THE HOUSE IN THE CEDARS
Less than half a mile back, along the main road, Laurie found a country garage, in which he left his car. It was in charge of a silent but intelligent person, a somewhat unkempt and haggard middle-aged man, who agreed to keep the machine out of sight, to have it ready at any moment of the day or night, and to accept a handsome addition to his regular charge in return for his discretion. He was only mildly interested in his new patron, for he had classified him without effort. One of them college boys, this young fella was, and up to some lark.
Just what form that lark might take was not a problem which stirred Henry Burke's sluggish imagination. Less than twenty hours before his seventh had been born; and his wife was delicate and milk was seventeen cents a quart, and the garage business was not what it had been. To the victim of these obsessing reflections the appearance of a handsome youth who dropped five-dollar bills around as if they were seed potatoes was in the nature of a miracle and an overwhelming relief. His mind centered on the five-dollar bills, and his lively interest in them assured Laurie of Burke's presence in the garage at any hour when more bills might possibly be dropped.
While he was lingeringly lighting a cigarette, Laurie asked a few questions. Who owned the big house back there in the cedar grove, on the bluff overlooking the Sound? Burke didn't know. All he knew, and freely told, was that it had been empty ever since he himself had come to the neighborhood, 'most two years ago.
Was it occupied now? No, and Burke was sure of that. Only two days before he himself had driven past it and had noted its continued closed-up, deserted appearance. It was a queer place, anyhow, he added; one couldn't get to it from the main road, but had to follow a blind path, which he himself had blundered into by chance, when he was thinking about something else. He had heard, he now recalled, that it was owned by some New Yorker who didn't like noise.
Laurie strolled out of the garage with a well-assumed air of indifference to the perplexities of life, but his heart was racked by them. As he hesitated near the entrance, uncertain which way to turn, he saw that behind the garage there was a tool shed, and following the side path which led to this, he found in the rear of the shed a workman's bench, evidently little used in these cold January days. Tacitly, it invited the discoverer to solitude and meditation, and Laurie gratefully dropped upon it, glad of the opportunity to escape Burke's eye and uninterruptedly think things out. But the daisied path of calm reflection was not for him then.
Theoretically, of course, his plan would be to wait until night and then, sheltered by the darkness, to approach the house, like a hero of melodrama, and in some way secure entrance. But even as this ready-made campaign presented itself, a dozen objections to it reared up in his mind. The first, of course, was the delay. It was not yet two o'clock in the afternoon, and darkness would not fall until five, even unwisely assuming that it would be safe to approach the place as soon as darkness came. In three hours all sorts of things might happen; and the prospect of marking time during that interval, while his unbridled imagination ran away with him, was one Laurie could not face.
On the other hand, what could he do in broad daylight? If he were seen, as he almost certainly would be, Shaw, careless now, perhaps, in his fancied security, would take precautions which might make impossible the night's work of rescue. That, of course, assuming that Shaw was still at the house among the cedars.
Was he? Laurie pondered that problem. Undoubtedly he had personally taken Doris there, he and the secretary. But the chances seemed about even that, having done this, he would leave her, for the day at least, either in charge of the secretary or of some caretaker. In that case—in that case—
The young man sprang to his feet. He would waste no more time in speculation. He would know, and at once, who was in that house with Doris. He swung back to the garage with determination in his manner, and entered the place so unexpectedly that Burke, who had fancied him a mile away, started at the sight of him. Then, with a contented smile, he stilled his nerves and kept his eyes on the bill the visitor held before him.
"See here," said the latter, "I want to do a tramp act."
"Sure you do!" Burke promptly acquiesced.
"Can you find me some ragged trousers and an old coat and cap? The worse they look, the better I'll like it. And while you're about it, get me some worn-out shoes or boots. How soon can you have them here?"
"I—I dunno." Burke was looking somewhat overwhelmed. "You're pretty big," he mentioned. "Nothin' o' mine 'd fit you."
"Great Scott!" exploded the other. "I don't want 'em to fit! I'm not going to a pink tea in them."
