her. Suddenly she
started and gave a low scream;

"There's somebody on the terrace!" she breathed in a ghastly whisper,
clutching at Miss Cornelia's arm.

For a second Miss Cornelia sat frozen. Then, "Don't do that!" she said
sharply. "What nonsense!" but she, looked over her shoulder as she
said it and Lizzie saw the look. Both waited, in pulsing
stillness—one second—two.

"I guess it was the wind," said Lizzie at last, relieved, her grip on
Miss Cornelia relaxing. She began to look a trifle ashamed of herself
and Miss Cornelia seized the opportunity.

"You were born on a brick pavement," she said crushingly. "You get
nervous out here at night whenever a cricket begins to sing—or scrape
his legs—or whatever it is they do!"

Lizzie bowed before the blast of her mistress's scorn and began to move
gingerly toward the alcove door. But obviously she was not entirely
convinced.

"Oh, it's more than that, Miss Neily," she mumbled. "I—"

Miss Cornelia turned to her fiercely. If Lizzie was going to behave
like this, they might as well have it out now between them—before Dale
came home.

"What did you really see last night?" she said in a minatory voice.

The instant relief on Lizzie's face was ludicrous; she so obviously
preferred discussing any subject at any length to braving the dangers
of the other part of the house unaccompanied.

"I was standing right there at the top of that there staircase," she
began, gesticulating toward the alcove stairs in the manner of one who
embarks upon the narration of an epic. "Standing there with your
switch in my hand, Miss Neily—and then I looked down and," her voice
dropped, "I saw a gleaming eye! It looked at me and winked! I tell
you this house is haunted!"

"A flirtatious ghost?" queried Miss Cornelia skeptically. She snorted.
"Humph! Why didn't you yell?"

"I was too scared to yell! And I'm not the only one." She started to
back away from the alcove, her eyes still fixed upon its haunted
stairs. "Why do you think the servants left so sudden this morning?"
she went on. "Do you really believe the housemaid had appendicitis? Or
the cook's sister had twins?"

She turned and gestured at her mistress with a long, pointed
forefinger. Her voice had a note of doom.

"I bet a cent the cook never had any sister—and the sister never had
any twins," she said impressively. "No, Miss Neily, they couldn't put
it over on me like that! They were scared away. They saw—It!"

She concluded her epic and stood nodding her head, an Irish Cassandra
who had prophesied the evil to come.

"Fiddlesticks!" said Miss Cornelia briskly, more shaken by the recital
than she would have admitted. She tried to think of another topic of
conversation.

"What time is it?" she asked.

Lizzie glanced at the mantel clock. "Half-past ten, Miss Neily."

Miss Cornelia yawned, a little dismally. She felt as if the last two
hours had not been hours but years.

"Miss Dale won't be home for half an hour," she said reflectively. And
if I have to spend another thirty minutes listening to Lizzie shiver,
she thought, Dale will find me a nervous wreck when she does come home.
She rolled up her knitting and put it back in her knitting-bag; it was
no use going on, doing work that would have to be ripped out again and
yet she must do something to occupy her thoughts. She raised her head
and discovered Lizzie returning toward the alcove stairs with the
stealthy tread of a panther. The sight exasperated her.

"Now, Lizzie Allen!" she said sharply, "you forget all that
superstitious nonsense and stop looking for ghosts! There's nothing in
that sort of thing." She smiled—she would punish Lizzie for her
obdurate timorousness. "Where's that ouija-board?" she questioned,
rising, with determination in her eye.

Lizzie shuddered violently. "It's up there—with a prayer book on it
to keep it quiet!" she groaned, jerking her thumb in the direction of
the farther bookcase.

"Bring it here!" said Miss Cornelia implacably; then as Lizzie still
hesitated, "Lizzie!"

Shivering, every movement of her body a conscious protest, Lizzie
slowly went over to the bookcase, lifted off the prayer book, and took
down the ouija-board. Even then she would not carry it normally but
bore it over to Miss Cornelia at arms'-length, as if any closer contact
would blast her with lightning, her face a comic mask of loathing and
repulsion.

She placed the lettered board in Miss Cornelia's lap with a sigh of
relief. "You can do it yourself! I'll have none of it!" she said
firmly.

"It takes two people and you know it, Lizzie Allen!" Miss Cornelia's
voice was stern but—it was also amused.

Lizzie groaned, but she knew her mistress. She obeyed. She carefully
chose the farthest chair in the room and took a long time bringing it
over to where her mistress sat waiting.

"I've been working for you for twenty years," she muttered. "I've been
your goat for twenty years and I've got a right to speak my mind—"

Miss Cornelia cut her off. "You haven't got a mind. Sit down," she
commanded.

Lizzie sat—her hands at her sides. With a sigh of tried patience,
Miss Cornelia put her unwilling fingers on the little moving table that
is used to point to the letters on the board itself. Then she placed
her own hands on it, too, the tips of the fingers just touching
Lizzie's.

"Now make your mind a blank!" she commanded her factotum.

"You just said I haven't got any mind," complained the latter.

"Well;" said Miss Cornelia magnificently, "make what you haven't got a
blank."

The repartee silenced Lizzie for the moment, but only for the moment.
As soon as Miss Cornelia had settled herself comfortably and tried to
make her mind a suitable receiving station for ouija messages, Lizzie
began to mumble the sorrows of her heart.

"I've stood by you through thick and thin," she mourned in a low voice.
"I stood by you when you were a vegetarian—I stood by you when you
were a theosophist—and I seen you through socialism, Fletcherism and
rheumatism—but when it comes to carrying on with ghosts—"

"Be still!" ordered Miss Cornelia. "Nothing will come if you keep
chattering!"