"But you want to get 'em on, don't you?" Burke demanded, with some coldness.
"I do."
"Well, look at yerself; young fella, and then look at me."
Laurie obeyed the latter part of the injunction. The father of seven was at least five inches shorter than he, and his legs and shoulders were small in proportion. No coat or trousers he wore could possibly go on the young Hercules before him.
"Oh, well," urged the latter, impatiently, "get some, somewhere. Here. Take a run into town. Use my car if you like. Or go to some one you know who's about my size. Only, mum's the word."
Five-dollar bills were in the air, fluttering before the eyes of the garage-owner like leaves in Vallambrosa. He clutched them avidly.
"And hurry up," added his impatient patron. "Let's see you back here in five minutes."
"Who'll look after the garage? Not that any one's likely to stop," the proprietor gloomily admitted.
"I'll look after it. Come, get a move on!"
"Oh, all right! But I can't be back in no five minutes, nor in thirty minutes, neither. I gotta go over to Nick Swanson's. He's about your size."
"All right, all right! Go to it."
The impatient youth was fairly shooing him out of his own garage, but with the sweet memory of those five-dollar bills to sustain him, Burke was patient, even good-humored. One thing he could say about them college lads: they was usually ready to pay well for their nonsense. With a forgiving grin he hurried off.
Left alone, Laurie removed his coat and cap, searched the garage successfully for grease, oil, waste, and shoe-blacking, and then, establishing himself in front of a broken mirror in Burke's alleged office, removed his collar and effected a startling transformation in the appearance of his head, face, hands, and shirt.
Beginning in his college days, and continuing throughout his more recent theatrical experiences, the art of make-up had increasingly interested him. The people in his plays owed something to his developing skill, and even one of the leading ladies had humbly taken suggestions from him. But never in any stage dressing-room had young Mr. Devon secured a more extraordinary change than the one he produced now, with the simple aids at hand.
When Burke returned he found his garage in charge of an unwashed, unkempt, unprepossessing young ruffian whom he stared at for a full minute before he accepted him as the man he had left there. The ragged trousers, the spotted "reefer" buttoned high around the neck, the dirty cap pulled over the eyes, and the wholly disreputable broken shoes Burke had brought with him completed the transformation of an immaculate young gentleman into a blear-eyed follower of the open road.
Clad in these garments, Laurie took a few preliminary shuffles around the garage, while the owner, watching him, slapped his thigh in approval. So great was his interest in the "act," indeed, that when the impersonator left the garage and started off, Burke showed a strong desire to follow him and see the finish of the performance, a desire that recalled for a fleeting instant the determined personality of the young gentleman hidden under the tramp disguise.
At the last moment before leaving, Laurie took from his pocket the tiny revolver he had brought with him, and holding it in his palm, studied it in silence. Should he take it, or shouldn't he? He hesitated. Then habit mastered caution. He dropped it among the discarded heap of clothes, and picked up in its stead a small screw-driver, which he put into his ragged pocket. That particular tool looked as if it might be useful.
Lounging up the country road, with his cold, bare, dirty hands in the pockets of the borrowed reefer, he looked about with assurance. He believed that in this unexpected guise, he could meet even Shaw and get away with it; but he meant to be very careful and take no unnecessary chances.
He cut across half a dozen fields, climbed half a dozen fences, was fiercely barked at by a dozen dogs, more or less, and finally reaching the grounds of the house in the cedars, approached it from the rear in exactly the half-sneaking, half-cocky manner in which the average tramp would have drawn near a shuttered house from one of whose chimneys smoke was rising. It was a manner that nicely blended the hope of a hand-out with the fear of a rebuff. Once he fancied he saw something moving among the trees. He ducked back and remained quiet for some time. Then, reassured by the continued silence, he emerged, sauntered to the back entrance, and after a brief preliminary study of the shuttered windows, assailed the door with a pair of grimy knuckles.
He had expected a long delay, possibly no response at all. But the door opened as promptly as if some one had been standing there awaiting his signal, and on its threshold a forbidding-looking woman, haglike as to hair and features but cleanly dressed, stood regarding him with strong disapproval. In the kitchen range back of her a coal fire was burning. A tea-kettle bubbled domestically on its top, and cheek by jowl with this a big-bellied coffee-pot exhaled a delicious aroma.
The entire tableau was so different from anything Laurie had expected that for an instant he stared at the woman, speechless and almost open-mouthed. Then the smell of the coffee gave him his cue. He suddenly remembered that he had eaten nothing that day, and the fact gave a thrill of sincerity to the professional whine in which he made his request.
"Say, lady," he begged urgently, "I'm down an' out. Gimme a cup o' cawfee, will yuh?"
Her impulse, he saw clearly, had been to close the door in his face. Already her hand was automatically responding to it. But he whipped off his dirty cap and, shivering on the door-step, looked at her with Laurie's eyes, whose beauty no amount of disguise could wholly conceal. There was real appeal in them now. Much, indeed almost everything, depended on what this creature would do in the next minute. She hesitated.
"I ain't had a mouthful since yesterday," croaked the visitor, pleadingly and truthfully.
"Well, wait there a minute. I'll bring you a cup of coffee."
She turned from the door and started to close it, evidently expecting him to remain outside, but he promptly followed her in, and her face, hardening into quick anger, softened a little as she saw him cowering over the big hot stove and warming his dirty hands. In silence she filled a cup with coffee, cut a thick slice from a loaf of bread, buttered it, and set the collation on the kitchen table.
"Hurry up and eat that," she muttered, "and then clear out. If any one saw you here, I'd get into trouble."
Laurie grunted acquiescence and wolfed the food. He had not sat down, and now, as he ate, his black eyes swept the room while he planned his next move. Drying on a stout cord back of the stove were several dish-towels. They gave him his first suggestion. His second came when he observed that his hostess, evidently reassured by his haste, had turned her back to him, and, bending a little, was examining the oven. Noiselessly setting down the cup and the bread, he crept behind her, and, seizing her in one powerful arm, covered her mouth with his free hand. He could not wholly stifle the smothered shriek she gave.
For the next moment he had his hands full. Despite her wrinkles and her gray hair, she was a strong woman, and she fought with a violence and a false strength due to overwhelming fury and terror. It was so difficult to control her without hurting her that all his strength was taxed. But at last he brought her slowly down into a chair under the row of dish-towels, and seizing two of these useful articles, as well as the cord that held them, securely bound and gagged her. As he did so he dropped his rôle and looked soberly into her furious eyes.
"Look here," he told her. "I'm not going to hurt you; be sure of that. But I've got something to say, and I want you to stop struggling and listen to it."
Under his quiet tones some of the frenzy died out of the eyes staring up at him.
"I'm here to get Miss Mayo," he went on. "She's in the house, isn't she? If she is, nod." There was a long moment of hesitation. At last the head nodded. "Is there any one else in the house?" The head shook negatively. "Is there no one here but you and Miss Mayo?" Laurie could hardly take in this good luck, but again the head shook negatively. "Where is she? Upstairs?"
The head nodded. He stepped back from the bound figure.
"All right," he said cheerfully. "Now I'm going to unbind you and let you take me up to her. As a precaution, I shall leave the bandage on your mouth and hands. But, being a sensible woman, of course you realize that you have absolutely nothing to fear, unless you give us trouble. If you try to do that, I shall have to lock you into a closet for a few hours."
As he spoke he was unfastening the cord.
"Lead on," he invited, buoyantly.
There was an instant when he thought the struggle with her would begin all over. He saw her draw herself together as if to spring. But she was evidently exhausted by her previous contest. She was also subdued. She rose heavily, and, taking her time to it, slowly led the way out of the kitchen and along a hall to the front of the house.
"No tricks, remember," warned Laurie, keeping close behind her. "Play fair, and I'll give you a year's salary when I take Miss Mayo out of this."