"That's why I'm chattering!" said Lizzie, driven to the wall. "My
teeth are, too," she added. "I can hardly keep my upper set in," and a
desolate clicking of artificial molars attested the truth of the
remark. Then, to Miss Cornelia's relief, she was silent for nearly two
minutes, only to start so violently at the end of the time that she
nearly upset the ouija-board on her mistress's toes.

"I've got a queer feeling in my fingers—all the way up my arms," she
whispered in awed accents, wriggling the arms she spoke of violently.

"Hush!" said Miss Cornelia indignantly. Lizzie always exaggerated, of
course—yet now her own fingers felt prickly, uncanny. There was a
little pause while both sat tense, staring at the board.

"Now, Ouija," said Miss Cornelia defiantly, "is Lizzie Allen right
about this house or is it all stuff and nonsense?"

For one second—two—the ouija remained anchored to its resting place
in the center of the board. Then—

"My Gawd! It's moving!" said Lizzie in tones of pure horror as the
little pointer began to wander among the letters.

"You shoved it!"

"I did not—cross my heart, Miss Neily—I—" Lizzie's eyes were round,
her fingers glued rigidly and awkwardly to the ouija. As the movements
of the pointer grew more rapid her mouth dropped open—wider and
wider—prepared for an ear-piercing scream.

"Keep quiet!" said Miss Cornelia tensely. There was a pause of a few
seconds while the pointer darted from one letter to another wildly.

"B—M—C—X—P—R—S—K—Z—" murmured Miss Cornelia trying to follow
the spelled letters.

"It's Russian!" gasped Lizzie breathlessly and Miss Cornelia nearly
disgraced herself in the eyes of any spirits that might be present by
inappropriate laughter. The ouija continued to move—more
letters—what was it spelling?—it couldn't be—good
heavens—"B—A—T—Bat!" said Miss Cornelia with a tiny catch in her
voice.

The pointer stopped moving: She took her hands from the board.

"That's queer," she said with a forced laugh. She glanced at Lizzie to
see how Lizzie was taking it. But the latter seemed too relieved to
have her hands off the ouija-board to make the mental connection that
her mistress had feared.

All she said was, "Bats indeed! That shows it's spirits. There's been
a bat flying around this house all evening."

She got up from her chair tentatively, obviously hoping that the seance
was over.

"Oh, Miss Neily," she burst out. "Please let me sleep in your room
tonight! It's only when my jaw drops that I snore—I can tie it up
with a handkerchief!"

"I wish you'd tie it up with a handkerchief now," said her mistress
absent-mindedly, still pondering the message that the pointer had
spelled. "B—A—T—Bat!" she murmured.
Thought-transference—warning—accident? Whatever it was, it
was—nerve-shaking. She put the ouija-board aside. Accident or not,
she was done with it for the evening. But she could not so easily
dispose of the Bat. Sending a protesting Lizzie off for her reading
glasses, Miss Cornelia got the evening paper and settled down to what
by now had become her obsession. She had not far to search for a long
black streamer ran across the front page—"Bat Baffles Police Again."

She skimmed through the article with eerie fascination, reading bits of
it aloud for Lizzie's benefit.

"'Unique criminal—long baffled the police—record of his crimes shows
him to be endowed with an almost diabolical ingenuity—so far there is
no clue to his identity—'" Pleasant reading for an old woman who's
just received a threatening letter, she thought ironically—ah, here
was something new in a black-bordered box on the front page—a
statement by the paper.

She read it aloud. "'We must cease combing the criminal world for the
Bat and look higher. He may be a merchant—a lawyer—a Doctor—honored
in his community by day and at night a bloodthirsty assassin—'" The
print blurred before her eyes, she could read no more for the moment.
She thought of the revolver in the drawer of the table close at hand
and felt glad that it was there, loaded.

"I'm going to take the butcher knife to bed with me!" Lizzie was saying.

Miss Cornelia touched the ouija-board. "That thing certainly spelled
Bat," she remarked. "I wish I were a man. I'd like to see any lawyer,
Doctor, or merchant of my acquaintance leading a double life without my
suspecting it."

"Every man leads a double life and some more than that," Lizzie
observed. "I guess it rests them, like it does me to take off my
corset."

Miss Cornelia opened her mouth to rebuke her but just at that moment
there, was a clink of ice from the hall, and Billy, the Japanese,
entered carrying a tray with a pitcher of water and some glasses on it.
Miss Cornelia watched his impassive progress, wondering if the Oriental
races ever felt terror—she could not imagine all Lizzie's banshees and
kelpies producing a single shiver from Billy. He set down the tray and
was about to go as silently as he had come when Miss Cornelia spoke to
him on impulse.

"Billy, what's all this about the cook's sister not having twins?" she
said in an offhand voice. She had not really discussed the departure
of the other servants with Billy before. "Did you happen to know that
this interesting event was anticipated?"

Billy drew in his breath with a polite hiss. "Maybe she have twins,"
he admitted. "It happen sometime. Mostly not expected."

"Do you think there was any other reason for her leaving?"

"Maybe," said Billy blandly.

"Well, what was the reason?"

"All say the same thing—house haunted." Billy's reply was prompt as
it was calm.

Miss Cornelia gave a slight laugh. "You know better than that, though,
don't you?"

Billy's Oriental placidity remained unruffled. He neither admitted nor
denied. He shrugged his shoulders.

"Funny house," he said laconically. "Find window open—nobody there.
Door slam—nobody there!"

BOOK: Mary Roberts Rinehart & Avery Hopwood
13.58Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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