She turned now and looked at him, and there was venom in the glance. Violently and negatively, she shook her head.
"Don't you want the money?" he interrupted, deeply interested in this phenomenon. "I'm glad to have met you," he politely added. "You're an unexpected and a brand-new type to me."
She was walking forward again, with no sign now that she heard his voice. Reaching a wide colonial staircase that led to the second floor, she started the ascent, but so slowly that the young man behind her uttered another warning.
"No tricks, remember," he repeated, cheerfully. "I'm afraid you're planning to start something. I believe you're capable of falling backward, and bowling me over like a ten-pin. But don't you do it. A dark, musty closet is no place for a kind-hearted, sensible woman to spend twenty-four hours in."
She ignored that, too, but now she moved more quickly, and her companion, close at her heels, found himself in an upper hall, approaching a door at the front of the house. Before this door his guide now planted herself, with much of the effect of a corner-stone settling into place.
Keeping a careful eye on her, he stretched out a long arm and tapped at the panel. There was no answer. He tapped again. Still no answer. He glanced at the enforcedly silent woman beside him, and something in her eyes, a gleam of triumph or sardonic amusement, or both, was tinder to his hot spirit.
"Have you led me to the wrong door?" he asked. He spoke very quietly, but the tone impressed the woman. The gleam faded from her eyes. Hastily she shook her head.
"If you have—" He nodded at her thoughtfully. Then he raised his voice.
"Doris," he called. "Doris!"
He heard a movement inside the room, an odd little cry, half exclamation, half sob, and hurried steps approaching. The next minute her voice came to him, in breathless words, with a tremor running through them.
"Is it you?" she gasped. "Oh, is it you?"
"Yes, open the door."
"I can't. It's locked."
He stared at the unyielding wood before him.
"You mean they've locked you in?"
"Yes. Of course."
It would be, of course, Laurie reflected. That was Shaw's melodramatic method.
"We'll change all that, in a minute." He stepped back from the door.
"What are you going to do?" The voice inside was anxious.
"Break it down, if necessary. Breaking down doors to get to you is my specialty. You haven't forgotten that, I hope." He turned to the woman beside him. "Have you the key to this?" She shook her head. "If you have, you may as well hand it over," he suggested. "I shall certainly break down the door if you don't; and it's a perfectly good door, with a nice polish on it."
He saw her hesitate. Then, sullenly, she nodded.
"You have it, after all?" He spoke with the natural relief of an indolent young man spared an arduous job. Again she nodded. "Where is it?" She could make no movement with her bound hands, but with an eye-flash she indicated the side of her gown. "In your pocket? Good. I'll get it."
He got it, as he spoke. Holding it in his hand, he again addressed his reluctant companion.
"When I unlock the door, you will go in first, and walk over to the nearest corner and stand there with your back to the room. Also, here's my last warning: I should be very sorry to do anything that would hurt or inconvenience you. If you behave yourself I will soon take off that gag. If you don't, I shall certainly lock you up. In either case, you can't accomplish anything. So take your choice."
He unlocked the door, and the deliberate figure preceded him into the room. In the next instant he saw nothing in the world but the eyes of Doris, fixed on his. Then he knew that he was holding her hands, and listening to her astonished gasp as she took in his appearance.
"My disguise," he explained. "I couldn't ride up as publicly as young Lochinvar, though I wanted to. So I got this outfit." He turned around for her inspection, deliberately giving her and himself time to pull up under the strain of the meeting. At the first glimpse of her all his assurance had returned. He was excited, triumphant. But as he again met her eyes, something in their expression subdued him.
"It took longer to get here than I expected, but of course you knew I was on the way," he said.
Her response was unexpected. Dropping into a low chair, she buried her face in her hands and burst into a passion of tears. Aghast, he stared at her, while from the corner the hag stared at them both. Laurie dropped on his knees beside Doris and seized her hands, his heart shaking under a new fear.
"They've been frightening you," he muttered, and was surprised by the intensity of his terror and anger as he spoke. "Don't cry. They'll pay for it."
She shook her head. "It isn't that," she sobbed at last.
"Then what is it?"
"I've brought you here. And I—I think it was a horrible thing to do. I—I can't forgive myself."
Laurie groped vaguely amidst sensations of relief and the mental confusion with which, someway, she always filled him.
"You're—all right, aren't you? And you expected me, didn't you?"
"Yes, but—Oh, don't make me talk! Let me cry."
She was crying as she spoke, rackingly, and every sob tore his heart. Again, as so often before, he felt dazed and helpless before the puzzle she presented. Yet, as always, there seemed nothing to do but obey her, since she, and not he, invariably held the key to the strange situations in which she placed him. Her tears made him feel desperate, yet he dared not continue to hold her hands, and he did not know what to say. Rising, but keeping his position beside her, he waited for her to grow calmer, and as he waited he subconsciously took in the room.
It was a big front chamber, furnished as a sitting-room. Its broad windows, with their cushioned window-seats, faced east. Besides the window, it had two exits, the door by which he had entered, and another door, half open, apparently leading into a bedroom. Its comfortable easy-chairs were covered with gay chintz, its curtains were of the same material, its reading-table held books and newspapers, and in its big open fireplace fat logs were blazing. Shaw "did" his prisoners well. Laurie remembered the cigarettes, matches, and blankets so thoughtfully provided for himself. Like Shaw's own room, the chamber breathed simple comfort. It was impossible to take in the thought of anything sinister in connection with it until one observed the gagged woman in the corner, and remembered the locked door.
"Well, Princess," he said at last, still trying to speak lightly, "this isn't much of a donjon tower, is it?"
Her sobs, hysterical and due to overwrought nerves, had given place to occasional sharp catches of the breath, like those uttered by a little child whose "crying-spell" is almost over. She did not speak, but she put out her hand to him, and he took it and held it closely, conscious of a deep thrill as the small palm touched his.
"I want to talk to you," he said gently, "but I'd feel a lot more comfortable if our chaperon were a little more remote. Can we put her into this inner room?"
Doris nodded, and he waved the woman across the threshold of the bedroom. She would be safe there. He had observed that the windows of the inner room were still barred and shuttered. Seemingly, in all the big house, this up-stairs sitting-room alone had opened its heart to the sun.
"Are you really alone in the house?" he asked.
"Yes, I think so; I'm almost sure of it."
"Then there's no mad rush about leaving?"
"No—I—I think not."
He observed her hesitation but ignored it. He drew two big chairs close to the open fire, and, leading Doris to one, seated her in it, and took the other himself, turning it to face hers. As he did so, she recoiled.
"You look so dreadful!" she explained with a shudder.
"I suppose I do. But forget that and tell me something. When did Shaw leave?"
"Within half an hour of the time he brought me here."
"When is he coming back?"
"To-night, I think."
"And he's left you here alone, with no one around but this woman?" Laurie asked, incredulously. Here was another situation hard to understand.
"His secretary is somewhere around, a wretched jackal that does what he's told."
"Oh!" This was news. "Where is he?"
"Out in the garage. He has a room there. I heard him say he had no sleep last night, and that he expected to get some to-day."
Laurie rose.
"I'll take a look around and see where he is," he suggested. "We can't have him catching on to my little visit and telephoning to Shaw, you know."
As he spoke he was walking toward the door that led into the hall, and now he confidently put out his hand and turned the knob. His expression changed. He gave the knob a violent twist, then, setting his shoulder against the jamb, tried to wrench the door open. It did not yield. Doris, watching him wide-eyed, was the first to speak.
"Locked?" she whispered.
"Locked," corroborated Laurie. He nodded thoughtfully. Several things, small in themselves, which had puzzled him, were clearing up. Among others, the housekeeper's persistent efforts to gain time were now explained. Shaw had not been so careless as he had seemed. The meek blond secretary with the pursuing eyes and the chloroforming habit was certainly in the house.